World War II

World War II summary: Summary of World War II: The Second World War was arguably the
most significant period of the 20th century. It brought about major leaps in technology and laid
the groundwork that permitted post-war social changes including the end of European
colonialism, the civil rights movement in the United States, and the modern women’s rights
movement, as well as the programs for exploring outer space. The primary combatants were the
Axis nations (Nazi Germany, Facist Italy, Imperial Japan and their smaller allies) and the Allied
nations, led by Britain (and its Commonwealth nations), the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
and the United States of America. The Allies were the victors. Two superpowers, the USA and
USSR, emerged from World War II to begin a Cold War with each other that would define much
of the rest of the century.

Casualties in World War II

The most destructive war in all of history, its exact cost in human lives is unknown, but
casualties in World War II may have totaled 50 million service personnel and civilians killed.
Nations suffering the highest losses, military and civilian, in descending order, are:
USSR: 42,000,000
Germany: 9,000,000
China: 4,000,000
Japan: 3,000,000

When did World War II begin?

Asking when World War II began is a good way to start a long and passionate debate. Some say
it was simply a continuation of the First World War that had theoretically ended in 1918. Others
point to 1931, when Japan seized Manchuria from China. Italy’s invasion and defeat of
Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935, Adolf Hitler’s re-militarization of Germany’s Rhineland in 1936,
the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), and Germany’s occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938 are
sometimes cited. The two dates most often mentioned as "the beginning of World War II" are
July 7, 1937, when the "Marco Polo Bridge Incident" led to a prolonged war between Japan and
China, and September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, which led Britain and France to
declare war on Hitler’s Nazi state in retaliation. From the invasion of Poland until the war ended
with Japan’s surrender in August 1945, multiple nations were at war with each other, some
fighting for the ultimately victorious Allies, some for the Axis.

Origins of World War II

No one historic event can be said to have been the origin of World War II. Japan’s unexpected
victory over czarist Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) left open the door for Japanese
expansion in Asia and the Pacific. The United States U.S. Navy first developed plans in
preparation for a naval war with Japan in 1890. War Plan Orange, as it was called, would be
updated continually as technology advanced and greatly aided the U.S. during World War II.
The years between the first and second world wars were a time of instability during the
worldwide Great Depression that began around 1930. It was also a time when some nations,
including Germany, Italy and Japan developed intense nationalist feelings that led to a desire to
expand: Germany in Northern and Eastern Europe, Italy in Africa and Greece, and Japan in Asia
and the South Pacific. Germany had the added motivation of overturning (and ultimately
avenging) the harsh terms forced on it at the conclusion of the First World War.

Competing ideologies further fanned the flames of international tension. The Bolshevik
Revolution in czarist Russia during the First World War, followed by the Russian Civil War, had
established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), a sprawling communist state.
Western republics and capitalists feared the spread of Bolshevism. In some nations, such as Italy,
Germany and Romania, ultra-conservative groups rose to power, in part as a reaction against
communism.

Germany, Italy and Japan signed agreements of mutual support but, unlike the Allied nations
they would face, they never developed a comprehensive or coordinated plan of action.

Initial Moves of the Second World War

On July 7, 1937, a skirmish near the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing, China, led to open warfare
between Japan and China. The outclassed Chinese military traded space for time, steadily
withdrawing deeper into the large country to extend Japanese supply lines and hoping to
eventually gain assistance from other nations. During the course of the war over 1 million
Japanese troops would be engaged in an unsuccessful attempt to subdue China.

The fighting in Europe began on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Previously,
Germany, led by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, had annexed Czechoslovakia and Austria
without provoking a military response from France or Great Britain. Poland was a step too far;
both of those nations declared war on Germany in support of Poland, but they were slow to take
effective actions. The French military and government expected Poland would hold out till
spring, allowing France time to mobilize. But Germany demonstrated the effectiveness of
combined arms warfare, in which infantry, armor, artillery and aircraft work in coordination.
This type of war required rapid communication; in preparation, the Germans had developed
radios small enough that every vehicle could be equipped with one.

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This new style of warfare became known as blitzkrieg (lightning war—the Germans actually
used the term blitzkrieg to refer to a war of short duration, but it came to refer to combined-arms
tactics of rapid maneuver). Germany quickly drove deep into Poland. Two weeks after the war
began, the USSR invaded from the east; Joseph Stalin, leader of the USSR, had earlier signed a
mutual non-aggression pact with Hitler, and secretly they had agreed to divide Poland between
them. Before the end of the month, Poland had capitulated. In the coming months, Denmark,
Norway, and the Baltic States also fell under Nazi control.

In May 1940, Germany shocked the world by rapidly invading and defeating the Netherlands,
Belgium, Luxembourg, France and a British Expeditionary Force that was aiding the French.
Operations began May 10 with attacks on Holland and ended June 25, when France signed an
armistice that divided the country into occupied and unoccupied zones. The Germans controlled
the occupied zones, in the north and northwest, which comprised three-fifths of the country; a
new French government established at Vichy administered the southern two-fifths. Italy’s leader,
Benito Mussolini, hoped to get in on the spoils and declared war on France June 10; Italian
forces attacked southern France on June 21.

On July 10, an air war over England began, which British prime minister Winston Churchill
termed the Battle of Britain. The German Luftwaffe was to knock out the Royal Air Force (RAF)
in preparation for Operation Sealion, the proposed naval invasion of Britain, or force Churchill to
seek a negotiated peace. Though it was a near-run thing, the defense mounted by the badly
outmanned RAF led Hitler to abandon plans for the invasion; the Battle of Britain ended
September 30.

Britain was also opposing German and Italian forces in the deserts of North Africa and on the
waters of the Atlantic. The Battle of the Atlantic was primarily fought between British surface
craft and the German U-boats (submarines) that attempted to sever the island nation’s supply
lines. The United States, although technically neutral, provided Britain with needed supplies
after approving a lend-lease agreement in March 1941. After the U.S. joined the war in
December 1941, its sea and air forces took an active part in the naval war of the Atlantic.
German U-boats patrolled off the U.S. east coast and in the Caribbean, sinking ships of the
American Merchant Marine.

Hitler turned his attention from Britain, a country he hadn’t really wanted to fight, to his most
important goal: invading and defeating his erstwhile ally, the Soviet Union. First, Germany had
to assist Italy, which had bogged down in its attempt to invade and conquer Greece. (Earlier,
Italy had seized Abyssinia, now called Ethiopia, in Africa.) Yugoslavia also fell to the German
war machine. Hungary and Romania were already German allies—Romania had planned to fight
against Germany but the loss of its major ally, France, left it with little choice but to become a
satellite of Nazi Germany. A fascist government overthrew Romania’s monarch, and the Balkan
country would serve as the third-largest Axis military in Europe until it switched sides in the
autumn of 1944, becoming the fourth-largest Allied military.

Operation Barbarossa
Finally, on June 22, 1941, Germany and its allies launched Operation Barbarossa, a massive
invasion of the Soviet Union from the Baltic shore in the north to the Black Sea in the South. The
Soviets were caught by surprise. (The USSR knew Germany would attack eventually and had
wargamed various scenarios but did not expect the invasion so soon.) Their military leadership
had been decimated by Stalin’s purges of the 1930s, in which he removed—often killed—many
of the most effective commanders and replaced them with political stooges. In the Finnish-Soviet
War (Winter War) between November 30, 1939 and March 12, 1940, tiny Finland repeatedly
stymied an invasion by the giant Soviet Union for months until finally forced to yield to
overwhelming numbers; the peace settlement gave the Soviets 25,000 square miles of Finnish
territory.

Initially, the Axis invasion of the USSR was a dramatic success. The invading wave swept
steadily eastward, reaching the gates of Moscow by the beginning of 1942, but Soviet
determination and much greater numbers of men and equipment, combined with the vast
distances and severe weather of the USSR halted the onslaught and forced a German retreat.

At Stalingrad two combatants fought a vicious, building-by-building, street-by-street battle from

July 17, 1942, to February 2, 1943. In November 1942, the Soviets launched a two-prong
counterattack that encircled and ultimately captured the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad. The
Red forces advanced westward rapidly until halted in the Third Battle of Kharkov. In the spring
of 1943, a bulge developed in the Soviet lines near Kursk. That summer, the Germans struck
with their own two-prong assault, intending to isolated and capture or destroy Soviet forces
within that bulge. Both sides committed large numbers of men and material; Kursk has long been
believed to have been the largest tank battle in history but recent research is casting doubt on the
long-accepted numbers. At any rate, the German offensive failed. From that point on, Soviet
forces advanced westward, entering the German capital of Berlin in April 1945.

