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
