World War II (
WWII or
WW2), also known as the
Second World War, was a
global war. It is generally considered to have lasted from 1939 to 1945, although some conflicts in Asia that are commonly viewed as becoming part of the world war had begun earlier than 1939. 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, and directly involved more than 100 million people, from more than 30 different countries. In a state of "
total war", the major participants threw their entire
economic,
industrial, and
scientific capabilities behind the
war effort, erasing the distinction between
civilian and
militaryresources. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including
the Holocaust, the
massive use of air power to bomb enemy cities, and the
first use of nuclear weapons in combat, it resulted in an estimated
50 million to 85 million fatalities. These made World War II the
deadliest conflict in
human history.
[1]
The
Empire of Japan aimed to dominate
East Asia and was already
at warwith the
Republic of China in 1937,
[2] but 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 the
United Kingdom. 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 their European neighbours,
including Poland,
Finland and the
Baltic states. 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 and
East Africa as well as the long-running
Battle of the Atlantic. In June 1941, the European Axis powers launched
an invasion of the Soviet Union, giving a start to the
largest land theatre of war in history, which tied down the major part of the Axis' military forces for the rest of the war. 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.
The Axis advance was stopped in 1942, when Japan lost a critical battle at
Midway, near Hawaii, and Germany was defeated in
North Africa and then decisively, at
Stalingrad in Russia. In 1943, with a series of German defeats on the
Eastern Front, the
Allied invasion of Italy which brought about that nation's surrender, 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 Japanese began suffering major reverses in mainland Asia in
Burma and
South Central China whilst the United States defeated the
Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands.
World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world. The
United Nations (UN) was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The
great powers that were the victors of the war—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, and France—became the
permanent members of the
United Nations Security Council.
[3] The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the
Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers started to decline, while the
decolonisation of Asia and
Africa began. Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards
economic recovery. Political integration, especially
in Europe, emerged as an effort to stabilise postwar relations and cooperate more effectively in the Cold War.
[4]
Chronology
The start of the war is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the
German invasion of Poland; Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. Other dates for the beginning of war include the start of the
Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937.
[5]
Others follow the British historian
A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and the two wars merged in 1941. This article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the
Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935.
[6] The British historian
Antony Beevor views the beginning of the Second World War as the
Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the Mongolia, Soviet Union from May to September 1939.
[7]
The exact date of the war's end is also not universally agreed upon. It has been suggested that the war ended at the
armistice of 14 August 1945 (
V-J Day), rather than the formal surrender of Japan (2 September 1945); in some European histories, it ended on
V-E Day(8 May 1945). However, the
Treaty of Peace with Japan was not signed until 1951,
[8] and
that with Germany not until 1990.
[9]
Background
World War I had radically altered the political map, with the defeat of the
Central Powers—including
Austria-Hungary, Germany and the
Ottoman Empire—and the 1917
Bolshevik seizure of power in
Russia. Meanwhile, existing victorious Allies such as France, Belgium, Italy, Greece and Romania gained territories, whereas new states were created out of the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the
Russianand Ottoman Empires.
The German Empire was dissolved in the
German Revolution of 1918–1919, 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
rightand
left. Although Italy as an Entente ally made some territorial gains, Italian nationalists were angered that the
promises made by Britain and France to secure Italian entrance into the war were not fulfilled with the peace settlement. From 1922 to 1925, the
Fascistmovement 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 foreign policy aimed at forcefully forging Italy as a
world power, promising the creation of a "
New Roman Empire".
[13]
Adolf Hitler, after an
unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government in 1923, eventually became the
Chancellor of Germany in 1933. He abolished democracy, espousing a
radical, racially motivated revision of the world order, and soon began a massive
rearmament campaign.
[19] It was at this time that multiple political scientists began to predict that a second Great War might take place.
[20] Meanwhile, France, to secure its alliance,
allowed Italy a free hand in Ethiopia, which Italy desired as a colonial possession. The situation was aggravated in early 1935 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.
[21]
Hoping to contain Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy formed the
Stresa Front; however, in June 1935, the United Kingdom made an
independent naval agreement with Germany, easing prior restrictions. The Soviet Union, concerned due to
Germany's goals of capturing vast areas of eastern Europe, wrote 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.
[22] The United States, concerned with events in Europe and Asia, passed the
Neutrality Act in August.
[23] In October, Italy invaded Ethiopia, and Germany was the only major European nation to support the invasion. Italy subsequently dropped its objections to Germany's goal of absorbing
Austria.
[24]
Hitler defied the Versailles and
Locarno treaties by
remilitarising the
Rhineland in March 1936. He received little response from other European powers.
[25] When the
Spanish Civil War broke out in July, Hitler and Mussolini supported the fascist and authoritarian
Nationalist forces in their civil war against the Soviet-supported
Spanish Republic. Both sides used the conflict to test new weapons and methods of warfare,
[26] with the Nationalists winning the war in early 1939. In October 1936, Germany and Italy formed the
Rome–Berlin Axis. A month later, Germany and Japan signed the
Anti-Comintern Pact, which Italy would join in the following year. In China, after the
Xi'an Incident the Kuomintang and communist forces agreed on a ceasefire in order to present a
united front to oppose Japan.
