World War II[b] or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945)

was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly
all of the world's countries participated, with many nations mobilising all resources in
pursuit of total war. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, enabling the strategic
bombing of cities and delivery of the first and only nuclear weapons ever used in
war. World War II is the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 70 to 85
million people, more than half of whom were civilians. Millions died in genocides,
including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. After the Allied
victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and
Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

The causes of World War II included unresolved tensions in the aftermath of World
War I and the rise of fascism in Europe and militarism in Japan. Key events
preceding the war included Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Spanish Civil
War, the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, and
Germany's annexations of Austria and the Sudetenland. World War II is generally
considered to have begun on 1 September 1939, when Nazi Germany, under Adolf
Hitler, invaded Poland, after which the United Kingdom and France declared war on
Germany. Poland was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union under
the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In 1940, the Soviet Union annexed the Baltic
states and parts of Finland and Romania. After the fall of France in June 1940, the
war continued mainly between Germany and the British Empire, with fighting in the
Balkans, Mediterranean, and Middle East, the aerial Battle of Britain and the Blitz,
and the naval Battle of the Atlantic. Through campaigns and treaties, Germany
gained control of much of continental Europe and formed the Axis
alliance with Italy, Japan, and other countries. In June 1941, Germany invaded the
Soviet Union, opening the Eastern Front and initially making large territorial gains.

In December 1941, Japan attacked American and British territories in Asia and the
Pacific, including at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, leading the United States to enter the
war against Japan and Germany. Japan conquered much of coastal China and
Southeast Asia, but its advances in the Pacific were halted in June 1942 at the Battle
of Midway. In early 1943, Axis forces were defeated in North Africa and at
Stalingrad in the Soviet Union, and that year their continued defeats on the Eastern
Front, an Allied invasion of Italy, and Allied offensives in the Pacific forced them into
retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded France at Normandy, as the
Soviet Union recaptured its pre-war territory and the US crippled Japan's navy
and captured key Pacific islands. The war in Europe concluded with the liberation
of German-occupied territories; invasions of Germany by the Western Allies and the
Soviet Union, which culminated in the fall of Berlin to Soviet troops; and Germany's
unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. On 6 and 9 August, the US dropped atomic
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Faced with an imminent Allied
invasion, the prospect of further atomic bombings, and a Soviet declaration of
war and invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its unconditional surrender on 15
August, and signed a surrender document on 2 September 1945.

World War II transformed the political, economic, and social structures of the world,
and established the foundation of international relations for the rest of the 20th
century and into the 21st century. The United Nations was created to foster
international cooperation and prevent future conflicts, with the victorious great
powers—China, France, the Soviet Union, the UK, and the US—becoming the
permanent members of its security council. The Soviet Union and the US emerged
as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the half-century Cold War. In the wake of
Europe's devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering
the decolonisation of Africa and of Asia. Many countries whose industries had been
damaged moved towards economic recovery and expansion.

Start and end dates

See also: List of timelines of World War II

Timelines of World War II

Chronological

Prelude

 Events (in Asia

 in Europe)
 Aftermath

 1939
 1940
 1941
 1942

1943
 1944
 1945
 Aftermath

By topic

o Causes (Diplomacy)
 Declarations of war

o Battles
o Operations

By theatre
 Battle of Europe air operations

o Eastern Front
o Manhattan Project
 United Kingdom home front
  Surrender of the Axis armies

 v
 t
 e

Most historians date the beginning of World War II to the German invasion of
Poland on 1 September 1939[1][2] and the United Kingdom and France's declaration of
war on Germany two days later. Dates for the beginning of the Pacific War include
the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937,[3][4] or the
earlier Japanese invasion of Manchuria, on 19 September 1931.[5][6] Others follow the
British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who stated that the Sino-Japanese War and war in
Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously, and the two wars became World
War II in 1941.[7] Other proposed starting dates for World War II include the Italian
invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935.[8] 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.[9] Others view the Spanish Civil War as the start or prelude to World
War II.[10][11]

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 15 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.[12] A 1990 treaty regarding Germany's future allowed the reunification
of East and West Germany to take place.[13] No formal peace treaty between Japan
and the Soviet Union was ever signed,[14] 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.[15]

Background
Main article: Causes of World War II
Aftermath of World War I

The League of Nations assembly, held

in Geneva, Switzerland (1930)
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 dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian,
Ottoman, and Russian Empires.[16]

To prevent a future world war, the League of Nations was established in 1920 by
the Paris Peace Conference. The organisation's primary goals were to prevent
armed conflict through collective security, military, and naval disarmament, as well
as settling international disputes through peaceful negotiations and arbitration.[17]

Despite strong pacifist sentiment after World War I,

[18]
irredentist and revanchist nationalism had emerged in several European states.
These sentiments were especially pronounced in Germany due to 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]

Germany and Italy

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 political 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, 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 President Paul
von Hindenburg and the Reichstag appointed him. Following Hindenburg's death in
1934, Hitler proclaimed himself Führer of Germany and abolished democracy,
espousing a radical, racially motivated revision of the world order, and soon began a
massive rearmament campaign.[21] France, seeking to secure its alliance with
Italy, 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]

European treaties
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 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 (CCP) 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 CCP forces agreed on a ceasefire to present a united front to
oppose Japan.[31]

Pre-war events
Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935)
Main article: Second Italo-Ethiopian War

Benito Mussolini inspecting troops during the Italo-

Ethiopian War, 1935
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); 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
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: Mussolini sent more than 70,000
ground troops, 6,000 aviation personnel, and 720 aircraft to Spain.[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
 Imperial Japanese 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 cooperation with
Germany. From September to November, the Japanese attacked Taiyuan, engaged
the Kuomintang Army around Xinkou,[40] 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 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] 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
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. This policy would prove difficult to maintain in light of the
Japanese defeat at Khalkin Gol in 1939, the ongoing Second Sino-Japanese
War[49] and ally Nazi Germany pursuing neutrality with the Soviets. 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
and eventually led to war with the United States and the Western Allies.[50][51]