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Patrick Katarousky
Jun 5th 2003
This draft of a brief history of World War II was left on a computer in Mac Lab C.
International conflict principally between the Axis Powers--Germany, Italy, and Japan--and the Allied Powers--France, Britain, the U.S., and the Soviet Union. Political and economic instability in Germany, combined with bitterness over its defeat in World War I and the harsh conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, allowed A. Hitler and the Nazi Party to rise to power. In the mid-1930s, Hitler began secretly to rearm Germany, in violation of the treaty. He signed alliances with Italy and Japan to oppose the Soviet Union and intervened in the Spanish Civil War in the name of anticommunism. Capitalizing on the reluctance of other European powers to oppose him by force, he sent troops to occupy Austria in 1938 (see Anschluss) and to annex Czechoslovakia in 1939. After signing the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany. Poland's defeat was followed by a period of military inactivity on the Western front (see Phony War). At sea Germany conducted a damaging submarine campaign by U-boat against merchant shipping bound for Britain. By early 1940 the Soviet Union had divided Poland with Germany, occupied the Baltic states, and subdued Finland in the Russo-Finnish War. In April 1940 Germany overwhelmed Denmark and began its conquest of Norway. In May German forces swept through the Netherlands and Belgium on their blitzkrieg invasion of France, forcing it to capitulate in June and establish the Vichy France regime. Germany then launched massive bombing raids on Britain in preparation for a cross-Channel invasion, but after losing the Battle of Britain Hitler postponed the invasion indefinitely. By early 1941 Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria had joined the Axis, and German troops quickly overran Yugoslavia and Greece in April. In June Hitler abandoned his pact with the Soviet Union and launched a massive surprise invasion of Russia, reaching the outskirts of Moscow before Soviet counterattacks and winter weather halted the advance. In E. Asia, Japan expanded its war with China and seized European colonial holdings. In December 1941 Japan attacked U.S. bases at Pearl Harbor and in the Philippines, and the U.S. declared war on Japan and all the Axis Powers. Japan quickly invaded and occupied most of S.E. Asia, Burma, the Netherlands E. Indies, and many Pacific islands. After the crucial U.S. naval victory at the Battle of Midway (1942), U.S. forces began to advance up the chains of islands toward Japan. In the N. Africa Campaigns, the British defeated Italian and German forces by 1943. The Allies then invaded Sicily and Italy, forcing the overthrow of the Fascist government in July 1943, though fighting against the Germans continued in Italy until 1945. In the Soviet Union, the Battle of Stalingrad (1943) marked the end of the German advance, and Soviet reinforcements in great numbers gradually pushed the German armies back. The massive Allied invasion of Western Europe began with the Normandy Campaign in W France (1944), and the Allies' steady advance ended in the occupation of Germany in 1945. After Soviet troops pushed German forces out of the Soviet Union, they advanced into Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania, and had occupied the E third of Germany by the time the surrender of Germany was signed on May 8, 1945. In the Pacific, an Allied invasion of the Philippines (1944) was followed by the successful Battle of Leyte Gulf and the costly Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa (1945). The war in the Pacific ended quickly after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Japan's formal surrender on September 2 ended the war. Estimates of total military and civilian casualties varied from 35 million to 60 million killed, incl. about 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust. Millions more civilians were wounded and made homeless throughout Europe and E. Asia. See also Anti-Comintern Pact; Atlantic Charter; Battles of El Alamein, the Atlantic, the Bulge, Coral Sea, Guadalcanal, and the Philippine Sea; Casablanca, Munich, Potsdam, Tehran, and Yalta conferences; Dunkirk Evacuation; lend-lease; Nuremberg Trials; Siege of Leningrad; Sino-Japanese Wars; O. Bradley, W. Churchill, D. Eisenhower, D. MacArthur, B. Montgomery, B. Mussolini, G. Patton, E. Rommel, F. Roosevelt, J. Stalin, I. Yamamoto, G. Zhukov.
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