[27]
Pre-war events
Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935)
The Second Italo–Abyssinian War was a brief
colonial war that began in October 1935 and ended in May 1936. The war was fought between the armed forces of the
Kingdom of Italy(
Regno d'Italia) and the armed forces of the
Ethiopian Empire (also known as
Abyssinia). The war resulted in the
military occupation of Ethiopia and its
annexation into the newly created colony of
Italian East Africa (
Africa Orientale Italiana, or AOI); in addition, it exposed the weakness of the
League of Nations as a force to preserve peace. Both Italy and Ethiopia were member nations, but the League did nothing when the former clearly violated the League's own
Article X.
[28]
Spanish Civil War (1936–39)
The
bombing of Guernica in 1937, sparked Europe-wide fears that the next war would be based on bombing of cities with very high civilian casualties
During the Spanish Civil War, Hitler and Mussolini lent military support to the
Nationalist rebels, led by General
Francisco Franco. The Soviet Union supported the existing government, the
Spanish Republic. Over 30,000 foreign volunteers, known as the
International Brigades, also fought against the Nationalists. Both Germany and the USSR used this
proxy war as an opportunity to test in combat their most advanced weapons and tactics. The
bombing of Guernica by the German
Condor Legion in April 1937 heightened widespread concerns that the next major war would include extensive terror bombing attacks on civilians.
[29][30] The Nationalists won the civil war in April 1939; Franco, now dictator, bargained with both sides during the Second World War, but never concluded any major agreements. He did send
volunteers to fight on the eastern front under German command but Spain remained neutral and did not allow either side to use its territory.
[31]
Japanese invasion of China (1937)
Japanese invasion of the Soviet Union and Mongolia (1938)
These clashes convinced some factions in the Japanese government that they should focus on conciliating the Soviet government to avoid interference in the war against China and instead turn their military attention southward, towards the US and European holdings in the Pacific, and also prevented the sacking of experienced Soviet military leaders such as
Georgy Zhukov, who would later play a vital role in the
defence of Moscow.
[39]
European occupations and agreements
German Foreign Minister
Ribbentropsigning the Nazi–Soviet non-aggression pact. Standing behind him are
Molotov and the Soviet leader
Joseph Stalin, 1939
In August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact,
[46] a non-aggression treaty with a secret protocol. The parties gave each other rights to "spheres of influence" (western
Poland and
Lithuania for Germany;
eastern Poland, Finland,
Estonia, Latvia and
Bessarabia for the USSR). It also raised the question of continuing Polish independence.
[47] The agreement was crucial to Hitler because it assured that Germany would not have to face the prospect of a two-front war, as it had in World War I, after it defeated Poland.
The situation reached a general crisis in late August as German troops continued to mobilise against the Polish border. In a private meeting with the Italian foreign minister,
Count Ciano, Hitler asserted that Poland was a "doubtful neutral" that needed to either yield to his demands or be "liquidated" to prevent it from drawing off German troops in the future "unavoidable" war with the Western democracies. He did not believe Britain or France would intervene in the conflict.
[48] On 23 August Hitler ordered the attack to proceed on 26 August, but upon hearing that Britain had concluded a formal mutual assistance pact with Poland and that Italy would maintain neutrality, he decided to delay it.
[49] In response to British pleas for direct negotiations, Germany demanded on 29 August that a Polish plenipotentiary immediately travel to Berlin to negotiate the handover of
Danzig and the
Polish Corridor to Germany as well as to agree to safeguard the German minority in Poland. The Poles refused to comply with this request and on the evening of 31 August Germany declared that it considered its proposals rejected.
[50]
Course of the war
War breaks out in Europe (1939–40)
On 6 October Hitler made a public peace overture to the United Kingdom and France, but said that the future of Poland was to be determined exclusively by Germany and the Soviet Union. Chamberlain rejected this on 12 October, saying "Past experience has shown that no reliance can be placed upon the promises of the present German Government."
[50] After this rejection Hitler ordered an immediate offensive against France, but his generals persuaded him to wait until May of next year.
In December 1939 the United Kingdom won a naval victory over Germany in the south Atlantic during the
Battle of the River Plate.
Western Europe (1940–41)
View of London after the German
"Blitz", 29 December 1940
On 19 July, Hitler again publicly offered to end the war, saying he had no desire to destroy the
British Empire. The United Kingdom rejected this, with Lord Halifax responding "there was in his speech no suggestion that peace must be based on justice, no word of recognition that the other nations of Europe had any right to self‑determination ..."
[82]
Following this, Germany began an
air superiority campaign over the United Kingdom (the
Battle of Britain) to prepare for
an invasion.
[83]The campaign failed, and the invasion plans were cancelled by September.
[83] Frustrated, and in part in response to repeated British air raids against Berlin, Germany began a strategic bombing offensive against British cities known as
the Blitz.
[84] However, the air attacks largely failed to either disrupt the British war effort or convince them to sue for peace.
Although Roosevelt had promised to keep the United States out of the war, he nevertheless took concrete steps to prepare for that eventuality. In December 1940 he accused Hitler of planning world conquest and ruled out negotiations as useless, calling for the US to become an "arsenal for democracy" and promoted the passage of
Lend-Lease aid to support the British war effort.
