World War II (1939-1945)

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The fighting fronts in World War II - spread to nearly every part of the globe. In Europe and northern Africa, they included cities and desert wastes. Little remained standing in Tournai, Bel­gium, after a German bombing raid. Tank warfare kept armies on the run in Egypt.

Battlegrounds in Asia and the Pacific included tropical jungles invaded across muddy rivers and crawled through thick vegetation, Pacific islands. Planes based on aircraft carriers, did much of and vast ocean spaces. Troops in Southeast Asia and on the fighting at sea.

The world at wan 1939-1945 - Germany, Italy, Japan, and their Axis partners fought Great Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, and the other Allies in World War II. This map shows the Allies and the lands controlled by the Axis nations at the height of their power. Few countries remained neutral.

Members of the Nazi Party marched in a rally in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1938. Their banners bore the Nazi emblem, the swastika. The Nazi Party gained control of Germany in 1933.

Two European dictators, Adolf Hitler of Germany, and Benito Mussolini of Italy, dreamed of powerful empires. Their actions plunged much of Europe and Africa into war.

The glorification of military power accompanied the rise of a dictatorship in Japan during the 1930's. This military band was showered with confetti as it marched through Tokyo in 1937.

The Warring Nations

Dates are those on which each country entered the war.

The Allies

Argentina (March 27,1945)

Australia (Sept. 3,1939)

Belgium (May 10, 1940)

Bolivia (April 7,1943)

Brazil (Aug. 22,1942)

Canada (Sept 10,1939)

Chile (Feb. 14,1945)

China (Dec. 9,1941)

Colombia (Nov. 26, 1943)

Costa Rica (Dec. 8, 1941)

Cuba (Dec. 9,1941)

Czechoslovakia (Dec. 16,1941)

Denmark (April 9,1940)

Dominican Republic (Dec. 8, 1941)

Ecuador (Feb. 2,1945)

Egypt (Feb. 24, 1945)

El Salvador (Dec. 8,1941)

Ethiopia (Dec. 1,1942)

France (Sept. 3,1939)

Great Britain (Sept 3,1939)

Greece (Oct 28, 1940)

Guatemala (Dec. 9,1941)

Haiti (Dec. 8,1941)

Honduras (Dec. 8,1941)

India (Sept 3,1939)

Iran (Sept 9,1943)

Iraq (Jan. 16,1943)

Lebanon (Feb. 27,1945)

Liberia (Jan. 26,1944)

Luxemburg (May 10, 1940)

Mexico (May 22,1942)

Mongolian People's Re­public (Aug. 9, 1945)

Netherlands (May 10,1940)

New Zealand (Sept. 3,1939)

Nicaragua (Dec. 8,1941)

Norway (April 9,1940)

Panama (Dec. 7,1941)

Paraguay (Feb. 8,1945)

Peru (Feb. 11, 1945)

Poland (Sept. 1, 1939)

San Marino (Sept 24,1944)

Saudi Arabia (March 1,1945)

South Africa (Sept. 6,1939)

Soviet Union (June 22,1941)

Syria (Feb. 26,1945)

Turkey (Feb. 23,1945)

United States (Dec. 8,1941)

Uruguay (Feb. 22,1945)

Venezuela (Feb. 16,1945)

Yugoslavia (April 6,1941)

The Axis

Albania (June 15,1940)

Bulgaria (April 6,1941)

Finland (June 25,1941)

Germany (Sept. 1,1939)

Hungary (April 10, 1941)

Italy (June 10,1940)

Japan (Dec. 7, 1941)

Romania (June 22, 1941)

Luxembourg (May 10,1940)

Thailand (Jan. 25,1942)

World War II (1939-1945) killed more people, de­stroyed more property, disrupted more lives, and prob­ably had more far-reaching consequences than any other war in history. It brought about the downfall of Western Europe as the centre of world power and led to the rise of the Soviet Union as a super-power to rival the United States. Japan and Germany, defeated in the war, later made dramatic economic recoveries. The war brought new technologies that were to change the post­war world. The development of the atomic bomb during the war opened the nuclear age.

The exact number of people killed because of World War II will never be known. Military deaths probably totalled about 17 million. Civilian deaths were even greater as a result of starvation, bombing raids, massa­cres, epidemics, and other war-related causes. The battlegrounds spread to nearly every part of the world. Troops fought in the steaming jungles of Southeast Asia, in the deserts of northern Africa, and on islands in the Pacific Ocean. Battles were waged on frozen fields in the Soviet Union, below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, and in the streets of many European cities.

World War II began on Sept. 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Germany's dictator, Adolf Hitler, had built Germany into a powerful war machine. That ma­chine rapidly crushed Poland, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, and France. By June 1940, Great Britain and its commonwealth allies stood alone against Hitler. That same month, Italy joined the war on Germany's side. The fighting soon spread to Greece and northern Africa. In June 1941, Germany in­vaded the Soviet Union. Japan attacked United States military bases at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on Dec. 7,1941, bringing the United States into the war. By mid-1942, Japanese forces had conquered much of Southeast Asia and had swept across many islands in the Pacific.

Germany, Italy, and Japan formed an alliance known as the Axis. Six other nations eventually joined the Axis, The United States, Great Britain, China, and the Soviet Union were the major powers fighting the Axis. They were called the Allies. The Allies totalled 50 nations by the end of the war.

During 1942, the Allies stopped the Axis advance in northern Africa, the Soviet Union, and the Pacific. Allied forces landed in Italy in 1943 and in France in 1944. In 1945, the Allies drove into Germany from the east and the west. A series of bloody battles in the Pacific brought the Allies to Japan's doorstep by the summer of 1945. Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945, and Japan on Sept. 2, 1945.

An uneasy peace took effect as a war-weary world began to rebuild after World War II. Much of Europe and parts of Asia lay in ruins. Millions of people were starving and homeless. Europe's leadership in world fairs had ended. The United States and the Soviet Union had become the world's most powerful nations. But their wartime alliance broke down soon after the war. New threats to peace arose as the Soviet Union sought to spread Communism in Europe and Asia.

Causes of the war

Many historians trace the causes of World War II to problems left unsolved by World War I (1914-1918). World War I and the treaties drawn up at the end also created new political and economic problems. Forceful leaders in several countries took advantage of those problems to seize power. The desire of dictators in Ger­many, Italy, and Japan to conquer additional territory brought them into conflict with democratic nations.

The Peace of Paris. After World War I ended, representatives of the victorious nations met in Paris in 1919 to draw up peace treaties for the defeated countries. The treaties, known together as the Peace of Paris, followed a long and bitter war. They were worked out in haste by countries with opposing goals and failed to satisfy even the victors. Of all the countries on the winning side, Italy and Japan left the peace conference most dis­satisfied. Italy gained less territory than it felt it deserved and vowed to take action on its own. Japan gained control of German territories in the Pacific and thereby launched a programme of expansion. But Japan was an­gered by the peacemakers' failure to endorse the princi­ple of the equality of all races.

The countries that lost World War I—Germany, Aus­tria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey—were especially dis­satisfied with the Peace of Paris. They were stripped of I territory and arms and were required to make repara­tions (payments for war damages).

The Treaty of Versailles, which was signed with Ger­many, punished Germany severely. The German govern­ment agreed to sign the treaty only after the victorious powers threatened to invade. Many Germans particu­larly resented a clause that forced Germany to accept re­sponsibility for causing World War I.

Economic problems. World War I seriously dam­aged the economies of European countries. Both the winners and the losers came out of the war deeply in debt. The defeated powers had difficulty paying repara­tions to the victors, and the victors had difficulty repay­ing loans from the United States. The shift from a war­time economy to a peacetime economy caused further problems. Many soldiers could not find jobs after the war.

Italy and Japan suffered from too many people and too few resources after World War I. They eventually tried to solve their problems by territorial expansion. In Germany, runaway inflation destroyed the value of money and wiped out the savings of millions of people.

In 1923, the German economy neared collapse. Loans from the United States helped Germany's government restore order. By the late 1920's, Europe appeared to be entering a period of economic stability.

A worldwide business slump known as the Great De­pression began in the United States in 1929. By the early '930's, it had halted Europe's economic recovery. The Great Depression caused mass unemployment and spread poverty and despair throughout the world. It

weakened democratic governments and strengthened extreme political movements that promised to end the economic problems. Two movements in particular gained strength. The forces of Communism called for revolution by the workers. The forces of fascism fa­voured strong national government. Throughout Eu­rope, the communists clashed with the fascists. The po­litical extremes gained the most support in countries with the greatest economic problems and the deepest resentment of the Peace of Paris.

Nationalism was an extreme form of patriotism that swept across Europe during the 1800's. Supporters of nationalism placed loyalty to the aims of their nation above any other public loyalty. Many nationalists viewed foreigners and members of minority groups as inferior. Such beliefs helped nations justify their conquest of other lands and the poor treatment of minorities within their borders. Nationalism was a chief cause of World War I, and it grew even stronger after that war.

Nationalism went hand in hand with feelings of na­tional discontent. The more people felt deprived of na­tional honour, the more they wished to see their country powerful and able to insist on its rights. Many Germans felt humiliated by their country's defeat in World War I and its harsh treatment under the Treaty of Versailles. During the 1930's, they enthusiastically supported a vio­lently nationalistic organization called the Nazi Party. The Nazi Party declared that Germany had a right to become strong again. Nationalism also gained strength in Italy and Japan.

The Peace of Paris established an international organi­zation called the League of Nations to maintain peace. But nationalism prevented the League from working ef­fectively. Each country backed its own interests at the ex­pense of other countries. Only weak countries agreed to submit their disagreements to the League of Nations for settlement. Strong nations reserved the right to settle their disputes by threats or, if tough talk failed, by force.

The rise of dictatorships. The political unrest and poor economic conditions that developed after World War I enabled dictatorships to arise in several countries, especially in those countries that lacked a tradition of democratic government During the 1920's and 1930's, dictatorships came to power in the Soviet Union, Italy, Germany, and Japan. They held total power and ruled without regard to law. The dictatorships used terror and secret police to crush opposition to their rule. People who objected risked imprisonment or execution.

In the Soviet Union, the Communists, led by V. I. Lenin, had seized power in 1917. Lenin set up a dictator­ship that firmly controlled the country by the time he died in 1924. After Lenin's death, Joseph Stalin and other leading Communists struggled for power. Stalin elimi­nated his rivals one by one and became the Soviet dicta­tor in 1929.

In Italy, economic distress after World War I led to strikes and riots. As a result of the violence, a strongly nationalistic group called the Fascist Party gained many supporters. Benito Mussolini, leader of the Fascists, promised to bring order and prosperity to Italy. He vowed to restore to Italy the glory it had known in the days of the ancient Roman Empire. By 1922, the Fascists had become powerful enough to force the king of Italy to appoint Mussolini premier. Mussolini, who took the title I Duce (the Leader), soon began to establish a dicta­torship.

In Germany, the Nazi Party made spectacular gains as the Great Depression deepened during the early 1930's. Many Germans blamed all their country's economic woes on the hated Treaty of Versailles, which forced Germany to give up territory and resources and pay large reparations. In 1933, Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazis, was appointed chancellor of Germany. Hitler, who was called der Fuhrer (the Leader), soon made Ger­many a dictatorship. He vowed to ignore the Versailles Treaty and to avenge Germany's defeat in World War I. Hitler preached that Germans were a "superior race" and that such peoples as Jews and Slavs were inferior. He began a campaign of hatred against Jews and Commu­nists and promised to rid the country of them. Hitler’s extreme nationalism appealed to many Germans.