The War in North Africa

Britain and Commonwealth forces (Australia, Canada, India, South Africa, New Zealand) had
been opposing the Axis in North Africa since Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini declared war on
Britain and France on June 10, 1940. Initially, the Italians had 250,000 troops opposing about
100,000 from the UK, but the British Army was better equipped, better trained, better organized,
and had better leadership. Once the Battle of Britain was over and the threat of an immediate
German invasion of the UK removed, Britain reinforced its North Africa contingent, to protect
its colonies there and particularly to protect the Suez Canal and shipping in the Mediterranean.
Beginning on December 9, 1940, British forces launched a drive that advanced 500 miles in two
months, capturing some 130,000 prisoners and destroying 10 Italian divisions; British casualties
totaled about 2,000.

In mid-February 1941, two German divisions and two additional Italian divisions were sent to
Libya; a third German division arrived later. German field marshal Erwin Rommel was assigned
to command the Afrika Korps. He would win fame as the "Desert Fox" for his daring armored
sweeps. Both sides faced significant supply problems in their operations in the North African
deserts, and although Rommel achieved some great victories he could never deliver a deathblow.
He never seemed to understand that for the German High Command, North Africa was always a
backwater; the primary focus was on preparing to invade the Soviet Union.

Britain went through a series of commanders in North Africa before placing Lt. Gen. Bernard
Montgomery in charge of Eighth Army there. After halting Rommel’s attacks near El Alamein in
September 1942, Montgomery launched a counterattack with a 3:1 advantage in October. When
the Afrika Korps ran short on fuel and ammunition, it retired to Tunisia.

The United States Enters World War II

The United States of America had technically remained on the sidelines until near the end of
1941, although it had provided aid to Britain and the Soviet Union. After the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, (see The Pacific War, below) Congress declared war on Japan.
Nazi Germany, honoring its pact with Japan, then declared war on the U.S.; Italy, Romania and
other countries within the European Axis alliance did the same. America was now at war with all
the Axis belligerents and would bring the full weight of its industrial power, vast natural
resources and large population onto the side of the British Commonwealth and its allied nations
such as the Free French, Free Poles, etc.

An American officer, Major General Dwight D. Eisenhower (soon promoted to lieutenant

general) was named supreme commander, Allied Expeditionary Forces, European Theater of
Operations. Although the battle-tested British were skeptical about his lack of command
experience, Eisenhower proved to be skilled in the diplomacy required to coordinate the
commanders and forces of the many Allied nations.

American troops first saw land combat against the soldiers of Nazi Germany, Italy (and some
Vichy French) after the U.S. and the United Kingdom invaded Algeria and Morocco in North
Africa during Operation Torch on November 8th, 1942. They pushed east toward Tunis and
came within a dozen miles of their objective before German counterattacks threw them back. In
February 1943 at Kasserine Pass Rommel inflicted on the U.S. forces one of the worst defeats in
America’s military history but failed to achieve his strategic goals. Allied armies squeezed the
Axis from the west and from the east. The Axis commanders—Rommel had been recalled to
Europe—surrendered in May. Some troops were successfully evacuated to Sicily, but North
Africa had cost the Axis 650,000 casualties; Britain’s losses were little more than a third of that,
and America, arriving much later, suffered less than 20,000.

Two American commanders came to public attention during the North African campaign and
would become two of the war’s most famous generals: Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., and his
deputy, Maj. Gen. Omar Bradley

The Invasion of Italy

Allied preparations began for the invasion of Europe through Italy. The first target was the island
of Sicily. Combat there included the first large-scale use of gliders and parachute troops by the
Allies. Though not particularly well handled, these airborne operations provided important
lessons that would be applied later on.

British forces under Montgomery and U.S. troops under Patton raced to capture the city of
Messina; Patton won the race, but his men arrived just hours after the last German troops had
been evacuated to the Italian mainland. Nearly 140,000 Italian troops surrendered on Sicily. The
Fascist Grand Council forced Mussolini from power on July 25, 1943, and a new Italian
government signed a secret armistice with the Allies on September 3.

On September 8, Allied troops came ashore in Italy, and the armistice was made public. The
Germans took charge of resisting the invaders. Ultimately, the Germans had to make a fighting
withdrawal, but took control of northern Italy and re-installed Mussolini as head of a puppet
government in that area. He and his mistress would be killed by Italian partisans on April 28,
1945. Their bodies, and those of other fascists killed at the same time, were hung upside down in
Milan, where Italian fascists had executed 15 partisans a year earlier.

Utilizing Italy’s mountainous terrain, cut by only a few, narrow roads, the Germans and those
Italians who continued to fight alongside them established a series of defensive positions such as
the Gustav Line to slow the Allied advance and inflict heavy casualties. The German command
in Italy did not surrender until May 2, 1945, just days before Allied victory in Europe.

The Italian campaign tied down 22 German divisions and gave the Allies lessons in amphibious
warfare and in cooperation between the forces of the different nations. What they learned would
prove useful during the major effort to come in France.

D-Day
The USSR had battled the Axis since the summer of 1941 and had faced the bulk of German
military strength. Joseph Stalin continually pressured the Western Allies to open a second front;
North Africa and Italy had not done enough to draw off German forces from the Soviet Union.

On June 6, 1944, the Western Allies invaded France’s Normandy coast. Months of carefully
planned deceptions had convinced Hitler the invasion would come at Calais, the closest point on
the French coast to England. The actual targets of Operation Overlord were further west. Even
so, Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, had established formidable defenses that included massive
concrete bunkers, four million mines, and a half-million obstacles.

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By the day of the invasion, called D-Day, the Allies had established complete air superiority. The
invasion began in darkness with three divisions of airborne troops, delivered by parachute and by
glider. Many men were lost in glider crashes; descending paratroopers were shot down by
German fire. Airborne troops were scattered across many miles, often far from their objectives,
but they coalesced into ad hoc groups and successfully captured and held bridges and other
strategic points.

In the early morning hours of June 6, five Allied divisions splashed ashore along 50 miles of
coastline that had been divided into five operational beaches codenamed Sword, Juno, Gold,
Omaha and Utah. British divisions were to capture two, Americans were to capture two, and a
Canadian division was to secure one. It was the largest amphibious operation in history. By the
end of the day, over 75,000 British and Canadian troops and more than 57,000 Americans held
the beaches; within a month, those numbers swelled to over a million.

Moving inland proved to be a bloody slugfest. In Normandy, farmers’ fields were separated by
hedgerows comprised of banks of earth covered with trees, the roots of which had intertwined
over centuries to form impenetrable barriers. Roads were narrow. German defenders covered
every road and every hedgerow opening. Not until Operation Cobra, July 25–31, a sweep around
the Germans’ western flank, were the Allies able to break out of the hedgerow country and begin
a fast-moving drive on Paris and then to the German border.

The Allied Race Across France

On August 15 a second invasion, Operation Dragoon, succeeded in southern France. Everywhere
within that country, German infantry and armored units were in retreat. The Allies’ greatest
obstacle was logistics: keeping their mechanized and motorized divisions supplied with fuel,
food, ammunition and other necessities. The Red Ball Express, made up of nearly 6,000 trucks,
rushed supplies forward. During the 81 days of its existence, the Red Ball transported over
800,000 gallons of fuel a day and a total of over 412,000 tons of other war supplies. The Allies
enjoyed a enormous superiority in the number and quality of trucks during the war, an advantage
that was as important as the fighting men and machines they kept supplied and mobile.

German resistance stiffened as the onrushing Allies approached the Rhine River and Germany
itself. In September 1944, Operation Market-Garden attempted to secure bridges across the
Rhine in Holland, using three airborne divisions dropped near the town of Arnhem and an
overland drive by 20,000 vehicles. It was a costly failure.

At almost the same time, the American 9th Infantry Division attacked into the Hurtgen Forest,
beginning a costly and poorly managed campaign that dragged on until the following February.

