Nearly 80 years after the end of World War II, we look at the story of this tragic conflict. Barely 21 years after the end of World War I, this even bloodier war broke out, and it ended with the use of nuclear weapons. So far, the world has avoided another truly global conflict, but history tells us that we can never take peace for granted.
France, Great Britain and the United States are the victors of World War I (1914–1918). They impose the harsh Treaty of Versailles, which admittedly is less draconian than the peace the Germans imposed on France in 1871. Out go the Fourteen Points of the naïve and idealistic US President Woodrow Wilson. Instead, populists demand that the victors squeeze the Germans “until the pips squeak.”
Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg lies to a German parliamentary committee, claiming that the military did not lose on the battlefield but was stabbed in the back. Per this myth, the Weimar Coalition of Social Democrat, Catholic and liberal politicians signed the Treaty of Versailles out of their lust for power. From now on, nationalists and right-wing extremists blame socialists, communists and, above all, Jews. The Weimar Republic gets off to a rocky start.
The economist John Maynard Keynes resigns from the British delegation to write The Economic Consequences of Peace, predicting German resentment, economic ruin and even war. History would prove Keynes right.
The League of Nations is born. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, this international organization is the brainchild of Wilson. Henry Cabot Lodge, the Senate majority leader and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, torpedoes Wilson’s efforts to join the League because of Republican worries about expenses and loss of national autonomy. Neither Great Britain nor France is strong enough to give the League any spine, and the organization is stillborn. Later, Italy and Germany mock its principles.
In late 1922, Germany failed to meet its reparation payments to France on time. In response, la grande nation occupies Ruhr Valley, Germany’s main industrial region, in January 1923. This leads to outrage in Germany, strikes in Ruhr and hyperinflation in the young Teutonic nation. By November 1923, the US dollar is worth more than 4.2 trillion German marks.
Economic crises often lead to political crises, and Germany in 1923 is no exception. Inspired by Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini’s March on Rome in October 1922, Adolf Hitler enters a beer hall, fires a shot into the ceiling and declares a national revolution. The putsch ends in chaos with Hitler arrested, but the fuse is now lit. Nazism enters the national consciousness.
Hitler serves nine months behind bars for rebellion. In prison, Hitler writes Mein Kampf, which literally translates to “My Struggle.” It becomes the manifesto of Nazism. He condemns communism and Judaism as the world’s two greatest ills. He deems it humane to weed out the weak and argues that the superior Aryan race needs lebensraum (“living space”) in Eastern Europe at the expense of the untermenschen (“subhuman”) of the inferior Slavic race.
On October 29, known as Black Tuesday, the American stock market suffers a meltdown. The Wall Street crash leads to the Great Depression, which affects the entire world. Industrialized nations can no longer keep their factories humming; colonies suffer deprivation, and trade wars break out.
Economic pain makes people around the world angry. The colonial powers, especially Great Britain and France, struggle to maintain their empires. Anti-colonial movements in East Asia, India and the Middle East are on the rise. In India, Mahatma Gandhi has already kicked off the civil disobedience movement by defying colonial salt laws. In Germany, Hitler rails against reparations and begins his rise to power.
American ships forced isolationist Japan to open up in 1853, and the Japanese responded with the Meiji Restoration in 1868. To avoid colonization, Japan turned militaristic, emulating Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s Germany. In 1905, Japan defeated Russia. The Great Depression destroyed the brief ascendancy of civilians. Now in 1931, the Kwantung army blows up the Japanese-owned railway line in Mukden, blaming it on China. It ignores orders from Tokyo and conquers Manchuria. The shining sun of Japanese militarism now shines ever more brightly.
Forced collectivization and the liquidation of the land-owning peasant class labeled “kulaks” leads to the 1932–3193 Soviet famine, which kills an estimated three to ten million people. Joseph Stalin follows this with the Great Purge of 1936–1938, in which millions of innocents are either killed or packed off to brutal Gulag labor camps. The young Soviet Union already used terrors as an instrument of state policy, but under Stalin, terror spirals to chilling levels where the right to life completely evaporates.
On January 30, Hitler becomes the German chancellor, i.e., prime minister. The Nazi Party has just three ministerial positions in the cabinet, but crucially, it controls much of the police. Nazis set fire to the Reichstag parliament building and blame the communists. This nets the Nazis improved results in the March 5 elections just six days later, but they still fall short of an absolute majority.
