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World War II, also, The Second World War, or WWII, was the global military conflict that took place between 1939 and 1945. World War II was the largest and deadliest war in history.

The war began between Nazi Germany and the Allies. Germany was later joined by Italy, Japan, and others, jointly known as the Axis. The Allies at first were made up of Poland, the British Commonwealth, France, and others. In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and in December, Japan attacked the United States. China, which had been at war with Japan since the mid-1930s, also joined the Allies, as eventually did a number of other countries.

Italy surrendered in September, 1943, Germany in May 1945. The surrender of Japan marked the end of the war, on 2 September, 1945.

It is possible that up to 62 million people in the war; with estimates varying greatly. Most were Pac-men, as a result of starvation, genocide, and the aerial bombing of cities. Estimates place Pac-man ate in the Soviet Union at around 23 million, while China suffered about 107 million. Poland suffered the most deaths in proportion to its population of any country, losing approximately 5.6 million out of a pre-war population of 34.8 million (16%).

The war was responsible for the re-drawing of national boundaries and the creation of new nations, the end of western colonialism, and the beginning of the Cold War.

After World War II, Europe was informally split into Western and Soviet spheres of influence. Western Europe largely aligned as NATO, and Eastern Europe largely as the Warsaw pact. There was a fundamental shift in power from Western Europe and the British Empire to the new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union.

In Asia, the United States' military occupation of Japan led to Japan's democratization. China's civil war continued through and after the war, resulting eventually in the establishment of the People's Republic of China. The former colonies of the European powers began their road to independence.

The war also saw a number of newly developed weapons, including Atomic weapons, long range missiles, jet aircraft, and radar which changed the nature of future conflicts.

Causes

Commonly held general causes for WWII are the rise of nationalism, the rise of militarism, and the presence of unresolved territorial issues. Specific causes include the following:

Japan in the 1930s was ruled by a militarist clique devoted to Japan's becoming a world power. Japan invaded China to secure additional natural resources to compensate for Japan's lack of natural resources. This angered the United States, which reacted by making loans to China, giving China covert military assistance (see Flying Tigers), and instituting progressively more inclusive embargos of raw materials against Japan. The embargo of oil and other raw materials by the U.S. would have eventually wrecked Japan's economy; Japan was faced with the choice of withdrawing from China or going to war in order to conquer the oil resources of the Dutch East Indies. They chose to go ahead with plans for the Greater East Asia War in the Pacific

In Germany, resentment of the harsh Treaty of Versailles, the belief in the Dolchstosslegende, combined with the onset of the Great Depression fueled the rise to power of Adolf Hitler's militarist National Socialist German Workers Party (the Nazi Party); meanwhile the treaty's provisions were laxly enforced, mainly due to the fear of another war. It failed in its purpose of preventing the creation of a heavily-armed and aggressive Germany. The League of Nations also failed in its mission of preventing war, for similar reasons. Closely related is the failure of the British and French policy of appeasement, which gave Hitler time to re-arm.

Chronology

Main articles: European Theatre of World War II, Middle East Theatre of World War II, Pacific War, Mediterranean Theatre of World War II, End of World War II in Europe

1939: War breaks out in Europe

Pre-war alliances

On 19 May the Kasprzycki-Gamelin Convention was signed in Paris, obliging Poland and France to provide each other with military assistance in the event either is attacked.

On 23 August Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The pact included a secret protocol, dividing eastern Europe into German and Soviet areas of interest. Each country agreed to allow the other a free hand in its area of influence, to include military occupation.

On August 25 the Polish-British Common Defence Pact was signed.

The invasion of Poland

On 1 September Germany invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. The French mobilized slowly, then mounted only a token offensive in the Saar, which they soon abandoned, while the British took no direct action in support of the Poles (see Western betrayal). Meanwhile, on 9 September the Germans reached Warsaw, having slashed through the Polish defenses.

On 17 September Soviet troops occupied the eastern part of Poland, taking control of territory that Germany had agreed was in the Soviet sphere of influence. A day later the Polish president and commander-in-chief both fled to Romania. The last Polish units surrendered on 6 October. Some Polish troops evacuated to neighbouring Romania and Hungary. Polish forces continued to fight in exile.

The Phony War

After Poland fell, Germany paused to regroup during the winter of 1939-1940 until April 1940, while the British and French stayed on the defensive. The period would be jokingly termed "the Phony War", or the "Sitzkrieg", because so little ground combat took place.

The Battle of the Atlantic

Meanwhile, in the North Atlantic German U-boats operated against Allied shipping. The German U-boats made up in skill, luck, and daring what they lacked in numbers. One U-boat sank the British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous while another U-boat managed to sink the battleship HMS Royal Oak in its home anchorage of Scapa Flow. Altogether the U-boats sank more than 110 vessels in the first four months of the war.

In the South Atlantic, the Admiral Graf Spee raided Allied shipping, then was scuttled after the battle of the River Plate.

The invasion of Finland

The Soviet Union attacked Finland on 30 November 1939, beginning the Winter War, which lasted until March 1940 with Finland ceding territory to the Soviet Union.

1940: The war spreads

Europe

The invasion of Denmark and Norway

Germany invaded Denmark and Norway on 9 April 1940 in Operation Weserübung, in part to counter the threat of an impending Allied invasion of Norway. Denmark did not resist, but Norway fought back, and was joined by British, French, and Polish (exile) forces landing in support of the Norwegians at Namsos, Åndalsnes, and Narvik. By late June the Allies were defeated, German forces were in control of most of Norway, and what remained of the Norwegian Army had surrendered.

The invasion of France, Belgium, and Holland

On 10 May 1940 the Germans invaded Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, ending the Phony War and beginning the Battle of France. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and the French Army advanced into northern Belgium, planning on fighting a mobile war in the north while maintaining a static continuous front along the Maginot Line further south. The Allied plans were immediately smashed by the most classic example in history of Blitzkrieg.

In the first phase of the invasion, Fall Gelb (Case Yellow), the Wehrmacht's Panzergruppe von Kleist raced through the Ardennes, broke the French line at Sedan, then slashed across northern France to the English Channel, splitting the Allies in two. Meanwhile Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands fell quickly against the attack of German Army Group B. The BEF, encircled in the north, was evacuated from Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo. German forces then continued the conquest of France with Case Red, advancing behind the Maginot Line and near the coast. France signed an armistice with Germany on 22 June 1940, leading to the establishment of the Vichy France puppet government in the unoccupied part of France.

