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After World War I, Germany was punished. They lost land, had to pay a lot of money, and felt very weak and angry.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adolf-Hitler

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Adolf Hitler, byname Der Führer (German: "The Leader"), (born April 20, 1889, Braunau am Inn, Austria-died April 30, 1945, Berlin, Germany), leader of the Nazi Party (from 1920/21) and chancellor ( Kanzler) and Führer of Germany (1933-45). He was chancellor from January 30, 1933, and, after President Paul von Hindenburg's death, assumed the twin titles of Führer and chancellor (August 2, 1934).

Hitler's father, Alois (born 1837), was illegitimate. For a time he bore his mother's name, Schicklgruber, but by 1876 he had established his family claim to the surname Hitler. Adolf never used any other surname.

Early life

After his father's retirement from the state customs service, Adolf Hitler spent most of his childhood in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria. It remained his favourite city throughout his life, and he expressed his wish to be buried there. Alois Hitler died in 1903 but left an adequate pension and savings to support his wife and children. Although Hitler feared and disliked his father, he was a devoted son to his mother, who died after much suffering in 1907. With a mixed record as a student, Hitler never advanced beyond a secondary education. After leaving school, he visited Vienna, then returned to Linz, where he dreamed of becoming an artist. Later, he used the small allowance he continued to draw to maintain himself in Vienna. He wished to study art, for which he had some faculties, but he twice failed to secure entry to the Academy of Fine Arts. For some years he lived a lonely and isolated life, earning a precarious livelihood by painting postcards and advertisements and drifting from one municipal hostel to another. Hitler already showed traits that characterized his later life: loneliness and secretiveness, a bohemian mode of everyday existence, and hatred of cosmopolitanism and of the multinational character of Vienna.

In 1913 Hitler moved to Munich. Screened for Austrian military service in February 1914, he was classified as unfit because of inadequate physical vigour; but when World War I broke out, he petitioned Bavarian King Louis III to be allowed to serve, and one day after submitting that request, he was notified that he would be permitted to join the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment. After some eight weeks of training, Hitler was deployed in October 1914 to Belgium, where he participated in the First Battle of Ypres. He served throughout the war, was wounded in October 1916, and was gassed two years later near Ypres. He was hospitalized when the conflict ended. During the war, he was continuously in the front line as a headquarters runner; his bravery in action was rewarded with the Iron Cross, Second Class, in December 1914, and the Iron Cross, First Class (a rare decoration for a corporal), in August 1918. He greeted the war with enthusiasm, as a great relief from the frustration and aimlessness of civilian life. He found discipline and comradeship satisfying and was confirmed in his belief in the heroic virtues of war.

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Adolf Hitler | Biography, Rise to Power, & Facts

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Adolf Hitler, the infamous dictator of Nazi Germany, rose to power with his radical ideology and orchestrated one of history's darkest periods through World War II and the Holocaust.

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In 1933, Adolf Hitler became leader of Germany. He promised to make Germany strong again and expand its territory.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adolf-Hitler

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Adolf Hitler, byname Der Führer (German: "The Leader"), (born April 20, 1889, Braunau am Inn, Austria-died April 30, 1945, Berlin, Germany), leader of the Nazi Party (from 1920/21) and chancellor ( Kanzler) and Führer of Germany (1933-45). He was chancellor from January 30, 1933, and, after President Paul von Hindenburg's death, assumed the twin titles of Führer and chancellor (August 2, 1934).

Hitler's father, Alois (born 1837), was illegitimate. For a time he bore his mother's name, Schicklgruber, but by 1876 he had established his family claim to the surname Hitler. Adolf never used any other surname.

Early life

After his father's retirement from the state customs service, Adolf Hitler spent most of his childhood in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria. It remained his favourite city throughout his life, and he expressed his wish to be buried there. Alois Hitler died in 1903 but left an adequate pension and savings to support his wife and children. Although Hitler feared and disliked his father, he was a devoted son to his mother, who died after much suffering in 1907. With a mixed record as a student, Hitler never advanced beyond a secondary education. After leaving school, he visited Vienna, then returned to Linz, where he dreamed of becoming an artist. Later, he used the small allowance he continued to draw to maintain himself in Vienna. He wished to study art, for which he had some faculties, but he twice failed to secure entry to the Academy of Fine Arts. For some years he lived a lonely and isolated life, earning a precarious livelihood by painting postcards and advertisements and drifting from one municipal hostel to another. Hitler already showed traits that characterized his later life: loneliness and secretiveness, a bohemian mode of everyday existence, and hatred of cosmopolitanism and of the multinational character of Vienna.

In 1913 Hitler moved to Munich. Screened for Austrian military service in February 1914, he was classified as unfit because of inadequate physical vigour; but when World War I broke out, he petitioned Bavarian King Louis III to be allowed to serve, and one day after submitting that request, he was notified that he would be permitted to join the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment. After some eight weeks of training, Hitler was deployed in October 1914 to Belgium, where he participated in the First Battle of Ypres. He served throughout the war, was wounded in October 1916, and was gassed two years later near Ypres. He was hospitalized when the conflict ended. During the war, he was continuously in the front line as a headquarters runner; his bravery in action was rewarded with the Iron Cross, Second Class, in December 1914, and the Iron Cross, First Class (a rare decoration for a corporal), in August 1918. He greeted the war with enthusiasm, as a great relief from the frustration and aimlessness of civilian life. He found discipline and comradeship satisfying and was confirmed in his belief in the heroic virtues of war.

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Adolf Hitler | Biography, Rise to Power, & Facts

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Adolf Hitler, the infamous dictator of Nazi Germany, rose to power with his radical ideology and orchestrated one of history's darkest periods through World War II and the Holocaust.

# data[].attributes.body
Britain and France allowed Hitler to take some land to avoid war, which actually made him stronger.

https://www.britannica.com/event/appeasement

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Germany and the Soviet Union agreed not to attack each other and secretly planned to divide Poland.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Molotov-Ribbentrop-Pact

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On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. This started World War II.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Invasion-of-Poland

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Invasion of Poland, attack on Poland by Nazi Germany that marked the start of World War II. The invasion lasted from September 1 to October 5, 1939.

As dawn broke on September 1, 1939, German forces launched a surprise attack on Poland. Army Group North attacked from Pomerania and East Prussia, while Army Group South drove deep into southern Poland from Silesia and Slovakia. Strategically outflanked and materially outnumbered, Polish forces stood little chance, especially because they were deployed too close to the German frontier, unintentionally facilitating Germany's strategy of envelopment.

The powerful Luftwaffe destroyed the Polish air force in days, leaving the Polish army at the mercy of the German panzer divisions. The speed with which the German tank units cut through the Polish lines was to give a new name to the lexicon of warfare: blitzkrieg ("lightning war"). The declaration of war on Nazi Germany by Britain and France on September 3 did nothing to help Poland.

The Poles enjoyed a limited tactical success from September 9 to 15 at the Bzura River, yet it came to nothing as the German armies closed in on Warsaw. Poland's fate had already been sealed, when-in accordance with the secret terms of the Nazi-Soviet pact-the Red Army crossed the Polish border from the east on September 17. While Warsaw and a few garrisons continued to hold out, the remnants of the Polish armed forces retreated to neighboring countries, with at least 90,000 men escaping to fight another day. Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In the end, German losses totaled 14,000 dead or missing and 30,000 wounded out of a total of 1,250,000 troops involved in the invasion; Polish casualties numbered 66,000 dead, 130,000 wounded, and 400,000 captured out of 800,000 troops.

Adrian Gilbert

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Invasion of Poland | Description & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany occurred from September 1 to October 5, 1939, and marked the start of World War II.

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Germany attacked Poland quickly using planes and tanks.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Invasion-of-Poland

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Invasion of Poland, attack on Poland by Nazi Germany that marked the start of World War II. The invasion lasted from September 1 to October 5, 1939.

As dawn broke on September 1, 1939, German forces launched a surprise attack on Poland. Army Group North attacked from Pomerania and East Prussia, while Army Group South drove deep into southern Poland from Silesia and Slovakia. Strategically outflanked and materially outnumbered, Polish forces stood little chance, especially because they were deployed too close to the German frontier, unintentionally facilitating Germany's strategy of envelopment.

The powerful Luftwaffe destroyed the Polish air force in days, leaving the Polish army at the mercy of the German panzer divisions. The speed with which the German tank units cut through the Polish lines was to give a new name to the lexicon of warfare: blitzkrieg ("lightning war"). The declaration of war on Nazi Germany by Britain and France on September 3 did nothing to help Poland.

The Poles enjoyed a limited tactical success from September 9 to 15 at the Bzura River, yet it came to nothing as the German armies closed in on Warsaw. Poland's fate had already been sealed, when-in accordance with the secret terms of the Nazi-Soviet pact-the Red Army crossed the Polish border from the east on September 17. While Warsaw and a few garrisons continued to hold out, the remnants of the Polish armed forces retreated to neighboring countries, with at least 90,000 men escaping to fight another day. Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In the end, German losses totaled 14,000 dead or missing and 30,000 wounded out of a total of 1,250,000 troops involved in the invasion; Polish casualties numbered 66,000 dead, 130,000 wounded, and 400,000 captured out of 800,000 troops.

Adrian Gilbert

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Invasion of Poland | Description & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany occurred from September 1 to October 5, 1939, and marked the start of World War II.

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On September 3, they declared war on Germany to protect Poland.

https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-II

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Home World History Wars, Battles & Armed Conflicts
Table of Contents

Also called:

Second World War

(Show more)

Date:

September 3, 1939 - September 2, 1945

(Show more)

What was the cause of World War II?

What countries fought in World War II?

Who were the leaders during World War II?

What were the turning points of World War II?

How did World War II end?

How many people died during World War II?

World War II, conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during the years 1939-45. The principal belligerents were the Axis powers- Germany, Italy, and Japan-and the Allies- France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, China. The war was in many respects a continuation, after an uneasy 20-year hiatus, of the disputes left unsettled by World War I. The 40,000,000-50,000,000 deaths incurred in World War II make it the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in history.

Along with World War I, World War II was one of the great watersheds of 20th-century geopolitical history. It resulted in the extension of the Soviet Union's power to nations of eastern Europe, enabled a communist movement to eventually achieve power in China, and marked the decisive shift of power in the world away from the states of western Europe and toward the United States and the Soviet Union.
(Read Sir John Keegan's Britannica entry on the Normandy Invasion.)

Axis initiative and Allied reaction

The outbreak of war

By the early part of 1939 the German dictator Adolf Hitler had become determined to invade and occupy Poland. Poland, for its part, had guarantees of French and British military support should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler intended to invade Poland anyway, but first he had to neutralize the possibility that the Soviet Union would resist the invasion of its western neighbour. Secret negotiations led on August 23-24 to the signing of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact in Moscow. In a secret protocol of this pact, the Germans and the Soviets agreed that Poland should be divided between them, with the western third of the country going to Germany and the eastern two-thirds being taken over by the U.S.S.R.

Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About World War II

Having achieved this cynical agreement, the other provisions of which stupefied Europe even without divulgence of the secret protocol, Hitler thought that Germany could attack Poland with no danger of Soviet or British intervention and gave orders for the invasion to start on August 26. News of the signing, on August 25, of a formal treaty of mutual assistance between Great Britain and Poland (to supersede a previous though temporary agreement) caused him to postpone the start of hostilities for a few days. He was still determined, however, to ignore the diplomatic efforts of the western powers to restrain him. Finally, at 12:40 pm on August 31, 1939, Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to start at 4:45 the next morning. The invasion began as ordered. In response, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, at 11:00 am and at 5:00 pm, respectively. World War II had begun.

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World War II | Facts, Summary, History, Dates, Combatants, & Causes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
World War II was a conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during 1939-45. The main combatants were the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) and the Allies (France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China). It was the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in human history.

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Soviet Union invades Poland from the East

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Soviet Union invades Poland from the East

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The USSR attacked Poland after Germany, dividing the country.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Invasion-of-Poland

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Invasion of Poland, attack on Poland by Nazi Germany that marked the start of World War II. The invasion lasted from September 1 to October 5, 1939.

As dawn broke on September 1, 1939, German forces launched a surprise attack on Poland. Army Group North attacked from Pomerania and East Prussia, while Army Group South drove deep into southern Poland from Silesia and Slovakia. Strategically outflanked and materially outnumbered, Polish forces stood little chance, especially because they were deployed too close to the German frontier, unintentionally facilitating Germany's strategy of envelopment.

The powerful Luftwaffe destroyed the Polish air force in days, leaving the Polish army at the mercy of the German panzer divisions. The speed with which the German tank units cut through the Polish lines was to give a new name to the lexicon of warfare: blitzkrieg ("lightning war"). The declaration of war on Nazi Germany by Britain and France on September 3 did nothing to help Poland.

The Poles enjoyed a limited tactical success from September 9 to 15 at the Bzura River, yet it came to nothing as the German armies closed in on Warsaw. Poland's fate had already been sealed, when-in accordance with the secret terms of the Nazi-Soviet pact-the Red Army crossed the Polish border from the east on September 17. While Warsaw and a few garrisons continued to hold out, the remnants of the Polish armed forces retreated to neighboring countries, with at least 90,000 men escaping to fight another day. Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In the end, German losses totaled 14,000 dead or missing and 30,000 wounded out of a total of 1,250,000 troops involved in the invasion; Polish casualties numbered 66,000 dead, 130,000 wounded, and 400,000 captured out of 800,000 troops.

Adrian Gilbert

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Invasion of Poland | Description & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany occurred from September 1 to October 5, 1939, and marked the start of World War II.

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The Soviet Union attacked Finland, but Finland fought back strongly.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Winter-War

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Germany attacked France through Belgium and conquered it in six weeks.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-France

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Thousands of British and French soldiers escaped by boat from the beaches of Dunkirk.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Dunkirk-evacuation

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Why was the Dunkirk evacuation necessary?

How was the Dunkirk evacuation executed?

What was the significance of the Dunkirk evacuation?

Dunkirk evacuation, (1940) in World War II, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and other Allied troops from the French seaport of Dunkirk (Dunkerque) to England. Naval vessels and hundreds of civilian boats were used in the evacuation, which began on May 26. When it ended on June 4, about 198,000 British and 140,000 French and Belgian troops had been saved.

Blitzkrieg and the Allied collapse

The immediate context of the Dunkirk evacuation was Germany's invasion of the Low Countries and northern France in May 1940. On May 10 the German blitzkrieg attack on the Netherlands began with the capture by parachutists of key bridges deep within the country, with the aim of opening the way for mobile ground forces. The Dutch defenders fell back westward, and by noon on May 12 German tanks were on the outskirts of Rotterdam. Queen Wilhelmina and her government left the country for England on May 13, and the next day the Dutch army surrendered to the Germans.

Learn about the German invasion of France and the neutral nations of Belgium and Holland and the Dunkirk evacuation

Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz See all videos for this article

The invasion of Belgium also began on May 10, when German airborne troops landed on the fortress of Eben Emael, immediately opposite Maastricht, and on bridges over the Albert Canal. On May 11 the Belgian front was broken, and German tanks ran on westward while Belgian, French, and British divisions fell back to a line between Antwerp and Namur.

The German invasion of France hinged on Gen. Paul Ludwig von Kleist's surprise advance through the hilly and dense Ardennes Forest. On May 10 German tanks crossed Luxembourg to the southeastern border of Belgium, and by the evening of May 12 the Germans were across the Franco-Belgian frontier and overlooking the Meuse River. The next day they crossed the Meuse, and on May 15 they broke through the French defenses into open country, turning westward in the direction of the English Channel. That same day, Gen. Henri Giraud assumed command of the French Ninth Army and drew up a plan for a counteroffensive on a line 25 miles (40 km) west of the Meuse. On May 16 Giraud found that the forces for such an undertaking were not available, while the Germans had advanced in strength far beyond that line. He now decided to withdraw to the line of the Oise, 30 miles (48 km) farther back, and to block the Germans there. Once again he was too late, for the German panzer divisions outran his retreating troops and were across that barrier on May 17.

Even if the French had been able to mount a counteroffensive, they would not have found it easy to crush the invader. Kleist's southern flank was progressively lined by his motorized divisions, which in turn were relieved by the infantry corps that were marching on as fast as possible. This lining of the Aisne had an important indirect effect of playing on the most instinctive fear of the French. When, on May 15, French commander-in-chief Maurice Gamelin received an alarming report that the Germans were crossing the Aisne between Rethel and Laon, he told the government that he had no reserves between that sector and Paris and could not guarantee the security of the capital for more than a day. After Gamelin's startling message, French Premier Paul Reynaud hastily decided to move the seat of government from Paris to Tours. By evening more reassuring reports had come from the Aisne, and Reynaud broadcast a denial of "the most absurd rumours that the government is preparing to leave Paris." At the same time, he seized the opportunity to replace Gamelin and for that purpose summoned Gen. Maxime Weygand from Syria. Weygand did not arrive until May 19, and thus for three critical days the Supreme Command was without direction.

While Allied leaders were still hoping for an attack that would cut off the expanding "bulge," German armoured forces raced to the Channel and cut off the Allied forces in Belgium. The remaining obstacles that could have blocked the advance were not manned in time. After crossing the Oise on May 17, German Gen. Heinz Guderian's advance troops reached Amiens two days later. On May 20 they swept on and reached Abbeville, thus blocking all communications between north and south. By the next day motorized divisions had taken over the line of the Somme from Péronne to Abbeville, forming a strong defensive flank. Guderian's corps then turned north up the coast in a drive for Calais and Dunkirk on May 22. Gen. Georg-Hans Reinhardt swung south of the British rear position at Arras, headed for the same objective-the last escape port that remained open for the British.