Only by arresting 181 communist deputies and preventing several Social Democrats from attending the Reichstag do the Nazis pass the Enabling Act. This transforms Hitler’s government into a de facto dictatorship. From now on, Hitler never looks back.
Hitler appoints Joseph Goebbels as Minister of Propaganda soon after taking power. Goebbels quickly asserts control over newspapers, radio, publishing, film and art. He bans opposition voices, promotes Nazi ideology and builds a personality cult around Hitler. Goebbels stages mass rallies and floods German life with coordinated slogans, images and lies. He frames Nazi goals as German national destiny and antisemitism as a way of life. From now on, every German message — from war news to children’s books — passes through Goebbels’s ministry.
Hitler orders a purge to eliminate rivals and win over the Wehrmacht military. He targets Ernst Röhm, head of the Sturmabteilung (SA) — the original Nazi paramilitary — and the party’s socialist wing. Röhm wants a “second revolution” to break elite power and demands the SA replace the Wehrmacht. Conservatives urge Hitler to crush him. In the Night of Long Knives, Schutzstaffel (SS) — a new Nazi paramilitary — squads execute Röhm, SA commanders, and critics. The killings silence the revolutionary wing, secure army loyalty and make Hitler ruler.
Mussolini’s troops invade Ethiopia. France and Great Britain — Africa’s dominant colonial powers — sacrifice the only independent country on the continent, deciding that a war with Italy over a distant African territory is not worth it. The next year, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie gives a rousing speech at the League of Nations, warning that others “may one day suffer the fate of Ethiopia.” He gets applause but no help. The Covenant of the League of Nations is now a dead letter.
On March 7, German military forces enter the Rhineland, violating the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties. These treaties had specifically imposed the demilitarization of this German territory on the left bank of the Rhine river. Remilitarization now begins in full swing.
From 1936 to 1939, Republicans, supported by Mexico, the Soviet Union and international volunteers — and covertly by France and Great Britain — fight Nationalists backed by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in the bloody Spanish Civil War. Pablo Picasso’s Guernica and Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls immortalize this conflict, which is regarded as a “dress rehearsal” for World War II.
On July 7, the Battle of Lugou Bridge, better known as the Battle of Marco Polo Bridge, breaks out between Chinese and Japanese troops. In 1931, the Japanese had invaded Manchuria and set up a puppet regime with Puyi, the deposed Qing emperor, as its nominal head. Tensions had been rising with sporadic clashes increasing. Now full-scale war breaks out.
Beginning December 1, Japanese troops lay siege to Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China (RoC). On December 13, they take the city. Mopping-up operations soon descend into an orgy of slaughter. Japanese soldiers execute tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of men they suspect of being Chinese military personnel, rape tens of thousands of women and set fire to many quarters of the city. The “Rape of Nanjing” enflames international opinion against Tokyo and convinces the Chinese that they must fight until the bitter end.
To halt the Japanese advance, the Kuomintang government breaches the dikes along the Yellow River, following German officer Alexander von Falkenhausen’s plan. A key figure in Sino-German cooperation (1933–1938), Falkenhausen helps modernize the Kuomintang army in exchange for raw materials. The resulting floods destroy thousands of villages and kill 400,000–900,000 civilians through drowning, starvation and disease. Millions flee. The government restores the original course of the river only in 1947, leaving behind lasting resentment.
Immediately after gobbling up Austria, Hitler becomes the advocate of ethnic Germans living in the Sudetenland. This area is in Czechoslovakia, one of the many new countries that emerged after the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1919. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flies to Munich, Germany, for “the settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem” and returns to London promising “peace for our time” after sacrificing Czechoslovakia on Hitler’s altar.
Early during the war, the Japanese occupied the densely populated and wealthy east coast of China. However, they lacked the resources or manpower to push into the vast interior. Mountainous terrain, poor infrastructure and persistent guerrilla resistance cripple their advance. Despite controlling key ports and cities for years, the Japanese are unable to force the RoC to negotiate or collapse. Led by General Chiang Kai-shek, nicknamed Generalissimo, China refuses to yield and, in October 1938, the conflict degenerates into a war of attrition.
