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236-459: In the history of the 20th century , the interwar period (or interbellum ) lasted from 11   November 1918 to 1   September 1939 (20   years, 9   months, 21   days) – from the end of World War I (WWI) to the beginning of World War II (WWII). It was relatively short, yet featured many social, political, military, and economic changes throughout the world. Petroleum-based energy production and associated mechanisation led to

472-746: A League of Nations mandate of the former German Cameroon and a free hand in the Ethiopian Empire from France in return for Italian support against Germany in the Stresa Front . This was refused by French Prime Minister Édouard Herriot , who was not yet sufficiently worried about the prospect of a German resurgence. The failed resolution of the Abyssinia Crisis led to the Second Italo-Ethiopian War , in which Italy annexed Ethiopia to its empire. Italy's stance towards Spain shifted between

708-599: A Marcel wave . The young women who pioneered these trends were called " flappers ". Not all was new: "normalcy" returned to politics in the wake of hyper-emotional wartime passions in the United States, France, and Germany. The leftist revolutions in Finland, Poland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Spain were defeated by conservatives, but succeeded in Russia, which became the base for Soviet communism and Marxism–Leninism . In Italy,

944-622: A Venetian possession for four hundred years. The matter was taken by Greece to the League of Nations , where Mussolini was convinced by Britain to evacuate Royal Italian Army troops, in return for reparations from Greece. The confrontation led Britain and Italy to resolve the question of Jubaland in 1924, which was merged into Italian Somaliland . During the late 1920s, imperial expansion became an increasingly favoured theme in Mussolini's speeches. Amongst Mussolini's aims were that Italy had to become

1180-576: A Belgian fort considered impregnable and guarded by 600 Belgians, to a force of only 88 German paratroopers . The worst of this was that King Leopold III of Belgium surrendered to the Germans on 28 May without warning his allies, exposing the entire flank of the Allied forces to German panzer groups. Following the conquest of the Low Countries, Hitler occupied Denmark and Norway, beginning on 9 April 1940. Norway

1416-477: A Forward Air Support Link at each brigade to forward air support requests. When trained tentacle teams arrived in 1942, they cut response time on support requests to thirty minutes. It was also in the North Africa desert that the cab rank strategy was developed. It used a series of three aircraft, each in turn directed by the pertinent ground control by radio. One aircraft would be attacking, another in flight to

1652-591: A base for Operation Downfall , the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands which were only 340 miles away. The battle was one of the bloodiest in the Pacific, with approximately 160,000 casualties on both sides: at least 75,000 Allied and 84,166–117,000 Japanese. Around half of the island's population of 300,000 were killed, committed suicide or went missing. The assaults on both Iwo Jima and Okinawa proved incredibly costly in terms of American lives and president Truman

1888-440: A concern – pilots did not know recognition signals and regularly bombed friendly units, until an A-36 was shot down in self-defense by Allied tanks. The expectation of losses to friendly fire from the ground during the planned invasion of France prompted the black and white invasion stripes painted on all Allied aircraft from 1944. In 1944, USAAF commander Lt. Gen. Henry ("Hap") Arnold acquired 2 groups of A-24 dive bombers,

2124-495: A constitutional monarchy and the former Chinese Emperor Pu Yi was placed on the throne, despite the real power being held by Japan. Despite relations between Japan and China suffering because the occupation of Manchuria, the situation did not turn into all-out war until 7 July 1937, when a dispute between Chinese and Japanese soldiers turned into a battle during the Marco Polo Bridge Incident . This, in turn, led to

2360-443: A critical importance in places where the infantry had got pinned down. At this time, British doctrine came to recognize two forms of air support; trench strafing (the modern-day doctrine of CAS), and ground strafing (the modern-day doctrine of air interdiction ) – attacking tactical ground targets away from the land battle. As well as strafing with machine-guns, planes engaged in such operations were commonly modified with bomb racks;

2596-685: A declining supply of aircraft and fuel, crippled their ability to provide effective CAS on the western front after 1943. The Royal Air Force (RAF) entered the war woefully unprepared to provide CAS. In 1940 during the Battle of France , the Royal Air Force and Army headquarters in France were located at separate positions, resulting in unreliable communications. After the RAF was withdrawn in May, Army officers had to telephone

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2832-607: A dictatorship under the leadership of General Francisco Franco after the Spanish Civil War . Totalitarian states attempted to achieve total control over their subjects as well as their total loyalty. They held the state above the individual, and were often responsible for some of the worst acts in history, such as the Holocaust Adolf Hitler perpetrated on European Jews , or the Great Purge Stalin perpetrated in

3068-412: A disgust with cultural liberalism . Fascists believed in power, violence, male superiority, and a "natural" hierarchy, often led by dictators such as Benito Mussolini or Adolf Hitler . Fascism in power meant that liberalism and human rights were discarded, and individual pursuits and values were subordinated to what the party decided was best. The Japanese modelled their industrial economy closely on

3304-573: A force in Western democracies when the global economy crashed in 1929 in what became known as the Great Depression . Many people saw this as the first stage of the end of the capitalist system and were attracted to Communism as a solution to the economic crisis, especially as the Soviet Union's economic development in the 1930s was strong, unaffected by the capitalist world's crisis. After World War I,

3540-629: A further and lower convergence point than aerial combat did. Of the Allied powers that fought in the Second World War, the Soviet Union used specifically designed ground attack aircraft more than the UK and US. Such aircraft included the Ilyushin Il-2 , the single most produced military aircraft at any point in world history. The Soviet military also frequently deployed the Polikarpov Po-2 biplane as

3776-578: A further escalation of the hostilities, leading to the Second Sino-Japanese War , one of the deadliest conflicts in human history. Japan enjoyed some early major victories, capturing both Shanghai and the Chinese capital of Nanjing in 1937 and forcing the Chinese central government 's relocation to Chongqing . Following Chinese victories in Changsha and Guangxi in 1939, the war reached somewhat of

4012-452: A greater psychological effect on friendly and hostile forces alike. Moreover, unlike massive, indiscriminate artillery strikes, small aerial bombs would not render ground untrafficable, slowing attacking friendly forces. Although the prevailing view in official circles was largely indifferent to CAS during the interwar period, its importance was expounded upon by military theorists, such as J. F. C. Fuller and Basil Liddell Hart . Hart, who

4248-479: A high tempo of exploitation even when they outran their artillery assets. He also used a modified antiaircraft radar to track friendly attack aircraft to redirect them as necessary, and experimented with assigning fighter pilots to tours as forward air controllers to familiarize them with the ground perspective. In July 1944, Quesada provided VHF aircraft radios to tank crews in Normandy. When the armored units broke out of

4484-466: A key factor in the rapid advance and success of his Third Army. The American Navy and Marine Corps used CAS in conjunction with or as a substitute for the lack of available artillery or naval gunfire in the Pacific theater . Navy and Marine F6F Hellcats and F4U Corsairs used a variety of ordnance such as conventional bombs, rockets and napalm to dislodge or attack Japanese troops using cave complexes in

4720-541: A limit that would be determined by the mandatory power. This led to increasing conflict with the Arab population, who openly revolted in 1936 . As the threat of war with Germany increased during the 1930s, Britain judged the support of Arabs as more important than the establishment of a Jewish homeland, and shifted to a pro-Arab stance, limiting Jewish immigration and in turn triggering a Jewish insurgency . The Dominions (Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and

4956-483: A major role in several countries in Latin America. Fascist parties sprang up, attuned to local right-wing traditions, but also possessing common features that typically included extreme militaristic nationalism, a desire for economic self-containment, threats and aggression toward neighbouring countries, oppression of minorities, a ridicule of democracy while using its techniques to mobilise an angry middle-class base, and

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5192-563: A military alliance and an assured flow of oil. In Palestine , Britain was presented with the problem of mediating between the Palestinian Arabs and increasing numbers of Jewish settlers . The Balfour Declaration , which had been incorporated into the terms of the mandate, stated that a national home for the Jewish people would be established in Palestine, and Jewish immigration allowed up to

5428-756: A period known as the Phony War ensued during the winter of 1939–1940, which saw only limited military land operation on the Western Front . All of this changed on 10 May 1940, when the Germans launched a massive attack on the Low Countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg ), most probably to surmount the Maginot Line of defenses on the Franco-German border. This witnessed the incredible fall of Eben Emael ,

5664-502: A personal campaign of revenge in Yugoslavia and to occupy Greece at the same time. The Greeks would have a bitter revenge of sorts; the attack caused a delay of several crucial weeks of the invasion of the USSR, potentially hampering it. On 22 June 1941, Hitler attacked Stalin with the largest army the world had ever seen . Over three million men and their weapons were put into service against

5900-513: A plan to divide post-war Europe. Most of the east went to Stalin, who agreed to allow free elections in Eastern Europe, which he never did. The west went to Britain, France, and the U.S. Post-war Germany would be split between the four, as would Berlin. This division of spheres of influence would set up international diplomacy for the Cold War that would dominate the second half of the century. At

6136-613: A reward, but failed to get self-government as the government was still kept in control of British hands and feared another rebellion like that of 1857 . The Government of India Act 1919 failed to satisfy demand for self-rule. Mounting tension, particularly in the Punjab region , culminated in the Amritsar Massacre in 1919. Indian nationalism surged and centred in the Congress Party led by Mohandas Gandhi . In Britain, public opinion

6372-461: A role previously dominated by FACs on the ground, and the use of B-52s for CAS . U.S. Marine Corps Aviation was much more prepared for the application of CAS in the Vietnam War, due to CAS being its central mission. In fact, as late as 1998, Marines were still claiming in their training manuals that "Close air support (CAS) is a Marine Corps innovation." One of the main debates taking place within

6608-414: A sharp reduction in new business starts. Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially those dependent on heavy industry . Construction was virtually halted in many countries. Farming communities and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by about 60%. Facing plummeting demand with few alternative sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as mining and logging suffered

6844-458: A smaller neighbour to match Germany's annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia . Italian King Victor Emmanuel III took the Albanian crown , and a fascist government under Shefqet Vërlaci was established. History of the 20th century The 20th century changed the world in unprecedented ways. The World Wars sparked tension between countries and led to the creation of atomic bombs ,

7080-522: A stable state. Albanian society was deeply divided by religion and language, with a border dispute with Greece and an undeveloped, rural economy. In 1939, Italy invaded and annexed Albania as a separate kingdom in personal union with the Italian crown. Italy had long built strong links with the Albanian leadership and considered it firmly within its sphere of influence. Mussolini wanted a spectacular success over