Allied planners had hoped to check the Germans at the Dyle Line-a defensive line that ran from Antwerp south to the French frontier, north of Sedan-but by May 16 Gamelin had determined that such a stand was impracticable. The Allied armies in Belgium wheeled back to the line of the Scheldt. By the time they arrived there, the position had been undermined by the cutting of their communications. On May 19 Gen. John Gort, commander in chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), began to consider the necessity of evacuating his forces by sea and the preparatory steps that such an endeavour would require. The next day, however, orders came from the British Cabinet that the BEF was to march south on Amiens. Gort argued that such a long-range drive in reverse was not practicable, either tactically or administratively. All he could manage was an attack by two divisions, which had just been rushed south to Arras, led by a brigade of infantry tanks, the only armoured troops he had. When this riposte was launched on May 21, it comprised no more than two tank battalions backed by two infantry battalions, while elements of one French light mechanized division covered its flanks. The British light tanks proved to be surprisingly effective against German antitank weapons, and this small drive into the corridor momentarily shook the nerve of the German High Command. German planners realized that if two or three armoured divisions had been available for a concentrated counterstroke, the German advance might have been dislocated.

After this flash in the pan the Allied armies in the north made no further effort to break out of the trap, while the belated relieving push from the south was so feeble as to be almost farcical. The prevailing confusion was increased by Weygand's arrival to take over supreme command. The 73-year-old veteran of World War I was better at expounding outdated theory than grasping the realities of a rapidly changing, increasingly motorized battlefield. His grandiloquent orders had no more chance of being translated into practical terms than those of Reynaud or new British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. While the governments and commanders got into a tangle of divergent views and orders, the cut-off armies in the north fell back on a slant closer to the coast under increasing pressure from Gen. Walther von Reichenau's advance through Belgium. More dangerous still was the backdoor approach of Guderian, whose armoured forces were sweeping north past Boulogne and Calais.

Consequently, three of Gort's divisions were withdrawn from the front and sent south to strengthen the line of canals that covered Dunkirk and the Allies' rear. Two more divisions were allotted for Weygand's renewed project of a Franco-British drive down into the German corridor. When the Belgians' extended right flank, adjoining the British, gave way under pressure from Reichenau, these two divisions were rushed north again. By the time they arrived on May 27, the Belgian centre had cracked, and there were no reserves to fill this fresh gap. With their country overrun and their backs to the sea, in a small strip crowded with refugees, the Belgians were driven to sue for an armistice that evening. The cease-fire was sounded early the next morning.

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Dunkirk evacuation | Facts, Map, Photos, Numbers, Timeline, & Summary

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Dunkirk evacuation (May 26-June 4, 1940), in World War II, the evacuation of about 198,000 soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and 140,000 French and Belgian troops from the French seaport of Dunkirk to England. Naval vessels and hundreds of civilian boats were used in the operation.

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Germany bombed British cities but failed to take control of the skies over Britain.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Britain

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Germany invaded these countries to control important sea routes.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Invasion-of-Norway

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Germany broke the pact and attacked the Soviet Union in June.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Operation-Barbarossa

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Table of Contents

Operation Barbarossa, original name Operation Fritz, during World War II, code name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which was launched on June 22, 1941. The failure of German troops to defeat Soviet forces in the campaign signaled a crucial turning point in the war.

Background

Although Adolf Hitler had congratulated himself on the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939 as a matter of expediency, anti-bolshevism had remained his most profound emotional conviction as World War II entered its second year. Following the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states and of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina in June 1940, which put Soviet forces in proximity to the Romanian oil fields on which Germany depended, Hitler's long-standing interest in overthrowing the Soviet regime was heightened. He became acutely suspicious of the intentions of the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, and he began to feel that he could not afford to wait to complete the subjugation of western Europe, as he had originally planned, before dealing with the Soviet Union.

Hitler and his generals had originally scheduled the invasion of the U.S.S.R. for mid-May 1941, but the unforeseen necessity of invading Yugoslavia and Greece in April of that year forced them to postpone the Soviet campaign to late June. The swiftness of Hitler's Balkan victories enabled him to keep to this revised timetable, but the five weeks' delay shortened the time for carrying out the invasion of the U.S.S.R. and was to prove the more serious because in 1941 the Russian winter would arrive earlier than usual. Nevertheless, Hitler and the heads of the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH, or German Army High Command)-namely, the army commander in chief, Walther von Brauchitsch, and the army general staff chief, Franz Halder-were convinced that the Red Army could be defeated in two or three months and that by the end of October the Germans would have conquered the whole European part of Russia and Ukraine west of a line stretching from Arkhangelsk (Archangel) to Astrakhan. The invasion of the Soviet Union was originally given the code name Operation Fritz, but, as preparations began, Hitler renamed it Operation Barbarossa, after the Holy Roman emperor Frederick Barbarossa (reigned 1152-90), who sought to establish German predominance in Europe.

For the campaign against the Soviet Union, the Germans allotted almost 150 divisions containing a total of about three million men. Among those units were 19 panzer divisions, and in total the Barbarossa force had about 3,000 tanks, 7,000 artillery pieces, and 2,500 aircraft. It was in effect the largest and most powerful invasion force in human history. The Germans' strength was further increased by more than 30 divisions of Finnish and Romanian troops.

The Soviet Union had twice or perhaps three times the number of both tanks and aircraft as the Germans had, but their aircraft were mostly obsolete. The Soviet tanks were about equal to those of the Germans, however. A greater hindrance to Hitler's chances of victory was that the German intelligence service underestimated the troop reserves that Stalin could bring up from the depths of the U.S.S.R. The Germans correctly estimated that there were about 150 divisions in the western parts of the U.S.S.R. and reckoned that 50 more might be produced. But the Soviets actually brought up more than 200 fresh divisions by the middle of August, making a total of 360. The consequence was that, though the Germans succeeded in shattering the original Soviet armies by superior technique, they then found their path blocked by fresh ones. The effects of the miscalculations were increased because much of August was wasted while Hitler and his advisers were having long arguments as to what course they should follow after their initial victories. Another factor in the Germans' calculations was purely political, though no less mistaken; they believed that within three to six months of their invasion, the Soviet regime would collapse from lack of domestic support.

Initial offensive

On June 22, 1941, the German offensive was launched by three army groups under the same commanders as in the invasion of France in 1940. On the left (north), an army group under Gen. Wilhelm von Leeb struck from East Prussia into the Baltic states toward Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). On the right (south), another army group, under Gen. Gerd von Rundstedt, with an armoured group under Gen. Paul Ludwig von Kleist, advanced from southern Poland into Ukraine against Kiev, whence it was to wheel southeastward to the coasts of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Last, in the centre, north of the Pripet Marshes, the main blow was delivered by Gen. Fedor von Bock's army group, with one armoured group under Gen. Heinz Guderian and another under Gen. Hermann Hoth, thrusting northeastward at Smolensk and Moscow.

The invasion along a 1,800-mile (2,900-km) front took the Soviet leadership completely by surprise and caught the Red Army in an unprepared and partially demobilized state. As part of the southern flank of Bock's group, Guderian's tanks raced 50 miles (80 km) beyond the frontier on the first day of the invasion and were at Minsk, 200 miles (320 km) beyond it, on June 27. At Minsk they converged with Hoth's tanks, which had attacked from the northern flank, but Bock's infantry could not follow up quickly enough to complete the encirclement of the Soviet troops in the area; though 300,000 prisoners were taken in the salient, a large part of the Soviet forces was able to escape to the east. The Soviet armies were clumsily handled and frittered their tank strength away in piecemeal action like that of the French in 1940. But the isolated Soviet troops fought with a stubbornness that the French had not shown, and their resistance imposed a brake by continuing to block road centres long after the German tide had swept past them. The result was similar when Guderian's tanks, having crossed the Dnieper River on July 10, entered Smolensk six days later and converged with Hoth's thrust through Vitebsk; 200,000 Soviet prisoners were taken, but some Soviet forces were withdrawn from the trap to the line of the Desna, and a large pocket of resistance lay behind the German armour. By mid-July, moreover, a series of rainstorms were turning the sandy Russian roads into clogging mud, over which the wheeled vehicles of the German transport behind the tanks could make only very slow progress. The Germans also began to be hampered by the scorched-earth policy adopted by the retreating Soviets. The Soviet troops burned crops, destroyed bridges, and evacuated factories in the face of the German advance. Entire steel and munitions plants in the westernmost portions of the U.S.S.R. were dismantled and shipped by rail to the east, where they were put back into production. The Soviets also destroyed or evacuated most of their rolling stock (railroad cars), thus depriving the Germans of the use of the Soviet rail system, since Soviet railroad track was of a gauge different from that of German track and German rolling stock was consequently useless on it.

Nevertheless, by mid-July the Germans had advanced more than 400 miles (640 km) and were only 200 miles (320 km) from Moscow. They still had ample time to make decisive gains before the onset of winter, but they lost the opportunity, primarily because of arguments throughout August between Hitler and the OKH about the destination of the next thrusts thence. Whereas the OKH proposed Moscow as the main objective, Hitler wanted the major effort to be directed southeastward, through Ukraine and the Donets Basin into the Caucasus, with a minor swing northwestward against Leningrad (to converge with Leeb's army group).

In Ukraine, meanwhile, Rundstedt and Kleist had made short work of the foremost Soviet defenses, stronger though the latter had been. A new Soviet front south of Kiev was broken by the end of July, and in the next fortnight the Germans swept down to the Black Sea mouths of the Bug and Dnieper rivers to converge with Romania's simultaneous offensive. Kleist was then ordered to wheel northward from central Ukraine and Guderian southward from Smolensk for a pincer movement around the Soviet forces behind Kiev; by the end of September the claws of the encircling movement had caught 520,000 men. These gigantic encirclements were partly the fault of inept Soviet high commanders and partly the fault of Stalin, who as commander in chief stubbornly overrode the advice of his generals and ordered his armies to stand and fight instead of allowing them to retreat eastward and regroup in preparation for a counteroffensive.

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Operation Barbarossa | History, Summary, Combatants, Casualties, & Facts

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Operation Barbarossa, original name Operation Fritz, during World War II, code name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which was launched on June 22, 1941. The failure of German troops to defeat Soviet forces in the campaign signaled a crucial turning point in the war.

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Japan attacked the US naval base in Hawaii, causing the US to enter the war.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Pearl-Harbor-attack

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Pearl Harbor attack, (December 7, 1941), surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii, by the Japanese that precipitated the entry of the United States into World War II. The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan.

Prelude to war

In the late 1930s, American foreign policy in the Pacific hinged on support for China, and aggression against China by Japan therefore necessarily would bring Japan into conflict with the United States. As early as 1931 the Tokyo government had extended its control over the Chinese province of Manchuria, and the following year the Japanese cemented their hold on the region with the creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo. A clash at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing on July 7, 1937, signaled the beginning of open warfare between Japan and the United Front of Chinese Nationalists and the Chinese Communist Party. In response, the United States government extended its first loan to China in 1938.

In July 1939 the U.S. announced the termination of the 1911 Treaty of Commerce and Navigation with Japan. Beginning in the summer of 1940, the U.S. began to restrict the export to Japan of materials useful in war. Between June 1940 and the fateful crisis of December 1941, the tension constantly mounted. In July 1941, by which time the Japanese had occupied all of Indochina and had entered into an alliance with the Axis powers ( Germany and Italy), the U.S. government severed all commercial and financial relations with Japan. Japanese assets were frozen, and an embargo was declared on shipments to Japan of petroleum and other vital war materials. Militarists were steadily gaining in influence in the Tokyo government; they bitterly resented U.S. aid to China, which by this time had been stepped up. They saw in the German invasion of the Soviet Union an unrivaled opportunity to pursue a policy of aggression in the Far East without danger of an attack upon their rear by the forces of the Red Army. Nonetheless, negotiations looking to find some kind of understanding between the United States and Japan took place through the autumn of 1941, and not until near the end of November did it become clear that no agreement was possible.

Although Japan continued to negotiate with the United States up to the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, the government of Prime Minister Tōjō Hideki decided on war. Adm. Yamamoto Isoroku, the commander in chief of Japan's Combined Fleet, had planned the attack against the U.S. Pacific Fleet with great care. Once the U.S. fleet was out of action, the way for the unhindered Japanese conquest of all of Southeast Asia and the Indonesian archipelago would be open. The order for the assault was issued on November 5, 1941, and on November 16 the task force began its rendezvous in the Kuril Islands. Commanders were instructed that the fleet might be recalled, however, in case of a favourable outcome of the negotiations in Washington, D.C. On November 26, Vice Adm. Nagumo Chuichi led a fleet including 6 aircraft carriers, 2 battleships, 3 cruisers, and 11 destroyers to a point some 275 miles (440 km) north of Hawaii. From there about 360 planes in total were launched.

Warnings and responses

The U.S. Pacific Fleet had been stationed at Pearl Harbor since April 1940. In addition to nearly 100 naval vessels, including 8 battleships, there were substantial military and air forces. As the tension mounted, Adm. Husband E. Kimmel and Lieut. Gen. Walter C. Short, who shared command at Pearl Harbor, were warned of the possibility of war, specifically on October 16 and again on November 24 and 27. The notice of November 27, to Kimmel, began, "This dispatch is to be considered a war warning," went on to say that "negotiations have ceased," and directed the admiral to "execute an appropriate defensive deployment." Kimmel also was ordered to "undertake such reconnaissance and other measures as you deem necessary." The communication of the same day to Short declared that "hostile action is possible at any moment" and, like its naval counterpart, urged "measures of reconnaissance."

In response to these warnings, the measures taken by the army and navy commanders were, as the event proved, far from adequate. Short ordered an alert against sabotage and concentrated most of his fighter planes at the base on Wheeler Field in an effort to prevent damage to them. He also gave orders to operate five of the mobile radar sets that had been set up in the island from 4:00 am to 7:00 am, considered to be the most dangerous period. (Radar training, however, was in a far-from-advanced stage.)

Kimmel, despite the fact that his intelligence had not been able to locate substantial elements in the Japanese fleet-especially the first-line ships in carrier divisions 1 and 2-did not expand his reconnaissance activities to the northwest, the logical point for an attack. He moored the entire fleet (save that part which was at sea) in the harbour and permitted a part of his personnel to go on shore leave. Neither of these officers suspected that the base at Pearl Harbor would itself be subjected to attack. Nor, for that matter, is there any indication that their superiors in Washington were in any way conscious of the approaching danger. In the 10 days between the war warning of November 27 and the Japanese attack itself, no additional action was taken by Washington.

Early on Sunday morning, December 7, Washington learned that the Japanese ambassadors had been instructed to ask for an interview with the secretary of state at 1:00 pm (7:30 am Pearl Harbor time). This was a clear indication that war was at hand. The message took some time to decode, and it was not in the hands of the chief of naval operations until about 10:30. It was delivered to the War Department between 9:00 and 10:00 am. Gen. George C. Marshall, the U.S. Army chief of staff, was out horseback riding and did not see the dispatch until he arrived at his office about 11:15 am. The chief of naval operations, Adm. Harold Stark, even then did not think that the communication called for any additional instructions to Kimmel. However, Marshall did decide to send a new warning and gave orders to the military command to communicate with the navy. He did not telephone, fearing that his words might be intercepted, and instead sent his dispatch by telegram. There was a mix-up in communication, however, and the warning did not reach Hawaii until after the attack had begun. It is important to note that it had not been filed until noon, only an hour before the Japanese planes moved in on the base.

At Pearl Harbor itself, there were incidents that, properly interpreted, might have given a brief warning. Four hours before the decisive moment, a Japanese submarine was sighted by the minesweeper USS Condor. About two and a half hours later, the commander of the destroyer USS Ward sent a message saying that he "had attacked, fired upon, and dropped depth charges upon submarine operating in defensive sea area" near Pearl Harbor. While Kimmel waited for confirmation of this report, the Japanese opened hostilities. In these same morning hours, U.S. Army Pvt. George Elliott, practicing on the radar set after its normal closing time, noticed a large flight of planes on the screen. When he telephoned his lieutenant, he was told to disregard the observation, as a flight of B-17 bombers from the United States was expected at that time. Once again an opportunity was missed.

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Pearl Harbor attack | Date, History, Map, Casualties, Timeline, & Facts

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Pearl Harbor attack, surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii, by the Japanese on December 7, 1941, which precipitated the entry of the United States into World War II. Learn more about the details and significance of the attack in this article.

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After Pearl Harbor, the USA declared war on Japan and Germany.

https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-II

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Home World History Wars, Battles & Armed Conflicts
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Also called:

Second World War

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Date:

September 3, 1939 - September 2, 1945

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What was the cause of World War II?

What countries fought in World War II?

Who were the leaders during World War II?

What were the turning points of World War II?

How did World War II end?

How many people died during World War II?

World War II, conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during the years 1939-45. The principal belligerents were the Axis powers- Germany, Italy, and Japan-and the Allies- France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, China. The war was in many respects a continuation, after an uneasy 20-year hiatus, of the disputes left unsettled by World War I. The 40,000,000-50,000,000 deaths incurred in World War II make it the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in history.

Along with World War I, World War II was one of the great watersheds of 20th-century geopolitical history. It resulted in the extension of the Soviet Union's power to nations of eastern Europe, enabled a communist movement to eventually achieve power in China, and marked the decisive shift of power in the world away from the states of western Europe and toward the United States and the Soviet Union.
(Read Sir John Keegan's Britannica entry on the Normandy Invasion.)

Axis initiative and Allied reaction

The outbreak of war

By the early part of 1939 the German dictator Adolf Hitler had become determined to invade and occupy Poland. Poland, for its part, had guarantees of French and British military support should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler intended to invade Poland anyway, but first he had to neutralize the possibility that the Soviet Union would resist the invasion of its western neighbour. Secret negotiations led on August 23-24 to the signing of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact in Moscow. In a secret protocol of this pact, the Germans and the Soviets agreed that Poland should be divided between them, with the western third of the country going to Germany and the eastern two-thirds being taken over by the U.S.S.R.

Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About World War II

Having achieved this cynical agreement, the other provisions of which stupefied Europe even without divulgence of the secret protocol, Hitler thought that Germany could attack Poland with no danger of Soviet or British intervention and gave orders for the invasion to start on August 26. News of the signing, on August 25, of a formal treaty of mutual assistance between Great Britain and Poland (to supersede a previous though temporary agreement) caused him to postpone the start of hostilities for a few days. He was still determined, however, to ignore the diplomatic efforts of the western powers to restrain him. Finally, at 12:40 pm on August 31, 1939, Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to start at 4:45 the next morning. The invasion began as ordered. In response, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, at 11:00 am and at 5:00 pm, respectively. World War II had begun.

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World War II | Facts, Summary, History, Dates, Combatants, & Causes

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World War II was a conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during 1939-45. The main combatants were the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) and the Allies (France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China). It was the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in human history.

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The Soviet army stopped the German advance near Moscow.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Moscow

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Table of Contents

Battle of Moscow, battle fought between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union from September 30, 1941 to January 7, 1942, during World War II. It was the climax of Nazi Germany's Operation Barbarossa, and it ended the Germans' intention to capture Moscow, which ultimately doomed the Third Reich.

The German advance on Moscow in September 1941 was soon in trouble because of atrocious weather conditions. The Germans were also shocked by the Soviet Union's ability to keep bringing forward more reserves. Although some Nazi officers thought Moscow was unattainable, they had no choice but to press forward, because they had to end the war before the fierce winter set in.

German troops managed to encircle large Soviet forces at Viazma in October, but the Soviets still fought on, delaying the Nazi advance. German soldiers pierced the improvised defense lines on the approaches to Moscow and reached within 15 miles (24 km) of the city-they could see the cupolas of St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square in the distance. However, resistance kept stiffening. Joseph Stalin chose to stay in Moscow and appeared at the annual celebrations in Red Square, offering a morale boost to his people.

By early November, the German army suffered its first cases of frostbite, and soon Nazi soldiers had difficulty firing frozen guns. Then, on December 5, Siberian troops-transferred from the Chinese frontier-attacked, many wearing the snow camouflage that the Germans would learn to fear. The Red Army had high hopes of this offensive, intending to encircle and destroy their attackers. They did not manage this, but they did drive back the Germans up to 155 miles (250 km) at some points. Nazi Germany had lost its chance for a quick victory. German losses during the Battle of Moscow totaled 250,000-400,000 dead or wounded, and the Red Army suffered 600,000-1,300,000 dead, wounded, or captured.

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Battle of Moscow, battle fought between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union from September 30, 1941 to January 7, 1942, during World War II. It was the climax of Nazi Germany's Operation Barbarossa, and it ended the Germans' intention to capture Moscow, which ultimately doomed the Third Reich.

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Nazis started deporting Jewish people to concentration camps.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Holocaust

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Holocaust, Hebrew Shoʾah ("Catastrophe"), Yiddish and Hebrew Ḥurban ("Destruction"), the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Germans called this "the final solution to the Jewish question." Yiddish-speaking Jews and survivors in the years immediately following their liberation called the murder of the Jews the Ḥurban, the word used to describe the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 bce and the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 ce. Shoʾah ("Catastrophe") is the term preferred by Israelis and the French, most especially after Claude Lanzmann's masterful 1985 motion picture documentary of that title. It is also preferred by people who speak Hebrew and by those who want to be more particular about the Jewish experience or who are uncomfortable with the religious connotations of the word Holocaust. Less universal and more particular, Shoʾah emphasizes the annihilation of the Jews, not the totality of Nazi victims. More particular terms also were used by Raul Hilberg, who called his pioneering work The Destruction of the European Jews, and Lucy S. Dawidowicz, who entitled her book on the Holocaust The War Against the Jews. In part she showed how Germany fought two wars simultaneously: World War II and the racial war against the Jews. The Allies fought only the World War. The word Holocaust is derived from the Greek holokauston, a translation of the Hebrew word ʿolah, meaning a burnt sacrifice offered whole to God. This word was chosen because in the ultimate manifestation of the Nazi killing program-the extermination camps -the bodies of the victims were consumed whole in crematoria and open fires.

Even before the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, they had made no secret of their anti-Semitism. As early as 1919 Adolf Hitler had written, "Rational anti-Semitism, however, must lead to systematic legal opposition....Its final objective must unswervingly be the removal of the Jews altogether." In Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"; 1925-27), Hitler further developed the idea of the Jews as an evil race struggling for world domination. Nazi anti-Semitism was rooted in religious anti-Semitism and enhanced by political anti-Semitism. To this the Nazis added a further dimension: racial anti-Semitism. Nazi racial ideology characterized the Jews as Untermenschen (German: "subhumans"). The Nazis portrayed the Jews as a race and not as a religious group. Religious anti-Semitism could be resolved by conversion, political anti-Semitism by expulsion. Ultimately, the logic of Nazi racial anti-Semitism led to annihilation.

Hitler's worldview revolved around two concepts: territorial expansion (that is, greater Lebensraum-"living space"-for the German people) and racial supremacy. After World War I the Allies denied Germany colonies in Africa, so Hitler sought to expand German territory and secure food and resources-scarce during World War I-in Europe itself. Hitler viewed the Jews as racial polluters, a cancer on German society in what has been termed by Holocaust survivor and historian Saul Friedländer "redemptive anti-Semitism," focused on redeeming Germany from its ills and ridding it of a cancer on the body politic. Historian Timothy Snyder characterized the struggle as even more elemental, as "zoological," and "ecological," a struggle of the species. Hitler opposed Jews for the values they brought into the world. Social justice and compassionate assistance to the weak stood in the way of what he perceived as the natural order, in which the powerful exercise unrestrained power. In Hitler's view, such restraint on the exercise of power would inevitably lead to the weakening, even the defeat, of the master race.

When Hitler came to power legally on January 30, 1933, as the head of a coalition government, his first objective was to consolidate power and to eliminate political opposition. The assault against the Jews began on April 1 with a boycott of Jewish businesses. A week later the Nazis dismissed Jews from the civil service, and by the end of the month the participation of Jews in German schools was restricted by a quota. On May 10 thousands of Nazi students, together with many professors, stormed university libraries and bookstores in 30 cities throughout Germany to remove tens of thousands of books written by non- Aryans and those opposed to Nazi ideology. The books were tossed into bonfires in an effort to cleanse German culture of "un-Germanic" writings. A century earlier Heinrich Heine -a German poet of Jewish origin-had said, "Where one burns books, one will, in the end, burn people." In Nazi Germany the time between the burning of Jewish books and the burning of Jews was eight years.

As discrimination against Jews increased, German law required a legal definition of a Jew and an Aryan. Promulgated at the annual Nazi Party rally in Nürnberg on September 15, 1935, the Nürnberg Laws-the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour and the Law of the Reich Citizen-became the centrepiece of anti-Jewish legislation and a precedent for defining and categorizing Jews in all German-controlled lands. Marriage and sexual relations between Jews and citizens of "German or kindred blood" were prohibited. Only "racial" Germans were entitled to civil and political rights. Jews were reduced to subjects of the state. The Nürnberg Laws formally divided Germans and Jews, yet neither the word German nor the word Jew was defined. That task was left to the bureaucracy. Two basic categories were established in November: Jews, those with at least three Jewish grandparents; and Mischlinge ("mongrels," or "mixed breeds"), people with one or two Jewish grandparents. Thus, the definition of a Jew was primarily based not on the identity an individual affirmed or the religion he or she practiced but on his or her ancestry. Categorization was the first stage of destruction.

Responding with alarm to Hitler's rise, the Jewish community sought to defend their rights as Germans. For those Jews who felt themselves fully German and who had patriotically fought in World War I, the Nazification of German society was especially painful. Zionist activity intensified. "Wear it with pride," journalist Robert Weltsch wrote in 1933 of the Jewish identity the Nazis had so stigmatized. Religious philosopher Martin Buber led an effort at Jewish adult education, preparing the community for the long journey ahead. Rabbi Leo Baeck circulated a prayer for Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) in 1935 that instructed Jews on how to behave: "We bow down before God; we stand erect before man." Yet while few, if any, could foresee its eventual outcome, the Jewish condition was increasingly perilous and was expected to worsen.

By the late 1930s there was a desperate search for countries of refuge. Those who could obtain visas and qualify under stringent quotas emigrated to the United States. Many went to Palestine, where the small Jewish community was willing to receive refugees. Still others sought refuge in neighbouring European countries. Most countries, however, were unwilling to receive large numbers of refugees.

Responding to domestic pressures to act on behalf of Jewish refugees, U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt convened, but did not attend, the Évian Conference on resettlement, in Évian-les-Bains, France, in July 1938. In his invitation to government leaders, Roosevelt specified that they would not have to change laws or spend government funds; only philanthropic funds would be used for resettlement. Britain was assured that Palestine would not be on the agenda. The result was that little was attempted and less accomplished.

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Holocaust | Definition, Concentration Camps, History, & Facts

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Holocaust, the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. Today the Holocaust is viewed as the emblematic manifestation of absolute evil. Learn more about the Holocaust in this article.

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A key naval battle where the US defeated Japan, turning the tide in the Pacific.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Midway

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Examine how the U.S. Navy defeated Japan's fleet to check Japanese expansion in the Battle of Midway Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. See all videos for this article

Battle of Midway, (June 3-6, 1942), World War II naval battle, fought almost entirely with aircraft, in which the United States destroyed Japan's first-line carrier strength and most of its best trained naval pilots. Together with the Battle of Guadalcanal, the Battle of Midway ended the threat of further Japanese invasion in the Pacific.

Context

The Midway Islands were claimed for the United States on July 5, 1859, by Capt. N.C. Brooks. The coral atoll-consisting of Eastern Island and the larger Sand Island to the west-has a total land area of just 2.4 square miles (6.2 square km). Midway was formally annexed by the U.S. in 1867, and the same year a coal depot was established for transpacific steamers, but it was never used. For many years thereafter only slight attention was paid to Midway. In 1903 Pres. Theodore Roosevelt placed Midway under the administration of the U.S. Navy Department, and the atoll became a connecting point for the submarine cable being laid between Hawaii and the Philippines. It was not until the advent of air transportation that the real significance of Midway was appreciated. By 1935 the islands had become a regular stopover point for transpacific flights.

It was World War II which conclusively demonstrated the strategic importance of Midway. In 1940 the U.S. Navy began work on a major air and submarine base there. By the following year Eastern Island would boast three runways, while on Sand Island a seaplane hangar was built for a squadron of PBY Catalina flying boats. Sand Island was also home to Midway's defensive garrison as well as its power plant and radio facilities. Japan recognized that control of the atoll would be critical for its plans in the central Pacific. If the islands could be seized by Japan, then the American military presence in Hawaii, just 1,100 miles (1,770 km) to the southeast, could be seriously threatened. Furthermore, the supply lines between the United States and Australia could be severed, thereby crippling the Allied war effort and opening the southwest Pacific to conquest.

So prominent was Midway in Japanese war planning that it was included in the opening offensive of the Pacific War on December 7-8, 1941. Roughly 12 hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese destroyers Sazanami and Ushio bombarded the power plant and seaplane hangar on Sand Island. Lieut. George Cannon, despite being seriously wounded by a Japanese shell, remained at his post to direct one of the island's defensive batteries. The Japanese ships were forced to retire, and Cannon, who died of his wounds, would be the first U.S. Marine to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor during World War II.

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Clash of carriers

Disposition of forces

Despite a strategic setback at the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 4-8, 1942), the Japanese had continued with plans to seize the Midway Islands and bases in the Aleutians. Seeking a naval showdown with the numerically inferior U.S. Pacific Fleet, Adm. Yamamoto Isoroku sent out the bulk of the Kidō Butai ("Mobile Force"), a massive carrier battle group under the command of Vice Adm. Nagumo Chuichi. The 4 heavy aircraft carriers Akagi, Hiryu, Kaga, and Soryu were supplemented by 2 light aircraft carriers, 2 seaplane carriers, 7 battleships, 15 cruisers, 42 destroyers, 10 submarines, and various support and escort vessels. Their orders were to engage and destroy the American fleet and invade Midway.

U.S. intelligence had divined Japanese intentions after breaking the Japanese JN25 naval code, and the Americans had time to prepare their defense. Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, could not muster a single battleship, however, and just two of his heavy carriers-the Hornet and the Enterprise-were combat ready. To further complicate matters, his most senior carrier commander, Vice Adm. William "Bull" Halsey, had been incapacitated by a serious bout of neurodermatitis and would miss the battle entirely. A third carrier, the Yorktown, had been so seriously damaged at the Battle of the Coral Sea that the Japanese believed it sunk, and it spent nearly two weeks limping back to Pearl Harbor. An initial damage assessment estimated that it would take three months to return the ship to service. Nimitz told repair crews that they had three days. Miraculously, after less than 72 hours in dry dock, the Yorktown steamed out of Pearl Harbor on the morning of May 30. It would join the rest of Nimitz's fleet, which included the Hornet, the Enterprise, 8 cruisers, and 18 destroyers at a rendezvous point optimistically code-named "Point Luck," 350 miles (560 km) northeast of Midway. There they awaited the advance of Yamamoto's armada. Whereas the Japanese had no land-based air support, the Americans could commit about 115 land-based Navy, Marine Corps, and Army Air Forces planes from Midway and Hawaii. The American fleet also included some 19 submarines.

June 3

The battle began at 9:04 am on June 3, 1942, when an American reconnaissance plane sighted lead elements of the invasion fleet some 500 miles (800 km) west of Midway and was fired upon by Japanese deck gunners. A second surface contact was made at 9:25 am, approximately 700 miles (1,100 km) west of Midway, with an American pilot reporting that he had located the "main body" of the Japanese fleet. In reality, these vessels represented only a small portion of the landing and occupation force.

Discover the significant events of June 4, 1942, during the Battle of Midway Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc/Kenny Chmielewski

At 12:30 pm a flight of U.S. Army Air Forces Boeing B-17 bombers was dispatched from Midway. In the late afternoon they struck ineffectually at part of the Japanese invasion force, which was by now about 220 miles (350 km) southwest of the U.S. fleet. American strategic bombers would demonstrate limited usefulness against moving naval targets at Midway and elsewhere in the Pacific, but they proved to be excellent reconnaissance platforms. Their high operational ceiling and long range meant that they could loiter for extended periods at altitudes unreachable by Japanese antiaircraft fire, while their onboard armament presented a formidable defense against carrier-based fighters.

About 9:15 pm, before the B-17s had returned, a quartet of Consolidated PBY Catalina seaplanes was launched from Midway. This group intercepted a Japanese surface force about 1:15 am in the early hours of June 4 and carried out a torpedo attack and strafing run. One of the Catalinas scored a hit on the Japanese tanker Akebono Maru; this would prove to be the only successful torpedo attack launched by an American aircraft during the entire battle. As the Catalinas made their way back to Midway, they were notified by radio that the islands were under attack by Japanese aircraft.

June 4

The attack on Midway

About 5:45 am on June 4, a Catalina pilot excitedly radioed the uncoded message, "Many planes heading Midway, bearing 320, distance 150." Within minutes, two of the Japanese carriers were sighted, and by 6:00 am virtually all of Midway's planes were airborne and on combat patrol. Just after 6:15 am more than two dozen Marine fighters-a mixture of Brewster F2A Buffaloes and Grumman F4F Wildcats-sighted and engaged the first wave of Japanese planes about 30 miles (48 km) from Midway. Formations of Japanese Aichi D3A "Val" dive-bombers and Nakajima B5N "Kate" torpedo bombers were escorted by squadrons of Mitsubishi A6M " Zero " fighters. The American pilots were outnumbered roughly 4-to-1. Moreover, the Zero was demonstrably superior to both the Buffalo and the Wildcat. Despite the mismatch, the Marines lightly bloodied the attackers but paid an enormous cost, losing more than half their number in the process.

About 6:30 am, with the island's fighter screen largely neutralized, the aerial bombardment of Midway began. The Japanese attack lasted about half an hour and caused extensive damage to structures on both Eastern and Sand islands. Midway's runways were largely unharmed, however, possibly because the Japanese were planning to use them themselves once the invasion had been completed. Between the aerial engagement and Midway's antiaircraft defenses, the Japanese lost fewer than 10 planes in their attack on the island.

Midway attacks and Nagumo's decision

While Midway was absorbing the full force of the Japanese assault, land-based planes from Midway were converging on the Japanese fleet. Just after 7:00 am a quartet of U.S. Army Air Forces Martin B-26 Marauders began a torpedo attack run on the Akagi, Nagumo's flagship. They were closely followed by six U.S. Navy Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers. Most of the American planes were shot down in the attempt, and none scored hits, a fact that owed much to the dismal performance of U.S. Mark 13 torpedoes. The Imperial Japanese Navy, conversely, fielded aerial and surface torpedoes of outstanding quality, and the Japanese would retain the technological advantage in this area until the end of the war.

About this time Nagumo made a fateful decision. Midway's aircraft were obviously still active, and an after-action report from the Hiryu's air commander, Lieut. Joichi Tomonaga, indicated that a second attack on Midway would be necessary to suitably pacify the island ahead of the planned amphibious assault. In addition, Nagumo's scout planes had detected no trace of an American naval presence nearby. This was hardly the fault of the pilots, as the search area was an expanse of ocean larger than the entire United Kingdom and visibility was sharply reduced by cloud cover in some areas. At 7:15 am, believing that he retained the element of surprise and that the American fleet was no closer than Hawaii, Nagumo ordered that the fueled and ready planes on the Kaga and the Akagi were to have their torpedoes replaced with bombs. The situation changed abruptly at 7:28 am, when one of Nagumo's scouts reported sighting "10 enemy surface ships" but gave no indication of the makeup of this force. Now, faced with the possibility of American carriers in the area, Nagumo brought the rearming effort to halt. At 7:45 am he ordered those planes which had not yet had their torpedoes replaced to prepare for an attack on American naval units. The flight and hangar decks of the Japanese carriers were now covered with fueled and armed aircraft as well as unsecured ordnance.