In a nationwide pogrom, Nazi mobs destroy thousands of Jewish homes, businesses, synagogues and schools. They kill at least 91 Jews and lock up over 30,000 more, sending them to concentration camps. Police and fire brigades receive orders not to interfere. The Nazis orchestrate the pogrom but claim the violence to be spontaneous. The shattered glass gives the pogrom its name — Kristallnacht, or “Night of Broken Glass.” Kristallnacht marks a shift from discrimination to open violence and signals the coming annihilation of Europe’s Jews.
On April 7, Mussolini invades Albania. Albania lies just 72 kilometers off the coast of southern Italy and was part of the Roman Empire. Mussolini sees the “Illyrian” coast as part of his new empire. After World War I, Italy briefly occupied part of the country but was forced out in 1920. Albania became an Italian protectorate in 1925. Invasion this time leads to Albanian surrender within a week of fighting.
Austria and Sudetenland only whet Nazi appetite for Lebensraum in the east. On August 23, Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop sign what comes to be known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The foreign ministers of the Soviet Union and Germany promise not to go to war against each other. They also secretly agree to carve up Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland. The Soviet Union signs this pact only after the United Kingdom and France spurn Moscow’s offer of a tripartite alliance like the one before World War I.
On September 1, Germany invades Poland. Two days later, Great Britain declares war on Germany. On September 17, the Soviet Union invades Poland. World War II begins.
After the declaration of war, there is no action on Germany’s Western Front till May. This eight-month period is dubbed the “Phoney War.” Germany, Britain and France engage in economic warfare while they prepare their forces. The Chamberlain government still hopes for a last-minute peace.
German U-boats (Unterseeboote, or submarines) and surface raiders try to cut off Britain by sinking merchant ships bringing supplies from North America. Allied convoys, escorted by destroyers and aircraft, face relentless attacks in open water. The Battle of the Atlantic is the war’s longest continuous campaign. At its peak, the U-boat threat nearly starves Britain into submission. The tide turns by mid-1943 with improved radar, sonar and air coverage. By 1945, the Allies regain control of the seas. But the cost is staggering: over 70,000 dead.
Metal imports from France stop, and Germany eyes Swedish iron for its war machine. Britain and France aim to enter neutral Norway and Sweden for three purposes: (1) to control the long Scandinavian coastline, denying access to Germany, (2) to deny German access to Swedish iron and (3) to open a new front against Germany, weakening its imminent invasion of France.
In Poland, the Soviets kill 22,000 captive Polish officers, police and intellectuals in cold blood. Infamously, they blame the Nazis for this massacre. The infamous incident is dubbed the Katyn massacre after the forest in western Russia where the Nazis go on to find mass graves in 1943.
German troops invade Denmark and Norway. Copenhagen capitulates within two hours and ill-prepared pacifist Oslo surrenders as well. The Norwegians do sink German flagship Blücher, killing 1,000 soldiers and allowing the king and his government to flee to London. The British and the French intervene, but the Germans prevail after some bitter fighting.
At 2100 hours, the German high command orders troops to invade France. Erich von Manstein’s cunning plan works its magic. Blitzkrieg (lightning war) uses tanks, motorized infantry and artillery combined with close air support to advance deep into enemy territory on a narrow front, bypassing pockets of resistance and flanking fixed defenses like France’s formidable Maginot Line. Germans win and occupy Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and France.
Even as war breaks out in Norway and France, Winston Churchill, a bitter opponent of the policy of appeasement, becomes British prime minister on May 10. That very night, the Royal Air Force (RAF) bombs Dortmund, an industrial city in the Ruhr region of Germany. Three days later, on May 13, Churchill demonstrates his virtuoso oratory in his first speech to Parliament, thundering, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
Advancing German forces push Allied forces, chiefly the British Expeditionary Force, back to the coast. They inexplicably stop attacking at Dunkirk, France. In a legendary operation, the British hastily assemble over 800 military and civilian vessels and rescue more than 330,000 Allied soldiers. Ferocious fighting by the French First Army at Lille, France, holds up seven German divisions, including three armored divisions. Churchill gives his “We will fight them on the beaches” speech and promises, “We will never surrender.”
