The First World War (1914–18) laid the foundation for World War 2, which started two decades later and would end up being considerably more destructive. Adolf Hitler, the head of the Nazi Party, came to power in a politically and economically unsteady Germany. To further his goals of world dominance, he rearmed the country and negotiated strategic agreements with Italy and Japan. After Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, France and Great Britain decided to go to war with Germany, starting World War 2. More lives would be lost and more land and property would be destroyed during the following six years of fighting than during any other war in history. Six million Jews were exterminated in Nazi concentration camps as part of Hitler's evil "Final Solution," commonly known as the Holocaust, among the estimated 45–60 million deaths.
World War 2 | History and End result
Ø Leading up to World War 2
The destruction of World War I, or the Great War as it was then known, had significantly destabilized Europe, and in many ways, the problems left unaddressed by that previous battle gave rise to World War 2. Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers' Party, also known as the Nazi Party in English and the NSDAP in German, rose to power in part due to political and economic unrest in Germany and persistent discontent over the severe conditions imposed by the Versailles Treaty.
Hitler quickly established himself as the nation's supreme leader after taking office as Germany's chancellor in 1933. Hitler was obsessed with the notion that the "pure" German race, which he referred to as "Aryan," was superior and thought that the only way to acquire the required "Lebensraum," or living space, for the German race to expand, was through war. He broke the terms of the Versailles Treaty by secretly starting Germany's rearmament in the middle of the 1930s. Hitler invaded Austria with military force in 1938, and the following year he annexed Czechoslovakia after forging alliances with Japan and Italy against the Soviet Union. Hitler's overt aggressiveness remained unchallenged because neither France nor Britain—the other two countries most ravaged by the Great War—were ready for conflict at the moment, and because the United States and the Soviet Union were preoccupied with internal politics.
World War 2 | History and End result
Ø Beginning of World War 2 (1939)
Hitler and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact in late August 1939, which caused panic in London and Paris. Poland was the target of Hitler's long-planned invasion because Great Britain and France had promised to defend it if Germany ever attacked. Hitler would not have to fight on two fronts after he invaded Poland thanks to the agreement with Stalin, and the Soviet Union would help him conquer and partition the country. Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany, sparking the start of World War 2.
Poland was attacked by Soviet forces from the east on September 17. Poland was swiftly overrun by both sides, and by the start of 1940, Germany and the Soviet Union had shared the country's control, in accordance with a covert protocol added to the Nonaggression Pact. Then, during the Russo-Finnish War, Stalin's forces advanced to conquer the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). The absence of action on the part of Germany and the Allies in the west during the six months after the invasion of Poland prompted speculation in the news media of a "fake war." However, at sea, the German and British navies engaged in a bloody war, and in the first four months of World War 2, more than 100 merchant ships headed for Britain were sunk by deadly German U-boat submarine attacks.
World War 2 | History and End result
Ø Second World War in the West (1940-41)
Germany simultaneously invaded Norway and captured Denmark on April 9, 1940, sparking the start of the war. On May 10, German forces launched a "blitzkrieg," or rapid war, that raced across Belgium and the Netherlands. Three days later, German soldiers crossed the Meuse River and attacked French troops at Sedan, which was at the northern tip of the Maginot Line, a complex network of fortifications built after World War I and regarded as an impregnable defensive line. In actuality, the Germans destroyed the line by piercing it with their tanks and bombers and continuing to the rear. In the latter part of May, the French forces in the south put up a vain resistance while the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was evacuated from Dunkirk by sea. With France on the point of disintegrating, Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy, joined forces with Hitler in the Pact of Steel and on June 10 declared war on both France and Britain.
German forces occupied Paris on June 14; two nights later, an armistice proposal was made by the new administration led by Marshal Philippe Petain, the World War I hero of France. Following this, France was split into two regions, one under German military control and the other under Petain's administration, which was established at Vichy France. In order to provide himself a defensive advantage, Hitler now focused on Britain, which was geographically isolated from the Continent by the English Channel.
German aircraft heavily bombed Britain from September 1940 to May 1941, a period known as the Blitz, including night raids on London and other industrial centers that resulted in significant civilian casualties and property damage. This bombardment was done to prepare for an amphibious invasion known as Operation Sea Lion. Hitler delayed his invasion preparations when the Royal Air Force (RAF) eventually beat the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) in the Battle of Britain. Prime Minister Winston Churchill started obtaining essential assistance from the United States via the Lend-Lease Act, which Congress ratified in early 1941 when Britain's defense capabilities were being taxed to their maximum capacity.
