THE UNITED KINGDOM AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA DURING THE PERIOD OF THE WORLD WAR II
** Political background in the world:
In 1919 the Treaty of Versailles ratified the end of the World War I. in 1920 Germany experienced a severe economic crises that paved the way for the rise of the Nazy party. British people were worried about the rearmament of Germany because they didn’t want to involve in another war.
In 1938 the Munich agreement annexed Austria to Germany. Soon after the latter invaded part of Czechoslovakia. Britain hurried to guarantee Poland her complete support in the event of a German invasion.
On the 1st September 1939 Germany invaded Poland and two days later France and Britain declared war on Germany. The World War II started and it was even bigger and more terrible than the World War I.
On April 1040 the German army invaded Denmark and Norway. The leader of the Nazy party was Adolph Hitler that adopted the new technique of “Blitzkrieg “ (Guerra lampo). Infact in just two years he occupied Poland, the Low Countries (Paesi Bassi) , Eastern Europe, the Balkans and France. Germany’s following move was the invasion of the Soviet Union that ended with the battle of Stalingrad in 1943. This marked the turning point of the war in the east.
In the United Kingdom the Prime Minister was Winston Churchill, a brilliant and energetic leader and under his guidance Britain was able to keep its spirits up. In June 1940 Italy sided with the Germany and declared war on France and Britain.
The invasion of Britain seemed certain. In the summer 1940 the pilots of the royal Air Force (RAF) attacked German bombers that were raiding London by day and by night. This was known as the
battle of Britain. This determined defense of British airspace eventually destroyed German invasion plans.
In 1941 Germany invaded Russia, completely ignoring the non aggression pact it had signed with the Country in 1939. This event is considered the turning point of the war world II because over time the invasion turned into a terrible disaster.
Meanwhile in the Pacific, events were moving fast. On the 7th December 1941 Japan attacked the naval base of Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands thus forcing the US into war.
The conflict also spread to North Africa where the British general Montgomery defeated the German general Erwin Rommel, who was known as the desert fox, in the battle of El Alamein.
The allied invasion of Italy in 1943 led to the fall of Fascism, but because of strenuous German resistance the actual liberation of the Country only took place in the Spring of 1945.
On the 6th June6th 1944 ( D Day) the allied forces invaded Normandy (France) and in a short time
the city of Paris was set free. Then they entered Germany and met Russia army on the banks of the river Elbe.
In Europe the war came to an end in May 1945 also with the suicide of Hitler, but still raged in the Pacific due to formidable Japanese resistance. Japan finally surrendered when the Americans used the atomic bomb to destroy the two Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in august 1945.
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Question about the World War II
1)What did the Treaty of Versailles ratify?
2)Why were British worried about the rearmament of Germany?
3)What happened in 1938 with the Munich Agreement?
4)Who was Hitler?
5)What is the name of the new technique that he adopted in the war? What does it mean in Italian?
6)Why did the World War II break out?
7)What Countries were invaded by Germany?
8)Who was the British Prime Minister during the war?
9)When did Britain enter in the war?
10)How many Countries were involved in the conflict?
11)Who was called the desert fox?
12)Who did defeat him?
13) What was the “D day?”
14)Why did the USA enter into the war?
15)What was dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
16)When did the World War II end?
(storia) WINSTON CHURCHILL
The British statement, Sir Winston Churchill is probably the most famous and celebrated Prime Minister of the 20th century. Politicians, soldier and artist, he is regarded as onethe greatest leaders of all time. His public life started in the reign of Queen Victoria in the late 19th century and continued up to the Cold War.
Churchill was born in 1874 at Blenheim Palace to an aristocratic family. His father, Randolph was an unsuccessful politician and his mother was a beautiful American and descendant of a Duke of Malborough ( a “condottiere” of 600). He entered the army and worked as a war correspondent, as a journalist and later as a politician.
At the outbreak of the World War II he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, an office that he had already held before the World War I. in May 1940 Churchill became Prime Minister and Minister of Defense and he held this office until 1945. In 1951 he became Prime Minister once more. However, in 1955, he decided to resign but remained a member of Parliament until the 1964 general election.
Churchill received many honors and decorations during his long life. At the age of 80 he made Father of the Country and deeply touched during the ceremony his comment was “you were the true lions, I have just roared.” Churchill died in London in 1965.