After fleeing to London, French General Charles de Gaulle broadcasts the Appeal of June 18 (L’Appel du 18 juin). He rejects collaboration with the German occupiers and urges the French to keep fighting. Though few hear the speech at the time, it marks the start of the Free French movement. De Gaulle claims to speak for the true France. He positions himself as the face of resistance and begins building support in exile. His words echo across the war, shaping how the world — and France — will remember his role.
France surrenders to Germany on June 22. According to the armistice agreement, Germany is to occupy the northern three-fifths of France. A rump French state is to administer the rest, along with the colonies, and Germany recognizes it as the legitimate government of the entire country. On July 10, the French Third Republic votes to reorganize itself as an authoritarian regime, granting Marshal Philippe Pétain dictatorial powers. The new state is formally called the French State but is better known by the name of its de facto capital, Vichy.
After Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain begins in earnest. When the RAF bombs Berlin, Germany, on August 25, the German Luftwaffe air force responds by bombing British cities. The era of total war begins and civilians are fair game now. The British prevail in this aerial battle and Churchill declares in parliament, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
Hitler urges Franco to let German troops cross Spain and capture Gibraltar in Operation Felix. Franco stalls because Spain is exhausted and bankrupt after the civil war. He demands massive aid and African territories, knowing Hitler won’t agree. Felix collapses by March 1941; Gibraltar stays British, and Spain stays out of the war. Franco’s prescient refusal of Hitler spares his country from ruin. Franco flirts with the Axis powers but never joins them. Unlike Hitler and Mussolini, he survives the war and retains power until his death in 1975.
In Central Africa, Free French forces under de Gaulle gain their first major foothold. After initial resistance, colonies like Chad, Cameroon and French Equatorial Africa declare allegiance to Free France. Governor Félix Éboué of Chad becomes the first colonial official to rally behind de Gaulle. The region provides troops, resources and legitimacy to the Free French cause. From bases in Central Africa, Free French units launch operations into Libya. These successes keep de Gaulle relevant and give Free France territory, manpower and momentum.
In French West Africa, de Gaulle attempts to conquer Dakar from Vichy forces but fails. British and Free French forces launch an amphibious assault to seize the strategic port. Vichy forces resist and local support for de Gaulle never materializes. After several days of naval clashes and stalled landings, the Allies withdraw. The failed raid is a major setback for de Gaulle, damaging his reputation and straining ties with Churchill. West Africa remains under Vichy control until late in the war.
Stalin and Ribbentrop exchange letters to deepen the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and explore the possibility of Moscow joining the Axis Powers. Stalin sends a proposal to Berlin, offering alliance in exchange for German recognition of the Baltics and the Balkans lying in the Soviet sphere of influence. Some Germans like the offer, but Hitler does not. He believes Stalin intends to dominate Eastern Europe and eventually invade Germany. After the war, Stalin claims that he was merely “testing the enemy.”
On October 28, badly armed and poorly commanded Italian troops move into Greece from Albania. Mussolini again appeals to the memory of the Roman Empire, which conquered and ruled Greece for centuries. The British give air and material support to the Greeks, who push the Italians back into Albania. The war turns into a bloody stalemate.
Italy invades Egypt. Italian General Rodolfo Graziani’s troops are supposed to seize the Suez Canal, the coronary artery of the British Empire. Instead, they suffer ignominious defeat. With a mere 1,900 casualties, the British take 133,298 Italian and Libyan prisoners. They also capture 420 tanks, over 845 guns and many aircraft.
To prevent supplies from reaching China through Vietnamese ports, Japan invades Indochina, a French colony. Japanese forces overwhelm the overstretched French troops within four days. Vichy France has no choice but to allow Japan to station troops there.
The US supports the Allies through the Lend-Lease Act, supplying food, oil and materiel. Initially, this measure largely helps Great Britain but later goes on to provide the basis for American support to the Soviet Union, China and other allies.
Despite being outgunned and outnumbered, the larger-than-life Desert Fox Erwin Rommel achieves spectacular victories in the Cyrenaica region of eastern Libya, capturing Benghazi on April 4. By April 11, he has chased the British down the Libyan coast back to Egypt. Only Tobruk, a deep-sea port 120 kilometers from the Egyptian border supplied by the Royal Navy, remains standing. Garrisoned by the Desert Rats — Australian, Polish, British and Indian troops — Tobruk holds out until the British Eighth Army relieves it on November 27.
