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On this day in 1945, the United Nations Charter, which was adopted and signed on June 26, 1945, is now effective and ready to be enforced.
Two other important objectives described in the Charter were respecting the principles of equal rights and self-determination of all peoples (originally directed at smaller nations now vulnerable to being swallowed up by the Communist behemoths emerging from the war) and international cooperation in solving economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian problems around the world.

Now that the war was over, negotiating and maintaining the peace was the practical responsibility of the new U.N. Security Council, made up of the United States, Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and China. Each would have veto power over the other. Winston Churchill called for the United Nations to employ its charter in the service of creating a new, united Europe-united in its opposition to communist expansion-East and West. Given the composition of the Security Council, this would prove easier said than done.

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Socio-political Landscape After World War II

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Socio-political Landscape After World War II

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The long-term effects of World War II can also be seen in the socioeconomic aspects of modern life. Nationalism became a widespread phenomenon, encouraging national lines to act, seeking independence much like the decolonization that followed in most of the Southeast Asian nations that were former colonies of the west. Ultimately, Western European influence, which has lasted for hundreds of years, waned and the rise of the communism and the new world challenged the balance of power. Two nations rose to power- the US and the Societ Union- upon the successive losses of Western Europe.
Upon defeat, Germany was divided into two: The Federal Republic of Germany (Allied Powers) In the West and the German Democratic Republic in the East (Soviet Union) under the agreement that was reached in the Potsdan Conference.
Society also changed its perception of human rights because of war atrocities. Minority groups such as black Americans were given better job opportunities. Women all over the world experienced a surge and clamor for equality, not only in social standing, but in economic status as well. Voting rights expanded and slowly created a movement that would eventually allow every citizen of any country equal voting rights

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The instability created in Europe by the First World War (1914-18) set the stage for another international conflict–World War II–which broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating. Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi Party) rearmed the nation and signed strategic treaties with Italy and Japan to further his ambitions of world domination. Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, and World War II had begun. Over the next six years, the conflict would take more lives and destroy more land and property around the globe than any previous war. Among the estimated 45-60 million people killed were 6 million Jews murdered in Nazi concentration camps as part of Hitler’s diabolical “Final Solution,” now known as the Holocaust.

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One of the deadliest of human conflicts, World War II influenced the political, socioeconomic, and diplomatic ties that can still be felt in modern international relations. Truly a "world war," almost all continents have in some way participated. Starting in Europe, it spread like wildfire in Asia, Africa, North America, and much of the Pacific.

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The Attack on Pearl Harbor unified American sentiments leading them to join the war. With the inclusion of the United States, a new alliance was created together with Britain and the Soviet Union- The Grand Alliance. With a mutual military pact, the Allies agreed to continuously bombard Axis advances in Europe and the Pacific without recourse. This mutual agreement to fight until Axis Powers completely surrendered hindered Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan from breaking the alliance.

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With British forces facing warfare with Germany in Europe, the only nation capable of combating the Japanese is the US. Because of the dissengting opinion of the US agaisnt Japanese aggression in China, it cancelled all economic ties with Japan.
The Japanese believed that the only way to prevent further intervention of US forces agaisnt Japanese aggression in Southeast Asia was to conduct a suprise attack, delivering a knockout blow.

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On this day in 1939, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov declares that the Polish government has ceased to exist, as the U.S.S.R. exercises the “fine print” of the Hitler-Stalin Non-aggression pact—the invasion and occupation of eastern Poland.

Hitler’s troops were already wreaking havoc in Poland, having invaded on the first of the month. The Polish army began retreating and regrouping east, near Lvov, in eastern Galicia, attempting to escape relentless German land and air offensives.

But Polish troops had jumped from the frying pan into the fire—as Soviet troops began occupying eastern Poland. The Ribbentrop-Molotov Non-aggression Pact, signed in August, had eliminated any hope Poland had of a Russian ally in a war against Germany.

Little did Poles know that a secret clause of that pact, the details of which would not become public until 1990, gave the U.S.S.R. the right to mark off for itself a chunk of Poland’s eastern region. The “reason” given was that Russia had to come to the aid of its “blood brothers,” the Ukrainians and Byelorussians, who were trapped in territory that had been illegally annexed by Poland. Now Poland was squeezed from West and East—trapped between two behemoths. Its forces overwhelmed by the mechanized modern German army, Poland had nothing left with which to fight the Soviets.

The Soviet Union would wind up with about three-fifths of Poland and 13 million of its people as a result of the invasion.