[82] In January 1941 secret high level staff talks with the British began for the purposes of determining how to defeat Germany should the US enter the war. They decided on a number of offensive policies, including an air offensive, the "early elimination" of Italy, raids, support of resistance groups, and the capture of positions to launch an offensive against Germany.
[91]
At the end of September 1940, the
Tripartite Pact united Japan, Italy and Germany to formalise the
Axis Powers. The Tripartite Pact stipulated that any country, with the exception of the Soviet Union, not in the war which attacked any Axis Power would be forced to go to war against all three.
[92] The Axis expanded in November 1940 when Hungary, Slovakia and
Romania joined the Tripartite Pact.
[93]Romania would make a
major contribution (as
did Hungary) to the Axis war against the USSR, partially to recapture
territory ceded to the USSR, partially to pursue its leader
Ion Antonescu's desire to combat communism.
[94]
Mediterranean (1940–41)
Italy began operations in the Mediterranean, initiating a
siege of Malta in June,
conquering British Somaliland in August, and
making an incursion into British-held Egypt in September 1940. In October 1940, Italy started the
Greco-Italian War due to Mussolini's jealousy of Hitler's success but within days was repulsed and pushed back into Albania, where a stalemate soon occurred.
[95] The United Kingdom responded to Greek requests for assistance by sending troops to Crete and providing air support to Greece. Hitler decided to take action against Greece when the weather improved to assist the Italians and prevent the British from gaining a foothold in the Balkans, to strike against the British naval dominance of the Mediterranean, and to secure his hold on Romanian oil.
[96]
By late March 1941, following
Bulgaria's signing of the Tripartite Pact, the Germans were in position to intervene in Greece. Plans were changed, however, due to developments in neighbouring
Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav government had signed the
Tripartite Pact on 25 March, only to be overthrown two days later by a
British-encouraged coup. Hitler viewed the new regime as hostile and immediately decided to eliminate it. On 6 April Germany simultaneously invaded both
Yugoslavia and
Greece, making rapid progress and forcing both nations to surrender within the month. The British were driven from the Balkans after Germany
conquered the Greek island of Creteby the end of May.
[102] Although the Axis victory was swift,
bitter partisan warfare subsequently broke out against the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia, which continued until the end of the war.
Axis attack on the USSR (1941)
Animation of the WWII European Theatre
With the situation in Europe and Asia relatively stable, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union made preparations. With the Soviets wary of mounting tensions with Germany and the Japanese planning to take advantage of the European War by seizing resource-rich European possessions in
Southeast Asia, the two powers signed the
Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1941.
[105] By contrast, the Germans were steadily making preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union, amassing forces on the Soviet border.
[106]
Hitler believed that Britain's refusal to end the war was based on the hope that the United States and the Soviet Union would enter the war against Germany sooner or later.
[107] He accordingly decided to try to strengthen Germany's relations with the Soviets, or failing that, to attack and eliminate them as a factor. In November 1940
negotiations took place to determine if the Soviet Union would join the Tripartite Pact. The Soviets showed some interest, but asked for concessions from Finland, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Japan that Germany considered unacceptable. On 18 December 1940 Hitler issued the directive to prepare for an invasion of the Soviet Union.
By October, when Axis
operational objectives in Ukraine and the Baltic region were achieved, with only the sieges of
Leningrad[121] and
Sevastopol continuing,
[122] a major
offensive against Moscow had been renewed. After two months of fierce battles, the German army almost reached the outer suburbs of Moscow, where the exhausted troops
[123] were forced to suspend their offensive.
[124] Large territorial gains were made by Axis forces, but their campaign had failed to achieve its main objectives: two key cities remained in Soviet hands, the Soviet
capability to resist was not broken, and the Soviet Union retained a considerable part of its military potential. The
blitzkrieg phase of the war in Europe had ended.
[125]
By early December, freshly mobilised
reserves[126] allowed the Soviets to achieve numerical parity with Axis troops.
[127] This, as well as
intelligence data that established a minimal number of Soviet troops in the East sufficient to prevent any attack by the Japanese
Kwantung Army,
[128] allowed the Soviets to begin a
massive counter-offensive that started on 5 December all along the front and pushed German troops 100–250 kilometres (62–155 mi) west.
[129]
War breaks out in the Pacific (1941)
In 1939 the United States had renounced its trade treaty with Japan and beginning with an
aviation gasoline ban in July 1940 Japan had become subject to increasing economic pressure.
[82] During this time, Japan launched its
first attack against Changsha, a strategically important Chinese city, but was repulsed by late September.
[130] Despite several offensives by both sides, the war between China and Japan was stalemated by 1940. In order to increase pressure on China by blocking supply routes, and to better position Japanese forces in the event of a war with the Western powers, Japan had
occupied northern Indochina[131] Afterwards, the United States
embargoed iron, steel and mechanical parts against Japan.
[132] Other sanctions soon followed.
German successes in Europe encouraged Japan to increase pressure on European governments in south-east Asia. The Dutch government agreed to provide Japan some oil supplies from the
Dutch East Indies, but negotiations for additional access to their resources ended in failure in June 1941.