Germany backs a coup in Iraq led by former Prime Minister Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, who seeks to cut British access to oil and link up with the Axis powers. The Luftwaffe sends a small force, which flies in from Vichy-controlled Syria, to support Ali. The British respond swiftly, landing troops in Basra as well striking west from Palestine. They crush the revolt within weeks and reassert control over Iraq. The German mission fails, showing the limits of the Axis reach beyond Europe.
After German planes use Vichy-controlled Syria to aid the pro-Axis coup in Iraq, the Allies invade Syria and Lebanon to prevent Axis powers from using them as launchpads on British territories. Free French, Indian and Australian troops fight Vichy forces in harsh terrain. Though both sides are French, Vichy troops resist fiercely. After weeks of fighting, the Allies take control, and the Free French boost their standing.
Together, Vichy France and the Italian Empire control the majority of northern Africa, with the British colonies of Egypt and Sudan forming a strip in between. Italian troops stationed in the Horn of Africa and Libya attack Sudan, British Somaliland and Egypt. The British quickly reverse the early Italian successes. British Commander Archibald Wavell drives the Italians out of Egypt and chases them deep into Libya.
In response to Japanese aggression in China and Indochina, the US first seizes Japanese assets in the country and then halts oil exports to Japan. The British and Dutch empires — which control oil-rich territories in Southeast Asia — also cut Japan off. Japan relies almost entirely on foreign oil to fuel its war machine in China; over 80% of the island nation’s oil comes from the US alone. So, Tokyo has two options: negotiate a deal with the West and/or secure oil supplies through a military solution.
The US and Great Britain announce the Atlantic Charter. Although not a treaty, it lays out a vision for the postwar world based upon eight common principles: self-determination; the right of the people to choose their government; the rejection of territorial expansionism; the liberalization of international trade; freedom of the seas; and standards for international labor, economic and welfare. It strengthens US–UK solidarity, rejuvenates Woodrow Wilson’s vision for the world and inspires people in the colonies.
Churchill and Stalin launch a joint invasion of Iran to ensure that its oil fields do not fall into German hands. They depose Reza Pahlavi and install his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, on the throne. He would remain in charge until 1979.
German and Finnish forces surround Leningrad, Russia — formerly St. Petersburg and today Petrograd. This 872-day siege is one of the longest and most destructive in history. An estimated 1.5 million people die from starvation, exposure, disease and shelling. Supplies reach the city over Lake Ladoga on barges in the summer and trucks and ice-borne sleds in the winter. Soviet offensives in early 1943 rupture the German encirclement and drive the Germans westward in January 1944.
Atrocious weather conditions and formidable Soviet defensive structures slow the German advance on Moscow. Stalin chooses to stay in the city until mid-November and appears in the annual Red Square celebrations. The Soviets have large reserves and throw 75 fresh divisions into the fighting, while the Germans fail to send reinforcements and lose. The Battle of Moscow is the climax of Operation Barbarossa and dooms the German Third Reich (“Third Empire”) regime.
Franco sends the 18,000-strong Blue Division to fight Soviet forces. Spain is officially neutral, but Franco allows these Spanish volunteers to serve in the Wehrmacht to show anti-communist solidarity. They see action mainly around Leningrad, and thousands die in the brutal winter fighting. Allied pressure forces Franco to withdraw his forces by 1943. Some Spanish fanatics choose to continue fighting for the Wehrmacht and a few join the Waffen-SS, the combat branch of the SS.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe is unable to reach an oil agreement with the US. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt demands Japan withdraw from China, but Japanese War Minister Hideki Tojo and the army refuse to consider it. On October 16, Konoe tenders his resignation to Emperor Hirohito. Against Konoe’s advice, Hirohito selects Tojo as his replacement. War in the Pacific is now inevitable.
Japan decides to conquer the oil-rich Dutch East Indies. The US controls the nearby Philippines and Tokyo fears American intervention. To knock Washington out of the fight, Japan attacks the US Pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Japanese planes sink several warships and kill 2,393 Americans. The Pacific Fleet’s three aircraft carriers are out at sea and survive. Japan negotiated until 30 minutes before the attack and both countries were at peace. So, Americans regard the surprise Japanese attack as a cowardly sucker punch.