World War 2 | History and End result
Ø Operation Barbarossa: Hitler vs. Stalin (1941-42)
Early in 1941, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria joined the Axis, and in April of that year, German forces occupied Yugoslavia and Greece. Hitler's conquest of the Balkans served as a prelude to his true goal, an invasion of the Soviet Union, whose vast territory would provide the "Lebensraum" required by the German master race. Hitler's plan also included eradicating all Jews from the regions of Europe that Germany had seized. Around the time of the Soviet advance, plans for the "Final Solution" were unveiled, and over the course of the following three years, more than 4 million Jews would perish in the death camps established in occupied Poland.
Hitler gave the command for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, on June 22, 1941. Despite having a vastly greater number of tanks and planes than the Germans, Russian aviation technology was mainly outmoded, and the impact of the surprise invasion enabled the Germans to be within 200 miles of Moscow by the middle of July. The next German push was delayed due to disputes between Hitler and his generals until October when it was halted by a Soviet counteroffensive and the arrival of severe winter weather.
World War 2 | History and End result
Ø Pacific Theater of World War 2 (1941-43)
The only country able to stop Japanese aggression, which by late 1941 encompassed an expansion of its continuing conflict with China and the acquisition of European colonial holdings in the Far East, was the United States, with Britain confronting Germany in Europe. More than 2,300 American soldiers lost their lives when 360 Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor, the main U.S. naval base in Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. The attack completely caught the Americans off guard. As a result of the Pearl Harbor attack, the American public's support for joining World War 2 was unified, and on December 8, Congress declared war on Japan with just one vote against it. The Axis Powers quickly declared war on the United States, led by Germany.
The U.S. Pacific Fleet won the Battle of Midway in June 1942, which proved to be a turning point in the war after a succession of Japanese wins. From August 1942 until February 1943, the Allies successfully fought off Japanese forces on Guadalcanal, one of the southern Solomon Islands, turning the tide in the Pacific. A series of amphibious assaults on significant Japanese-held islands in the Pacific were part of the Allied naval forces' aggressive counterattack against Japan that started in the middle of 1943. Success in this "island-hopping" tactic allowed the Allies to get closer to their eventual objective of conquering mainland Japan.
Ø Toward Allied Victory in World War 2 (1943-45)
By 1943, the Italians and Germans had been routed in North Africa by British and American forces. Mussolini's administration was overthrown in July 1943 as a result of the Allied invasion of Sicily and Italy, however fighting between the Allies and the Germans in Italy persisted until 1945.
A Soviet counteroffensive initiated in November 1942 on the Eastern Front brought an end to the terrible Battle of Stalingrad, which saw some of the bloodiest warfare of World War 2. The last German forces there surrendered on January 31, 1943, as a result of the approaching cold and diminishing food and medical supplies.
The Allies launched a huge invasion of Europe on June 6, 1944, known as "D-Day," and 156,000 British, Canadian, and American forces were deployed on the beaches of Normandy, France. Hitler's response was to send all of his army's remaining power into Western Europe, assuring Germany's loss in the east. While Hitler prepared his forces to push the Americans and British back from Germany in the Battle of the Bulge (December 1944–January 1945), the last significant German offensive of the war, Soviet troops quickly marched into Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania.
Prior to the Allied land invasion of Germany in February 1945, the country was subjected to a heavy aerial bombardment; by the time Germany formally capitulated on May 8, Soviet forces had taken control of most of it. Hitler committed suicide on April 30 in his Berlin bunker, therefore he was already deceased.
Ø End of World War 2 (1945)
Churchill, Stalin, and U.S. President Harry S. Truman discussed the ongoing war with Japan as well as the peace treaty with Germany at the Potsdam Conference in July–August 1945. Truman had taken office after Roosevelt's death in April. The Soviet Union, Britain, the United States, and France would each oversee one of four post-war occupation zones in Germany. Churchill and Truman agreed with Stalin on the contentious topic of Eastern Europe's future because they required Soviet assistance in the battle against Japan.
Truman authorized the employment of a brand-new, destructive weapon as a result of the high number of deaths suffered in the operations at Iwo Jima (in February 1945) and Okinawa (in April–June 1945), as well as concerns over the even more expensive land invasion of Japan. The Manhattan Project, a top-secret undertaking that produced the atomic bomb, was launched in early August on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In a statement released on August 15, the Japanese government indicated that they would accept the provisions of the Potsdam Declaration. On September 2, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur formally accepted Japan's surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
Ø World War 2 Death Toll and Its Effects
As the bloodiest international battle in history, World War 2 claimed the lives of 60 to 80 million people, including 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust at the hands of the Nazis. 50–55 million people died as a result of the conflict who were civilians, compared to 21–25 million who were military. Still more people lost their homes and possessions, and millions more were hurt.
The Cold War would soon pit two opposing superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union—against one another, and the war's lasting effects would include communism's march from the Soviet Union into Eastern Europe and its eventual victory in China.
World War 2 | History and End result
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