Nearly an hour after the initial American strike at the Japanese carrier force, a second wave of Midway-based planes launched their attack. At 7:55 am a squadron of 16 U.S. Marine Corps Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bombers targeted the Soryu, scoring no hits and losing half their number to antiaircraft fire and Japanese fighters. Roughly 15 minutes later U.S. Army Air Forces B-17s carried out a high-level bombing of the carrier force to little effect but suffered no losses themselves. At approximately 8:20 am the last of Midway's planes, a squadron of 11 U.S. Marine Corps Vought SB2U Vindicator dive-bombers, targeted the Japanese battleship Haruna. Most of these planes were intercepted by the Japanese fighter screen, however, and the bombing runs that they did manage to carry out were not on target. Until this moment, the Battle of Midway was an unqualified Japanese victory.

Battle of Midway: Japanese aircraft carrier U.S. Air Force

As the Vindicators were being chased away, Nagumo finally received confirmation that the American naval force did, indeed, include a carrier. This news could not have come at a worse time. The planes from the attack on Midway were returning and low on fuel, and the fighters of Nagumo's combat air patrol were also in need of refueling and rearmament. If he chose to launch his ready aircraft for an attack on the imminent threat, he risked losing scores of skilled aviators as their planes splashed into the Pacific. Nagumo had also spent the previous 90 minutes demonstrating the futility of attempting uncoordinated attacks on a well-defended carrier battle group without fighter escort. Rather than risk the same outcome, Nagumo made a decision that would determine the course of the Pacific War. He would clear his flight decks and recover his planes before launching a concerted attack on the American fleet.

Attack by the American carriers

The American carriers were divided into two groups: Task Force 16, which included the Enterprise and the Hornet, under Halsey's replacement, Rear Adm. Raymond Spruance, and Task Force 17, which included the Yorktown, under Rear Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher. Due to his seniority in rank, Fletcher would have overall tactical command, but he granted Spruance significant operational latitude. This was fortunate, as Spruance was arguably the finest American naval commander of the war.

The flight of the Devastators

As the attack on Midway was unfolding, Fletcher and Spruance were monitoring signals traffic in an effort to determine the strength and position of the Japanese fleet. Just after 6:00 am, Midway radioed that two carriers had been sighted, and the American admirals acted immediately. Spruance's Task Force 16 was about 10 miles (16 km) southwest of Fletcher and Task Force 17, placing it closer to the Japanese fleet. Fletcher ordered Spruance to sail southwest and engage the enemy. Fletcher, who had scouts in the air, would recover his planes and hold the Yorktown in reserve against the threat of additional Japanese carriers. Hoping to catch the Japanese carriers before they could prepare a second attack on Midway, Spruance gambled by launching his planes at 7:00 am from a distance that all but guaranteed that many of his aircraft would not have enough fuel to return.

While the American carrier planes were attempting to close on the Japanese fleet, they were given no additional guidance on its whereabouts. The lack of communication between Midway and the carriers and between the carriers and their own planes would mean that the American strike force would arrive piecemeal if it arrived at all. Dozens of planes were forced to return to the Hornet, land at Midway, or ditch at sea without ever having located the Japanese. At 8:38 am, having recovered his scouts and believing that his fleet had been discovered by the Japanese, Fletcher began launching planes from the Yorktown.

About 9:20 am, 15 Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo bombers from the Hornet became the first American carrier planes to strike at the Japanese. The attack of Torpedo Squadron 8 on the Soryu was an unmitigated disaster. Every one of the Devastators was shot down, and the squadron's sole survivor, pilot Ensign George Gay, would spend the next 30 hours floating in the Pacific as the battle raged around him. At 10:20 am torpedo squadrons from the Enterprise and Yorktown struck with similar results. Of the 41 Devastators launched at Midway, only six made it back to their carriers, and not a single one carried out a successful torpedo attack.

The Dauntlesses turn the tide

The Yorktown's Devastators were unique in that they were the only torpedo squadron to enter the battle with a fighter escort. A half-dozen Grumman F4F Wildcats from the Yorktown accompanied the slow-moving Devastators, and the Japanese combat air patrol responded immediately. They dropped down to near sea level to intercept the American fighters, unwittingly clearing the way for a new threat.

Battle of Midway U.S. Navy/National Archives/Naval Historical Center(Digital Photo Number: 80-G-17054)

Low on fuel and lacking any additional information about the whereabouts of the Japanese fleet, Lieut. Comdr. Wade McClusky was scanning the Pacific for any trace of the enemy. The Enterprise's air group commander had arrived at the estimated point of interception at 9:20 am, but Nagumo had changed course while they were en route. McClusky then made what Nimitz would later characterize as "one of the most important decisions of the battle." Rather than returning to the Enterprise with his squadron of Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bombers, McClusky continued his search to the northwest, eventually spotting the Japanese destroyer Arashi as it hastened to catch up with the rest of the fleet. The Dauntlesses spotted the Kaga and the Akagi about 10:00 am and moved into attack position.

Diving out of the sun, the Enterprise's Dauntlesses struck at 10:22 am just as the torpedo attack was concluding, and quickly scored multiple devastating bomb hits on both the Kaga and the Akagi. Almost simultaneously, 17 Dauntlesses that had accompanied the Yorktown torpedo attack group dove on the Soryu. Within minutes the three Japanese carriers were in flames, and the momentum in the Pacific had shifted. Although the dive-bombers did not emerge unscathed-the Enterprise lost more than a dozen Dauntlesses-they had inflicted enormous damage on the Kidō Butai. As fires raged out of control, Nagumo was forced to abandon the Akagi, and he transferred his flag to the light cruiser Nagara.

The Hiryu strikes back

About 10:50 am, as the other three Japanese carriers burned, Rear Adm. Tamon Yamaguchi, commander of the battle group which included the Soryu and the Hiryu, ordered a hastily assembled attack force into the air. For the next half hour, until Nagumo had reestablished his flagship, Yamaguchi would serve as the effective commander of what remained of the Japanese fleet. The Hiryu's planes followed the American strike force back to the Yorktown, and, just after noon, they carried out a dive-bombing attack that left the American carrier dead in the water. Although the American fighter screen and antiaircraft defenses had exacted a punishing toll on the Japanese, three bomb hits had seriously-but not fatally-damaged the Yorktown. While repair teams worked to patch the flight deck and restore operation to the ship's boilers, Fletcher transferred his flag to the cruiser Astoria.

Battle of Midway 2rd Class William G. Roy-U.S. Navy/NARA

An hour of frenzied work brought most of the Yorktown's boilers back online, and by 2:30 pm the ship was underway. Within minutes, however, a second wave of planes from the Hiryu pounced on the carrier. A pair of torpedo hits brought the Yorktown to a stop for a second time, and the ship began to list dangerously. At 2:55 pm the Yorktown 's captain, Capt. Elliott Buckmaster, gave the order to abandon ship.

Spruance in command

By this time, however, American scouts had located the Hiryu, and a mixed force of Dauntlesses from the Enterprise and the Yorktown took to the skies at 3:30 pm. They were soon joined by additional dive-bombers from the Hornet. The American bombers would travel without escort, as all available fighters were tasked with maintaining a combat air patrol over the fleet. Just before 4:00 pm Fletcher, recognizing that Task Force 17 had ceased to be a functional carrier battle group and not wishing to waste precious time by transferring his flag to the Enterprise, turned over operational control of the fleet to Spruance.

The first wave of American bombers descended on the Hiryu about 5:00 pm and quickly reduced the Japanese carrier to a flaming wreck. At least four American bombs struck the Hiryu, and the Hornet's Dauntlesses, arriving a half hour later, turned their attention to other ships in the Hiryu 's battle group. This attack caused no significant damage to the remaining Japanese ships nor did a subsequent high-altitude strike by B-17s from Midway and Hawaii.

After recovering his planes, Spruance opted to sail Task Force 16 east, away from the day's action, rather than west in pursuit of the remnants of the Kidō Butai. History would prove this to be an exceptionally prudent course, as the Japanese navy excelled at night engagements, and their surface fleet, even accounting for the loss of four carriers, remained a significant threat. Retiring to the east also kept the American ships within range of Midway's land-based aircraft. The destroyer Hughes from Task Force 17 was tasked with guarding the crippled Yorktown overnight. That evening the Kaga and the Soryu both sank.

June 5-6

On June 5 the Yorktown was taken under tow and a salvage operation was begun. The Akagi and the Hiryu, both of which had managed to remain afloat through the night, were scuttled. Yamaguchi opted to go down with his flagship, and he was accompanied by the Hiryu's captain, Rear Adm. Tomeo Kaku. While such a decision was entirely in keeping with the Japanese honour code ( Bushidō) it deprived the Japanese navy of a highly esteemed flag officer as well as one of its most senior naval aviators.

Battle of Midway National Archives, Washington, D.C.

On the afternoon of June 5 Spruance dispatched nearly 60 bombers in an attempt to catch the retiring Japanese surface force, but the Americans succeeded in locating just one ship, the destroyer Tanikaze. The Tanikaze had been tasked with ensuring that the Hiryu actually sunk, and despite being the target of multiple attacks, it managed to escape largely unscathed and rejoin the Japanese fleet. Spruance renewed the pursuit the following day, and Dauntlesses from the Hornet and the Enterprise found a group of stragglers from the main Japanese fleet. With no fighter escort to protect them, the Japanese ships were easy prey for the dive-bombers. The cruiser Mikuma was sunk, and the cruiser Mogami as well as the destroyers Asashio and Arashio were seriously damaged.

Meanwhile, repair crews were working feverishly to save the Yorktown. The destroyer Hammann had tied up to the carrier early on the morning of June 6, and other ships joined a growing protective ring. Scores of men worked throughout the day to fight fires and bring flooding under control, and good progress was being made when, at 1:35 pm, lookouts spotted the wakes of incoming torpedoes. The Japanese submarine I-168 had approached the salvage operation undetected, and explosions soon rocked both the Hammann and the Yorktown. Almost immediately the order was given to abandon the Hammann, which sank within minutes. Some of the remaining destroyers launched a depth charges attack against the I-168, but the submarine escaped. The Yorktown, for all the damage it had sustained, somehow remained afloat but listing, and the salvage crew had hoped to resume work the following day. However, in the early morning hours of June 7, the Yorktown 's list increased, and about 5:00 am the carrier slipped beneath the waves "with all her battle flags flying."

Casualties and significance

The material losses suffered by Japan at Midway were catastrophic. Four carriers, a heavy cruiser, and more than 320 planes were sent to the bottom of the Pacific. Approximately 3,000 Japanese sailors and airmen were killed, and, because the Japanese fleet left the action area in relative haste, there was little opportunity to recover survivors who might have gone into the water. The victory cost the United States one carrier and a destroyer, as well as nearly 150 aircraft-more than two-thirds of which were carrier-based. American personnel losses were relatively light; 317 sailors, airmen, and Marines from the Midway garrison were killed.

In the days following the engagement, U.S. Navy patrols in the area around Midway recovered several survivors, including nearly three dozen crewmen from the engineering department of the Hiryu. Interrogation of these prisoners of war would provide the Americans with vital intelligence about Japanese naval capabilities. On June 21, more than two weeks after the battle, an American Catalina flying boat spotted the two-man crew of one of the Enterprise 's Devastators some 360 miles (roughly 580 km) north of Midway. They would be the last survivors of Midway to be recovered from the Pacific.

The official U.S. Navy combat narrative of the battle characterized Midway as "a victory of intelligence," and this was certainly the case. From the breaking of the Japanese JN25 naval code to the execution of a clever scheme to confirm that Midway was to be the target of the Japanese attack, American cryptanalysts played an outsize role at Midway. Intelligence alone did not win the battle, however. Both Fletcher and Spruance employed sound carrier tactics, and Fletcher's decision to cede operational control to Spruance late on June 4 ensured that the American command structure would not be disrupted at a key point of the battle.

The Battle of Midway brought the Pacific naval forces of Japan and the United States to approximate parity and marked a turning point of the military struggle between the two countries. It was also the most decisive naval defeat suffered by Japan since 1592, when Korean admiral Yi Sun-shin destroyed Toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasion fleet. For the Allies it was a great strategic victory: the Japanese were prompted to cancel their plans to invade New Caledonia, Fiji, and Samoa and lost all but the last vestiges of their earlier strategic initiative.
Michael Ray

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Battle of Midway | Significance & Outcome

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Battle of Midway (June 3-6, 1942), World War II naval battle, fought almost entirely with aircraft, in which the United States destroyed Japan's first-line carrier strength and most of its best trained naval pilots. The American victory effectively ended Japan's ability to prosecute an offensive war in the Pacific.

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One of the bloodiest battles; the Soviet army started to push back the Germans.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Stalingrad

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Battle of Stalingrad | History, Summary, Location, Deaths, & Facts | Britannica

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Battle of Stalingrad, successful Soviet defense of the city of Stalingrad that was a turning point in favor of the Allies in World War II. Russians consider it to be one of the greatest battles of their Great Patriotic War, and most historians consider it to be the greatest battle of the entire conflict.

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The US and Britain began large bombing campaigns against German cities.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Strategic-bombing-during-World-War-II

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Strategic bombing during World War II | Definition, Significance, Aircraft, Germany, & Japan | Britannica

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Strategic bombing during World War II, the mass bombing of military targets and population centers during the Second World War. Large multi-engine bombers operated in formations (sometimes numbering 1,000 or more) that were intended not to evade enemy defenses but to beat them back or overwhelm them.

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Japan expanded its empire quickly across Asia.

https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-II

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September 3, 1939 - September 2, 1945

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What was the cause of World War II?

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How many people died during World War II?

World War II, conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during the years 1939-45. The principal belligerents were the Axis powers- Germany, Italy, and Japan-and the Allies- France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, China. The war was in many respects a continuation, after an uneasy 20-year hiatus, of the disputes left unsettled by World War I. The 40,000,000-50,000,000 deaths incurred in World War II make it the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in history.

Along with World War I, World War II was one of the great watersheds of 20th-century geopolitical history. It resulted in the extension of the Soviet Union's power to nations of eastern Europe, enabled a communist movement to eventually achieve power in China, and marked the decisive shift of power in the world away from the states of western Europe and toward the United States and the Soviet Union.
(Read Sir John Keegan's Britannica entry on the Normandy Invasion.)

Axis initiative and Allied reaction

The outbreak of war

By the early part of 1939 the German dictator Adolf Hitler had become determined to invade and occupy Poland. Poland, for its part, had guarantees of French and British military support should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler intended to invade Poland anyway, but first he had to neutralize the possibility that the Soviet Union would resist the invasion of its western neighbour. Secret negotiations led on August 23-24 to the signing of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact in Moscow. In a secret protocol of this pact, the Germans and the Soviets agreed that Poland should be divided between them, with the western third of the country going to Germany and the eastern two-thirds being taken over by the U.S.S.R.

Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About World War II

Having achieved this cynical agreement, the other provisions of which stupefied Europe even without divulgence of the secret protocol, Hitler thought that Germany could attack Poland with no danger of Soviet or British intervention and gave orders for the invasion to start on August 26. News of the signing, on August 25, of a formal treaty of mutual assistance between Great Britain and Poland (to supersede a previous though temporary agreement) caused him to postpone the start of hostilities for a few days. He was still determined, however, to ignore the diplomatic efforts of the western powers to restrain him. Finally, at 12:40 pm on August 31, 1939, Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to start at 4:45 the next morning. The invasion began as ordered. In response, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, at 11:00 am and at 5:00 pm, respectively. World War II had begun.

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World War II | Facts, Summary, History, Dates, Combatants, & Causes

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World War II was a conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during 1939-45. The main combatants were the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) and the Allies (France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China). It was the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in human history.

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The USA began a secret project to build the atomic bomb.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Manhattan-Project

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Manhattan Project | Definition, Scientists, Timeline, Locations, Facts, & Significance

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Manhattan Project, U.S. government research project (1942–45) that produced the first atomic bombs. The project’s name was derived from its initial location at Columbia University, where much of the early research was done. The first bomb was exploded in a test at Alamogordo air base in southern New Mexico on July 16, 1945.

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The defeat of Germany’s army at Stalingrad marked a turning point on the Eastern Front.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Stalingrad

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Battle of Stalingrad | History, Summary, Location, Deaths, & Facts | Britannica

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Battle of Stalingrad, successful Soviet defense of the city of Stalingrad that was a turning point in favor of the Allies in World War II. Russians consider it to be one of the greatest battles of their Great Patriotic War, and most historians consider it to be the greatest battle of the entire conflict.

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The Allies invaded Italy, leading to Mussolini’s fall.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Italian-Campaign

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Italian Campaign | Summary, Map, Significance, Date, & World War II | Britannica

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Italian Campaign, (July 9, 1943–May 2, 1945), during World War II, the Allied invasion and conquest of Italy. With the success of operations in North Africa (June 1940–May 13, 1943) and Sicily (July 9–August 17, 1943), the next logical step for the Allies in the Mediterranean was a move against

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Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin planned the final defeat of Germany.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Tehran-Conference

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Tehrān Conference, (November 28-December 1, 1943), meeting between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in Tehrān during World War II. The chief discussion centred on the opening of a "second front" in western Europe. Stalin agreed to an eastern offensive to coincide with the forthcoming Western Front, and he pressed the western leaders to proceed with formal preparations for their long-promised invasion of German-occupied France.

Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Though military questions were dominant, the Tehrān Conference saw more discussion of political issues than had occurred in any previous meeting between Allied governmental heads. Not only did Stalin reiterate that the Soviet Union should retain the frontiers provided by the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939 and by the Russo-Finnish Treaty of 1940, but he also stated that it would want the Baltic coast of East Prussia. Though the settlement for Germany was discussed at length, all three Allied leaders appeared uncertain; their views were imprecise on the topic of a postwar international organization; and, on the Polish question, the western Allies and the Soviet Union found themselves in sharp dissension, Stalin expressing his continued distaste for the Polish government-in-exile in London. On Iran, which Allied forces were partly occupying, they were able to agree on a declaration (published on December 1, 1943) guaranteeing the postwar independence and territorial integrity of that state and promising postwar economic assistance.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Michael Ray, Editor.

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...Roosevelt and Churchill went to Tehrān, to meet Stalin at the Eureka conference of November 28-December 1. Stalin renewed the Soviet promise of military intervention against Japan, but he primarily wanted an assurance that "Overlord" (the invasion of France) would indeed take place in 1944. Reassured about this by Roosevelt,...

At the Tehrān Conference late in 1943, Churchill's proposal that the Soviet-Polish border coincide with the Curzon Line (roughly similar to the Ribbentrop-Molotov line) and that Poland be compensated at Germany's cost was accepted by Roosevelt and Stalin. The Mikołajczyk government, which was opposed to such a...

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Tehran Conference | Facts History, & Significance

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Tehran Conference (November 28-December 1, 1943), meeting of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in Iran during World War II. The chief discussion concerned the opening of a second front in Europe with the invasion of German-occupied France.

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The Allies secured their first major victory against Japan in the Pacific.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Guadalcanal

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Battle of Guadalcanal, (August 1942-February 1943), series of World War II land and sea clashes between Allied and Japanese forces on and around Guadalcanal, one of the southern Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific. Along with the naval Battle of Midway (June 3-6, 1942), the fighting on Guadalcanal marked a turning point in favour of the Allies in the Pacific War.

The naval campaign at Guadalcanal

Landings in the southern Solomons and the Battle of Savo Island

On July 6, 1942, the Japanese moved a force consisting of troops and labourers to Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands and began constructing an airfield. The Allies recognized that land-based planes operating from this field would seriously menace bases in the New Hebrides and New Caledonia as well as Port Moresby in New Guinea. Immediate steps were taken to eject the Japanese, utilizing forces that were available in the South Pacific.

On August 7, 1942, some 6,000 men of the U.S. 1st Marine Division, commanded by Maj. Gen. Alexander Vandegrift, launched an amphibious assault on Guadalcanal and Florida Island, surprising Guadalcanal's 2,000 Japanese defenders. The landings were made with strong naval and air support and met with little initial resistance, and the airfield on Guadalcanal and the harbour on Florida Island were seized in the first 36 hours. The Marines named the airstrip Henderson Field, after Maj. Lofton Henderson, a Marine aviator who had perished while leading a bombing run at the Battle of Midway the previous month. Henderson Field would quickly become the centre of gravity for the conflict on Guadalcanal.

The Japanese reacted quickly, and just before 2:00 am on August 9 they struck hard at the Allied naval force supporting the operation. A force of Japanese cruisers and destroyers engaged the Allied fleet in a furious night battle that came to be called the Battle of Savo Island. The result was a disaster for the Allies. Over the course of roughly a half hour, the Japanese sank the U.S. cruisers Astoria, Quincy, and Vincennes and crippled the Australian cruiser Canberra while suffering negligible losses. Over the following months, some two dozen Japanese and Allied ships would be sunk in the waters to the north of Guadalcanal; the sea lane between Guadalcanal and Florida Island would subsequently be known to Allied sailors as Ironbottom Sound.

The Battles of the Eastern Solomons, Cape Esperance, and Santa Cruz

Japanese forces began gathering at Rabaul, New Britain, some 650 miles (roughly 1,050 km) northwest of Guadalcanal, and Vice Adm. Robert Ghormley responded by concentrating Task Force 61, under Rear Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher, southeast of Guadalcanal. The carriers USS Enterprise and USS Saratoga and the battleship USS North Carolina were supported by numerous cruisers and destroyers, as well as land-based aircraft from Henderson Field. On August 24 contact was made with the powerful 1st Carrier Division under Nagumo Chūichi, and the Battle of the Eastern Solomons ensued. Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers from the Saratoga sank the Japanese light carrier Ryujo, and Saratoga dive-bombers seriously damaged the seaplane carrier Chitose. The Enterprise was struck by dive-bombers from the Japanese carrier Shokaku, and a fire deep in the ship caused its rudder to jam. It spent nearly an hour steaming in a circle before control was restored; if a second wave of Japanese planes had not followed an erroneous position report on the American carriers, the Enterprise almost certainly would not have survived the day.

Both sides withdrew their ships from the area by midnight, and a Japanese resupply convoy under the command of Rear Adm. Tanaka Raizō attempted to force its way through to Guadalcanal without the benefit of air cover on the morning of August 25. Dive-bombers from Guadalcanal struck Tanaka's flagship, the cruiser Jintsū, and inflicted heavy damage on a Japanese troop ship. U.S. Army Air Forces B-17s scored a direct hit on the destroyer Mutsuki, sinking it. Tanaka was forced to retire, but he quickly revised his tactics, and his destroyer squadron-the so-called "Toyko Express"-would ferry tens of thousands of Japanese troops and tons of vital supplies to Guadalcanal over the following months.

During the next six weeks, no major action took place in the Solomons, although Japanese planes and submarines continued to harass the U.S. resupply effort, and Japanese surface ships shelled Henderson Field. The most notable loss during this time was the carrier USS Wasp, which was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-19 on September 15. That single torpedo attack also fatally struck the destroyer USS O'Brien and damaged the USS North Carolina. The Japanese resupplied and reinforced their positions at Guadalcanal with nightly runs of the "Tokyo Express," and Tanaka would earn a reputation as arguably the most gifted destroyer captain in the Pacific War. Just before midnight on the night of October 11, five U.S. cruisers and four destroyers under the command of Rear Adm. Norman Scott intercepted a strong Japanese surface force that was en route to Henderson Field. In the ensuing Battle of Cape Esperance, the Japanese lost the heavy cruiser Furutaka and the destroyer Fubuki, while the Americans lost the destroyer USS Duncan.

Two weeks later the much larger Battle of Santa Cruz occurred against the backdrop of a major Japanese ground offensive on Guadalcanal. U.S. commanders were anticipating a Japanese attack, and Vice Adm. William ("Bull") Halsey, who had succeeded Ghormley as commander of U.S. naval forces in the South Pacific on October 18, concentrated his available assets into two carrier battle groups. The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, which had spent nearly a month at Pearl Harbor undergoing repairs, sailed with the battleship USS South Dakota, the heavy cruiser USS Portland, and a screen of light cruisers and destroyers. The carrier USS Hornet was supported by the heavy cruisers USS Northampton and USS Pensacola and a light cruiser and destroyer escort. Against this force was arrayed Vice Adm. Nagumo Chūichi's fleet carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku-both of which had participated in the Pearl Harbor attack-the light carrier Zuiho, the escort carrier Junyo, four battleships, and an assortment of destroyers and other support craft. The two forces met north of Guadalcanal on October 26, and the result was a tactical victory for Japan. The Hornet was sunk, as was the destroyer USS Porter, and the Enterprise was seriously damaged. Nagumo was forced to retire, however, as the Zuiho and the Shokaku had suffered numerous bomb hits and the loss of nearly 100 aircraft had left him without a significant portion of his naval air complement. The Japanese retreat bought the Americans a much needed breathing spell.

The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal

The climax of sea fighting in the Solomons came in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (November 12-15, 1942). On November 11-12, the U.S. landed a sizable contingent of reinforcements and supplies on the island. At roughly the same time, a fleet of Japanese transports, carrying some 7,000 men, steamed southward from Rabaul behind an escort of several battleships and a large screen of cruisers and destroyers. When the Americans detected this force descending on their vulnerable transports and cargo vessels, they dispatched a force of cruisers and destroyers to fight a delaying action. The result was a series of violent confrontations that inflicted heavy losses on both sides, but left the United States in a position of strength in the southern Solomons.

Just after midnight on November 13, the U.S. task force, under the command of Rear Adm. Daniel Callaghan, engaged Japanese ships commanded by Vice Adm. Abe Hiroaki. The battle that followed was a brutal 24-minute melee that saw capital ships on both sides blasting away at extremely close range. The Japanese lost the battleship Hiei while the U.S. lost the cruisers USS Atlanta and USS Juneau as well as several destroyers. Callaghan and Rear Adm. Norman Scott were killed in the engagement; they were the only two flag officers of the U.S. Navy to be killed in a surface engagement in World War II.

On November 14 Japanese cruisers and destroyers shelled Henderson Field, and another invasion force was discovered north of Guadalcanal. The Japanese ships were subjected to air attacks throughout the day, and that night they were engaged by the battleships USS Washington and USS South Dakota. About midnight, contact was made north of Savo Island, and another fierce night action ensued. The Japanese lost the battleship Kirishima and the heavy cruiser Kinugasa, and the U.S. lost three more destroyers.

The land campaign on Guadalcanal

The initial amphibious assault on the southern Solomons represented a superb coordination of Allied naval, air, and ground forces. Warships laid down heavy barrages to screen the approach of troop transports and carrier-based planes, and U.S. Army Air Forces bombers softened Japanese defenses. Landing craft took the Marines ashore at key points throughout the islands. The Marines rapidly secured a beachhead on Guadalcanal and captured the almost-complete airstrip that would become Henderson Field. They also seized the smaller islands of Tulagi, Gavutu, and Tanombogo. While the Japanese construction units on Guadalcanal were overcome with comparative ease-or simply melted away into the jungle-the defenders of Tulagi and Gavatu included elements of the elite Special Naval Landing Force (SNLF), and they fought desperately. The battle for Tulagi saw the Japanese garrison destroyed virtually to the last man; this would serve as a grim preview of later engagements in the U.S. campaign in the Pacific.

Almost as soon as the U.S. Marines landed on Guadalcanal, Japanese commanders began making preparations for the retaking of the island. Vandegrift had concentrated some 11,000 Marines into a tight defensive perimeter centred on Henderson Field. He had been warned of an imminent attack, thanks to the efforts of U.S. cryptanalysts, who had penetrated the Japanese naval code. The Japanese, believing that the Americans had withdrawn many of their troops after the stinging defeat at Savo Island, vastly underestimated the strength of the U.S. presence on Guadalcanal. In the predawn hours of August 21, the Japanese launched their first ground offensive on Guadalcanal. At the Battle of the Tenaru (also called the Battle of Alligator Creek), U.S. Marine defenders annihilated a force of some 900 veteran Japanese army troops east of Henderson Field.

Shelling by Japanese ships and aerial bombardment from Japanese planes became routine, but the U.S. defenders were able to cling to their narrow toehold on Guadalcanal, thanks in part to the efforts of the so-called " Cactus Air Force," a motley collection of Marine, U.S. Army Air Forces, and U.S. Navy aviators operating out of Henderson Field. Cactus Air Force pilots shot down more than 150 Japanese planes in the first five weeks of the battle, and Henderson's bomber contingent pounded Japanese warships and transports. On September 13-14, U.S. Marine Corps Col. Merritt ("Red Mike") Edson, the 800 Marines of the 1st Raider Battalion, and a handful of Marine parachute troops were subjected to one of the most intense assaults on Henderson Field thus far, when they were attacked by a Japanese force more than three times their size. Their tenacious defense in what came to be called the Battle of Edson's Ridge helped to cement the reputation of the Raiders in Marine lore and earned Edson the Medal of Honor.

The Japanese forces on the island reached a peak strength of 36,000 troops by October, but they were unable to overwhelm the Americans' defensive perimeter and retake the airfield. The hardest fighting occurred on October 24-25, when a single Marine battalion was all that stood between Henderson Field and two Japanese regiments. The 1st Battalion of the 7th Marine Division, commanded by Lieut. Col. Chesty Puller, repelled the Japanese assault and inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers. Reinforced by soldiers of the 164th Infantry Regiment, the first U.S. Army unit to land on Guadalcanal, Puller's Marines weathered repeated Japanese charges and held their positions. Gunnery Sgt. John Basilone was awarded the Medal of Honor for "conspicuous gallantry" during the engagement, and Puller received his third Navy Cross (of an eventual five). By November the U.S. Navy was able to land reinforcements on Guadalcanal faster than the Japanese, and Allied counterattacks had steadily pushed the Japanese toward the northwest part of the island.

In December the 1st Marine Division was withdrawn after four months of intense combat, and the U.S. 25th Infantry Division began arriving on Guadalcanal. At the start of 1943, Allied combat strength on Guadalcanal stood at two U.S. Army divisions and a Marine regiment, totaling some 44,000 troops. Offensive operations continued through January 1943, narrowing and compressing the Japanese position. During the first week of February, light surface craft began evacuating the 12,000 remaining Japanese troops from Guadalcanal. On February 8, 1943, almost exactly six months after the initial landings, the last remaining Japanese pocket of resistance was eliminated, and Guadalcanal was at last firmly in Allied hands.

Outcome and casualties

Although U.S. losses were heavy in both the naval and ground campaigns, the Battle of Guadalcanal was decisive in that U.S. positions in the southern Solomons were never again seriously threatened. The Japanese lost a total of 24,000 men killed in the Battle of Guadalcanal, while the Americans sustained 1,600 killed, 4,200 wounded, and several thousand dead from malaria and other tropical diseases. The various naval battles cost each side 24 warships: the Japanese lost 2 battleships, 4 cruisers, 1 light carrier, 11 destroyers, and 6 submarines, while the Americans lost 8 cruisers, 2 heavy carriers, and 14 destroyers.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
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Battle of Guadalcanal | Facts, Map, & Significance

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Battle of Guadalcanal, (August 1942-February 1943), series of World War II land and sea clashes between Allied and Japanese forces on and around Guadalcanal, one of the southern Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific. Along with the naval Battle of Midway (June 3-6, 1942), the fighting on Guadalcanal marked a turning point in favour of the Allies in the Pacific War.

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German submarines attacked British ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-the-Atlantic

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Invasion of Poland, attack on Poland by Nazi Germany that marked the start of World War II. The invasion lasted from September 1 to October 5, 1939.

As dawn broke on September 1, 1939, German forces launched a surprise attack on Poland. Army Group North attacked from Pomerania and East Prussia, while Army Group South drove deep into southern Poland from Silesia and Slovakia. Strategically outflanked and materially outnumbered, Polish forces stood little chance, especially because they were deployed too close to the German frontier, unintentionally facilitating Germany's strategy of envelopment.

The powerful Luftwaffe destroyed the Polish air force in days, leaving the Polish army at the mercy of the German panzer divisions. The speed with which the German tank units cut through the Polish lines was to give a new name to the lexicon of warfare: blitzkrieg ("lightning war"). The declaration of war on Nazi Germany by Britain and France on September 3 did nothing to help Poland.

The Poles enjoyed a limited tactical success from September 9 to 15 at the Bzura River, yet it came to nothing as the German armies closed in on Warsaw. Poland's fate had already been sealed, when-in accordance with the secret terms of the Nazi-Soviet pact-the Red Army crossed the Polish border from the east on September 17. While Warsaw and a few garrisons continued to hold out, the remnants of the Polish armed forces retreated to neighboring countries, with at least 90,000 men escaping to fight another day. Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In the end, German losses totaled 14,000 dead or missing and 30,000 wounded out of a total of 1,250,000 troops involved in the invasion; Polish casualties numbered 66,000 dead, 130,000 wounded, and 400,000 captured out of 800,000 troops.

Adrian Gilbert

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Invasion of Poland | Description & Facts

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The Invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany occurred from September 1 to October 5, 1939, and marked the start of World War II.

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Nazi Germany continued the mass murder of Jews and other groups.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Holocaust

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Holocaust, Hebrew Shoʾah ("Catastrophe"), Yiddish and Hebrew Ḥurban ("Destruction"), the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Germans called this "the final solution to the Jewish question." Yiddish-speaking Jews and survivors in the years immediately following their liberation called the murder of the Jews the Ḥurban, the word used to describe the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 bce and the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 ce. Shoʾah ("Catastrophe") is the term preferred by Israelis and the French, most especially after Claude Lanzmann's masterful 1985 motion picture documentary of that title. It is also preferred by people who speak Hebrew and by those who want to be more particular about the Jewish experience or who are uncomfortable with the religious connotations of the word Holocaust. Less universal and more particular, Shoʾah emphasizes the annihilation of the Jews, not the totality of Nazi victims. More particular terms also were used by Raul Hilberg, who called his pioneering work The Destruction of the European Jews, and Lucy S. Dawidowicz, who entitled her book on the Holocaust The War Against the Jews. In part she showed how Germany fought two wars simultaneously: World War II and the racial war against the Jews. The Allies fought only the World War. The word Holocaust is derived from the Greek holokauston, a translation of the Hebrew word ʿolah, meaning a burnt sacrifice offered whole to God. This word was chosen because in the ultimate manifestation of the Nazi killing program-the extermination camps -the bodies of the victims were consumed whole in crematoria and open fires.

Even before the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, they had made no secret of their anti-Semitism. As early as 1919 Adolf Hitler had written, "Rational anti-Semitism, however, must lead to systematic legal opposition....Its final objective must unswervingly be the removal of the Jews altogether." In Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"; 1925-27), Hitler further developed the idea of the Jews as an evil race struggling for world domination. Nazi anti-Semitism was rooted in religious anti-Semitism and enhanced by political anti-Semitism. To this the Nazis added a further dimension: racial anti-Semitism. Nazi racial ideology characterized the Jews as Untermenschen (German: "subhumans"). The Nazis portrayed the Jews as a race and not as a religious group. Religious anti-Semitism could be resolved by conversion, political anti-Semitism by expulsion. Ultimately, the logic of Nazi racial anti-Semitism led to annihilation.