In Japan, military officers began to hold political of­fice during the 1930s. By 1936, they had strong control of the government. Japan's military government glorified war and the training of warriors. In 1941, General Hideki Tojo became premier of Japan.

Aggression on the march. Japan, Italy, and Ger­many followed a policy of aggressive territorial expan­sion during the 1930s. They invaded weak lands that could be taken over easily. The dictatorships knew what they wanted, and they grabbed it. The democratic coun­tries responded with timidity and indecision to the ag­gression of the dictatorships.

Japan was the first dictatorship to begin a programme of conquest. In 1931, Japanese forces seized control of Manchuria, a region of China rich in natural resources. Some historians consider Japan's conquest of Manchu­ria as the real start of World War II. Japan made Man­churia a puppet state called Manchukuo. In 1937, Japan launched a major attack against China. It occupied most of eastern China by the end of 1938, though the two countries had not officially declared war. Japan's military leaders began to speak about bringing all of eastern Asia under Japanese control.

Italy looked to Africa to fulfil its ambitions for an em­pire. In 1935, Italian troops invaded Ethiopia, one of the few independent countries in Africa. The Italians used machine guns, tanks, and aeroplanes to overpower Ethiopia’s poorly equipped army. They had conquered the country by May 1936.

Soon after Hitler took power, he began to build up &.Germany's armed forces in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1936, Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland, a region of Germany along the banks of the Rhine River.

Under the treaty, the Rhineland was to remain free of troops. In March 1938, German soldiers marched into Austria and united it with Germany. Many people in Ger­many and Austria welcomed that move.

The acts of aggression were easy victories for the dic­tatorships. The League of Nations proved incapable of stopping them. It lacked an army and the power to en­force international law. The United States had refused to join the League or become involved in European dis­putes. Great Britain and France were unwilling to risk  another war so soon after World War I. The two powers knew they would bear the burden of any fighting.

The aggressors soon formed an alliance. In 1936, Ger­many and Italy agreed to support one another's foreign policy. The alliance was known as the Rome-Berlin Axis. Japan joined the alliance in 1940, and it became the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.

The Spanish Civil War. A civil war tore Spain apart from 1936 to 1939. In 1936, many of Spain's army officers revolted against the government. The army rebels chose General Francisco Franco as their leader. Franco's forces were known as Nationalists or Rebels. The forces that supported Spain's elected government were called Loyalists or Republicans. The Spanish Civil War drew worldwide attention. During the war, the dictatorships again displayed their might while the democracies re­mained helpless.

Hitler and Mussolini sent troops, weapons, aircraft, and advisers to aid the Nationalists. The Soviet Union was the only power to help the Loyalists. France, Britain, and the United States decided not to become involved. However, Loyalist sympathizers from many countries joined the International Brigades that the Communists formed to fight in Spain.

The last Loyalist forces surrendered on April 1,1939, and Franco set up a dictatorship in Spain. The Spanish Civil War served as a military proving ground for World War II because Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union

used it to test weapons and tactics. The war in Spain was also a rehearsal for World War II in that it split the world into forces that either supported or opposed Na­zism and Fascism.

The failure of appeasement. Hitler prepared to strike again soon after Germany absorbed Austria in March 1938. German territory then bordered Czechoslo­vakia on three sides. Czechoslovakia had become an in­dependent nation after World War I. Its population con­sisted of many nationalities, including more than 3 million people of German descent. Hitler sought control of the Sudetenland, a region of western Czechoslovakia where most of the Germans lived. Urged on by Hitler, the Sudeten Germans began to clamour for union with Germany.

Czechoslovakia was determined to defend its terri­tory. France and the Soviet Union had pledged their support. As tension mounted, Britain's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain tried to restore calm. Chamberlain wished to preserve peace at all cost. He believed that war could be prevented by meeting Hitler's demands. That policy became known as appeasement.

Chamberlain had several meetings with Hitler during September 1938 as Europe teetered on the edge of war. Hitler raised his demands at each meeting. On Septem­ber 29, Chamberlain and French Premier Edouard Daladier met with Hitler and Mussolini in Munich, Germany. Chamberlain and Daladier agreed to turn over the Sude­tenland to Germany, and they forced Czechoslovakia to accept the agreement. Hitler promised that he had no more territorial demands.

The Munich Agreement marked the height of the pol­icy of appeasement. Chamberlain and Daladier hoped that the agreement would satisfy Hitler and prevent war—or that it would at least prolong the peace until Britain and France were ready for war. The two leaders were mistaken on both counts.

The failure of appeasement soon became clear. Hitler broke the Munich Agreement in March 1939 and seized the rest of Czechoslovakia. He thereby added Czecho­slovakia's armed forces and industries to Germany's mili­tary might. In the months before World War II began, Germany's preparations for war moved ahead faster than did the military build-up of Britain and France.

Early stages of the war

During the first year of World War II, Germany won a series of swift victories over Poland, Denmark, Luxem­bourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, and France. Germany then attempted to bomb Britain into surren­dering, but it failed.

The invasion of Poland. After Hitler seized Czecho­slovakia, he began demanding territory from Poland. Great Britain and France pledged to help Poland if Ger­many attacked it. Yet the two powers could aid Poland only by invading Germany, a step that neither chose to take. Britain had only a small army. France had prepared to defend its territory, not to attack.

Great Britain and France hoped that the Soviet Union would help defend Poland. But Hitler and Stalin shocked the world by becoming allies. On Aug. 23, 1939, Ger­many and the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact —in which they agreed not to go to war against each other. They secretly decided to divide Poland between themselves.

On Sept. 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland and began World War II. Poland had a fairly large army but little modern equipment. The Polish army expected to fight along the country's frontiers. However, the Germans introduced a new method of warfare they called blitzkrieg (lightning war). The blitzkrieg stressed speed and surprise. Rows of tanks smashed through Poland's defences and rolled deep into the country before the Polish army, had time to react. Swarms of German dive bombers and fighter aircraft knocked out communications and pounded battle lines.

The Poles fought bravely. But Germany's blitzkrieg threw their army into confusion. On Sept. 17, 1939, So­viet forces invaded Poland from the east. By late Sep­tember, the Soviet Union occupied the eastern third of Poland, and Germany had swallowed up the rest

The Phoney War. Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on Sept. 3, 1939, two days after the in­vasion of Poland. But the two countries stood by while Poland collapsed. France moved troops to the Maginot Line, a belt of steel and concrete fortresses it had built after World War 1 along its border with Germany. Britain sent a small force into northern France. Germany sta­tioned troops on the Siegfried Line, a strip of defences Hitler built in the 1930's opposite the Maginot Line. The two sides avoided fighting in late 1939 and early 1940. Journalists called the period the Phoney War.

The conquest of Denmark and Norway. Valuable shipments of iron ore from Sweden reached Germany

by way of Norway's port of Narvik. Hitler feared British plans to cut off those shipments by laying explosives in Norway's coastal waters. In April 1940, German forces invaded Norway. They conquered Denmark on the way. Britain tried to help Norway, but Germany's airpower prevented many British ships and troops from reaching the country. Norway fell to the Germans in June 1940. The conquest of Norway secured Germany's shipments of iron ore. Norway also provided bases for German submarines and aircraft.

Chamberlain, the champion of appeasement, re­signed after the invasion of Norway. Winston Churchill replaced him as Britain's prime minister on May 10, 1940. Churchill told the British people he had nothing to offer them but "blood, toil, tears, and sweat"

The invasion of the Low Countries. The Low Countries—Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands—hoped to remain neutral after World War II began. However, Germany launched a blitzkrieg against them on May 10,1940. The Low Countries imme­diately requested Allied help. But Luxembourg surren­dered in one day, and the Netherlands in five days. Brit­ish and French forces rushed into Belgium and fell into a German trap. As the Allied forces raced northward, the main German invasion cut behind them through the Bel­gian Ardennes Forest to the south. The Germans reached the English Channel on May 21. They had nearly surrounded Allied forces in Belgium.

King Leopold III of Belgium surrendered on May 28, 1940. His surrender left the Allied forces trapped in Bel­gium in great danger. They were retreating toward the French seaport of Dunkerque on the English Channel. Britain sent all available craft to rescue the troops. The rescue fleet included destroyers, yachts, ferries, fishing vessels, and motorboats. Under heavy bombardment, the vessels evacuated about 338,000 troops from May 26 to June 4. The evacuation of Dunkerque saved most of Britain's army. But the army left behind all its tanks and equipment. The remaining Allied troops in Dunkerque surrendered on June 4, 1940.

The evacuation of Dunkerque rescued about 338,000 Allied soldiers in 1940. While the Germans attacked, every available British vessel, including small craft like those above, ferried the troops to safety. At the right, soldiers waded out to a ship.

The fall of France. France had expected to fight along a stationary battlefront and had built the Maginot Line for its defence. But German tanks and aircraft went around the Maginot Line. The Germans passed north of the Maginot Line as they swept through Luxembourg and Belgium and into northern France in May 1940. They launched a major assault against France on June 5. The blitzkrieg sent French forces reeling backward. As France neared collapse, Italy declared war on France and Great Britain on June 10.

German troops entered Paris on June 14, 1940. The French government had already fled the capital. Paul Reynaud had become premier of France in March. Reynaud wanted to fight on. But many of his generals and cabinet officers believed that the battle for France was lost. Reynaud resigned, and a new French government agreed to an armistice (truce) on June 22.

Under the terms of the armistice, Germany occupied the northern two-thirds of France and a strip of western France along the Atlantic Ocean. Southern France remained in French control. The town of Vichy became the capital of unoccupied France. Marshal Henri Petain, a French hero of World War i, headed the Vichy government. He largely cooperated with the Germans. Then in November 1942, German troops occupied all France.

One of the French generals, Charles de Gaulle, had escaped to Britain after France fell. In radio broadcasts to France, he urged the people to carry on the fight against Germany. The troops who rallied around de Gaulle became known as the Free French forces.

The Battle of Britain. Hitler believed that Great Brit­ain would seek peace with Germany after the fall of France. But Britain fought on alone. Hitler made prepara­tions to cross the English Channel and invade southern England. Before the Germans could invade, however, they had to defeat Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF). The Battle of Britain, which began in July 1940, was the first battle ever fought to control the air.

In August 1940, the German air force, the Luftwaffe, began to attack RAF bases. Germany's aircraft out­numbered those of the RAF. But radar stations along

After France fell, victorious German soldiers paraded down the Champs Elysees, the famous Paris boulevard. France's sur­render in June 1940 left Britain alone to fight Germany.

England's coast provided warning of approaching Ger­man planes and helped the RAF intercept them.

Each side greatly overestimated the number of enemy planes it had shot down. By September 1940, the Luft­waffe mistakenly believed it had destroyed the RAF. The Germans then halted their strikes against RAF bases and began to bomb London and other civilian targets. They hoped to weaken civilian morale and force Britain to surrender. Air raids known as the Blitz took place nearly every night through the autumn and the winter. In May, 1941, Germany finally gave up its attempts to defeat Brit­ain from the air.

Hitler's decision to end the attacks on the RAF en­abled Britain to rebuild its air force. Britain's survival was immensely important later in the war because the coun­try served as a base for the Allied liberation (freeing) of Europe from Nazi rule.

World War II had become a global conflict by the end of 1941. Fighting spread to Africa, the Balkan Peninsula of southeastern Europe, and the Soviet Union. The Axis and the Allies also fought each other at sea. In Decem­ber 1941, the United States entered the war.