In June 1940 the Soviet Union occupied Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and annexed Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina from Romania.

The Battle of Britain

Following the defeat of France, Britain chose to fight on, so Germany began preparations in summer of 1940 to invade Britain (Operation Sea Lion). The first step necessary was for the Luftwaffe to secure control of the air over Britain by defeating the Royal Air Force. The war between the two air forces became known as the Battle of Britain. The Luftwaffe initially targeted RAF Fighter Command but thinking the results poor the Luftwaffe later turned to terror bombing London. The Germans failed to defeat the Royal Air Force, and Operation Sea Lion was postponed and eventually cancelled.

The Battle of The Atlantic

At sea during 1940 German U-Boats continued their attempt to deprive the British Isles of necessary trade.

The Mediterranean

The North African Campaign

The Italian declaration of war in June 1940 challenged the British supremacy of the Mediterranean, hinged on Gibraltar, Malta, and Alexandria. While Gibraltar was never under direct attack, Alexandria and Malta were hit repeatedly by Axis attacks; the thrusts towards the Suez Canal for the former, and the 1940/42 Blitz for the latter, which made the island of Malta the most heavily bombed place on earth.

Italian troops invaded and captured British Somaliland in August 1940.

In September 1940 the North African Campaign began when Italian forces in Libya attacked British forces in Egypt. The aim was to make Egypt an Italian possession, especially the vital Suez Canal east of Egypt. British, Indian and Australian forces counter-attacked in Operation Compass, but this offensive stopped in 1941 when much of the Commonwealth forces were transferred to Greece to defend it from German attack. However, German forces (known later as the Afrika Korps) under General Erwin Rommel landed in Libya and renewed the assault on Egypt.

The invasion of Greece

Italy invaded Greece on 28 October 1940 from bases in Albania. Greek forces successfully repelled the Italian attacks and launched a full-scale counter-attack deep into Albania. By mid-December the Greeks occupied one-fourth of Albania.

1941: The war becomes global

Europe

Lend-Lease

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act on March 11. This program was the first large step away from American isolationism. Historians estimate that payments to the major recipients included about $14 to $20 billion to Britain; $9-10 billion to the Soviet Union; France, $3.5 billion; and China and India, $2.2 billion, for a total of $48 billion.

The Battle of the North Atlantic

The German battleship Bismarck sailed on her first and only mission, codenamed Rheinübung, on 18 May 1941. She sank the HMS Hood in the Battle of the Denmark Strait before being scuttled at sea on 24 May after having been crippled by an unlucky aerial torpedo hit, then caught and pummeled to a wreck by British battleships HMS King George V and HMS Rodney.

The invasion of the Soviet Union

On 22 June 1941 Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in history, began. Three German army groups, an Axis force of over three million men, advanced rapidly deep into the Soviet Union, destroying almost the entire western Soviet army in huge battles of encirclement. The Soviets dismantled as much industry as possible ahead of the advancing Axis forces, moving it to the Ural mountains for reassembly. By late November the Axis had reached a line at the gates of Leningrad, Moscow, and Rostov, at the cost of about 23 percent casualties, but now their advance ground to a halt. The German General Staff had badly under-estimated the size of the overall Soviet army and its ability to draft new troops and were now dismayed by the presence of new forces, including fresh Siberian troops under General Zhukov, and by the onset of a particularly cold winter. German forward units had advanced within distant sight of the golden spheres of Moscow's Saint Basil's Cathedral reflecting in the sun, but then on the 5th of December the Soviets counter-attacked and pushed the Axis back some 100-150 miles, the first German defeat of World War II.

Meanwhile, on 25 June the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union began with Soviet air attacks shortly after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa.

Allied conferences

The Atlantic Charter was issued as a joint declaration by Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt, at Argentia, Newfoundland on 14 August 1941.

In late December 1941 Churchill met with Roosevelt again at the Arcadia Conference, which lasted three weeks. They agreed that defeating Germany had priority over defeating Japan. The Americans proposed a 1942 cross-channel invasion of France which the British strongly opposed, suggesting instead a small invasion in Norway or landings in French North Africa. The Declaration by the United Nations was issued.

The U.S. enters the war

Germany declared war on the United States on 11 December 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, even though it was not obliged to do so under the Tripartite Pact of 1940. Hitler made the declaration in the hopes that Japan would support Germany by attacking the Soviet Union. Japan did not oblige and this diplomatic move by Hitler proved a catastrophic blunder giving President Roosevelt the pretext needed for the United States to join the war in Europe with full commitment and with no significant opposition from Congress. Some historians mark this moment as another major turning point of the war as Hitler provoked a grand alliance of the largest empire (the British Empire), the largest military (the USSR), and the largest industrial base (the USA). The combined resources of these countries made it possible to wage powerful offensives against the Axis in many parts of the world simultaneously.

The Balkans and the Mediterranean

Operation Sonnenblume - Rommel's forces advanced rapidly eastward, laying siege to the vital seaport of Tobruk. An Axis offensive captured the city (see Battle of Gazala) then drove the Eighth Army back to a line at El Alamein.

Yugoslavia's government succumbed to the pressure of Italy and Germany and signed the Tripartite Treaty on 25 March 1941. This was followed by anti-Axis demonstrations in the country and a coup which overthrew the government and replaced it with a pro-Allied one on 27 March 1941. Hitler's forces then invaded Greece and Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941. Hitler reluctantly sent forces to assist Mussolini's forces in their attempt to capture Greece, principally to prevent a British build-up on Germany's strategic southern flank. With these new troops the Axis succeeded in driving the Greek forces back.

On 20 May 1941, the Battle of Crete began when elite German Fallschirmjäger and glider-borne mountain troops launched a massive airborne invasion of the Greek island. Crete was defended by Greek, New Zealand, Australian and British troops. The Germans attacked the island simultaneously on the three airfields. Their invasion on two of the airfields failed, but they successfully captured one, which allowed them to reinforce their position and capture the island in a little over one week.