7316-527: A stalemate, with Japan controlling the large cities, but being unable to rule the vast countryside. On 27 September 1940, Japan became cosignatories of the Tripartite Pact , joining a military alliance with Germany and Italy. On 7 December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the American base at Pearl Harbor as a mean of preventing the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with its planned expansion in

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7552-596: A strong Germany ready to take on the communist menace to the east. Antisemitism during the Great Depression was widespread as many were content to blame the Jews for causing the economic downturn. Hitler began to put his plan in motion, annexing Austria in the Anschluss , or reunification of Austria to Germany, in 1938. He then negotiated the annexation of the Sudetenland , a German-speaking mountainous area of Czechoslovakia , in

7788-516: A strong challenge to the threat of communism. When Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, a new variant of fascism called Nazism took over Germany and ended the German experiment with democracy. The Nazi Party in Germany was dedicated to the restoration of German honor and prestige, the unification of German-speaking peoples, and the annexation of Central and Eastern Europe as vassal states, with

8024-536: Is a well known example of a dive bomber built for precision bombing but which was successfully used for CAS. It was fitted with wind-blown sirens on its landing gear to enhance its psychological effect. Some variants of the Stuka were equipped with a pair of 37 mm (1.5 in) Bordkanone BK 3,7 cannons mounted in under-wing gun pods, each loaded with two six-round magazines of armour-piercing tungsten carbide -cored ammunition, for anti-tank operations. Other than

8260-669: The AN/MPQ-14 , a system that enabled radar-guided bomb release at night or in poor weather. Though the Marine Corps continued its tradition of intimate air–ground cooperation in the Korean War , the newly created United States Air Force (USAF) again moved away from CAS, now to strategic bombers and jet interceptors . Though eventually the Air Force supplied sufficient pilots and forward air controllers to provide battlefield support, coordination

8496-635: The Austro-Hungarian Empire 's heir to the throne, Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand , by Gavrilo Princip of the organization " Young Bosnia ," Bosnian Serbs' liberation movement. This was similar to how the 9/11 was the inciting incident of the 21st century . Bound by Slavic nationalism to help the small Serbian state, the Russians came to the aid of the Serbs when they were attacked. Interwoven alliances, an increasing arms race, and old hatreds dragged Europe into

8732-721: The Bolsheviks managed to regain control of Belarus and Ukraine, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, forming the Soviet Union . In the Near East , Egypt and Iraq gained independence. During the Great Depression , countries in Latin America nationalised many foreign companies (most of which belonged to the United States ) in a bid to strengthen their own economies. The territorial ambitions of

8968-545: The Cold War led to the Space Race and the creation of space-based rockets, and the World Wide Web was created. These advancements have played a significant role in citizens' lives and shaped the 21st century into what it is today. The new beginning of the 20th century marked significant changes. The 1900s saw the decade herald a series of inventions, including the automobile , airplane and radio broadcasting . 1914 saw

9204-676: The Dodecanese Islands , in return for a payment to Turkey , the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, though he failed in an attempt to extract a mandate of a portion of Iraq from Britain. The month following the ratification of the Treaty of Lausanne, Mussolini ordered the invasion of the Greek island of Corfu after the Corfu incident . The Italian press supported the move, noting that Corfu had been

9440-836: The Entente , the Americans came up with the Dawes Plan and Wall Street invested heavily in Germany, which repaid its reparations to nations that, in turn, used the dollars to pay off their war debts to Washington. By the middle of the decade, prosperity was widespread, with the second half of the decade known as the Roaring Twenties . The important stages of interwar diplomacy and international relations included resolutions of wartime issues, such as reparations owed by Germany and boundaries; American involvement in European finances and disarmament projects;

9676-591: The Imperial Japanese Army and supported by other right-wing societies. The IJA's nationalism ended civilian rule in Japan until after 1945. The Army, however, was itself divided into cliques and factions with different strategic viewpoints. One faction viewed the Soviet Union as the main enemy; the other sought to build a mighty empire based in Manchuria and northern China. The Navy, while smaller and less influential,

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9912-625: The League of Nations in 1926. Hitler came to power in January 1933, and inaugurated an aggressive power designed to give Germany economic and political domination across central Europe. He did not attempt to recover the lost colonies. Until August 1939, the Nazis denounced Communists and the Soviet Union as the greatest enemy, along with the Jews. Hitler's diplomatic strategy in the 1930s was to make seemingly reasonable demands, threatening war if they were not met. When opponents tried to appease him, he accepted

10148-605: The Luftwaffe could supply the 6th Army adequately, when it could in reality only supply a minute fraction of the needed ammunition and rations . Eventually, the starved 6th Army surrendered, dealing a severe blow to the Germans. In the end, the defeat at Stalingrad was the turning point for the war in the east. Meanwhile, the Japanese had attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on 7 December 1941. This disastrous attack forced

10384-518: The May 15 Incident and the military took more power, leading to rapid democratic backsliding . In September 1931, the Japanese Kwantung Army —acting on its own without government approval— seized control of Manchuria , an area in northeastern China that was controlled by the powerful warlord Zhang Xueliang . It created the puppet government of Manchukuo . Britain and France effectively controlled

10620-466: The Munich Conference . The British were eager to avoid war and believed Hitler's assurance to protect the security of the Czech state. Hitler annexed the rest of the Czech state shortly afterwards, indicating that he had ulterior motives. Fascism was not the only form of dictatorship to rise in the post-war period. Almost all of the new democracies in the nations of Eastern Europe collapsed and were replaced by authoritarian regimes. Spain also became

10856-480: The National Fascist Party came to power under Benito Mussolini after threatening a March on Rome in 1922. Most independent countries enacted women's suffrage in the interwar era, including Canada in 1917 (though Quebec held out longer), Britain in 1918, and the United States in 1920. There were a few major countries that held out until after the Second World War (such as France, Switzerland, and Portugal). Leslie Hume argues: The women's contribution to

11092-444: The North African Campaign in 1941 the British Army and the Royal Air Force established Forward Air Support Links (FASL), a mobile air support system using ground vehicles. Light reconnaissance aircraft would observe enemy activity and report it by radio to the FASL which was attached at brigade level. The FASL was in communication (a two-way radio link known as a "tentacle") with the Air Support Control (ASC) Headquarters attached to

11328-684: The North American A-36 Apache , a P-51 Mustang modified with dive brakes, the Americans and British used no dedicated CAS aircraft in the Second World War, preferring fighters or fighter-bombers that could be pressed into CAS service. While some aircraft, such as the Hawker Typhoon and the P-47 Thunderbolt , performed admirably in that role, there were a number of compromises that prevented most fighters from making effective CAS platforms. Fighters were usually optimized for high-altitude operations without bombs or other external ordnance – flying at low level with bombs quickly expended fuel. Cannons had to be mounted differently for strafing – strafing required

11564-407: The Second Battle of the Aisne , the British debuted the first ground-attack aircraft, a modified F.E 2b fighter carrying 20 lb (9.1 kg) bombs and mounted machine-guns . After exhausting their ammunition, the planes returned to base for refueling and rearming before returning to the battle-zone. Other modified planes used in this role were the Airco DH.5 and Sopwith Camel – the latter

11800-479: The Slavic population to act as slave labor to serve German economic interests. There was also a strong appeal to a mythical racial purity (the idea that Germans were the Herrenvolk or the "master race"), and a vicious antisemitism which promoted the idea of Jews as subhuman ( Untermensch ) and worthy only of extermination. Many people in Western Europe and the United States greeted the rise of Hitler with relief or indifference. They could see nothing wrong with

12036-515: The Soviet Union in the 1930s. This section provides a conversational overview of World War II in Europe. See main article for a fuller discussion. Soon after the events in Czechoslovakia, Britain and France issued assurances of protection to Poland, which seemed to be next on Hitler's list. World War II officially began on 1 September 1939, when Hitler unleashed his Blitzkrieg , or lightning war, against Poland. Britain and France, much to Hitler's surprise, immediately declared war upon Germany, but

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12272-414: The Spanish Civil War lead to the creation of five ground-attack groups in 1938, four of which would be equipped with Stukas . The Luftwaffe matched its material acquisitions with advances in the air-ground coordination. General Wolfram von Richthofen organized a limited number of air liaison detachments that were attached to ground units of the main effort. These detachments existed to pass requests from

12508-412: The Twenty-One Demands of 1915. Its occupation of Siberia proved unproductive. Japan's wartime diplomacy and limited military action had produced few results, and at the Paris Versailles peace conference at the end of the war, Japan was frustrated in its ambitions. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, its Racial Equality Proposal led to increasing diplomatic isolation. The 1902 alliance with Britain

12744-447: The V-2 , the first rockets used in modern warfare. The V-1 was often intercepted by air pilots, but the V-2 was extremely fast and carried a large payload. However, this advance came too late in the war to have any real effect. The Germans were also on the verge of introducing a number of terrifying new weapons, including advanced jet aircraft, which were too fast for ordinary propeller aircraft, and submarine improvements which would allow

12980-468: The War Office in London to arrange for air support. The stunning effectiveness of German air-ground coordination spurred change. On the basis of tests in Northern Ireland in August 1940, Group Captain A. H. Wann RAF and Colonel J.D. Woodall (British Army) issued the Wann-Woodall Report, recommending the creation of a distinct tactical air force liaison officer (known colloquially as "tentacles") to accompany Army divisions and brigades. Their report spurred

13216-415: The Wehrmacht had encountered serious casualties that it could not replace. Hitler also insisted on a "hold at all costs" policy which forbade relinquishing any ground. He followed a "fight to the last man" policy that was completely ineffective. By the beginning of 1944, Hitler had lost all initiative in the Soviet Union, and was struggling even to hold back the tide turning against him. From 1942 to 1944,

13452-417: The conservative and Catholic elements and the army revolted against the newly elected government of the Second Spanish Republic , and full-scale civil war erupted. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany gave munitions and strong military units to the rebel Nationalist faction , led by General Francisco Franco . The Republican (or "Loyalist") government , was on the defensive, but it received significant help from

13688-408: The invasion of Normandy , 33 divisions had received no joint air-ground training. The USAAF saw the greatest innovations in 1944 under General Elwood Quesada , commander of IX Tactical Air Command, supporting the First U.S. Army. He developed the "armored column cover", where on-call fighter-bombers maintained a high level of availability for important tank advances, allowing armor units to maintain

13924-463: The invasion of Normandy . CAS continued to advance during the conflicts of the Cold War , especially the Korean War and the Vietnam War ; major milestones included the introduction of attack helicopters , gunships , and dedicated CAS attack jets . The use of aircraft in the close air support of ground forces dates back to World War I , the first conflict to make significant military use of aerial forces. Air warfare, and indeed aviation itself,