Fighting in Africa. The Italians opened battlefronts in Africa at about the time of the Battle of Britain. Mus­solini expected easy victories over the small British forces in North Africa. In August 1940, the Italians pushed eastward from Ethiopia and overran the forces in British Somaliland. The following month, Italian forces that were stationed in Libya invaded Egypt

For two years, the fighting seesawed back and forth across Libya and Egypt. Troops from Australia, New Zea­land, India, and South Africa fought alongside British soldiers to keep the Axis out of Egypt. Axis control of Egypt would have cut Britain off from oil fields in the Middle East and from the Suez Canal, the shortest sea route to Asia. Britain struck back at the Italians in De­cember 1940, sweeping them out of Egypt and back into Libya. An Italian invasion of Greece then drew part of Britain's force from Africa and ended the advance.

Early in 1941, Hitler sent tank units trained in desert warfare to help the Italians in northern Africa. The tank units, known as the Afrika Korps, were led by General Erwin Rommel. Rommel's clever tactics earned him the nickname "The Desert Fox." During the spring, Rommel recaptured the Libyan territory the Italians had lost and drove into Egypt The British again pushed the Axis forces back into Libya. In May 1942, Rommel broke through British lines and reached El Alamein, only 320 kilometres from the Suez Canal.

However, the Germans did not save Mussolini's em­pire in eastern Africa. By May 1941, Britain had defeated the Italians in British Somaliland and Ethiopia.

Fighting in the Balkans. Hitler used threats to force Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania into joining the Axis. Those countries supplied Germany with food, petro­leum, and other goods. Yugoslavia's government signed an agreement with the Axis in March 1941. But Yugosla­via's armed forces rebelled and overthrew the govern­ment. An enraged Hitler ordered that Yugoslavia be crushed. German troops began to pour into the country on April 6. Yugoslavia surrendered 11 days later. During that time, Hitler had to rescue Mussolini's troops else­where on the Balkan Peninsula.

Mussolini had tired of playing Hitler's junior partner, and he badly wanted a victory to boost his standing. In October 1940, Italian forces based in Albania invaded Greece. They expected to defeat the poorly equipped Greek army easily. The Greeks fought fiercely, though they were greatly outnumbered. By December, they had driven the Italians out of Greece and had overrun part of Albania. Britain sent a small force to help Greece. Butin April 1941, a much larger German force came to the aid of the Italians. By the end of April, the Axis controlled Greece.

British troops in Greece withdrew to the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea. On May 20, 1941, thou­sands of German paratroopers descended on Crete and seized an airfield. More German troops then landed. The first airborne invasion in history gave Germany an im­portant base in the Mediterranean by the end of May.

The defeats in the Balkans were serious blows to Brit­ain. However, some historians believe that the detours into Yugoslavia and Greece were costly for Hitler be­cause they delayed his invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler confidently predicted victory over the Soviet Union within eight weeks, and he had failed to prepare for a winter war.

The invasion of the Soviet Union. Germany and the Soviet Union proved to be uneasy partners. Hitler viewed the Soviet Union as Germany's chief enemy. He feared Soviet ambitions to expand in eastern Europe. Hitler also wanted control of Soviet wheat fields and oil fields. His 1939 nonaggression pact with Stalin served merely to keep the Soviet Union out of the war while Germany overran western Europe.

Stalin distrusted Hitler, and he sought to obtain more naval bases and to strengthen Soviet borders. In Novem­ber 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland. The Finns surrendered in March 1940 after a fierce fight. In the summer, the Soviet Union seized the countries of Esto­nia, Latvia, and Lithuania along the Baltic Sea.

Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, which was code-named Operation Barbarossa, began on June 22, 1941. It took the Soviet Union by surprise. German tanks smashed through Soviet battle lines. During the first few weeks of the campaign, the German armies encircled and killed or captured hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops. As the Germans advanced, the Soviet people de­stroyed factories, dams, railways, food supplies, and anything else that might be useful to the enemy. The Germans appeared to be heading for victory by late July. They then began to make mistakes.

Hitler's generals wanted to press on to Moscow. But Hitler overruled them. Instead, he reinforced the Ger­man armies heading north toward Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and south toward the Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea. While the Germans wasted time transfer­ring forces, Stalin brought in fresh troops. The German advance slowed in September, though they took Kiev in the south. Heavy rain fell in October, and German tanks and artillery became bogged down in mud.

By November 1941, the Germans had surrounded Leningrad and had begun to encircle Moscow. They reached the suburbs of Moscow by early December.

The temperature then plunged to —40° C. An unusually severe Soviet winter had begun early. German troops lacked warm clothing and suffered from frostbite. Their tanks and weapons broke down in the bitter cold. Win­ter had saved the Soviet Union.

The Battle of the Atlantic. Britain's survival in World War II depended on shipments of food, war materials, and other supplies across the Atlantic Ocean from North America. Throughout the war, Germany tried to destroy such shipments, while Britain struggled to keep its At­lantic shipping lanes open.

Germany's surface fleet was far too weak to challenge Britain's Royal Navy in battle during World War II. But individual German battleships attacked British cargo vessels. The Royal Navy hunted down and sank such raiders one by one. The biggest operation was against the powerful German battleship Bismarck. In May 1941, a fleet of British warships chased, trapped, and finally sank the Bismarck about 970 kilometres off the coast of France. Afterward, Germany rarely allowed its large war­ships to leave port.

The greatest threat to British shipping came from Ger­man submarines, called Unterseeboote or U-boats. U-boats prowled the Atlantic, torpedoing any Allied cargo ships they spotted. The conquest of Norway and of France gave Germany excellent bases for its U-boats. To combat the U-boats, Britain began to use a convoy sys­tem. Under that system, cargo ships sailed in large groups escorted by surface warships. But Britain had few such ships available for escort duty.

From 1940 to 1942, Germany appeared to be winning the Battle of the Atlantic. Each month, U-boats sank thou­sands of tons of Allied shipping. But the Allies gradually overcame the U-boat danger. They used radar and an underwater detection device called sonar to locate Ger­man submarines. Long-range aircraft bombed U-boats as they surfaced. Shipyards in North America stepped up their production of warships to accompany convoys. By mid-1943, the Allies were sinking U-boats faster than Germany could replace them. The crisis in the Atlantic had passed.

The war becomes a global conflict

Commonwealth nations had entered the war either with or soon after Britain. Australia, New Zealand, and India declared war on Germany on Sept 3, 1939. South Africa did so on Sept. 6, and Canada on Sept 10. Many colonies, including the West Indies and African colo­nies, sent troops.

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the neutrality of the United States. The majority of people in the United States thought that their country should stay out of World War II. Yet most Americans hoped for an Allied victory. Roosevelt and other interventionists urged all aid "short of war" to nations fighting the Axis. They argued that an Axis victory would endanger democracies everywhere. Isolationists, on the other hand, opposed U.S. aid to warring nations.

All the countries in North and South America eventu­ally declared war on the Axis. But only Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and the United States sent troops. The United States played a key role in the final Allied victory.

Lend-Lease. U.S. President Roosevelt hoped the United States could defeat the Axis powers by equip­ping the nations fighting them with ships, tanks, aircraft, and other war materials. Roosevelt appealed to the United States to become what he called "the arsenal of democracy."

At the start of World War II, U.S. neutrality laws for­bade the sale of arms to warring nations. The U.S. Con­gress soon changed the laws to help Britain and France. A new law permitted warring nations to buy arms for cash. But by late 1940, Britain had nearly run out of funds for arms. Roosevelt then proposed the Lend-Lease Act, which would permit the United States to lend or lease raw materials, equipment, and weapons to any na­tion fighting the Axis. The U.S. Congress approved the act in March 1941. In all, 38 nations received a total of about 50 billion U.S. dollars in aid under Lend-Lease. More than half the aid went to the British Empire and about a fourth to the Soviet Union.

Japan attacks. Japan, not Germany, finally plunged the United States into World War II. By 1940, Japanese forces were bogged down in China. To force China to surrender, Japan decided to cut off supplies reaching China from Southeast Asia. Japan also wanted the rich resources of Southeast Asia for itself. Japan's military leaders spoke of building an empire, which they called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

The European colonial powers and the United States opposed Japan's expansion in Southeast Asia. In 1940, Japanese troops occupied northern Indochina (today part of Laos and Vietnam). In response, the United States cut off exports to Japan of petroleum, scrap metal, and other important industrial raw materials. Tension rose after Japan seized the rest of Indochina in 1941. The U.S. government then barred the withdrawal of Japanese funds from American banks.

General Hideki Tojo became premier of Japan in Oc­tober 1941. Tojo and Japan's other military leaders de­cided to attack the Americans, British, and Dutch in the Pacific. They realized they had to cripple the powerful U.S. Pacific Fleet.

On Dec. 7, 1941 without warning, Japanese aircraft at­tacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The bombing of Pearl Harbor was a great success for Japan at first. It disabled much of the American fleet and destroyed many aircraft. But in the long run, the attack on Pearl Harbor proved disastrous for Japan. lt propelled the United States into the war.

The United States, Britain, and other Allies declared war on Japan on Dec. 8,1941. The next day, China declared war on the Axis. Germany and Italy declared war on the United States on December 11. World War II had become a global conflict.

The Allies attack in Europe and northern Africa

Allied defeats in Europe ended late in 1941. Soviet forces held off the German advance in eastern Europe in 1942 and won a major victory at Stalingrad in 1943. The Allies invaded northern Africa in 1942 and forced Italy to surrender in 1943. Allied troops swarmed ashore in 1944 in northern France in the largest seaborne invasion in history. Allied attacks from the east and the west forced Germany to surrender in 1945.

The strategy. Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin—the leaders of the three major Allied powers—were known during World War II as the Big Three. The Big Three and their military advisers planned the strategy that de­feated the Axis. Churchill and Roosevelt conferred fre­quently on overall strategy. Stalin directed the Soviet war effort but rarely consulted his allies.

At a meeting in Washington, D.C, in December 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt agreed that the European war must be won first, and that this would call for an Allied invasion of western Europe. Military leaders of the two , major Western allies formed the Combined Chiefs of Staff, to exchange ideas and information. The political leaders of the Allies — Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin relied heavily on their senior military advisers.

The main wartime disagreement among the Big Three concerned an Allied invasion of western Europe. Stalin constantly urged Roosevelt and Churchill to open a second fighting front in western Europe and thus draw man troops from the Soviet front. Both Roosevelt and Churchill supported the idea but disagreed on where and when to invade. The Americans wanted to land in  northern France as soon as possible. The British argued that an invasion of France before the Allies were fully prepared would be disastrous. Instead, Churchill favoured invading Italy first. This plan was adopted.

Roosevelt and Churchill first met in August 1941 aboard ship off the coast of Newfoundland. They issued the Atlantic Charter, a statement of the postwar aims of the United States and Great Britain. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed that Germany was a nearer and a more dangerous enemy than Japan. They decided to open the second front, to relieve the hard-pressed Soviet forces, and con­centrate on defeating Germany.

In January 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill met in Casa­blanca, Morocco. They agreed to invade the Mediterra­nean island of Sicily after driving the Germans and Ital­ians from northern Africa. At the conference, Roosevelt announced that the Allies would accept only uncondi­tional (complete) surrender from the Axis powers. Churchill supported him.

Roosevelt and Churchill first met Stalin in November 1943 in Teheran, Iran. The Big Three discussed plans for a joint British and American invasion of France in the spring of 1944. They did not meet again until Germany neared collapse. In February 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin gathered at Yalta, a Soviet city on the Crimean Peninsula. They agreed that their countries would each occupy a zone of Germany after the war. France was to occupy a fourth zone. At the Yalta Conference, Stalin pledged to permit free elections in Poland and other countries in eastern Europe after the war. He later broke that pledge. Roosevelt died in April 1945, two months after the Yalta Conference.

