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World War Ii

Stalingrad.jpg
World War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the world's nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives.

The German invasion of Poland on September 1 1939 is the most common date in the West for the start of World War II. Others cite the Japanese invasion of China on July 7, 1937, as the war's beginning, or even the 1931 Japanese incursion into Manchuria. The war ended in Europe with the surrender of Germany on May 8, 1945, but continued in Asia and the Pacific until the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the subsequent Japanese surrender on September 2 1945.

There are several main causes of this conflict, most important being unforeseen consequences of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, and of the Great Depression, the worldwide economic disaster gave rise to nationalism and militarism. The lead-up to the war stretches back to (*****) of the 1930s, which slowly drew in more countries and culminated in massive battles with millions of combatants in the first half of the 1940s.

Fighting occurred across the Atlantic Ocean, in the European theatre in and around eastern and western Europe, in North Africa and the Middle East as well as across the Mediterranean Sea, and in the Pacific theatre in the Pacific, in Oceania and across much of East Asia and South East Asia.

It was the first war in which air power was a significant factor and civilian suffering and terror a primary military strategy. The war (*****) . This was partly due to its unprecedented scale, the first uses of mass aerial bombings against civilian populations (a policy initiated by the German Luftwaffe against Poland and later used more extensively against German cities by the Allies), and the first application of industrial-age technology to enable the mass killing of unwanted civilians in extermination camps; a significant part of the German war machine was diverted towards the execution of Jews, Roma, Slavs and other unwanted citizens in the Holocaust. In total, World War II caused the deaths of about two percent of the population of the world.

The war also saw the re-emergence of the United States from its isolationism, the destruction and rebuilding of Germany and Japan into major industrial powers, the advent of the atomic bomb, the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as global superpowers, closer integration of Europe in the form of a European Union, the dissolution of the League of Nations and creation of the United Nations, founded by the victorious Allies in order to prevent such a large and destructive conflict from ever happening again.

The post-war period set the stage for the Cold War, with the Western Allies and most of Western Europe including West Germany, Italy, the United States and United Kingdom forming NATO, and the Soviet Union and its Eastern Europe satellites creating the Warsaw Pact. The struggle for dominance between these two alliances would last until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Participants

Main article: Participants in World War II

Traditionally, the war is described as a conflict between two groups of powers: the Axis and the Allies. The primary members of the Allies were the British Commonwealth, the United States, and the Soviet Union. The Axis primarily consisted of Nazi Germany, Italy, and the Empire of Japan.

In reality, this network of alliances changed over time, with divisions within countries, shifts in alliances, and questionable practices by supposedly neutral countries. Countries that highlight complication with the Allied–Axis categorization include:

- France, which was Allied at the start of the war, but was later divided into Vichy France and a German occupational government, with the Free French Forces controlling some French colonies;
- Italy, where the association with Nazi Germany remained controversial and tentative until the German conquest of France, and which later surrendered to and joined the Allies following its invasion by Allied forces;
- The Soviet Union, which actively participated in the invasion of Poland in a partnership with Nazi Germany, and extended its territory in the Baltics with German approval, but joined the Allies following an invasion by Nazi Germany in June 1941 which broke the Molotow-Ribbentrop Pact between them;
- Finland, which initially received Allied sympathy, and some support, while defending itself from the Soviet invasion of the Winter War — a sympathy that diminished starkly after the aforementioned invasion of the Soviet Union, when the Red Army in the Continuation War attacked Finland again. In this conflict, Finland's northern part was defended by German forces, and Britain, but not the United States, declared war on Finland in support of the Soviet action.

In addition, many countries, although avowedly neutral, provided military volunteers and other support either to the Allies or to the Axis. For example, Spain supplied troops for use by Germany.

Causes

Main article: Causes of World War II

The Second World War originated from a variety of causes. Some of the most commonly mentioned include the aggressive rise of totalitarian ideologies, and, from a narrower perspective, war reparations demanded of Germany after World War I, coupled with the effects of the Great Depression and the lack of raw materials in Japan.

The economic depression and inflation of these latter nations' currency contributed to the rise of fascist ideals and fervent nationalism, which, in turn, led to the militarization of the economy and mobilization of forces along key borders in these nations. With the rise of fascism, the foreign policies of the Axis nations became more aggressive and strained the Allied leadership.

