How many countries were involved in world war 2
World War II
– global conflict
Several terms redirect here.
For other uses, see WWII (disambiguation), The Second World War (disambiguation), and World War II (disambiguation).
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World War&#;II[b] or the Second World War (1 September – 2 September ) was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers.
Nearly all the world's countries—including all the great powers—participated, with many investing all available economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities in pursuit of total war, blurring the distinction between military and civilian resources. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, with the latter enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and delivery of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war.
World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, resulting in 70 to 85 million deaths, more than half being civilians.
Ww2 biography wikipedia: The United States remained neutral but started to help the Allies. Quotations from Wikiquote. Book Overview: This classic work by William L. The surrender documents were formally signed on board the USS Missouri on September 2, , which ended the war.
Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust of European Jews, as well as from massacres, starvation, and disease. Following the Allied powers' victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and war crimes tribunals were conducted against German and Japanese leaders.
The causes of World War II included unresolved tensions in the aftermath of World War I and the rise of fascism in Europe and militarism in Japan.
Key events leading up to the war included Japan's invasion of Manchuria, the Spanish Civil War, the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, and Germany's annexations of Austria and the Sudetenland. World War&#;II is generally considered to have begun on 1 September , when Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, invaded Poland, prompting the United Kingdom and France to declare war on Germany.
Ww2 biography for kids President Harry S. Frank Cass Publishers. Soon, Western Europe agreed to give Sudetenland , the part of Czechoslovakia that was mostly German, to Germany if Hitler promised to stop taking land. Around 11 million to 17 million civilians died.Poland was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, in which they had agreed on "spheres of influence" in Eastern Europe. In , the Soviets annexed the Baltic states and parts of Finland and Romania. After the fall of France in June , the war continued mainly between Germany and the British Empire, with fighting in the Balkans, Mediterranean, and Middle East, the aerial Battle of Britain and the Blitz, and naval Battle of the Atlantic.
Through a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany took control of much of continental Europe and formed the Axis alliance with Italy, Japan, and other countries.
Ww2 biography examples The fascist movement in Germany rose because of the Great Depression. Join our Newsletter. The Battle of the Atlantic was a protracted naval battle in which German submarines attempted to intercept Allied shipping across the Atlantic. Lithuania revolution from above.In June , Germany led the European Axis in an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the Eastern Front and initially making large territorial gains.
Japan aimed to dominate East Asia and the Asia-Pacific, and by was at war with the Republic of China. In December , Japan attacked American and British territories in Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific, including Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, which resulted in the US and the UK declaring war against Japan, and the European Axis declaring war on the US.
Japan conquered much of coastal China and Southeast Asia, but its advances in the Pacific were halted in mid after its defeat in the naval Battle of Midway. In late , Germany and Italy were defeated in North Africa and at Stalingrad in the Soviet Union. Events in —including German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasion of Italy, and Allied offensives in the Pacific—forced the Axis into retreat on all fronts.
In , the Western Allies invaded occupied France at Normandy and the Soviet Union recaptured its lost territory. In the Pacific, the Allies crippled Japan's navy and captured key islands.
The war in Europe concluded with the liberation of German-occupied territories; the invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the fall of Berlin to Soviet troops; Hitler's suicide; and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May Following the refusal of Japan to surrender on the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, the US dropped the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August.
Faced with an imminent invasion of the Japanese archipelago, the possibility of further atomic bombings, and the Soviet declaration of war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its unconditional surrender on 15 August and signed a surrender document on 2 September , marking the end of the war.
World War&#;II changed the political alignment and social structure of the world, and it set the foundation of international relations for the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st century.
The United Nations was established to foster international cooperation and prevent conflicts, with the victorious great powers—China, France, the Soviet Union, the UK, and the US—becoming the permanent members of its security council. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War.
In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia. Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery and expansion.
Ww2 biography books In mid, Allied naval forces began an aggressive counterattack against Japan, involving a series of amphibious assaults on key Japanese-held islands in the Pacific. The Japanese victories were stopped in , and the Soviets won the huge Battle of Stalingrad in early The Soviet Union forced the Baltic countries to allow it to keep Soviet soldiers in their countries. Another feature of military intelligence was the use of deception , especially by the Allies.Start and end dates
See also: List of timelines of World War II
World War II began in Europe on 1 September [2] with the German invasion of Poland and the United Kingdom and France's declaration of war on Germany two days later on 3 September Dates for the beginning of the Pacific War include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July ,[3] or the earlier Japanese invasion of Manchuria, on 19 September [5][6] Others follow the British historian A.