[137] In July 1941 Japan sent troops to southern Indochina, thus threatening British and Dutch possessions in the Far East. The United States, United Kingdom and other Western governments reacted to this move with a freeze on Japanese assets and a total oil embargo.
[138][139]
Since early 1941 the United States and Japan had been engaged in negotiations in an attempt to improve their strained relations and end the war in China. During these negotiations Japan advanced a number of proposals which were dismissed by the Americans as inadequate.
[140] At the same time the US, Britain, and the Netherlands engaged in secret discussions for the joint defence of their territories in the event of a Japanese attack against any of them.
[141] Roosevelt reinforced
the Philippines (an American possession since 1898) and warned Japan that the US would react to Japanese attacks against any "neighboring countries".
[141]
Frustrated at the lack of progress and feeling the pinch of the American-British-Dutch sanctions, Japan prepared for war. On 20 November it presented an interim proposal as its final offer. It called for the end of American aid to China and the supply of oil and other resources to Japan. In exchange they promised not to launch any attacks in Southeast Asia and to withdraw their forces from their threatening positions in southern Indochina.
[140] The American counter-proposal of 26 November required that Japan evacuate all of China without conditions and conclude non-aggression pacts with all Pacific powers.
[142] That meant Japan was essentially forced to choose between abandoning its ambitions in China, or seizing the natural resources it needed in the Dutch East Indies by force;
[143] the Japanese military did not consider the former an option, and many officers considered the oil embargo an unspoken declaration of war.
[144]
These attacks led the United States,
Britain, China, Australia and several other states to formally declare war on Japan, whereas the Soviet Union, being heavily involved in large-scale hostilities with European Axis countries, preferred to maintain a neutrality agreement with Japan.
[148] Germany, followed by the other Axis states, declared war on the United States in solidarity with Japan, citing as justification the American attacks on German submarines and merchant ships that had been ordered by Roosevelt.
[108]
Axis advance stalls (1942–43)
During 1942 Allied officials debated on the appropriate
grand strategy to pursue. All agreed that defeating Germany was the primary objective. The Americans favoured a straightforward, large-scale attack on Germany through France. The Soviets were also demanding a second front. The British, on the other hand, argued that military operations should target peripheral areas in order to throw a "ring" around Germany which would wear out German strength, lead to increasing demoralisation, and bolster resistance forces. Germany itself would be subject to a heavy bombing campaign. An offensive against Germany would then be launched primarily by Allied armour without using large-scale armies.
[150] Eventually, the British persuaded the Americans that a landing in France was infeasible in 1942 and they should instead focus on driving the Axis out of North Africa.
[151]
At the
Casablanca Conference in early 1943 the Allies issued a declaration declaring that they would not negotiate with their enemies and demanded their
unconditional surrender. The British and Americans agreed to continue to press the initiative in the Mediterranean by invading Sicily to fully secure the Mediterranean supply routes.
[152] Although the British argued for further operations in the Balkans to bring Turkey into the war, in May 1943 the Americans extracted a British commitment to limit Allied operations in the Mediterranean to an invasion of the Italian mainland and to invade France in 1944.
[153]
Pacific (1942–43)
Map of Japanese military advances, until mid-1942
By the end of April 1942, Japan and its ally Thailand had almost fully conquered
Burma,
Malaya,
the Dutch East Indies,
Singapore, and
Rabaul, inflicting severe losses on Allied troops and taking a large number of prisoners.
[154] Despite stubborn resistance at
Corregidor, the
US possession of the Philippines was
eventually captured in May 1942, forcing its government into exile.
[155] On 16 April, in Burma 7,000 British soldiers were encircled by the Japanese 33rd Division during the
Battle of Yenangyaung and rescued by the Chinese 38th Division.
[156] Japanese forces also achieved naval victories in the
South China Sea,
Java Sea and
Indian Ocean,
[157] and
bombed the Allied naval base at
Darwin, Australia. The only real Allied success against Japan was a Chinese
victory at Changsha in early January 1942.
[158] These easy victories over unprepared opponents left Japan overconfident, as well as overextended.
[159]
Both plans started in July, but by mid-September,
the Battle for Guadalcanal took priority for the Japanese, and troops in New Guinea were ordered to withdraw from the Port Moresby area to the
northern part of the island, where they faced Australian and United States troops in the
Battle of Buna-Gona.
[165] Guadalcanal soon became a focal point for both sides with heavy commitments of troops and ships in the battle for Guadalcanal. By the start of 1943, the Japanese were defeated on the island and
withdrew their troops.
[166] In Burma, Commonwealth forces mounted two operations. The first,
an offensive into the Arakan region in late 1942, went disastrously, forcing a retreat back to India by May 1943.
[167] The second was the
insertion of irregular forces behind Japanese front-lines in February which, by the end of April, had achieved mixed results.
[168]
Eastern Front (1942–43)
Despite considerable losses, in early 1942 Germany and its allies stopped a major Soviet offensive in Central and Southern Russia, keeping most territorial gains they had achieved during the previous year.