Prelude to War

Main article: Events preceding World War II in Europe, Events preceding World War II in Asia

Resentment of the victorious powers' treatment of the Weimar Republic in the aftermath of World War I and economic difficulties caused by war reparations and the Great Depression allowed Adolf Hitler's extreme nationalist NSDAP movement to come to power in Germany. Due to the fragile political situation, Hitler was able to assume emergency powers and virtual total control of the country.

Defying post-WWI treaties, he re-developed the German military by means of the democratic constitution that was later put aside. He re-militarised the border zone next to France, enforced the re-unification with Austria in the so-called Anschluss, and with Franco-British approval he annexed parts of Czechoslovakia.

In 1922 Benito Mussolini and the Fascist party had risen to power in Italy. Mussolini's Italian fascists shared some ideological goals with the German National Socialists or Nazis and, although Mussolini distrusted Hitler, the two countries formed an agreement that became known as the "Rome-Berlin Axis" in 1936.

Hitlermusso.jpg launched a second invasion that occupied the rest of the region. For this reason, some scholars consider 1936/37 the actual start of World War II.

European Theatre

Main article: European Theatre of World War II, The end of World War II in Europe

In 1939, Hitler laid claim to parts of Poland and concluded the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Soviet Union in response to Britain's and France's supportive defence alliance with Poland of March 1939.

The German Wehrmacht then invaded Poland on 1 September, and on 3 September 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany (Listen to Neville Chamberlain declaring war on Germany (MP3, 1.32MB)), however neither French nor British troops gave any significant assistance to the Poles during the entire September Campaign.

On 17 September the Soviet Red Army joined the invasion, and, hours after that, the Polish government evacuated the country for Romania. Hostilities in Poland ended on 6 October with the final Battle of Kock. Over the following months (*****) in France and Britain and remained an important combatant throughout the entire war.

In October U-47 sank HMS Royal Oak in Scapa Flow and the Luftwaffe carried out bombing raids on British naval bases at Rosyth and Scapa Flow.

In December 1939, the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee engaged British naval forces in the Battle of the River Plate in South America. The German warship retreated into Montevideo harbour and was scuttled shortly thereafter.

The period from the conclusion of the invasion of Poland in October 1939 until the German invasion of the Benelux countries and France in May 1940, became known as the Phony War. The German and Soviet forces were moved from the attack on Poland. The Red Army concentrated on the Baltic countries and on Finland, where the Winter War became a focus of the world's interest in the absence of other hostilities.

Meanwhile, the Wehrmacht moved north and invaded Denmark and Norway in Operation Weserübung. France mobilised and manned its heavily-defended border (The Maginot Line) against the Rhine and the British sent a large expeditionary force to France. However, apart from a brief attack by the French across the Rhine, there were little in the way of hostilities as both sides built up their forces.

In May of 1940 German forces attacked the Low Countries (The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg). The three countries were occupied quickly, all of their governments and monarchs fleeing to London, except for the Belgian king Leopold III who stayed in his country.

France was then invaded via the Low Countries, bypassing the Maginot Line. The Germans' Blitzkrieg tactics succeeded in defeating the French and British armies in France. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) evacuated from Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo, leaving their heavy equipment and their French allies behind. When German tanks overran most of France, the French State collapsed and a new government made a peace, leaving the Germans in control of the North and the Vichy government in (nominal) charge of the South.

The Luftwaffe was unable to defeat the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain and gain the air superiority needed to invade Britain. Instead, they began a strategic bombing campaign, which the British called the Blitz, and attempted to blockade Britain into submission in the Battle of the Atlantic. Britain failed to succumb to either tactic.

Meanwhile the geography of the Europe was changed: Soviet Union occupied Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia (June, 1940), and annexed Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina from Romania (June 28 1940).

Italy attacked Greece on October 28 1940 and suffered the first Axis defeat. Though Hitler had no plans for Greece at that time, he was forced to send troops to occupy Greece (since Greece's neutrality was broken) on April of 1941. This resulted in the delay of Operation Barbarossa and the loss of precious troops (see the Battle of Crete).

In June 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union, with whom they had previously signed a non-aggression pact, starting what is known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War (ru: Великая Отечественная Война, Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna). The Russians were caught largely by surprise and the Wehrmacht initially conquered vast areas of territory, capturing hundreds of thousands of troops.