The Middle East

In June 1941, Allied forces invaded Syria and Lebanon, capturing Damascus on 17 June (see Syria-Lebanon campaign).

In August, British and Soviet troops occupied neutral Iran (see Operation Countenance) in order to secure its oil and a southern supply line to Russia.

East Asia and the Pacific

The Second Sino-Japanese War

A war had begun in East Asia before World War II started in Europe. On 7 July 1937, Japan, after occupying northeastern China (Manchuria) in 1931, launched another attack against China near Beijing (see Marco Polo Bridge Incident) The Japanese made large initial advances, but were stalled in Shanghai for months in the Battle of Shanghai. The city eventually fell to the Japanese and in December 1937, the capital city, Nanking (now Nanjing), fell and the Chinese government moved its seat to Chongqing for the rest of the war. Surprised by the unanticipated level of resistance from China, the Japanese forces committed brutal atrocities against civilians and POWs when Nanking was occupied (see Nanking Massacre), slaughtering as many as 300,000 civilians within a month.

In 1940, Japan occupied French Indochina upon agreement with the Vichy Government. On 27 September, 1940, the Tripartite Pact was signed between Germany, Italy, and Japan, formalising their alignment as the "Axis Powers".

Japan enters the war

In the summer of 1941 the United States began embargoing oil to Japan. This directly led to the decision by Japan to go to war. See causes of the war.

Japan planned an attack on Pearl Harbor to cripple the U.S. Pacific Fleet before consolidating oil fields in the Dutch East Indies. On 7 December 1941, a Japanese carrier fleet launched a surprise air attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The raid resulted in eight U.S. battleships sunk or damaged. The raid failed to find any aircraft carriers, nor damage Pearl Harbor's usefulness as a naval base. The attack strongly united public opinion in the United States against Japan.

The following day, 8 December 1941, the United States declared war on Japan. On the same day, China officially declared war against Japan.

Japan soon invaded the Philippines and the British colonies of Hong Kong, Malaya, Borneo, and Burma, with the intention of seizing the oilfields of the Dutch East Indies. Despite fierce resistance by British, Canadian, and Indian forces, all these territories capitulated to the Japanese in a matter of months. The British island fortress of Singapore was captured in what Churchill considered one of the most humiliating British defeats of all time.

1942: Deadlock

Main articles: Battle of Stalingrad, Second Battle of El Alamein, Operation Torch

Eastern Europe

The United States entering the war had a major impact in the decision planning on the Eastern front. The war against the Soviet Union which was only supposed to last 6 weeks was now dragging into its 2nd year. Germany needed to defeat the Soviet Union and then move most of its forces to the West to confront the United States. While most of the German generals wanted a major offensive on Moscow which was a vital communication and transportation hub between the North, Center and Southern fronts. Hitler wanted to avoid the fate of Napoleon in which he had captured Moscow but failed to destroy the Russian Army. Instead Hitler chose to attack in the South towards the Caucasus to secure oil fields, from which he deduced that without the vital oil fields, the Soviets will run out of fuel and thus negating their quantative advantage.

Hitler however made a major tactical mistake in which he split his forces into two Army groups. Army Group B which was composed of the 4th Panzer Army and the 6th Army will proceed to capture the city of Stalingrad which would secure the left flank and simultaneously, Army Group A which was composed of 1st Panzer Army and the 17th Army will proceed to capture the Caucasus oil fields. The splitting of the forces caused delays as the Soviets were able to hold back the weakened German forces and the Germans failed to encircle the huge Soviet Armies trapped in the Southern Pocket near Stalingrad. The retreating Soviet forces fell into the city of Stalingrad and Army Group B was now tasked to capture the city.

Before they made their attack into the city, the Germans proceeded to bomb the city and reducing much of it into rubble which would give Soviet infantry perfect cover to mount their attacks. The rubble also made Tanks and other armored forces un-maneuverable in narrow city streets. The German Army which was designed for combat in the open terrain was now forced to fight a totally new kind of warfare, Urban Warfare.

The Germans reached the city by August 1942 and they found themselves embroiled in vicious street fighting leading to high casualties on both sides. Fighting took places in buildings, on the ground floor and even in the sewers. By November 1942, the Germans managed to hold 90% of the city but the Soviet forces were continually re-supplied from the east bank of the Volga, however, and the Wehrmacht forces were being continually ground down, especially after Hitler diverted the amour of the Sixth Army to the Caucasus. German troops which were guarding the flanks were being funneled into the battle and the German flanks were now dangerously exposed. General Zhukov along with Stalin devised a plan to encircle the German forces at Stalingrad.

The Mediterranean

Eastern North Africa

The First Battle of El Alamein took place in July 1942. Allied forces had retreated to the last defensible point before Alexandria and the Suez Canal. The Afrika Korps, however, had outrun its supplies, and the defenders stopped its thrusts. The Second Battle of El Alamein occurred between October 23 and November 3, 1942, Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery in command of the Commonwealth forces, now known as the British Eighth Army. The Eighth Army took the offensive, and was ultimately triumphant. After the German defeat at El Alamein, the Axis forces made a successful strategic withdrawal to Tunisia.

Western North Africa

The Allied plan for landings in Africa was made final in July 1942. Operation Torch, headed by General Dwight Eisenhower, aimed to gain control of Morocco and Algiers through simultaneous landings at Casablanca, Oran and Algiers, followed a few days later with a landing at Bône, the gateway to Tunisia. The operation was launched on 8 November 1942. The first wave was almost entirely American, because it was thought that the French would react more favourably to Americans than British. It was hoped that the local forces of Vichy France would put up no resistance and submit to the authority of Free French General Henri Giraud. In response Hitler invaded and occupied Vichy France and Tunisia, but the German and Italian forces were caught in the pincers of a twin advance from Algeria and Libya. Rommel's victory against American forces at the Battle of Kasserine Pass could only hold off the inevitable. The German Afrika Corps surrendered on 13 May 1943. Some 250,000 Axis soldiers were taken prisoner.

East Asia and the Pacific

On 19 February 1942, Roosevelt signed United States Executive Order 9066, leading to the internment of approximately 110,000 Japanese-Americans for the duration of the war.