14160-419: The welfare state . These two politico-economic principles, the belief in government intervention and the welfare state, as opposed to the belief in the free market and private institutions, would define many political battles for the rest of the century. Fascism first appeared in Italy with the rise to power of Benito Mussolini in 1922. The ideology was supported by a large proportion of the upper classes as

14396-418: The 'traditional' branches of the regular infantry , horse cavalry , and artillery . In the air, the question of allocating air forces to strategic bombing versus dedicating such forces to frontline close air support was the primary contention, with some arguing that interceptor development was outpacing bombers , and others maintaining that " the bomber will always get through ." In the naval sphere,

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14632-458: The 1920s and the 1930s. The Fascist regime in the 1920s held deep antagonism towards Spain due to Miguel Primo de Rivera 's pro-French foreign policy. In 1926, Mussolini began aiding the Catalan separatist movement , which was led by Francesc Macià , against the Spanish government. With the rise of the left-wing Republican government replacing the Spanish monarchy , Spanish monarchists and fascists repeatedly approached Italy for aid in overthrowing

14868-490: The 1920s. Economic disaster led to a distrust in the effectiveness of democracy and its collapse in much of Europe and Latin America, including the Baltic and Balkan countries, Poland, Spain, and Portugal. Powerful expansionary anti-democratic regimes emerged in Italy, Japan, and Germany. Fascism took control of the Kingdom of Italy in 1922; as the Great Depression worsened, Nazism emerged victorious in Germany, fascism spread to many other countries in Europe, and also played

15104-494: The 1973 Yom Kippur War , provided aircraft with an effective ranged anti-tank weapon. These considerations motivated armies to promote the helicopter from a support role to a combat arm. Though the U.S. Army controlled rotary-wing assets, coordination continued to pose a problem. During wargames, field commanders tended to hold back attack helicopters out of fear of air defenses, committing them too late to effectively support ground units. The earlier debate over control over CAS assets

15340-399: The Allied forces, already war-weary and stretched thin after two years of war in Europe and North Africa. Japan managed to capture British Burma , New Guinea , the Dutch East Indies , the Solomon Islands , Bali and Timor . In March 1942, days before the surrender of the Philippines, general Douglas MacArthur, who came out of retirement to become commander of United States Army Forces in

15576-412: The Allied system used to subsequently gain victory in the air over Germany in 1944 and devastate its cities and industries. The use of forward air control to guide close air support (CAS) aircraft, so as to ensure that their attack hits the intended target and not friendly troops, was first used by the British Desert Air Force in North Africa, but not by the USAAF until operations in Salerno. During

15812-441: The Allies suggested Calais as the landing site. By this time, the war was looking ever darker for Germany. On 20 July 1944, a group of conspiring German officers attempted to assassinate Hitler. The bomb they used did injure him, but the second was not used, and a table shielded Hitler in a stroke of luck. The plotters still could have launched a coup, but only the head of occupied Paris acted, arresting SS and Gestapo forces in

16048-402: The Americans into the war. Parts of the German brass advised against declaring war on the US, arguing that since Japan was the aggressor, the Tripartite Pact didn't bind Germany to do so. However, Hitler hoped that Japan would be able to quickly defeat the US and then turn its attention on helping the effort against Russia. Both Germany and Italy declared war on the United States a few days after

16284-427: The Americans set their eyes on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima, which was of great strategic importance, being situated halfway between Tokyo and the Mariana Islands . Capturing the island meant not only a better launch station for aerial attacks against mainland Japan, but also the prevention of its use as an early-warning station against air raids. The Japanese were expecting an attack and have been heavily fortifying

16520-410: The Army's aggression in Manchuria, and announced it was withdrawing. On the contrary, the Army completed the conquest of Manchuria, and the civilian cabinet resigned. The political parties were divided on the issue of military expansion. Prime Minister Tsuyoshi tried to negotiate with China but was assassinated in the May 15 Incident in 1932, which ushered in an era of nationalism and militarism led by

16756-404: The Atlantic coast, allowing Marshal Pétain to remain as dictator of an area known as Vichy France . However, members of the escaped French Army formed around General Charles de Gaulle to create the Free French forces, which would continue to battle Hitler in the stead of an independent France. At this moment, Italy, under Benito Mussolini , declared war on the Allies on 10 June, thinking that

16992-584: The Axis military alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. In 1930, the London disarmament conference angered the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces . The Imperial Japanese Navy demanded parity with the United States, Britain and France, but was rejected and the conference kept the 1921 ratios. Japan was required to scrap a capital ship . Extremists assassinated Japanese Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi in

17228-599: The British achieved air superiority over the German aircraft sent to aid the Ottoman Turks , squadrons of S.E 5a's and D.H. 4s were sent on wide-ranging attacks against German and Turkish positions near the Jordan river . Combined with a ground assault led by General Edmund Allenby , three Turkish armies soon collapsed into a full rout. In the words of the attacking squadron's official report: No 1 Squadron made six heavy raids during

17464-613: The British system. At the start of the War, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) had, as its principal mission, the doctrine of strategic bombing. This incorporated the unerring belief that unescorted bombers could win the war without the advent of ground troops. This doctrine proved to be fundamentally flawed. However, during the entire course of the war the USAAF top brass clung to this doctrine, and hence operated independently of

17700-529: The CAS role. Though the Army gained more control over its own CAS due to the development of the helicopter gunship and attack helicopter, the Air Force continued to provide fixed-wing CAS for Army units. Over the course of the war, the adaptation of The Tactical Air Control System proved crucial to the improvement of Air Force CAS. Jets replaced propeller-driven aircraft with minimal issues. The assumption of responsibility for

17936-666: The Desert Air Force, was steadily refined and perfected, during the campaigns in Italy, Normandy and Germany. By the time the Italian Campaign had reached Rome , the Allies had established air superiority . They were then able to pre-schedule strikes by fighter-bomber squadrons; however, by the time the aircraft arrived in the strike area, oftentimes the targets, which were usually trucks, had fled. The initial solution to fleeing targets

18172-594: The Far East at the onset of the war, was forced to flee and narrowly escape to Australia. On 19 February 1942, Japan also launched a devastating aerial attack on the Australian city of Darwin, in what was the first attack by a foreign power on Australian soil. The turning of the tide came in early May, during the Battle of the Coral Sea , which proved the first strategic victory of the Allies against Japanese expansion. This

18408-556: The First World War and Russian Civil War . In advanced economies the prosperity reached middle class households and many in the working class with radio , automobiles , telephones , and electric lighting and appliances . There was unprecedented industrial growth, accelerated consumer demand and aspirations, and significant changes in lifestyle and culture. The media began to focus on celebrities, especially sports heroes and movie stars. Major cities built large sports stadiums for

18644-534: The French government. But the hyperinflation caused many prudent savers to lose all the money they had saved. Weimar added new internal enemies every year, as anti-democratic Nazis , Nationalists , and Communists battled each other in the streets. Germany was the first state to establish diplomatic relations with the new Soviet Union . Under the Treaty of Rapallo , Germany accorded the Soviet Union de jure recognition, and

18880-713: The French-dominated Suez Canal Company accept an Italian representative on its board of directors. Italy opposed the French monopoly over the Suez Canal because, under the French-dominated Suez Canal Company, all merchant traffic to the Italian East Africa colony was forced to pay tolls on entering the canal. Albanian Prime Minister and President Ahmet Zogu , who had, in 1928, proclaimed himself King of Albania , failed to create

19116-766: The French-run Suez Canal . Three weeks later, Mussolini told Ciano that he intended for an Italian takeover of Albania. Mussolini professed that Italy would only be able to "breathe easily" if it had acquired a contiguous colonial domain in Africa from the Atlantic to the Indian Oceans, and when ten million Italians had settled in them. In 1938, Italy demanded a sphere of influence in the Suez Canal in Egypt , specifically demanding that

19352-631: The Germans prevented any real action being taken. Nevertheless, it was one of the bloodiest battles of the war and the second costliest battle in the history of the American Army . In early February 1945, the three Allied leaders, Franklin Roosevelt , Winston Churchill , and Joseph Stalin , met at newly liberated Yalta in the Crimea in the Soviet Union in the Yalta Conference . Here, they agreed upon

19588-527: The Germans to again fight effectively in the Atlantic. All this came too late to save Hitler. Although a September invasion of The Netherlands failed, the Allies made steady advances. In the winter of 1944, Hitler put everything into one last desperate gamble in the West, known as the Battle of the Bulge , which, despite an initial advance, was a failure, because the introduction of new Allied tanks and low troop numbers among

19824-549: The Germans were first exposed to dive-bombing , which permitted greater accuracy while making attack aircraft more difficult to track by antiaircraft gunners. As a result, Ernst Udet , chief of the Luftwaffe's development, initiated procurement of close support dive bombers on the model of the U.S. Navy's Curtiss Helldiver , resulting in the Henschel Hs 123 , which was later replaced by the famous Junkers Ju 87 Stuka . Experience in

20060-559: The Imperial Japanese Navy during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in what was to be the largest naval battle of World War II and possibly the largest naval battle of all time . The Allied victory achieved its stated goal of further severing oil supplied to the Japanese army, which was already struggling to fuel the remainder of its naval power. The battle of Leyte Gulf is also notable as the first battle in which Japanese aircraft carried out organized kamikaze attacks. By early 1945,

20296-857: The Irish Free State) were self-governing and gained semi-independence in the World War, while Britain still controlled foreign policy and defence in all except Ireland. The right of the Dominions to set their own foreign policy was recognised in 1923 and formalised by the 1931 Statute of Westminster . The Irish Free State effectively broke all ties with Britain in 1937, leaving the Commonwealth and becoming an independent republic . French census statistics from 1938 show an imperial population with France at over 150 million people, outside of France itself, of 102.8 million people living on 13.5 million square kilometers. Of

20532-633: The Japanese Empire became more feasible, with important battles taking place in Burma , Borneo and China . Continuing to come nearer the main Japanese islands, on 1 April 1945 the US Marines mounted the largest amphibious assault of the Pacific Theater on the island of Okinawa . After a long campaign of island hopping , the Allies were planning to use Kadena Air Base on the large island of Okinawa as

20768-593: The League of Nations, which issued the Lytton Report in 1932, saying that Japan had genuine grievances, but it acted illegally in seizing the entire province. Japan quit the League, and Britain and France took no action. US Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson announced that the United States would also not recognise Japan's conquest as legitimate. Germany welcomed Japan's actions. The civilian government in Tokyo tried to minimise

