WW2
Your World War II Resource
Encyclopedia
MDSWW-- The Macmillan Dictionary of the Second World War
OCWW2--The Oxford Companion to World War II
OEGWW2--The Oxford Essential Guide to World War II
PWE: The Pacific War Encyclopedia
RMEWW2--Rand McNally Encyclopedia of World War II
SBEE--Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage
WW2AVE--World War II: A Visual Encyclopedia
WW2AW--World War II: America at War, 1941-1945
Abysinnia (Ethiopia)
(Ethiopia) An ancient East African kingdom of some ten million people ruled by an emperor, aile Selassie. In October 1935 Abyssinia was invaded by Italian forces from the neighbouring Italian territories of Italian Somaliland and Eritrea, and in March 1936 Haile Selassie's forces were decisively defeated by [Marshal Pietro] Badoglio; the emperor was forced into exile in the UK.
The country became part of Italian East Africa, with [Marshal Rodolfo] Graziani as its governor-general and viceroy, and the population was ruthlessly repressed. When Italy entered the war in June 1940 it became a springboard from which the Italians attacked frontier posts in the Sudan and Kenya, and for the capture of British Somaliland. But with internal rebellion threatening them the Italians failed to capitalize on these successes and were continually defeated in the East African campaign by British and Commonwealth forces. Haile Selassie was returned to his throne by [Orde] Wingate and his Gideon Force in May 1941 and later managed to wrest control of his country from his British allies. [OCWW2]
Admiralty Islands
Pacific group which lies 320 km (200 mi.) north-east of what was then the Australian mandate of New Guinea of which they formed a part. The Japanese developed air bases there after occupying the islands in April 1942 and Seeadler harbour provided an ideal fleet anchorage. Their capture was therefore an essential requisite for General MacArthur's plan to isolate and reduce Rabaul, and he gave the task of seizing the islands to Lt-General Walter Krueger's Alamo Force. On 29 February 1944 the 1st Cavalry Division, supported by 73rd Wing of the Royal Australian Air Force, landed on one of the principal islands, Los Negros, before moving to the other, Manus, the following week. The Japanese garrison, which included two infantry battalions and naval detachments, resisted tenaciously and the islands were not declared secure until 18 May. The 1st Cavalry Division lost 326 men killed and 1,189 wounded. [OCWW2]
Afghanistan
A netural oligarchy ruled by Mohammed Zahir Shah. It joined the League of Nations in 1934 and in 1937 signed a non-agression pact with Turkey and Persia. From 1935 until the outbreak of the Second World War, German influence increased markedly, but though the sympathies of the ruling elite were mainly with the Axis they kept the country strictly neutral. Economic and political ties were maintained with Germany, a position the USSR at first chose not to, and the UK was unable to, alter. However, once Hitler invaded the USSR in June 1941 the Afghan government was successfully pressed into severing all ties with the Axis powers and expelled their citizens. [OCWW2]
Albania
Pop: (1939) 1,063,000   Albania, a Balkan nation on the Adriatic Sea, entered the war involuntarily on Good Friday, April 7, 1939, when Italy invaded the nation, violating a defense alliance. King Zog fled and his country became a kingdom under Italy. On Oct. 28, 1940, Italy used Albania as a jumping-off point to invade Greece. The Greek Army forced the Italians back into Albania and occupied parts of the country, including Santi Quaranta (which Benito Mussolini had renamed Porto Edda, after his oldest daughter. Germany came to Italy's assistance and in April 1941, after defeating Yugoslavia, Germany drove the Greeks out of Albania, which Italian forces reoccupied. Many Albanians, organized under various leaders, continued to fight as guerrillas.
After the Italian surrender in Sept. 1943, the Germans promised Albania that victory would bring a Greater Albania incorporating parts of Yugoslavia and Greece. But Albanian guerrillas, led by pro-Soviet Communist partisans, kept on fighting the Germans, with the aid of British advisers, arms, and ammunition. In Oct. 1944 British forces seized the port of Sarande and on Nov. 18 Albanian partisans began the liberation of Tirana, the capital, which the Germans evacuated on Nov. 20.
Enver Hoxha, a schoolteacher who had led the Communist partisans, created a one-party government and began killing thousands of Albanians accused of collaboration with the Fascists or opposition to Hoxha's totalitarian rule. (He remained the hard-line leader of Albania until his death in 1985.) [WW2AW]
Algeria
Pop: (1936) 7,234, 684)   A governor-general appointed by the French government administered Algeria, which had no parliament and was considered an extension of metropolitan France. French colonists ruled the social and economic life of the country, where only one Moslem child out of eight went to school and natives were contemptuously called pied-noirs, "black feet," for their shoeless poverty. As the European war loomed, France and Italy skirmished diplomatically over Italy's desire for a wider role in North Africa, inspiring France to beef up Algeria's defenses. France stationed more than 85,000 troops in Algiers, including Foreign Legionnaires and Arab cavalry. In 1939 the French began building a large army-naval base at Oran's port of Mers el-Kebir.
The fall of France in June 1940 put these bases, as well as the troops in Algeria, in the hands of the pro-German regime of Vichy France. On July 3, a British fleet appeared off Mers el-Kebir and gave the commander of the French warships in port there an ultimatum: go to the West Indies or scuttle the ships -- or be destroyed. The British could not allow the ships to go into German service. The French refused to acknowledge the ultimatum and the British attacked them, sinking or damaging several French ships and killing about 1,300 French seamen.
Algeria was a key Allied objective in the North African invasion of Nov. 1942. Although Vichy forces initially fought the invaders, political negotiations quickly ended resistance. On Nov. 23, 1942, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of the invasion forces, made Algiers his headquarters. Gen. Charles de Gaulle, leader of the anti-Vichy Free French, in Dec. 1943 said that Algerian natives and other natives in French colonies had so helped the Allies that they should be awarded civil rights. But before the Algerians could test French sincerity the French and Algerians clashed -- ironically during celebrations over the end of the European war in May 1945. Nationalists killed eighty-eight French and, in retaliation, French security forces killed at least 1,500 Algerian Moslems. The massacre sowed bitter seeds for what would be the long and bloody Algerian-French war of the 1950s. [WW2AW]