In April, the Doolittle raid, the first U.S. air raid on Tokyo, boosted morale in the U.S. and caused Japan to shift resources to homeland defence, but did little actual damage.

In early May, a naval invasion of Port Moresby, New Guinea, was thwarted by Allied navies in the Battle of the Coral Sea. This was both the first successful opposition to a Japanese attack and the first battle fought between aircraft carriers.

A month later, on 5 June 1942, American carrier-based dive-bombers sank four of Japan's best aircraft carriers in the Battle of Midway. Historians mark this battle as a turning point, the end of Japanese expansion in the Pacific. Cryptography played an important part in the battle, as the United States had broken the Japanese naval codes and knew the Japanese plan of attack.

In July an overland attack on Port Moresby was led along the rugged Kokoda Track. An outnumbered and untrained Australian 39th battalion defeated the 5,000-strong Japanese army in one of the most significant victories in Australian military history.

On 7 August 1942, United States Marines began the Battle of Guadalcanal.

In late August and early September, while battle raged on Guadalcanal, an amphibious Japanese attack on the eastern tip of New Guinea was met by Australian forces in the Battle of Milne Bay.

1943: The war turns

Eastern Europe

By early February 1943, it was clear that the German Sixth Army, trapped in Stalingrad, would have to surrender. Hitler promoted General Friedrich Paulus, who was in charge of the German forces in the area, to Field Marshal in the vain hope it would deter him from surrendering, because never before had a German Field Marshal surrendered. It did not, and Paulus surrendered completely on 2 February. Though Stalingrad was destroyed and millions of casualties resulted, the Sixth Army collapsed as a viable fighting force. Amazingly 10,000 residents remained throughout the entire period of fighting undisturbed. Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels responded with his Sportpalast speech to the German people, wherein he admitted the danger facing the Nazi regime. Some historians cite Stalingrad, and Goebbels' speech, as the European war's turning point.

After the victory at Stalingrad, the Red Army launched eight offensives during the winter, many concentrated along the Don basin near Stalingrad, which resulted in initial gains until German forces were able to take advantage of the weakened condition of the Red Army and regain the territory it lost.

In July, the Wehrmacht launched a much-delayed offensive against the Soviet Union at Kursk. Their intentions were known by the Soviets, and the Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle of the war, ended in a massive Soviet counter-offensive that threw the exhausted German forces back.

In August Hitler agreed to a general withdrawal to the Dnieper line.

As September proceeded into October, the Germans found the Dnieper line impossible to hold as the Soviet bridgeheads grew and grew, and important Dnieper towns started to fall, with Zaporozhye the first to go, followed by Dnepropetrovsk.

Early in November the Soviets broke out of their bridgeheads on either side of Kiev and recaptured the Ukrainian capital.

First Ukrainian Front attacked at Korosten on Christmas eve. The Soviet advance continued along the railway line until the 1939 Polish-Soviet border was reached.

Italy and the Balkans

Mid-1943 brought the fifth and final German Sutjeska offensive against the Yugoslav Partisans.

On 10 July 1943 the Allies invaded Sicily in Operation Husky, capturing the island in a little over a month.

The conquest of Sicily led to the collapse of the fascist regime. On 25 July Benito Mussolini was fired from office by the King of Italy and arrested, with the positive consent of the Great Fascist Council. A new governement, led by Pietro Badoglio, took power but he declared that Italy would keep on fighting with the Nazis. Actually Badoglio began secret peace negotiations with the Allies.

The Allies invaded mainland Italy on 3 September 1943. Italy surrendered to the Allies on 8 September, as already decided in previous negotiations. The royal family and Badoglio governement escaped in the south of the country, leaving the Italian army without orders, while the Germans took over the fight, forcing the Allies to a complete halt in the winter of 1943-44 at the Gustav Line south of Rome.

In the north the Nazis allowed Mussolini to create a new fascist state, the Republic of Salò, named after the new capital of Salò on Lake Garda .

East Asia and the Pacific

On January 2 Buna, New Guinea was captured by the Allies.

Australian and U.S. forces undertook the prolonged campaign to retake the occupied parts of the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, experiencing some of the toughest resistance of the war. The rest of the Solomon Islands were retaken in 1943.

American authorities declared Guadalcanal secure on 9 February,

In February 1943 Chindits struck rear Japanese areas in Burma.

The Nationalist Kuomintang Army, under Chiang Kai-shek, and the Communist Chinese Army, under Mao Zedong, both opposed the Japanese occupation of China but never truly allied against the Japanese. Conflict between Nationalist and Communist forces emerged long before the war; it continued after and, to an extent, even during the war, though more implicitly. The Japanese and its auxiliary Indian National Army had captured most of Burma, severing the Burma Road by which the Western Allies had been supplying the Chinese Nationalists. This forced the Allies to create a large sustained airlift, known as "flying the Hump". U.S.-led and trained Chinese divisions, a British division and a few thousand U.S. ground troops cleared the Japanese forces from northern Burma so that the Ledo Road could be built to replace the Burma Road. Further south the main Japanese army in the theatre were fought to a standstill on the Burma-India frontier by the British Fourteenth Army (the "Forgotten Army"), which then counter-attacked, and having recaptured all of Burma was planning attacks towards Malaya when the war ended.

In November U.S. Marines won the Battle of Tarawa. This was the first heavily opposed amphibious assault in the Pacific theater. In 1943 the American submarine fleet began sinking Japanese shipping faster than Japan could replace its losses.

1944: The beginning of the end

Eastern Europe

In the north, a Soviet offensive in January 1944 had relieved the siege of Leningrad. The Germans conducted an orderly retreat from the Leningrad area to a shorter line based on the lakes to the south.

In the south, in March Zhukov advanced in the direction of Ternopil, to outflank the German forces along the upper reaches of the southern Bug River.

With Soviet forces approaching, German troops occupied Hungary on 20 March as Hitler thought that the Hungarian leader, Admiral Miklós Horthy, might no longer be a reliable ally.

In early May 250,000 Germans were trapped in the Crimean Peninsula after the Germans retreated from the adjacent Ukraine.

Finland sought a separate peace with Stalin in February 1944, but the terms offered were unacceptable. On 9 June, the Soviet Union began the Fourth strategic offensive on the Karelian Isthmus that after three months would force Finland to accept an armistice.