[169] In May the Germans defeated Soviet offensives in the
Kerch Peninsula and at
Kharkiv,
[170] and then launched their main
summer offensive against southern Russia in June 1942, to seize the
oil fields of the Caucasus and occupy
Kuban steppe, while maintaining positions on the northern and central areas of the front. The Germans split
Army Group South into two groups:
Army Group A struck lower
Don River while
Army Group B struck south-east to the Caucasus, towards
Volga River.
[171] The Soviets decided to make their stand at Stalingrad, which was in the path of the advancing German armies.
Western Europe/Atlantic & Mediterranean (1942–43)
An American
B-17 bombing raid, by the
8th Air Force, on the Focke Wulf factory in Germany, 9 October 1943
Exploiting poor American naval command decisions, the
German navy ravaged Allied shipping off the American Atlantic coast.
[176] By November 1941, Commonwealth forces had launched a counter-offensive,
Operation Crusader, in North Africa, and reclaimed all the gains the Germans and Italians had made.
[177] In North Africa, the Germans launched an offensive in January, pushing the British back to positions at the
Gazala Line by early February,
[178] followed by a temporary lull in combat which Germany used to prepare for their upcoming offensives.
[179] Concerns the Japanese might use bases in Vichy-held
Madagascar caused the British to
invade the island in early May 1942.
[180] An Axis
offensive in Libya forced an Allied retreat deep inside Egypt until Axis forces were
stopped at El Alamein.
[181] On the Continent, raids of Allied
commandos on strategic targets, culminating in the disastrous
Dieppe Raid,
[182] demonstrated the Western Allies' inability to launch an invasion of continental Europe without much better preparation, equipment, and operational security.
[183]
Allies gain momentum (1943–44)
In the Soviet Union, both the Germans and the Soviets spent the spring and early summer of 1943 making preparations for large offensives in Central Russia. On 4 July 1943, Germany
attacked Soviet forces around the Kursk Bulge. Within a week, German forces had exhausted themselves against the Soviets' deeply echeloned and well-constructed defences
[194] and, for the first time in the war, Hitler cancelled the operation before it had achieved tactical or operational success.
[195] This decision was partially affected by the Western Allies'
invasion of Sicily launched on 9 July which, combined with previous Italian failures, resulted in the ousting and arrest of Mussolini later that month.
[196] Also in July 1943 the British
firebombed Hamburg killing over 40,000 people.
On 12 July 1943, the Soviets launched their own
counter-offensives, thereby dispelling any hopes of the German Army for victory or even stalemate in the east. The Soviet victory at Kursk heralded the downfall of German superiority,
[197] giving the Soviet Union the initiative on the Eastern Front.
[198][199] The Germans attempted to stabilise their eastern front along the hastily fortified
Panther-Wotan line, however, the Soviets broke through it at
Smolenskand by the
Lower Dnieper Offensives.
[200]
Allies close in (1944)
In September 1944, Soviet
Red Army troops advanced into
Yugoslavia and forced the rapid withdrawal of the German Army Groups
Eand
F in
Greece,
Albania and Yugoslavia to rescue them from being cut off.
[230] By this point, the Communist-led
Partisans under Marshal
Josip Broz Tito, who had led an
increasingly successful guerrilla campaign against the occupation since 1941, controlled much of the territory of Yugoslavia and were engaged in delaying efforts against the German forces further south. In northern
Serbia, the
Red Army, with limited support from
Bulgarian forces, assisted the Partisans in a joint
liberation of the capital city of Belgrade on 20 October. A few days later, the Soviets launched a
massive assault against
German-occupied Hungary that lasted until
the fall of Budapest in February 1945.
[231] In contrast with impressive Soviet victories in the Balkans, the
bitter Finnish resistance to the
Soviet offensive in the
Karelian Isthmus denied the Soviets occupation of Finland and led to the signing of
Soviet-Finnish armistice on relatively mild conditions,
[232][233] with a subsequent
shift to the Allied side by Finland.
By the start of July, Commonwealth forces in Southeast Asia had repelled the Japanese sieges in Assam, pushing the Japanese back to the
Chindwin River[234] while the Chinese captured Myitkyina. In China, the Japanese were having greater successes, having finally captured Changsha in mid-June and the city of
Hengyang by early August.
[235] Soon after, they further invaded the province of Guangxi, winning major engagements against Chinese forces at
Guilin and Liuzhou by the end of November
[236] and successfully linking up their forces in China and Indochina by the middle of December.
[237]
Axis collapse, Allied victory (1944–45)
On 16 December 1944, Germany attempted its last desperate measure for success on the Western Front by using most of its remaining reserves to launch
a massive counter-offensive in the Ardennes to attempt to split the Western Allies, encircle large portions of Western Allied troops and capture their primary supply port at
Antwerp in order to prompt a political settlement.
[239] By January, the offensive had been repulsed with no strategic objectives fulfilled.
[239] In Italy, the Western Allies remained stalemated at the German defensive line. In mid-January 1945, the Soviets and Poles attacked in Poland,
pushing from the Vistula to the Oder river in Germany, and
overran East Prussia.
[240] On 4 February, US, British, and Soviet leaders met for the
Yalta Conference. They agreed on the occupation of post-war Germany, and on when the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan.
