Guidebook Essay 4

Essay 4

For most of World War II there seemed to be a constant stretch of defeat for the Allies with endless battles and infinite casualties. The Germans swept through Europe using their lightning war strategy quickly taking small countries like Denmark and even Norway which received more Allied support than Denmark. Meanwhile in Africa the Italian dictator Mussolini had captured Ethiopia and with German help captured the nations of Greece and Yugoslavia. Even in the Pacific the Axis Japanese were making swift progress occupying Manchuria and taking over parts of the Philippine Islands. However the Allied leaders realizing that Hitler’s forces would soon overrun Britain and France, the only two combatants left in Europe, held several conferences between 1943 and 1945. These conferences developed the strategy that would win the war.

The first major conference occurred in Casablanca, Morocco between the dates of January 14th to January 24th, 1943. This conference called for the unconditional surrender of the Axis Powers and more tactically significant planned the invasion of Sicily from which the Allies hoped to gain a foothold in Italy. With this foothold they intended to liberate France and invade Germany to overtake Berlin and end the German invasion. These conferences were essential to the planning and execution of both militarily defensive, offensive and of political issues during and up until the final days of the Second World War. In July of 1943 the success of the Sicily plan led to several more tactical and political conferences between the Allied Leaders.

The second major conferences were the Cairo and Teheran Conferences in Egypt and Iran, respectively. These conferences were essential to the Allied stance on what course of action to take against Japan and the famous D-day Invasion. On November 22nd, 1943 in Cairo the United States and Great Britain discussed their island-hopping strategy to overtake the numerous Japanese held islands in the Pacific. The plan would be carried out by bypassing heavily fortified Japanese strongholds and capturing small adjacent islands. By cornering essential islands the United States hoped to starve out the Japanese. On November 27th, 1943 the Allies signed the Cairo Declaration vowing to deploy military force until the Japanese surrendered and to return and liberate captured territories to their respective motherlands. Only a day latter Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin joined Churchill and FDR in Teheran, Iran were the course of history was altered at the Tripartite dinner meeting. These leaders only met twice within the course of the war however their decisions liberated France, captured Germany and engineered the Ultimatum and final surrender of Japan. During the meeting the Allies