Churchill’s courage, determination, political experience and enormous vitality helped him guide Britain during the World War II to victory against Germany, which was officially celebrated on he 8th of May 1945.
Here an extract from Churchill’s famous speech that he made in May 1940 on the eve of the Great Britain’s entry into the second world war:
“” Blood, sweat and tears,
We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind, we have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.
You ask, what is our policy?
I will: it is to wage war by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.
You ask: what is our aim?
I can never answer in one word: victory, victory at all cost, victory, in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.””
Questions about Churchill
1)Who was Winston Churchill?
2)What were his jobs during the World War II?
3)Which Countries were allied with Britain during the World War II?
4)What are the common words that he said to British people during his famous speech?
5)What title did Churchill received at the age of eighty?
(storia) FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT
He was the President of the United States during the World War II. He was born on January the 30th 1882 in New York. He studied at Harward and received the Bachelor of Art in 1904.
He started his career as a lawyer but in 1910 he moved into politics. In 1912 he was appointed Assistance Secretary of the Navy. During a holiday in 1921 he contracted poliomyelitis and he was forced to use a wheelchair. From this experience he founded the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation after spending much of his time there recovering from polio.
In 1932 he chose as the democratic presidential candidate to run against Hoover and he won the elections. Elected in the national crisis of the Great Depression he managed to approve the anti-depression measure and created “the New Deal” policy that promoted the “three R’s” relief recovery and reform.
Roosevelt believed in the good neighbor policy which established good relations with Latin America. At the outbreak of the World War II he wanted to prevent American involvement in the conflict and only offered assistance to the allied Countries (Great Britain and Soviet Union), but the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December the 7th, 1941) brought the US officially into the war.
He didn’t see the end of the war because less than one month before Germany surrendered to Allies, on the 8th of May 1945, Roosevelt died of a cerebral haemorrhage.
Questions about Roosevelt:
1)Who was Franklin Delano Roosevelt?
2)Which was his political party?
3)What did he create and in which period?
4)In what did Roosevelt believe?
5)Why did he decide to enter in war?
6)Did he see the end of the war? Why?
(tecnologia storia e geografia) THE ATOMIC BOMB
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The atomic or fission bomb is a lethal weapon whose explosive power derives from the fission of atomic nuclei. In 1938, before the outbreak of the World War II, two German physicist discovered the fission process. A group of scientist ( including Albert Einstein) informed the U.S. president that Germany was working on atomic research and that there was the fear that Germany could win the race to produce the first bomb. So Roosevelt decided to produce the bomb first. The project to create the bomb was called “The Manhattan Project” and people worked for three years. Now the U.S. president was Henry Truman and he asked to Japanese government the unconditional surrender, but they didn’t want. So, on the morning of August, the 6th 1945, one American B-29 bomber, nicknamed Enola Gay, flew over the Japanese city of Hiroshima and dropped an atomic bomb composed of uranium. The bomb was given the unusual name of “Little Boy” in memory of the president Roosevelt. The bomb destroyed the 90% of the city. The U.S. received no response from the Japan about the request to surrender. So, a second bomb called “Fat Man” in honour to Churchill was dropped to Japan. First the target was the city of Kokura, but the bad weather conditions changed the target: the new city was Nagasaki that was destroyed on august the 9th 1945. Thousands of people were killed, others were injured from both the bombs and many other died over the following years from injuries or radiation exposure.
Enola Gay
It was the first aircraft in history to carry and drop an atomic bomb in time of war. The commander of the bomb squadron was Colonel Paul Tibbets. He didn’t know the real destructive power of those bombs and gave to his plane the name of his mother. After the war the aircraft was displayed at the National Air Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.
Questions about the atomic bomb
1)What is the atomic bomb?
2)Why did American President Roosevelt decide to build the Atomic Bomb?
3)What was the Manhattan Project?
4)When was the Atomic Bomb dropped over Hiroshima?
5)Why wasn’t the Atomic Bomb dropped over Kokura?
6)What do you think about the Atomic Bomb?
(ora di approfondimento storia) THE HOLOCAUST
Hitler blamed the Jews who lived Germany for all the problems of the country, and he considered them to be an inferior race. Hitler believed that only the Northern European people or “Aryan” race were superior, and so he created a terrible plan to eliminate all the Jews. During the Nazy period there were many restrictions placed on the Jews. At first were boycotted their shops and businesses and then that the Jews were no longer considered German citizens and therefore had no rights.