[241]
In the Pacific theatre, American forces accompanied by the forces of the
Philippine Commonwealth advanced
in the Philippines,
clearing Leyte by the end of April 1945. They
landed on Luzon in January 1945 and
captured Manila in March following a battle which reduced the city to ruins. Fighting continued on Luzon,
Mindanao, and other islands of the Philippines until the
end of the war.
[248] On the night of 9–10 March,
B-29 bombers of the
US Army Air Forces struck Tokyo with
incendiary bombs, which killed 100,000 people within a few hours. Over the next five months, American bombers
firebombed 66 other Japanese cities, causing the untold numbers of destruction of buildings and the deaths between 350,000-500,000 Japanese civilians.
[249]
Japanese foreign affairs minister
Shigemitsu signs the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on board the
USS Missouri, 2 September 1945
In May 1945, Australian troops
landed in Borneo, overrunning the oilfields there. British, American, and Chinese forces defeated the Japanese in northern
Burma in March, and the British pushed on to reach
Rangoon by 3 May.
[250] Chinese forces started to counterattack in
Battle of West Hunan that occurred between 6 April and 7 June 1945. American forces also moved towards Japan, taking
Iwo Jima by March, and
Okinawa by the end of June.
[251] At the same time American bombers were destroying Japanese cities, American submarines
cut offJapanese imports, drastically reducing Japan's ability to supply its overseas forces.
[252]
As Japan continued to ignore the
Potsdam terms issued to them on 27 July, the United States
dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of
Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in early August. Like the Japanese cities previously bombed by American airmen, the US and its allies justified the atomic bombings as military necessity in order to avoid
invading the Japanese home islands which would cost the lives of between 250,000-500,000 Allied troops and millions of Japanese troops and civilians.
[256] Between the two bombings, the Soviets, pursuant to the Yalta agreement,
invaded Japanese-held Manchuria, and quickly defeated the
Kwantung Army, which was the largest Japanese fighting force.
[257][258] The Red Army also captured
Sakhalin Island and the
Kuril Islands. On 15 August 1945
Japan surrendered, with the
surrender documents finally signed aboard the deck of the American battleship
USS Missouri on 2 September 1945, ending the war.
[259]
Aftermath
The Allies established occupation administrations in
Austria and
Germany. The former became a neutral state, non-aligned with any political bloc. The latter was divided into western and eastern occupation zones controlled by the Western Allies and the USSR, accordingly. A
denazification program in Germany led to the
prosecution of Nazi war criminals and the removal of ex-Nazis from power, although this policy moved towards amnesty and re-integration of ex-Nazis into West German society.
[260]
In an effort to maintain peace,
[267] the Allies formed the United Nations, which officially came into existence on 24 October 1945,
[268] and adopted the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, as a common standard for all member nations.
[269] The great powers that were the victors of the war—the United States, Soviet Union, China, Britain, and France—formed the permanent members of the UN's
Security Council.
[3] The five permanent members remain so to the present, although there have been two seat changes,
between the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China in 1971, and between the Soviet Union and its successor state, the Russian Federation, following the
dissolution of the Soviet Union. The alliance between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union had begun to deteriorate even before the war was over.
[270]
Germany had been
de facto divided, and two independent states,
Federal Republic of Germany and
German Democratic Republic[271] were created within the borders of Allied and Soviet occupation zones, accordingly. The rest of Europe was also divided onto Western and Soviet
spheres of influence.
[272] Most eastern and central European countries fell into the Soviet sphere, which led to establishment of Communist led regimes, with full or partial support of the Soviet occupation authorities. As a result,
Poland,
Hungary,
East Germany,
[273] Czechoslovakia,
Romania, and
Albania[274] became
Soviet Satellite states. Communist
Yugoslavia conducted a fully independent policy, causing tension with the USSR.
[275]
Post-war division of the world was formalised by two international military alliances, the United States-led
NATO and the Soviet-led
Warsaw Pact;
[276] the long period of political tensions and military competition between them, the
Cold War, would be accompanied by an unprecedented arms race and proxy wars.
[277]
The global economy suffered heavily from the war, although participating nations were affected differently. The US emerged much richer than any other nation; it had a
baby boom and by 1950 its gross domestic product per person was much higher than that of any of the other powers and it dominated the world economy.
[283] The UK and US pursued a policy of
industrial disarmament in Western Germanyin the years 1945–1948.
[284] Due to international trade interdependencies this led to European economic stagnation and delayed European recovery for several years.
[285][286]
Recovery began with the mid-1948
currency reform in Western Germany, and was sped up by the liberalisation of European economic policy that the
Marshall plan (1948–1951) both directly and indirectly caused.
[287][288] The post 1948 West German recovery has been called the
German economic miracle.
[289] Also the Italian
[290] and French economies rebounded.
[291] By contrast, the United Kingdom was in a state of economic ruin,
[292] and although it received a quarter of the total Marshall Plan assistance, more than any other European country,
[293] continued relative economic decline for decades.
[294]
The Soviet Union, despite enormous human and material losses, also experienced rapid increase in production in the immediate post-war era.
[295] Japan experienced
incredibly rapid economic growth, becoming one of the most powerful economies in the world by the 1980s.
