Hello, welcome to History here at Oak National Academy.

My name's Mr. Newton, and I will be your teacher today guiding you through the entire lesson.

Right, let's get started.

Over the next few lessons we'll be thinking about our big inquiry question, which events turned the tide in the story of the second World War? This is the question we'll use to investigate the unfolding events of the war, the outcome of which was not certain from the outset.

Nazi Germany had used their military tactic of Blitzkrieg to conquer most of Europe.

Britain had been pushed off the continent and now faced its darkest hour.

Britain and its empire stood alone in the Second World War.

There was only the Royal Air Force that stood between Germany's invasion of Britain.

The RAF served up Germany's first defeat in the Battle of Britain.

However, there was not much to celebrate about.

Hitler ordered the blitz bombing campaign, which targeted civilian homes and buildings throughout major British cities.

By the end of 1940 then, Britain had been successfully defended, but Nazi Germany was still the undisputed master of Europe.

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to explain why the period of 1941 to 1942 was an important turning point of the Second World War.

Before we begin, there are a few keywords that we need to understand.

Lebensraum was the concept of living space used by the Nazis to justify invading other countries.

A siege is the surrounding of a place by an armed force, cutting off essential supplies with the aim of compelling those inside to surrender.

Today's lesson is split into two parts.

We'll look at the first learning point, the Nazi Soviet war before looking at the war in Asia.

Right, let's start the lesson with the Nazi Soviet War.

By the end of 1940, Nazi Germany had dominated most of Europe.

We can see this from the map.

Germany is in the dark green and the lighter green represents the German occupations with the brownish colour representing German allies.

Ultimately, this map shows us that within the first two years of the second World War, Germany had looked like it had won the war.

However, two events in 1941 radically changed the direction of the second World War.

The first event is the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union or the USSR.

Again, looking at the map, we can imagine Hitler and his Nazi troops on the coast of France having failed to invade Britain and wondering what to do next.

Hitler decided to focus his efforts east, the red bit on the map, and head towards communist Russia.

By doing this, Hitler was ripping up the Nazi Soviet Pact.

This was the agreement in which they both agreed not to engage in military action against each other.

However, Hitler used this pact as a delaying tactic.

He'd always hated the communist ideology which ruled Russia, but the with them allowed the Nazi army to dominate Europe without fearing a Soviet attack.

The second event to radically changed the direction of the war was the Japanese attack on America.

So what this meant was that after these two events, a bit of struggle would now ensue.

These events changed the composition of the sides fighting the war.

So look at the table, this highlights why these two events were important.

We can see that before 1941, Britain and its empire are alone in the allied column, and we can see in the axis column Britain are up against Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union.

However, once Germany invaded Russia, the Soviet Union joined Britain's side in the war.

And then when Japan attacked America, who had mainly stayed out of the war at this point, America also quickly joined in against Germany and Japan.

So after these two pivotal events, we can see that on the one hand where Germany, Japan, and Italy known as the Axis powers are up against Britain, the Soviet Union and America who are known as the allies.

This meant a much more even but brutal fight would now ensue.

Okay, now let's just focus on the Nazi Soviet War.

In 1941, Hitler launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, and this was code named Operation Barbarossa.

Have a look at the map, the reddish maroon colour shows the areas of the Soviet Union, and the grey colour shows the areas of Nazi Germany.

Operation Barbarossa involved the Nazi army group in the north marching on the Baltic states with its final target locked in for Leningrad, modern day St.

Petersburg.

There was also an army group in the centre which would march across Soviet territory towards Moscow, the capital of Russia.

And finally, there was an army group in the south, which attacked Ukraine and Kiev and later Stalingrad.

The Nazi's aim was to secure strategic territory and take out key industrial centres.

So as we've already said, Hitler was betraying his pact with the Soviet Union and he'd used his pact to buy him time to conquer his other enemies, but he now ignored this non-aggression agreement.

Hitler had reasons to betray the pact.

Firstly, he had always wanted to destroy communism.

However, another significant reason was Hitler's belief in racial hierarchy.

In his view, the racially superior German people deserved more living space or Lebensraum, which they had the right to take by force from the peoples of Eastern Europe whom Hitler regarded as a racially inferior.

Furthermore, the Soviet Union was rich in resources which could fuel the growing economy and the military of the Reich.

As such, the German occupation of Soviet territories was brutal and unforgiving, involving some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

On the photo on the left, we can see German troops crossing the Soviet border.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding, why did Hitler invade the Soviet Union in June, 1941? Select three correct answers.

A, to avoid a war with Britain, B, to destroy communism, C, to increase German Lebensraum, D, to take Soviet resources, pause the video, select your three correct answers and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back and well done if you knew Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union was to destroy communism to increase German Lebensraum and to take Soviet resources.