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The word “Holocaust,” from the Greek words “holos” (whole) and “kaustos” (burned), was historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar. Since 1945, the word has taken on a new and horrible meaning: the mass murder of some 6 million European Jews (as well as members of some other persecuted groups, such as Gypsies and homosexuals) by the German Nazi regime during the Second World War. To the anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, an alien threat to German racial purity and community. After years of Nazi rule in Germany, during which Jews were consistently persecuted, Hitler’s “final solution”–now known as the Holocaust–came to fruition under the cover of world war, with mass killing centers constructed in the concentration camps of occupied Poland.

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In the summer and fall of 1940, German and British air forces clashed in the skies over the United Kingdom, locked in the largest sustained bombing campaign to that date. A significant turning point of World War II, the Battle of Britain ended when Germany’s Luftwaffe failed to gain air superiority over the Royal Air Force despite months of targeting Britain’s air bases, military posts and, ultimately, its civilian population. Britain’s decisive victory saved the country from a ground invasion and possible occupation by German forces while proving that air power alone could be used to win a major battle.

On June 17, 1940, the defeated French signed an armistice and quit World War II. Britain now stood alone against the power of Germany’s military forces, which had conquered most of Western Europe in less than two months. But Prime Minister Winston Churchill rallied his stubborn people and outmaneuvered those politicians who wanted to negotiate with Adolf Hitler. But Britain’s success in continuing the war would very much depend on the RAF Fighter Command’s ability to thwart the Luftwaffe’s efforts to gain air superiority. This then would be the first all-air battle in history.

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A German term for “lightning war,” blitzkrieg is a military tactic designed to create disorganization among enemy forces through the use of mobile forces and locally concentrated firepower. Its successful execution results in short military campaigns, which preserves human lives and limits the expenditure of artillery. German forces tried out the blitzkrieg in Poland in 1939 before successfully employing the tactic with invasions of Belgium, the Netherlands and France in 1940. The blitzkrieg was also used by German commander Erwin Rommel during the North African campaign of World War II, and adopted by U.S. General George Patton for his army’s European operations.

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With German victory in Rhineland in 1936, Hitler began another plan for expansion. In 1938, he launched his unification efforts with his homeland, Austria. Under pressure from Hitler's Anschluss or unionist campaign, Austria was officially annexed by Germany on March 13, 1938, with the support of Austrian Nazis. This began a series of campaigns to recover German territories lost in World War I.

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By gaining momentum in their military campaigns, the Axis powers-Germany, Italy, and Japan- became military superpowers, a clear violation of the disarmament under the Treaty of Versailles. With successive victories, the threat of World War II expanded.

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With the resentment of German defeat in World War I, the rise of Hitler, and the belief in Aryan supremacy, the seeds of World War II were sown. Nazism gave Germany a new sense of power and a need to expand under the banner of social Darwinism. Being an anti-communist, he planned to conquer much of the Soviet Union to build the Third Reich, a perfect German state that enslaves and dominates the world for a thousand years. In 1933, Hitler withdrew from the League of Nations, causing concern among member-states. By March of 1935, Hitler started increasing military spending through the expansion of the German army and the creation of the German army and the creation of the German air force-an act violating the limitations set by the Treaty of Versailles.

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Totalitarianism and The Rise of Dictators

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Totalitarianism and The Rise of Dictators

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Totarlitarianism is a form of government that uses absolute control over sociopolitical and even cultural aspects of a state. Usually led by a single party or even a single political leader, most of Europe believed that totalitarian regimes can bring Europe out of the post-war socioeconomic slump.
In Italy, dictatorship was inevitable. Divisions due to ecobomic inequalities between industrial and agricultural classes caused strife to Italians. Out of thr extreme right-wing movement came the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini of the Italian Fascist Party. Facism is a system of hypernationalistic government where the dictator absolutely controls the lives of its citizens.
Totalitarianism rose to power during the time of Josef Stalin, Benito Mussolibi, Hideki Tojo, and Adolf Hitler.

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Because of the impact caused by post-war economic and political turmoil, it became difficult for governments to remain intact and in power. Tensions between socioeconomic classes resulted in encouraging the masses to seek for reforms. Most democracies fell under the impact of the Great Depression, causing higher unemployment, worsening inflation, and unfair corporate practices agaisnt labor. With the rise of Lenin in the 1920s, communism spread across Russia under Marxist communism. European and Asian communist parties arose as a response to the call agaisnt the continued struggles resulting from western imperialism.