Hitler's worldview revolved around two concepts: territorial expansion (that is, greater Lebensraum-"living space"-for the German people) and racial supremacy. After World War I the Allies denied Germany colonies in Africa, so Hitler sought to expand German territory and secure food and resources-scarce during World War I-in Europe itself. Hitler viewed the Jews as racial polluters, a cancer on German society in what has been termed by Holocaust survivor and historian Saul Friedländer "redemptive anti-Semitism," focused on redeeming Germany from its ills and ridding it of a cancer on the body politic. Historian Timothy Snyder characterized the struggle as even more elemental, as "zoological," and "ecological," a struggle of the species. Hitler opposed Jews for the values they brought into the world. Social justice and compassionate assistance to the weak stood in the way of what he perceived as the natural order, in which the powerful exercise unrestrained power. In Hitler's view, such restraint on the exercise of power would inevitably lead to the weakening, even the defeat, of the master race.

When Hitler came to power legally on January 30, 1933, as the head of a coalition government, his first objective was to consolidate power and to eliminate political opposition. The assault against the Jews began on April 1 with a boycott of Jewish businesses. A week later the Nazis dismissed Jews from the civil service, and by the end of the month the participation of Jews in German schools was restricted by a quota. On May 10 thousands of Nazi students, together with many professors, stormed university libraries and bookstores in 30 cities throughout Germany to remove tens of thousands of books written by non- Aryans and those opposed to Nazi ideology. The books were tossed into bonfires in an effort to cleanse German culture of "un-Germanic" writings. A century earlier Heinrich Heine -a German poet of Jewish origin-had said, "Where one burns books, one will, in the end, burn people." In Nazi Germany the time between the burning of Jewish books and the burning of Jews was eight years.

As discrimination against Jews increased, German law required a legal definition of a Jew and an Aryan. Promulgated at the annual Nazi Party rally in Nürnberg on September 15, 1935, the Nürnberg Laws-the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour and the Law of the Reich Citizen-became the centrepiece of anti-Jewish legislation and a precedent for defining and categorizing Jews in all German-controlled lands. Marriage and sexual relations between Jews and citizens of "German or kindred blood" were prohibited. Only "racial" Germans were entitled to civil and political rights. Jews were reduced to subjects of the state. The Nürnberg Laws formally divided Germans and Jews, yet neither the word German nor the word Jew was defined. That task was left to the bureaucracy. Two basic categories were established in November: Jews, those with at least three Jewish grandparents; and Mischlinge ("mongrels," or "mixed breeds"), people with one or two Jewish grandparents. Thus, the definition of a Jew was primarily based not on the identity an individual affirmed or the religion he or she practiced but on his or her ancestry. Categorization was the first stage of destruction.

Responding with alarm to Hitler's rise, the Jewish community sought to defend their rights as Germans. For those Jews who felt themselves fully German and who had patriotically fought in World War I, the Nazification of German society was especially painful. Zionist activity intensified. "Wear it with pride," journalist Robert Weltsch wrote in 1933 of the Jewish identity the Nazis had so stigmatized. Religious philosopher Martin Buber led an effort at Jewish adult education, preparing the community for the long journey ahead. Rabbi Leo Baeck circulated a prayer for Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) in 1935 that instructed Jews on how to behave: "We bow down before God; we stand erect before man." Yet while few, if any, could foresee its eventual outcome, the Jewish condition was increasingly perilous and was expected to worsen.

By the late 1930s there was a desperate search for countries of refuge. Those who could obtain visas and qualify under stringent quotas emigrated to the United States. Many went to Palestine, where the small Jewish community was willing to receive refugees. Still others sought refuge in neighbouring European countries. Most countries, however, were unwilling to receive large numbers of refugees.

Responding to domestic pressures to act on behalf of Jewish refugees, U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt convened, but did not attend, the Évian Conference on resettlement, in Évian-les-Bains, France, in July 1938. In his invitation to government leaders, Roosevelt specified that they would not have to change laws or spend government funds; only philanthropic funds would be used for resettlement. Britain was assured that Palestine would not be on the agenda. The result was that little was attempted and less accomplished.

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Holocaust | Definition, Concentration Camps, History, & Facts

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Holocaust, the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. Today the Holocaust is viewed as the emblematic manifestation of absolute evil. Learn more about the Holocaust in this article.

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Allied forces landed in Normandy, France, beginning the liberation of Western Europe.

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The Allies freed Paris from German control.

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Last major German offensive in the West, but it failed.

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Battle of the Bulge, also called Battle of the Ardennes, (December 16, 1944-January 16, 1945), the last major German offensive on the Western Front during World War II-an unsuccessful attempt to push the Allies back from German home territory. The name Battle of the Bulge was appropriated from Winston Churchill 's optimistic description in May 1940 of the resistance that he mistakenly supposed was being offered to the Germans' breakthrough in that area just before the Anglo-French collapse; the Germans were in fact overwhelmingly successful. The "bulge" refers to the wedge that the Germans drove into the Allied lines.

After their invasion of Normandy in June 1944, the Allies moved across northern France into Belgium during the summer but lost momentum in the autumn. Apart from an abortive thrust to Arnhem, Netherlands, the efforts of the Allied armies in western Europe during September and October 1944 amounted to little more than a process of nibbling. Meanwhile, the German defense was being continuously strengthened with such reserves as could be relocated from elsewhere and with the freshly raised forces of the Volkssturm ("home guard"). German numbers were also bolstered by those troops who had managed to withdraw from France. A general offensive launched in mid-November by all six Allied armies on the Western Front brought disappointingly small results at heavy cost; continued efforts merely exhausted the attacking troops.

In mid-December Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, had at his disposal 48 divisions distributed along a 600-mile (nearly 1,000-km) front between the North Sea and Switzerland. For the site of their counteroffensive, the Germans chose the hilly and wooded country of the Ardennes. Because it was generally regarded as difficult country, a large-scale offensive there was likely to be unexpected. At the same time, the thick woods provided concealment for the massing of forces, whereas the high ground offered a drier surface for the maneuvers of tanks. An awkward feature from an offensive point of view, however, was the fact that the high ground was intersected with deep valleys where the through roads became bottlenecks where a tank advance was liable to be blocked. The aims of the German counteroffensive were far-reaching: to break through to Antwerp, Belgium, by an indirect move, to cut off the British army group from American forces as well as from its supplies, and then to crush the isolated British. Overall command of the offensive was given to Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt.

The Fifth Panzer Army, led by Hasso, Freiherr (baron) von Manteuffel, was to break through the U.S. front in the Ardennes, swerve westward, and then wheel northward across the Meuse, past Namur to Antwerp. As it advanced, it was to build up a defensive flank barricade to shut off interference from the U.S. armies farther south. The Sixth Panzer Army, under SS commander Sepp Dietrich, was to thrust northwestward on an oblique line past Liège to Antwerp, creating a strategic barrier astride the rear of the British and of the more northerly American armies. To those two panzer armies the Germans gave the bulk of the tanks that they could scrape together. To minimize the danger from a speedy intervention of Anglo-American air power, which was vastly greater than their own, the Germans launched their stroke when the meteorological forecast promised them a natural cloak; indeed, for the first three days, mist and rain kept the Allied air forces on the ground.

Aided by its surprise, the German counteroffensive, which started before dawn on December 16, 1944, made menacing progress in the opening days, creating alarm and confusion on the Allied side. The Fifth Panzer Army bypassed Bastogne (which was held throughout the offensive by the U.S. 101st Airborne Division under the tenacious leadership of Gen. Anthony McAuliffe) and by December 24 had advanced to within 4 miles (6 km) of the Meuse River. Time and opportunities were lost, however, through gasoline shortages resulting from wintry weather and from growing Allied air attacks, and the German drive faltered. This frustration of the German advance was largely due to the way in which outflanked U.S. detachments held Bastogne and several other important bottlenecks in the Ardennes as well as to the speed with which British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who had taken charge of the situation on the northern flank, swung his reserves southward to forestall the Germans at the crossings of the Meuse.

Gen. George S. Patton's Third Army relieved Bastogne on the 26th, and on January 3, 1945, the U.S. First Army began a counteroffensive. Between January 8 and January 16 the Allied armies concentrated their strength and were attempting to pinch off the great German wedge driven into their front, but the Germans carried out a skillful withdrawal that took them out of the potential trap. Judged on its own account, the Battle of the Bulge had been a profitable operation for Germany, for, even though it fell short of its objectives, it upset the Allies' preparations and inflicted much damage at a cost that was not excessive for the effect. Viewed in relation to the whole situation, however, the counteroffensive had been a fatal operation. While the Allies suffered some 75,000 casualties, Germany lost 120,000 men and stores of matériel that it could ill afford to replace. Germany had thus forfeited the chance of maintaining any prolonged resistance to a resumed Allied offensive. It brought home to the German troops their incapacity to turn the scales and thereby undermined such hopes as they had retained.

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Battle of the Bulge | Summary, Commanders, & Significance

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Battle of the Bulge (December 16, 1944-January 16, 1945), the last major German offensive on the Western Front during World War II. The 'bulge' refers to the wedge that the Germans drove into the Allied lines during their ultimately unsuccessful attempt to push the Allies back from German home territory.

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Italy, led by Mussolini, joined Germany’s side in June 1940.

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The Red Army pushed German forces back across Eastern Europe.

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World War II, conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during the years 1939-45. The principal belligerents were the Axis powers- Germany, Italy, and Japan-and the Allies- France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, China. The war was in many respects a continuation, after an uneasy 20-year hiatus, of the disputes left unsettled by World War I. The 40,000,000-50,000,000 deaths incurred in World War II make it the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in history.

Along with World War I, World War II was one of the great watersheds of 20th-century geopolitical history. It resulted in the extension of the Soviet Union's power to nations of eastern Europe, enabled a communist movement to eventually achieve power in China, and marked the decisive shift of power in the world away from the states of western Europe and toward the United States and the Soviet Union.
(Read Sir John Keegan's Britannica entry on the Normandy Invasion.)

Axis initiative and Allied reaction

The outbreak of war

By the early part of 1939 the German dictator Adolf Hitler had become determined to invade and occupy Poland. Poland, for its part, had guarantees of French and British military support should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler intended to invade Poland anyway, but first he had to neutralize the possibility that the Soviet Union would resist the invasion of its western neighbour. Secret negotiations led on August 23-24 to the signing of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact in Moscow. In a secret protocol of this pact, the Germans and the Soviets agreed that Poland should be divided between them, with the western third of the country going to Germany and the eastern two-thirds being taken over by the U.S.S.R.

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Having achieved this cynical agreement, the other provisions of which stupefied Europe even without divulgence of the secret protocol, Hitler thought that Germany could attack Poland with no danger of Soviet or British intervention and gave orders for the invasion to start on August 26. News of the signing, on August 25, of a formal treaty of mutual assistance between Great Britain and Poland (to supersede a previous though temporary agreement) caused him to postpone the start of hostilities for a few days. He was still determined, however, to ignore the diplomatic efforts of the western powers to restrain him. Finally, at 12:40 pm on August 31, 1939, Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to start at 4:45 the next morning. The invasion began as ordered. In response, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, at 11:00 am and at 5:00 pm, respectively. World War II had begun.

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World War II | Facts, Summary, History, Dates, Combatants, & Causes

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World War II was a conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during 1939-45. The main combatants were the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) and the Allies (France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China). It was the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in human history.

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Bombing raids increased to weaken Germany’s industry.

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Strategic bombing during World War II | Definition, Significance, Aircraft, Germany, & Japan | Britannica

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Strategic bombing during World War II, the mass bombing of military targets and population centers during the Second World War. Large multi-engine bombers operated in formations (sometimes numbering 1,000 or more) that were intended not to evade enemy defenses but to beat them back or overwhelm them.

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The Allies decided how to divide Germany and plan the post-war world.

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Yalta Conference, (February 4-11, 1945), major World War II conference of the three chief Allied leaders-Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom, and Premier Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union-which met at Yalta in Crimea to plan the final defeat and occupation of Nazi Germany.

It had already been decided that Germany would be divided into occupied zones administered by U.S., British, French, and Soviet forces. The conferees accepted the principle that the Allies had no duty toward the Germans except to provide minimum subsistence, declared that the German military industry would be abolished or confiscated, and agreed that major war criminals would be tried before an international court, which subsequently presided at Nürnberg. The determination of reparations was assigned to a commission.

How to deal with the defeated or liberated countries of eastern Europe was the main problem discussed at the conference. The agreements reached, which were accepted by Stalin, called for "interim governmental authorities broadly representative of all democratic elements in the population...and the earliest possible establishment through free elections of governments responsive to the will of the people." Britain and the United States supported a Polish government-in-exile in London, while the Soviets supported a communist-dominated Polish committee of national liberation in Lublin. Neither the Western Allies nor the Soviet Union would change its allegiance, so they could only agree that the Lublin committee would be broadened to include representatives of other Polish political groups, upon which the Allies would recognize it as a provisional government of national unity that would hold free elections to choose a successor government. Poland 's future frontiers were also discussed but not decided.

Regarding the Pacific Theatre, a secret protocol stipulated that, in return for the Soviet Union's entering the war against Japan within "two or three months" after Germany's surrender, the U.S.S.R. would obtain from Japan the Kuril Islands and regain the territory lost in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 (including the southern part of Sakhalin Island), and the status quo in pro-Soviet Outer Mongolia would be maintained. Stalin agreed to sign a pact of alliance and friendship with China.

The United Nations organization charter had already been drafted, and the conferees worked out a compromise formula for voting in the Security Council. The Soviets withdrew their claim that all 16 Soviet republics should have membership in the General Assembly.

After the agreements reached at Yalta were made public in 1946, they were harshly criticized in the United States. This was because, as events turned out, Stalin failed to keep his promise that free elections would be held in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Instead, communist governments were established in all those countries, noncommunist political parties were suppressed, and genuinely democratic elections were never held. At the time of the Yalta Conference, both Roosevelt and Churchill had trusted Stalin and believed that he would keep his word. Neither leader had suspected that Stalin intended that all the popular front governments in Europe would be taken over by communists. Roosevelt and Churchill were further inclined to assent to the Yalta agreements because they assumed, mistakenly as it turned out, that Soviet assistance would be sorely needed to defeat the Japanese in the Pacific and Manchuria. In any case, the Soviet Union was the military occupier of eastern Europe at the war's end, and so there was little the Western democracies could do to enforce the promises made by Stalin at Yalta. The formulation by American delegation member James F. Byrnes, soon to be secretary of state (1945-47), was apt: "It was not a question of what we would let the Russians do, but what we could get the Russians to do."

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Yalta Conference | Summary, Dates, Consequences, & Facts

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Yalta Conference, (February 4-11, 1945), major World War II conference of the three chief Allied leaders-Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom, and Premier Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union-which met at Yalta in Crimea to plan the final defeat and occupation of Nazi Germany.

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The Red Army took control of Berlin, leading to Germany’s surrender.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Berlin

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Battle of Berlin (1945) | Description & Facts | Britannica

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The Battle of Berlin was one of the final battles of World War II. It took place from April 20 to May 2, 1945, and ended with the fall of Berlin to the Soviets.

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World War II ends in Europe with Germany’s defeat.

https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-II

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Home World History Wars, Battles & Armed Conflicts
Table of Contents

Also called:

Second World War

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Date:

September 3, 1939 - September 2, 1945

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What was the cause of World War II?

What countries fought in World War II?

Who were the leaders during World War II?

What were the turning points of World War II?

How did World War II end?

How many people died during World War II?

World War II, conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during the years 1939-45. The principal belligerents were the Axis powers- Germany, Italy, and Japan-and the Allies- France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, China. The war was in many respects a continuation, after an uneasy 20-year hiatus, of the disputes left unsettled by World War I. The 40,000,000-50,000,000 deaths incurred in World War II make it the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in history.

Along with World War I, World War II was one of the great watersheds of 20th-century geopolitical history. It resulted in the extension of the Soviet Union's power to nations of eastern Europe, enabled a communist movement to eventually achieve power in China, and marked the decisive shift of power in the world away from the states of western Europe and toward the United States and the Soviet Union.
(Read Sir John Keegan's Britannica entry on the Normandy Invasion.)

Axis initiative and Allied reaction

The outbreak of war

By the early part of 1939 the German dictator Adolf Hitler had become determined to invade and occupy Poland. Poland, for its part, had guarantees of French and British military support should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler intended to invade Poland anyway, but first he had to neutralize the possibility that the Soviet Union would resist the invasion of its western neighbour. Secret negotiations led on August 23-24 to the signing of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact in Moscow. In a secret protocol of this pact, the Germans and the Soviets agreed that Poland should be divided between them, with the western third of the country going to Germany and the eastern two-thirds being taken over by the U.S.S.R.

Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About World War II

Having achieved this cynical agreement, the other provisions of which stupefied Europe even without divulgence of the secret protocol, Hitler thought that Germany could attack Poland with no danger of Soviet or British intervention and gave orders for the invasion to start on August 26. News of the signing, on August 25, of a formal treaty of mutual assistance between Great Britain and Poland (to supersede a previous though temporary agreement) caused him to postpone the start of hostilities for a few days. He was still determined, however, to ignore the diplomatic efforts of the western powers to restrain him. Finally, at 12:40 pm on August 31, 1939, Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to start at 4:45 the next morning. The invasion began as ordered. In response, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, at 11:00 am and at 5:00 pm, respectively. World War II had begun.