21004-452: The League of Nations. Egypt's King Fuad and his son King Farouk and their conservative allies stayed in power with lavish lifestyles thanks to an informal alliance with Britain who would protect them from both secular and Muslim radicalism. Mandatory Iraq , a British mandate since 1920, gained official independence as the Kingdom of Iraq in 1932 when King Faisal agreed to British terms of

21240-693: The Luftwaffe refused to provide Erwin Rommel with an air liaison officer for the Afrika Korps , because it "would be against the best use of the air force as a whole." German CAS was also extensively used on the Eastern Front during the period 1941–1943. Their decline was caused by the growing strength of the Red Air Force and the redeployment of assets to defend against American and British strategic bombardment. Luftwaffe's loss of air superiority, combined with

21476-555: The Luftwaffe to launch a massive air war against the British isles, which would come to be known as the Battle of Britain . The British at first suffered steady losses, but eventually managed to turn the air war against Germany, taking down 2,698 German planes throughout the summer of 1940 to only 915 Royal Air Force (RAF) losses. The key turning point came when the Germans discontinued successful attacks against British airplane factories and radar command and coordination stations and turned to civilian bombing known as terror bombing using

21712-458: The Marine Corps during the war was whether to adopt the helicopter gunship as a part of CAS doctrine and what its adoption would mean for fixed-wing CAS in the Marine Corps. The issue would eventually be put to rest, however, as the helicopter gunship proved crucial in the combat environment of Vietnam. Though helicopters were initially armed merely as defensive measures to support the landing and extraction of troops, their value in this role led to

21948-469: The Mediterranean": The bars of this prison are Corsica , Tunisia , Malta , and Cyprus . The guards of this prison are Gibraltar and Suez . Corsica is a pistol pointed at the heart of Italy; Tunisia at Sicily. Malta and Cyprus constitute a threat to all our positions in the eastern and western Mediterranean. Greece, Turkey, and Egypt have been ready to form a chain with Great Britain and to complete

22184-500: The Nazis expected or were ready for. After establishing the " Rome-Berlin Axis " with Benito Mussolini , and signing the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan – which was joined by Italy a year later in 1937 – Hitler felt able to take the offensive in foreign policy. On 12 March 1938, German troops marched into Austria, where an attempted Nazi coup had been unsuccessful in 1934. When Austrian-born Hitler entered Vienna , he

22420-457: The Normandy beachhead, tank commanders were able to communicate directly with overhead fighter-bombers. However, despite the innovation, Quesada focused his aircraft on CAS only for major offensives. Typically, both British and American attack aircraft were tasked primarily to interdiction, even though later analysis showed them to be twice as dangerous as CAS. XIX TAC , under the command of General Otto P. Weyland used similar tactics to support

22656-494: The RAF to create an RAF Army Cooperation Command and to develop tentacle equipment and procedures placing an Air Liaison Officer with each brigade. Although the RAF was working on its CAS doctrine in London, officers in North Africa improvised their own coordination techniques. In October 1941, Sir Arthur Tedder and Arthur Coningham , senior RAF commanders in North Africa, created joint RAF-Army Air Support Control staffs at each corps and armored division headquarters, and placed

22892-538: The Republican forces. The Soviet Union provided armaments but never enough to equip the heterogeneous government militias and the " International Brigades " of outside far-left volunteers. The civil war did not escalate into a larger conflict, but did become a worldwide ideological battleground that pitted all the Communists and many socialists and liberals against Catholics , conservatives and fascists. Worldwide there

23128-573: The Republican government, in which Italy agreed to support them to establish a pro-Italian government in Spain. In July 1936, Francisco Franco of the Nationalist faction in the Spanish Civil War requested Italian support against the ruling Republican faction, and guaranteed that, if Italy supported the Nationalists, "future relations would be more than friendly" and that Italian support "would have permitted

23364-561: The Rhineland, and Germany was not allowed to have a real army, navy, or air force. Reparations were demanded, especially by France, involving shipments of raw materials, as well as annual payments. When Germany defaulted on its reparation payments, French and Belgian troops occupied the heavily industrialised Ruhr district (January 1923). The German government encouraged the population of the Ruhr to passive resistance : shops would not sell goods to

23600-567: The Soviet Union and Japan , leading to multiple clashes along the Soviet and Japanese occupied Manchurian border; fascist diplomacy, including the aggressive moves by Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany; the Spanish Civil War ; Italy's invasion and occupation of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in the Horn of Africa ; the appeasement of Germany's expansionist moves against the German-speaking nation of Austria ,

23836-436: The Soviet Union and Mexico. Led by Great Britain and France, and including the United States, most countries remained neutral and refused to provide armaments to either side. The powerful fear was that this localised conflict would escalate into a European conflagration that no one wanted. The Spanish Civil War was marked by numerous small battles and sieges, and many atrocities, until the Nationalists won in 1939 by overwhelming

24072-435: The Soviet Union. Stalin had been warned about the attack, both by other countries and by his own intelligence network, but he had refused to believe it. Therefore, the Soviet army was largely unprepared and suffered massive setbacks in the early part of the war, despite Stalin's orders to counterattack the Germans. Throughout 1941, German forces, divided into 3 army groups (Army Group A, Army Group B, and Army Group C), occupied

24308-659: The Soviets, Japanese, Italians, and Germans led to the expansion of their domains. Militarily, the period would see a markedly rapid advance in technology which, alongside lessons learned from WWI, would catalyze new strategic and tactical innovations. While the period would largely see a continuation of the development of the technologies pioneered in WWI, debates emerged as to the most effective use of these advancements. On land, discussions focused on how armoured , mechanized , and motorized forces should be employed, particularly in-relation to

24544-701: The Spanish Civil War. Germany seized Austria , considered to be a German state, in 1938, and took over Czechoslovakia after the Munich Agreement with Britain and France. Forming a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union in August 1939, Germany invaded Poland after Poland's refusal to cede the Free City of Danzig in September 1939. Britain and France declared war and World War II began – somewhat sooner than

24780-459: The Spanish and French for control of Morocco. The Spanish had faced unrest off and on from the 1890s, but in 1921, Spanish forces were massacred at the Battle of Annual . El-Krim founded an independent Rif Republic that operated until 1926, but had no international recognition. Eventually, France and Spain agreed to end the revolt. They sent in 200,000 soldiers, forcing el-Krim to surrender in 1926; he

25016-592: The United Nations Commander, Gen. Mark Clark , to permanently attach an attack squadron to each of the four army corps in Korea. Though the request was denied, Clark allocated many more Navy and Air Force aircraft to CAS. Despite the rocky start, the USAF would also work to improve its coordination efforts. It eventually required pilots to serve 80 days as forward air controllers (FACs), which gave them an understanding of

25252-423: The United States and Britain acted in only a limited manner in the European theater, much to the chagrin of Stalin. They drove out the Germans in Africa, invading Morocco and Algeria on 8 November 1942. Then, on 10 July 1943, the Allies invaded Sicily , in preparation for an advance through Italy, the "soft underbelly" of the Axis, as Winston Churchill called it. On 9 September, the invasion of Italy began. By

25488-594: The United States or Japan, Britain opted not to renew the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and instead signed the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty , in which Britain accepted naval parity with the United States. The issue of the empire's security was a serious concern in Britain, as it was vital to the British pride, its finance, and its trade-oriented economy. India strongly supported the Empire in the First World War. It expected

25724-801: The activity of the Panzers . Joseph Stalin paid the Il-2 a great tribute in his own inimitable manner: when a particular production factory fell behind on its deliveries, Stalin sent the following cable to the factory manager: "They are as essential to the Red Army as air and bread". From Navy experiments with the KGW-1 Loon , the Navy designation for the German V-1 flying bomb, Marine Captain Marian Cranford Dalby developed

25960-461: The aim of capturing the oil-rich Caucacus and the city of Stalingrad . However, he repeatedly switched his troops to where they were not needed. The offensive bogged down, and the entire 6th Army , considered the best of German troops, was trapped in Stalingrad. Hitler now refused to let 6th Army break out. He insisted that the German army would force its way in. Hermann Göring also assured Hitler that

26196-410: The air request net by the Air Force improved communication equipment and procedures, which had long been a problem. Additionally, a major step in satisfying the Army's demands for more control over their CAS was the successful implementation of close air support control agencies at the corps level under Air Force control. Other notable adaptations were the usage of airborne Forward Air Controllers (FACs),

26432-581: The air. And in 1943, the USAAF changed their radios to a frequency incompatible with ground radios. The situation improved during the Italian Campaign , where American and British forces, working in close cooperation, exchanged CAS techniques and ideas. There, the AAF's XII Air Support Command and the Fifth U.S. Army shared headquarters, meeting every evening to plan strikes and devising a network of liaisons and radios for communications. However, friendly fire continued to be

26668-529: The area. The next day, following Roosevelt's Infamy Speech , the United States declared war on Japan, marking the official entry of both nations in World War 2. At the same time, Japan also launched attacks on Thailand , the British colonies of Malaya , Singapore , Hong Kong and American military bases in Guam , Wake Island and the Philippines . The next six months were dominated by Japanese victories against

26904-496: The army could find, including fishing boats. Hitler refused to "risk" his panzers on an action at Dunkirk, listening to the advice of Air Minister Hermann Göring and allowing the Luftwaffe , or German Air Force, to handle the job. The irony of this was that the escaped men would form the core of the army that was to invade the beaches of Normandy in 1944. Hitler did not occupy all of France, but about three-quarters, including all of

27140-523: The army rather than the air force. Fighters and ground attack aircraft like the A-10 Thunderbolt II provide close air support using rockets, missiles, bombs, and strafing runs. During the Second World War, a mixture of dive bombers and fighters were used for CAS missions. Dive bombing permitted greater accuracy than level bombing runs, while the rapid altitude change made it more difficult for anti aircraft gunners to track. The Junkers Ju 87 Stuka

27376-652: The army version of the Navy's SBD-2, in response to the success of the Stuka and German CAS. Later, the USAAF developed a modification of the North American P-51 Mustang with dive brakes – the North American A-36 Apache . However, there was no training to match the purchases. Though Gen. Lesley McNair, commander of Army Ground Forces, pushed to change USAAF priorities, the latter failed to provide aircraft for even major training exercises. Six months before

27612-426: The attack. Throughout the rest of 1942 and 1943, the Soviets began to gain ground against the Germans after some victories like the tank battle of Kursk . By this time, Rommel had been forced to abandon North Africa after a defeat by Montgomery at El Alamein in what was the first decisive victory of the Allies over the Germany army, leading Churchill to declare it " the end of the beginning ". On several fronts,

27848-411: The battle area, while a third was being refuelled and rearmed at its base. If the first attack failed to destroy the tactical target, the aircraft in flight would be directed to continue the attack. The first aircraft would land for its own refuelling and rearming once the third had taken off. The CAS tactics developed and refined by the British during the campaign in North Africa served as the basis for