Japan implements its plan to capture the Dutch East Indies and invades on December 8. Simultaneously, Japanese forces attack the US-controlled Philippines, British Malaya, Hong Kong and the independent Kingdom of Thailand. The US, UK, Canada and the Netherlands declare war the same day. Australia does so on December 9.
Until Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt could only support his European allies by supplying food, fuel and materiel. Now, the US formally enters war in Europe by declaring war on Germany and Italy. The war now becomes truly global.
Churchill and Roosevelt back General Henri Giraud, a conservative French war hero who escaped from German hands twice and who agrees to Allied control of the French war effort. De Gaulle insists that only Frenchmen should lead la grande nation and denounces Giraud. De Gaulle also packs Free French offices with loyalists, wins support among French settlers in North Africa and the Resistance in France. In Algiers, the two generals co-chair the French Committee of National Liberation, but de Gaulle is firmly in the driver’s seat.
Unlike other Western colonies in Southeast Asia, the Philippines holds out against the Japanese onslaught for several months. The main American-Filipino forces abandon Manila and take up a defensive position on the nearby Bataan Peninsula, where they hold out for 105 days. The long siege throws a wrench in Japanese plans for more quick advances. Under orders from Roosevelt, General Douglas MacArthur escapes on March 11. From Australia, he declares, “I came through and I shall return.”
Japanese forces besiege and capture Singapore, in British Malaya. This island fortress was a crown jewel of the British Empire. Though the Allied forces outnumber the Japanese by more than two-to-one, they surrender. The defeat humiliates London. About 80,000 British, Indian and Australian troops surrendered in what Churchill calls the “worst disaster” in British military history. Even Hitler bemoans this loss of, in his view, racially superior Europeans to his Asian allies, and chooses not to congratulate the Japanese on their success.
The British develop the new Lancaster and Stirling heavy bombers, capable of taking the fight deep into Germany. Although the bombing of Lübeck on March 28, 1942, leads to a firestorm, Allied air raids start inflicting real damage from 1944, disrupting transport and destroying manufacturing in Germany. The British are aided by heavily armored bombers like the American B-17 Flying Fortress that fight their way into German airspace in the daytime and devastate cities. By the end of the war, over half a million German civilians are dead.
On April 9, 80,000 American-Filipino troops on Bataan surrender to the Japanese. The Japanese forcibly march them 105 kilometers across the Philippines’ Luzon region. They starve, beat and kill the surrendered troops. The Japanese regard them as captives and not prisoners of war (POWs). Only 54,000 make it to their destination at Camp O’Donnell. General George Marshall voices the outrage of the American public by threatening the “aboriginal [and] barbaric” Japanese with retribution.
On May 8, US and Australian forces interrupt Japanese warships en route to Port Moresby, in the British colony of New Guinea. The Battle of the Coral Sea (between New Guinea and Australia) exacts heavy losses from both sides. Although the Japanese sink more ships, they turn back without achieving their objective. This is Japan’s first strategic defeat in the war.
The US inflicts a crushing defeat on Japan in the Battle of Midway. American cryptographers give the US Navy the precise date and location of a Japanese attack on this US-controlled atoll. The US has three aircraft carriers while Japan deploys four which were part of the six involved in Pearl Harbor. The Americans sink all four Japanese aircraft carriers, losing only one themselves. Like Britain's victory at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), this turns the tide of war and becomes one of the most consequential naval battles in history.
British and German forces push back and forth across Libya throughout the summer and autumn of 1942. Rommel informs Berlin that his supply lines are overstretched, but Hitler orders him to press on into Egypt towards the Suez Canal, the lifeline of the British Empire. Rommel’s advance halts at El Alamein, a port city near Alexandria. After months of planning, British General Bernard Montgomery launches an offensive on October 23 and defeats Rommel after 13 days of pitched battle.
The US enters the ground war when Lieutenant General George Patton sails directly to North Africa and lands at the Moroccan ports of Safi, Casablanca and Port Lyautey on November 8. Simultaneously, US and British forces sailing from Britain capture the Algerian cities of Oran and Algiers. The allies quickly subdue light French resistance. Furious with his ally’s poor performance, Hitler decides to invade the unoccupied zone previously administered by Vichy on November 10. The next day, Mussolini captures the French island of Corsica.