The Soviets withdrew, and managed to move most of their heavy industry away from the front line and re-establish it in more remote areas. Tenacious, sacrificial defence prevented the Germans from capturing Moscow (Hero City) by the time winter set in (see Battle of Moscow). Hitler, expecting the campaign to be over in a few months, had not equipped their armies for winter fighting.

Five days after the Soviets launched their counter-attack on December 11, 1941, Germany declared war on the United States following the Attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan - see Asian Theatre.

Chrost.jpg oilfields. Moscow was again spared and, at the end of 1942, the Soviets succeeded in smashing the Axis' front lines in the south and surrounding the German 6th Army, originally comprised of 300,000 men, in the Battle of Stalingrad (Hero City).

In February 1943, the paltry remnant of the 6th Army surrendered. The loss could have been avoided had Hitler taken Stalingrad when it was devoid of Soviet troops; however, he mistakenly believed it was too well defended. In retrospect, Goebbels' Sportpalast speech marks their recognition that total war was a necessary response to the Allies' advances.

In the spring, the Wehrmacht was able to restore the front line and make a successful riposte in the Second Battle of Kharkov but their offensive at the massive Battle of Kursk (July 1943) was so unsuccessful that the Red Army were able to counterattack and regain the ground previously lost.

From that time forward, the Soviet Union had the initiative in the East. By early 1944, the Red Army had reached the border of Poland and ended the Siege of Leningrad.

The German disaster at Stalingrad was promptly followed by a disaster of similar importance in Tunisia (see African theatre below), resulting in the loss of the last Axis foothold in North Africa and the capture of a quarter of a million German and Italian POWs (May 1943).

Thereafter, the Allies used North Africa as a springboard for the invasion of Sicily (July 1943) and mainland Italy (September 1943), which Winston Churchill described as "the soft underbelly of Europe".

Italy surrendered but German troops moved to disarm the Italians and set about defending the country on their own. They established a series of tough defensive lines in mountainous country that was ideally suited to defence and progress by the Allies was slow.

The Allies invaded Normandy in Operation Overlord on June 6 1944 and liberated most of France and the Low Countries by the end of the year.

On June 9, the Soviet Union began an offensive on the Karelian Isthmus, forcing German co-belligerent Finland out of the war. On June 22, the Soviets began Operation Bagration; 2.5 million men and 6,000 tanks attacked along a 1,000-kilometre front, completely destroying the 500,000-man German Army Group Centre and taking 350,000 prisoners.

Romania surrendered in August and Bulgaria on September. The Germans withdrew from Balkans and managed to hold their position in Hungary until February 1945.
Keitel signs the German surrender.jpg , Adolf Hitler committed suicide as Russian shells exploded in the Chancellery garden above.

It had been twelve years and three months since the time he had become dictator of Germany. He had appointed Admiral Karl Dönitz President of Germany prior to his suicide but, one week later, the German armed forces surrendered unconditionally on 8 May 1945 (the documents were signed on 7 May and the surrender to Soviet forces occurred on 9 May).

Throughout the period of the war, Ireland, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, and Sweden remained officially neutral. In Ireland, the conflict is referred to as The Emergency.

Pacific Theatre

US landings.jpg

Main article: Pacific War

In 1940, Japan occupied French Indochina (Vietnam) upon agreement with the Vichy Government and despite local Free French, and joined the Axis powers Germany and Italy. These actions intensified Japan's conflict with the United States and the United Kingdom which reacted with an oil boycott.

The Japanese had already invaded China before World War II started in Europe. U.S. President Roosevelt signed an executive order in May of 1940 allowing U.S. military personnel to resign from the service so that they could participate in a covert operation in China. Hence was born the All Volunteer Group, more commonly known as Chennault's Flying Tigers. With the United States and other countries cutting exports to Japan, Japan decided to bomb Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 without warning or declaration of war. Severe damage was done to the American Pacific Fleet, although the aircraft carriers escaped as they were at sea. Japanese forces simultaneously invaded the British possessions of Malaya and Borneo and the American occupied Philippines, with the intention of seizing the oilfields of the Dutch East Indies. The British island fortress of Singapore was captured in what Churchill considered one of the most humiliating British defeats of all time.