28084-554: The beginning of 1945, Hitler was on his last strings. The Soviets launched a devastating attack from Poland into Germany and Eastern Europe, intending to take Berlin. The Germans collapsed in the West, allowing the Allies to fan out across Germany. However, the Supreme Allied Commander, American general Dwight D. Eisenhower , refused to strike for Berlin, and instead became obsessed with reports of possible guerrilla activity in southern Germany, which in reality existed mainly in

28320-437: The blame on Chinese dissidents. Japan then used this as pretext to invade northeastern China the next day and turn the region of Manchuria into the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo . After the League of Nations commissioned the 1932 Lytton Report , which exposed the Mukden Incident as a Japanese ruse, Japan was left internationally isolated, withdrawing from the League of Nations in March 1933. In 1934 Manchukuo became

28556-407: The cession of Sudeten territory to the German Reich by Czechoslovakia . Hitler thereupon declared that all of German Reich's territorial claims had been fulfilled. However, hardly six months after the Munich Agreement, in March 1939, Hitler used the smouldering quarrel between Slovaks and Czechs as a pretext for taking over the rest of Czechoslovakia as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia . In

28792-430: The city. The German propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels , rallied the Nazis and hunted down the conspirators, arresting up to 7000 people in the wake of the plot, according to some estimates. In France, the Allies took Normandy and finally Paris on 25 August. In the east, the Soviets had advanced almost to the former Polish-Soviet border. At this time, Hitler introduced the V-weapons , the V-1 flying bomb and, later,

29028-432: The completion of the Panama Canal . From 1914 to 1918, the First World War, and its aftermath, caused major changes in the power balance of the world, destroying or transforming some of the most powerful empires. The First World War (or simply WWI), termed "The Great War" by contemporaries, started in 1914 and ended in 1918. The war and by extension the century as a whole was ignited by the Assassination in Sarajevo of

29264-501: The conflict. Aviators, who wanted institutional independence from the Army, pushed for a view of air-power centered around interdiction, which would relieve them of the necessity of integrating with ground forces and allow them to operate as an independent military arm. They saw close air support as both the most difficult and most inefficient use of aerial assets. Close air support was the most difficult mission, requiring identifying and distinguishing between friendly and hostile units. At

29500-441: The corps or armoured division which could summon support through a Rear Air Support Link with the airfields. They also introduced the system of ground direction of air strikes by what was originally termed a "Mobile Fighter Controller" traveling with the forward troops. The controller rode in the "leading tank or armoured car" and directed a "cab rank" of aircraft above the battlefield. This system of close co-operation first used by

29736-422: The creation of the air liaison officer (ALO) position. The ALO is an aeronautically rated officer that has spent a tour away from the cockpit, serving as the primary adviser to the ground commander on the capabilities and limitations of airpower . The Korean War revealed important flaws in the application of CAS. Firstly, the USAF preferred interdiction over fire support while the Army regarded support missions as

29972-419: The creators of the combined-arms tactical doctrine commonly known as " blitzkrieg ", believed the best way to provide cover for the crossing would be a continuous stream of ground attack aircraft on French defenders. Though few guns were hit, the attacks kept the French under cover and prevented them from manning their guns. Aided by the sirens attached to Stukas , the psychological impact was disproportional to

30208-399: The crisis or to alleviate the suffering of many ordinary people. Thus, the idea that the existing system could be reformed by government intervention in the economy, rather than by continuing the laissez-faire approach, became prominent as a solution to the crisis. Democratic governments assumed the responsibility to provide needed services in society, and to alleviate poverty. Thus was born

30444-417: The day, dropped three tons of bombs and fired nearly 24,000 machine gun rounds. The close air support doctrine was further developed in the interwar period . Most theorists advocated the adaptation of fighters or light bombers into the role. During this period, airpower advocates crystallized their views on the role of air-power in warfare. Aviators and ground officers developed largely opposing views on

30680-578: The decision was made to create a unified RAF Iraq Command to use air power as a more cost-effective way of controlling large areas than the use of conventional land forces. It was effectively used to suppress the Great Iraqi Revolution of 1920 and various other tribal revolts. During the Spanish Civil War German volunteer aviators of the Condor Legion on the Nationalist side, despite little official support from their government, developed close air support tactics that proved highly influential for subsequent Luftwaffe doctrine. U.S. Marine Corps Aviation

30916-399: The decision was made to resort to the first use of atomic bombs . On 6 August, the 393d Bombardment Squadron B-29 Enola Gay , took off from Tinian and dropped the bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The two bombings killed 129,000–226,000 people, most of them civilians. On 9 August, the Soviet Union also invaded Manchukuo in what was to be

31152-417: The destructive power of close air support (although as often as not, the Stukas were used as tactical bombers instead of close air support, leaving much of the actual work to the older Hs 123 units for the first years of the war). In addition, the reliance on air support over artillery reduced the demand for logistical support through the Ardennes. Though there were difficulties in coordinating air support with

31388-593: The devastation of the First World War and the destabilising effects of not just the collapse of the Russian Empire , but the destruction of the German , Austro-Hungarian , and Ottoman Empires , as well. There were numerous new or restored countries in Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe, some small in size, such as Lithuania and Latvia , and some larger, such as Poland and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes . The United States gained dominance in world finance. Thus, when Germany could no longer afford war reparations to Britain, France and other former members of

31624-413: The development of the destroyer and aircraft with a longer patrol range were effective at countering the U-boat threat and by December 1943, the Germans had lost the battle. On 6 June 1944, the Western Allies finally launched the long-awaited assault on "Fortress Europe" so wanted by Stalin. The offensive, codenamed Operation Overlord , began the early morning hours of 6 June. The day, known as D-day ,

31860-401: The difficulties from the ground perspective and helped cooperation when they returned to the cockpit. The USAF also provided airborne FACs in critical locations. The Army also learned to assist, by suppressing anti-aircraft fire prior to air strikes. The U.S. Army wanted a dedicated USAF presence on the battlefield to reduce fratricide , or the harm of friendly forces. This preference led to

32096-483: The disaster in the Low Countries, France, considered at the time to have had the finest army in the world, lasted only four weeks, with Paris being occupied on 14 June. Three days later, Marshal Philippe Pétain surrendered to the Germans. The debacle in France also led to one of the war's greatest mysteries, and Hitler's first great blunder, Dunkirk , where a third of a million trapped British and French soldiers were evacuated by not only British war boats, but every craft

32332-451: The distinctive "bomb" sound created by the German dive-bomber, the Stuka . The switch came after a small British bombing force had attacked Berlin. Hitler was infuriated. However, his decision to switch the attacks' focus allowed the British to rebuild the RAF and eventually force the Germans to indefinitely postpone Sea Lion. The importance of the Battle of Britain is that it marked the first of Hitler's defeats, however its overall impact

32568-400: The dominant power in the Mediterranean that would be able to challenge France or Britain, as well as attain access to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans . Mussolini alleged that Italy required uncontested access to the world's oceans and shipping lanes to ensure its national sovereignty. This was elaborated on in a document he later drew up in 1939 called "The March to the Oceans", and included in

32804-545: The east under the command of Marshal Georgy Zhukov counterattacked the Germans and drove them from Moscow. Mussolini had launched an offensive in North Africa from Italian-controlled Libya into British-controlled Egypt. However, the British smashed the Italians and were on the verge of taking Libya. Hitler decided to help by sending in a few thousand troops, a Luftwaffe division, and the first-rate general Erwin Rommel . Rommel managed to use his small force to repeatedly smash massively superior British forces and to recapture

33040-516: The enlisted members of the Tactical Air Control Party . Since their 1977 introduction into modern military practice for close air support purposes, General Crosbie E. Saint provided the AH-64 Apache the doctrinal cover for use in AirLand Battle operations such as in the NATO European theatre. Various aircraft can fill close air support roles. Military helicopters are often used for close air support and are so closely integrated with ground operations that in most countries they are operated by

33276-404: The entire island for over a year. Despite the American troops outnumbering the Japanese to a rate of more than 3 to 1, the USA suffered heavy casualties in the 36 days of fighting, with over 6,800 Marines killed and another 20,000 wounded, leading some historians to question the strategic worth of the action. With Japan struggling to defend the homeland islands, counteroffensives in other parts of

33512-451: The execution of His Imperial Majesty Nicholas II and his family) sparked a wave of communist revolutions across Europe, prompting many to believe that a socialist world revolution could be realized in the near future. However, the European revolutions were defeated, Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, and within a few years, Joseph Stalin displaced Leon Trotsky as the de facto leader of the Soviet Union . The idea of worldwide revolution

33748-502: The expectations and failures of the League of Nations ; the relationships of the new countries to the old; the distrustful relations of the Soviet Union to the capitalist world; peace and disarmament efforts; responses to the Great Depression starting in 1929; the collapse of world trade; the collapse of democratic regimes one by one; the growth of efforts at economic autarky; Japanese aggressiveness toward China , occupying large amounts of Chinese land, as well as border disputes between

33984-428: The fans, in addition to palatial cinemas. The mechanisation of agriculture continued apace, producing an expansion of output that lowered prices, and made many farm workers redundant. Often they moved to nearby industrial towns and cities. The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place after 1929. The timing varied across nations; in most countries it started in 1929 and lasted until

34220-402: The fighters to map grid coordinates, or they might resort to a description of prominent terrain features as guidance. However, one drawback for the Rovers was the constant rotation of pilots, who were there for fortnightly stints, leading to a lack of institutional memory. US commanders, impressed by the British tactics at the Salerno landings, adapted their own doctrine to include many features of

34456-512: The first purpose-built ground attack aircraft , the Junkers J.I . During the 1918 German spring offensive , the Germans employed 30 squadrons, or Schlasta , of ground attack fighters and were able to achieve some initial tactical success. The British later deployed the Sopwith Salamander as a specialized ground attack aircraft, although it was too late to see much action. During the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of 1918, CAS aircraft functioned as an important factor in ultimate victory. After

34692-447: The first. As Hitler's forces conquered Poland, the Soviet Union , under General Secretary Joseph Stalin , was acting out guarantees of territory under a secret part of a nonaggression pact between the USSR and Germany known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact . This treaty gave Stalin free rein to take the Baltic republics of Estonia , Latvia, and Lithuania , as well as Eastern Poland, all of which would remain in Soviet possession after

34928-410: The foreign soldiers, coal mines would not dig for the foreign troops, trams in which members of the occupation army had taken seat would be left abandoned in the middle of the street. The German government printed vast quantities of paper money, causing hyperinflation , which also damaged the French economy . The passive resistance proved effective, insofar as the occupation became a loss-making deal for

