World
War II , also known as the Second World War, was a global war that was
underway by 1939 and ended in 1945. It involved the vast majority of the
world's nations including all of the great powers eventually forming two
opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. It was the most
widespread war in history, with more than 100 million people serving in
military units. During the war over 16 million
Americans served in the United States military, with 290,000 killed in action
and 670,000 wounded.Japan tried to neutralize
America's power in the Pacific by attacking Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941,
which catalyzed American support to enter the war and seek revenge. During
the first 2 years of the global conflict, the United States had maintained formal
neutrality, while supplying Britain, the Soviet Union and China with war
material through Lend-Lease, as well as deploying the US military to replace
the British invasion forces in Iceland. In a state of "total war", the major participants placed
their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service
of the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military
resources. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the
only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, it resulted in 50 million to over 75
million fatalities. These deaths make World War II by far the deadliest
conflict in human history.
The
world war is generally said to have begun on 1 September, 1939 with the
invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by
France and Britain. From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and
treaties, Germany formed the Axis alliance with Italy, conquering or subduing
much of continental Europe. Following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Germany and
the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories between themselves of
their European neighbours, including Poland. The United Kingdom and the other
members of the British Commonwealth were the only major Allied forces
continuing the fight against the Axis, with battles taking place in North
Africa as well as the long-running Battle of the Atlantic.
In December 1941, Japan joined
the Axis, attacked the United States and European territories in the Pacific
Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. In 1943, with a
series of German defeats in Eastern Europe, the Allied invasion of Italy, and
American victories in the Pacific, the Axis lost the initiative and undertook
strategic retreat on all fronts.
In 1944, the Western Allies invaded France, while the Soviet Union regained all
of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and
1945 the United States defeated the Japanese Navy and captured key Western
Pacific Islands.
The war in Europe finished in May 1945 when the Russians sacked Berlin and the
Germans surrended. The US, British and French troops, along with their other
allies, and the Soviets, took the surrender jointly. The War in the Pacific
ended in August 1945 following the US Atomic bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki
earlier that month. The Japanese were already sueing for peace prior to the
Atomic bombs being dropped. The Japanese surrended formerly on the USS Missouri
in Tokyo Bay with the US, Britain and Australia at the signing ceremony.