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Unlike the First World War whose beginnings were caused by an interweaving of complex events, World War II started of conflicting ideologies that set nations pitting agaisnt each other. Aggression among states with rising political extremism shook most of the democratic world. Fragile peace treaties did not protect much of Europe and the Great Depression agitated much of the masses leading them to seek out new and stronger leadership. Continued extreme nationalistic sentiments, the waning of democracy, and the rise of dictators formed new alliances. These created the preconditions for the beginnings of World War II.

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World War II, also called Second World War, 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.

World War II: Battle of Stalingrad

In the Battle of Stalingrad (1942–43), the advancing Germans were finally stopped by the Red Army in desperate house-to-house fighting. From The Second World War: Allied Victory (1963), a documentary by Encyclopædia Britannica Educational Corporation.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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.

atomic bombing of Hiroshima

A gigantic mushroom cloud rising above Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, after a U.S. aircraft dropped an atomic bomb on the city, immediately killing more than 70,000 people.

U.S. Air Force photograph

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20th-century international relations: World War II, 1939–45

War once again broke out over nationality conflicts in east-central Europe, provoked in part by a German…

Axis Initiative And Allied Reaction

The outbreak of war

By the early part of 1939 the Germandictator 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.

Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov, having negotiated the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of August 1939, is greeted by German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and other officials in Berlin. From “The Second World War: Prelude to Conflict” (1963), a documentary by Encyclopædia Britannica Educational Corporation.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Having achieved this cynicalagreement, 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 AMand at 5:00 PM, respectively. World War II had begun.

World War II: German invasion of Poland

Overview of the German invasion of Poland (1939), which marked the beginning of World War II.

Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz

World War II: Invasion of Poland

In September 1939 the Germans overrun Poland, forcing all of Europe into a state of war. From “The Second World War: Prelude to Conflict” (1963), a documentary by Encyclopædia Britannica Educational Corporation.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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A new world order began to form. In the place of old European empires, sprang new states, most of which were democracies. In the place of the German Reich under Wilheim II was the German social democracy know as the Weimar Republic. The Austro-Hungarian empire split into the independent nations of Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.

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The League of Nations was an international diplomatic group developed after World War I as a way to solve disputes between countries before they erupted into open warfare. A precursor to the United Nations, the League achieved some victories but had a mixed record of success, sometimes putting self-interest before becoming involved with conflict resolution, while also contending with governments that did not recognize its authority. The League effectively ceased operations during World War II.

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After the Russians discontinued the war, the Germans could finally marshal all their resources to defeat the British and the French on the Western Front. But the window of time for success would close quickly. The Germans knew that they had to attack and win the war before the Americans mobilized their armies and brought forth their abundant industrial resources. Just as in the initial stages of the war, the Germans believed that a quick, shocking victory was crucial.

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Land and aerial warfare became a critical turning point in the end of World War I. For the first time in the history of warfare, airplanes took flight on the battlefront. By 1915, airplanes were used to attack ground targets, which at the time of trench warfare, seemed impossible. Tanks and poisonous gasses also became critical weapons in the resolution of the Great War.

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When World War I broke out across Europe in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the United States would remain neutral, and many Americans supported this policy of nonintervention. However, public opinion about neutrality started to change after the sinking of the British ocean liner Lusitania by a German U-boat in 1915; almost 2,000 people perished, including 128 Americans. Along with news of the Zimmerman telegram threatening an alliance between Germany and Mexico, Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. The U.S. officially entered the conflict on April 6, 1917.

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The Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of the most explosive political events of the twentieth century. The violent revolution marked the end of the Romanov dynasty and centuries of Russian Imperial rule. During the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks, led by leftist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, seized power and destroyed the tradition of csarist rule. The Bolsheviks would later become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
>In 1917, two revolutions swept through Russia, ending centuries of imperial rule and setting into motion political and social changes that would lead to the formation of the Soviet Union. While the two revolutionary events took place within a few short months, social unrest in Russia had been simmering for decades.

>In the early 1900s, Russia was one of the most impoverished countries in Europe with an enormous peasantry and a growing minority of poor industrial workers.

>Much of Western Europe viewed Russia as an undeveloped, backwards society. The Russian Empire practiced serfdom—a form of feudalism in which landless peasants were forced to serve the land-owning nobility—well into the nineteenth century. In contrast, the practice had disappeared in most of Western Europe by the end of the Middle Ages.

>In 1861, the Russian Empire finally abolished serfdom. The emancipation of serfs would influence the events leading up to the Russian Revolution by giving peasants more freedom to organize.