On the Soviet front. Soviet forces struck back at the Germans outside Moscow in December 1941. The So­viet troops pushed the invaders back about 160 kilometres from Moscow during the winter. The Germans never again came so close to Moscow as they had been in December 1941. However, the Soviet recovery was short lived.

In the spring of 1942, the Germans again attacked. They overran the Crimean Peninsula and headed east­ward toward Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus region. Hitler ordered General Friedrich von Paulus to press on and to take the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd). A sav­age five-month battle for Stalingrad began in late Au­gust. By September, German and Soviet soldiers were fighting hand to hand in the heart of the city.

With winter approaching, Paulus asked permission to pull back from Stalingrad. Hitler ordered him to hold on and fight. Soviet troops counterattacked in mid-November. Within a week, they had trapped Paulus' army. The Luftwaffe promised to supply the army by air. But few supplies landed. Each day, thousands of German soldiers froze or starved to death. On Feb. 2, 1943, the last German troops in Stalingrad surrendered.

The Battle of Stalingrad marked a turning point in World War II. It halted Germany's eastward advance. About 300,000 German troops were killed or captured. An enormous number of Soviet soldiers also died.

In northern Africa. The Germans took a beating in northern Africa about the same time as their defeat at Stalingrad. In the summer of 1942, German and Italian forces led by Rommel faced the British and their allies at El Alamein, Egypt. General Harold Alexander and Lieu­tenant General Bernard L. Montgomery commanded the British forces in northern Africa.

Rommel attacked in late August 1942 at Alam el Haifa, south of El Alamein. The British halted the attack, partly because they had secretly learned of Rommel's battle plan. Churchill called for an immediate counterattack. But Montgomery refused to rush into battle before he was fully prepared. On October 23, Montgomery struck at El Alamein. He had broken through the enemy lines by early November. The Axis forces retreated to­ll ward Tunisia with the British in hot pursuit. The Battle of PEI Alamein, like the Battle of Stalingrad, marked a turning point in the war. In both battles, the Allies ended Hitler's string of victories.

Soon after the Battle of El Alamein, the Allies invaded French colonies in northern Africa. Allied troops commanded by Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower of the United States landed in Algeria and Morocco on Nov. 8, 1942. Vichy French forces in northern Africa fought back for a few days. They then joined the Allied side.

The Allies hoped to advance rapidly into Tunisia and thereby cut off the Axis forces from their home bases in Italy and Sicily. But Axis troops moved faster and seized Tunisia first. There, Rommel prepared for battle. American troops first engaged in combat with the Germans in  February 1943 near Kasserine Pass in northern Tunisia. Rommel defeated the inexperienced Americans in hard fighting. But thereafter, the Allies steadily closed in. The last Axis forces in northern Africa surrendered in May. Rommel had already returned to Germany. By clearing the Axis forces from northern Africa, the Allies obtained bases from which to invade southern Europe.

The air war. Before World War II began, some avia­tion experts claimed that the long-range bomber was the most advanced weapon in the world. They believed that bombers could wipe out cities and industries and so destroy an enemy's desire and ability to go on fighting. Their theory was tested during World War II.

The first great air battle in history opened in 1940 be­tween Germany's Luftwaffe and Britain's Royal Air Force. During the Battle of Britain, Marshal Hermann Goering, commander of the Luftwaffe, failed to defeat Britain i from the air. RAF fighter planes, including Spitfires and Hurricanes, helped win the Battle of Britain by shooting down German bombers. By May 1941, the bombing of Britain had largely stopped. But RAF bombers pounded Germany until the end of the war.

At first, Britain's bombing campaign was costly and in­effective. The RAF relied on area bombing in the hope of hitting a target by plastering the area with bombs. It favoured nighttime raids, using Lancasters, Halifaxes, and other heavy bombers. But pilots often missed their targets in the dark. In 1942, Britain turned to saturation bombing of German cities. About 900 bombers battered Cologne on May 30,1942, in the first such massive raid.

The United States joined the air war against Germany in 1942. The American B-17 bombers were known as Fly­ing Fortresses because of their heavy armour and many guns, and they could take much punishment. The B-17 also had a better bombsight than the RAF's planes. The Americans favoured pinpoint bombing of specific tar­gets during daytime, rather than area bombing at night. From 1943 until the end of the war, bombs rained down on Germany around the clock.

In spite of the massive bombardment, German indus­tries continued to increase production, and German mo­rale failed to crack. The air war achieved its goals only during the last 10 months of World War II. In that time, nearly three times as many bombs fell on Germany as in all the rest of the war. By the end of the war, Germany's cities lay in ruins. Its factories, refineries, railways, and canals had nearly ceased to operate. Hundreds of thou­sands of German civilians had been killed. Millions more were homeless. The bomber had finally become the weapon its supporters had foreseen.

Germany's air defences rapidly improved during World War II. The Germans used radar to spot incoming bombers, and they used fighter aircraft to shoot them down. In 1944, Germany introduced the first jet fighter, the Messerschmitt Me-262. The fast plane could easily overtake the propeller-driven fighters of the Allies. But Hitler failed to use jet fighters effectively, which kept Germany from gaining an advantage in the air war.

In 1944, Germany used the first guided missiles against Britain. The V-1 and V-2 missiles caused great damage and took many lives. But the Germans intro­duced the weapons too late to affect the war's outcome.

The invasion of Italy. The Allies planned to invade Sicily after driving the Axis forces out of northern Africa. Axis planes bombed Allied ships in the Mediterranean Sea from bases in Sicily. The Allies wanted to make the Mediterranean safe for their ships. They also hoped that an invasion of Sicily might knock a war-weary Italy out of the war.

Allied forces under Eisenhower landed along Sicily's south coast on July 10,1943. For 39 days, they engaged in bitter fighting with German troops over rugged ter­rain. The last Germans left Sicily on August 17.

Mussolini fell from power on July 25,1943, after the invasion of Sicily. The Italian government imprisoned Mussolini, but German paratroopers later rescued him. Italy's new premier, Field Marshal Pietro Badoglio, began secret peace talks with the Allies. Badoglio hoped to prevent Italy from becoming a battleground. Italy sur­rendered on September 3. However, Field Marshal Al­bert Kesselring, Germany's commander in the Mediter­ranean region, was determined to fight the Allies for control of Italy.

Allied forces led by Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark of the United States landed at Salerno, Italy, on Sept 9, 1943. They fought hard just to stay ashore. Another Al­lied force had already landed farther south. The Allies slowly struggled up the Italian Peninsula in a series of head-on assaults against well-defended German posi­tions. By early November, the Allies had nearly reached Cassino, about 120 kilometres south of Rome. But they failed to pierce German defences there. Some of the most brutal fighting of World War II occurred near Cas­sino.

In January 1944, the Allies landed troops at Anzio, west of Cassino, in an effort to attack the Germans from behind. However, German forces kept the Allies pinned down on the beaches at Anzio for four months. Thou­sands of Allied soldiers died there.

The Allies finally broke through German defences in Italy in May 1944. Rome fell on June 4. The Germans held their positions in northern Italy through the au­tumn and winter. But in the spring, the Allies swept to­ward the Alps. German forces in Italy surrendered on May 2, 1945. Mussolini had been captured and shot by Italian resistance fighters on April 28.

D-Day. Soon after the evacuation of Dunkerque in 1940, Great Britain started to plan a return to France. In 1940, the United States and Britain began to discuss a large-scale invasion across the English Channel. That summer, the Allies raided the French port of Dieppe on the channel. The raiders met strong German defences and suffered heavy losses. The Dieppe raid convinced the Allies that landing on open beaches had a better chance of success than landing in a port.

Throughout 1943, preparations moved ahead for an invasion of northern France the following year. The inva­sion plan received the code name Operation Overlord. The Allies assembled huge amounts of equipment and great numbers of troops for Overlord in southern Eng­land. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was selected to command the invasion.

The Germans expected an Allied invasion along the north coast of France in 1944. But they were unsure where. A chain of fortifications, which the Germans called the Atlantic Wall, ran along the coast. Hitler placed Rommel in charge of strengthening German de­fences along the English Channel. Rommel brought in artillery, mined the water and the beaches, and strung up barbed wire. The Germans concentrated their troops near Calais, at the narrowest part of the English Channel. But the Allies planned to land farther west, in a region of northern France called Normandy.

The Allies chose Monday, June 5, 1944, as D-Day— the date of the Normandy invasion. Rough seas forced them to postpone D-Day until June 6. During the night, about 2,700 ships carrying landing craft and 176,000 sol­diers crossed the channel. Minesweepers had gone ahead to clear the water. Paratroopers dropped behind German lines to capture bridges and railway tracks. At dawn, battleships opened fire on the beaches. At 6:30 A.M., Allied troops stormed ashore on a 100-kilometre J front in the largest seaborne invasion in history.

D-Day took the Germans by surprise. But they fought f back fiercely. At one landing site, code-named Omaha Beach, U.S. troops came under heavy fire and barely managed to stay ashore. Nevertheless, all five Allied landing beaches were secure by the end of D-Day. The Allies soon had an artificial harbour in place for unload­ing more troops and supplies. A pipeline carried fuel

across the channel. By the end of June 1944, about a mil­lion Allied troops had reached France.

The Allied forces advanced slowly at first. The Ameri­cans struggled westward to capture the badly needed port of Cherbourg. British and Canadian soldiers fought their way to Caen. The battle for Cherbourg ended on June 27. Caen, which the British hoped to capture on D- Day, fell on July 18. Near the end of July, the Allies finally broke through German lines into open country.

The drive to the Rhine. On July 25, 1944, Allied bombers blasted a gap in the German front near St.-Lo, about 80 kilometres southeast of Cherbourg. The U.S. Third Army under Lieutenant General George S. Patton drove through the hole. The battlefield had opened up. During August, the Allies cleared the Germans out of most of northwestern France. Allied bombers hounded the retreating Germans.

Patton's army rolled eastward toward Paris. On Aug 19, 1944, Parisians rose up against the occupying Ger­man forces. Hitler ordered the city destroyed. But his generals delayed carrying out the order. Allied forces, including Free French, liberated Paris on August 25.

In mid-August 1944, Allied forces landed in southern France. They moved rapidly up the Rhone River Valley. Meanwhile, Patton raced eastward toward the German border and the Rhine River. In late August, his tanks ran out of fuel. To the north, British forces led by Field Mar­shal Bernard L. Montgomery swept into Belgium and captured Antwerp on September 4. The Allies planned a daring airborne operation to carry them across the Rhine. On September 17, about 20,000 paratroopers dropped behind German lines to seize bridges in the Netherlands. But bad weather and other problems ham­pered the Arnhem operation. It became clear that vic­tory over Germany would have to wait until 1945.

Germany's generals knew they were beaten. But Hitler pulled his failing resources together for another assault. On Dec. 16, 1944, German troops surprised and over­whelmed the Americans in the Ardennes Forest in Bel­gium and Luxembourg. However, the Germans lacked the troops and fuel to turn their thrust into a break­through. Within two weeks, the Americans stopped the German advance near the Meuse River in Belgium. The Ardennes offensive is also known as the Battle of the Bulge because of the bulging shape of the battleground on a map.

