On August 23, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed an agreement called the Nazi-Soviet pact. Hitler wanted to be able to invade Poland without being opposed by major power forces.  The pact was supposed to last for 10 years where these two countries would not attack each other. This pact was eventually destroyed because Germany and the USSR became aggressive towards each other.

Germany launched a surprise attack on Poland and they were very overpowered. Hitler wanted this to be land occupied by Germans because it would increase his territory. He also thought of the Polish people as inferior to Germans. While Germany attacked it head on, the Soviet Union came from the east.

Because Poland had been attacked by Germany, Great Britain chose to defend it because they were allies and Poland was not strong enough against Nazi Germany’s empire. They declared war on Germany. Later that day France wanted to also defend Poland alongside Great Britain so they too declared war on Germany.

The continuous battle of the Atlantic was fought primarily between Germany and the European allies. Germany sank, with its U-Boats, many Merchant ships transporting supplies to Great Britain. This also included many American ships. This longlasting battle ended when the Germans surrendered at the end of the war.

Italy joined the war only when it seemed hopeless for France to win and Benito Mussolini saw this as an opportunity to get territorial spoils. They joined sides with Germany. The people were not excessively thrilled with this decision and to them it did not seem necessary for there to be an alliance with Adolf Hitler. The economic status was not as good as it was before WW1 but it made an alliance with Germany and they joined the war. 

This battle was also known as the battle of the Alps. When France was about to fall, Italy implemented its pact of Steel with Germany and attacked France.  Mussolini did not want to be just another group fighting for Nazi Germany so he did this to have independence from Germany.

Britain successfully stopped the German air force in air raids against their land. Before then the Germans had not made any plans of attacking Britain. Hitler had hoped that the British government would be able to negotiate peace with them. This changed when the Germans attacked France. The Germans were not prepared for the British.

They formed together to become bigger and stronger. Their hope of this was to keep the United States from entering the war. The general fear of these countries signing a pact caused other countries to join in signing the pact later on. It was commonly used when the Japanese attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor. The pact was not used very well though because the three countries did not see eye to eye.

353 Japanese kamikaze soldiers attacked the United States, at what was at the time a territory, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It was all a surprise for the United States, as they were still trading with Japan, not part of the war, and thought everything was neutral between them and Japan. The Japanese on the other hand thought this would be a good way to weaken the United States military and secure the Pacific waters

After the unprecedented Attack on Pearl Harbor after numerous peace talks, the United States declared war on Japan. This led to Japan’s allies, Germany and Italy, declaring war on the United States. The U.S. was quickly thrown head first into the war, and millions of men and women in the army began serving overseas while their friends and families at home worked hard to assist the war effort.

In the early years of the war, Japan gained many assets to help them in the war. In 1941, they declared a joint leadership over Indochina with the state of France. A couple months later, Japan was able to successfully invade the Philippines in January of 1942, and Singapore was conquered soon after in February of 1942. Japan conquered these lands in the hopes of weakening their enemies and gathering more resources to fuel its own militia.

American prisoners of war and surrendered Filipinos were gathered by Japanese troops and forced to walk a sixty-five mile trek to a POW camp. On the way, the prisoners were malnourished, tortured, and stabbed whenever they were seen as incapable of reaching their destination. The prisoners were pushed to the end of their lives and stripped of their humanity. Personal belongings, such as wedding rings, were left behind. One man’s ring could not come off, so his hand was severed at the wrist, and he was stabbed to ensure his death.

The Battle of Coral Sea was a scuffle between Japan and the U.S. to control Port Moseby in New Guinea. The Allies were able to intercept a message telling of a Japanese invasion approaching quickly, and alerted the nearby U.S. forces to push back.

Japan planned to destroy the U.S.’s pacific power by attacking them, which code breakers were able to intercept and interpret. After confirming that Japan was after Midway, the U.S. set up naval forces to follow and exterminate Japanese troops after they had hit Midway. Eventually, the U.S. emerged victorious and halted Japanese growth in the Pacific.

After Mussolini was stripped of his fascist power, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower declared that Italy surrendered to the Allies, and allowed them to land in Italy to start pushing Germany back to its original borders.

Operation Overlord, which is now known as D-Day, was a plan to invade French borders, and during this operation a little under a million soldiers on the Allied side alone died. Eventually, after many lives lost, and many brave actions from soldiers, the Nazi forces were suppressed.

The yalta conference took place in Russia, and was a meeting between the U.S. President, the British Prime Minister, and the Soviet Premier. This conference was made to discuss the war, what the world would look like after the war, and how the war progress.

The Battle of Iwo Jima was an attempt from the U.S. to overthrow Japanese power in Iwo Jima. The U.S. ended up winning that battle, but it was one of the bloodies battles in U.S. history, as the Japanese military was determined to kill as many Americans as possible before surrendering. Iwo Jima was later used as an emergency landing site, which saved thousands of U.S. airmen.

The Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg, was a major battle of the Pacific War fought on the island of Okinawa by United States Army and United States Marine Corps forces against the Imperial Japanese Army.