Allied forces based in Algeria push eastward into the French colony of Algeria. Axis reinforcements arrive from Italy, and in February 1943, Rommel’s Afrika Korps joins them. These German troops evacuated Egypt and Libya after the Second Battle of El Alamein and now make their last stand in Algeria. After months of heavy fighting — which give the fresh American troops much-needed battlefield experience — Axis troops surrender on May 13, leaving North Africa under Allied control.
German and Axis troops attack the southern Russian city of Stalingrad — today known as Volgograd — the largest industrial center in the Soviet Union and a very important transport hub on the Volga River. Close-quarters combat ensues for months in history’s bloodiest battle; studies later estimate it took two million lives. Defying Hitler’s orders, about 91,000 exhausted, ill, wounded and starving Axis troops surrender, including 22 generals. This battle marks the biggest turning point of the war.
The Nazi war machine needs more oil than Germany and its captured territories can supply. They eye the oil-rich Caucasus region, southeast of Ukraine. On July 25, German troops overrun Rostov-on-Don, the Soviet stronghold that guards the western flank of the Caucasus. They penetrate deep into the region, but Soviet advances near Stalingrad threaten to cut them off, and the Germans are forced to withdraw.
The Guadalcanal campaign kicks off the first major land offensive by Allied forces against the Empire of Japan. These forces, predominantly US Marines, land on the islands of Guadalcanal, Tulagi and Florida in the southern Solomon Islands, destroying the possibility of a Japanese advance towards Australia. After several land and naval battles, the Allies emerge triumphant. The Allies transition from defensive to offensive operations for the first time in the war and seize the strategic initiative in the Pacific theater.
In India, the tide also turns against the British Empire. Dissatisfied by the UK’s offer of elections, self-government and dominion status after the war, Gandhi announces the Quit India Movement on August 8. Echoing Churchill, Gandhi makes a call to “do or die,” launching a mass uprising against British rule. The imperial response is heavy-handed suppression and mass incarceration.
Churchill and Roosevelt meet in Casablanca to plan the next stage of World War II. They discuss the impending invasion of Italy — a British priority — and a full-scale invasion of mainland Europe — an American priority. Both demand “unconditional surrender” from the Axis Powers and set the stage for a fight to the bitter end.
By now, Japan is on the back foot. On April 18, an American P-38 fighter shoots down Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s plane, killing the chief architect of Japanese naval strategy while he was on an inspection tour. By July 28, a year after they first landed, Japanese troops have evacuated Kiska Island in the Aleutian Islands, west of Alaska. This was their last foothold in the Western hemisphere.
After a year of Nazi terror, Jews in occupied Poland’s Warsaw Ghetto refuse to surrender to the SS and end up in a concentration camp. In the block-by-block fighting that ensues, about 13,000 Jews lose their lives. About half are suffocated or burnt alive. This was the largest Jewish revolt during the war. Despite knowing that they were doomed to fail, the rebels were determined “not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of [their] deaths.”
MacArthur implements Operation Cartwheel in the Solomon Islands. He adopts an island-hopping strategy, bypassing the major Japanese island fortresses and capturing less-defended islands one by one. At the same time, the US Navy blockades Japanese fortresses using submarines and other naval vessels, severing communications and supplies.
After failing to take Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad, the Germans launch their final strategic offensive on the Eastern Front. Thanks to their spies, the Russians have advance warning of a pincer attack around Kursk, Russia. The Allies invade Sicily, forcing the Germans to divert resources. The Russians halt the German offensive. Kursk is the largest single battle in world history. The Germans describe it as “another Verdun.” In the words of British historian Andrew Roberts, the “last gasp of Nazi aggression” runs out of steam.
Allied troops invade Sicily, causing the collapse of the Fascist regime. Italian King Victor Emmanuel III fires Mussolini and then orders his arrest on July 25. German troops invade northern and central Italy, and Austrian-born Waffen-SS paratrooper Otto Skorzeny rescues Mussolini in a spectacular prison break. The Germans set Mussolini up as the head of a new “Italian Social Republic,” headquartered in the northern resort town of Salò. The new state is essentially a German colony and Mussolini is now a puppet.
Chiang’s strategy during this phase of the war is of limited engagement. Rather than launching major offensives, he plans to wait out the Japanese, banking on American and Allied pressure to bring Tokyo to its knees. To support this indirect approach, Chiang permits US forces to run bombing raids against Japanese targets from air bases in China. While this earns American support, critics accuse Chiang of preserving his army for a future fight — not against Japan, but against Mao Zedong’s Communists.