Battle of the Bulge

Just south of the Hurtgen Forest, German troops were secretly massing a quarter-million men,
nearly 1,000 tanks and mechanized assault guns, and 1,900 artillery pieces for a major
counteroffensive that was meant to drive a wedge between the American and British sectors and
re-capture the port of Antwerp in the Netherlands. Concealed by the Ardennes Forest, through
which they had successfully attacked France in May 1940, they launched a surprise attack in the
early hours of December 16 against a lightly defended portion of the American line. Within three
days they had destroyed the American 28th and 106th divisions—but those units had delayed the
advance long enough to upset the tight German timetable and allow Eisenhower time to order
other units forward, including the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions. British Field Marshal
Bernard Montgomery deployed his XXX Corps on his own initiative to block the German drive
to the north.

The onslaught forced a bulge 50 miles wide and 70 miles deep into the American lines, giving it
the name Battle of the Bulge. Staunch defenses at St. Vith and Bastogne caused the attack to
grind to a halt, and by late January counterattacks had pushed the Germans back to their start
line, minus 100,000 men and 700 fighting vehicles. Allied losses, primarily American, were
90,000 men and 300 fighting vehicles, but those losses could be replaced much more easily than
the Germans could replace theirs.

The Alsace Campaign

To the south of the Bulge, another German counteroffensive was playing out. Beginning in
November, American and French forces began a campaign to recapture the Alsace region. After
initial successes that included liberating the capital of Strasbourg, they were hit by strong
German counterattacks that began around midnight on New Year’s Eve. The Allies were driven
back until January 25, when their opponents could no longer continue the fight. Six of the eight
divisions in the German Nineteenth Army were destroyed. Combined with the losses in the
Battle of the Bulge, Hitler had sacrificed a significant amount of the strength that would be
needed for contesting both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union as they invaded Germany.

On May 2, the German capital of Berlin surrendered to Soviet forces. On April 30, Hitler had
committed suicide, along with his mistress Eva Braun, whom he had married just hours before,
and other members of his inner circle. On May 8, an unconditional surrender was officially
ratified. The war in Europe was over, but the war in the Pacific was still unfinished. Many
soldiers, airmen and sailors who had survived war in Europe and the Atlantic began preparing to
fight again, on the other side of the world.

The Pacific War

Isolationist sentiment was widespread in America during the 1930s, a reaction to the high
casualties the U.S. took in the First World War while gaining little of significance for America.
That sentiment died in the flames of American battleships burning at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Imperial Japan, with much of its army and air force still tied down fighting in China, had coerced
the Vichy French government to grant permission for Japanese air bases in French Indochina
(today’s Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia). In response, the U.S., Britain and the Netherlands
imposed a total embargo on Japan. Among the most critical results of the embargo was the loss
of oil. Unless Japan could import the oil it needed, its navy would be drydocked within a year
and its factories would shut down in about 18 months. The Imperial military leaders saw as their
only hope capturing Malaya, the Netherlands East Indies, and other counties they termed "the
Southern Resource Area." This course of action meant war with the United States.

Pearl Harbor
On December 7, 1941, Japanese carrier-based bombers struck the American naval base at Pearl
Harbor. Japan’s military planners hoped to cripple the U.S. Pacific Fleet in order to buy time to
capture and fortify the region they sought to control, then negotiate an armistice from a position
of strength. War had not been declared between the two nations before the attack; the Japanese
embassy in Washington, D.C., took too long decoding the 5,000-word message from their
homeland; however, the plan was to deliver it just 30 minutes before the bombs were to start
falling anyway.

America’s president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had long wanted the U.S. involved in the war on the
side of Great Britain. There have always been questions about how much Roosevelt knew of the
Japanese plans and whether or not he allowed the attack to occur in order to get into the
European war "through the back door."

The plan to cripple the U.S. fleet failed—although a number of battleships and other vessels and
facilities were severely damaged or destroyed—primarily because none of the American aircraft
carriers based at Pearl were in the harbor that Sunday morning. They were on assignments at sea,
including an assignment to find the Japanese fleet that was known to have sailed days earlier.

In addition to bombing Pearl Harbor, Japan swept through British Malaya in a "bicycle
blitzkrieg" and captured "impregnable Singapore," seizing more territory in a shorter amount of
time than any nation since Napoleon’s France. It was now at war with China, the United States,
the United Kingdom and Commonwealth nations (notably Australia, New Zealand, India and
Burma), and the Netherlands. (In 1938, Japanese forces had been decisively beaten by those of
the Soviet Union in the Battle of Khalkin Gol, and those two nations signed a non-aggression
pact that would last until the final weeks of World War II.)

In the Philippines, a U.S. protectorate, American and Filipino forces put up a valiant, months-
long defense against a Japanese invasion, but the numbers against them were too great and they
could not be resupplied. After Bataan, the last holdout in the Philippines, fell in April 1942, the
Imperial Army forced 64,000 Filipino and 12,000 U.S. soldiers to march for over a week to reach
a prison camp. Many died along the way, often shot, bayoneted or beheaded when they fell from
exhaustion. It became known as the Bataan Death March.

Although the United States switched from a peacetime to a wartime economy very rapidly, the
transition still required time, as did the training for hundreds of thousands of new troops. Unable
to launch a sustained attack against Japan, war planners settled for a dangerous mission to boost
homefront morale: the Doolittle Raid on Japan. On April 18, 1942, sixteen B-25 bombers
launched from the carrier Hornet and, led by Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, bombed the Japanese
capital of Tokyo and the city of Nagoya. Though the bombing caused little damage, it succeeded
as a morale booster in America, and it embarrassed the Japanese High Command. Determined to
eliminate further raids, the Imperial Navy sent a fleet to locate and destroy American aircraft
carriers a month and a half later.

Midway and Guadalcanal

Planes from the American fleet found the Japanese ships first and destroyed four of their carriers
in the Battle of Midway. Only one American carrier was lost. Midway is often called the turning
point in the War in the Pacific because it destroyed the myth of Japanese invulnerability.

Another, and perhaps more significant turning point, came with the battle for Guadalcanal,
August 1942–February 1943. To halt construction of a Japanese airbase on the island of
Guadalcanal, which would have allowed air strikes against Allied supply convoys to Australia,
the U.S. Marines and Army invaded the island. Fighting was intense on land, sea and air. In the
end, the Japanese had to evacuate their remaining 12,000 troops.

Fighting was always brutal between the two sides, wherever they faced each other. Surrender
was so shameful in Japan’s Bushido culture that, as one American officer expressed it after the
war, "Every nation said its soldiers would fight to the last man. Only the Japanese did it." The
names of islands like New Guinea, Tarawa, Peleliu, the Marianas, the Philippines, Iwo Jima,
Okinawa and others would be written in the blood of Japanese, American, Australian and New
Zealand servicemen.

Allied strategy was to capture a series of islands, constantly moving closer to Japan, and use
those islands as supply bases from which to launch the next assault. This required a combined
land-sea approach. Unlike the European Theater, there was no single supreme commander, as
Eisenhower was in Europe.

Douglas MacArthur, a former Army Chief of Staff, was named supreme commander of Allied
forces in the Southwest Pacific after his evacuation from the Philippines in 1942. Fleet Admiral
Chester Nimitz became supreme commander of Allied forces in the Pacific Ocean Area that
same year. Lieutenant General Joseph Stilwell commanded all U.S. forces in the China-Burma-
India Theater; Britain’s Archibald Wavell was commander in chief in India, after being replaced
as commander in North Africa. American general Curtis LeMay oversaw the strategic aerial
bombing campaign against Japan.

Battle of Leyte Gulf

At sea, the U.S. continued gaining naval and air superiority over the Japanese. The Battle of the
Philippine Sea in June 1944 became known as "the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot" because U.S.
Navy pilots shot down nearly 300 Japanese planes in a 12-to-1 loss ratio, and three Japanese
carriers were sunk. Some American ships were damaged. During October 23–26, the Second
Battle of the Philippine Sea, better known as the Battle of Leyte Gulf, was fought between
Japanese naval and air forces and those of Australia and the US. is considered the largest naval
battle of the Second World War and possibly the largest in history. The US lost six front-line
warships, while the Japanese lost 26.
By that time the Japanese had resorted to a new method of attack. "Kamikaze" pilots used their
planes as guided bombs, committing suicide by flying directly into American and British ships.
They inflicted considerable damage and caused much terror but were not sufficient to turn the
tide of the war.

Iwo Jima and Okinawa

As the Allies neared the Japanese home islands, they fought fierce battles to capture small
islands nearby, to use as air and supply bases. At Iwo Jima, which is just eight square miles in
size, operations began February 19, 1945, and lasted until March 26, though pockets of
resistance remained in cave complexes through May. Only 300 of the 21,000 Japanese defenders
were taken alive. American losses were approximately 6,500 dead and 20,000 thousand
wounded.

