Worl War II

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.