World War II

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"The Second World War" and "WWII" redirect here. For other uses, see The Second World War
(disambiguation), WWII (disambiguation), and World War II (disambiguation).

"WW2" redirects here. Not to be confused with WWW2.

World War II

in the

Clockwise from top left:

Chinese forces in the Battle of ChangdeAustralian 25-pounder guns during the First Battle of El
AlameinGerman Stuka dive bombers on the Eastern Front in December 1943US naval force in the
Lingayen GulfWilhelm Keitel signing the German Instrument of SurrenderSoviet troops in the Battle of
Stalingrad

Date

1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945[a]

(6 years and 1 day)

Location

EuropePacificAtlanticIndian OceanSouth-East AsiaChinaJapanMiddle EastMediterraneanNorth

Result

Allied victory

Fall of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan

Allied military occupations of Germany, Japan, Austria and Korea

Beginning of the Nuclear Age

Dissolution of the League of Nations and creation of the United Nations

Participants

Allies Axis

Commanders and leaders

Main Allied leaders:

Soviet Union Joseph Stalin

United States Franklin D. Roosevelt

United Kingdom Winston Churchill

Republic of China (1912–1949) Chiang Kai-shek

Main Axis leaders:

Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler

Empire of Japan Hirohito

Fascist Italy (1922–1943) Benito Mussolini

Casualties and losses

Military dead:

Over 16,000,000

Civilian dead:

Over 45,000,000

Total dead:

Over 61,000,000

(1937–1945)

...further details

Military dead:

Over 8,000,000

Civilian dead:

Over 4,000,000

Total dead:
Over 12,000,000

(1937–1945)

...further details

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Campaigns of World War II

World War II

Alphabetical indices

ABCDEFGHIJKLM

NOPQRSTUVWXYZ

0–9

Navigation

CampaignsCountriesEquipment

TimelineOutlineListsHistoriography

PortalCategoryBibliography

vte

World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a global war that lasted
from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great
powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. In a total war directly
involving more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries, the major participants threw
their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction
between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic
bombing of population centres and the only two uses of nuclear weapons in war. World War II was by
far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, a majority being
civilians. Tens of millions of people died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation,
massacres, and disease. In the wake of the Axis defeat, Germany and Japan were occupied, and war
crimes tribunals were conducted against German and Japanese leaders.

The exact causes of World War II are debated, but contributing factors included the Second Italo-
Ethiopian War, the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Soviet–Japanese border
conflicts and rising European tensions since World War I. World War II is generally considered to have
begun on 1 September 1939, when Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, invaded Poland. The United
Kingdom and France subsequently declared war on Germany on 3 September. Under the Molotov–
Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union had partitioned Poland and marked out
their "spheres of influence" across Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania. From late 1939 to
early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental
Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan (along with other countries later on).
Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, and the fall of France in mid-1940, the
war continued primarily between the European Axis powers and the British Empire, with war in the
Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz of the UK, and the Battle of the Atlantic. On 22 June 1941,
Germany led the European Axis powers in an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the Eastern Front,
the largest land theatre of war in history.

Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with the Republic of China by 1937. In
December 1941, Japan attacked American and British territories with near-simultaneous offensives
against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific, including an attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor which
resulted in the United States declaring war against Japan. Therefore the European Axis powers declared
war on the United States in solidarity. Japan soon captured much of the western Pacific, but its advances
were halted in 1942 after losing the critical Battle of Midway; later, Germany and Italy were defeated in
North Africa and at Stalingrad in the Soviet Union. Key setbacks in 1943—including a series of German
defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and the Italian mainland, and Allied offensives
in the Pacific—cost the Axis powers their initiative and forced it into strategic retreat on all fronts. In
1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its
territorial losses and turned towards Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945, Japan suffered
reversals in mainland Asia, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key western Pacific
islands.

The war in Europe concluded with the liberation of German-occupied territories, and the invasion of
Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the fall of Berlin to Soviet troops,
Hitler's suicide and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. Following the Potsdam
Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender on its terms, the United
States dropped the first atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima, on 6 August, and Nagasaki,
on 9 August. Faced with an imminent invasion of the Japanese archipelago, the possibility of additional
atomic bombings, and the Soviet’s declared entry into the war against Japan on the eve of invading
Manchuria, Japan announced on 15 August its intention to surrender, then signed the surrender
document on 2 September 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies.

