![]() The Luftwaffe had been fashioned to work closely with the tanks and foot soldiers of the army. (These events are described in Chapter 2.)Īlthough they caused civilian deaths, the air attacks were closely connected to efforts by German ground troops to capture the cities they were bombing or to cut off enemy forces. Shortly after, when large numbers of civilians clogged the roads of Belgium and France trying to escape the advancing Germans, Luftwaffe planes sometimes swooped down and fired machine guns at them to increase their panic and to block the movement of the Allied armies. In both places, many civilians were killed and injured, and there was heavy damage to nonmilitary structures such as Then the Luftwaffe destroyed the center of the Dutch port of Rotterdam in May 1940. In the first days of the war, the German air force (the Luftwaffe) heavily bombed Warsaw, the Polish capital. One of the ways in which the war was brought hometo civilian populations was by attacks from the air. (The impact of World War II in the United States are described in Chapter 5 some of the experiences of civilians in Europe are described in Chapter 6 and the German attempt to destroy the Jewish people, known as the Holocaust, is described in Chapter 7.) Death from the air If World War II were a war of the people, then the people were its victims as well as its fighters. Were necessary for victory, then they were also targets for the enemy. If all the people of a country were involved in the war, then the country could ask the civilian population to make major sacrifices to win the war. The people who built these products, as well as the scientists and engineers who developed new weapons (see Chapter 15) and the writers and filmmakers who waged psychological warfare (see Chapter 16), were as important to the war effort as the soldiers in the armies. It needed enough boots, uniforms, and helmets for its soldiers. It needed the ships, railroads, and trucks to transport them the fuel to run them and the grease to lubricate them. A country needed modern weapons, including planes, bombs, tanks, submarines, aircraft carriers, and machine guns. Victory in World War II depended, more than anything else, on supplying armies with huge quantities of industrial products. Instead, each country tried to use all its resources to support the war. It was not fought just by soldiers and sailors. It came closer than any prior conflict to being a total war. But it was different in another way, too. World War II was larger than previous wars and was fought in more parts of the world. ![]()
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