The Soviet advance. The Soviet victory in the Battle of Stalingrad ended Germany's progress in Eastern Eu­rope. After January 1943, Soviet soldiers slowly pushed the Germans back. Soviet forces had improved by 1943, and they greatly outnumbered the opposing German ar­mies. Supplies poured into the Soviet Union from Brit­ain and the United States, and Soviet factories had geared up for wartime production.

Nevertheless, the Germans returned to the offensive in July 1943, near the Soviet city of Kursk. They massed about 3,000 tanks for the assault. Soviet forces lay wait­ing for them. In one of the greatest tank battles in his­tory, Soviet mines, tanks, antitank guns, and aircraft blew apart many German tanks. Hitler finally called off the attack to save his remaining tanks.

Soviet troops moved slowly forward during the sum­mer and autumn of 1943. In January 1944, a Soviet offen­sive ended the siege of Leningrad, which had begun in September 1941. It had been the longest siege in mod­ern history. About a million Leningraders died during the siege, mostly from lack of food and heat. But the city never surrendered.

In June 1944, soon after the Normandy invasion, Sta­lin's armies attacked along a 720-kilometre front. By late July, Soviet troops had reached the outskirts of Warsaw. Poland's Home Army rose up against German forces in Warsaw on August 1. But Soviet troops refused to come to Poland's aid. Stalin permitted the Germans to destroy the Home Army, which might have resisted his plans to

set up a Communist government in Poland after the war The Home Army surrendered after two months. More than 200,000 Poles died during the Warsaw uprising. So­viet forces entered Warsaw in January 1945.

Meanwhile, Soviet troops drove into Romania and Bulgaria. The Germans pulled out of Greece and Yugo­slavia in the autumn of 1944 but held out in Budapest, the capital of Hungary, until February 1945. Vienna, Aus­tria's capital, fell to Soviet soldiers in April. By then, So­viet troops occupied nearly all of eastern Europe.

Victory in Europe. The Allies began their final as­sault on Germany in early 1945. Soviet soldiers reached the Oder River, about 65 kilometres east of Berlin, in January. Allied forces in the west occupied positions along the Rhine by early March.

British and Canadian forces cleared the Germans out of the Netherlands and swept into northern Germany. American and French forces raced toward the Elbe River in central Germany. Hitler ordered his soldiers to fight to the death. But large numbers of German soldiers surrendered each day.

As they advanced, the Allies discovered horrifying evidence of Nazi brutality. Hitler had ordered the imprisonment and murder of millions of Jews and members of other minority groups in concentration camps. The starving survivors of the death camps gave proof of the j terrible suffering of those who had already died.

The capture of Berlin, Germany's capital, was left to Soviet forces. By April 25, 1945, Soviet troops had sur­rounded the city. From a bunker (shelter) deep under­ground, Hitler ordered German soldiers to fight on. On April 30, however, Hitler committed suicide. He re­mained convinced that his cause had been right but that the German people had proven unworthy of his rule.

Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz briefly succeeded Hitler as the leader of Germany. Doenitz arranged for Germany's surrender. On May 7,1945, Colonel General Alfred Jodi, chief of staff of the German armed forces, signed a statement of unconditional surrender at Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims, France. World War II had end in Europe. The Allies declared May 8 as V-E Day, or V tory in Europe Day.

Weapon  of World War II

The Spitfire was an outstanding British fighter plane of World War II. Spitfires were noted for their speed, ability to make tight turns, and rapid climbing rate. Thus, they could outmanoeuvre most German fighters. In 1940, Spitfires helped defeat Germany in the Battle of Britain. A Spitfire IA is shown on the left.

The B-17 was a widely used U.S. bomber of World War II. B-17's be­came famous for daytime raids over Germany. They were called Flying For­tresses because of their heavy armour and many guns. The B-17G, right, carried 13 machine guns.

The DUKW, nicknamed "Duck," was an American six-wheeled truck that travelled over water and land. Ducks carried men and supplies from transport ships to enemy shores in amphibious (seaborne) landings. They were first used in the inva­sion of Sicily in July 1943 and later in am­phibious operations in the Pacific.

The tank played a key role in combat in World War II. Germany, in particular, made use of the tank's mobility and fire­power. In early victories, Germany massed its tanks and smashed through enemy battle lines in surprise attacks. The German Tiger, was a heavy tank that could outgun almost all Allied tanks.

The aircraft carrier was a floating air­field that replaced the battleship as the main naval weapon during World War II. Carrier-based planes took part in many battles in the Pacific. The irregular pattern on the U.S.S. Wasp, below, made it hard for enemy submarines to determine the ship's course.

The war in Asia and the Pacific

The attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, left the U.S. Pacific Fleet powerless to halt Japan's expansion. During the next six months, Japanese forces swept across Southeast Asia and the western Pacific Ocean. Japan's empire reached its greatest size in August 1942.

It stretched northeast to the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, west to Burma, and south to the Netherlands Indies (now Indonesia). The Allies halted Japan's expansion in the summer of 1942. They nibbled away at its empire until Japan agreed to surrender in August 1945.

Early Japanese victories. On Dec. 8,1941, within hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese bombers struck the British colony of Hong Kong on the south coast of China and two U.S. islands in the Pacific Ocean—Guam and Wake. The Japanese invaded Thai­land the same day. Thailand surrendered within hours and joined the Axis. Japanese troops took Hong Kong, Guam, and Wake Island by Christmas.

From Thailand, Japanese forces soon advanced into Malaya (now part of Malaysia) and Burma. Great Britain then ruled that region. The British wrongly believed that soldiers could not penetrate the thick jungles of the Malay Peninsula. They expected an assault by sea in­stead. But Japanese troops streamed through the jun­gles and rapidly overran the peninsula.

By late January 1942, the Japanese had pushed British forces back to Singapore, a fortified island off the tip of the Malay Peninsula. The Japanese stormed the island on February 8, and Singapore surrendered a week later. Japan captured about 85,000 soldiers, making the fall of Singapore Britain's worst military defeat ever.

Japan's next target was the petroleum-rich Nether­lands Indies, south of Malaya. Allied warships protected those islands. Japan's navy mauled the ships in February, 1942 in the Battle of the Java Sea. The Netherlands Indies fell in early March.

Meanwhile, Japanese forces had advanced into south­ern Burma. China sent troops into Burma to help Britain hold onto the Burma Road. Weapons, food, and other goods travelled over that supply route from India to China. In April 1942, Japan seized and shut down the Burma Road. The Japanese had driven Allied forces from most of Burma by mid-May.

Only the conquest of the Philippines took longer than Japan expected. Japan had begun landing troops in the Philippines on Dec. 10, 1941. American and Philippine forces commanded by U.S. General Douglas MacArthur defended the islands. In late December, MacArthur's forces abandoned Manila, the capital of the Philippines and withdrew to nearby Bataan Peninsula. Although suf­fering from malnutrition and disease, they beat back Japanese attacks for just over three months.

President Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to Australia, and he left the Philippines in March 1942. He promised the Filipinos, "I shall return." On April 9, about 75,000 ex­hausted U.S. troops on Bataan surrendered to the Japa­nese. Most of them were forced to march about 105 kilometres to prison camps. Many prisoners died of dis­ease and mistreatment during what became known as the Bataan Death March. Some soldiers held out on Corregidor Island, near Bataan, until May 6. By then, the Jap­anese were victorious everywhere.

Japan's string of quick victories astonished even the Japanese. It terrified the Allies. The fall of the Nether­lands Indies left Australia unprotected. The capture of Burma brought the Japanese to India's border. Australia and India feared invasion. Japanese planes bombed Dar­win on Australia's north coast in February 1942.

The tide turns. Three events in 1942 helped turn the tide against Japan. They were (1) the Doolittle raid, (2) the Battle of the Coral Sea, and (3) the Battle of Midway.

The Doolittle raid. To show that Japan could be beaten, the United States staged a daring bombing raid; on the Japanese homeland. On April 18,1942, Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle led 16 B-25 bombers in a sur­prise attack on Tokyo and other Japanese cities. The bombers took off from the deck of the Hornet, an aircraft carrier more than 960 kilometres east of Japan. The raid did very little damage. But it alarmed Japan's lead­ers, who had believed that their homeland was safe from Allied bombs. To prevent future raids, the Japanese determined to capture more islands to the south and the east and so extend the country's defences. They soon found themselves in trouble.

Important dates in the Pacific: 1941-1942

1941

Dec. 7 -Japan bombed U.S. military bases at Pearl Hart in Hawaii.

Dec. 8 -The United States, Great Britain, and Canada de­clared war on Japan.

1942

Feb. 15 -Singapore fell to the Japanese.

Feb. 26-28 -Japan defeated an Allied naval force in the Battle of the Java Sea.

April 9 -U.S. and Philippine troops on Bataan Peninsula

surrendered.

April 18 -U.S. bombers hit Tokyo in the Doolittle raid.

May 4-8 -The Allies checked a Japanese assault in the Battle of the Coral Sea.

June 4-6  -The Allies defeated Japan in the Battle of Mid­way.

Aug. 7 -U.S. marines landed on Guadalcanal.

The Battle of the Coral Sea. In May 1942, a Japanese f invasion force sailed toward Australia's base at Port j Moresby on the south coast of the island of New I Guinea. Port Moresby lay at Australia's doorstep. American warships met the Japanese force in the Coral Sea, northeast of Australia. The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought from May 4 to 8, was unlike all earlier naval bat- I ties. It was the first naval battle in which opposing ships never sighted one another. Planes based on aircraft car­riers did all the fighting. Neither side won a clear vic­tory. But the battle halted the assault on Port Moresby and temporarily checked the threat to Australia.

The Battle of Midway. Japan next sent a large fleet to capture Midway Island at the westernmost tip of the Ha­waiian chain. The United States had cracked Japan's naval code and thus learned about the coming invasion. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander of the U.S. Pa­cific Fleet, gathered the ships that had survived the raid on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of the Coral Sea. He pre­pared to ambush the Japanese.

The Battle of Midway opened on June 4, 1942, with a Japanese bombing raid on Midway. Outdated U.S. bombers flew in low and launched torpedoes against Japanese warships. But Japanese guns shot down most of the slow-moving planes. American dive bombers swooped in next. They pounded enemy aircraft carriers while their planes refuelled on deck. During the three- day battle, the Japanese lost 4 aircraft carriers and more than 200 planes and skilled pilots. Japan sank 1 U.S. air­craft carrier and shot down about 150 U.S. planes.

The Battle of Midway was the first clear Allied victory over Japan in World War 11. Aircraft carriers had be­come the most important weapon in the war in the Pa­cific. Japan's naval power was crippled by the loss of 4 of its 9 aircraft carriers.

Although Japan failed to capture Midway, it seized two islands at the tip of Alaska's Aleutian chain on June 7,1942. The Americans drove the Japanese out of the Aleutians in the spring and summer of 1943.

The South Pacific. After the Battle of Midway, the Al­lies were determined to stop Japanese expansion in the South Pacific. In the battles that followed, American soldiers and marines fought many jungle campaigns on Pacific islands. The jungle itself was a terrifying enemy. Heavy rains drenched the troops and turned the jungle into a foul-smelling swamp. The men had to hack their way through tangled, slimy vegetation and wade through knee-deep mud. Japanese snipers hid every­where, waiting to shoot unsuspecting Allied troops. Scorpions and snakes were a constant menace. Malaria and other tropical diseases took a heavy toll.

The Allies also encountered Japan's strict military code in the South Pacific. The code required Japanese soldiers to fight to the death. Japanese soldiers believed that surrender meant disgrace, and the Allies rarely cap­tured them alive. When cornered, the Japanese some­times charged at Allied troops in nighttime suicide at­tacks. Rather than admit defeat, Japan's military leaders took their lives by stabbing themselves in the abdomen according to the tradition of hara-kiri.