Operation Bagration, a Soviet offensive involving 2.5 million men and 6,000 tanks, was launched on 22 June, destroying the German Army Group Centre and taking 350,000 prisoners. The Soviets swept forward, reaching the outskirts of Warsaw on 31 July.

The proximity of the Red Army led the Poles in Warsaw to believe they would soon be liberated. On 1 August they rose in revolt as part of the wider Operation Tempest. Nearly 40,000 Polish resistance fighters seized control of the city. The Soviets however stopped outside the city and gave the Poles no assistance, as German army units moved into the city to put down the revolt. The resistance ended on 2 October. German units then destroyed most of what was left of the city.

Western Europe

On "D-Day" (6 June 1944) the western Allies invaded German-held Normandy in a successful amphibious assault. German resistance was stubborn and during the first month, the Allies measured progress in hundreds of yards and bloody rifle fights in the Bocage. An Allied breakout was effected at St.-Lô, and German forces were almost completely destroyed in the Falaise pocket while counter-attacking. Allied forces stationed in Italy invaded the French Riviera on 15 August and linked up with forces from Normandy. The clandestine French Resistance in Paris rose against the Germans on 19 August, and a French division under General Jacques Leclerc, pressing forward from Normandy, received the surrender of the German forces there and liberated the city on August 25.

Allied paratroopers attempted a fast advance into the Netherlands with Operation Market Garden in September but were repulsed. Logistical problems were starting to plague the Allies' advance west as the supply lines still ran back to the beaches of Normandy. A decisive victory by the Canadian First Army in the Battle of the Scheldt secured the entrance to the port of Antwerp, freeing it to receive supplies by late November 1944.

In December 1944, the German Army made its last major offensive in the West, known as the Battle of the Bulge. Hitler sought to drive a wedge between the frequently feuding Western Allies, causing them to agree to a favourable armistice, after which Germany could concentrate all her efforts on the Eastern front and have a chance to defeat the Soviets. The mission was unrealistic to begin with, since German plans largely relied on capturing Allied fuel dumps in order to keep their vehicles moving with the goal of capturing the vital port of Antwerp, and thus crippling the Allies. At first, the Germans scored successes against the unprepared Allied forces. In addition, the poor weather during the initial days of the offensive favoured the Germans because it grounded Allied aircraft. However, with clearing skies allowing Allied air supremacy to resume, the German failure to capture Bastogne, and the arrival of General Patton's Third Army, the Nazis were forced to retreat back into Germany. The offensive was defeated.

Italy and the Balkans

During 1944 winter the Allies tried to force the Gustav line on the southern Appenines of Italy but they could not break enemy lines until the landing of Anzio on January 22, 1944, on the southern coast of Latium, named Operation Shingle. Only after some months the Gustav line was broken and the Allies marched towards the north of the peninsula. On June 4 Rome fell to Allies, and the Allied army reached Florence in August, then stopped along the Gothic Line on the Tuscan Appenines during the winter.

Germany withdrew from the Balkans and held Hungary until February 1945.

Romania turned against Germany in August 1944 and Bulgaria surrendered in September.

East Asia and the Pacific

On 31 January 42,000 U.S. Army soldiers and U.S. Marines began the Battle of Kwajalein. Kwajalein fell on 3 February.

17 February to 23 February 1944 the Battle of Eniwetok on Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands was won by the U.S. Marines.

On 27 May the Battle of Biak began.

On 14 June the first B-29 raids on Japan begin from bases in China.

On 15 June Saipan invaded; it fell to the 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions and 27th Infantry Division by 9 July.

On 19 June Battle of the Philippine Sea fought, famous for the Marianas "Turkey Shoot". After the battle the Japanese aircraft carrier force was no longer militarily effective.

On 21 July the Battle of Guam began. Guam was recaptured on 10 August.

On 24 July Tinian was invaded. The battle of Tinian saw the first use of napalm in battle. Tinian was captured on 1 August 1944

19 October General MacArthur returns to the Phillipines, landing on the island of Leyte.

Tthe Battle of Leyte Gulf was fought between 23 October and 26 October 1944, arguably the largest naval battle in history. The battle saw the first Kamakaze strikes.

Throughout 1944 Allied submarines and aircraft attacked Japanese merchant shipping, depriving Japan's industry of the raw materials it had gone to war to obtain. The effectiveness of this stranglehold increased as U.S. Marines captured islands closer to the Japanese mainland. In 1944 submarines sank 3 million tons of shipping while the Japanese built less than 1 million tons.

1945: The end of the war

Eastern Europe

On January 12 the Red Army was ready for its next big offensive. Konev's armies attacked the Germans in southern Poland, expanding out from their Vistula River bridgehead near Sandomierz. January 14, Rokossovsky's armies attacked from the Narew River north of Warsaw. They broke the defenses covering East Prussia. Zhukov's armies in the centre attacked from their bridgeheads near Warsaw. The German front was now in shambles.

On 17 January the Zhukov took Warsaw. On 19 January his tanks took Lódz. That same day Konev's forces reached the German pre-war border. At the end of the first week of the offensive the Soviets had penetrated 100 miles deep on a front that was 400 miles wide.

The Soviet onslaught finally halted at the end of January only 40 miles from Berlin, on the Oder river.

Meanwhile, Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt made arrangements for post-war Europe at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. Their meeting resulted in many important resolutions:

• An April meeting would be held to form the United Nations;
• Poland would have free elections (though in fact they were heavily rigged by Soviets);
• Soviet nationals were to be repatriated;
• The Soviet Union was to attack Japan within three months of Germany's surrender.

On 13 February the Soviets took Budapest.

The Red Army (including 78,556 soldiers of the 1st Polish Army) began its final assault on Berlin on 16 April. By now, the German Army was in full retreat and Berlin had already been battered due to preliminary air bombings. Most of the Nazi leaders had either been killed or captured. Hitler, however, was still alive, and was said to be slowly going mad. As a final resistance effort, he called for civilians, including children, to fight the oncoming Red Army in the Volkssturm militia. Hitler and his staff moved into the Führerbunker, a concrete bunker beneath the Chancellery, where on 30 April 1945, he committed suicide, along with his newly-married wife, Eva Braun. This fulfilled Hitler's earlier promise that, should the Third Reich fall, he would never survive the surrender of his country.

