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World War II
The deadliest conflict in history began with Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 and ended with Japan's surrender on 2 September 1945. It was fought in Europe, Africa, Asia and on every ocean, killed an estimated 70 to 85 million people, most of them civilians, and included the Holocaust - the murder of six million European Jews.
Blitzkrieg
THEME ONE
Under a secret clause of the pact between Hitler and Stalin, Germany and the Soviet Union divided Poland in September 1939. Britain and France declared war on Germany. In spring 1940 German tanks and aircraft overran Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and, within six weeks, France. Britain fought on alone, and in the Battle of Britain its air force prevented a German invasion.
The Eastern Front
THEME TWO
On 22 June 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union with more than three million soldiers. The Wehrmacht reached the outskirts of Moscow and besieged Leningrad, where about a million civilians died in the siege. The tide turned at Stalingrad, where the German 6th Army surrendered in February 1943, and at Kursk that summer. The Soviet Union lost about 27 million people, more than any other country.
The war against civilians
THEME THREE
More civilians died than soldiers. In occupied Europe Nazi Germany murdered about six million Jews in mass shootings and in death camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka, and also killed Roma, disabled people, Soviet prisoners of war and millions of Poles and other Slavs. Millions were taken for forced labour. Bombing destroyed cities from Warsaw, Rotterdam and Coventry to Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo.
The Pacific and the end of the war
THEME FOUR
On 7 December 1941 Japan attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, and the United States entered the war. After the naval battle of Midway in June 1942 the Allies advanced island by island. On 6 June 1944 they landed in Normandy, and in the spring of 1945 Soviet troops took Berlin. Germany surrendered in May. In August atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union attacked Japan in Manchuria, and Japan surrendered.
Periods
Axis victories
1939 – 1941
Germany conquers most of Europe, Italy joins the war, and Japan expands in China. In 1941 Germany invades the Soviet Union and Japan attacks the United States.
The turning point
1942 – 1943
Midway, El Alamein, Stalingrad and Kursk. The Allies land in North Africa and Italy, and Mussolini falls.
Allied victory
1944 – 1945
Normandy and the great Soviet offensives, the liberation of the camps, the fall of Berlin, the atomic bombs and the founding of the United Nations.
Key dates
- 1939Germany invades Poland on 1 September, and Britain and France declare war.
- 1940France falls, and the Battle of Britain is fought in the air.
- 1941Germany attacks the Soviet Union on 22 June, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor on 7 December.
- 1943The German 6th Army surrenders at Stalingrad in February.
- 1944The Allies land in Normandy on 6 June.
- 1945Germany surrenders in May, Japan in September after the atomic bombs.
Questions and answers
How many people died in the Second World War?
Estimates range from about 70 to 85 million, some 3 per cent of the world's population in 1940. The Soviet Union lost about 27 million people and China between 15 and 20 million. Most of the dead were civilians.
What was the Holocaust?
The systematic, state-organised murder of about six million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1941 and 1945, after years of persecution that began in 1933. Victims were shot in mass executions or killed in the gas chambers of extermination camps. The Nazis also murdered Roma, disabled people and other groups they declared unworthy of life.