The Allies developed two major campaigns against Japan in the South Pacific. One force under General MacArthur checked the Japanese on New Guinea. An­other force under Admiral Nimitz fought the Japanese in the Solomon Islands northeast of Australia. The Allies aimed at taking the port of Rabaul on New Britain. Rabaul was Japan's chief base in the South Pacific. Japa­nese aircraft and warships attacked Allied ships from Rabaul, and Japan supplied other islands in the South Pacific from that base.

New Guinea. In the summer of 1942, Japanese troops began an overland drive across New Guinea's rugged, jungle-covered mountains to the Australian base of Port Moresby on the south coast. An Allied force made up chiefly of Australians quickly counterattacked. By No­vember, the Japanese had been pushed back across the mountains. The Americans then attacked Japanese posi­tions along the north coast in a series of brilliant opera­tions that combined air, sea, and land forces. Brutal fighting continued on New Guinea until mid-1944.

Guadalcanal. On Aug. 7, 1942, U.S. marines invaded the island of Guadalcanal in the first stage of a campaign in the Solomon Islands. The Japanese were building an air base on Guadalcanal from which to attack Allied ships. The invasion took the Japanese by surprise. But they fought back, and a fierce battle developed.

The six-month battle for Guadalcanal was one of the most vicious campaigns of World War II. Each side de­pended on its navy to land supplies and troop reinforce­ments. In a series of naval battles, the Allies gained con­trol of the waters surrounding Guadalcanal. They then cut off Japanese shipments. Until that time, Allied sup­plies had been short, and the U.S. marines had de­pended on rice captured from the enemy. By February 1943, the starving Japanese had evacuated Guadalcanal

After taking Guadalcanal, American forces led by Ad­miral William F. Halsey worked their way up the Solo­mon Islands. In November 1943, the Americans reached Bougainville at the top of the island chain. They defeated the Japanese there in March 1944.

Rabaul. In the summer of 1943, Allied military leaders cancelled the invasion of Rabaul. Instead, American bombers pounded the Japanese base, and aircraft and submarines sank shipments headed for Rabaul. About 100,000 Japanese defenders waited there for an attack that never came. The Allies spared many lives by isolat­ing Rabaul rather than capturing it.

Island hopping in the Central Pacific. From late 1943 until the autumn of 1944, the Allies hopped from is­land to island across the Central Pacific toward the Phil­ippines. During the island-hopping campaign, the Allies became expert at amphibious (seaborne) invasions. Each island they captured provided a base from which to strike the next target. But rather than capture every is­land, the Allies by-passed Japanese strongholds and in­vaded islands that were weakly held. That strategy, known as leapfrogging, saved time and lives. Leapfrog­ging carried the Allies across the Gilbert, Marshall, Car­oline, and Mariana islands in the Central Pacific.

Admiral Nimitz selected the Gilbert Islands as the first major objective in the island-hopping campaign. Ameri­can marines invaded Tarawa in the Gilberts in Novem­ber 1943. The attackers met heavy fire from Japanese troops in concrete bunkers. But they inched forward and captured the tiny island after four days of savage fighting. About 4,500 Japanese soldiers died defending the island. Only 17 remained alive. More than 3,000 marines were killed or wounded in the assault. The Allies K improved their amphibious operations because of lessons they had learned at Tarawa. As a result, fewer men died in later landings.

In February 1944, U.S. marines and infantrymen moved north to the Marshall Islands. They captured Kwajalein and Enewetak in relatively smooth operations. Allied military leaders meanwhile had decided to by­pass Truk, a key Japanese naval base in the Caroline Islands west of the Marshalls. They bombed Truk instead and made it unusable as a base.

The Americans made their next jump to the Mariana Islands, about 1,600 kilometres northwest of Enewetak. Bitter fighting for the Marianas began in June 1944. In the Battle of the Philippine Sea on June 19 and 20,

Japan's navy once again attempted to destroy the U.S. Pa­cific Fleet. During the battle, which was fought near the island of Guam, the Allies severely damaged Japan's navy and destroyed its airpower. Japan lost 3 aircraft car­riers and about 480 aeroplanes, or more than three- fourths of the planes it sent into battle. The loss of so many trained pilots was also a serious blow to Japan.

By August 1944, American forces occupied Guam, Saipan, and Tinian—the three largest islands in the Mari­anas. The occupation of the Marianas brought Allied forces within bombing distance of Japan. Tojo resigned as Japan's prime minister in July 1944 after the loss of Saipan. In November, American B-29 bombers began using bases in the Marianas to raid Japan.

A final hop before the invasion of the Philippines took U.S. forces to the Palau Islands in September 1944. The islands lie between the Marianas and the Philippines.

The attackers met stiff resistance on Peleliu, the chief Japanese base in the Palaus. About 25 per cent of the Americans were killed or injured in a month-long fight

The liberation of the Philippines. The campaigns in New Guinea and the Central Pacific brought the Allies within striking distance of the Philippine Islands. MacAr­thur and Nimitz combined their forces to liberate the Philippines. Allied leaders decided to invade the island of Leyte in the central Philippines in the autumn of 1944.

The Allies expected the Japanese to fight hard to hold the Philippines. They therefore assembled the largest landing force ever used in the Pacific campaigns. About 750 ships participated in the invasion of Leyte, which began on Oct. 20, 1944. It had taken the U.S. commander MacArthur, more than 2 1/2 years and many brutal battles to keep his pledge to return to the Philippines.

While Allied troops poured ashore on Leyte, Japan's navy tried yet again to crush the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The Battle for Leyte Gulf, which was fought from Oct. 23 to 26, 1944 was the greatest naval battle in history in total tonnage. In all, 282 ships took part. The battle ended in a major victory for the United States. Japan's navy was so badly damaged that it was no longer a seri­ous threat for the rest of the war.

During the Battle for Leyte Gulf, the Japanese un­leashed a terrifying new weapon—the kamikaze (suicide pilot). Kamikazes crashed planes filled with explosives onto Allied warships and died as a result. Many kamika­zes were shot down before they crashed. But others caused great damage. The kamikaze became one of Japan's major weapons during the rest of the war.

The fight for Leyte continued until the end of 1944. On Jan. 9,1945, the Allies landed on the island of Luzon and began to work their way toward Manila. The city fell in early March. The remaining Japanese troops on Luzon pulled back to the mountains and went on fighting until the war ended.

About 350,000 Japanese soldiers died during the cam­paign in the Philippines. American casualties numbered nearly 14,000 dead and about 48,000 wounded or miss­ing. Japan was clearly doomed to defeat after losing the Philippines. But it did not intend to surrender.

The China-Burma-India theatre. While fighting raged in the Pacific, the Allies also fought the Japanese on the Asian mainland. The chief theatre of operations (area of military activity) involved China, Burma, and India. By mid-1942, Japan held much of eastern and southern China and had conquered nearly all Burma.

The Japanese had closed the Burma Road, the overland supply route from India to China. China lacked equip­ment and trained troops and barely managed to go on fighting. But the Western Allies wanted to keep China in the war because the Chinese tied down hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops. For three years, the Allies flew war supplies over the world's tallest mountain sys­tem, the Himalaya, from India to China. The route was known as "the Hump."

China. By 1942, five years after Japan had invaded China, the opposing armies were near exhaustion. Japa­nese troops staged attacks especially to capture China's food supplies for themselves and to starve the country into surrender. As a result, millions of Chinese people died from lack of food during the war.

A struggle between China's Nationalist government, headed by Chiang Kai-shek, and Chinese Communists further weakened the country's war effort. At first, the Nationalist forces and the Communists had joined in fighting the Japanese invaders. But their cooperation gradually broke down as they prepared to fight each other after the war.

The Allies sent military advisers as well as equipment to China. The United States trained pilots and estab­lished an airforce in China. By the end of 1943, Allied pi­lots controlled the skies over China. But they could not help exhausted Chinese troops on the ground. A U.S. commander, Major General Joseph W. Stilwell, served as Chiang's chief of staff and trained the Chinese army.

Burma. The Allied campaign in Burma was closely linked to the fighting in China. From 1943 until early 1945, the Allies fought to recapture Burma from the Jap­anese and reopen a land route to China. But rugged jun­gle, heavy rains, and a shortage of troops and supplies hampered the Allies in Burma. The 14th Army, com­manded by the British General William Slim, fought a long and exhausting campaign against the Japanese.

Admiral Louis Mountbatten of Great Britain became supreme Allied commander in Southeast Asia in August 1943. He directed several successful offensives in Burma in late 1943 and in 1944. By the end of 1944, Allied forces had battled their way through the jungles of northern Burma. They opened a supply route across northern Burma to China in January 1945. Rangoon, Burma's capi­tal, fell to the Allies in May. The Allies finally regained f Burma.

India. India became an important supply base training centre for Allied forces during World War II. Japan's conquest of Burma in 1942 placed India in danger. In early 1944, Japanese troops invaded encircled the towns of Imphal and Kohima just inside India's border. The British supplied the towns by air. me attackers finally began to withdraw from India late in June. Thousands of Japanese soldiers died of and starvation during the retreat.

Closing in on Japan. Superiority at sea and in enabled the Allies to close in on Japan in early 1 then, Japan had lost much of its empire, most of its craft and cargo ships, and nearly all its warships, hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers remained stranded on Pacific islands by-passed by the Allies. American B-29 bombers were pounding Japan's industries, and Allied submarines were sinking vital supplies headed for Japan.

In January 1945, Major General Curtis E. LeMay, an American commander, took command of the Allied air war against Japan. LeMay ordered more frequent and more daring raids. American bombers increased their accuracy by flying in low during nighttime raids. They began to drop incendiary (fire-producing) bombs that set Japanese cities aflame. A massive incendiary raid in March 1945 destroyed the heart of Tokyo. By the end of the month, about 3 million people in Tokyo were home­less.

Japan's military leaders went on fighting, though they faced certain defeat The Allies needed more bases to step up the bombing campaign against Japan. They chose the Japanese islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

Iwo Jima lies about 1,210 kilometres south of Japan. About 21,000 Japanese troops were stationed there.

They prepared to defend the tiny island from fortified caves and underground tunnels. Allied aircraft began bombarding Iwo Jima seven months before the invasion. American marines landed on Feb. 19,1945, and made slow progress. The Japanese hung on desperately until March 16. About 25,000 marines—about 30 per cent of the landing force—were killed or wounded in the cam­paign for Iwo Jima.

Okinawa, the next stop on the Allied route toward Japan, lies about 565 kilometres southwest of Japan. Al­lied troops began to pour ashore on Okinawa on April 1, 1945. Japan sent kamikazes to attack the landing force. By the time the battle ended on June 21, kamikazes had sunk at least 30 ships and damaged more than 350 oth­ers. The capture of Okinawa cost the Allies about 50,000 casualties. About 110,000 Japanese died, including many civilians who chose to commit suicide rather than be conquered.

By the summer of 1945, some members of Japan's government favoured surrender. But others insisted that Japan fight on. The Allies planned to invade Japan in No­vember 1945. Allied military planners feared that the in­vasion might cost as many as 1 million Allied lives. Some Allied leaders believed that Soviet help was needed to defeat Japan, and they had encouraged Stalin to invade Manchuria. However, the Allies found another way to end the war.