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In the late summer of 1914, the ancient monarchies of Austria, Russia and Germany plunged their countries into a world war which engulfed Europe in one of the bloodiest conflicts in history. The Eastern Front of that great war had a profound impact on the remainder of the 20th century, even though the Western Front with its British, French and American combatants achieved somewhat greater fame. The statistics for the Eastern war are grim. More than three-million men died in the fighting, more than nine-million men were wounded, and every major country which participated lost its form of government. One of them, Russia, collapsed so completely and catastrophically that the ensuing consequences still resonate in today's world. It was into this conflict that the soldiers of 1914 marched, with an eagerness and confidence which has not since been repeated.

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-The Western Front was the main theatre of World War I, a 700-kilometre line from Switzerland to the North Sea.
-It took shape in late 1914, as fighting in northern France stalled and both sides attempted to outflank the other.
-Eventually the Western Front became a long line of trenches, fortifications and defences crossing western Europe.
-Most of the major battles of the war – and therefore most of its casualties – were fought along the Western Front.
-Breaking through the Western Front was a critical objective of military planners on both sides. These offensives were often overly ambitious, poorly planned and wasteful of men and resources.

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The assassination of the archduke incited anger among national line in Europe. Austrian riots in Sarajevo killed many ethnic Serbs. Franz Joseph I, emperor of Autria-Hungary, ssougt its German allies by writing to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany for support. Germany responded with a "blank check" saying that it fully supports whatever action its ally would take agaisnt Serbia even if Russia becomes involved.
The events that led to the summer of 1914 were initially thought of as a quick skirmish since the horrors of war were seen as costly, both politically and economically.
Diplomacy was also seen as a solution.
However, the aggression between the two sides
>The Allied Powers- composed of the Triple Entente (France, Russia and Britain) and
>The Central Powers- composed of the Triplr Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy), as they call themselves after 1914, proved to be unstoppable. With the system of alliances in full operation and nationalistic propaganda spreading within national borders, the Great War has begun.

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The alliances between European superpowers were further tested by looming revolutions in the Baklan Peninsula, a region in Southeastern Europe, led by European minorities such as the Greeks, the Rumanians, the Turks, and the Serbs. The decline and modernization of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century created a power vacuum in its territories in the Balkans. Because if the ethnic conflicts that arose in the region, historians call the Balkans the "power keg of Europe."
The treaty if Belin of 1878 provided Austria-Hungary a firm succession of power in the region with the right to administer Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The First Balkan War was fought between the members of the Balkan League—Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro—and the Ottoman Empire. The Balkan League was formed under Russian auspices in the spring of 1912 to take Macedonia away from Turkey, which was already involved in a war with Italy.

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Because of conflicting interests and rivalries, a frenzy of nationalistic pride swept the continent, laying the foundation of a system of alliances. In 1800s, the major European powers organized themselves in case of war breaks out. Major alliances were created in order to protect similar interests between nation-states.
The triple Alliance, composed of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, and the Triple Entente, a coalition between France and Britain, shaped the dangerous balance of power in Europe in the onset of the 20th century. With the formation of alliances comes bitter tensions between rivals.

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The brewing tensiom caused by growing nationalism worsened internal conflicts brought about by dissent between members of the same nation-state. Clamor for ideologies such as the socialist labor movement, caused rampant violence due to unfair labor practices brought about by industrialization.
Class warfare shook the balance of power held by conservative leadership classes. Nation-states with the worst internal conflicts were on the verge of revolution. In order to avoid bloodshed within the citizens of the same nation-state, conservative leaders were encouraged to regain control through the idea of unifying the nation by plunging into war.
The worsening internal and external situations in Europe caused nations to strengthen large armies in preparation for war.
Military spending in other European nations also ballooned.
A popular method of drafting soldiers called conscription became the norm, enlarging most of the armies in the continent. With the rise of militarism, generals gained more power, influencing major political decisions of the time.
HMS Dreadnought, one of the largest battleships of the British Royal Navy.

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The Rise of Nationalism and Colonial Rivalries

The root of rivalries between European powers in the 1800 was the rise of nationalism.
>Nationalism is the shared belief of loyalty to the ethnicity and culture of a nation-state.
>Nationalism also gave citizens inflated confidence in their nation, their governments and their military strength.
It assured them that their country was fair, righteous and without blame. In contrast, nationalist ideas demonised rival nations, caricaturing them as aggressive, scheming, deceitful, backward or uncivilised.

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-Europe has grown to become the most powerful continent in world affairs. The coming of the 19th century marked the development of nation-states (a sovereign countries composed of ethnically similar groups of self-governing peoples).
-The First World War began as a regional European disagreement between Austria-Hungary and Serbia