35164-399: The former Austro-Hungarian Empire to accommodate the nationalist aspirations of these groups. An international body called the League of Nations was formed to mediate disputes and prevent future wars, although its effectiveness was severely limited by, among other things, its reluctance and inability to act. The Russian Revolution of 1917 (ending in the overthrow of the Tsarist regime and

35400-459: The gains that were offered, then went to the next target. That aggressive strategy worked as Germany pulled out of the League of Nations , rejected the Versailles Treaty , and began to rearm. Retaking the Territory of the Saar Basin in the aftermath of a plebiscite that favoured returning to Germany, Hitler's Germany remilitarised the Rhineland , formed the Pact of Steel alliance with Mussolini's Italy, and sent massive military aid to Franco in

35636-471: The global economy remained strong through most of the 1920s. The war had provided a stimulus for industry and economic activity in general. There were many warning signs foretelling the Crash of 29 of the global economic system at the end of the decade, that were generally not understood by the political leadership of the time. The responses to the crisis often made the situation worse, as millions of people watched their savings become next to worthless, and

35872-430: The ground to the air, and receive reconnaissance reports, but they were not trained to guide aircraft onto targets. These preparations did not prove fruitful in the invasion of Poland , where the Luftwaffe focused on interdiction and dedicated few assets to close air support. But the value of CAS was demonstrated at the crossing of the Meuse River during the Invasion of France in 1940. General Heinz Guderian , one of

36108-427: The help they delivered to Poland was negligible. Sixteen days later, Poland was attacked from the East by Soviet Union, acting in a secret alliance with Nazi Germany. After only a few weeks, the Polish forces were overwhelmed, and its government fled to exile in London (see Polish government in Exile ). In starting World War II, the Germans had unleashed a new type of warfare, characterized by highly mobile forces and

36344-411: The idea of a steady job with a reasonable income fading away. Many sought answers from alternative ideologies such as communism and fascism. They believed that the capitalist economic system was collapsing and that new ideas were required to meet the crisis. The early responses to the crisis were based on the assumption that the free market would correct itself. This, however, did very little to correct

36580-429: The immediate postwar period. The newly formed Royal Air force (RAF) contributed to the defeat of the Afghan military during the Third Anglo-Afghan War by harassing Afghani troops and breaking up their formations. Z Force, an RAF air squadron, was also used to support ground operations during the Somaliland campaign , in which the Darawiish king Diiriye Guure 's insurgency was defeated. Following from these successes,

36816-400: The importance of CAS, views that would frame institutional battles for CAS in the 20th century. The inter-war period saw the use of CAS in a number of conflicts, including the Polish–Soviet War , the Spanish Civil War , the Iraqi revolt of 1920 and the Gran Chaco War . The British used air power to great effect in various colonial hotspots in the Middle East and North Africa during

37052-469: The influence of Rome to prevail over that of Berlin in the future politics of Spain". Italy intervened in the civil war with the intention of occupying the Balearic Islands and creating a client state in Spain. Italy sought the control of the Balearic Islands due to its strategic position—Italy could use the islands as a base to disrupt the lines of communication between France and its North African colonies and between British Gibraltar and Malta . After

37288-405: The interwar period would see a shift away from 'traditional' line- and front-based warfare and towards a significantly more mobile, mechanized, and asymmetric form of combat. Following the Armistice of Compiègne on 11 November 1918 that ended World War I, the years 1918–1924 were marked by turmoil as the Russian Civil War continued to rage on, and Eastern Europe struggled to recover from

37524-413: The last campaign of the war. On 10 August the "sacred decision" was made by Japanese Cabinet to accept the Potsdam terms and on 15 August Emperor Hirohito broadcast to the nation and to the world at large the rescript of surrender, ending the Second World War. The formal Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed on 2 September 1945, on the battleship USS Missouri , in Tokyo Bay . The surrender

37760-444: The late 1930s. It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. The depression originated in the United States and became worldwide news with the stock market crash of 29 October 1929 (known as Black Tuesday ). Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide GDP fell by an estimated 15%. By comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession . Some economies started to recover by

37996-402: The late 1950s and early 1960s, the US Army began to identify a dedicated CAS need for itself. The Howze Board, which studied the question, published a landmark report describing the need for a helicopter-based CAS requirement. However, the Army did not follow the Howze Board recommendation initially. Nevertheless, it did eventually adopt the use of helicopter gunships and attack helicopters in

38232-443: The latter part of the Second World War. The Soviet Union 's Red Air Force quickly recognized the value of ground-support aircraft. As early as the Battles of Khalkhyn Gol in 1939, Soviet aircraft had the task of disrupting enemy ground operations. This use increased markedly after the June 1941 Axis invasion of the Soviet Union . Purpose-built aircraft such as the Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik proved highly effective in blunting

38468-442: The lead. U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes sponsored the Washington Naval Conference of 1921 in determining how many capital ships each major country was allowed. The new allocations were actually followed and there were no naval races in the 1920s. Britain played a leading role in the 1927 Geneva Naval Conference and the 1930 London Conference that led to the London Naval Treaty , which added cruisers and submarines to

38704-675: The list of ship allocations. However the refusal of Japan, Germany, Italy and the USSR to go along with this led to the meaningless Second London Naval Treaty of 1936. Naval disarmament had collapsed and the issue became rearming for a war against Germany and Japan. The Roaring Twenties highlighted novel and highly visible social and cultural trends and innovations. These trends, made possible by sustained economic prosperity, were most visible in major cities like New York City , Chicago , Paris , Berlin , and London . The Jazz Age began and Art Deco peaked. For women, knee-length skirts and dresses became socially acceptable, as did bobbed hair with

38940-512: The main concern for air forces. Then, the Army advocated a degree of decentralization for good reactivity, in contrast with the USAF-favored centralization of CAS. The third point dealt with the lack of training and joint culture, which are necessary for an adequate air-ground integration. Finally, USAF aircraft were not designed for CAS: "the advent of jet fighters , too fast to adjust their targets, and strategic bombers , too big to be used on theatre, rendered CAS much harder to implement". During

39176-402: The major Chinese cities and industrial areas. A puppet government was set up. In the U.S., government and public opinion—even including those who were isolationist regarding Europe—was resolutely opposed to Japan and gave strong support to China. Meanwhile, the Japanese Army fared badly in large battles with the Soviet Red Army in Mongolia at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol in summer 1939. The USSR

39412-544: The mid-1930s. However, in many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II. The Great Depression had devastating effects in countries both rich and poor . Personal income , tax revenue , profits , and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by more than 50%. Unemployment in the United States rose to 25% and in some countries rose as high as 33%. Prices fell sharply, especially for mining and agricultural commodities. Business profits fell sharply as well, with

39648-475: The modification of early helicopters as dedicated gunship platforms. Though not as fast as fixed-wing aircraft and consequently more vulnerable to anti-aircraft weaponry, helicopters could use terrain for cover, and more importantly, had much greater battlefield persistence owing to their low speeds. The latter made them a natural complement to ground forces in the CAS role. In addition, newly developed anti-tank guided missiles , demonstrated to great effectiveness in

39884-437: The most advanced Western European models. They started with textiles, railways, and shipping, expanding to electricity and machinery. The most serious weakness was a shortage of raw materials. Industry ran short of copper, and coal became a net importer. A deep flaw in the aggressive military strategy was a heavy dependence on imports including 100 per cent of the aluminium, 85 per cent of the iron ore, and especially 79 per cent of

40120-506: The most. The Weimar Republic in Germany gave way to two episodes of political and economic turmoil, the first culminated in the German hyperinflation of 1923 and the failed Beer Hall Putsch of that same year. The second convulsion, brought on by the worldwide depression and Germany's disastrous monetary policies, resulted in the further rise of Nazism . In Asia, Japan became an ever more assertive power, especially with regard to China . Democracy and prosperity largely went together in

40356-443: The need for aerial support of ground operations. Though the Luftwaffe , like its counterparts, tended to focus on strategic bombing, it was unique in its willingness to commit forces to CAS. Unlike the Allies, the Germans were not able to develop powerful strategic bombing capabilities, which implied industrial developments they were forbidden to take according to the Treaty of Versailles . In joint exercises with Sweden in 1934,

40592-413: The new Boeing B-29 bombers. Despite the advances of the Allies, massive fighting was still taking place, both in South-East Asia with the Japanese offensive in India and in the Pacific, with the Battle of the Philippine Sea , where Japan suffered major losses and definitively lost the ability to rely on aircraft carriers . In later October, a combined attack of American and Australian forces took on

40828-562: The oceans. In the Balkans , the Fascist regime claimed Dalmatia and held ambitions over Albania , Slovenia , Croatia , Bosnia and Herzegovina , Macedonia , and Greece based on the precedent of previous Roman dominance in these regions. Dalmatia and Slovenia were to be directly annexed into Italy while the remainder of the Balkans was to be transformed into Italian client states. The regime also sought to establish protective patron-client relationships with Austria , Hungary , Romania , and Bulgaria . In both 1932 and 1935, Italy demanded

41064-478: The offensive, earning victories in the New Guinea campaign at Guadalcanal , Milne Bay and Buna-Gona . Over the next two years the Allies slowly captured one island base after another, trying to get closer to Japan itself, where it planned to launch massive strategic air attacks and, only if absolutely necessary, execute a ground invasion. By July 1944, the US recaptured Guam and captured Tinian , which finally put them in attacking range of mainland Japan using

41300-405: The official records of a meeting of the Grand Council of Fascism . This text asserted that maritime position determined a nation's independence: countries with free access to the high seas were independent; while those who lacked this, were not. Italy, which only had access to an inland sea without French and British acquiescence, was only a "semi-independent nation", and alleged to be a "prisoner in

41536-525: The oil supplies. It was one thing to go to war with China or Russia, but quite another to be in conflict with the key suppliers, especially the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands, of oil and iron. Japan joined the Allies of the First World War to make territorial gains. Together with the British Empire, it divided up Germany's territories scattered in the Pacific and on the Chinese coast ; they did not amount to very much. The other Allies pushed back hard against Japan's efforts to dominate China through

41772-438: The plane would fly in very low to the ground and release the bombs just above the trenches. The Germans were also quick to adopt this new form of warfare and were able to deploy aircraft in a similar capacity at Cambrai. While the British used single-seater planes, the Germans preferred the use of heavier two-seaters with an additional machine gunner in the aft cockpit . The Germans adopted the powerful Hannover CL.II and built