March–June 1945 saw the last major battle for a Pacific island. Okinawa is just 60 miles long
and just 18 miles across at its widest point. An assault force of 180,000 was sent to wrest it from
130,000 defenders. Over 107,000 Japanese military and civilian personnel died, including
women who threw their babies into the sea from cliffs, then jumped themselves because
Japanese propaganda had convinced them the Americans would torture them. The Americans
lost some 13,000 dead and 49,000 wounded among their land forces. Additionally, kamikaze
attacks sunk 36 American and British ships and damaged 368 more. One of the damaged, the
USS Indianapolis, would be sent to California for repairs; it returned from there carrying the
atom bomb to Tinian Island but was sunk shortly after delivering its lethal package.

Atom Bombs
After capturing the island of Okinawa in an 82-day battle, Allied planners began preparing for
the invasion of the Japanese home islands. Based on their experience with the tenacious,
fatalistic defense Japanese troops had displayed through the Pacific, they were aware these
operations would cost large numbers of American and British Commonwealth lives. Some
estimates in popular media ran as high as a million; military planners expected a few hundred
thousand. They also feared that a homefront weary of war would demand a negotiated settlement
if the war dragged on into 1946.

Allied salvation came in August 1945. An American B-29 dropped a single atomic bomb on the
city of Hiroshima, obliterating the town. When no Japanese surrender was forthcoming, a second
bomb fell on Nagasaki. While the world was shocked by the high number of primarily civilian
casualties and massive destruction wrought by a single explosive device, in fact far more
Japanese had been killed in the firebombings that U.S. planes had been carrying out for months.

End of World War II

On August 15, 1945, Japan formally surrendered. World War II was over. A new age of nuclear
weapons had begun, and a cold war between the two superpowers that emerged from the war—
the United States and the Soviet Union—would result in many "surrogate wars" in the decades to
come, wars fought in and between nations backed by one side or the other.

The Holocaust and Other Atrocities of World War II

Nazi Germany’s fascination with producing a "racial pure" culture led to a campaign to eliminate
"Untermensch" ("sub-humans"). The largest of these groups were European Jews but also
included Gypsies, some Slavs, the mental ill, homosexuals, communists, socialists, and any other
group termed undesirable. Millions—six million Jews alone—were executed; some were
tortured, shot or hanged; others gassed or starved to death in concentration camps (death camps),
were worked to death as slave labor, or killed by other means. This systemic murder is known as
The Holocaust, a Greek word meaning "sacrifice by fire." Any nation that fell under German
dominance, whether by conquest or political agreement, was expected to join in the purging of
the Untermensch.

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Imperial Japan also believed its people were racially superior, and therefore any act conducted
against other Asians or Westerners was justified. At Nanking tens of thousands of Chinese were
buried alive or slaughtered by other means. Chinese, Korean, Dutch and other women were
forced into sexual slavery as "comfort women," each servicing dozens of Japanese military
personnel daily.

The Imperial Japanese Army also established Unit 731, a secret biological warfare unit that
infected prisoners of war with biological agents in order to study their effectiveness. Some
prisoners were cut open while they were still alive, without anesthesia, to examine the effects of
the disease within their bodies. Other horrific experiments were also carried out. Unlike
concentration camp guards and executioners from Europe, many of whom were tried and
imprisoned or executed for their crimes, the staff of Unit 731 was granted immunity by U.S.
authorities in exchange for information on their findings, for America’s own biological warfare
program. The Soviet Union prosecuted a dozen members of the unit and sentenced them to labor
camps.

Allied governments and militaries did not set up systemic avenues of torture, rape or murder, but
thousands of rapes were carried out against the women of Germany, Japan, Okinawa and even
the women of Allied nations by individual soldiers. This was particularly widespread among
Soviet troops in retaliation for what German soldiers had done to women of Russia, the Ukraine
and other areas of the USSR. The American Joint Chiefs received reports of large numbers of
rape among French, Italian and other women by U.S. forces. In Japan American admiral
Raymond Spruance set up supervised brothels to reduce the rates of venereal disease and rape,
but this was short-lived once a Congressman heard about it. Some Axis soldiers were shot after
being captured, sometimes in anger or retaliation, sometimes during rapid advances or during
combat.

Social Changes Resulting from World War II

The Second World War effectively ended the era of European colonialism. European nations had
been seriously weakened by the war, and their people were war-weary. Leftist revolts in their
colonies in Africa and Asia generally ended with the colonial powers withdrawing, sometimes
peacefully, sometimes after periods of guerrilla warfare. Many rebels had received combat
experience during the war; often, the best-organized and best-armed rebel groups were
communist. Their uprisings for independence, land reform or other goals helped fuel fears of a
global communist takeover—especially since eastern Europe had fallen under the control of the
USSR at war’s end and communists won the Chinese Civil War in 1949—and western nations
often supplied aid or even military support to suppress them.

On the American homefront, African Americans who had served in the war returned to find the
old discrimination against them still in place. A civil rights movement developed, with Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., as its best-known leader, that ended officially sanctioned segregation,
discrimination in employment and other social ills. Mahatma Ghandi in India paved the way for
civil rights movements in the U.S. and other countries through nonviolent means. In South
Africa in 1948, however, conservatives narrowly defeated the moderate coalition that had guided
the nation through World War II, and the new government instituted even stricter racial policies
than had existed before, under the name apartheid (seperateness); apartheid continued until 1994.

In many nations, with so many men away at war, women went into the workplace in large
numbers during the war, and demonstrated they could handle non-traditional jobs such as
welding. Immediately following the war, they were replaced by the men returning home. A baby
boom began, and women of the "boomer generation" would lead their own civil rights movement
against gender discrimination in employment and other areas.

Nazi Germany had developed a rocket program, launching explosive missiles against civilian
targets in Britain. At war’s end, the US and USSR raced against each other to round up as many
of the German scientists as they could to develop their own programs. This resulted not only in
intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, it led to a "Space Race"
between the two ideologically opposed nations that took humanity beyond the confines of Earth
for the first time.

Other technology, developed or improved upon for war, also became part of daily life, most
notably nuclear power, which supplies energy to homes and businesses in many nations.
Improved radar and sonar, microwave ovens, the expansion of chemical and plastics industries,
and many other changes were part of the post-war world. Even the toy Slinky was developed by
Richard James, an engineer working on a meter to test horsepower on battleships.
World War II History
The instability created in Europe by the First World War (1914-18) set the stage for another
international conflict–World War II–which broke out two decades later and would prove even
more devastating. Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf
Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi Party) rearmed the nation and signed strategic treaties
with Italy and Japan to further his ambitions of world domination. Hitler’s invasion of Poland in
September 1939 drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, and World War II
had begun. Over the next six years, the conflict would take more lives and destroy more land and
property around the globe than any previous war. Among the estimated 45-60 million people
killed were 6 million Jews murdered in Nazi concentration camps as part of Hitler’s diabolical
“Final Solution,” now known as the Holocaust.

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Leading up to World War II

The devastation of the Great War (as World War I was known at the time) had greatly
destabilized Europe, and in many respects World War II grew out of issues left unresolved by
that earlier conflict. In particular, political and economic instability in Germany, and lingering
resentment over the harsh terms imposed by the Versailles Treaty, fueled the rise to power of
Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi) Party.
Did You Know?

As early as 1923, in his memoir and propaganda tract "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle), Adolf Hitler
had predicted a general European war that would result in "the extermination of the Jewish race
in Germany."

After becoming Reich Chancellor in 1933, Hitler swiftly consolidated power, anointing himself
Führer (supreme leader) in 1934. Obsessed with the idea of the superiority of the “pure” German
race, which he called “Aryan,” Hitler believed that war was the only way to gain the necessary
“Lebensraum,” or living space, for that race to expand. In the mid-1930s, he began the
rearmament of Germany, secretly and in violation of the Versailles Treaty. After signing
alliances with Italy and Japan against the Soviet Union, Hitler sent troops to occupy Austria in
1938 and the following year annexed Czechoslovakia. Hitler’s open aggression went unchecked,
as the United States and Soviet Union were concentrated on internal politics at the time, and
neither France nor Britain (the two other nations most devastated by the Great War) were eager
for confrontation.