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World War II | Facts, Summary, History, Dates, Combatants, & Causes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
World War II was a conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during 1939-45. The main combatants were the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) and the Allies (France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China). It was the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in human history.

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Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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The USA dropped atomic bombs on Japan in August, leading to Japan’s surrender.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Atomic-bombings-of-Hiroshima-and-Nagasaki

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atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, during World War II, American bombing raids on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) that marked the first use of atomic weapons in war. Tens of thousands were killed in the initial explosions and many more would later succumb to radiation poisoning. On August 10, one day after the bombing of Nagasaki, the Japanese government issued a statement agreeing to accept the Allied surrender terms that had been dictated in the Potsdam Declaration.

Early atomic research

The turning point in the quest for atomic energy came in January 1939, eight months before the start of World War II. German scientists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, following a clue provided by Irène Joliot-Curie and Pavle Savić in France (1938), proved definitely that the bombardment of uranium with neutrons produced radioisotopes of barium, lanthanum, and other elements from the middle of the periodic table.

The significance of this discovery was communicated by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch, two Jewish scientists who had fled Germany, to Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. Bohr had been preparing to journey to the United States, and he arrived in New York on January 16, 1939. He discussed the matter with Albert Einstein, John Archibald Wheeler, and others before announcing to the world on January 26 the discovery of a process that Meitner and Frisch had termed fission. Enrico Fermi proposed to Bohr that neutrons might be released during the fission process, thus raising the possibility of a sustained nuclear chain reaction. These revolutionary suggestions triggered a flurry of activity in the world of physics. Subsequent studies by Bohr and Wheeler indicated that fission did not occur in uranium-238, the isotope of uranium most commonly found in nature, but that fission could take place in uranium-235. Gradually many of the riddles surrounding fission were resolved, and by June 1940 the basic facts concerning the release of atomic energy were known throughout the scientific world.

The Manhattan Project

The American atomic program takes shape

While engaged in one war in Europe and another in the Pacific, the United States would launch the largest scientific effort undertaken to that time. It would involve 37 installations throughout the country, more than a dozen university laboratories, and 100,000 people, including the Nobel Prize-winning physicists Arthur Holly Compton, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Ernest Lawrence, and Harold Urey.

The first contact between the scientific community and the U.S. government regarding atomic research was made by George B. Pegram of Columbia University. Pegram arranged a conference between Fermi and officers of the U.S. Navy in March 1939. In July Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner conferred with Einstein, and the three later went to New York to meet with National Recovery Administration economist Alexander Sachs. Supported by a letter from Einstein, Sachs approached Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt and explained the significance of nuclear fission to him. Roosevelt formed the Advisory Committee on Uranium, appointing Lyman Briggs, director of the National Bureau of Standards, to serve as its chair. In February 1940 a fund of $6,000 was made available to begin research; by the time of its completion, the project's budget would exceed $2 billion.

U.S. officials were now well aware of Adolf Hitler's atomic ambitions. In his letter to Roosevelt, Einstein explicitly called attention to uranium reserves in Czechoslovakia that had fallen under the control of the Third Reich in March 1939. The British had also begun studying fission, and Urey and Pegram visited the United Kingdom to see what was being done there. By August 1943 a combined policy committee had been established with the United Kingdom and Canada. Later that year a number of scientists of those countries moved to the United States to join the project that by then was well underway.

On December 6, 1941, one day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the project was placed under the direction of Vannevar Bush and the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). Bush's staff included Harvard University Pres. James B. Conant, Pegram, Urey, and Lawrence, among others. Alongside this scientific body was created the "Top Policy Group," consisting of Bush, Conant, Roosevelt, U.S. Vice Pres. Henry Wallace, U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and U.S. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall.

Because there was no way of knowing in advance what technique would succeed in creating a functional bomb, it was decided to work simultaneously on several methods of isolating uranium-235 while also researching reactor development. The goal was twofold: to learn more about the chain reaction for bomb design and to develop a method of producing a new element, plutonium, which was expected to be fissile and could be isolated from uranium chemically. Lawrence and his team developed an electromagnetic separation process at the University of California, Berkeley, while Urey's group at Columbia University experimented with the conversion of uranium into a gaseous compound that was then permitted to diffuse through porous barriers. Both of these processes, particularly the diffusion method, required large complex facilities and huge amounts of electric power to produce even small amounts of separated uranium-235. It soon became clear that an enormous physical infrastructure would have to be built to support the project.

From Stagg Field to Los Alamos

On June 18, 1942, the War Department assigned management of construction work related to the project to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Manhattan District (much early atomic research-most notably Urey's group-was based at Manhattan's Columbia University). On September 17, 1942, Brig. Gen. Leslie R. Groves was placed in charge of all Army activities relating to the project. "Manhattan Project" became the code name applied to this body of atomic research that would extend across the country.

The first experimental reactor-a graphite cube about 8 feet (2.4 meters) on edge and containing about seven tons of uranium oxide-had been set up at Columbia University in July 1941. By the end of that year, reactor work had been transferred to the University of Chicago, where Arthur Holly Compton and his cryptically named "Metallurgical Laboratory" were considering related problems. On December 2, 1942, the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was carried out under Fermi's supervision in Chicago Pile No. 1, a reactor that Fermi had constructed in a squash court under the bleachers of Stagg Field, the university's football stadium. It had now been proven that the controlled release of atomic energy was feasible for the production of power and the manufacture of plutonium.

In February 1943 construction began on a pilot uranium enrichment plant located on the Clinch River in the Tennessee Valley, about 15 miles (about 24 km) west of Knoxville, Tennessee. The Clinton Engineer Works (later known as Oak Ridge) occupied a 70-square-mile (180-square-km) tract of land and came to employ roughly 5,000 technicians and maintenance personnel. For the project's full-sized reactors, however, a more isolated site would be necessary. Groves had expressed concern about the pilot reactor's proximity to Knoxville, and the larger reactors would have significantly greater power needs than could be accommodated in the Tennessee Valley.

In January 1943 Groves had selected a 580-square-mile (1,500-square-km) tract in south-central Washington for the project's plutonium production facilities. The location was desirable for its relative isolation and for the availability, in large quantities, of cooling water from the Columbia River and electric power from the Grand Coulee Dam and Bonneville Dam hydroelectric installations. The creation of what came to be known as the Hanford Engineer Works required a significant displacement of the local population. Residents of the towns of Hanford, Richland, and White Bluffs were given just 90 days to vacate their homes, and the Wanapum Native American people were forced to relocate to Priest Rapids, losing access to their traditional fishing grounds on the Columbia. At its peak in the summer of 1944, the huge complex at Hanford employed more than 50,000 people.

For the final stages of the project, it was necessary to find a location that was even more remote than Hanford for the purposes of both security and safety. A site was chosen by the Manhattan Project's scientific director, J. Robert Oppenheimer, on an isolated mesa at Los Alamos, New Mexico, 34 miles (55 km) north of Santa Fe. Beginning in April 1943, scientists and engineers began arriving at the Los Alamos Laboratory, as it was then called. Under Oppenheimer's direction, this team was tasked with developing methods of reducing the fissionable products of the Clinton and Hanford production plants to pure metal and fabricating that metal into the components of a deliverable weapon. The weapon had to be small enough that it could be dropped from a plane and simple enough that it could be fused to detonate at the proper moment in the air above the target. Most of these issues had to be addressed before any significant stores of fissionable material had been produced, so that the first adequate amounts could be used in a functional bomb. At its peak in 1945 more than 5,000 scientists, engineers, technicians, and their families lived at the Los Alamos site.

The Trinity test

Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, and within 24 hours Pres. Harry S. Truman had been briefed about the atomic bomb program by Stimson. Germany surrendered in May 1945, thus ending the war in Europe, but combat raged on in the Pacific. Sanguinary battles at Iwo Jima (February-March 1945) and Okinawa (April-June 1945) offered a preview of what an invasion of the Japanese home islands might look like, and there remained a strong impetus to see the Manhattan Project through to its conclusion. By the summer of 1945, the production plants had delivered a sufficient amount of fissionable material to produce a nuclear explosion, and bomb development had advanced to a point that an actual field test of a nuclear weapon could be conducted. Such a test would obviously be no simple affair. A vast array of complex equipment had to be assembled so that the success or failure of the test could be analyzed.

The bomb development teams at Los Alamos had settled on two possible designs. One, fueled by uranium-235, would utilize a "gun assembly" that used high explosives to shoot two subcritical slugs of fissionable material together in a hollow tube. The violent collision of the two slugs would cause the uranium-235 to reach critical mass, thus triggering a chain reaction and explosion. Engineers were confident that this comparatively simple design would work, but a sufficient quantity of uranium-235 would not be available until about August 1, 1945. The Hanford site would be able to deliver enough plutonium-239 for testing by early July, but Los Alamos scientists had determined that the gun assembly model would not be compatible with plutonium as a fuel source. An alternative design had been proposed, one that would use concentric layers of high explosives to implode the fissionable material under enormous pressures into a denser mass that would immediately achieve criticality. It was believed that this "implosion" design would be the most efficient way to weaponize the meager amount of plutonium that had been produced thus far.

For the test, Oppenheimer selected a location on the Alamogordo Bombing Range (now White Sands Missile Range), 120 miles (193 km) south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. He called the site "Trinity" in reference to one of John Donne's Holy Sonnets. The first atomic bomb-a plutonium implosion device called "Gadget"-was raised to the top of a 100-foot (30-meter) steel tower that was designated "Zero." The area at the base of the tower was marked as "Ground Zero," a term that would pass into common parlance to describe the center of an (often catastrophic) event. Military officials and scientists occupied observation posts at distances ranging from 10,000 to 17,000 yards (9 to 15.5 km). They had been instructed to lie down with their feet toward the tower and to protect their eyes from the blinding flash of the explosion.

On the morning of the test, the skies were dark and it was raining, with occasional lightning. "Gadget" was detonated at 5:29:45 am on July 16, 1945. The explosion caused a flash that illuminated the mountain peaks 10 miles (16 km) away. Soon there followed a tremendous sustained roar accompanied by a tornado-like burst of wind. Where the tower had stood, there was a great surging ball of fire, followed by a mushroom cloud that rose some 40,000 feet (12,200 meters) into the sky. The heat of the explosion had completely vaporized the tower; in its place was a saucer-shaped crater about a half mile (800 meters) in diameter and 25 feet (almost 8 meters) deep. The floor of the crater was fused into a glassy jade-colored mineral subsequently dubbed trinitite. The bomb had generated an explosive power equivalent to approximately 21,000 tons of trinitrotoluene (TNT). The blast was visible from a distance of 50 miles (80 km), and it shattered windows 125 miles (200 km) away. Residents of Gallup, New Mexico, more than 180 miles (290 km) from Ground Zero, reported feeling the ground shake. In an attempt to head off questions about the world-changing event that had occurred at Trinity, the army issued a brief statement to the press: "A remotely located ammunition magazine containing a considerable amount of high explosives and pyrotechnics exploded, but there was no loss of life or limb to anyone."

News of the successful test reached Truman, who was attending the final meeting of the "Big Three" Allied powers at Potsdam, Germany. Truman informed Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that the United States possessed "a new weapon of unusual destructive force." On July 26 the Big Three issued an ultimatum, calling on Japan to surrender unconditionally or face "prompt and utter destruction." When it became clear that no surrender was imminent, plans to use the bomb went into effect. Some within the Manhattan Project had argued for a demonstration explosion on an uninhabited site in the Pacific. This was considered but soon discarded, largely because of concerns that the demonstration bomb might not prompt sufficient reaction from the Japanese government. By this time, several dozen B-29 bombers had been modified to carry the weapons, and a staging base at Tinian, in the Mariana Islands, 1,500 miles (2,400 km) south of Japan, had been expanded into the largest airfield in the world.

The bombing of Hiroshima

On July 16, just hours after the successful completion of the Trinity test, the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis left port at San Francisco with the gun assembly mechanism, roughly half of the U.S. supply of uranium-235, and several Los Alamos technicians. The remainder of the U.S. uranium-235 stockpile was flown to Tinian on transport planes. Upon the arrival of the Indianapolis at Tinian on July 26, assembly began on the bomb, dubbed Little Boy. The Indianapolis departed Tinian after the delivery, but it was sunk en route to the Philippines by the Japanese submarine I-58 on July 30. Hundreds of crew members who survived the torpedo attack died in the water while awaiting a rescue. The components of a second bomb, a plutonium device nicknamed Fat Man, were transported to Tinian by air. By August 2, 1945, both bombs had arrived at Tinian, and U.S. commanders were waiting only for a break in the weather to order the execution of Special Bombing Mission 13-an atomic attack on the Japanese home islands.

Groves had chaired the committee responsible for target selection, and by the end of May 1945 the list had been narrowed to Kokura, Hiroshima, Niigata, and Kyōto, all cities that had not yet been subjected to Gen. Curtis LeMay's strategic bombing campaign. Kyōto, Japan's ancient capital, was consistently placed at the top of the list, but Stimson appealed directly to Truman to remove it from consideration because of its cultural importance. Nagasaki was added in its place. Hiroshima became the primary target because of its military value-the city served as the headquarters of the Japanese Second Army-and because planners believed that the compactness of the urban center would most vividly demonstrate the destructive power of the bomb.

The pilots, mechanics, and crews of the 509th Composite Group of the Twentieth Air Force had all trained with the specially modified B-29s that would serve as delivery vehicles for the bombs. Col. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., the commander of the 509th, would pilot the B-29 that would drop the first bomb. His 11-man crew included Maj. Thomas Ferebee as bombardier and Manhattan Project ordnance expert Capt. William ("Deak") Parsons as weaponeer. Tibbets personally selected plane number 82 for the mission, and, shortly before taking off at approximately 2:45 am on August 6, 1945, Tibbets asked a maintenance worker to paint his mother's name-Enola Gay-on the nose of the aircraft. Two other B-29s accompanied the Enola Gay to serve as observation and camera planes. Once the Enola Gay was airborne, Parsons added the final components to Little Boy. This was done because a number of the modified B-29s had crashed on takeoff, and there was some concern that a crash would cause a fully assembled bomb to detonate, wiping out the installation at Tinian.

The skies were clear, and the Enola Gay encountered no opposition while approaching the target. At 7:15 am (Tinian time) Parsons armed the weapon, and the Enola Gay ascended to an attack altitude of 31,000 feet (9,450 meters). A trio of B-29s had flown ahead of the strike force to perform weather reconnaissance over the primary (Hiroshima) and secondary (Kokura and Nagasaki) targets. The pilot of the Hiroshima mission radioed Tibbets that there was little cloud cover and that he should proceed to the primary target. Just after 8:00 am local time (9:00 am Tinian time), the crew of the Enola Gay sighted Hiroshima. At around 8:12 am Tibbets relinquished control of the aircraft to Ferebee, who began his bombing run. Ferebee's aim point was the Aioi Bridge, a distinctive T-shaped span over the Ōta River. Tibbets ordered his crew to don their protective goggles, and at 8:15 am the bomb was released. Tibbets immediately put the Enola Gay into a sharp turn that, he hoped, would carry it beyond the bomb's blast radius.

It took roughly 45 seconds for Little Boy to descend to an altitude of 1,900 feet (580 meters), at which point it exploded in the sky directly above Shima Hospital. Within a fraction of a second of the detonation, the temperature at ground level exceeded 7,000 °C (12,600 °F) and a powerful blast wave scoured the landscape. Out of a population of 343,000 inhabitants, some 70,000 people were killed instantly, and by the end of the year the death toll had surpassed 100,000. Two-thirds of the city area was destroyed. "Nuclear shadows" were all that remained of people who had been subjected to the intense thermal radiation. A massive mushroom cloud rose to a height of more than 40,000 feet (more than 12 km). Although less than 2 percent of the uranium-235 contained in Little Boy had achieved fission, the bomb was horrifying in its destructive power. The explosive yield was the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT. Sgt. Bob Caron, the Enola Gay's tail gunner and the only member of the crew to directly observe the blast, described the scene as a "peep into hell." A series of shockwaves rocked the Enola Gay as it departed the area, and at a distance of nearly 400 miles (640 km) the mushroom cloud was still visible. Upon returning to Tinian, after a flight of just over 12 hours, Tibbets was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

Later that day, Truman addressed the people of the United States:

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. It had more than 2,000 times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam," which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.

The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold. And the end is not yet. With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their present form these bombs are now in production, and even more powerful forms are in development.

It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.

Truman further noted, "We have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history-and won." Poet and author James Agee, writing in Time, offered something of a counterpoint to Truman's speech:

The race had been won, the weapon had been used by those on whom civilization could best hope to depend; but the demonstration of power against living creatures instead of dead matter created a bottomless wound in the living conscience of the race. The rational mind had won the most Promethean of its conquests over nature, and had put into the hands of common man the fire and force of the sun itself.

News of Hiroshima's destruction was only slowly understood, and some Japanese officials argued that their own stalled atomic program had demonstrated how difficult it would be to create such a weapon. It was possible, they argued, that the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was the only one in the American arsenal. Other members of the Japanese government had been arguing for months in favor of a negotiated settlement, perhaps mediated by the Soviets. That window was abruptly closed on August 8, 1945, two days after the Hiroshima bombing, when the Soviet Union declared war against Japan.

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atomic bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki

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Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki | Date, Significance, Timeline, Deaths, & Aftermath | Britannica

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Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, during World War II, American bombing raids on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) that marked the first use of atomic weapons in war. Tens of thousands were killed in the blasts and thousands more would die of radiation poisoning.

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World War II ends completely with Japan’s surrender.

https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-II

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Home World History Wars, Battles & Armed Conflicts
Table of Contents

Also called:

Second World War

(Show more)

Date:

September 3, 1939 - September 2, 1945

(Show more)

What was the cause of World War II?