In May 1942, the Allied navies in the Battle of the Coral Sea thwarted a Japanese naval attack on Port Moresby, New Guinea which had it succeeded would have put them within striking range of Australia. This was both the first successful opposition to Japanese plans and the first naval battle fought only between aircraft carriers. A month later the U.S. Navy again prevented the invasion of Midway Island, this time destroying four Japanese carriers, which Japanese industry could not replace, and putting the Japanese navy on the defensive.

However, in July the Japanese Army attempted an overland attack on Port Moresby, along the rugged Kokoda Track. Australian reservists, many of them very young and untrained, fought a stubborn rearguard action, until they were relieved by Australian regular troops returning from action in the Middle East.

The Allied leaders had agreed even prior to the American entry to the war that priority should be given to the defeat of Germany. Nonetheless US and Australian forces under General Douglas MacArthur began to attack captured territories, beginning with, against the bitter and determined defence of Japanese troops, Guadalcanal Island. On 7 August 1942 the island was assaulted by United States Marines. In late August and early September, while battle raged on Guadalcanal, Australian forces fought off a Japanese amphibious attack on the eastern tip of New Guinea at Milne Bay, the first conclusive defeat suffered by Japanese land forces. US forces triumphed on Guadalcanal in February 1943.

Exhausted Australian and US forces then strove to retake the occupied parts of New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, experiencing some of the toughest resistance of the Pacific Theatre. The rest of the Solomon Islands were retaken in 1943, New Britain and New Ireland in 1944. The Philippines were attacked in late 1944 following the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

US and Allied submarines and aircraft also attacked Japanese merchant shipping, depriving Japanese industry of the raw materials she had gone to war to obtain. The effectiveness of this stranglehold increased as the U.S. captured islands closer to the Japanese mainland.

The Nationalist Kuomintang Army under Chiang Kai-shek and the Communist Chinese Army under Mao Zedong both opposed the Japanese occupation of China, but never truly allied against the Japanese. Conflict between Nationalist and Communist forces continued after and, to an extent, even during the war.

Capture by the Allies of islands such as Iwo Jima and Okinawa close to Japan brought the homeland within range of naval and air attacks, Tokyo was firebombed and later an atomic bomb, the "Little Boy", was dropped from the B-29 "Enola Gay" and destroyed Hiroshima. On 8 August 1945 the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, as had been agreed to at Yalta, and launched a large scale invasion of Japanese occupied Manchuria (operation August Storm). On August 9, in Nagasaki, another atom bomb, "Fat Man" was dropped by the B-29 "Bock's Car". The Japanese surrendered on 14 August 1945, signing official surrender papers on 2 September 1945 aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

African and Middle Eastern Theatre

The North African Campaign began in 1940, when small British forces in Egypt turned back an Italian advance from Libya. This advance was stopped in 1941 when German forces under Erwin Rommel landed in Libya. In addition, in June 1941 the Australian Army and allied forces invaded Syria and Lebanon, capturing Damascus on 17 June. Rommel's Afrika Korps advanced rapidly eastward, laying siege to the vital seaport of Tobruk. The Australian and British troops in the city resisted all until relieved, but a renewed Axis offensive captured the city and drove the Eighth Army back to a line at El Alamein.

The First Battle of El Alamein took place between July 1 and July 27, 1942. German forces had advanced to the last defensible point before Alexandria and the Suez Canal. However they had outrun their supplies, and a British and Commonwealth defence stopped their thrusts. The Second Battle of El Alamein occurred between October 23 and November 3, 1942 after Bernard Montgomery had replaced Claude Auchinleck as commander of the Eighth Army. Commonwealth forces took the offensive and destroyed the Afrika Korps. Rommel was pushed back, and this time did not stop falling back until Tunisia.

To complement this victory, on 8 November 1942, American and British troops landed in Morocco and Algeria in Operation Torch. The local forces of Vichy France put up limited resistance before joining the Allied cause. Ultimately German and Italian forces were caught in the pincers of a twin advance from Algeria and Libya. Advancing from both the east and west, the Allies completely pushed the Wehrmacht out of Africa and on May 13, 1943, the remnants of the Axis forces in North Africa surrendered. 250,000 prisoners were taken; as many as at Stalingrad.

