World War II

World War II (WWII or WW2), also known as the Second World War, was a global war
that lasted from 1939 to 1945, though related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast
majority of the world's nationsincluding all of the great powerseventually forming two
opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in
history, and directly involved more than 100 million people, from more than 30 different
countries. In a state of "total war", the major participants threw their entire economic,
industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, erasing the distinction between
civilian and military resources. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust,
the Three Alls Policy, the strategic bombing of enemy industrial and/or population centres,
and the first use of nuclear weapons in combat, it resulted in an estimated 50 million to 85
million fatalities. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history.
The Empire of Japan aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific and was already at war with the
Republic of China in 1937, but the world war is generally said to have begun on 1 September
1939 with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on
Germany by France and the United Kingdom. From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of
campaigns and treaties, Germany formed the Axis alliance with Italy, conquering or subduing
much of continental Europe. Following the MolotovRibbentrop Pact, Germany and the
Soviet Union partitioned between themselves and annexed territories of their European
neighbours, including Poland, Finland and the Baltic states. The United Kingdom and the
other members of the British Commonwealth were the only major Allied forces continuing
the fight against the Axis, with battles taking place in North Africa and the Horn of Africa as
well as the long-running Battle of the Atlantic. In June 1941, the European Axis powers
launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, giving a start to the largest land theatre of war in
history, which tied down the major part of the Axis' military forces for the rest of the war. In
December 1941, Japan joined the Axis, attacked the United States and European territories in
the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific.
The Axis advance was stopped in 1942 when Japan lost a critical Battle of Midway, near
Hawaii, and Germany was defeated in North Africa and then, decisively, at Stalingrad in the
Soviet Union. In 1943, with a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied
invasion of Italy which brought about that nation's surrender, and Allied victories in the
Pacific, the Axis lost the initiative and undertook strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the
Western Allies invaded France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and
invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese began suffering major
reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies defeated the
Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands.
The war in Europe ended with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet
Union culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet and Polish troops and the subsequent
German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. Following the Potsdam Declaration by the
Allies on 26 July 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 August and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the
Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, and the Soviet
Union's declaration of war on Japan and invasion of Manchuria, Japan surrendered on 15
August 1945. Thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies over the
Axis.
World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world. The United
Nations (UN) was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts.
The great powers that were the victors of the warthe United States, the Soviet Union,
China, the United Kingdom, and Francebecame the permanent members of the United
Nations Security Council The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival
superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years.
Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers started to decline, while the
decolonisation of Asia and Africa began. Most countries whose industries had been damaged
moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an
effort to stabilise postwar relations and co-operate more effectively in the Cold War.

Chronology

The start of the war is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German
invasion of Poland; Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. Other dates
for the beginning of war include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937.
[5]

Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and
war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and the two wars merged in 1941.
This article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World
War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935.
[6]
The British historian
Antony Beevor views the beginning of the Second World War as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol
fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to
September 1939.
[7]

The exact date of the war's end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted
at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945 (V-J Day), rather than the
formal surrender of Japan (2 September 1945); it is even claimed in some European histories
that it ended on V-E Day (8 May 1945).
[citation needed]
A peace treaty with Japan was signed in
1951 to formally tie up any loose ends such as compensation to be paid to Allied prisoners of
war who had been victims of atrocities.
[8]
A treaty regarding Germany's future allowed the
reunification of East and West Germany to take place in 1990 and resolved other post-World
War II issues