[296] China returned to its pre-war industrial production by 1952.
[297]
Impact
Casualties and war crimes
Estimates for the total casualties of the war vary, because many deaths went unrecorded. Most suggest that some 75 million people died in the war, including about
20 million soldiers and 40 million civilians.
[298][299][300] Many civilians died because of
disease,
starvation,
massacres,
mass-bombing, and deliberate
genocide. The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the war,
[301] including 8.7 million military and 19 million civilian deaths. The largest portion of military dead were ethnic
Russians (5,756,000), followed by ethnic
Ukrainians (1,377,400).
[302] One of every four Soviet citizens was killed or wounded in that war.
[303] Germany sustained 5.3 million military losses, mostly on the Eastern Front and during the final battles in Germany.
[304]
Of the total deaths in World War II, approximately 85 percent—mostly Soviet and Chinese—were on the Allied side and 15 percent on the Axis side. Many of these deaths were caused by war crimes
committed by German and
Japanese forces in occupied territories. An estimated 11
[305] to 17 million
[306] civilians died as a direct or indirect result of Nazi ideological policies, including the systematic genocide of around six million
Jews during the
Holocaust along with a further five million ethnic
Poles and other
Slavs, including Ukrainians and
Belarusians,
[307]Roma,
homosexuals and other ethnic and minority groups.
[306]
The best-known Japanese atrocity was the
Nanking Massacre, in which several hundred thousand Chinese civilians were raped and murdered.
[310] Between 3 million to more than 10 million civilians, mostly Chinese, were killed by the Japanese occupation forces.
[311]Mitsuyoshi Himeta reported 2.7 million casualties occurred during the
Sankō Sakusen. General
Yasuji Okamura implemented the policy in Heipei and
Shantung.
[312]
Concentration camps, slave labour, and genocide
In addition to Nazi
concentration camps, the Soviet
gulags (
labour camps) led to the death of citizens of occupied countries such as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, as well as German
prisoners of war (POWs) and even Soviet citizens who had been or were thought to be supporters of the Nazis.
[327] Sixty percent of
Soviet POWs of the Germans died during the war.
[328] Richard Overy gives the number of 5.7 million Soviet POWs. Of those, 57 percent died or were killed, a total of 3.6 million.
[329] Soviet ex-POWs and repatriated civilians were treated with great suspicion as potential Nazi collaborators, and some of them were sent to the Gulag upon being checked by the NKVD.
[330]
Japanese
prisoner-of-war camps, many of which were used as labour camps, also had high death rates. The
International Military Tribunal for the Far East found the death rate of Western prisoners was 27.1 percent (for American POWs, 37 percent),
[331] seven times that of POWs under the Germans and Italians.
[332] While 37,583 prisoners from the UK, 28,500 from the Netherlands, and 14,473 from United States were released after the
surrender of Japan, the number for the Chinese was only 56.
[333]
According to historian Zhifen Ju, at least five million Chinese civilians from northern China and Manchukuo were enslaved between 1935 and 1941 by the
East Asia Development Board, or
Kōain, for work in mines and war industries. After 1942, the number reached 10 million.
[334] The US Library of Congress estimates that in
Java, between 4 and 10 million
romusha (Japanese: "manual laborers"), were forced to work by the Japanese military. About 270,000 of these Javanese labourers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia, and only 52,000 were repatriated to Java.
[335]
On 19 February 1942, Roosevelt signed
Executive Order 9066, interning about 100,000 Japanese living on the West Coast. Canada had a similar program.
[336][337] In addition, 14,000 German and Italian citizens who had been assessed as being security risks were also interned.
[338]
Occupation
A mass grave inside the German Nazi
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; where many captured Jewish, Polish, and Soviet inmates were sent to perform
forced labourwork and later exterminated, 1945
In Europe, occupation came under two forms. In Western, Northern and Central Europe (France, Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, and the
annexed portions of Czechoslovakia) Germany established economic policies through which it collected roughly 69.5 billion
reichmarks (27.8 billion US Dollars) by the end of the war; this figure does not include the
sizeable plunder of industrial products, military equipment, raw materials and other goods.
[341] Thus, the income from occupied nations was over 40 percent of the income Germany collected from taxation, a figure which increased to nearly 40 percent of total German income as the war went on.
[342]
In the East, the much hoped for bounties of
Lebensraum were never attained as fluctuating front-lines and Soviet
scorched earth policies denied resources to the German invaders.
[343]Unlike in the West, the
Nazi racial policy encouraged excessive brutality against what it considered to be the "
inferior people" of Slavic descent; most German advances were thus followed by
mass executions.
[344] Although
resistance groups did form in most occupied territories, they did not significantly hamper German operations in either the East
[345] or the West
[346] until late 1943.
In Asia, Japan termed nations under its occupation as being part of the
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, essentially a Japanese
hegemony which it claimed was for purposes of liberating colonised peoples.
[347] Although Japanese forces were originally welcomed as liberators from European domination in many territories, their excessive brutality turned local public opinions against them within weeks.
