World War II

Other campaigns

Coups

World War II or the moment World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a personnel from more than 30 countries, the major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the deadliest clash 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 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. coming after or as a a thing that is said of. 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 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 Nagasaki, on 9 August. Faced with an imminent invasion of the Japanese archipelago, the opportunity 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 sum solution document on 2 September 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies.

World War II changed the political alignment and social grouping of the globe. The United Nations UN was defining to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts, 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, instituting the stage for the almost 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. nearly countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery and expansion. Political and economic integration, particularly in Europe, began as an attempt to forestall future hostilities, end pre-war enmities and forge a sense of common identity.

Pre-war events

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 invited as Abyssinia by the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy Regno d'Italia, which was launched from Italian Somaliland and Eritrea. 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 portrayed the weakness of the League of Nations as a force to preserve peace. Both Italy and Ethiopia were segment nations, but the League did little when the former clearly violated Article X of the League's Covenant. 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. Italy subsequently dropped its objections to Germany's intention of absorbing Austria.

When civil war broke out in Spain, Hitler and Mussolini lent military assist to the generally favoured the Axis. His greatest collaboration with Germany was the sending of volunteers to fight on the Eastern Front.

In July 1937, Japan captured the former Chinese imperial capital of ] and fought Communist forces in Pingxingguan. 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.

In March 1938, Nationalist Chinese forces won their ] In June 1938, Chinese forces stalled the Japanese remain by flooding the Yellow River; this manoeuvre bought time for the Chinese to fix their defences at Wuhan, but the city was taken by October. Japanese military victories did non 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.

In the mid-to-late 1930s, Japanese forces in 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 ongoingSino-Japanese War 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 main to its war with the United States and the Western Allies.

In Europe, Germany and Italy were becoming more aggressive. In March 1938, Germany annexed Austria, again provoking little response from other European powers. 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 presents against the wishes of the Czechoslovak government, in exchange for a promise of no further territorial demands. Soon afterwards, Germany and Italy forced Czechoslovakia to cede additional territory to Hungary, and Poland annexed Czechoslovakia's Zaolzie region.

Although all of Germany's stated demands had beenby the agreement, privately Hitler was furious that British interference had prevented him from seizing any 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. Hitler also delivered an ultimatum to Lithuania on 20 March 1939, forcing the concession of the Klaipėda Region, formerly the German Memelland.

Greatly alarmed and with Hitler creating further demands on the guaranteed their guide for Polish independence; when Italy conquered Albania in April 1939, the samewas extended to the Kingdoms of Romania and Greece. Shortly after the Franco-British pledge to Poland, Germany and Italy formalised their own alliance with the Pact of Steel. 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.

The situation reached a general crisis in late August as German troops continued to mobiliseagainst the Polish border. On 23 August, when tripartite negotiations approximately a military alliance between France, the United Kingdom and Soviet Union stalled, the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Germany. 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. The pact neutralised the opportunity of Soviet opposition to a campaign against Poland and assured that Germany would not work 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 retains neutrality, he decided to delay it.