Outbreak of World War II (1939)

In late August 1939, Hitler and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin signed the German-Soviet
Nonaggression Pact, which incited a frenzy of worry in London and Paris. Hitler had long
planned an invasion of Poland, a nation to which Great Britain and France had guaranteed
military support if it was attacked by Germany. The pact with Stalin meant that Hitler would not
face a war on two fronts once he invaded Poland, and would have Soviet assistance in
conquering and dividing the nation itself. On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland from the
west; two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany, beginning World War II.

On September 17, Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east. Under attack from both sides,
Poland fell quickly, and by early 1940 Germany and the Soviet Union had divided control over
the nation, according to a secret protocol appended to the Nonaggression Pact. Stalin’s forces
then moved to occupy the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and defeated a resistant
Finland in the Russo-Finish War. During the six months following the invasion of Poland, the
lack of action on the part of Germany and the Allies in the west led to talk in the news media of a
“phony war.” At sea, however, the British and German navies faced off in heated battle, and
lethal German U-boat submarines struck at merchant shipping bound for Britain, sinking more
than 100 vessels in the first four months of World War II.

World War II in the West (1940-41)

On April 9, 1940, Germany simultaneously invaded Norway and occupied Denmark, and the war
began in earnest. On May 10, German forces swept through Belgium and the Netherlands in
what became known as “blitzkrieg,” or lightning war. Three days later, Hitler’s troops crossed
the Meuse River and struck French forces at Sedan, located at the northern end of the Maginot
Line, an elaborate chain of fortifications constructed after World War I and considered an
impenetrable defensive barrier. In fact, the Germans broke through the line with their tanks and
planes and continued to the rear, rendering it useless. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was
evacuated by sea from Dunkirk in late May, while in the south French forces mounted a doomed
resistance. With France on the verge of collapse, Benito Mussolini of Italy put his Pact of Steel
with Hitler into action, and Italy declared war against France and Britain on June 10.

On June 14, German forces entered Paris; a new government formed by Marshal Philippe Petain
(France’s hero of World War I) requested an armistice two nights later. France was subsequently
divided into two zones, one under German military occupation and the other under Petain’s
government, installed at Vichy. Hitler now turned his attention to Britain, which had the
defensive advantage of being separated from the Continent by the English Channel. To pave the
way for an amphibious invasion (dubbed Operation Sea Lion), German planes bombed Britain
extensively throughout the summer of 1940, including night raids on London and other industrial
centers that caused heavy civilian casualties and damage. The Royal Air Force (RAF) eventually
defeated the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) in the Battle of Britain, and Hitler postponed his
plans to invade. With Britain’s defensive resources pushed to the limit, Prime Minister Winston
Churchill began receiving crucial aid from the U.S. under the Lend-Lease Act, passed by
Congress in early 1941.

Operation Barbarossa (1941-42)

By early 1941, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria had joined the Axis, and German troops overran
Yugoslavia and Greece that April. Hitler’s conquest of the Balkans was a precursor for his real
objective: an invasion of the Soviet Union, whose vast territory would give the German master
race the “Lebensraum” it needed. The other half of Hitler’s strategy was the extermination of the
Jews from throughout German-occupied Europe. Plans for the “Final Solution” were introduced
around the time of the Soviet offensive, and over the next three years more than 4 million Jews
would perish in the death camps established in occupied Poland.

On June 22, 1941, Hitler ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union, codenamed Operation
Barbarossa. Though Soviet tanks and aircraft greatly outnumbered the Germans’, their air
technology was largely obsolete, and the impact of the surprise invasion helped Germans get
within 200 miles of Moscow by mid-July. Arguments between Hitler and his commanders
delayed the next German advance until October, when it was stalled by a Soviet counteroffensive
and the onset of harsh winter weather.

World War II in the Pacific (1941-43)

With Britain facing Germany in Europe, the United States was the only nation capable of
combating Japanese aggression, which by late 1941 included an expansion of its ongoing war
with China and the seizure of European colonial holdings in the Far East. On December 7, 1941,
360 Japanese aircraft attacked the major U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, taking the
Americans completely by surprise and claiming the lives of more than 2,300 troops. The attack
on Pearl Harbor served to unify American public opinion in favor of entering World War II, and
on December 8 Congress declared war on Japan with only one dissenting vote. Germany and the
other Axis Powers promptly declared war on the United States.
After a long string of Japanese victories, the U.S. Pacific Fleet won the Battle of Midway in June
1942, which proved to be a turning point in the war. On Guadalcanal, one of the southern
Solomon Islands, the Allies also had success against Japanese forces in a series of battles from
August 1942 to February 1943, helping turn the tide further in the Pacific. In mid-1943, Allied
naval forces began an aggressive counterattack against Japan, involving a series of amphibious
assaults on key Japanese-held islands in the Pacific. This “island-hopping” strategy proved
successful, and Allied forces moved closer to their ultimate goal of invading the Japanese
homeland.

Toward Allied Victory in World War II (1943-45)

In North Africa, British and American forces had defeated the Italians and Germans by 1943. An
Allied invasion of Sicily and Italy followed, and Mussolini’s government fell in July 1943,
though Allied fighting against the Germans in Italy would continue until 1945.

On World War II’s Eastern Front, a Soviet counteroffensive launched in November 1942 ended
the bloody Battle of Stalingrad, which had seen some of the fiercest combat of the war. The
approach of winter, along with dwindling food and medical supplies, spelled the end for German
troops there, and the last of them surrendered on January 31, 1943.

On June 6, 1944–celebrated as “D-Day”–the Allied began a massive invasion of Europe, landing

156,000 British, Canadian and American soldiers on the beaches of Normandy, France. In
response, Hitler poured all the remaining strength of his army into Western Europe, ensuring
Germany’s defeat in the east. Soviet troops soon advanced into Poland, Czechoslovakia,
Hungary and Romania, while Hitler gathered his forces to drive the Americans and British back
from Germany in the Battle of the Bulge (December 1944-January 1945), the last major German
offensive of the war. An intensive aerial bombardment in February 1945 preceded the Allied
land invasion of Germany, and by the time Germany formally surrendered on May 8, Soviet
forces had occupied much of the country. Hitler was already dead, having committed suicide on
April 30 in his Berlin bunker.

World War II Ends (1945)

At the Potsdam Conference of July-August 1945, U.S. President Harry S. Truman (who had
taken office after Roosevelt’s death in April), Churchill and Stalin discussed the ongoing war
with Japan as well as the peace settlement with Germany. Post-war Germany would be divided
into four occupation zones, to be controlled by the Soviet Union, Britain, the United States and
France. On the divisive matter of Eastern Europe’s future, Churchill and Truman acquiesced to
Stalin, as they needed Soviet cooperation in the war against Japan. Heavy casualties sustained in
the campaigns at Iwo Jima (February 1945) and Okinawa (April-June 1945), and fears of the
even costlier land invasion of Japan led Truman to authorize the use of a new and devastating
weapon–the atomic bomb–on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. On
August 10, the Japanese government issued a statement declaring they would accept the terms of
the Potsdam Declaration, and on September 2, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur accepted
Japan’s formal surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
World War II proved to be the most devastating international conflict in history, taking the lives
of some 35 to 60 million people, including 6 million Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis.
Millions more were injured, and still more lost their homes and property. The legacy of the war
would include the spread of communism from the Soviet Union into eastern Europe as well as its
eventual triumph in China, and the global shift in power from Europe to two rival superpowers–
the United States and the Soviet Union–that would soon face off against each other in the Cold
War.

What Caused World War II?

Most historians believe that the causes of World War II can be traced to World War I (1914-
1918). Americans had fought in that earlier war to "make the world safe for democracy." Those
were the words and goals of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. But the peace treaties that ended
World War I did not make the world safe for democracy. Instead, they caused bitterness and
anger that led to World War II.

Germany and its allies had been the losers in World War I. Germany was stripped of one sixth of
its territory and forced to pay huge reparations (payments by a defeated country for the
destruction it caused in a war). After World War I, Germany suffered from high unemployment
and runaway inflation. German money became almost worthless. Many Germans seethed in
anger at the peace treaty.

A League of Nations was set up after World War I to keep the peace. But the U.S. did not join,
and other countries were too busy with their own problems to worry about Germany and other
trouble spots.

Then, in the early 1930s, the world was hit by an economic depression. Workers lost their jobs,
trade fell off, and times were hard. People looked for leaders who could bring about change.