[348] During Japan's initial conquest it captured 4,000,000 barrels (640,000 m
3) of oil (~5.5×10
5 tonnes) left behind by retreating Allied forces, and by 1943 was able to get production in the Dutch East Indies up to 50 million barrels (~6.8
×106 t), 76 percent of its 1940 output rate.
[348]
Home fronts and production
In Europe, before the outbreak of the war, the Allies had significant advantages in both population and economics. In 1938, the Western Allies (United Kingdom, France, Poland and British Dominions) had a 30 percent larger population and a 30 percent higher gross domestic product than the European Axis (Germany and Italy); if colonies are included, it then gives the Allies more than a 5:1 advantage in population and nearly 2:1 advantage in GDP.
[349] In Asia at the same time, China had roughly six times the population of Japan, but only an 89 percent higher GDP; this is reduced to three times the population and only a 38 percent higher GDP if Japanese colonies are included.
[349]
Though the Allies' economic and population advantages were largely mitigated during the initial rapid blitzkrieg attacks of Germany and Japan, they became the decisive factor by 1942, after the United States and Soviet Union joined the Allies, as the war largely settled into one of attrition.
[350] While the Allies' ability to out-produce the Axis is often attributed to the Allies having more access to natural resources, other factors, such as Germany and Japan's reluctance to employ women in the
labour force,
[351] Allied
strategic bombing,
[352] and Germany's late shift to a
war economy[353] contributed significantly. Additionally, neither Germany nor Japan planned to fight a protracted war, and were not equipped to do so.
[354] To improve their production, Germany and Japan used millions of
slave labourers;
[355] Germany used about 12 million people, mostly from Eastern Europe,
[326] while
Japan pressed more than 18 million people in Far East Asia.
[334][335]
Advances in technology and warfare
Aircraft were used for
reconnaissance, as
fighters,
bombers, and
ground-support, and each role was advanced considerably. Innovation included
airlift (the capability to quickly move limited high-priority supplies, equipment, and personnel);
[356] and of
strategic bombing (the bombing of enemy industrial and population centers to destroy the enemy's ability to wage war).
[357] Anti-aircraft weaponry also advanced, including defences such as
radar and surface-to-air artillery, such as the German
88 mm gun. The use of the
jet aircraft was pioneered and, though late introduction meant it had little impact, it led to jets becoming standard in worldwide air forces.
[358]
In the Atlantic,
escort carriers proved to be a vital part of Allied convoys, increasing the effective protection radius and helping to close the
Mid-Atlantic gap.
[362] Carriers were also more economical than battleships due to the relatively low cost of aircraft
[363] and their not requiring to be as heavily armoured.
[364]Submarines, which had proved to be an effective weapon during the First World War
[365] were anticipated by all sides to be important in the second. The British focused development on
anti-submarine weaponry and tactics, such as
sonar and convoys, while Germany focused on improving its offensive capability, with designs such as the
Type VII submarine and
wolfpack tactics.
[366] Gradually, improving Allied technologies such as the
Leigh light,
hedgehog,
squid, and
homing torpedoes proved victorious.
Land warfare changed from the static front lines of World War I to increased mobility and
combined arms. The
tank, which had been used predominantly for infantry support in the First World War, had evolved into the primary weapon.
[367] In the late 1930s, tank design was considerably more advanced than it had been during World War I,
[368] and
advances continued throughout the war in increasing speed, armour and firepower.
At the start of the war, most commanders thought enemy tanks should be met by tanks with superior specifications.
[369] This idea was challenged by the poor performance of the relatively light early tank guns against armour, and German doctrine of avoiding tank-versus-tank combat. This, along with Germany's use of combined arms, were among the key elements of their highly successful blitzkrieg tactics across Poland and France.
[367] Many means of
destroying tanks, including
indirect artillery,
anti-tank guns (both towed and
self-propelled),
mines, short-ranged infantry antitank weapons, and other tanks were utilised.
[369] Even with large-scale mechanisation, infantry remained the backbone of all forces,
[370] and throughout the war, most infantry were equipped similarly to World War I.
[371]
The portable machine gun spread, a notable example being the German
MG42, and various
submachine guns which were suited to
close combat in urban and jungle settings.
[371] The
assault rifle, a late war development incorporating many features of the rifle and submachine gun, became the standard postwar infantry weapon for most armed forces.
[372][373]
Most major belligerents attempted to solve the problems of complexity and security presented by using large
codebooks for
cryptography with the use of
ciphering machines, the most well known being the German
Enigma machine.
[374] SIGINT (
signals
intelligence) was the countering process of decryption, with the notable examples being the Allied breaking of
Japanese naval codes[375] and British
Ultra, a
pioneering method for decoding Enigma benefiting from information given to Britain by the
Polish Cipher Bureau, which had been decoding early versions of Enigma for seven years before the war.
[376] Another aspect of
military intelligencewas the use of
deception, which the Allies used to great effect, such as in operations
Mincemeat and
Bodyguard.
[375][377] Other technological and engineering feats achieved during, or as a result of, the war include the world's first programmable computers (
Z3,
Colossus, and
ENIAC),
guided missiles and
modern rockets, the
Manhattan Project's development of
nuclear weapons,
operations research and the development of
artificial harbours and
oil pipelines under the English Channel.
[378]
See also
- Documentaries
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