North Africa was used as the jumping-off point for the invasions of Sicily and mainland Italy in 1943.

Consequences

In contrast to World War I, the Western victors in the Second World War did not demand compensation from the defeated nations. On the contrary, a plan created by U. S. Secretary of State George Marshall, the "European Recovery Program", better known as the Marshall Plan, called for the U.S. Congress to allocate billions of dollars for the reconstruction of Europe. Also as part of the effort to rebuild global capitalism and spur post-war reconstruction, the Bretton Woods system was put into effect after the war.

Since the League of Nations had obviously failed to prevent the war, a new international order was constructed. In 1945 the United Nations was founded. Also, in order to prevent such devastating war from occurring again and to establish a lasting peace in Europe, the European Coal and Steel Community was born in 1951 (Treaty of Paris (1951)), which became the predecessor of the European Union.

The future Warsaw Pact countries did not subscribe to the Marshall Plan. In the Paris Peace Treaty, the Soviet Union's enemies Hungary, Finland and Romania were required to pay war reparations of $300,000,000 each (in 1938 dollars) to the USSR. Italy was required to pay $360,000,000, shared chiefly between Greece, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.

In the areas occupied by Western Allied troops, capitalist governments were created, in the areas occupied by Soviet troops, communist governments were created. Germany was partitioned into four zones of occupation, with the American, British and French zones grouped as West Germany and the Soviet zone as East Germany. Austria was once again separated from Germany and it, too, was divided into four zones of occupation which eventually re-united and became the state of Austria. The Cold War had begun, and soon NATO and the Warsaw Pact would form.

The repatriation, pursuant to the terms of the Yalta Conference, of two million Russian soldiers who had come under the control of advancing American and British forces, resulted for the most part in their deaths.

The massive research and development involved in the Manhattan Project in order to quickly achieve a working nuclear weapon design greatly impacted the scientific community, among other things creating a network of national laboratories in the United States. In addition, the pressing for numerous calculations for various things like code breaking and ballistics tables kickstarted the development of electronic computer technology.

In the military sphere, World War II marked the coming of age of airpower, mostly at the expense of warships. While the pendulum continues to swing in this never-ending competition, air powers are now a full partner in any military action. World War II also saw the creation of guided missiles which, like airpower, are now used in virtually every conflict.

The war was the high-water mark for mass armies. While huge armies of low-quality troops would be seen again (during the Korean War and in a number of African conflicts), after this victory the major powers relied upon small highly-trained and well-equipped militaries.

After the war, many high-ranking Germans were prosecuted for war crimes, as well as the mass murder of the Holocaust committed mainly on the area of General Government, in the Nuremberg trials. Similarly Japanese leaders were prosecuted in the Tokyo War Crime Trial. Although the deliberate targeting of civilians was already defined as a war crime and it had been used extensively by both sides, most notably in Poland, Britain, Germany and Japan, those responsible were never tried for it. In other countries, notably in Finland, the Allies demanded the political leadership to be prosecuted in "war-responsibility trials" — i.e. not for crimes of war.

The defeat of Japan, and her occupation by American Forces, led to a westernization of Japan that was surely more far-reaching than would otherwise have occurred. Japan approximated more closely to a Western style democracy and, because of her defeat by the USA, set out to imitate the United States. This huge national effort led to the post-war Japanese economic miracle and Japan's rise to become the world's second largest economy.

The destruction of Europe and the destruction, via aerial bombing, of a significant proportion of the United Kingdom's cities would also symbolically destroy the aura of invincibility the European nation had in the eyes of their colonies. Coupled with the enormous amount of money it had expended during the war, an empire was perceived to be an unnecessarily expensive possession. Thus this would provoke the rapid decolonisation process that would see the empires of the United Kingdom, France and others swept away.

