Paul W. answered • 04/24/22
Dedicated to Achieving Student Success in History, Government, Culture
Although it wasn't immediately apparent, 1941 was the decisive turning point in World War II, ultimately determining whether the Allies or the Axis Powers would win the war.
Long before he became the ruler of Germany, Adolf Hitler had conceived of the need for the German people to expand their territory eastwards in order to provide a growing German population with the additional land and resources they needed. This notion rested on Hitler's warped concepts of race, viewing the German people - the 'Master Race' - as racially superior to the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe - Poles, Czechs, Russians, etc.
By 1941 Germany had achieved unchallenged dominance over Europe. Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Greece, the Netherlands (Holland), Norway, Poland, Yugoslavia, and, most important of all, France, had been conquered. Great Britain remained free, but isolated - unable to threaten Nazi dominated Europe.
Hitler determined that it was time to launch Germany's eastward expansion by going to war with Josef Stalin's Soviet Union (Russia). Operation 'Barbarossa', the largest land invasion up until that point in history, initially achieved astounding success, with hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers captured and nearly all of the warplanes, tanks, and artillery pieces that the Soviets had at the beginning of the invasion destroyed.
Stalin, however, had two great advantages that were not available to the other nations Hitler had so far conquered: space and vast resources, including manpower. Despite suffering repeated defeats on an incredible scale, Stalin was able to trade space for time. Soviet factories were disassembled and transported east of the Ural Mountains by train. There, out range of German warplanes, they were reconstituted and, with a steady supply of raw materials, began churning out new warplanes, tanks, artillery pieces, etc. to replace those that had been lost. With its huge supply of manpower, Stalin was able to organize, train, and equip new armies to replace those that the Germans had so far defeated and destroyed on the battlefield.
Hitler had hoped that, as in his previous wars, the Soviet Union could be defeated in less than a year of fighting. Initially it seemed he would achieve his goal, but for every Soviet army that his forces defeated, Stalin was able to put another in the field. As the German forces approached the Soviet capitol, Moscow, winter weather slowed and, ultimately, stopped their advance. Expecting to defeat the Soviets before winter, the Germans had not made any preparations; German troops suffered from freezing temperatures while their weapons became inoperable. Just short of capturing Moscow, the Germans were then taken by surprise when Stalin launched a massive counterattack in the depths of winter. Hitler may have viewed this as a temporary setback, but, in hindsight, it was the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.
While the outcome of World War II in Europe was being decided on the vast battlefields of Russia in 1941, the outcome of World War II in Asia would be decisively shaped by a single, remarkable attack by the carrier based aircraft of Imperial Japan in December of that same year. In contrast to Nazi Germany, in 1941 the Armed Forces of Imperial Japan were hopelessly bogged down an attempted conquest of China that Japan had launched four years earlier in 1937.
Because of their colonial possessions in Asia, as well as their interest in trade with China, the United States, along with Great Britain and the Netherlands (Holland), had viewed the growing power and territorial expansion of Imperial Japan with great concern. By 1941, in an effort to force Japan to end its war in China, the Governments of United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands (which existed in exile in Britain, the country of the Netherlands having by then been conquered by Hitler) jointly imposed an embargo of vital resources, such as oil, on Japan. For the Japanese Armed Forces, which essentially controlled the Government in Japan, giving up their ongoing conquest of China was completely out of the question. But the embargo, particularly the cutting off of their supply of oil, threatened Japan's ability to continue fighting their war in China. If the Japanese were prevented from purchasing vital resources, such as oil, the only other option was to take these resources by force.