J. P. Taylor, who stated that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously, and the two wars became World War II in [7] Other proposed starting dates for World War&#;II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October [8] The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War&#;II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September Others view the Spanish Civil War as the start or prelude to World War II.[10][11]
The exact date of the war's end also is not universally agreed upon.
It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 15 August (V-J Day), rather than with the formal surrender of Japan on 2 September , which officially ended the war in Asia. A peace treaty between Japan and the Allies was signed in A treaty regarding Germany's future allowed the reunification of East and West Germany to take place and resolved most post–World War&#;II issues.[13] No formal peace treaty between Japan and the Soviet Union was ever signed,[14] although the state of war between the two countries was terminated by the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of , which also restored full diplomatic relations between them.[15]
History
Background
Main article: Causes of World War II
Aftermath of World War I
World War I had radically altered the political European map with the defeat of the Central Powers—including Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire—and the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, which led to the founding of the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, the victorious Allies of World War I, such as France, Belgium, Italy, Romania, and Greece, gained territory, and new nation-states were created out of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian Empires.[16]
To prevent a future world war, the League of Nations was established in by the Paris Peace Conference.
The organisation's primary goals were to prevent armed conflict through collective security, military, and naval disarmament, as well as settling international disputes through peaceful negotiations and arbitration.[17]
Despite strong pacifist sentiment after World War&#;I,irredentist and revanchistnationalism had emerged in several European states.
These sentiments were especially marked in Germany because of the significant territorial, colonial, and financial losses imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. Under the treaty, Germany lost around 13 percent of its home territory and all its overseas possessions, while German annexation of other states was prohibited, reparations were imposed, and limits were placed on the size and capability of the country's armed forces.
Germany and Italy
The German Empire was dissolved in the German revolution of –, and a democratic government, later known as the Weimar Republic, was created.
The interwar period saw strife between supporters of the new republic and hardline opponents on both the political right and left. Italy, as an Entente ally, had made some post-war territorial gains; however, Italian nationalists were angered that the promises made by the United Kingdom and France to secure Italian entrance into the war were not fulfilled in the peace settlement.
Ww2 biography By May, the Soviets had retaken Crimea. The Allies managed to occupy Austria and Germany. Germany had two different ideas of how it would occupy countries. Germany then signed an agreement to work together with the Soviet Union.From to , the Fascist movement led by Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy with a nationalist, totalitarian, and class collaborationist agenda that abolished representative democracy, repressed socialist, left-wing, and liberal forces, and pursued an aggressive expansionist foreign policy aimed at making Italy a world power, promising the creation of a "New Roman Empire".
Adolf Hitler, after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government in , eventually became the chancellor of Germany in when President Paul von Hindenburg and the Reichstag appointed him.
Following Hindenburg's death in , Hitler proclaimed himself Führer of Germany and abolished democracy, espousing a radical, racially motivated revision of the world order, and soon began a massive rearmament campaign. France, seeking to secure its alliance with Italy, allowed Italy a free hand in Ethiopia, which Italy desired as a colonial possession.
The situation was aggravated in early when the Territory of the Saar Basin was legally reunited with Germany, and Hitler repudiated the Treaty of Versailles, accelerated his rearmament programme, and introduced conscription.
European treaties
The United Kingdom, France and Italy formed the Stresa Front in April in order to contain Germany, a key step towards military globalisation; however, that June, the United Kingdom made an independent naval agreement with Germany, easing prior restrictions.
The Soviet Union, concerned by Germany's goals of capturing vast areas of Eastern Europe, drafted a treaty of mutual assistance with France. Before taking effect, though, the Franco-Soviet pact was required to go through the bureaucracy of the League of Nations, which rendered it essentially toothless.[23] The United States, concerned with events in Europe and Asia, passed the Neutrality Act in August of the same year.
Hitler defied the Versailles and Locarno Treaties by remilitarising the Rhineland in March , encountering little opposition due to the policy of appeasement.
In October , Germany and Italy formed the Rome–Berlin Axis. A month later, Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, which Italy joined the following year.
Asia
The Kuomintang (KMT) party in China launched a unification campaign