World War Ii

World War II, which began in 1939 and ended in 1945, was a devastating international conflict. It involved a total of 100 million people from more than 30 countries. World War II was the deadliest war in human history, with a death toll ranging from 70 to 85 million people. Hundreds of millions of people died as a result of genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, massacres, and disease. The Axis powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan—were pitted against the Allies—France, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, China.

 

• Indemnification in the event of a war.

• The provision for Germany's disarmament.

• A 15-year lease on the Saar coal mine to France.

• Poland received a Polish corridor.

• Danzing City was set free.

• Both Italy's Mussolini and Germany's Hitler extolled war and violence.

• Germany and Italy began massive militarization while the West was fighting communism.

 

• Imperialism 

• Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis (1936).

 

• Following World War I, new countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Austria arose. Minority groups' interests in each of these countries were overlooked when establishing borders.

 

• Allies: Britain, France, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China vs. Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, and Japan

• Leaders: Winston Churchill (Britain), Franklin D. Roosevelt (USA), and Joseph Stalin (Stalin) (USSR)

• Despite the Munich Pact (1938) between Germany and the United Kingdom, Germany re-attacked and sized Czechoslovakia.

 

• In 1919, the League of Nations was established as an international organisation to maintain world peace.

• It was envisioned that all countries would be members, and that any disputes between them would be resolved through negotiation rather than force.

• The League of Nations was a good idea, but it failed in the end because not all countries joined.

• In addition, the League lacked an army to counter military aggression like Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in Africa or Japan's invasion of Manchuria in China.

 

• The global economic depression of the 1930s had a variety of effects in Europe and Asia.

• Several countries in Europe, including Germany, Italy, and Spain, have shifted political power to totalitarian and imperialist governments.

• In Asia, a resource-scarce Japan began to expand aggressively, invading China and manoeuvring for control of a Pacific sphere of influence.

 

• The invasion of Poland by Germany (1st September 1939)

• Germany annexed the Polished Corridor and the city of Danzig. Blitzkrieg is the term for a sudden attack on Poland (lightning war).

• Brtiain and France declared war on Germany.

 

• On September 3, 1939, two days after Hitler's armies invaded Poland, World War II began. 

• The war would be fought between the Axis Powers – Germany, Italy, and Japan – and the Allies – the United Kingdom, France, Commonwealth countries, the United States, and the Soviet Union.

1. During the first few months of the war, Western Europe was very quiet.

2. This period of conflict is known as the "phoney war."

3. War preparations intensified, but there were few signs of conflict and civilians from western European countries (allied powers) were evacuated to safer locations.

 

1. By the early part of 1939, Adolf Hitler, the German dictator, had made up his mind to invade and occupy Poland.

2. Poland, for its part, had military guarantees from France and the United Kingdom in the event of a German attack. Hitler had already planned to invade Poland, but first he had to neutralize the possibility that the Soviet Union would resist the invasion of its western neighbour.

3. In August 1939, secret negotiations led to the signing of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact in Moscow.

4. Furthermore, in September, Russia invaded Poland, and Poland was divided between the two invaders by the end of the year.

 

The 'winter war' between Russia and Finland ended in March, and Germany invaded Denmark and Norway the following month.

 

An armistice was signed in France between Germany and the puppet French Vichy government. After conquering France, Hitler turned his attention to the United Kingdom and began planning an invasion.

 

It was the first war to be fought entirely in the air, lasting from July to September 1940. The failure of Germany to defeat the RAF and gain control of the skies over southern England made invasion virtually impossible.

 

Following Mussolini's defeats in Greece and Tobruk, German forces arrived in North Africa in April 1941 and invaded Greece and Yugoslavia.

1. In 1941, after losing in Britain, Hitler violated the Ribbentrop Pact and invaded Russia.

2. The initial push was quick, with Sebastopol falling at the end of October and Moscow being attacked at the end of the year.

3. The Germans, however, were crippled by the bitter Russian winter, which was similar to the one Napoleon had endured a century and a half before.

4. In December, the Soviets counterattacked, and the Eastern Front remained stagnant until the spring.

 

1. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese, fed up with American trade embargoes, launched a surprise attack on the US Navy base of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

2. As a result, global conflict erupted, with Germany declaring war on the United States a few days later.

3. Japan also invaded the Philippines, Burma, and Hong Kong within a week of Pearl Harbor.

 

1. The Battle of Midway in 1942 ushered the United States into World War II. Four Japanese carriers and a cruiser were destroyed by US sea-based aircraft in this battle, which marked the turning point in World War II.

2. The news of the Nazis' mass murders of Jews reached the Allies, and the US promised to avenge the crimes.

 

1. By the second half of 1942, British forces had taken control of North Africa, while Russian forces launched a counter-offensive at Stalingrad.

2. In February 1943, Germany surrendered to the Soviet Union at Stalingrad. This was Hitler's army's first major defeat.

3. In addition, in North Africa, German and Italian forces surrendered to the Allies.

4. As the Russian advance on the Eastern Front accelerated, Germany lost control of Kharkiv and Kiev. Furthermore, Allied bombers began launching massive daylight air raids on German cities.

5. On April 21, 1945, the Russians arrived in Berlin (Germany's capital).

6. On the 30th, two days after Mussolini was captured and hanged by Italian partisans, Hitler committed suicide.

7. On the 7th of May, Germany unconditionally surrendered, and the following day was designated as VE (Victory in Europe) Day. Europe's war had come to an end.

 

• Plans for an Allied invasion of Japan were being put in place, but fears of fierce resistance and massive casualties prompted Harry Truman, the new American president, to approve the use of an atomic bomb against Japan.

• These bombs had been in development since 1942, and one was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945.

• A third bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later.

• No country could have stood up to such assaults, and the Japanese surrendered on August 14th.

• World War II came to an end with Japan's surrender.

 

• Imperialism is coming to an end.

• Decolonization begins.

• In Africa and Asia, nationalist movements are becoming more powerful. (From the United Kingdom, India, Myanmar, Egypt, and Sri Lanka; from the United States, the Philippines; from France, Indo-China; and from the Netherlands, Indonesia)

• In Germany and Italy, the dictatorships have come to an end.

• Germany was split into two parts: west and east. West Germany was ruled by the United Kingdom, France, and the United States. The Soviet Union occupied East Germany.

• Millions of people have died.

• Economic issues such as unemployment, low growth, and so on.

• New World Economic Order

• During World War II, the Bretton Woods Conference, formally the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire (July 1–22, 1944) to make financial arrangements for the postwar world after Germany and Japan were expected to be defeated.

• It devised a plan for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, now known as the World Bank) to make long-term capital available to countries in desperate need of assistance, as well as a plan for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to finance short-term imbalances in international payments in order to stabilise exchange rates.

• The US dollar was also designated as a reserve currency for international trade.

• The emergence of two power blocs: the United States and the Soviet Union. As a result, the Cold War erupted.

• The emergence of countries from the Third World.

• The United Nations was founded in 1945.

 

• The British Empire had suffered greatly as a result of World War II. Britain had lost a lot of money and was looking to its colonies to help them reclaim their status as a world power. Mahatma Gandhi, on the other hand, was organising Indians against the British at the time.

• Also, World War II erupted to prevent Hitler from establishing German colonies outside of Germany's borders, a colonial occupation that Britain had been carrying out for centuries.

• As a result, after the war, people all over the world began to support voices opposing British colonial occupation.