Background
World War I had radically altered the political map, with the defeat of the Central
Powersincluding Austria-Hungary, Germany and the Ottoman Empireand the 1917
Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia. Meanwhile, existing victorious Allies such as France,
Belgium, Italy, Greece and Romania gained territories, whereas new states were created out
of the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman and Russian Empires.
To prevent the outbreak of a future world war, the League of Nations was formally created
during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The organisation's primary goal was to prevent
armed conflict through collective security, military and naval disarmament, and settling
international disputes through peaceful negotiations and arbitration.
Despite strong pacifist sentiment after World War I, its aftermath still caused irredentist and
revanchist nationalism to become important in a number of European states. Irredentism and
revanchism were strong in Germany because of the significant territorial, colonial, and
financial losses incurred by the Treaty of Versailles. Under the treaty, Germany lost around
13 percent of its home territory and all of its overseas colonies, while German annexation of
other states was prohibited, reparations were imposed, and limits were placed on the size and
capability of the country's armed forces. Meanwhile, the Russian Civil War had led to the
creation of the Soviet Union.
The German Empire was dissolved in the German Revolution of 19181919, and a
democratic government, later known as the Weimar Republic, was created. The interwar
period saw strife between supporters of the new republic and hardline opponents on both the
right and left. Although Italy as an Entente ally made some territorial gains, Italian
nationalists were angered that the promises made by Britain and France to secure Italian
entrance into the war were not fulfilled with the peace settlement. From 1922 to 1925, the
Fascist movement led by Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy with a nationalist,
totalitarian, and class collaborationist agenda that abolished representative democracy,
repressed socialist, left-wing and liberal forces, and pursued an aggressive foreign policy
aimed at forcefully forging Italy as a world power, promising the creation of a "New Roman
Empire".


The League of Nations assembly, held in Geneva, Switzerland, 1930
In Germany, the Weimar Republic's legitimacy was challenged by right-wing elements such
the Freikorps and the Nazi party, resulting in events such as the Kapp Putsch and the Beer
Hall Putsch. With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, domestic support for Nazism and
its leader Adolf Hitler rose and, in 1933, he was appointed Chancellor of Germany. In the
aftermath of the Reichstag fire, Hitler created a totalitarian single-party state led by the Nazis.
The Kuomintang (KMT) party in China launched a unification campaign against regional
warlords and nominally unified China in the mid-1920s, but was soon embroiled in a civil war
against its former Chinese communist allies. In 1931, an increasingly militaristic Japanese
Empire, which had long sought influence in China as the first step of what its government saw
as the country's right to rule Asia, used the Mukden Incident as a pretext to launch an invasion
of Manchuria and establish the puppet state of Manchukuo.
Too weak to resist Japan, China appealed to the League of Nations for help. Japan withdrew
from the League of Nations after being condemned for its incursion into Manchuria. The two
nations then fought several battles, in Shanghai, Rehe and Hebei, until the Tanggu Truce was
signed in 1933. Thereafter, Chinese volunteer forces continued the resistance to Japanese
aggression in Manchuria, and Chahar and Suiyuan.


Adolf Hitler at a German National Socialist political rally in Weimar, October 1930
Adolf Hitler, after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government in 1923,
eventually became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933. He abolished democracy, espousing a
radical, racially motivated revision of the world order, and soon began a massive rearmament
campaign. It was at this time that multiple political scientists began to predict that a second
Great War might take place. Meanwhile, France, to secure its alliance, allowed Italy a free
hand in Ethiopia, which Italy desired as a colonial possession. The situation was aggravated in
early 1935 when the Territory of the Saar Basin was legally reunited with Germany and Hitler
repudiated the Treaty of Versailles, accelerated his rearmament programme and introduced
conscription.
[21]

Hoping to contain Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy formed the Stresa Front;
however, in June 1935, the United Kingdom made an independent naval agreement with
Germany, easing prior restrictions. The Soviet Union, concerned due to Germany's goals of
capturing vast areas of eastern Europe, wrote a treaty of mutual assistance with France.
Before taking effect though, the Franco-Soviet pact was required to go through the
bureaucracy of the League of Nations, which rendered it essentially toothless. The United
States, concerned with events in Europe and Asia, passed the Neutrality Act in August. In
October, Italy invaded Ethiopia through Italian Somaliland and Eritrea; Germany was the only
major European nation to support the invasion. Italy subsequently dropped its objections to
Germany's goal of absorbing Austria.
Hitler defied the Versailles and Locarno treaties by remilitarising the Rhineland in March
1936. He received little response from other European powers. When the Spanish Civil War
broke out in July, Hitler and Mussolini supported the fascist and authoritarian Nationalist
forces in their civil war against the Soviet-supported Spanish Republic. Both sides used the
conflict to test new weapons and methods of warfare, with the Nationalists winning the war in
early 1939. In October 1936, Germany and Italy formed the RomeBerlin Axis. A month
later, Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, which Italy would join in the
following year. In China, after the Xi'an Incident, the Kuomintang and communist forces
agreed on a ceasefire to present a united front to oppose Japan.