World War II military history by country

- Military history of Germany during World War II
- Military history of Britain during World War II
- Military history of Italy during World War II

Military engagements

Major Campaigns

- September Campaign, "Fall Weiss"
- Operation Weserübung
- Fall of France, "Fall Gelb"
- Balkans Campaign, "Unternehmen Marita"
- Operation Barbarossa
- North African Campaign
- Italian Campaign
- Operation Overlord

Battles

- Battle of the border
- Battle of Bory Tucholskie
- Battle of Bzura
- Battle of Tomaszów Lubelski
- Battle of Kock
- Battle of France, "Fall Gelb"
- Battle of Dunkirk, "Dynamo"
- Battle of Britain
- Battle of Crete
- Battle of Smolensk
- Battle of Minsk
- Battle of Kiev
- Battle of Moscow
- Second Battle of Kharkov
- Battle of Stalingrad
- Third Battle of Kharkov
- Battle of Kursk
- Operation Bagration
- First Battle of El Alamein
- Second Battle of El Alamein
- Battle of Normandy, "D-Day" or "Operation Overlord"
- Battle of Tali-Ihantala
- Operation Market Garden, "Battle of Arnhem"
- Battle of Monte Cassino
- Battle of Warsaw, "Warsaw Uprising"
- Battle of Ardennes, "Battle of the Bulge"
- Battle of Hurtgen Forest
- Battle of Seelow Heights
- Battle of Berlin
- Battle of Leyte
- Battle of Peleliu
- Battle of Iwo Jima
- Battle of Okinawa
- Battle of Lugou Bridge
- Battle of Tai er zhuang
- Battle of Changsha
- Battle of Hundred Regiments
- Battle of Milne Bay
- Battle of Prachuab Khirikhan

Sieges

- Siege of Warsaw
- Siege of Leningrad
- Siege of Lwów
- Siege of Modlin
- Siege of Novorossiysk
- Siege of Odessa
- Siege of Sevastopol
- Siege of Tobruk

Naval engagements

- The Battle of the River Plate
- First Battle of Narvik
- Second Battle of Narvik
- Battle of the Atlantic
- Battle of Cape Matapan
- Battle of Pearl Harbor
- Battle of the Coral Sea
- Battle of Midway
- Battle of the Komandorski Islands
- Battle of Guadalcanal
- Battle of Leyte Gulf

Major bombing campaigns

- Warsaw
- Rotterdam
- Coventry
- London "The Blitz" and the V1 and V2 campaigns
- Baedeker raids
- Pearl Harbor
- Stalingrad 23 August 1942
- Helsinki February 1944, was mostly ineffective due to air defence and deception.
- Tallinn February - March 1944. Bombed by Soviet ADD. Large-scale damage.
- Narva March 1944. Evacuated town was destroyed by Soviet ADD.
- Tokyo bombed several times
- Hamburg
- Kassel
- Rostock Heinckel Airplane Construction Plant, Seaport, and City
- Lübeck
- Dresden
- Hiroshima One nuclear weapon dropped from a B-29, devastating a city.
- Nagasaki One nuclear weapon dropped from a B-29, devastating a city.
- Chungking

Defensive lines

- Atlantic Wall
- Gustav Line
- Maginot Line
- Mannerheim Line
- Siegfried Line
- GHQ Line
- Taunton Stop Line

Political and social aspects of the war

- Appeasement
- Occupation of Denmark
- German children 1933-1945
- Nazi children in the times of peace
- Gold Star Mothers Club for those mothers who lost their children, KIA
- United States Political Leadership in World War II

Production and logistics

The Axis lost, at least partly because the Allies, after the USA's and the Soviet Union's entrance into the war, had greater productive resources, and were able to turn these resources into greater numbers of soldiers and weapons than the Axis. This was further compounded by the comparative lack of equipment standardization among the Axis forces and its failure to use its large territorial (and associated resources) gains in an economy on war footing. For instance Germany was the only war economy which largely didn't make use of the labour of women.

- American tank production during World War II
- German tank production during World War II
- Soviet tank production during World War II
- WW2 aircraft production
- US weapon production (1942-1945)

Common military awards

Soviet Union

- Hero of the Soviet Union
- Order of Lenin
- Order of Suvorov
- Order of the October Revolution
- Order of the Red Banner
- Order of Victory

In Soviet Union orders and medals were also awarded to cities and military divisions.

