By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to
World War II (which is often abbreviated to WW2 or WWII), also referred to as the Second World War, was a global war lasting from the year 1939 to 1945. The big majority of the countries of the world- including every great power- eventually formed opposing military alliances: The Axis and the Allies. There emerged a state of total war, involving more than 100 million people directly from over 30 different countries. The main participants of the war threw their entire industrial, scientific and economic capabilities behind the war effort, this blurred the distinction between military and civilian resources.
The second World War was the deadliest conflict in the history of humans, marked by 50 to 85 million deaths, most of which were civilians from China and in the Soviet Union. It included the genocide of the Holocaust, massacres, strategic bombing, premeditated death from disease and starvation, and the only use of nuclear weapons.
DATE
The war happened between 1st September 1939 and 2nd September 1945. The war took a period of 6 years and one day.
LOCATION
Europe, Atlantic, Pacific, South East Asia, Middle East, China, North Africa, Mediterranean, Australia, Horn of Africa, briefly South and North America.
The Treaty of Versailles ended World War I between Germany and the Allied Powers. Because Germany had lost World War I, the Treaty of Versailles was harsh against Germany. Germany was forced to accept the responsibility for the war damages suffered by the Allies. The treaty required that Germany pay a huge sum of monetary reparations. This left the German economy in ruins. People were starving and the government was in chaos. The Germans were desperate for someone to turn around their economy and restore their national pride.
In the 1930s, Germany came under the rule of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. He was proclaimed the ‘Fuhrer” and became dictator of Germany. He wanted to make Germany the most powerful country in Europe. He built up his army and air force, and expanded Germany’s border, taking over Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1939. To gain more land and power, on 1 September 1939 German troops invaded Poland. After Hitler refused to stop the invasion, Britain and France declared war on Germany – World War II had begun.
During the course of the war, German forces advanced through Europe. By the summer of 1941, they had invaded France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Greece, Yugoslavia, and the USSR.
Around the same time that Germany fought for power in Europe, Japan wanted to control Asia and the Pacific. Before World War II had officially begun, in 1937, under Emperor Hirohito, Japan attacked China, bringing the two nations into years of conflict.
The United States reacted to the Japanese invasion of China by placing an embargo on Japan.
The United States didn’t join the war until 1941 when Japan attacked the United States at their Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. On 8th December 1941 (the very next day), the US declared war on Japan and, in turn, its German allies.
RESULT
The participants were the Allies and the Axis.
The main Axis countries were Germany, Italy, and Japan.
The main Allied countries were Britain, the United States, France, Russia, and China.
Japan, which had an aim of dominating the Pacific as well as Asia, was at war with China by 1937, but none of the sides had declared war on the other. It is generally said that that the second world war started on 1st September 1939, after the invasion of Poland by Germany as well as subsequent declarations of war on Germany by the United Kingdom and France. From late 1939 to early 1941, through a series of treaties and campaigns, Germany controlled or conquered much of the European continent, and formed an alliance with Japan and Italy called Axis. The Soviet Union and Germany partitioned and annexed territories of their neighbors in Europe. These countries include The Baltic states, Romania, Poland, and Finland. After the start of campaigns in East Africa and North Africa as well as the fall of France in mid-1940, the war went ahead primarily between the British Empire and the European Axis powers.
On June 22nd 1941, the Axis powers of Europe launched an invasion of the Soviet Union. This act opened the largest land theater of war in the history of man. The Axis were trapped by the Eastern Front, most especially the German Wehrmacht, into a war of attrition. In December the year 1941, Japan launched an attack on Pearl Harbor in the US and European Colonies in the Pacific. After the declaration of war on Japan by the United States, the European Powers also declared war on the United States in solidarity with Japan.
The Axis advance in the Pacific was halted in the year 1942 when Japan lost the crucial Battle of Midway. Germany and Italy were later defeated.
The war in Europe ended after the invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, the capture of Berlin by the Soviet troops as well as the suicide of Adolf Hitler.