Okay, let's continue, on the 22nd of June, 1941, Hitler ordered the largest army in history, three million soldiers into the Soviet Union.

Hitler had actually hoped to invade the month before to avoid the harsh Russian winter where temperatures regularly dropped to minus 30 Celsius.

But other military operations had meant there were delays.

The photo on the left shows tanks in operation Barbarossa.

The invasion eventually went ahead and the Nazi army marched towards the key Soviet cities of Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad, leaving a trail of terror as they went.

Within a week, Nazi troops had marched 200 miles, blown up thousands of Russian tanks and planes, and had trapped over 300,000 Russian soldiers.

Many simply fled rather than faced the Nazi war machine.

The photo on the left shows Russian deserters surrendering to a German soldier.

Tragically, these soldiers would not be rewarded for surrendering.

Hitler had instructed his troops to show no mercy.

Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, both soldiers and civilians and in newly occupied territory.

The Nazis began their systematic persecution and murder of Jewish people, political opponents and other persecuted groups.

By July, rather than risk street battle, the Nazi army surrounded Leningrad.

This became one of the most devastating sieges in history.

The image on the left is a diorama of the siege of Leningrad.

This is part of a three dimensional display in a museum, and it really depicts the conditions that would've been endured during this time.

Leningrad was bombarded and the water and power supplies were destroyed.

As winter approached, the city starved and thousands died.

Many people were so desperate they were forced to eat the glue from wallpaper, the grease from machines and the boiled leather from shoes, some resorted to eating human flesh, cats and dogs.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

Which major Russian city had been surrounded by July, 1941? A, Leningrad, B, Moscow, C Stalingrad.

Pause video, have a think and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done if you knew it was Leningrad.

In late 1941, the Germans had closed in on Moscow, the Soviet Union's capital city.

With German tanks stationed just 10 miles away, it seemed as if Moscow would fall.

The Soviet leader, Stalin, ordered his troops to take not one step back.

Anyone who dared retreat was shot.

Ordinary Russians all joined the war effort.

On the photo on the left, we can see Russian women digging defensive trenches in front of Moscow.

Thousands of women would dig these anti-tank trenches.

The citizens of Moscow turned the city into a fortress.

However, it was the vastness of the Soviet Union that worked against the Nazi army.

With a population of 200 million people and the land which stretched 6,000 miles, the Soviet Union could absorb the Nazi war machine.

The photo on the left shows the view from the turrets of a German tank during the winter, and it really shows the brutal conditions on the eastern front.

The Nazi Blitzkrieg was ineffective here.

As you'll remember, Blitzkrieg was a military tactic which relied on lightning quick speed and frequent attacks, which were not possible in the vast Russian landscape.

Crucially, as winter set in, German soldiers began to die of exposure.

The photo on the left shows frozen German soldiers during Operation Barbarossa.

They were totally unprepared for the Russian winter.

Even the oil in their armoured vehicles began to freeze.

As a result, they were forced to retreat from Moscow.

This represented the first major defeat suffered by the Nazi army and tied them into a prolonged war on the eastern front.

Furious by the events in Moscow throughout 1942, Hitler ordered an advance further south in an attempt to encircle the defending Soviet forces.

In order to do this, German soldiers would have to capture the strategically important city of Stalingrad.

Fighting in the city was amongst the most intense of the entire conflict.

For five months, Soviet defenders fought street by street to push back the Nazi invaders.

In the photo, we can see German soldiers clearing the streets in Stalingrad, and we can see how the city has been gripped by urban warfare as soldiers literally fought street by street.

Stalingrad was largely reduced to rubble in the process.

The photo shows the centre of Stalingrad after their liberation in February, 1943.

Aerial photos would show that large parts of the city had been flattened.

This was an incredibly bloody battle.

The Nazis lost almost a million soldiers and the Soviets had lost more than a million.

The Soviets were successful, however, and German soldiers were forced to begin a panicked retreat.

Stalingrad represented the largest defeat of the Nazi army.

The Soviet army, known as the Red Army, spent the next two years pushing retreating Nazi troops back to Germany.

The Soviets who had been building huge numbers of new aircraft now boasted control of the skies.

They were able to pursue the fleeing Nazi soldiers ruthlessly.

In London, Winston Churchill watched the events of Moscow unfold and said that the Nazis had suffered a colossal defeat and predicted that the Russians would drive them back to Germany.

Churchill was convinced the tide had turned for the allies, a view that was bolstered by the American entry into the war.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding, what was significant about the battle of Moscow? A, Churchill stated that a million soldiers had been killed.

