- After the end of World War I, Germany received most of the blame for the war and

destruction it brought. It was stripped of its army and pay reparations to other countries
for the damage Germany caused.
- It caused a lot of bad effects to Germany’s economy.
- In 1933, Germans elected a new government led by Adolf Hitler. Hitler blamed the
Jewish people in Germany had betrayed the country by pushing the government to sign
the treaty and the countries that ruined the Germany’s economy.
- Hitler controlled the country and built a new army. He wanted to recover the economy
of the country by taking lands from other countries.

- Another country had also begun building a new empire, Japan.

- By 1937, the Japanese army had seized the Chinese cities of Beijing and Shanghai.
- Japanese leaders wanted Japan to be the most powerful country in the Pacific Region.
Japan had few natural resources such as metal ores and oil. The United States stopped
trading with Japan for raw materials to punish Japan for its aggressive action against
China.

- The German army invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Two days later, Great Britain
and France declared war on Germany. World War II happened.
- Nations began to form Alliances to fight against Germany and its enemies. Germany,
Japan and Italy formed the Axis Powers.
- Germany continued invading European countries including Denmark, Norway, Belgium,
France, …
- On December 7, 1941, the Japanese army staged the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor
Naval Base in Hawaii. It caused a heavy loss to U.S Navy. The Next day, the U.S army
declared the war on Japan and four days later it declared the war on Germany, joining
Great Britain, France, China and the Soviet Union to form the Allied forces.
- After the attack on the United States, Japanese army had conquered a lot of countries in
South East Asia within four months.
- By the late 1930s, building the most deadly and powerful weapon ever made ,the atomic
bomb became possible because of discoveries of Scientists.

- German chemist Otto Hahn began working with Austrian physicist Lise Meitner in 1907.
After that, scientist Friedrich Strassmann joined with them. Much of their work involved
experiments with a radioactive element, uranium.
- In 1938, they discovered that when they used neutrons to bombard an atom of uranium,
the atom split into 2 different elements, barium and krypton.
- A year later, Meitner and her nephew, physicist Otto Frisch showed that the atoms in
uranium had been split. They called this process “nuclear fission”.
- The incredible power inside the atom was unlocked and the country that built the first
atomic weapon would control the fate of the world.

- Germany seemed very likely to be the first country to develop the first nuclear weapon.
The country had a large supply of uranium, the raw material for the chain reaction.
- Albert Einstein sent a letter to president Roosevelt to warn him about the dangerous of
nuclear weapon.
- President Roosevelt signed an executive order creating a new government agency, the
Office of Scientific Research and Development. Vannevar Bush became its director.
- With the United States now fighting in World War II, the government knew it needed to
have before the enemy did.
- Colonel Groves was chosen as the leader of the Manhattan project. Grooves chose a
physicist and professor at the University of California, J. Robert Oppenheimer.
- Groves and Oppenheimer decided to move the laboratory to New Mexico desert to
make it secret.
- Oppenheimer’s team included some of the world’s best chemist, physicists, and
engineers.

- Meanwhile, the Allies were winning the war in Europe. In January, 1945, the Allies
defeated the German army at the battle of Bulge in Belgium, France and Luxembourg.
- The Allies surrounded Berlin in April, 1945. Hitler suicided in bunker in the city. The war
in Europe was over.
- President Roosevelt died of a stroke on April 12. His vice president, Harry S. Truman,
became the president.
- Germany’s surrender left only Japan to fight for the Axis powers. By early 1945, the allies
had taken all the territory that the Japanese had invaded. In March, a massive bombing
raid destroyed the capital Tokyo, killed about 100,000 people.
- By the end of July 1945, the Manhattan project team was ready for the final test of the
bomb. At 5:30, the bomb was detonated. The scientists saw nothing that human have
ever seen before. A huge and devastated explosion with a huge splash of light
- The test bomb proved that a nuclear explosion caused an almost unbelievable amount
of destruction

- On the day of the test, the Potsdam Conference took place in Germany with leaders of
three main nations of the Allied: Soviet Union, United States and Great Britain.
- It stated the Allies’ terms for Japan’s surrender, the declaration promised “prompt and
utter destruction if Japan didn’t surrender.
- The Japanese leaders rejected to surrender terms and went on fighting. They didn’t
know that 2 atomic bombs were shipped to Tinian. An island near Japan. It was a base
for the B-29 bombers.
- The first bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, was ready by July 31. Plans were made to drop the
bomb on Hiroshima on the next day, but a storm delayed the mission. Meanwhile, the
second bomb, nicknamed Fat Man was being assembled to drop on Nagasaki
- The Little Boy was carried on a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay.
- At 8:50 a.m – 7:50 Hiroshima time – the Enola Gay began its first approach to the target
area. At 8:15 a.m., the Little Boy was released. It was set to explode in 43 seconds.
- Little Boy detonated about 2,000 feet above the city. It produced a gigantic fireball and
killed many people. The blast of intense heat instantly killed almost people within half a
mile. The blinding light acted like a giant camera. Anyone who looked directly at the
flash suffered a permanent eye damage. More than 62,000 buildings were destroyed
because of the massive explosion.
- Long before dawn on August 9, another B-29 bomber took off from the U.S Air Force
Base on Tinian. It carried the bomb names “Fat Man”, because it was much bigger than
“Little Boy”, which was dropped to Hiroshima. The B-29 bomber flew to its target,
Nagasaki.
- With a population of 240,000, Nagasaki is one of Japan’s oldest and biggest ports and
home to a large number of Japanese. It was also an important center of weapons
factories, shipbuilding and other industries.
- At about 11 a.m the plant dropped the “Fat Man” to the city. It detonated but it caused
less damage to the city than “Little Boy” as Hiroshima was on a very flat land. The steep
hills that surround Nagasaki absorbed some of the shock and stopped the blast from
spreading. Even so, the bomb killed about 45,000 people and destroyed a lot of houses
and buildings in Nagasaki.
- On August 9 Japan’s emperor Hirohito decided to stop the war to restore war peace and
relive the nation from the devastation of the bombs. Japan agreed to surrender and the
World War II was finally over.

- After the surrender, the death rate slowly increased. Many people had many bad
symptoms caused by the explosion of 2 nuclear bombs. Doctors in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki knew that they were facing “atomic bomb illness”
- The radiation caused many harmful effects to many people. Many babies of pregnant
women died soon after birth. Many men became sterile and couldn’t become father in
the future.
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