World War II
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The Second World War" and "WWII" redirect here. For other uses, see The Second World War
(disambiguation) and WWII (disambiguation).
World War II
Clockwise from top left: Chinese forces in the
Battle of Wanjialing, Australian 25-pounder
guns during the First Battle of El Alamein,
German Stuka dive bombers on the Eastern
Front in December 1943, a U.S. naval force in
the Lingayen Gulf, Wilhelm Keitel signing the
German Instrument of Surrender, Soviet troops
in the Battle of Stalingrad
1 September 1939 –
Date 2 September 1945 (6 years and 1
day)[a]
Europe, Pacific, Atlantic, South-
East Asia, China, Middle East,
Location Mediterranean, North Africa and
Horn of Africa, briefly North and
South America
Result Allied victory

 Collapse of Nazi Germany

 Fall of Japanese and Italian
Empires
 Creation of the United
Nations
 Emergence of the United
 States and the Soviet Union
as superpowers
 Beginning of the Cold War
(more...).

Participants
Allies Axis
Commanders and leaders
Main Allied leaders
Main Axis leaders
Joseph Stalin
Adolf Hitler
Franklin Roosevelt
Hirohito[b]
Winston Churchill
Benito Mussolini
Chiang Kai-shek
Casualties and losses
Military dead: Military dead:
Over 16,000,000 Over 8,000,000
Civilian dead: Civilian dead:
Over 45,000,000 Over 4,000,000
Total dead: Total dead:
Over 61,000,000 (1937– Over 12,000,000 (1937–
45) 45)
...further details ...further details
[show]

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Campaigns of World War II

World War II

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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 nations—including all of the great powers—eventually 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 over 30 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 (in which approximately 11 million people were
killed)[1][2] and the strategic bombing of industrial and population centres (in which
approximately one million were killed, and which included the atomic bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki),[3] it resulted in an estimated 50 million to 85 million fatalities. These made World
War II the deadliest conflict in human history.[4]

The Empire of Japan aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific and was already at war with the
Republic of China in 1937,[5] but the world war is generally said to have begun on 1 September
1939[6] 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 conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis
alliance with Italy and Japan. Based on the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany
and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland,
Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. For a year starting in late June 1940, the United
Kingdom and the British Commonwealth were the only Allied forces continuing the fight against
the European Axis powers, with campaigns in North Africa and the Horn of Africa, the aerial
Battle of Britain and the Blitz bombing campaign, as well as the long-running Battle of the
Atlantic. In June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union,
opening the largest land theatre of war in history, which trapped the major part of the Axis'
military forces into a war of attrition. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and
European territories in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific.
The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the 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 Italian 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 German-occupied
France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its
allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South
Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled 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 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, 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.

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 victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom,
and France—became the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.[7] 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
waned, 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 end pre-war enmities and to create a common identity. [8]

World War Two - Causes

Last Updated: 08/14/2014 - 11:18

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World War Two began in September 1939 when Britain and France declared war on Germany
following Germany's invasion of Poland.

Although the outbreak of war was triggered by Germany's invasion of Poland, the causes of the
war are more complex.

Treaty of Versailles

In 1919, Lloyd George of England, Orlando of Italy, Clemenceau of France and Woodrow
Wilson from the US met to discuss how Germany was to be made to pay for the damage world
war one had caused.

Woodrow Wilson wanted a treaty based on his 14-point plan which he believed would bring
peace to Europe.

Georges Clemenceau wanted revenge. He wanted to be sure that Germany could never start
another war again.

Lloyd George personally agreed with Wilson but knew that the British public agreed with
Clemenceau. He tried to find a compromise between Wilson and Clemenceau.
Germany had been expecting a treaty based on Wilson's 14 points and were not happy with the
terms of the Treaty of Versailles. However, they had no choice but to sign the document.

The main terms of the Treaty of Versailles were:

 War Guilt Clause - Germany should accept the blame for starting World War One
 Reparations - Germany had to pay 6,600 million pounds for the damage caused by the war
 Disarmament - Germany was only allowed to have a small army and six naval ships. No tanks, no
airforce and no submarines were allowed. The Rhineland area was to be de-militarised.
 Territorial Clauses - Land was taken away from Germany and given to other countries. Anschluss
(union with Austria) was forbidden.

The German people were very unhappy about the treaty and thought that it was too harsh.
Germany could not afford to pay the money and during the 1920s the people in Germany were
very poor. There were not many jobs and the price of food and basic goods was high. People
were dissatisfied with the government and voted to power a man who promised to rip up the
Treaty of Versailles. His name was Adolf Hitler.

Hitler's Actions

Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933. Almost immediately he began
secretly building up Germany's army and weapons. In 1934 he increased the size of the army,
began building warships and created a German airforce. Compulsory military service was also
introduced.

Although Britain and France were aware of Hitler's actions, they were also concerned about the
rise of Communism and believed that a stronger Germany might help to prevent the spread of
Communism to the West.
In 1936 Hitler ordered German troops to enter the Rhineland. At this point the German army was
not very strong and could have been easily defeated. Yet neither France nor Britain was prepared
to start another war.

Hitler also made two important alliances during 1936. The first was called the Rome-Berlin Axis
Pact and allied Hitler's Germany with Mussolini's Italy. The second was called the Anti-
Comitern Pact and allied Germany with Japan.

Hitler's next step was to begin taking back the land that had been taken away from Germany. In
March 1938, German troops marched into Austria. The Austrian leader was forced to hold a vote
asking the people whether they wanted to be part of Germany.

The results of the vote were fixed and showed that 99% of Austrian people wanted Anschluss
(union with Germany). The Austrian leader asked Britain, France and Italy for aid. Hitler
promised that Anschluss was the end of his expansionist aims and not wanting to risk war, the
other countries did nothing.

Hitler did not keep his word and six months later demanded that the Sudetenland region of
Czechoslovakia be handed over to Germany.

Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Britain, met with Hitler three times during September
1938 to try to reach an agreement that would prevent war. The Munich Agreement stated that
Hitler could have the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia provided that he promised not to
invade the rest of Czechoslovakia.

Hitler was not a man of his word and in March 1939 invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia. Despite
calls for help from the Czechoslovak government, neither Britain nor France was prepared to
take military action against Hitler. However, some action was now necessary and believing that
Poland would be Hitler's next target, both Britain and France promised that they would take
military action against Hitler if he invaded Poland. Chamberlain believed that, faced with the
prospect of war against Britain and France, Hitler would stop his aggression. Chamberlain was
wrong. German troops invaded Poland on 1st September 1939.
Failure of Appeasement

Appeasement means giving in to someone provided their demands are seen as reasonable.
During the 1930s, many politicians in both Britain and France came to see that the terms of the
Treaty of Versailles had placed restrictions on Germany that were unfair. Hitler's actions were
seen as understandable and justifiable.

When Germany began re-arming in 1934, many politicians felt that Germany had a right to re-
arm in order to protect herself. It was also argued that a stronger Germany would prevent the
spread of Communism to the west.

In 1936, Hitler argued that because France had signed a new treaty with Russia, Germany was
under threat from both countries and it was essential to German security that troops were
stationed in the Rhineland. France was not strong enough to fight Germany without British help
and Britain was not prepared to go to war at this point. Furthermore, many believed that since the
Rhineland was a part of Germany it was reasonable that German troops should be stationed
there.

In May 1937, Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister of Britain. He believed that the
Treaty of Versailles had treated Germany badly and that there were a number of issues
associated with the Treaty that needed to be put right. He felt that giving in to Hitler's demands
would prevent another war.

This policy, adopted by Chamberlain's government became known as the policy of

Appeasement.

The most notable example of appeasement was the Munich Agreement of September 1938.
The Munich Agreement, signed by the leaders of Germany, Britain, France and Italy, agreed that
the Sudetenland would be returned to Germany and that no further territorial claims would be
made by Germany. The Czech government was not invited to the conference and protested about
the loss of the Sudetenland. They felt that they had been betrayed by both Britain and France
with whom alliances had been made. However, the Munich Agreement was generally viewed as
a triumph and an excellent example of securing peace through negotiation rather than war.

This famous picture shows Chamberlain returning from Munich with the paper signed by Hitler
declaring 'Peace in our time.'

When Hitler invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, he broke the terms of the
Munich Agreement. Although it was realised that the policy of appeasement had failed,
Chamberlain was still not prepared to take the country to war over "..a quarrel in a far-away
country between people of whom we know nothing." Instead, he made a guarantee to come to
Poland's aid if Hitler invaded Poland.