Despite being confronted by extremely difficult choices in 1941, the circumstances in Asia appeared particularly favorable for Imperial Japan. The ability of the European nations, specifically Great Britain and the Netherlands, to defend their colonies in Asia was severely compromised by the war in Europe. With the British Armed Forces fully committed to fighting Hitler's Germany, as well as Mussolini's Italy, there wasn't much that could be spared for the defense of Britain's colonies in Asia against an attack by Japan. As noted above, by 1941 the home country of the Netherlands was occupied by Germany, so that the Netherland's colonies in Asia - specifically the Dutch East Indies (today Indonesia) - could not expect any help from the mother country in Europe. As such, the primary obstacle to Japan's hopes of seizing the resources it needed - particularly the extensive oil fields in the Dutch East Indies - was the Armed Forces of the United States, which possessed the Asian colony of the Philippine Islands. U.S. warplanes and warships could use bases in the Philippines to prevent Japan from transporting oil from the Dutch East Indies back to the Japanese Home Islands.
The Japanese Navy, therefore, chose to launch a highly risky attack that it hoped would, in one instance, destroy most of the U.S. Navy, thus enabling the Japanese the freedom to carry out their conquests and, of equal importance, consolidate and exploit the territories that they conquered. To signal its opposition to Japan's continuing war in China, the United States had moved its Pacific Fleet from its base in San Diego to Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. On December 7, 1941, Japanese warplanes launched from aircraft carriers appeared without warning in the skies above Pearl Harbor and commenced attacking U.S. warships and air bases. The attack achieved considerable success, sinking and severely damaging numerous U.S. warships and destroying most of the warplanes based in Hawaii. Nevertheless, the Japanese focus on warships and air bases meant that they neglected to damage vital fuel supplies and facilities for the repair of damaged warships, both of which would enable the U.S. Armed Forces to quickly recover and engage the Japanese in battle. Luckily for the United States, the Navy's two aircraft carriers were not present at Pearl Harbor when he attack occurred. As the Japanese Navy's attack on Pearl Harbor had itself demonstrated, the aircraft carrier had become the most important type of warship for the subsequent sea battles fought between Imperial Japan and the United States in the Pacific Ocean.
Most of all, however, whatever success Imperial Japan had achieved in its attack on Pearl Harbor was vastly outweighed by the consequences this attack had on public opinion in the United States. Before Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt's wishes to bring the United States into World War II in order to ensure the victory of the Allies were opposed by a large percentage of people of the United States who didn't want the country to become involved in what they saw as 'Europe's War'. The unprovoked surprise attack on Pearl Harbor produced an enormous, unified wave of anger among the people of the United States that translated into a powerful determination to defeat Imperial Japan. Initially it wasn't clear if war with Imperil Japan meant that the United States would also go to war with Nazi Germany, but it was Hitler himself who made this decision for the United States when, in solidarity with his Axis partner, he declared war on the United States!
Thus, the decisions of the two main Axis Powers - Hitler's Germany and Imperial Japan - to go to war with the Soviet Union and the United States in 1941 decisively changed the course of World War II, arguably all but guaranteeing that the Allies would win (Note: Japan did not go to war with the Soviet Union - in spite of Hitler's wishes. only after Germany had been defeated did the Soviet Union join the United States and Great Britain in their war with Japan). Like the Soviet Union, the United States also had enormous industrial capacity to transform the raw material available to it into vast quantities of warplanes, warships, tanks, artillery pieces, etc., not only with which to equip the Armed forces of the United States, but also to provide weapons in huge numbers to its Allies, including Stalin's Soviet Union. Neither Hitler's Germany nor Imperial Japan, much less Mussolini's Italy, had the ability to manufacture arms and munitions in anything like the quantity produced by the Soviet Union and the United States. Granted, greater numbers of arms and men could not, by themselves, guarantee victory. Decisions over strategy and the performance on the battlefield also played a role. And it took a few years for the mobilization of resources to translate into decisive victories on the battlefield. Nevertheless, by 1944 there was no longer any possibility of the Axis Powers being able to win World War II and it was only a year later that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had been utterly destroyed. The irony was that this outcome was determined by decisions made by Hitler and Imperial Japan in 1941.