World War II changed the political alignment and social structure of the globe. The United Nations (UN)
was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts,[1] with the victorious
great powers—China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States—becoming
the permanent members of its Security Council. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival
superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century-long Cold War. In the wake of European
devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia.
Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery and expansion.
Political and economic integration, especially in Europe, began as an effort to forestall future hostilities,
end pre-war enmities and forge a sense of common identity.
Contents

1 Start and end dates

2 Background

2.1 Europe

2.2 Asia

3 Pre-war events

3.1 Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935)

3.2 Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)

3.3 Japanese invasion of China (1937)

3.4 Soviet–Japanese border conflicts

3.5 European occupations and agreements

4 Course of the war

4.1 War breaks out in Europe (1939–40)

4.2 Western Europe (1940–41)

4.3 Mediterranean (1940–41)

4.4 Axis attack on the Soviet Union (1941)

4.5 War breaks out in the Pacific (1941)

4.6 Axis advance stalls (1942–43)

4.7 Allies gain momentum (1943–44)

4.8 Allies close in (1944)

4.9 Axis collapse, Allied victory (1944–45)

5 Aftermath

6 Impact

6.1 Casualties and war crimes

6.2 Genocide, concentration camps, and slave labour

6.3 Occupation

6.4 Home fronts and production

7 See also

8 Notes

9 Citations

10 References

11 External links

Start and end dates

See also: Timeline of World War II

Timelines of World War II

Chronological

Prelude

(in Asiain Europe)

1939194019411942

194319441945 onwards

By topic

Diplomacy

Declarations of war

EngagementsOperations

Battle of Europe air operations

Eastern FrontManhattan Project

United Kingdom home front

Surrender of the Axis armies

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It is generally considered that in Europe World War II started on 1 September 1939,[2][3] beginning with
the German invasion of Poland and the United Kingdom and France's declaration of war on Germany
two days later. The dates for the beginning of the war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-
Japanese War on 7 July 1937,[4][5] or the earlier Japanese invasion of Manchuria, on 19 September
1931.[6][7][8] 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 became World War II in
1941. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3
October 1935.[9] The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles
of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to
September 1939.[10] Others view the Spanish Civil War as the start or prelude to World War II.[11][12]

The exact date of the war's end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time
that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945 (V-J Day), rather than with the formal
surrender of Japan on 2 September 1945, which officially ended the war in Asia. A peace treaty between
Japan and the Allies was signed in 1951.[13] A 1990 treaty regarding Germany's future allowed the
reunification of East and West Germany to take place and resolved most post-World War II issues.[14]
No formal peace treaty between Japan and the Soviet Union was ever signed,[15] although the state of
war between the two countries was terminated by the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956, which
also restored full diplomatic relations between them.[16]

Background

Main article: Causes of World War II

Europe

World War I had radically altered the political European map, with the defeat of the Central Powers—
including Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire—and the 1917 Bolshevik seizure
of power in Russia, which led to the founding of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the victorious Allies of
World War I, such as France, Belgium, Italy, Romania, and Greece, gained territory, and new nation-
states were created out of the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman and Russian Empires.

The League of Nations assembly, held in Geneva, Switzerland, 1930

To prevent a future world war, the League of Nations was created during the 1919 Paris Peace
Conference. The organisation's primary goals were to prevent armed conflict through collective security,
military and naval disarmament, and settling international disputes through peaceful negotiations and
arbitration.[17]

Despite strong pacifist sentiment after World War I,[18] irredentist and revanchist nationalism emerged
in several European states in the same period. These sentiments were especially marked in Germany
because of the significant territorial, colonial, and financial losses imposed by the Treaty of Versailles.
Under the treaty, Germany lost around 13 percent of its home territory and all its overseas possessions,
while German annexation of other states was prohibited, reparations were imposed, and limits were
placed on the size and capability of the country's armed forces.[19]
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 right and left. Italy, as an Entente
ally, had made some post-war territorial gains; however, Italian nationalists were angered that the
promises made by the United Kingdom and France to secure Italian entrance into the war were not
fulfilled in the peace settlement. From 1922 to 1925, the Fascist movement 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
expansionist foreign policy aimed at making Italy a world power, and promising the creation of a "New
Roman Empire".[20]

Adolf Hitler at a German Nazi political rally in Nuremberg, August 1933

Adolf Hitler, after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government in 1923, eventually
became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933 when Paul Von Hindenburg and the Reichstag appointed
him. He abolished democracy, espousing a radical, racially motivated revision of the world order, and
soon began a massive rearmament campaign.[21] 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.[22]