United States

- Medal of Honor
- Silver Star
- Bronze Star Medal
- Distinguished Flying Cross
- Air Medal
- World War II Victory Medal
- Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal
- European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal
- American Campaign Medal

United Kingdom

- Victoria Cross
- Air Force Cross
- Order of the Bath
- Order of the British Empire
- Distinguished Flying Cross
- Africa Star
- Pacific Star

France and Belgium

- Croix de Guerre

Poland

- Cross of the Valorous
- Order of Polonia Restituta
- Virtuti Militari

Germany

- Iron Cross

- Italian aircraft production 1935 to 1945
- Italian fighter aces of World War Two
- Holocaust
- Sonderaktion Krakau
- Timeline of the Second World War
- Axis Powers
- Generalplan Ost
- World War
- British Women's Land Army
- Polish contribution to World War II
- Free French Forces
- Deutsches Afrika Korps
- Potsdam Agreement
- Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)
- The Dambusters raid
- Devil's Brigade
- Operation Shingle
- Pursuit of Nazi collaborators
- Special Operations Executive
- Female roles in the world wars
- Continuation War
- Lapland War

Lists

- List of World War II Theatres and Campaigns
- List of countries involved in World War II
- List of World War II casualties by country
- List of people associated with World War II
- List of World War II Veterans
- List of equipment used in World War II
- (*****)
- List of World War II aces by country
- Glossary of WWII German military terms

References

- Churchill, Winston (1948-53), The Second World War, 6 vols.
- Gilbert, Martin (1995) Second World War, Phoenix, ISBN 1857993462
- Keegan, John (1989) The Second World War
- Liddel Hart, Sir Basil (1970), History of the Second World War Cassel & Co; Pan Books,1973, London
- Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett (2000) A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War ISBN 067400163X
- Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won, Pimlico, 1995. ISBN 0712674535
- Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (1994) ISBN 0521443172

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World War Ii
Stalingrad.jpg
World War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the world's nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives.

The German invasion of Poland on September 1 1939 is the most common date in the West for the start of World War II. Others cite the Japanese invasion of China on July 7, 1937, as the war's beginning, or even the 1931 Japanese incursion into Manchuria. The war ended in Europe with the surrender of Germany on May 8, 1945, but continued in Asia and the Pacific until the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the subsequent Japanese surrender on September 2 1945.

There are several main causes of this conflict, most important being unforeseen consequences of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, and of the Great Depression, the worldwide economic disaster gave rise to nationalism and militarism. The lead-up to the war stretches back to (*****) of the 1930s, which slowly drew in more countries and culminated in massive battles with millions of combatants in the first half of the 1940s.

Fighting occurred across the Atlantic Ocean, in the European theatre in and around eastern and western Europe, in North Africa and the Middle East as well as across the Mediterranean Sea, and in the Pacific theatre in the Pacific, in Oceania and across much of East Asia and South East Asia.

It was the first war in which air power was a significant factor and civilian suffering and terror a primary military strategy. The war (*****) . This was partly due to its unprecedented scale, the first uses of mass aerial bombings against civilian populations (a policy initiated by the German Luftwaffe against Poland and later used more extensively against German cities by the Allies), and the first application of industrial-age technology to enable the mass killing of unwanted civilians in extermination camps; a significant part of the German war machine was diverted towards the execution of Jews, Roma, Slavs and other unwanted citizens in the Holocaust. In total, World War II caused the deaths of about two percent of the population of the world.

The war also saw the re-emergence of the United States from its isolationism, the destruction and rebuilding of Germany and Japan into major industrial powers, the advent of the atomic bomb, the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as global superpowers, closer integration of Europe in the form of a European Union, the dissolution of the League of Nations and creation of the United Nations, founded by the victorious Allies in order to prevent such a large and destructive conflict from ever happening again.

The post-war period set the stage for the Cold War, with the Western Allies and most of Western Europe including West Germany, Italy, the United States and United Kingdom forming NATO, and the Soviet Union and its Eastern Europe satellites creating the Warsaw Pact. The struggle for dominance between these two alliances would last until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

World War Ii

Participants

Causes

Prelude to War

European Theatre

Pacific Theatre

African and Middle Eastern Theatre

Consequences

World War II military history by country

Military engagements

Major Campaigns

Battles

Sieges

Naval engagements

Major bombing campaigns

See also

Defensive lines

Political and social aspects of the war

Production and logistics

Common military awards

Soviet Union

United States

United Kingdom

France and Belgium

Poland

Germany

Related articles

Lists

References

External links

Participants

Causes

Prelude to War

European Theatre

Pacific Theatre

African and Middle Eastern Theatre