The atomic bomb. In 1939, the German-born scien­tist Albert Einstein had informed U.S. President Roose­velt about the possibility of creating a superbomb. It would produce an extremely powerful explosion by splitting the atom. Einstein and other scientists feared that Germany might develop such a bomb first. In 1942, American, British and other scientists began work on the Manhattan Project, a top-secret programme to de­velop an atomic bomb. The first test explosion of an atomic bomb occurred in the United States in July 1945.

President Roosevelt died in April 1945, and Vice Presi­dent Harry S. Truman became president of the United States. Truman met with Churchill and Stalin in Potsdam, Germany, in July, shortly after Germany's defeat. At the Potsdam Conference, Truman learned of the successful test explosion of the atomic bomb and informed the other leaders of it. The United States, Britain, and China then issued a statement threatening to destroy Japan un­less it surrendered unconditionally. In spite of the warn­ing, Japan went on fighting.

On Aug. 6,1945, an American B-29 bomber called the Enola Cay dropped the first atomic bomb used in war­fare on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion killed from 70,000 to 100,000 people, it is estimated, and destroyed about 13 square kilometres. After Japanese leaders failed to respond to the bombing, the United States dropped a larger bomb on Nagasaki on August 9. It killed about 40,000 people. Later, thousands more died of injuries and radiation from the two bombings. Meanwhile, on August 8, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria. Soviet troops raced south toward Korea.

Victory in the Pacific. Although Japan's emperors had traditionally stayed out of politics, Hirohito urged the government to surrender. On August 14, Japan agreed to end the war. Some of the country's military leaders committed suicide.

On Sept. 2, 1945, representatives of Japan signed the official statement of surrender aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri, which lay at anchor in Tokyo Bay. Representa­tives of all the Allied nations were present. The Allies declared September 2 as V-J Day, or Victory over Japan Day. World War II had ended.

The secret war

Throughout World War II, a secret war was fought between the Allies and the Axis to obtain information about each other's activities and to weaken each other's war effort. Codebreakers tried to decipher secret com­munications, and spies worked behind enemy lines to gather information. Saboteurs tried to disrupt activities on the home front. Many people in Axis-held territories joined undercover resistance groups that opposed the occupying forces. All the warring nations used propa­ganda to influence public opinion.

The Ultra secret Soon after the outbreak of World War II, Britain obtained, with the help of Polish spies, one of the machines Germany used to code secret mes­sages. In an outstanding effort, British mathematicians and codebreakers solved the machine's electronic cod­ing procedures. Britain's ability to read many of Germa­ny's wartime communications was known as the Ultra secret Ultra helped the Allies defeat Germany.

The Ultra secret played an important role in battle. During the 1940 Battle of Britain, for example, Ultra supplied advance warning of where and when the Luftwaffe planned to attack. Ultra also helped Montgomery defeat the Germans in Egypt in 1942 by providing him with Rommel's battle plan. The British carefully guarded their Ultra secret. They were extremely cautious about using; their knowledge so that Germany would not change its coding procedures. The Germans never discovered that Britain had broken their code.

Spies and saboteurs were specially trained by the warring nations. Spies reported on troop movements, defence build-ups, and other developments behind enemy lines. Spies of Allied nations also supplied resist­ance groups with weapons and explosives. Saboteurs hampered the enemy's war effort in any way they could. For example, they blew up factories and bridges, and organized slowdowns in war plants.

Germany had spies in many countries. But its efforts at spying were less successful in general than those of the Allies. The Allied governments set up wartime agen­cies to engage in spying and sabotage. These agencies included the British Special Operation Executive (SOE), and the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The So­viet Union operated networks of spies in Allied nations as well as in Germany and Japan.

Resistance groups sprang up in every Axis- occupied country. Resistance began with individual acts of defiance against the occupiers. Gradually, like- minded people banded together and worked in secret to overthrow the invaders. The activities of resistance groups expanded as the war continued. Their work in­cluded publishing and distributing illegal newspapers, rescuing Allied aircrews shot down behind enemy lines, gathering information about the enemy, and sabotage.

In such countries as France, Yugoslavia, and Burma, resistance groups engaged in guerrilla warfare. They or­ganized bands of fighters who staged raids, ambushes, and other small attacks against the occupation forces.

All resistance movements suffered many setbacks. But they also achieved outstanding successes. For example, the French resistance interfered with German efforts to turn back the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944. Nor­wegian resistance workers destroyed a shipment of heavy water headed for Germany. Heavy water is a sub­stance needed in the production of an atomic bomb. Yu­goslavia had the most effective resistance movement of all—the Partisans. With Allied help, the Partisans drove the Germans out of Yugoslavia in 1944.

Even in Germany itself, a small underground move­ment opposed the Nazis. In July 1944, a group of Ger­man army officers planted a bomb intended to kill Hitler. However, Hitler escaped the explosion with minor inju­ries. He ordered the plotters arrested and executed.

The risks of joining the resistance were great. A re­sistance worker caught by the Nazis faced certain death. The Germans sometimes rounded up and executed hun­dreds of civilians in revenge for an act of sabotage against their occupation forces.

Propaganda. All the warring nations used propa­ganda to win support for their policies. Governments aimed propaganda at their own people and at the enemy. Radio broadcasts reached the largest audiences. Films, posters, and cartoons were also used.

The Nazis skilfully used propaganda to spread their beliefs. Joseph Goebbels directed Germany's Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment, which controlled publi­cations, radio programmes, films, and the arts in Ger­many and German-occupied Europe. The ministry worked to persuade people of the superiority of Ger­man culture and of Germany's right to rule the world.

Mussolini stirred the Italians with dreams of restoring Japan promised conquered peoples a share in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, which would unite all eastern Asia under Japanese control. Using the slogan "Asia for the Asians," the Japanese claimed that they were freeing Asia from European rule.

Nightly news bulletins beamed by the British Broad­casting Corporation (BBC) to the European mainland provided truthful information about the day's fighting. The Nazis made it a crime for people in Germany and German-held lands to listen to BBC broadcasts. In 1942, the Voice of America, a U.S. government radio service, began broadcasting to Axis-occupied countries.

The warring countries also engaged in psychological warfare intended to destroy the enemy's will to fight Al­lied planes dropped leaflets over Germany that told of Nazi defeats. The Axis nations employed a few traitors who broadcast radio programmes to weaken the morale of Allied soldiers. For example, William Joyce, a Briton who claimed German citizenship, made broadcasts from Germany. He was nicknamed "Lord Haw-Haw." An Amer­ican, Iva D'Aquino, who was called "Tokyo Rose," broad­cast for Japan. Such broadcasts merely amused most troops and civilians who heard them.

World War II affected the civilian populations of all the fighting nations. But the effects were extremely un­even. Much of Europe and large parts of Asia suffered widespread destruction and hardship. The United States, Canada, and Australia, which lay far from the battlefronts, were spared most of the horror of war.

The Allied war effort. Most people living in Allied countries fully backed the war effort. Nearly all Allied citizens despised Nazism and wished to defeat it. They also wanted to defeat Japanese militarism.

Producing for the war. Victory in World War II re­quired an enormous amount of war materials, including huge numbers of ships, tanks, aircraft, and weapons. The United States, in particular, built many plants to manufacture war goods. Governments also turned old factories into war plants. For example, car factories began to produce tanks and aircraft.

The United States hugely increased its output. The U.S. government called for the production of 60,000 air­craft during 1942—a goal many industrialists believed was impossible to achieve. Vet U.S. war plants turned out nearly 86,000 planes the following year. Shipbuild­ing gains were just as impressive. For example, the time needed to build an aircraft carrier dropped from 36 months in 1941 to 15 months in 1945. Britain, with facto­ries frequently damaged in air raids, maintained and even increased its output during World War II. Nations such as Canada and Australia had become more impor­tant industrial powers by the war's end.

Millions of women in the Allied nations joined the la­bour force during World War II, after men left for com­bat Women worked in shipyards and aircraft factories and filled many jobs previously held only by men. In Britain, women served as drivers, nurses, firewatchers, and air raid wardens. They also worked in voluntary services helping people who lost homes and belong­ings in air raids. Women replaced men on farms as well as in factories. They helped to raise the crops that fed Allied troops.

Financing the war. The war put the economies of the warring nations under great strain. Governments bor­rowed from individuals and businesses by selling them war bonds, certificates, notes, and stamps. Taxes also helped pay war costs. There were economy drives'to increase efficiency, and avoid waste of reusable materi­als such as scrap metal. Even the richest Allied nation, the United States, spent more money than it raised to pay for the war. National debts increased.

Government controls over civilian life increased in most Allied nations. Governments set up various agen­cies and ministries to direct the war effort. These bodies controlled factory production, limited price increases, censored newspapers and newsreels, and set up ration­ing schemes to distribute scarce goods fairly. Each fam­ily received a book of ration coupons to use for such items as sugar, meat, butter, and clothing.

Mobilizing for the war. Great Britain, the United States, and other Allied nations introduced conscription or draft (compulsory military service). Britain introduced conscription in 1940, for men aged between 181 and 51 for both military and industrial service, and for women aged between 20 and 30 for industrial service and the women's auxiliary forces. Boys and girls between 16 and 18 had to register for possible enrolment in youth or­ganizations. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa also introduced conscription, and similar call-up rules were applied in other Allied nations. The United States introduced its first peacetime conscription in 1940, requiring all men between the ages of 21 and 35 to register for military service. The U.S. draft was later ex­tended to men aged 18 to 45. All over the world, mil­lions of men were called up to serve in the army, navy, or air force. Millions more men volunteered.

Women also served in the armed forces. They worked as mechanics, drivers, clerks, and cooks, and also filled many other noncombat positions.

Some people who did work of special importance, such as engineers, were not liable for conscription. In Britain, young men were conscripted to work in the coal mines, as well as in the armed services.

In all the Allied countries, civilians left their jobs to serve in the armed forces. Soon after war began in 1939, Commonwealth troops began moving into combat areas alongside British and other Allied forces. The Australian 6th Division was raised shortly after Sept. 1939 and left for the Middle East in January 1940. Many other Com­monwealth troops were stationed in Great Britain.

Later, after the United States entered the war, large numbers of U.S. troops were based in Britain. For many people in Britain, it was their first chance of meeting men and women from these countries. Relations be­tween civilians and soldiers were usually good. After the war many Americans returned home with British wives, who were known as “G.l. brides.”

Treatment of enemy aliens. Germans, Italians, Japanese and other citizens of Axis nations living in Allied countries risked being interned, or held in restriction, as enemy aliens. In the United States, only newly arrived Japanese immigrants were treated unjustly. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, some Americans di­rected their anger at people of Japanese ancestry. In 1942, anti-Japanese hysteria led the U.S. government to move about 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry from their homes on the west coast of the United States to re­location camps inland. About two-thirds of these people were United States citizens.

Civil defence. The civilian population of Great Britain united wholeheartedly behind the war effort. People worked long hours in factories and accepted severe shortages of food, clothing, and other goods. Many suf­fered bomb damage to their homes. World War II was a war in which civilians were in the front line. Government planners in Britain expected air raids. They based their plans on the experience of the Spanish Civil War, in which bombing from the air had caused severe damage to towns. Civil defence plans were made, involving the

police, ambulance and rescue services, and fire bri­gades. Air raid wardens worked in every neighbour­hood, reporting to a central control on each bomb inci­dent during an air raid. Civilians worked to rescue people trapped in bombed buildings. Firefighters con­trolled fierce blazes that engulfed streets and factories. Men too old for the armed forces volunteered to serve in a reserve local defence force known as the Home Guard.

