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This global conflict split a majority of the world's nations into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis.
Spanning much of the globe, World War II resulted in the deaths of over 60 million people, making it the deadliest conflict
in human history.
World War II was the most widespread war in history, and countries involved mobilized more than 100 million military personnel.
Total war erased the distinction between civil and military resources and saw the complete activation of a nation's economic,
industrial, and scientific capabilities for the purposes of the war effort; nearly two-thirds of those killed in the war were
civilians. For example, nearly 11 million of the civilian casualties were victims of the Holocaust, which was largely conducted
in Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union.
Since invading mainland China and French Indochina in 1940, Japan had been subjected to increasing economic sanctions by the
United States, Great Britain and Netherlands, and was attempting to reduce these sanctions through diplomatic negotiations.
In December 1941, however, the war expanded again when Japan, already into its fifth year of war with China, launched near
simultaneous attacks against the United States and British assets in Southeast Asia; four days later, Germany declared war
on the United States. This brought the United States and Japan into the greater conflict and turned previously separate Asian
and European wars into a single global one.
In 1942, though Axis forces continued to make gains, the tide began to turn. Japan suffered its first major defeat against
American forces in the Battle of Midway, where four of Japan's aircraft carriers were destroyed. German forces in Africa were
being pushed back by Anglo-American forces, and Germany's renewed summer offensive in the Soviet Union had ground to a halt.
World War II (abbreviated WWII), or the Second World War, was a worldwide military conflict; the amalgamation of two separate
conflicts, one beginning in Asia, 1937, as the Second Sino-Japanese War and the other beginning in Europe, 1939, with the
invasion of Poland. It is regarded as the historical successor to World War I.
In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland and war in Europe followed. The French and British did not declare war at first,
hoping they could persuade Hitler through appeasement, but Hitler did not respond. The United Kingdom and France declared
war. During the winter of 1939-1940 there was little indication of hostilities since neither side was willing to engage the
other directly. This period was called the Phoney War.
In 1940, Germany captured Denmark and Norway in the spring, and then in the early summer France and the Low Countries.
The United Kingdom was then targeted; the Germans attempted to cut the island off from vitally needed supplies and obtain
air superiority in order to make a seaborne invasion possible. This never came to pass, but the Germans continued to attack
the British mainland throughout the war, primarily from the air. Unable to engage German forces on the continent, the United
Kingdom concentrated on combating German and Italian forces in the Mediterranean Basin. It had limited success however; it
failed to prevent the Axis conquest of the Balkans and fought indecisively in the Western Desert Campaign. It had greater
success in the Mediterranean Sea, dealing severe damage to the Italian Navy, and dealt Germany's first major defeat by winning
the Battle of Britain.
In June 1941, the war expanded dramatically when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, bringing the Soviet Union into alliance
with the United Kingdom. The German attack started strong, overrunning great tracts of Soviet territory, but began to stall
by the winter.
Germany and France had been struggling for dominance in Continental Europe for 80 years and had fought two previous wars,
the Franco-Prussian War and World War I. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Communist revolutionary movements began
spreading across Europe, briefly taking power in both Budapest and Bavaria; in response, fascist and nationalist groups were
born.
In 1922, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his fascist party took control of the Kingdom of Italy and set the model
for German dictator Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party, which, aided by the civil unrest caused by the Great Depression, took power
in Germany and eliminated its democratic government, the Weimar Republic. These two leaders began to re-militarize their countries
and become increasingly hostile. Mussolini first conquered the African nation of Abyssinia and then seized Albania, with both
Italy and Germany actively supporting Francisco Franco's fascist Falange party in the Spanish Civil War against the Second
Spanish Republic (which was supported by the Soviet Union). Hitler then broke the Treaty of Versailles by increasing the size
of the Germany's military, and re-militarized the Rhineland. He started his own expansion by annexing Austria and sought the
same against the German-speaking regions (Sudetenland) of Czechoslovakia.
Following the end of the war, a rapid period of decolonization also took place within the holdings of the various European
colonial powers. These primarily occurred due to shifts in ideology, the economic exhaustion from the war and increased demand
by indigenous people for self-determination. For the most part, these transitions happened relatively peacefully, though notable
exceptions occurred in countries such as Indochina, Madagascar, Indonesia and Algeria.[144] In many regions, divisions, usually
for ethnic or religious reasons, occurred following European withdrawal; this was seen prominently in the Mandate of Palestine,
leading to the creation of Israel and Palestine, and in India, resulting in the creation of the Dominion of India and the
Dominion of Pakistan.
Estimates for the total casualties of the war vary, but most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including
about 20 million soldiers and 40 million civilians.Many civilians died because of disease, starvation, massacres, genocide.
The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the war, about half of all World War II casualties. Of the total
deaths in World War II, approximately 85% were on the Allied side (mostly Soviet and Chinese) and 15% on the Axis side. One
estimate is that 12 million civilians died in Holocaust camps, 1.5 million by bombs, 7 million in Europe from other causes,
and 7.5 million in China from other causes.Figures on the amount of total casualties vary to a wide extent because the majority
of deaths were not documented.
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In September, 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria under false pretexts and captured it from the Chinese.
In 1933, Adolf Hitler of the Nazi Party became leader of Germany. Under the Nazis, Germany began to rearm and to pursue
a new nationalist foreign policy. By 1937, Hitler also began demanding the cession of territories which had historically been
part of Germany, like the Rhineland and Gdansk.