42008-409: The politico-military encirclement of Italy. Thus Greece, Turkey, and Egypt must be considered vital enemies of Italy's expansion ... The aim of Italian policy, which cannot have, and does not have continental objectives of a European territorial nature except Albania, is first of all to break the bars of this prison ... Once the bars are broken, Italian policy can only have one motto—to march to

42244-404: The port city of Tobruk and advance into Egypt . However, Hitler, embroiled in his invasion of the Soviet Union, refused to send Rommel any more troops, causing Rommel to retreat and preventing him from seizing the Middle East , where Axis-friendly regimes had taken root in Iraq and Persia (present-day Iran ). After the winter, Hitler launched a fresh offensive in the spring of 1942, with

42480-423: The primary question was whether battleships would maintain their dominance of the seas or be rendered virtually obsolete by naval aviation . The military deliberations and controversies characteristic of the interwar period would ultimately find resolution via the events of WWII, which served as a foundation for many of the tenets, doctrines , and strategies of modern warfare . Overall, the innovations of WWI and

42716-415: The propaganda of Joseph Goebbels. By 25 April the Soviets had besieged Berlin. Hitler remained in the city in a bunker under the Chancellery garden. On 30 April he committed suicide by shooting himself, after a ritual wedding with his longtime mistress Eva Braun . The Germans held out another 7 days under Admiral Doenitz , their new leader, but the Germans surrendered unconditionally on 7 May 1945, ending

42952-417: The prosperous Roaring Twenties , a time of social and economic mobility for the middle class . Automobiles , electric lighting , radio , and more became common among populations in the first world . The era's indulgences were followed by the Great Depression , an unprecedented worldwide economic downturn that severely damaged many of the world's largest economies. Politically, the era coincided with

43188-474: The rapid advance, the Germans demonstrated consistently superior CAS tactics to those of the British and French defenders. Later, on the Eastern front , the Germans would devise visual ground signals to mark friendly units and to indicate direction and distance to enemy emplacements. Despite these accomplishments, German CAS was not perfect and suffered from the same misunderstanding and interservice rivalry that plagued other nations' air arms, and friendly fire

43424-424: The rapid armored advance of General Patton 's Third Army in its drive across France. Armed reconnaissance was a major feature of XIX TAC close air support, as the rapid advance left Patton's Southern flank open. Such was the close nature of cooperation between the Third Army and XIX TAC that Patton actually counted on XIX TAC to guard his flanks. This close air support from XIX TAC was credited by Patton as having been

43660-431: The region inhabited by ethnic Germans called the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia , the remilitarisation of the League of Nations demilitarised zone of the German Rhineland region, and the last, desperate stages of rearmament as the Second World War increasingly loomed. Disarmament was a very popular public policy. However, the League of Nations played little role in this effort, with the United States and Britain taking

43896-410: The resounding victory are Japanese overconfidence in their own forces, poor planning and the intercepting of Japanese battle plans by the United States. The losses suffered during this Battle of Midway, paired with the campaign of attrition that was taking place in Solomon Islands , left Japan unable to replenish its forces and turned the tides of war against it. By August 1942, the Allied forces were on

44132-500: The rest of the Army. Thus it was initially unprepared to provide CAS, and in fact, had to be dragged "kicking and screaming" into the CAS function with the ground troops. USAAF doctrinal priorities for tactical aviation were, in order, air superiority, isolation of the battlefield via supply interdiction, and thirdly, close air support. Hence, during the North African Campaign , CAS was poorly executed, if at all. So few aerial assets were assigned to U.S. troops that they fired on anything in

44368-429: The rise of communism , starting in Russia with the October Revolution and Russian Civil War , at the end of WWI, and ended with the rise of fascism , particularly in Germany and Italy. China was in the midst of a half-century of instability and the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang the Chinese Communist Party and many warlords. The empires of Britain , France , and others faced challenges as imperialism

44604-482: The same month, he secured the return of Memel from Lithuania to Germany. Chamberlain was forced to acknowledge that his policy of appeasement towards Hitler had failed. In 1922, the leader of the Italian Fascist movement, Benito Mussolini , was appointed Prime Minister of Italy after the March on Rome . Mussolini resolved the question of sovereignty over the Dodecanese at the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne , which formalised Italian administration of both Libya and

44840-428: The same time, targets engaged in combat are dispersed and concealed, reducing the effectiveness of air attacks. They also argued that the CAS mission merely duplicated the abilities of artillery, whereas interdiction provided a unique capability. Ground officers contended there was rarely sufficient artillery available, and the flexibility of aircraft would be ideal for massing firepower at critical points, while producing

45076-412: The shrinking zone of German control. The Germans offered staunch resistance, but by 4 June 1944, Rome had fallen. The Battle of the Atlantic took place from 1942 to 1944 and was described as "longest, largest, and most complex naval battle in history". The Germans hoped to sever the vital supply lines between Britain and America, sinking many tons of shipping with U-boats , German submarines. However,

45312-471: The skies of Britain, now turned his gaze eastward to the Soviet Union . Despite having signed the non-aggression pact with Stalin, Hitler despised communism and wished to destroy it in the land of its birth. He originally planned to launch the attack in early spring of 1941 to avoid the disastrous Russian winter. However, a pro-allied coup in Yugoslavia and Mussolini's almost utter defeat in his invasion of Greece from occupied Albania prompted Hitler to launch

45548-425: The target. If it can identify the target, it can't hit it. But if it does hit the target, it doesn't do a great deal of damage anyway." It is unsurprising, then, that MacArthur excluded USAF aircraft from the airspace over the Inchon Landing in September 1950, instead relying on Marine Aircraft Group 33 for CAS. In December 1951, Lt. Gen. James Van Fleet , commander of the Eighth U.S. Army , formally requested

45784-434: The territories of the present day Ukraine and Belarus , laid siege to Leningrad (present day Saint Petersburg), and advanced to within 15 miles of Moscow. At this critical moment, the Soviet people stalled the German Wehrmacht to a halt at the gates of Moscow. Stalin had planned to evacuate the city, and had already moved important government functions, but decided to stay and rally the city. Recently arrived troops from

46020-572: The total population, 64.7 million lived in Africa and 31.2 million lived in Asia; 900,000 lived in the French West Indies or islands in the South Pacific. The largest colonies were French Indochina with 26.8 million (in five separate colonies), French Algeria with 6.6 million, the French protectorate in Morocco , with 5.4 million, and French West Africa with 35.2 million in nine colonies. The total includes 1.9 million Europeans, and 350,000 "assimilated" natives. The Berber independence leader Abd el-Krim (1882–1963) organised armed resistance against

46256-433: The two signatories mutually agreed to cancel all pre-war debts and renounced war claims. In October 1925 the Treaty of Locarno was signed by Germany, France, Belgium, Britain, and Italy; it recognised Germany's borders with France and Belgium. Moreover, Britain, Italy, and Belgium undertook to assist France in the case that German troops marched into the demilitarised Rhineland. Locarno paved the way for Germany's admission to

46492-403: The universal acceptance of the integration of air power into combined arms warfare, with all of the war's major combatants having developed effective air-ground coordination techniques by the conflict's end. New techniques, such as the use of forward air control to guide CAS aircraft and identifying invasion stripes , also emerged at this time, being heavily shaped by the Italian Campaign and

46728-402: The use of massed aircraft. The German strategy concentrated upon the devotion of the Wehrmacht , or German army, to the use of tank groups, called panzer divisions, and groups of mobile infantry, in concert with relentless attacks from the air. Encirclement was also a major part of the strategy. This change smashed any expectations that the Second World War would be fought in the trenches like

46964-420: The victory by Franco and the Nationalists in the war, Allied intelligence was informed that Italy was pressuring Spain to permit an Italian occupation of the Balearic Islands . After Great Britain signed the Anglo-Italian Easter Accords in 1938, Mussolini and Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano issued demands for concessions in the Mediterranean by France, particularly regarding French Somaliland , Tunisia and

47200-428: The war effort combined with failures of the previous systems' of Government made it more difficult than hitherto to maintain that women were, both by constitution and temperament, unfit to vote. If women could work in munitions factories, it seemed both ungrateful and illogical to deny them a place in the polling booth. But the vote was much more than simply a reward for war work; the point was that women's participation in

47436-451: The war helped to dispel the fears that surrounded women's entry into the public arena. In Europe, according to Derek Aldcroft and Steven Morewood, "Nearly all countries registered some economic progress in the 1920s and most of them managed to regain or surpass their pre-war income and production levels by the end of the decade." The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Greece did especially well, while Eastern Europe did poorly, due to

47672-421: The war in Europe (see V-E Day ). Rivalries that had begun during the war, combined with the sense of strength in the victorious powers, laid the foundations of the Iron Curtain and of the Cold War. The first event that is usually linked to the later Pacific conflict was the Mukden Incident of 18 September 1931, during which the Japanese military staged the bombing of the South Manchuria Railway and pinned

47908-480: The war nor did they feel they caused the war (see Stab-in-the-back legend ). Germany was never occupied by Allied troops, yet it had to accept a liberal democratic government imposed on it by the victors after the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm . Much of the map of Europe was redrawn by the victors based upon the theory that future wars could be prevented if all ethnic groups had their own "homeland". New states like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were created out of

48144-415: The war was almost over, but he managed only to occupy a few hundred yards of French territory. Throughout the war, the Italians would be more of a burden to the Nazis than a boon, and would later cost them precious time in Greece. Hitler now turned his eyes on Great Britain, which stood alone against him. He ordered his generals to draw up plans for an invasion, code named Operation Sea Lion , and ordered

48380-418: The war. Stalin also launched an attack on Finland, which he hoped to reduce to little more than a Soviet puppet state, but the Red Army met staunch Finnish resistance in what became known as the Winter War and succeeded in gaining only limited territory from the Finns. This action would later cause the Finns to ally with Germany when its attack on the Soviet Union came in 1941. After the defeat of Poland,

48616-403: The war. The Allies, known initially as "The Triple Entente ", comprised the British Empire, France, and Russia. Germany, Austria-Hungary , Bulgaria , and later the Ottoman Empire , were known as "The Central Powers ". In 1917, Russia ended hostile actions against the Central Powers after the fall of the Tsar. The Bolsheviks negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany, although it

48852-546: The winter of 1943, the southern half of Italy was in Allied hands. The Italians, most of whom did not really support the war, had already turned against Mussolini. In July, he had been stripped of power and taken prisoner, though the Italians feigned continued support of the Axis. On 8 September, the Italians formally surrendered, but most of Italy not in Allied hands was controlled by German troops and those loyal to Mussolini's (Mussolini had been freed by German paratroopers) new Italian Social Republic , which in reality consisted of

