conditions soldiers Faced
The first word in World War II is world, and rightly so, as the war was fought across the globe in nearly every single environment possible. It is divided into two so-called “theaters”: the Pacific Theater and the European Theater. Conditions varied widely along with the changing landscape. The sides fought from North Africa to the Pacific Islands to historic Greece and Rome to freezing cold Russia, both on land and in the sea and in the air.
In Europe, the battles took place in a landscape that alternated between urban cities and rural farmland. There were two so-called fronts: the first, operated by the Soviets, was on the eastern part of the theater. Brutally cold winters were blamed for thousands of deaths of troops; Germans were especially under-supplied with cold-weather equipment. The Eastern Front itself was massive, stretching for more than a thousand miles along sparsely populated territory.
The Western Front (or Second Front) was operated mainly by the Americans and the rest of the Allies. It took place alternating between urban cities and rural farmland in France, west Germany, and Italy, as well as the desperately hot North African campaign. There, soldiers were faced with the constant threat of heat stroke and lack of water. Other troops were standing by in England training or in support functions closer to civilian life, but even there they were attacked by the German bombing campaign. No matter where soldiers were stationed, they faced the attack of both the enemy and of nature. |
The Pacific Theater was yet another location where the war was fought. The war took place among small, tropical islands where fighting occurred in the jungle and insects transported various diseases (one of the biggest causes of sickness in World War II was malaria carried by mosquitoes). The lack of established resources, such as buildings and roads, added to the difficulty of the planning involved in the war.
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