B, it marked the end of the second World War, C, it was the first major defeat suffered by the Nazi army.

Pause the video, have a think, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back and well done if you knew it was C, it was the first major defeat suffered by the Nazi army.

Okay, great, let's move on to task A.

What I want you to do here is expand the following sentence.

And the sentence is this, "Operation Barbarossa had begun".

So to help us expand this sentence, I want you to answer the following questions.

And those questions are who, when, where, and why? And you can see I've answered the first one for you already.

So the who in Operation Barbarossa was three million Nazi troops.

So I want you now to complete the when, the where and the why of Operation Barbarossa.

Pause the video, have a go at the task and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back.

So your answers could include the following.

So for the when of Operation Barbarossa, we could put there on the 22nd of June, 1941, that marked the beginning of the operation and where, that was the invasion of the Soviet Union.

And why had Operation Barbarossa begun? We could have put something like Hitler believed that Germany needed Lebensraum.

Okay, let's move on to the second part of Task A.

And we're still expanding this sentence, operation Barbarossa begun.

But now I want you to use your answers from parts one to expand the sentence with more historical detail.

So you've already created some knowledge from your who, when, where and why answers.

So we can now use that knowledge to write a paragraph which expands the sentence, operation Barbarossa had begun.

Pause the video, have a go at the task and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back.

So your expansion of that sentence might look something like this, Operation Barbarossa began on the 22nd of June, 1941.

And you can see there that was the when question that you answered in part one of the task.

So the next part we can include the who and the where.

So on 22nd of June, 1941, when three million Nazi troops invaded the Soviet Union, Hitler believed that Germany needed Lebensraum and had set its sights on the Soviet Union.

The Nazi army laid siege to Leningrad and would march on Moscow and Stalingrad.

They killed hundreds of thousands of people along the way as Hitler regarded the people of Eastern Europe and the USSR as racially inferior.

Okay, so we've now covered the first pivotal event in 1941, the Nazi Soviet War and Operation Barbarossa.

Let's now move on to the second part of the lesson where we look at the second pivotal event, which would also impact the war in Asia.

So for us to understand these events, we need to go back in time a little bit.

So at the beginning of the 1930s, so that's before Hitler comes to power in Germany and before the Second World War had begun, let's look at the events that are happening at this time in Japan.

So at this time, Japan was ruled by Emperor Hirohito.

And in the photo we can see the Japanese emperor.

However, despite Emperor Hirohito ruling Japan, power was often exercised by military generals.

One of these generals, Hideki Tojo, who we can see in the photo, would also go on to become prime minister.

So at the time, Japan lacked access to natural resources like oil, coal and tin.

So the generals set about building an Asian empire which would spread across East Asia and gain them access to these resources.

And we can see on the left, the map shows the extent of this empire would eventually grow to.

So starting in 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria in northeastern China.

And in 1937 this developed into a full scale invasion of China.

Like the Nazis, the Japanese military carried out numerous war crimes.

So now we've got a bit of context of what's happening in Asia just before the Second World War begun.

So now if we fast forward a few years and Nazi Germany has now dominated Europe in the early stages of the second World War.

And then by September, 1940, Japan joined the axis powers.

So the second World War presented Japan with an opportunity to further build its empire.

With the allies bogged down in Europe and North Africa, the Japanese general saw an opportunity to grab some resource rich territory.

They had their sights set on the Dutch East Indies, British held Malaya and Burma and French Vietnam and Cambodia.

The only obstacle was an American presence in the Pacific.

The Americans had troops stationed in the colony of the Philippines and had a large naval base, Pearl Harbour, in Hawaii.

And if you have a look at the map, we can get an idea of the proximity of that American presence with regards to the Japanese ambitions of building their empire.

So the Japanese generals believed that if they destroyed Pearl Harbour and the Navy there, they could then build their empire unopposed.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

Why did Japan want to invade territory in East Asia? Select two correct answers.

A, to develop an empire, B, to do their part for their Axis war efforts.

C, to gain access to natural resources, D to spread Nazi rule, pause the video, select your two correct answers and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back and well done if you knew it was A, to develop an empire and C, to gain access to natural resources.

So in December, 1941, around about the time that Nazi soldiers were freezing in Moscow, Germany's ally Japan shocked the world by launching an unprovoked air attack on Pearl Harbour.

This attack sank four battleships and destroyed more than 180 aircraft.

If you have a look at the image on the left, it's a photo taken from a Japanese plane after the beginning of the Pearl Harbour attack.

If you look closer, I've highlighted where you can see that this photo has captured an attack on the far side of Ford Island.

And if we zoom in, we can see a torpedo hitting the USS West Virginia here.

And we can see Japanese planes just barely visible in the centre and just a bit to the right.