What countries fought in World War II?

Who were the leaders during World War II?

What were the turning points of World War II?

How did World War II end?

How many people died during World War II?

World War II, conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during the years 1939-45. The principal belligerents were the Axis powers- Germany, Italy, and Japan-and the Allies- France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, China. The war was in many respects a continuation, after an uneasy 20-year hiatus, of the disputes left unsettled by World War I. The 40,000,000-50,000,000 deaths incurred in World War II make it the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in history.

Along with World War I, World War II was one of the great watersheds of 20th-century geopolitical history. It resulted in the extension of the Soviet Union's power to nations of eastern Europe, enabled a communist movement to eventually achieve power in China, and marked the decisive shift of power in the world away from the states of western Europe and toward the United States and the Soviet Union.
(Read Sir John Keegan's Britannica entry on the Normandy Invasion.)

Axis initiative and Allied reaction

The outbreak of war

By the early part of 1939 the German dictator Adolf Hitler had become determined to invade and occupy Poland. Poland, for its part, had guarantees of French and British military support should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler intended to invade Poland anyway, but first he had to neutralize the possibility that the Soviet Union would resist the invasion of its western neighbour. Secret negotiations led on August 23-24 to the signing of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact in Moscow. In a secret protocol of this pact, the Germans and the Soviets agreed that Poland should be divided between them, with the western third of the country going to Germany and the eastern two-thirds being taken over by the U.S.S.R.

Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About World War II

Having achieved this cynical agreement, the other provisions of which stupefied Europe even without divulgence of the secret protocol, Hitler thought that Germany could attack Poland with no danger of Soviet or British intervention and gave orders for the invasion to start on August 26. News of the signing, on August 25, of a formal treaty of mutual assistance between Great Britain and Poland (to supersede a previous though temporary agreement) caused him to postpone the start of hostilities for a few days. He was still determined, however, to ignore the diplomatic efforts of the western powers to restrain him. Finally, at 12:40 pm on August 31, 1939, Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to start at 4:45 the next morning. The invasion began as ordered. In response, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, at 11:00 am and at 5:00 pm, respectively. World War II had begun.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
World War II | Facts, Summary, History, Dates, Combatants, & Causes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
World War II was a conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during 1939-45. The main combatants were the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) and the Allies (France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China). It was the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in human history.

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The war caused around 70 million deaths and destroyed many cities.

https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-II

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Home World History Wars, Battles & Armed Conflicts
Table of Contents

Also called:

Second World War

(Show more)

Date:

September 3, 1939 - September 2, 1945

(Show more)

What was the cause of World War II?

What countries fought in World War II?

Who were the leaders during World War II?

What were the turning points of World War II?

How did World War II end?

How many people died during World War II?

World War II, conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during the years 1939-45. The principal belligerents were the Axis powers- Germany, Italy, and Japan-and the Allies- France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, China. The war was in many respects a continuation, after an uneasy 20-year hiatus, of the disputes left unsettled by World War I. The 40,000,000-50,000,000 deaths incurred in World War II make it the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in history.

Along with World War I, World War II was one of the great watersheds of 20th-century geopolitical history. It resulted in the extension of the Soviet Union's power to nations of eastern Europe, enabled a communist movement to eventually achieve power in China, and marked the decisive shift of power in the world away from the states of western Europe and toward the United States and the Soviet Union.
(Read Sir John Keegan's Britannica entry on the Normandy Invasion.)

Axis initiative and Allied reaction

The outbreak of war

By the early part of 1939 the German dictator Adolf Hitler had become determined to invade and occupy Poland. Poland, for its part, had guarantees of French and British military support should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler intended to invade Poland anyway, but first he had to neutralize the possibility that the Soviet Union would resist the invasion of its western neighbour. Secret negotiations led on August 23-24 to the signing of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact in Moscow. In a secret protocol of this pact, the Germans and the Soviets agreed that Poland should be divided between them, with the western third of the country going to Germany and the eastern two-thirds being taken over by the U.S.S.R.

Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About World War II

Having achieved this cynical agreement, the other provisions of which stupefied Europe even without divulgence of the secret protocol, Hitler thought that Germany could attack Poland with no danger of Soviet or British intervention and gave orders for the invasion to start on August 26. News of the signing, on August 25, of a formal treaty of mutual assistance between Great Britain and Poland (to supersede a previous though temporary agreement) caused him to postpone the start of hostilities for a few days. He was still determined, however, to ignore the diplomatic efforts of the western powers to restrain him. Finally, at 12:40 pm on August 31, 1939, Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to start at 4:45 the next morning. The invasion began as ordered. In response, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, at 11:00 am and at 5:00 pm, respectively. World War II had begun.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
World War II | Facts, Summary, History, Dates, Combatants, & Causes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
World War II was a conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during 1939-45. The main combatants were the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) and the Allies (France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China). It was the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in human history.

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To prevent future wars, the UN was founded in 1945.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/United-Nations

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United Nations (UN), international organization established on October 24, 1945. The United Nations (UN) was the second multipurpose international organization established in the 20th century that was worldwide in scope and membership. Its predecessor, the League of Nations, was created by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and disbanded in 1946. Headquartered in New York City, the UN also has regional offices in Geneva, Vienna, and Nairobi. Its official languages are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. For a list of UN member countries and secretaries-general, see below.
(Read Ted Turner's Britannica entry on the U.N. Foundation.)
According to its Charter, the UN aims:

to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,...to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights,...to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.

In addition to maintaining peace and security, other important objectives include developing friendly relations among countries based on respect for the principles of equal rights and self-determination of peoples; achieving worldwide cooperation to solve international economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian problems; respecting and promoting human rights; and serving as a centre where countries can coordinate their actions and activities toward these various ends.

The UN formed a continuum with the League of Nations in general purpose, structure, and functions; many of the UN's principal organs and related agencies were adopted from similar structures established earlier in the century. In some respects, however, the UN constituted a very different organization, especially with regard to its objective of maintaining international peace and security and its commitment to economic and social development.

Changes in the nature of international relations resulted in modifications in the responsibilities of the UN and its decision-making apparatus. Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union deeply affected the UN's security functions during its first 45 years. Extensive post- World War II decolonization in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East increased the volume and nature of political, economic, and social issues that confronted the organization. The Cold War's end in 1991 brought renewed attention and appeals to the UN. Amid an increasingly volatile geopolitical climate, there were new challenges to established practices and functions, especially in the areas of conflict resolution and humanitarian assistance. At the beginning of the 21st century, the UN and its programs and affiliated agencies struggled to address humanitarian crises and civil wars, unprecedented refugee flows, the devastation caused by the spread of AIDS, global financial disruptions, international terrorism, and the disparities in wealth between the world's richest and poorest peoples.

History and development

Despite the problems encountered by the League of Nations in arbitrating conflict and ensuring international peace and security prior to World War II, the major Allied powers agreed during the war to establish a new global organization to help manage international affairs. This agreement was first articulated when U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill signed the Atlantic Charter in August 1941. The name United Nations was originally used to denote the countries allied against Germany, Italy, and Japan. On January 1, 1942, 26 countries signed the Declaration by United Nations, which set forth the war aims of the Allied powers.

The United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union took the lead in designing the new organization and determining its decision-making structure and functions. Initially, the "Big Three" states and their respective leaders (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Soviet premier Joseph Stalin) were hindered by disagreements on issues that foreshadowed the Cold War. The Soviet Union demanded individual membership and voting rights for its constituent republics, and Britain wanted assurances that its colonies would not be placed under UN control. There also was disagreement over the voting system to be adopted in the Security Council, an issue that became famous as the "veto problem."

The first major step toward the formation of the United Nations was taken August 21-October 7, 1944, at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, a meeting of the diplomatic experts of the Big Three powers plus China (a group often designated the "Big Four") held at Dumbarton Oaks, an estate in Washington, D.C. Although the four countries agreed on the general purpose, structure, and function of a new world organization, the conference ended amid continuing disagreement over membership and voting. At the Yalta Conference, a meeting of the Big Three in a Crimean resort city in February 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin laid the basis for charter provisions delimiting the authority of the Security Council. Moreover, they reached a tentative accord on the number of Soviet republics to be granted independent memberships in the UN. Finally, the three leaders agreed that the new organization would include a trusteeship system to succeed the League of Nations mandate system.

The Dumbarton Oaks proposals, with modifications from the Yalta Conference, formed the basis of negotiations at the United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO), which convened in San Francisco on April 25, 1945, and produced the final Charter of the United Nations. The San Francisco conference was attended by representatives of 50 countries from all geographic areas of the world: 9 from Europe, 21 from the Americas, 7 from the Middle East, 2 from East Asia, and 3 from Africa, as well as 1 each from the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (in addition to the Soviet Union itself) and 5 from British Commonwealth countries. Poland, which was not present at the conference, was permitted to become an original member of the UN. Security Council veto power (among the permanent members) was affirmed, though any member of the General Assembly was able to raise issues for discussion. Other political issues resolved by compromise were the role of the organization in the promotion of economic and social welfare; the status of colonial areas and the distribution of trusteeships; the status of regional and defense arrangements; and Great Power dominance versus the equality of states. The UN Charter was unanimously adopted and signed on June 26 and promulgated on October 24, 1945.

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United Nations (UN) | Definition, History, Founders, Flag, & Facts

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United Nations, international organization established on October 24, 1945. Headquartered in New York City, the United Nations also has regional offices in Geneva, Vienna, and Nairobi. Its official languages are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.

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Tensions grew between the USA and the Soviet Union after the war.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Cold-War

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Why was the Cuban missile crisis such an important event in the Cold War?

Cold War, the open yet restricted rivalry that developed after World War II between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. The Cold War was waged on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and had only limited recourse to weapons. The term was first used by the English writer George Orwell in an article published in 1945 to refer to what he predicted would be a nuclear stalemate between "two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by which millions of people can be wiped out in a few seconds." It was first used in the United States by the American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch in a speech at the State House in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1947.

A brief treatment of the Cold War follows. For full treatment, see international relations.

Origins of the Cold War

Following the surrender of Nazi Germany in May 1945 near the close of World War II, the uneasy wartime alliance between the United States and Great Britain on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other began to unravel. By 1948 the Soviets had installed left-wing governments in the countries of eastern Europe that had been liberated by the Red Army. The Americans and the British feared the permanent Soviet domination of eastern Europe and the threat of Soviet-influenced communist parties coming to power in the democracies of western Europe. The Soviets, on the other hand, were determined to maintain control of eastern Europe in order to safeguard against any possible renewed threat from Germany, and they were intent on spreading communism worldwide, largely for ideological reasons. The Cold War had solidified by 1947-48, when U.S. aid provided under the Marshall Plan to western Europe had brought those countries under American influence and the Soviets had installed openly communist regimes in eastern Europe.

The struggle between superpowers

The Cold War reached its peak in 1948-53. In this period the Soviets unsuccessfully blockaded the Western-held sectors of West Berlin (1948-49); the United States and its European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a unified military command to resist the Soviet presence in Europe (1949); the Soviets exploded their first atomic warhead (1949), thus ending the American monopoly on the atomic bomb; the Chinese communists came to power in mainland China (1949); and the Soviet-supported communist government of North Korea invaded U.S.-supported South Korea in 1950, setting off an indecisive Korean War that lasted until 1953.

Comprehension Quiz: Cold War

From 1953 to 1957 Cold War tensions relaxed somewhat, largely owing to the death of the longtime Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1953; nevertheless, the standoff remained. A unified military organization among the Soviet-bloc countries, the Warsaw Pact, was formed in 1955; and West Germany was admitted into NATO that same year. Another intense stage of the Cold War was in 1958-62. The United States and the Soviet Union began developing intercontinental ballistic missiles, and in 1962 the Soviets began secretly installing missiles in Cuba that could be used to launch nuclear attacks on U.S. cities. This sparked the Cuban missile crisis (1962), a confrontation that brought the two superpowers to the brink of war before an agreement was reached to withdraw the missiles.

The Cuban missile crisis showed that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union were ready to use nuclear weapons for fear of the other's retaliation (and thus of mutual atomic annihilation). The two superpowers soon signed the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty of 1963, which banned aboveground nuclear weapons testing. But the crisis also hardened the Soviets' determination never again to be humiliated by their military inferiority, and they began a buildup of both conventional and strategic forces that the United States was forced to match for the next 25 years.

Throughout the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union avoided direct military confrontation in Europe and engaged in actual combat operations only to keep allies from defecting to the other side or to overthrow them after they had done so. Thus, the Soviet Union sent troops to preserve communist rule in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Afghanistan (1979). For its part, the United States helped overthrow a left-wing government in Guatemala (1954), supported an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba (1961), invaded the Dominican Republic (1965) and Grenada (1983), and undertook a long (1964-75) and unsuccessful effort to prevent communist North Vietnam from bringing South Vietnam under its rule ( see Vietnam War).

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Cold War | Summary, Causes, History, Years, Timeline, & Facts

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Cold War, the open yet restricted rivalry that developed after World War II between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. It was waged on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and had only limited recourse to weapons. The term was first used by writer George Orwell.

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Europe was split into Western (democratic) and Eastern (communist) parts.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Cold-War

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Why was the Cuban missile crisis such an important event in the Cold War?

Cold War, the open yet restricted rivalry that developed after World War II between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. The Cold War was waged on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and had only limited recourse to weapons. The term was first used by the English writer George Orwell in an article published in 1945 to refer to what he predicted would be a nuclear stalemate between "two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by which millions of people can be wiped out in a few seconds." It was first used in the United States by the American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch in a speech at the State House in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1947.

A brief treatment of the Cold War follows. For full treatment, see international relations.

Origins of the Cold War

Following the surrender of Nazi Germany in May 1945 near the close of World War II, the uneasy wartime alliance between the United States and Great Britain on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other began to unravel. By 1948 the Soviets had installed left-wing governments in the countries of eastern Europe that had been liberated by the Red Army. The Americans and the British feared the permanent Soviet domination of eastern Europe and the threat of Soviet-influenced communist parties coming to power in the democracies of western Europe. The Soviets, on the other hand, were determined to maintain control of eastern Europe in order to safeguard against any possible renewed threat from Germany, and they were intent on spreading communism worldwide, largely for ideological reasons. The Cold War had solidified by 1947-48, when U.S. aid provided under the Marshall Plan to western Europe had brought those countries under American influence and the Soviets had installed openly communist regimes in eastern Europe.

The struggle between superpowers

The Cold War reached its peak in 1948-53. In this period the Soviets unsuccessfully blockaded the Western-held sectors of West Berlin (1948-49); the United States and its European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a unified military command to resist the Soviet presence in Europe (1949); the Soviets exploded their first atomic warhead (1949), thus ending the American monopoly on the atomic bomb; the Chinese communists came to power in mainland China (1949); and the Soviet-supported communist government of North Korea invaded U.S.-supported South Korea in 1950, setting off an indecisive Korean War that lasted until 1953.

Comprehension Quiz: Cold War

From 1953 to 1957 Cold War tensions relaxed somewhat, largely owing to the death of the longtime Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1953; nevertheless, the standoff remained. A unified military organization among the Soviet-bloc countries, the Warsaw Pact, was formed in 1955; and West Germany was admitted into NATO that same year. Another intense stage of the Cold War was in 1958-62. The United States and the Soviet Union began developing intercontinental ballistic missiles, and in 1962 the Soviets began secretly installing missiles in Cuba that could be used to launch nuclear attacks on U.S. cities. This sparked the Cuban missile crisis (1962), a confrontation that brought the two superpowers to the brink of war before an agreement was reached to withdraw the missiles.

The Cuban missile crisis showed that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union were ready to use nuclear weapons for fear of the other's retaliation (and thus of mutual atomic annihilation). The two superpowers soon signed the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty of 1963, which banned aboveground nuclear weapons testing. But the crisis also hardened the Soviets' determination never again to be humiliated by their military inferiority, and they began a buildup of both conventional and strategic forces that the United States was forced to match for the next 25 years.

Throughout the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union avoided direct military confrontation in Europe and engaged in actual combat operations only to keep allies from defecting to the other side or to overthrow them after they had done so. Thus, the Soviet Union sent troops to preserve communist rule in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Afghanistan (1979). For its part, the United States helped overthrow a left-wing government in Guatemala (1954), supported an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba (1961), invaded the Dominican Republic (1965) and Grenada (1983), and undertook a long (1964-75) and unsuccessful effort to prevent communist North Vietnam from bringing South Vietnam under its rule ( see Vietnam War).

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Cold War | Summary, Causes, History, Years, Timeline, & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Cold War, the open yet restricted rivalry that developed after World War II between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. It was waged on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and had only limited recourse to weapons. The term was first used by writer George Orwell.

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Many countries in Asia and Africa began to gain independence.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/decolonization

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

decolonization, process by which colonies become independent of the colonizing country. Decolonization was gradual and peaceful for some British colonies largely settled by expatriates but violent for others, where native rebellions were energized by nationalism. After World War II, European countries generally lacked the wealth and political support necessary to suppress faraway revolts; they also faced opposition from the new superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, both of which had taken positions against colonialism. Korea was freed in 1945 by Japan's defeat in the war. The U.S. relinquished the Philippines in 1946. Britain left India in 1947, Palestine in 1948, and Egypt in 1956; it withdrew from Africa in the 1950s and '60s, from various island protectorates in the 1970s and '80s, and from Hong Kong in 1997. The French left Vietnam in 1954 and gave up its North African colonies by 1962. Portugal gave up its African colonies in the 1970s; Macau was returned to the Chinese in 1999.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Adam Augustyn.

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Decolonization | Definition, Examples, & Facts

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Decolonization, process by which colonies become independent of the colonizing country. Decolonization was gradual and peaceful for some British colonies largely settled by expatriates but violent for others, where native rebellions were energized by nationalism.