The United Kingdom, France and Italy formed the Stresa Front in April 1935 in order to contain
Germany, a key step towards military globalisation; however, that June, the United Kingdom made an
independent naval agreement with Germany, easing prior restrictions. The Soviet Union, concerned by
Germany's goals of capturing vast areas of Eastern Europe, drafted 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.[23] The United States, concerned with
events in Europe and Asia, passed the Neutrality Act in August of the same year.[24]

Hitler defied the Versailles and Locarno treaties by remilitarising the Rhineland in March 1936,
encountering little opposition due to the policy of appeasement.[25] In October 1936, Germany and
Italy formed the Rome–Berlin Axis. A month later, Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact,
which Italy joined the following year.[26]

Asia

The Kuomintang (KMT) party in China launched a unification campaign against regional warlords and
nominally unified China in the mid-1920s, but was soon embroiled in a civil war against its former
Chinese Communist Party allies[27] and new regional warlords. In 1931, an increasingly militaristic
Empire of Japan, which had long sought influence in China[28] as the first step of what its government
saw as the country's right to rule Asia, staged the Mukden Incident as a pretext to invade Manchuria and
establish the puppet state of Manchukuo.[29]

China appealed to the League of Nations to stop the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Japan withdrew
from the League of Nations after being condemned for its incursion into Manchuria. The two nations
then fought several battles, in Shanghai, Rehe and Hebei, until the Tanggu Truce was signed in 1933.
Thereafter, Chinese volunteer forces continued the resistance to Japanese aggression in Manchuria, and
Chahar and Suiyuan.[30] After the 1936 Xi'an Incident, the Kuomintang and communist forces agreed on
a ceasefire to present a united front to oppose Japan.[31]

Pre-war events

Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935)

Benito Mussolini inspecting troops during the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935

Main article: Second Italo-Ethiopian War

The Second Italo-Ethiopian War was a brief colonial war that began in October 1935 and ended in May
1936. The war began with the invasion of the Ethiopian Empire (also known as Abyssinia) by the armed
forces of the Kingdom of Italy (Regno d'Italia), which was launched from Italian Somaliland and Eritrea.
[32] 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 little when the former clearly violated Article X of the League's Covenant.[33] The United
Kingdom and France supported imposing sanctions on Italy for the invasion, but the sanctions were not
fully enforced and failed to end the Italian invasion.[34] Italy subsequently dropped its objections to
Germany's goal of absorbing Austria.[35]

Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)

Main article: Spanish Civil War

The bombing of Guernica in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, sparked fears abroad in Europe that the
next war would be based on bombing of cities with very high civilian casualties.

When civil war broke out in Spain, Hitler and Mussolini lent military support to the Nationalist rebels, led
by General Francisco Franco. Italy supported the Nationalists to a greater extent than the Nazis did:
altogether Mussolini sent to Spain more than 70,000 ground troops and 6,000 aviation personnel, as
well as about 720 aircraft.[36] The Soviet Union supported the existing government of the Spanish
Republic. More than 30,000 foreign volunteers, known as the International Brigades, also fought against
the Nationalists. Both Germany and the Soviet Union used this proxy war as an opportunity to test in
combat their most advanced weapons and tactics. The Nationalists won the civil war in April 1939;
Franco, now dictator, remained officially neutral during World War II but generally favoured the Axis.
[37] His greatest collaboration with Germany was the sending of volunteers to fight on the Eastern
Front.[38]

Japanese invasion of China (1937)

Main article: Second Sino-Japanese War

Japanese Imperial Army soldiers during the Battle of Shanghai, 1937

In July 1937, Japan captured the former Chinese imperial capital of Peking after instigating the Marco
Polo Bridge Incident, which culminated in the Japanese campaign to invade all of China.[39] The Soviets
quickly signed a non-aggression pact with China to lend materiel support, effectively ending China's prior
co-operation with Germany. From September to November, the Japanese attacked Taiyuan, engaged
the Kuomintang Army around Xinkou,[40][unreliable source?] and fought Communist forces in
Pingxingguan.[41][42] Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek deployed his best army to defend Shanghai, but
after three months of fighting, Shanghai fell. The Japanese continued to push the Chinese forces back,
capturing the capital Nanking in December 1937. After the fall of Nanking, tens or hundreds of
thousands of Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants were murdered by the Japanese.[43][44]