And then this photo shows us the damage to the USS West Virginia from sea level.

At a stroke, America had been brought into the conflict, declaring war on Japan, Germany and Italy.

Here's a poster showing a Japanese Samurai destroying the American fleet during Pearl Harbour.

And we can see the flags of Germany, Japan and Italy behind the Samurai, showing the Axis powers dealing a blow to the American Navy.

Japan's entry into the conflict opened up another front of fighting in the Pacific.

Britain had a number of colonies in the region and the British forces stationed there were unprepared for the speed and scale of the Japanese attack.

In early 1942, Japanese invaders swept through the Malayan Peninsula and occupied Singapore where many civilians were rounded up and interned in concentration camps.

Millions of soldiers and civilians were killed during the Japanese campaigns in the Pacific Wars, either through combat, starvation, execution or forced labour.

Before long, even Australia was threatened.

The entry of America may have been a benefit for Britain, but victory in this volatile war was by no means guaranteed.

Which event led to the USA declaring war on both Japan and Nazi Germany in December, 1941? A, the attack on Pearl Harbour, B, the Battle of Britain, C, the invasion of Poland or D, operation Barbarossa.

Pause the video, have a think and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back and well done if you knew it was A, the attack on Pearl Harbour.

Okay, great, let's move on to task B.

What I want you to do here is discuss the reasons why Japan attacked Pearl Harbour.

Pause the video, have a quick discussion, then come right back.

Okay, great, so hopefully you had some interesting discussions and it might have seemed quite surprising that Japan made this attack on America, who up until this point, had not really been involved with the war.

So it's definitely worth having a discussion why Japan made this attack.

So you may have discussed that Japan was ruled by military generals and had already brutally invaded Manchuria.

Japan lacked access to natural resources and aimed to build an Asian empire to gain access to these resources and that the only obstacle was America.

And they had troops in the Philippines and the Naval base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii.

And finally, you might have said that Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbour so they could build their empire unopposed.

Let's move on to the second part of task B.

What I want you to do here is explain why the period of 1941 to 42 was an important turning point of the second World War.

I want you to write one paragraph on the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and one paragraph on the Pearl Harbour attack.

So what we're doing here is summarising everything that you've learnt in the lesson so far, making sure that you can explain why the period of 1941 to 42 was such a pivotal turning point of the second World War.

Pause the video, have a got at the task, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back.

So there's many ways you could have answered this question, but compare what you've got with my example answer here.

1941 to 42 can be described as an important turning point of the Second World War because it involved a Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June, 1941.

This meant that the Soviet Union switched sides and joined the allied powers.

Furthermore, the vastness of the USSR and the winter conditions worked against the Nazi army.

The Soviets built huge numbers of aircraft and took control of the skies.

German soldiers were forced to retreat from Moscow in late 1941, and by the end of a gruelling battle in Stalingrad, which started in 1942, the Red Army spent the next two years pushing retreating Nazi troops back to Germany.

This was pivotal as it was the first defeat suffered by the Nazi army.

And Winston Churchill was convinced the tide had turned for the allies.

Another reason that 1941 to 42 was an important turning point of the Second World War was because Japan attacked America.

Japan aimed to build an Asian empire to gain access to natural resources.

However, they feared that America would stop them.

America had troops in the Philippines and a large naval base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii.

When Japan launched an unprovoked air attack on Pearl Harbour in December, 1941, it brought America into the Second World War.

Before 1941, Britain and its empire stood alone against the axis powers.

But after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and the attack on Pearl Harbour, Britain was joined by the Soviet Union and America, which improved their chances of winning the war.

Okay, great, let's summarise today's lesson, 1941 to 42, a pivotal period of the Second World War.

Nazi troops invaded the Soviet Union in June, 1941, and during the invasion, they laid siege to the Leningrad and marched on Moscow.

However, after some of the fiercest fighting of the war in Stalingrad, the Nazi army.

However, after some of the fiercest fighting of the war in Stalingrad, the Nazi army suffered defeat.

Japan aimed to build an Asian empire to gain access to natural resources.

However, they feared that America would stop them.

Japan launched an air attack on Pearl Harbour in December, 1941, which brought America into the war.

Before 1941, Britain and Empire stood alone against the axis powers.

But after the Nazi invasion of the USSR and the attack on Pearl Harbour, Britain was joined by the Soviet Union and America.

Well done on a brilliant lesson, and hopefully you can see how 1941 to 42 was a pivotal period of the war, and we can begin thinking about how we could answer part of our inquiry question, which events turned the tide in the story of the Second World War? However, we still have some further years to cover, and I will see you next time when we continue our inquiry.

See you in the next lesson.