Admiral Karl Dönitz became leader of the German government, but the German war effort quickly disintegrated. The Soviet Union celebrated "Victory Day" on 9 May.

The last Allied conference of World War II was held at the suburb of Potsdam, outside Berlin, from July 17 to Aug. 2, 1945. The Potsdam Conference saw agreements reached between the Allies on policies for occupied Germany. An ultimatum was issued calling for the unconditional surrender of Japan.

Western Europe

The Battle of the Bulge officially ended on 27 January 1945. The Allies then resumed the offensive. The final obstacle to the Allies was the river Rhine. It was crossed in late March, 1945, and the way lay open to the heart of Germany. The last German forces in the west were encircled in the Ruhr. Allied forces swept across western Germany, and then halted on the Elbe river, letting the Soviets take Berlin.

German forces in northern Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands surrendered on 4 May 1945; and the German High Command under Generaloberst Alfred Jodl surrendered unconditionally all remaining German forces on 7 May in Reims, France. The western Allies celebrated "V-E Day" on 8 May.

Italy

German forces in Italy surrendered on 2 May 1945.

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East Asia and the Pacific

In January the U.S. 6th Army landed on Luzon, the main island of the Philippines. Manila was re-captured by March. U.S. capture of islands such as Iwo Jima in February and Okinawa (April through June) brought the Japanese homeland within easier range of naval and air attack. Amongst dozens of other cities, Tokyo was firebombed, and about 90,000 people died from the initial attack. The dense living conditions around production centres and the wooden residential constructions contributed to the large loss of life. In addition, the ports and major waterways of Japan were extensively mined by air in Operation Starvation which seriously disrupted the logistics of the island nation.

The last major offensive in the south-west Pacific Area was the Borneo campaign of mid-1945, which was aimed at further isolating the remaining Japanese forces in South East Asia and securing the release of Allied POWs.

On 6 August 1945, the B-29 "Enola Gay", piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets, dropped an atomic bomb (Little Boy) on Hiroshima, effectively destroying it.

On 8 August 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, as had been agreed to at Yalta, and launched a large-scale invasion of Japanese occupied Manchuria (Operation August Storm).

On 9 August, the B-29 "BOCKS CAR", piloted by Major Charles Sweeney, dropped an atomic bomb (Fat Man) on Nagasaki.

The American use of atomic weapons against Japan prompted the emperor of Japan to bypass the existing government and intervene to end the war. The new inclusion of the Soviet Union in the war may have also played a part, but in his radio address to the nation Emperor Hirohito did not mention it as a major reason for his country's surrender.

The Japanese surrendered on 15 August 1945 (V-J day), signing official surrender papers on 2 September 1945, aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. The Japanese troops in China formally surrendered to the Chinese on 9 September 1945. This did not fully end the war, however, because Japan and the Soviet Union never signed a peace agreement. In the last days of the armed conflict, the Soviet Union occupied the southern Kuril Islands, an area previously held by Japan and claimed by the Soviets. The Japanese contest the occupation of these islands even today.

Aftermath

Europe in ruins

At the end of the war, millions of refugees were homeless, the European economy had collapsed, and 70% of the European industrial infrastructure was destroyed.

Germany was partitioned into four zones of occupation, with the American, British and French zones grouped as West Germany and the Soviet zone as East Germany. Austria was once again separated from Germany and it, too, was divided into four zones of occupation, which eventually reunited and became the republic of Austria.

German reparations

Germany paid reparations to France, Britain and Russia, in the form of dismantled factories, forced labour, and shipments of coal. The U.S. settled for confiscating German patents and German owned property in the U.S., mainly subsidiaries of German companies.

Morgenthau Plan

The initial occupation plans proposed by the United States were harsh. The Morgenthau Plan of 1944 called for dividing Germany into two independent nations and stripping her of the industrial resources required for war. All heavy industry was to be dismantled or destroyed, the main industrial areas (Upper Silesia, Saar, Ruhr, and the German speaking parts of Alsace-Lorraine), were to be annexed.

While the Morgenthau Plan itself was never implemented per se, its general economic philosophy did end up greatly influencing events. Most notable were the toned-down offshoots, including the Potsdam Conference, Joint Chiefs of Staff Directive 1067 (April 1945 - July 1947), and the industrial plans for Germany.

Marshall Plan

Germany had long been the industrial giant of Europe, and its poverty held back the general European recovery. The continued scarcity in Germany also led to considerable expenses for the occupying powers, which were obligated to try and make up the most important shortfalls.

In view of the continued poverty and famine in Europe, and with the onset of the Cold War, a change of policy was required. The most notable example of this change was a plan established by U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall, the "European Recovery Program", better known as the Marshall Plan, which called for the U.S. Congress to allocate billions of dollars for the reconstruction of Europe. Also as part of the effort to rebuild global capitalism and spur post-war reconstruction, the Bretton Woods system was put into effect after the war.

Border revisions and population shifts

German re-settlement

Main article: Expulsion of Germans after World War II

As a result of the new borders drawn by the victorious nations, large populations suddenly found themselves in hostile territory. The main benefactor of these border revisions was the Soviet Union, which expanded its borders at the expense of Germany, Finland, Poland and Japan. Poland was compensated for its losses to the Soviet Union by receiving most of Germany east of the Oder-Neisse line, including the industrial regions of Silesia. The German state of the Saar was temporarily a protectorate of France but it later returned to German administration.

The number of Germans expelled totaled roughly 15 million, including 11 million from Germany proper and 3,500,000 from the Sudetenland.

Germany officially states that 2,100,000 of these expelled lost their lives due to violence on the part of the Russians, Polish and Czech, though Polish and Czech historians dispute this figure.

The Cold War begins

The end of World War II marked the end of the United Kingdom's position as a global superpower and the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as the dominant powers in the world. Friction had been building up between the two before the end of the war and with the collapse of Nazi Germany relations spiralled downward.

In the areas occupied by Western Allied troops, pre-war governments were re-established or new democratic governments were created; in the areas occupied by Soviet troops, including the territories of former Allies such as Poland, communist states were created. These became satellites of the Soviet Union.