Failure of the League of Nations

The League of Nations was an international organisation set up in 1919 to help keep world
peace. It was intended that all countries would be members of the League and that if there were
disputes between countries they could be settled by negotiation rather than by force. If this failed
then countries would stop trading with the aggressive country and if that failed then countries
would use their armies to fight.

In theory the League of Nations was a good idea and did have some early successes. But
ultimately it was a failure.

The whole world was hit by a depression in the late 1920s. A depression is when a country's
economy falls. Trade is reduced, businesses lose income, prices fall and unemployment rises.

In 1931, Japan was hit badly by the depression. People lost faith in the government and turned to
the army to find a solution. The army invaded Manchuria in China, an area rich in minerals and
resources. China appealed to the League for help. The Japanese government were told to order
the army to leave Manchuria immediately. However, the army took no notice of the government
and continued its conquest of Manchuria.

The League then called for countries to stop trading with Japan but because of the depression
many countries did not want to risk losing trade and did not agree to the request. The League
then made a further call for Japan to withdraw from Manchuria but Japan's response was to leave
the League of Nations.

In October 1935, Italy invaded Abyssinia. The Abyssinians did not have the strength to
withstand an attack by Italy and appealed to the League of Nations for help.

The League condemned the attack and called on member states to impose trade restrictions with
Italy. However, the trade restrictions were not carried out because they would have little effect.
Italy would be able to trade with non-member states, particularly America. Furthermore, Britain
and France did not want to risk Italy making an attack on them.

In order to stop Italy's aggression, the leaders of Britain and France held a meeting and decided
that Italy could have two areas of land in Abyssinia provided that there were no further attacks
on the African country. Although Mussolini accepted the plan, there was a public outcry in
Britain and the plan was dropped.

The main reasons for the failure of the League of Nations can be summarised into the following
points:

Not all countries joined the League

Although the idea for the League of Nations had come from Woodrow Wilson, there was a
change of government in the United States before the signing of the treaty and the new
Republican government refused to join. As a punishment for having started World War One,
Germany was not allowed to join and Russia was also excluded due to a growing fear of
Communism. Other countries decided not to join and some joined but later left.

The League had no power.

The main weapon of the League was to ask member countries to stop trading with an aggressive
country. However, this did not work because countries could still trade with non-member
countries. When the world was hit by depression in the late 1920s countries were reluctant to
lose trading partners to other non-member countries.

The League had no army

Soldiers were to be supplied by member countries. However, countries were reluctant to get
involved and risk provoking an aggressive country into taking direct action against them and
failed to provide troops.

Unable to act quickly

The Council of the League of Nations only met four times a year and decisions had to be agreed
by all nations. When countries called for the League to intervene, the League had to set up an
emergency meeting, hold discussions and gain the agreement of all members. This process meant
that the League could not act quickly to stop an act of aggression.

Causes of World War II

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German battleship Schleswig-Holstein attacks Polish forts at the start of the war, September 1,
1939
Destroyer USS Shaw exploding during the Attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

Among the main long-term causes of World War II were Italian fascism in the 1920s, Japanese
militarism and invasions of China in the 1930s, and especially the political takeover in 1933 of
Germany by Hitler and his Nazi Party and its aggressive foreign policy. The immediate cause
was Britain and France declaring war on Germany after it invaded Poland in September 1939.

Problems arose in Weimar Germany that experienced strong currents of revanchist after the
Treaty of Versailles that concluded its defeat in World War I in 1918. Dissatisfactions of treaty
provisions included the demilitarizarion of the Rhineland, the prohibition of unification with
Austria and the loss of German-speaking territories such as Danzig, Eupen-Malmedy and Upper
Silesia despite Wilson's Fourteen Points, the limitations on the Reichswehr making it a token
military force, the war-guilt clause, and last but not least the heavy tribute that Germany had to
pay in the form of war reparations, and that become an unbearable burden after the Great
Depression. The most serious internal cause in Germany was the instability of the political
system, as large sectors of politically active Germans rejected the legitimacy of the Weimar
Republic.

After his rise and take-over of power in 1933 to a large part based on these grievances, Adolf
Hitler and the Nazis heavily promoted them and also ideas of vastly ambitious additional
demands based on Nazi ideology such as uniting all Germans (and further all Germanic peoples)
in Europe in a single nation; the acquisition of "living space" (Lebensraum) for primarily
agrarian settlers (Blut und Boden), creating a "pull towards the East" (Drang nach Osten) where
such territories were to be found and colonized, in a model that the Nazis explicitly derived from
the American Manifest Destiny in the Far West and its clearing of native inhabitants; the
elimination of Bolshevism; and the hegemony of an "Aryan"/"Nordic" so-called Master Race
over the "sub-humans" (Untermenschen) of inferior races, chief among them Slavs and Jews.

Tensions created by those ideologies and the dissatisfactions of those powers with the interwar
international order steadily increased. Italy laid claim on Ethiopia and conquered it in 1935,
Japan created a puppet state in Manchuria in 1931 and expanded beyond in China from 1937,
and Germany systematically flouted the Versailles treaty, reintroducing conscription in 1935
with the Stresa Front's failure after having secretly started re-armament, remilitarizing the
Rhineland in 1936, annexing Austria in March 1938, and the Sudetenland in October 1938.

All those aggressive moves met only feeble and ineffectual policies of appeasement from the
League of Nations and the Entente Cordiale, in retrospect symbolized by the "peace for our time"
speech following the Munich Conference, that had allowed the annexation of the Sudeten from
interwar Czechoslovakia. When the German Führer broke the promise he had made at that
conference to respect that country's future territorial integrity in March 1939 by sending troops
into Prague, its capital, breaking off Slovakia as a German client state, and absorbing the rest of
it as the "Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia", Britain and France tried to switch to a policy of
deterrence.

As Nazi attentions turned towards resolving the "Polish Corridor Question" during the summer
of 1939, Britain and France committed themselves to an alliance with Poland, threatening
Germany with a two-front war. On their side, the Germans assured themselves of the support of
the USSR by signing a non-aggression pact with them in August, secretly dividing Eastern
Europe into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence.

The stage was then set for the Danzig crisis to become the immediate trigger of the war in
Europe started on 1 September 1939. Following the Fall of France in June 1940, the Vichy
regime signed an armistice, which tempted the Empire of Japan to join the Axis powers and
invade French Indochina to improve their military situation in their war with China. This
provoked the then neutral United States to respond with an embargo. The Japanese leadership,
whose goal was Japanese domination of the Asia-Pacific, thought they had no option but to pre-
emptively strike at the US Pacific fleet, which they did by attacking Pearl Harbor on 7 December
1941.

Causes of World War Two

The causes of World War Two can be divided into long term causes and short
term causes. There can be little doubt that one of the long term causes of the
war was the anger felt in Weimar Germany that was caused by the Treaty of
Versailles. Another long term cause was the obvious inability of the League of
Nations to deal with major international issues. In the 1930’s these would
have been inManchuria and Abyssinia. In both conflicts the League showed
that it was unable to control those powers that worked outside of accepted
international law. In the case of Manchuria it was Japan and in Abyssinia it
was Mussolini’s Italy.

With such apparent weakness, Hitler must have known that at the very least
he could push the boundaries and see what he could get away with. His first
major transgression was his defiance of the Versailles Treaty when he
introduced re-armament into Nazi Germany. The expansion of all three arms
of the military was forbidden by treaty. Hitler, however, ignored these
restrictions. The world’s powers did nothing. The same occurred in 1936 when
Nazi Germany re-occupied the Rhineland. Forbidden by Versailles, Hitler felt
confident enough to ignore it. Europe’s failure to react was also demonstrated
when Austria and theSudentenland were occupied. Only when it became
obvious that Hitler was determined to expand east and that what was left of
Czechoslovakia and region Poland were to be his next targets, did the major
powers of Europe react. Hitler’s reference to the Munich Agreement as a
“scrap of paper” made clear his intentions. However, in 1938, very many in
the UK had supported Neville Chamberlain’s attempts at avoiding war
(appeasement) and public opinion was on his side. This only changed when it
became clear thatappeasement had failed and the public rallied to the side of
Winston Churchill – the man who had insisted that Chamberlain had taken the
wrong course of action.

HS-102 Readings

Effects of World War II

WHAT WERE THE EFFECTS OF WORLD WAR II UPON THE MAJOR WORLD
POWERS; UPON GERMANY, JAPAN, ENGLAND, FRANCE, THE SOVIET UNION,
AND THE UNITED STATES?
--UPON THE NON-EUROPEAN WORLD?
--UPON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY?
--UPON INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS?

