THE SECOND WORLD WAR 1939-1945

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 THE SECOND WORLD WAR 1939-1945

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• World War II involved nearly all parts of the world from 1939 to 1945, causing widespread destruction.
• The Axis powers were Germany, Italy, and Japan and they fought the Allied powers France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union (+ China).
• Various disputes left unsettled by World War I led to WW II.
• Nearly 5 crore deaths make it the deadliest ever in human history.
• Adolf Hitler was able to convince the German people that the terms of settlement in peace treaties after the WW I were unjust towards Germany
• He captured power in 1933, and the Nazi party set on a course for rapid military building and conquest  (and wholesale slaughter and genocide)
• Meanwhile, Japan was already an empire in Asia, eyeing more territories
• The second World War 1939-1945
• Britain and France remained committed to appeasement even as Germany and Italy began rearming themselves
• World War II began on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Great Britain and France responded by declaring war.
• The war between U.S.S.R. and Germany began on June 22, 1941, with the German invasion of the Soviet Union. 
• The war in the Pacific began on December 7/8, 1941, when Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbour.
• Allied were led by Winston Churchill (UK); Joseph Stalin (USSR); Charles de Gaulle (France); and Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman (US). 
• The Axis powers were led by Adolf Hitler (Germany), Benito Mussolini (Italy), and Hideki Tojo (Japan).
• The war in the Pacific turned against Japan during the Battle of Midway (June 3–6, 1942), an American victory.
• The war in Europe shifted with the Soviet victory at the Battle of Stalingrad (February 1943). More than one million Soviet troops and tens of thousands of civilians died in the defense of the city.
• The destruction of two entire German armies marked the beginning of the end of the Third Reich of Hitler.
• The Allied landings at Normandy on June 6, 1944, opened a second front in Europe.
• The Red Army advanced from the east and claimed all the territory under its control for the Soviet sphere. The Allied armies converged on Berlin. 
• Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, and war in Europe ended on May 8. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 ended the war with Japan.

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