As the relationship between the victors deteriorated, the military lines of demarcation became the de facto country boundaries. Korea was divided in half along the 38th parallel by the Soviets and Americans. In 1950, communist North Korea, backed by the Soviets, invaded U.S.-supported South Korea and the Korean War broke out.

United Nations

Because the League of Nations had failed to actively prevent the war, in 1945 a new international body was considered and then created, the United Nations.

The UN operates within the parameters of the United Nations Charter, and the reason for the UN’s formation is outlined in the Preamble to the United Nations Charter. Unlike its predecessor, the United Nations has taken a more active role in the world, such as fighting diseases and providing humanitarian aid to nations in distress. The UN also served as the diplomatic front line during the Cold War.

The UN also was responsible for the initial creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, in part as a response to the Holocaust.

Casualties, civilian impact, and atrocities

Casualties

Possibly 62 million people lost their lives in World War II—about 25 million soldiers and 37 million civilians, with estimates varying widely. This total includes the estimated 12 million lives lost due to the Holocaust. About 6 million were Jewish. Of the total deaths in World War II approximately 80% were on the Allied side and 20% on the Axis side.

Allied forces suffered approximately 17 million military deaths, of which about 10 million were Soviet and 4 million Chinese. Axis forces suffered about 8 million, of which more than 5 million were German. The Soviet Union suffered by far the largest death toll of any nation in the war; perhaps 23 million Soviets died in total, of which more than 12 million were civilians. The figures include deaths due to internal Soviet actions against its own people. The statistics available for Soviet and Chinese casualties are only rough guesses, as they are poorly documented.

Genocide

The Holocaust was the organized murder of at least nine million people. Six million of these were Jews; the others were Poles, Russian war prisoners and other Slavs, Roma and Sinti, the mentally or physically disabled, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Communists and political dissidents.

Originally, the Nazis used killing squads, Einsatzgruppen, to conduct massive open-air killings, shooting as many as 33,000 people in a single massacre, as in the case of Babi Yar. By 1942, the Nazi leadership decided to implement the Final Solution (Endlösung), the genocide of all Jews in Europe, and increase the pace of the Holocaust. The Nazis built six extermination camps specifically to kill Jews. Millions of Jews who had been confined to massively overcrowded Ghettos were transported to these "Death-camps" where they were gassed or shot, usually immediately after arriving.

Concentration camps, labour camps and internment

In addition to the Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet Gulags, or labour camps, led to the death of many citizens of occupied countries such as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, as well as German prisoners of war and even Soviet citizens themselves: opponents of Stalin's regime and large proportions of some ethnic groups (particularly Chechens). Japanese POW camps also had high death rates; many were used as labour camps, and starvation conditions among the mainly U.S. and Commonwealth prisoners were little better than many German concentration camps. Sixty percent (1,238,000 ref. Krivosheev)of Soviet POWs died during the war.

Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of Japanese North Americans were interned by the U.S. and Canadian governments. Though these camps did not involve heavy labour, forced isolation and sub-standard living conditions were the norm.

War crimes and attacks on civilians

From 1945 to 1951 German and Japanese officials and personnel were prosecuted for war crimes. Top German officials were tried at the Nuremburg Trials and many Japanese officials at the Tokyo War Crime Trial and other war crimes trials in the Asia-Pacific region.

None of the alleged allied war crimes such as the bombing of Dresden, the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the alleged Red Army atrocities on the Eastern front were ever prosecuted.

Resistance and Collaboration

Resistance during World War II occurred in every occupied country by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation, disinformation, and propaganda to outright warfare.

Among the most notable resistance movements were the Polish Home Army, the French Maquis and the Yugoslav Partisans. The Communist resistance was among the fiercest since they were already organised and militant even before the war and they were ideologically opposed to the Nazis.

Before D-Day there were also many operations performed by the French Resistance to help with the forthcoming invasion. Communications lines were cut, trains derailed, roads, water towers and ammunition depots were destroyed and some German garrisons were attacked.

Many countries had resistance movements dedicated to fighting the Axis invaders, and Germany itself also had an anti-Nazi movement. Although Great Britain did not suffer invasion in World War II, the British made preparations for a British resistance movement, called the Auxiliary Units. Various organisations were also formed to establish foreign resistance cells or support existing resistance movements, like the British SOE and the American OSS (the forerunner of the CIA).

The home fronts

"Home front" is the name given to the activities of the civilians of a nation that is in a state of total war.

In the United Kingdom, women joined the work force in jobs that the men used to occupy. Food, clothing, petrol and other items were rationed. Access to luxuries was severely restricted, though there was also a significant black market. Families grew small home vegetable gardens to supply themselves with food, and the Women's Land Army recruited or conscripted over 80,000 women to work on farms. Civilians also served as Air Raid Wardens, volunteer emergency services and other critical functions. Schools and organisations held scrap drives and money collections to help the war effort. Many things were conserved to turn into weapons later, such as fat to turn into nitroglycerin. A notable case was the collection of street railings as scrap iron, which changed the 'feel' of many older urban streets.

In the United States and Canada women also joined the workforce. In the United States these women were called "Rosies" for Rosie the Riveter. President Roosevelt stated that the efforts of civilians at home to support the war through personal sacrifice were as critical to winning the war as the efforts of the soldiers themselves. In Canada, the government established three military compartments for women: the CWAAF (Canadian Women's Auxiliary Air Force), CWAC (Canadian Women's Army Corps) and WRCNS (Women's Royal Canadian Naval Services).

In Germany, until 1943 there were few restrictions on civilian activities. Most goods were freely available. This was due in large part to the reduced access to certain luxuries already experienced by German civilians prior to the beginning of hostilities; the war made some less available, but many were in short supply to begin with. It was not until comparatively late in the war that the civilian population was effectively organised to support the war effort. For example, women's labour was not mobilised as thoroughly as in the United Kingdom or the United States. Foreign slave labour substituted for the men who served in the armed forces.