In Germany, most of the people greeted the start of World War II with little enthusiasm. But Germany's string of easy victories from 1939 to mid-1941 stirred support for the war. By the summer of 1941, the Ger­mans did not expect the war to last much longer.

Civilian life. Food, clothing, and other consumer goods remained plentiful in Germany during the early years of the war. Imports poured in from Nazi-occupied countries of Europe. The Allied bombing of Germany got off to a slow start and did little damage at first.

Germany's situation had changed by late 1942. The armed forces were bogged down in the Soviet Union, and there were fewer reports of German victories to cheer the people. Allied bombs rained down day and night on German cities. Consumer goods became in­creasingly scarce. Yet the people continued to work hard for the war effort.

The Nazi terror. Hitler's dreaded secret police, the Gestapo, ruthlessly crushed opposition to the Nazi Party. The Gestapo arrested anyone suspected of opposing Nazism in Germany and in German-held territories.

To free German men for combat, the Gestapo re­cruited workers from occupied countries. Millions of Europeans were eventually forced to work long hours under terrible conditions in German war plants. Many died of mistreatment or starvation.

The Nazis brutally persecuted several groups, includ­ing Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs. By 1942, Hitler had started a campaign to murder all European Jews. The Nazis rounded up Jewish men, women, and children from oc­cupied Europe and shipped them in railway wagons to concentration camps. About 6 million jews died in con­centration camps during World War II. Many were shot by firing squads or killed in groups in gas chambers. Others died of lack of food, disease, or torture. The Nazis also slaughtered many Poles, Gypsies, and mem­bers of other groups.

In the Soviet Union, conditions were especially diffi­cult, because fierce fighting went on for nearly four years. Stalin ordered retreating Soviet soldiers to bum everything in their path that German troops could use for food or shelter. But that scorched-earth policy also caused great hardships for the Soviet people. Millions of Soviet civilians died of famine and other war-related causes. In the Ukraine and areas occupied by the Soviet Union, many of the people at first welcomed the con­quering German troops. They believed that the Germans would deliver them from Stalin's harsh rule. But the cru­elty of the Nazi occupation forces turned the people against them. During World War II, civilians and sol­diers in the Soviet Union fought the Germans with a ha­tred and determination seldom matched elsewhere in Europe.

Occupied countries. Germany looted the con­quered lands to feed its own people and fuel its war ef­fort. Opponents of Nazism lived in constant fear of Ge­stapo brutality.

Japan came closest to collapse of all the warring na­tions. As the Allies closed in, they deprived Japan of

more and more of the raw materials needed by the country's industries. Allied bombers pounded Japan's cities, and Allied submarines sank Japanese cargo ships. By 1945, hunger and malnutrition were widespread in Japan. But the Japanese people remained willing to make enormous sacrifices for the war effort.

Consequences of the war

Deaths and destruction. World War II took more lives and caused more destruction than any other war. Altogether, about 70 million people served in the armed forces of the Allied and Axis nations. About 17 million of them lost their lives. The Soviet Union suffered about 71 million battle deaths, more than any other country. The United States and Great Britain had the fewest battle deaths of the major powers. About 400,000 American and about 350,000 British military personnel died in the war. Germany lost about 3| million servicemen, and Japan about 11 million.

Aerial bombing rained destruction on civilian as well as military targets. Many cities lay in ruins, especially in Germany and Japan. Bombs wrecked houses, factories, and transportation and communication systems. Land battles also spread destruction over vast areas. After the war, millions of starving and homeless people wan­dered among the ruins of Europe and Asia.

No one knows how many civilians died as a direct re­sult of World War II. Bombing raids destroyed many of the records needed to estimate those deaths. In addition, millions of people died in fires, of diseases, and of other causes after such essential services as fire fighting and health care broke down in war-torn areas.

The Soviet Union and China suffered the highest toll of civilian deaths during World War II. As many as 20 million Soviet and 10 million Chinese civilians may have died. Many of the deaths resulted from famine.

Displaced persons. World War II uprooted millions of people. By the war's end, more than 12 million dis­placed persons remained in Europe. They included or­phans, prisoners of war, survivors of Nazi concentration and slave labour camps, and people who had fled invad­ing armies and war-torn areas. Others were displaced by changes in national borders. For example, many Ger­mans moved into Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other lands in eastern Europe that the Nazis took over. After the war, those countries expelled German residents.

To help displaced persons, the Allies established the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). UNRRA began operating in 1944 in areas freed by the Allies from Nazi occupation. The organization set up camps for displaced persons and provided them with food, clothing, and medical supplies. By 1947, most of the displaced persons had been resettled. However, about a million people still remained in camps. Many had fled from countries in eastern Europe and refused to return to homelands that had come under Communist rule.

New power struggles arose after World War II ended. The war had exhausted the leading prewar powers of Europe and Asia. Germany and Japan ended the war in complete defeat, and Great Britain and France were severely weakened. Emerging nations, such as India, sought independence from their old colonial rul­ers. The United States and the Soviet Union emerged : from the war as the world's leading powers. Their war­time alliance soon collapsed as the Soviet Union sought to spread Communism in Europe and Asia. The struggle between the Communist world, led by the Soviet Union, and the non-Communist world, led by the United States, became known as the Cold War.

After 1945, the United States found it impossible to return to the policy of isolation it had followed before the war. Americans realized that they needed strong allies, and they helped the war-torn nations to recover.

World War II had united the Soviet people behind a great patriotic effort. The Soviet Union came out of the war stronger than ever before, in spite of the severe de­struction it had suffered. Before the war ended, the Soviet Union had absorbed three nations along the Baltic Sea—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. It had also taken parts of Poland, Romania, Finland, and Czechoslovakia by mid-1945. At the end of the war, Soviet troops oc­cupied most of eastern Europe. In March 1946, Churchill warned that an "Iron Curtain" had descended across Eu­rope, dividing eastern Europe from western Europe. Be­hind the Iron Curtain, the Soviet Union helped Commu­nist governments take power in Bulgaria, Czechoslo­vakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania.

Communism also gained strength in the Far East. The Soviet Union set up a Communist government in North Korea after the war. In China, Mao Zedong's Communist forces battled Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist armies. Late in 1949, Chiang fled to the island of Taiwan, and China joined the Communist world.

By 1947, Communists threatened to take control of Greece, and the Soviet Union was demanding military bases in Turkey. That year, U.S. President Truman an­nounced that the United States would provide military and economic aid to any country threatened by Commu­nism. American aid helped Greece and Turkey resist Communist aggression.

In 1948, the United States set up the Marshall Plan to help war-torn nations in Europe rebuild their econo­mies. Under the plan, 18 nations received 13 billion U.S. dollars in food, machinery, and other goods. The Soviet Union forbade countries in eastern Europe to partici­pate in the Marshall Plan.

The nuclear age opened with the development of the atomic bomb during World War II. Many people be­lieved that weapons capable of mass destruction would make war unthinkable in the future. They hoped that the world would learn to live in peace. But a race to develop ever more powerful weapons soon began.

At the end of World War II, only the United States knew how to build an atomic weapon. In 1946, the United States proposed the creation of an international agency that would control atomic energy and ban the production of nuclear weapons. But the Soviet Union objected to an inspection system, and the proposal was dropped. Stalin ordered Soviet scientists to develop an atomic bomb, and they succeeded in 1949. During the early 1950's, the United States and the Soviet Union each tested an even more destructive weapon, the hydrogen bomb.

People have feared a nuclear war since the nuclear age began. At times, Cold War tensions threatened to erupt into war between the two superpowers. But the terrifying destructiveness of nuclear weapons may well have kept them from risking a major war.

Establishing the peace

Birth of the United Nations (UN). Out of the horror of World War II came efforts to prevent war from ever again engulfing the world. In 1943, representatives of the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China met in Moscow. They agreed to establish an inter­national organization that would work to promote peace. The four Allied powers met again in 1944 at Dumbarton Oaks, an estate in Washington, D.C The del­egates decided to call the new organization the United Nations. In April 1945, representatives from 50 nations gathered in San Francisco, California, U.S.A., to draft a charter for the United Nations. They signed the charter in June, and it went into effect on October 24.

Peace with Germany. Before World War II ended, the Allies had decided on a military occupation of Ger­many after its defeat. They divided Germany into four zones, with the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France each occupying a zone. The four powers jointly administered Berlin.

At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, the Allies set forth their occupation policy. They agreed to abolish Germany's armed forces and to outlaw the Nazi Party. Germany lost territory east of the Oder and Neisse riv­ers. Most of the region went to Poland. The Soviet Union gained the northeastern corner of this territory.

The Allies brought to trial Nazi leaders accused of war crimes. The trials exposed the monstrous evils in­flicted by Nazi Germany. Many leading Nazis were sen­tenced to death. The most important war trials took place in the German city of Nuremberg from 1945 to 1949.

Soon after the occupation began, the Soviet Union stopped cooperating with its Western Allies. It blocked all efforts to reunite Germany. The Western Allies gradu­ally joined their zones into one economic unit. But the Soviet Union forbade its zone to join.

The city of Berlin lay deep within the Soviet zone of Germany. In June 1948, the Soviet Union sought to drive the Western powers from Berlin by blocking all road, rail, and water routes to the city. For over a year, the Western Allies flew in food, fuel, and other goods to Berlin. The Soviet Union finally lifted the Berlin blockade in May 1949, and the airlift ended in September.

The Western Allies set up political parties in their zones and held elections. In September 1949, the thrpe Western zones were officially combined as the Federal Republic of Germany. It became known as West Ger­many. In May 1955, the Western Allies signed a treaty ending the occupation of West Germany, and granting the country full independence. But the treaty was not a general peace treaty because the Soviet Union refused to sign it.

The Soviet Union set up a Communist government in its zone. In October 1949, the Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic, also called East Germany. Soviet control over East Germany remained strong, after the country became officially independent in 1955. It did not relax until the 1980's, shortly before the two Germanies reunited. See Germany (History).

Peace with Japan. The military occupation of Japan began in August 1945. Americans far outnumbered other troops in the Allied occupation forces because of the key role their country had played in defeating Japan. General MacArthur directed the occupation as supreme commander for the Allied nations. He introduced many reforms designed to rid Japan of its military institutions and transform it into a democracy. A Constitution drawn up by MacArthur's staff took effect in 1947. The Constitu­tion transferred all political rights from the Japanese em­peror to the people. In addition, the Constitution granted voting rights to women, and denied Japan's right to declare war.

The Allied occupation forces brought to trial 25 Japa­nese war leaders and government officials who were ac­cused of war crimes. Seven of these individuals were ex­ecuted. The other people who were tried received prison sentences.

In September 1951, the United States and most of the other Allied nations signed a peace treaty with Japan. The treaty took away Japan's overseas empire. But it per­mitted Japan to rearm. The Allied occupation of Japan ended soon after the nations signed the peace treaty. However, a new treaty permitted the United States to keep troops in Japan. China's Nationalist government signed its own peace treaty with Japan in 1952, and the Soviet Union and Japan also signed a separate peace treaty in 1956.

Peace with other countries. Soon after World War

ended, the Allies began to draw up peace treaties with Italy and four other countries that had fought with the Axis—Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, and Romania. The treaties limited the armed forces of the defeated coun­tries and required them to pay war damages. The trea­ties also called for territorial changes. Bulgaria gave up territory to Greece and Yugoslavia. Czechoslovakia gained land from Hungary. Finland lost territory to the Soviet Union. Italy gave up land to France, Yugoslavia, and Greece. The country also lost its empire in Africa. Romania gained territory from Hungary, but in turn it lost land to Bulgaria and the Soviet Union.