In March 1938, Nationalist Chinese forces won their first major victory at Taierzhuang, but then the city
of Xuzhou was taken by the Japanese in May.[45][unreliable source?] In June 1938, Chinese forces
stalled the Japanese advance by flooding the Yellow River; this manoeuvre bought time for the Chinese
to prepare their defences at Wuhan, but the city was taken by October.[46] Japanese military victories
did not bring about the collapse of Chinese resistance that Japan had hoped to achieve; instead, the
Chinese government relocated inland to Chongqing and continued the war.[47][48]

Soviet–Japanese border conflicts

Main article: Soviet–Japanese border conflicts

Red Army artillery unit during the Battle of Lake Khasan, 1938

In the mid-to-late 1930s, Japanese forces in Manchukuo had sporadic border clashes with the Soviet
Union and Mongolia. The Japanese doctrine of Hokushin-ron, which emphasised Japan's expansion
northward, was favoured by the Imperial Army during this time. With the Japanese defeat at Khalkin Gol
in 1939, the ongoing Second Sino-Japanese War[49] and ally Nazi Germany pursuing neutrality with the
Soviets, this policy would prove difficult to maintain. Japan and the Soviet Union eventually signed a
Neutrality Pact in April 1941, and Japan adopted the doctrine of Nanshin-ron, promoted by the Navy,
which took its focus southward, eventually leading to its war with the United States and the Western
Allies.[50][51]

European occupations and agreements

Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano pictured just before signing the Munich Agreement,
29 September 1938

In Europe, Germany and Italy were becoming more aggressive. In March 1938, Germany annexed
Austria, again provoking little response from other European powers.[52] Encouraged, Hitler began
pressing German claims on the Sudetenland, an area of Czechoslovakia with a predominantly ethnic
German population. Soon the United Kingdom and France followed the appeasement policy of British
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and conceded this territory to Germany in the Munich Agreement,
which was made against the wishes of the Czechoslovak government, in exchange for a promise of no
further territorial demands.[53] Soon afterwards, Germany and Italy forced Czechoslovakia to cede
additional territory to Hungary, and Poland annexed Czechoslovakia's Zaolzie region.[54]

Although all of Germany's stated demands had been satisfied by the agreement, privately Hitler was
furious that British interference had prevented him from seizing all of Czechoslovakia in one operation.
In subsequent speeches Hitler attacked British and Jewish "war-mongers" and in January 1939 secretly
ordered a major build-up of the German navy to challenge British naval supremacy. In March 1939,
Germany invaded the remainder of Czechoslovakia and subsequently split it into the German
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and a pro-German client state, the Slovak Republic.[55] Hitler also
delivered an ultimatum to Lithuania on 20 March 1939, forcing the concession of the Klaipėda Region,
formerly the German Memelland.[56]

German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (right) and the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, after
signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, 23 August 1939

Greatly alarmed and with Hitler making further demands on the Free City of Danzig, the United Kingdom
and France guaranteed their support for Polish independence; when Italy conquered Albania in April
1939, the same guarantee was extended to the Kingdoms of Romania and Greece.[57] Shortly after the
Franco-British pledge to Poland, Germany and Italy formalised their own alliance with the Pact of Steel.
[58] Hitler accused the United Kingdom and Poland of trying to "encircle" Germany and renounced the
Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact.[59]
The situation reached a general crisis in late August as German troops continued to mobilise against the
Polish border. On 23 August, when tripartite negotiations about a military alliance between France, the
United Kingdom and Soviet Union stalled,[60] the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with
Germany.[61] This pact had a secret protocol that defined German and Soviet "spheres of influence"
(western Poland and Lithuania for Germany; eastern Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Bessarabia for
the Soviet Union), and raised the question of continuing Polish independence.[62] The pact neutralised
the possibility of Soviet opposition to a campaign against Poland and assured that Germany would not
have to face the prospect of a two-front war, as it had in World War I. Immediately after that, Hitler
ordered the attack to proceed on 26 August, but upon hearing that the United Kingdom had concluded a
formal mutual assistance pact with Poland and that Italy would maintain neutrality, he decided to delay
it.[63]

In response to British requests for direct negotiations to avoid war, Germany made demands on Poland,
which only served as a pretext to worsen relations.[64] On 29 August, Hitler demanded that a Polish
plenipotentiary immediately travel to Berlin to negotiate the handover of Danzig, and to allow a
plebiscite in the Polish Corridor in which the German minority would vote on secession.[64] The Poles
refused to comply with the German demands, and on the night of 30–31 August in a confrontational
meeting with the British ambassador Nevile Henderson, Ribbentrop declared that Germany considered
its claims rejected.[65]