World War Two: The Global Conflict

The seeds of World War II were planted at the end of World War I. The Treaty of Versailles had severely punished Germany, taking away its land, reducing its military, and forcing it to pay massive fines. This left the German economy in ruins and its people feeling angry and humiliated. When a global economic crisis called the Great Depression hit in the 1930s, people across the world lost their jobs, their homes, and their hope. In these desperate times, many turned to extreme political movements and powerful, demanding leaders to fix their problems.

During this time, several countries saw the rise of a Dictator—a ruler with total power over a country. In Italy, Benito Mussolini created Fascism, a political system that demanded total loyalty to the state and its leader, leaving no room for individual rights. In Germany, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party took control. Hitler blamed Germany's problems on politicians and the Jewish people. He promised to rip up the Treaty of Versailles, rebuild the military, and restore Germany to glory. Meanwhile, halfway across the world, military leaders took control of Japan. Japan is an island nation with few natural resources, so its military decided the only way to survive was to invade its neighbors and build a massive empire.

As Germany, Italy, and Japan grew stronger, they began aggressively taking over other countries. Japan invaded parts of China. Italy invaded Ethiopia in Africa. Hitler began taking back land in Europe. The rest of the world, traumatized by the horrors of World War I, desperately wanted to avoid another conflict. Great Britain and France adopted a policy of Appeasement. This meant giving in to an aggressor's demands to keep the peace. They allowed Hitler to take certain lands, hoping he would finally be satisfied. He was not.

The breaking point came on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Realizing that Hitler could not be trusted, Great Britain and France finally declared war on Germany. World War II had begun. Germany shocked the world with a terrifying new military strategy called Blitzkrieg, or "lightning war." Instead of sitting in trenches like in WWI, the Germans used fast-moving airplanes, massive tanks, and highly mobile troops to smash through enemy lines with incredible speed and force. Poland fell in weeks.

By the spring of 1940, Hitler turned his attention to the west. Using Blitzkrieg tactics, German forces quickly overwhelmed Belgium and France. France surrendered, leaving Great Britain to fight alone. Hitler planned to invade Britain, but first, he had to destroy the British Royal Air Force. In the Battle of Britain, German planes bombed British cities night after night for months. However, the British people, led by their stubborn Prime Minister Winston Churchill, refused to give up. With the help of a new invention called Radar, the British air force successfully defended their island, forcing Hitler to call off the invasion.

The world was now divided into two massive opposing teams. The Axis Powers consisted mainly of Germany, Italy, and Japan. They fought against the Allied Powers, which at first was led by Great Britain. In 1941, Hitler made a massive mistake. He broke a peace treaty he had signed with the Soviet Union and invaded Russia. This brought the Soviet Union, led by the ruthless dictator Joseph Stalin, into the war on the side of the Allies. The German army advanced deep into Russia, but they were eventually stopped by fierce fighting and the brutal, freezing Russian winter.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, the United States wanted to stay out of the fighting. However, the US was secretly sending weapons and supplies to Great Britain. Meanwhile, tensions between the US and Japan were rising over Japan's violent expansion in Asia. On the morning of December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The attack killed over 2,400 Americans and destroyed much of the Pacific fleet. The very next day, the United States declared war on Japan, causing Germany and Italy to declare war on the United States.

With the US in the war, the conflict became a massive global effort. The Home Front refers to the civilian population working to support the military. Just like in WWI, factories stopped making cars and toys and started building tanks, airplanes, and bullets. Because millions of men went off to fight, women stepped into the factories in record numbers, proving they could do heavy industrial jobs. To make sure the soldiers had enough food, gas, and rubber, ordinary citizens faced strict Rationing. Governments also used Propaganda, such as posters and movies, to keep people motivated and to encourage them to buy war bonds to fund the military.

While the battles raged, the Nazi regime was committing one of the worst crimes in human history, known as the Holocaust. Driven by intense Anti-Semitism (hatred of Jewish people), Hitler believed Germans were a "master race" and that other groups, especially Jews, had to be eliminated. This horrific plan of mass murder is called a Genocide. The Nazis forced Jewish people into crowded, walled-off neighborhoods called ghettos, and later sent millions to Concentration Camps. In these death camps, innocent men, women, and children were worked to death, starved, or murdered in gas chambers. Over six million Jewish people, along with millions of others including Romani people, disabled individuals, and political prisoners, were systematically killed.

By 1943, the tide of the war began to turn in favor of the Allies. The Soviet Union defeated the German army at the massive Battle of Stalingrad, marking a turning point in the east. In the west, the Allies planned a massive invasion to take France back from Nazi control. On June 6, 1944, a day known as D-Day, American, British, and Canadian troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, France. It was the largest sea-to-land invasion in history. Despite heavy casualties, the Allies successfully broke through the German defenses and began pushing toward Germany.

Germany was now trapped in a vice. The Soviet Union attacked from the east, while the US and British forces attacked from the west. In the spring of 1945, the Allied armies met in Germany. Realizing he had lost, Adolf Hitler took his own life. On May 8, 1945, Germany officially surrendered. This day became known as V-E Day, or Victory in Europe Day. But the war was not over yet; fighting still raged furiously in the Pacific against Japan.

The war in the Pacific was mostly fought on the ocean and in hot, disease-filled jungles. The US used a strategy called Island Hopping. Instead of attacking every single island controlled by Japan, the US military carefully chose only the most important islands, skipping over heavily defended ones. They hopped closer and closer to the Japanese mainland. The fighting was incredibly brutal. Japanese soldiers followed a strict code of honor and almost never surrendered. In desperation, Japanese pilots known as Kamikaze began purposely crashing their planes loaded with explosives into American ships.

US leaders knew that invading the Japanese home islands would cost hundreds of thousands of American lives, as well as millions of Japanese lives. To force an immediate surrender, US President Harry S. Truman made the controversial decision to use a terrifying new weapon developed in secret: the Atomic Bomb. In August 1945, the US dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A single bomb could destroy an entire city in seconds. Over 100,000 people were killed instantly, and many more died later from radiation. Shortly after the second bomb, Japan surrendered. The bloodiest war in human history was finally over.

World War II left much of the world in ashes. Up to 70 million people had died, the majority of them innocent civilians. Trying to ensure that such devastation would never happen again, the countries of the world came together to form the United Nations, an international organization dedicated to maintaining peace and solving global problems. However, the alliance between the US and the Soviet Union quickly broke down, leading to a new era of global tension and competition known as the Cold War.