In July 1937, Japan launched a large scaled invasion of mainland China, beginning with the bombing of Shanghai and Guangzhou
and followed by the Nanking massacre in December.
In Europe, Germany, and to a lesser extent Italy, asserted increasingly hostile and aggressive foreign policies and demands,
which the United Kingdom and France initially attempted to diffuse primarily through diplomacy and appeasement.
In 1944, the outcome of the war was becoming clearly unfavorable for the Axis. Germany became boxed in as the Soviet offensive
became a juggernaut in the east, pushing the Germans out of Russia and pressing into Poland and Romania; in the west, the
Western Allies invaded mainland Europe, liberating France and the Low Countries and reaching Germany's western borders. While
Japan launched a successful major offensive in China, in the Pacific, their navy suffered continued heavy losses as American
forces captured airfields within bombing range of Tokyo.
In 1945 the war ended. In Europe, a final German counter-attack in the west failed, while Soviet forces captured Berlin
in May, forcing Germany to surrender. In Asia, American forces captured the Japanese islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa while
British forces in Southeast Asia managed to expel Japanese forces there. Initially unwilling to surrender, Japan finally capitulated
after the Soviet Union invaded Manchukuo and the United States dropped atomic bombs on the mainland of Japan.
In an effort to maintain international peace,the Allies formed the United Nations, which officially came into existence on
24 October, 1945.[140]
Regardless of this though, the alliance between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union had begun to deteriorate even
before the war was over, and the two powers each quickly established their own spheres of influence. In Europe, the continent
was essentially divided between Western and Soviet spheres by the so-called Iron Curtain which ran through and partitioned
Allied occupied Germany and occupied Austria. In Asia, the United States occupied Japan and administrated Japan's former islands
in the Western Pacific while the Soviets annexed Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands; the former Japanese governed Korea was divided
and occupied between the two powers. Mounting tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union soon evolved into the
formation of the American-led NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact military alliances and the start of the Cold War between
them
Economic recovery following the war was varied in differing parts of the world, though in general it was quite positive. In
Europe, West Germany recovered quickly and doubled production from its pre-war levels by the 1950s.Italy came out of the war
in poor economic condition, but by 1950s, the Italian economy was marked by stability and high growth. The United Kindgom
was in a state of ecomonic ruin after the war,and continued to experience relative economic decline for decades to follow.France
rebounded quite quickly, and enjoyed rapid economic growth and modernization.The Soviet Union also experienced a rapid increase
in production in the immediate post-war era. In Asia, Japan experienced incredibly rapid economic growth, and led to Japan
becoming one of the most powerful economies in the world by the 1980s. China, following the conclusion of its civil war, was
essentially a bankrupt nation. By 1953, economic restoration seemed fairly successful as production had resumed pre-war levels.This
growth rate mostly persisted, though it was briefly interrupted by the disastrous Great Leap Forward economic experiment.
At the end of the war, the United States produced roughly half of the worlds industrial output; by the 1970s though, this
dominance had lessened significantly.
The British and French governments followed a policy of appeasement in order to avoid military confrontation after the high
cost of the First World War. This policy culminated in the Munich Agreement in 1938, which would give the Sudetenland to Germany
in exchange for Germany making no further territorial claims in Europe. In March 1939, Germany annexed the remainder of Czechoslovakia.
Mussolini, following suit, annexed Albania in April.
The failure of the Munich Agreement pushed the United Kingdom and France to prepare for war with Germany. France and Poland
pledged on May 19, 1939, to provide each other with military assistance in the event either was attacked. The following August,
the British guaranteed the same.
On August 23, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which provided for sales of oil and
food from the Soviets to Germany, thus reducing the danger of a British blockade such as the one that had nearly starved Germany
in World War I. Also included was a secret agreement that would divide Central Europe into German and Soviet areas of interest,
including a provision to partition Poland. Each country agreed to allow the other a free hand in its area of influence, including
military occupation.
In early May, Japan initiated operations to capture Port Moresby via amphibious assault and thus sever the line of communications
between the United States and Australia. The Allies, however, intercepted and turned back Japanese naval forces, preventing
the invasion.
Japan's next plan, motivated by the earlier bombing on Tokyo, was to seize the Midway Atoll as this would seal a gap in their
perimeter defences, provide a forward base for further operations, and lure American carriers into battle to be eliminated;
as a diversion, Japan would also send forces to occupy the Aleutian Islands. In early June, Japan put their operations into
action but the Americans, having broken Japanese naval codes in late May, were fully aware of the Japanese plans and force
dispositions and used this knowledge to achieve a decisive victory over the Imperial Japanese Navy.
With their capacity for amphibious assault greatly diminished as a result of the Midway battle, Japan chose to focus on
an overland campaign on the Territory of Papua in another attempt to capture Port Moresby. For the Americans, they planned
their next move against Japanese positions in the southern Solomon Islands, primarily against the island of Guadalcanal, as
a first step towards capturing Rabaul, the primary Japanese base in Southeast Asia. Both plans started in July, but by mid-September
the battle for Guadalcanal took priority for the Japanese, and troops in New Guinea were ordered to withdraw from the Port
Moresby area to the northern part of the island.
Guadalcanal soon became a focal point for both sides with heavy commitments of troops and ships in a battle of attrition.
By the start of 1943, the Japanese were defeated on the island and withdrew their troops.
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