49088-416: Was a decline in pacifism and a growing sense that another world war was imminent, and that it would be worth fighting for. The changing world order that the war had brought about, in particular the growth of the United States and Japan as naval powers, and the rise of independence movements in India and Ireland, caused a major reassessment of British imperial policy. Forced to choose between alignment with

49324-448: Was a huge cost to Russia. In the treaty, Bolshevik Russia ceded the Baltic states to Germany, and its province of Kars Oblast in the South Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire . It also recognized the independence of Ukraine . Although Germany shifted huge forces from the eastern to the western front after signing the treaty, it was unable to stop the Allied advance, especially with the entrance of American troops in 1918. The war itself

49560-820: Was accepted by General Douglas MacArthur as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers . Close air support The requirement for detailed integration because of proximity, fires or movement is the determining factor. CAS may need to be conducted during shaping operations with special forces if the mission requires detailed integration with the fire and movement of those forces. A closely related subset of air interdiction , battlefield air interdiction , denotes interdiction against units with near-term effects on friendly units, but which does not require integration with friendly troop movements. CAS requires excellent coordination with ground forces, typically handled by specialists such as artillery observers , joint terminal attack controllers , and forward air controllers . World War I

49796-400: Was also a chance for the combatant nations to show off their military strength and technological ingenuity. The Germans introduced the machine gun, U-boats and deadly gases. The British first used the tank . Both sides had a chance to test out their new aircraft to see if they could be used in warfare. It was widely believed that the war would be short. Unfortunately, since trench warfare

50032-437: Was also factionalised. Large-scale warfare, known as the Second Sino-Japanese War , began in August 1937, with naval and infantry attacks focused on Shanghai , which quickly spread to other major cities. There were numerous large-scale atrocities against Chinese civilians, such as the Nanjing massacre in December 1937, with mass murder and mass rape. By 1939 military lines had stabilised, with Japan in control of almost all of

50268-472: Was an advocate of what later came to be known as ' Blitzkrieg ' tactics, thought that the speed of armoured tanks would render conventional artillery incapable of providing support fire. Instead he proposed that: actual 'offensive' support must come from an even more mobile artillery moving alongside. For this purpose the close co-operation of low-flying aircraft ... is essential As a continental power intent on offensive operations, Germany could not ignore

50504-420: Was divided over the morality of the massacre between those who saw it as having saved India from anarchy and those who viewed it with revulsion. Egypt had been under de facto British control since the 1880s, despite its nominal ownership by the Ottoman Empire . In 1922, the Kingdom of Egypt was granted formal independence , though it continued to be a client state following British guidance. Egypt joined

50740-545: Was exiled in the Pacific until 1947. Morocco was now pacified, and became the base from which Spanish Nationalists would launch their rebellion against the Spanish Republic in 1936. The humiliating peace terms in the Treaty of Versailles provoked bitter indignation throughout Germany, and seriously weakened the new democratic regime. The Treaty stripped Germany of all of its overseas colonies , of Alsace–Lorraine , and of predominantly Polish districts. The Allied armies occupied industrial sectors in western Germany including

50976-400: Was followed one month later by the Battle of Midway , in which the US Navy defeated an attacking Japanese fleet, inflicting devastating damage on the attacking force. The Battle of Midway is widely considered the most important naval battle of the Pacific Campaign and has even been described as "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare" The reasons usually given for

51212-512: Was greeted by loud cheers. Four weeks later, 99% of Austrians voted in favour of the annexation ( Anschluss ) of their country Austria to the German Reich . After Austria, Hitler turned to Czechoslovakia , where the 3.5 million-strong Sudeten German minority was demanding equal rights and self-government. At the Munich Conference of September 1938, Hitler, the Italian leader Benito Mussolini, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain , and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier agreed upon

51448-464: Was horrified at the prospect of Operation Downfall, a planned boots-on-the-ground invasion of mainland Japan that was estimated to lead to over a million casualties among American soldiers. Despite a devastating campaign of fire-bombing in Tokyo and dozens of other cities, the Japanese showed no sign of planning to surrender. Following the Potsdam Declaration of 26 July, where the Allies threatened "prompt and utter destruction" should Japan not surrender,

51684-625: Was increasingly viewed negatively and independence movements emerged in many colonies ; in Europe, after protracted low-level fighting most of Ireland became independent. The Russian , Ottoman , Austro-Hungarian , and German Empires were dismantled, with the Ottoman territories and German colonies redistributed among the Allies , chiefly Britain and France. The western parts of the Russian Empire, Estonia , Finland , Latvia , Lithuania , and Poland became independent nations in their own right, and Bessarabia (now Moldova and parts of Ukraine ) chose to reunify with Romania . In Russia,

51920-416: Was marked by foul weather. Rommel, who was now in charge of defending France against possible Allied attack, thought the Allies would not attack during the stormy weather, and was on holiday in Germany. Besides this, the Germans were expecting an attack, but at the natural harbor of Calais and not the beaches of Normandy ; They did not know about the Allies' artificial harbours , and false leads planted by

52156-410: Was no longer in the forefront, as Stalin concentrated on " socialism in one country " and embarked on a bold plan of collectivization and industrialization. The majority of socialists and even many communists became disillusioned with Stalin's autocratic rule, his purges and the assassination of his "enemies", as well as the news of famines he imposed on his own people. Communism was strengthened as

52392-421: Was not renewed in 1922 because of heavy pressure on Britain from Canada and the United States. In the 1920s Japanese diplomacy was rooted in a largely liberal democratic political system, and favoured internationalism. By 1930, however, Japan was rapidly reversing itself, rejecting democracy at home, as the Army seized more and more power, and rejecting internationalism and liberalism. By the late 1930s it had joined

52628-451: Was not uncommon. For example, on the eve of the Meuse offensive, Guderian's superior cancelled his CAS plans and called for high-altitude strikes from medium bombers, which would have required halting the offensive until the air strikes were complete. Fortunately for the Germans, his order was issued too late to be implemented, and the Luftwaffe commander followed the schedule he had previously worked out with Guderian. As late as November 1941,

52864-501: Was not until 1916 that an air support doctrine was elaborated and dedicated fighters for the job were put into service. By that point, the startling and demoralizing effect that attack from the air could have on the troops in the trenches had been made clear. At the Battle of the Somme , 18 British armed reconnaissance planes strafed the enemy trenches after conducting surveillance operations. The success of this improvised assault spurred innovation on both sides. In 1917, following

53100-446: Was overshadowed by his later blunders in the east. Secondly, it marked the advent of radar as a major weapon in modern air war. With radar, squadrons of fighters could be quickly assembled to respond to incoming bombers attempting to bomb civilian targets. It also allowed the identification of the type and a guess at the number of incoming enemy aircraft, as well as tracking of friendly airplanes. Hitler, taken aback by his defeat over

53336-401: Was particularly successful in this role. Aircraft support was first integrated into a battle plan on a large scale at the 1917 Battle of Cambrai , where a significantly larger number of tanks were deployed than previously. By that time, effective anti-aircraft tactics were being used by the enemy infantry and pilot casualties were high, although air support was later judged as having been of

53572-438: Was reiterated between ground commanders and aviators. Nevertheless, the US Army incrementally gained increased control over its CAS role. In the mid-1970s, after Vietnam, the USAF decided to train an enlisted force to handle many of the tasks the ALO was saturated with, to include terminal attack control . Presently, the ALO mainly serves in the liaison role, the intricate details of mission planning and attack guidance left to

53808-477: Was relatively difficult at this early date to co-ordinate these attacks due to the primitive nature of air-to-ground radio communication . Though most air-power proponents sought independence from ground commanders and hence pushed the importance of interdiction and strategic bombing, they nonetheless recognized the need for close air support. From the commencement of hostilities in 1914, aviators engaged in sporadic and spontaneous attacks on ground forces , but it

54044-646: Was still in its infancy – and the direct effect of rifle caliber machine guns and light bombs of World War I aircraft was very limited compared with the power of (for instance) an average fighter bomber of World War II, but CAS aircraft were still able to achieve a powerful psychological impact. The aircraft was a visible and personal enemy – unlike artillery – presenting a personal threat to enemy troops, while providing friendly forces assurance that their superiors were concerned about their situation. The most successful attacks of 1917–1918 had included planning for co-ordination between aerial and ground units, although it

54280-434: Was still lacking. Since pilots operated under centralized control, ground controllers were never able to familiarize themselves with pilots, and requests were not processed quickly. Harold K. Johnson, then commander of the 8th Cavalry Regiment , 1st Cavalry Division (later Army Chief of Staff ) commented regarding CAS: "If you want it, you can't get it. If you can get it, it can't find you. If it can find you, it can't identify

54516-406: Was strategically important because of its sea routes which supplied crucial Swedish ore to the Nazi war machine. Norway held on for a few crucial weeks, but Denmark surrendered after only six hours . Sweden was the only Scandinavian country to successfully maintain its neutrality throughout the war, with occasional breaches of neutrality in favor of both Germany and the Western Allies . With

54752-478: Was the British "Rover" system. These were pairings of air controllers and army liaison officers at the front but able to switch communications seamlessly from one brigade to another – hence Rover. Incoming strike aircraft arrived with pre-briefed targets, which they would strike 20 minutes after arriving on station only if the Rovers had not directed them to another more pressing target. Rovers might call on artillery to mark targets with smoke shells, or they might direct

54988-453: Was the best form of defense, advances on both sides were very slow and came at a terrible cost to lives. When the war was finally over in 1918, the results would set the stage for the next twenty years. First and foremost, the Germans were forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles , forcing them to make exorbitant payments to repair damages caused during the War. Many Germans felt these reparations were unfair because they did not actually "lose"

55224-444: Was the first conflict to make extensive use of CAS, albeit using relatively primitive methods in contrast to later warfare, though it was made evident that proper coordination between aerial and ground forces via radio made attacks more effective. Several conflicts during the interwar period —including the Polish–Soviet War , the Spanish Civil War , the Iraqi Revolt , and the Chaco War —made notable use of CAS. World War II marked

55460-422: Was too powerful. Tokyo and Moscow signed a nonaggression treaty in April 1941 , as the militarists turned their attention to the European colonies to the south which had urgently-needed oil fields. To one degree or another, Spain had been unstable politically for centuries, and in 1936–1939 was wracked by one of the bloodiest civil wars of the 20th century. The real importance comes from outside countries. In Spain

55696-402: Was used as an intervention force in support of U.S. Marine Corps ground forces during the Banana Wars , in places such as Haiti , the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua . Marine Aviators experimented with air-ground tactics and in Haiti and Nicaragua they adopted the tactic of dive bombing . The observers and participants of these wars would base their CAS strategies on their experience of

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