Germany was totally defeated, and the Nazi regime brought down. Its leaders were tried for
crimes against humanity at Nuremberg, the former site of Nazi propaganda triumphs. Hitler
escaped trial and execution by committing suicide in his Berlin bunker at the end of the war.
German cities were in ruins from a massive bombing campaign.

Germany was divided into 4 zones of occupation by the victorious powers, pending a more
permanent political settlement.

Japan also was in ruins from extensive bombing. Prominent military leaders were tried and
convicted of war crimes, but the emperor was allowed to retain his position.
Japan was temporarily placed under U.S. military rule.

England was devastated by the war, having experienced extensive bombing during the 1940
blitz by the Germans. The economy depended for recovery upon aid from the United States.
England rapidly phased out most of its remaining imperial holdings in the years immediately
following the war.

France had not experienced the enormous human losses sustained in the First World War, but
would have to recover from the effects of Nazi occupation. Retribution was taken upon
collaborators. Like England, France would be compelled to dismantle its colonial empire in the
years following the war. This was a particularly traumatic and drawn out process for the French,
in Algeria and in Vietnam where they fought prolonged and bitter wars in an attempt to maintain
their colonial control.

England and France no longer held a status of power comparable either to the United States or
the Soviet Union.

The Russian people had suffered immeasurably during the war, and western Russia was
devastated by the land warfare which was primarily on Russian territory. But, in the process of
defeating the Germans, the Russians had built a large and powerful army, which occupied most
of Eastern Europe at the end of the war. The great resources and population of Russia assured
that the Soviet Union would be, along with the United
States, one of two super-powers.

The United States economy was greatly stimulated by the war, even more so than in World
War I. The depression was brought decisively to an end, and new industrial complexes were built
all over the United States. Spared the physical destruction of war, the U.S. economy dominated
the world economy. After 4 years of military buildup, the U.S. had also become the leading
military power. The position of the United States as world leader was now more obvious than
ever.

WHAT WERE THE EFFECTS OF THE WAR UPON THE NON-EUROPEAN WORLD?

The struggle for national independence of non-European peoples was greatly enhanced and
stimulated by the war. The weakness of England and France, the two major European imperial
powers, provided opportunities. The stage was set for the collapse of European empires in the 3
decades following the war.
New technology, developed during the war to fight disease, would, when applied to the non-
European world, result in sharply lower mortality rates and soaring population growth.

WHAT EFFECTS DID THE WAR HAVE UPON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY?

Enormous technological progress was made during the war. The English developed radar
which would be the forerunner of television. Progress in electronics and computers, made during
the war, provided a foundation for further development which fundamentally transformed the
postwar world.
The development of the atomic bomb by European and American scientists during the war,
not only transformed the nature of potential future wars, it marked the beginning of the nuclear
power industry.

WHAT POLITICAL CHANGES OCCURRED IN REGARD TO THE PROSPECT OF

FUTURE WARS?

World War II had appeared to pose an unprecedented threat to human civilization and gave
impetus to the renewal of Wilson's vision of an international organization to keep the peace.
Organizing efforts were begun even while the war was on. In June, 1945, 51 nations were
represented at the founding conference in San Francisco. In October, 1945,
the United Nations was officially established. Unlike the League of Nations, the UN had the full
support and leadership of the United States. The Soviet Union and all the most significant
nations of the world were members.
In 1944, representatives of the major economic powers met to create an International
Monetary Fund and to agree upon a regime of international tariff regulation known as GATT.
There was a determination to avoid the mistakes of the interwar years which had exacerbated the
Great Depression.
The world community was thought to be entering a new era of international cooperation.
Aftermath of World War II
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The aftermath of World War II was the beginning of a new era. It was defined by the decline
of the old great powers and the rise of two superpowers: the Soviet Union (USSR) and the
United States of America (US), creating a bipolar world. Allied during World War II, the US and
the USSR became competitors on the world stage and engaged in what became known as the
Cold War, so called because it never boiled over into open war between the two powers but was
focused on espionage, political subversion and proxy wars. Western Europe and Japan were
rebuilt through the American Marshall Plan whereas Eastern Europe fell in the Soviet sphere of
influence and was forced to reject the plan. Europe was divided into a US-led Western Bloc and
a Soviet-led Eastern Bloc. Internationally, alliances with the two blocs gradually shifted, with
some nations trying to stay out of the Cold War through the Non-Aligned Movement. The Cold
War also saw a nuclear arms race between the two superpowers; part of the reason that the Cold
War never became a "hot" war was that the Soviet Union and the United States had nuclear
deterrents against each other, leading to a mutually assured destruction standoff.
As a consequence of the war, the Allies created the United Nations, a new global organization
for international cooperation and diplomacy. Members of the United Nations agreed to outlaw
wars of aggression in an attempt to avoid a third world war. The devastated great powers of
Western Europe formed the European Coal and Steel Community, which later evolved into the
European Common Market and ultimately into the current European Union. This effort primarily
began as an attempt to avoid another war between Germany and France by economic cooperation
and integration, and a common market for important natural resources.

The end of the war also increased the rate of decolonization from the great powers with
independence being granted India (from the United Kingdom), Indonesia (from the Netherlands),
the Philippines (from the US) and a number of Arab nations, primarily from specific rights which
had been granted to great powers from League of Nations Mandates in the post World War I-era
but often having existed de facto well before this time. Also related to this was Israel gaining
independence from its previous status as part of Mandatory Palestine in the years immediately
following the war. Independence for the nations of Sub-Saharan Africa came more slowly.

The aftermath of World War II also saw the rise of the People's Republic of China, as the
Chinese Communists emerged victorious from the Chinese Civil War in 1949.

Impact of the War on European Society

The Second World War began in Europe, so we'll begin by looking at its effects on European
societies. After the war broke out in response to Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939, the
governments of European countries launched major campaigns aimed at influencing public
opinion. To do this, they made widespread use of propaganda. Propaganda is any genre of
media used to influence a person's attitude about a particular topic or theme. Music, film, art, and
speeches can all be used as propaganda. One of the most popular forms of propaganda during
World War II was the poster. The governments of nearly all major countries created propaganda
posters. Some were intended to boost morale, others to demonize the enemy. In Nazi Germany,
anti-Semitic posters portraying Jews in a negative light were produced under the leadership of
the Reich Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. And yes, that was his actual title!
Sometimes the word 'propaganda' has a dirty connotation. Remember, not all propaganda was
necessarily deceitful or 'bad.' Propaganda posters were often aimed at getting women to join the
workforce, or saving resources like scrap metal and oil for the war effort.

During the Battle of Britain, the people of London played a major role in maintaining morale
through their determination to withstand Germany's strategic bombing. During 'the Blitz,' as it
was often called, civilians were forced to take shelter underground. London's metro system,
nicknamed the tube, was a popular source of underground shelter for British civilians. The
civilian population also responded with enthusiastic mobilization. Auxiliary organizations like
the Home Guard and the Air Raid Precautions sprang up to deal with the challenges of German
bombing.

Most European countries (and even the United States) were forced to resort to various systems of
rationing to deal with food shortages. Also, with men fighting on the front, increasingly women
were being called upon to enter the workforce. These changes were generally true across the
board, among all countries during the war. In the Soviet Union, women were even called upon to
serve in combat roles right beside of men.

Impact of War on American Society

The United States was tremendously fortunate to be insulated by the vast expanses of the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Nevertheless, the war brought about drastic changes within
American society. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, America's
industrial might was turned on almost overnight. Factories that had once turned out automobiles,
were now turning out tanks and planes at an unbelievable rate. Detroit, Michigan was an
especially important industrial center. With men overseas, female factory workers became
common. One of the most enduring symbols of the American home front is Rosie the Riveter.
Rosie the Riveter was a fictional character based upon real-life female factory workers. By the
mid-1940s, female war workers were often nicknamed 'Rosie'. One of the most well-known
American propaganda posters features a 'Rosie,' with the text 'We Can Do It!' above her.

In response to rationing, many American families grew victory gardens, which were just
personal gardens christened with the word 'victory,' implying a patriotic duty. Victory gardens
were also common during the First World War, and in both America and Great Britain. Scrap
metal drives and car-pooling also became opportunities for Americans to show their support for
the war effort. Even 'pin-up' girls took on an air of patriotism!