The Jews now called Jude were forced to live in close areas within cities called “Ghettos.” Then were built special camps called concentration camps and more and more Jews were sent there. The living conditions were terrible and many of poor people went there only to die. These camps were called extermination camps. The most notorious was Auschwitz-Birkenau in southern Poland. Here there were enormous gas chambers where over one million of people died and around six million of them were killed in the holocaust.
Among thousands of boys and girls that were in these camps we remember Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who died in March 1945, only a few weeks before Allied soldiers freed the camps.
Her friends saved Anne’s diary and gave it to her father who was the only survivor of his family. He published it in 1952 and it immediately became a bestseller.
Questions about the holocaust
1)Why did Hitler decide to kill the Jews?
2)Which restrictions were placed on the Jews?
3)What were the ghettos?
4)What was Auschwitz-Birkenau?
5)What happened to Anne Frank? Why is she famous today?
6)Did you read the Anne Frank Diary?
7)What do you think about the holocaust?
8)Do you know anybody who was survivor the extermination camps?
(ora di approfondimento storia e geografia) THE COLD WAR
The Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension and economic competition existing after the World War II between Communist World (primarily the Soviet Union and its States allies) and the power of Western World, primarily the USA and its allies. Both Countries held two opposite points of view about how to best achieve economic, political and scientific development and both wanted to show the other that their way was the best one. This started a period which lasted for over forty years.
Advancements in space were very important to both Countries. In October 1957 the USSR launched the first artificial satellite, called Sputnik. This was the beginning of the space race between the two countries which continued for many years. In July 1969 American astronauts from the Apollo 11 became the first to land and walk on the moon.
In 1985 Mikhail Gorbached became the new Soviet leader. He wanted to improve relations between his country and the West. The relationship between the USA and the URSS became easier and in 1989, at a summit in Malta, US President George H.W.Bush and Mikhail Gorbached officially declared the Cold War over.
From now some of the Countries of the Soviet Union have free elections, and between June and September, Poland, Hungary, Czecholovakia and Bulgaria all elected non-communist forms of government and in 1990 during the first free elections in the URSS the nationalist movements won. By 26th December 1991 the Soviet Union did not exist anymore.
After the World War II a very sad Wall was built in Berlin and it divided the city into two parts: the Western part and the East part and nobody could cross it without special permission. In October 1990 East and West Germany were united to form the Federal Republic of Germany. People celebrated the “falling of the wall.”
Questions about the Cold War.
1)What was the Cold war?
2)What was the reasons for the cold War?
3)What successes in the space programme did both countries have?
4)What was Mikhail Gorbachev’s role in the Cold War?
5)When did the Soviet Union let some its allies countries have free election?
6)What was the “sad Wall”?
7)What did it divide? Why?
8)When did people celebrate the “falling of the Fall ” ?
(Letteratura) THOUGHTS AND AUTHORS DURING THE WORLD WARS I II
The experience of the war hastened the dissolution of familiar boundaries and developed a mistrust in authority and in any sign of assertive will. The unconscious, subconscious and the human interactions became the subject matter of many writers like James Joyce, Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell. These novelist introduced innovations in a compromise with realistic techniques.
James Joyce (1882-1941): his impact on literature can be seen as a sort of revolution. His extraordinary display of techniques makes him the most important representative of Modernism. About Joyce’s most important works we can remember “Dubliners (1909) and Ulysses”.
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941):her novels are distinctively “ modern” because of her representation of psychologies through new techniques and forms. Woolf’s novels have no hero or heroine or conventional plot and action. The author focuses on images, memories, thoughts perceptions and impressions. Among her important works we can remember “To the Lighthouse, Night and Day and Mrs Dalloway.”
George Orwell (1903-1950): his talent consists of careful craftsmanship. His fiction is characterized by a direct use of language and great attention to detail. Orwell’s best novel is “Animal Farm and 1984..”
Questions about authors during the World Wars I II
1)What did create the experience of the wars to the authors to the authors of the XX century?
2)What were the principal subject of their works?
3)What did the novelists introduce?
4)Who are the most popular author at that time?
5)What’s about Joyce, Woolf and Orwell’s novels?