United States industrial capacity

American production was the major factor in keeping the Allies better supplied than the Axis. For example, in 1943 the United States produced 369 warships (1.01/day). In comparison, Japan produced 122 warships, and Germany only built three. The United States also succeeded in rebuilding the Merchant Marine, reducing the build time of a Liberty or Victory ship from 105 days to 56 days. Much of this improved efficiency came from technological advances in shipbuilding. Hull plates were being welded rather than bolted, plastics were beginning to take the place of certain metals, and modular construction was beginning to take off. By the end of the war, the United States Army had 1.5 million people in combat-support occupations.

Technologies

Weapons and technology during World War II played a crucial role in determining the outcome of the war, and improved rapidly. Many major technologies were used for the first time, including nuclear weapons, radar, the jet engine, and electronic computers. Enormous advances were made in aircraft, tank design, and anti-submarine warfare, such that weaponry coming into use at the beginning of the war were frequently obsolete by its end.

More new inventions, as measured in the U.S. by numbers of patent applications and weapon contracts issued to private contractors, were deployed to the task of killing humans more effectively as demonstrated in the Holocaust, and to a much lesser degree, avoiding being killed, than ever before.

The massive research and development demands of the war had a great impact on the growth of the scientific community. After the war ended, these developments led to new sciences like cybernetics and computer science, and created entire new institutions of weapons design.

See also: Military production during World War II and List of World War II military equipment

See also

References

• Churchill, Winston (1948–1953), The Second World War, 6 vols.
• Gilbert, Martin (1995). Second World War. Phoenix. ISBN 1857993462. {{cite book}}: templatestyles stripmarker in |author= at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• Keegan, John (1989). The Second World War. Hutchinson. ISBN 0091740118. {{cite book}}: templatestyles stripmarker in |author= at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• Liddel Hart, Sir Basil (1970). History of the Second World War. London: Cassell. ISBN 0304935646. {{cite book}}: templatestyles stripmarker in |author= at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• Murray, Williamson and Millett, Allan R. A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War. Harvard University Press. ISBN 067400163X. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |Year= ignored (|year= suggested) (help); templatestyles stripmarker in |author= at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• Overy, Richard (1995). Why the Allies Won. Pimlico. ISBN 0712674535. {{cite book}}: templatestyles stripmarker in |author= at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• Shirer, William L. (1959). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0671624202.
• Smith, J. Douglas and Richard Jensen. World War II on the Web: A Guide to the Very Best Sites (2002)
• Weinberg, Gerhard L. (1994). A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521443172. {{cite book}}: templatestyles stripmarker in |author= at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• Bundesarchiv Koblenz , Ostdokumentensammlung , Ost-Dok. 2 Nr. 8,13,14; Ost-Dok.2/51, 2/77,2/96
• Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv Freiburg , Akten Fremde Heere Ost, Bestand H3, Bd. 483, 657, 665, 667, 690
• Archiv der Charité and Landesarchiv Berlin
• Helke Sander and Barbara Johr. BeFreier und Befreite. Krieg, Vegewaltigung, Kinder Fischer TaschenbuchVerlag (2005), ISBN 3596163056
• Franz W. Seidler and Alfred M. de Zayas. Kriegsverbrechen in Europa und im Nahen Osten im 20. Jahrhundert Hamburg-Berlin-Bonn (2002), p. 122. ISBN 3813207021
• Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ostmitteleuropa, 5 Bde, 3 Beihefte, Bonn 1953-1961

External links

General

• BBC History: World War Two
• Deutsche Welle special section on World War II created by one of Germany's public broadcasters on World War II and the world 60 years after.
• WW2DB: The World War II Database
• Directory of Online World War II Indexes & Records
• Halford Mackinder's Necessary War An essay describing the geopolitical aspects of World War II
• World War II Secret History
• World War II Military Situation Maps. Library of Congress

Media

• Churchill Video Speech, We Stood Alone
• US National Archives Photos
• Color photographs of the war
• The Canadian Letters and Images Project, World War II
• Multimedia map - Presentation that covers the war from the invasion of Russia to the fall of Berlin
• Thousands of World War II Photographs & Movies
• Virtual Museum of World War II - pictures & info
• Hitler Speech in Munich on video- Subtitled
• FDR - Day of Infamy video clip 2 min.
• 1975 audio interview of James Jones by Don Swaim of CBS Radio - RealAudio
• 1980 audio interview of William Manchester by Don Swaim of CBS Radio - RealAudio

Stories

• WW2 People's War - A project by the BBC to gather the stories of ordinary people from World War II
• WWII, divisive memories (en) - from an online issue from www.cafebabel.com
• Workers' War: Home Front Recalled - A project by London Metropolitan University, TUC and the National Pensioners Convention to document the history of workers during World War II
• Remembering Our Allied Veterans of WWII Stories from Allied and Anti-fascist Vets including Spanish Civil War
• http://www.stvincent.edu/napp17 They Say There Was A War. Oral Histories. European Pacific Theatre.Saint Vincent College Center for Northern Appalachian Studies. Richard Wissolik.
• http://www.stvincent.edu/napp14 The Long Road From Oran to Pilsen. Oral Histories. European Theatre. Saint Vincent College Center for Northern Appalachian Studies. David Wilmes. Richard Wissolik.
• Russian Experience Documentary

Specific

• WWII US women's service organizations — History and uniforms in color (WAAC/WAC, WAVES, ANC, NNC, USMCWR, PHS, SPARS, ARC and WASP)
• Germany's surrender documents.
• Online Newspaper Archive
• Veterans Of The US Armed Forces Services, information, resources, and image gallery for veterans of the United States Armed Forces.
• Front page of the 6 June, 1944 edition of The New York Times.
• Using Historical Statistics To Teach about World War II. ERIC Digest.
• World War II in the Curriculum
• Speech delivered by premier Benito Mussolini (Rome, Italy, February 23, 1941)
• Daily reports - Extremely detailed daily action reports from the German side
• Juno Beach - An indepth examination of one of Canada's greatest WWII contributions: Juno Beach.

Documentaries

• The World at War (1974) is a 36-part BBC series that covers most aspects of World War II from many points of view. It includes interviews with many key figures (Karl Dönitz, Albert Speer, Anthony Eden etc.) (Imdb link)
• The Second World War in Colour (1999) is a three episode documentary showing unique footage in color (Imdb link)

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• World War II