In contrast to Chiang’s strategy, Mao’s communist forces adopt a dual strategy. They conduct guerrilla warfare against the Japanese, gaining popular legitimacy, while also fighting the Kuomintang. Though the Kuomintang and communists are officially united in the war effort, they distrust each other. Each side hoards resources and territory, preparing for the inevitable postwar showdown. The communists expand their influence through land reform, gaining rural support. By 1944, they are a real threat to the Kuomintang government.
King Victor Emmanuel III and Pietro Badoglio, Italy’s new prime minister, sign an armistice with the Allies on September 8. They flee Rome before the Germans capture the capital. Although the Kingdom of Italy cannot formally join the Allies, it fights Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic from its new headquarters in the southern city of Brindisi. Meanwhile, communist, Catholic, Slavic and royalist partisan groups spring up in the occupied North. The resulting Italian Civil War lasts a year and a half and claims hundreds of thousands of lives.
Naples, the largest city in southern Italy, falls to the Nazis on September 8. Sporadic resistance occurs throughout the month. Restive locals kill several German soldiers, provoking savage reprisals. Finally, the Nazis plan to destroy the port of Naples and deport the entire young male population into forced labor. News of the plan prompts a spontaneous citizen uprising organized entirely by the populace. Dubbed the Four Days of Naples (September 27–30), this uprising successfully ejects the German occupiers.
Prolonged drought in early 1943 causes famine in the Belgian mandate of Ruanda-Urundi (modern-day Rwanda and Burundi). Famine worsens because colonial authorities are sending agricultural produce as well as animals to the Belgian Congo as part of the Allied war effort. An estimated one-fifth to one-third of the population dies.
SS Chief Heinrich Himmler, the principal architect of the Holocaust, deems Gypsies and part-Gypsies to be on the same level as Jews and orders them to be placed in concentration camps. Long deeming them to be racially inferior, the SS has been deporting and murdering Gypsies, or Romanis, as they call themselves, since the beginning of the war. Now, the SS rounds up and slaughters tens of thousands of the Roma people.
After a series of Jewish uprisings in ghettos and concentration camps, Himmler orders the massacre of remaining Jewish forced laborers digging air defense trenches in Poland. The SS launches Operation Harvest Festival, gunning an estimated 43,000 Jews down in cold blood. This massacre in the Majdanek, Poniatowa and Trawniki concentration camps is the largest single massacre of Jews during the Holocaust.
The Tehran Conference brings Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin together for the first time. They reach an agreement on Operation Overlord, a plan to invade mainland Europe in June, giving Stalin the second front against the Nazis he has long been pleading for. The Soviet Man of Steel proposes executing 50,000 to 100,000 German officers to destroy the country’s ability to plan another war. This infuriates Churchill, who storms out of dinner.
Marshal Josip Broz Tito, communist resistance leader of the Partisans, proclaims a provisional democratic Yugoslav government in Jajce, a town in modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina. A month earlier, Churchill threw his support behind Tito at the Tehran Conference after growing frustrated with Draža Mihailović, the royalist general. Churchill would go on to make that support public in an address to the House of Commons on February 22, 1944.
On December 12, Hitler appoints Rommel to head Fortress Europa and plan German defenses against the expected Allied invasion. Twelve days later, on Christmas Eve, the Allies appoint General Dwight David Eisenhower as the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe in charge of this invasion.
American General Joseph Stilwell, commander of US forces in China, becomes frustrated with Chiang’s refusal to mobilize his armies for large-scale ground operations. Stilwell warns that Chiang’s inaction has left southern China, including key American air bases, vulnerable. He believes Chiang prioritizes maintaining his own power over defeating the Japanese. Tensions between the two deepen, straining US–China relations. Stilwell’s concerns, dismissed at the time, will soon be validated by a devastating Japanese offensive.
The Battle of Monte Cassino, also known as the Battle for Rome, becomes one of the bloodiest campaigns in Western Europe. Allied forces launch repeated assaults against the German Gustav Line, suffering heavy casualties in brutal mountain combat. A massive bombing campaign destroys the historic abbey at Monte Cassino, Italy. Meanwhile, the Allies attempt to outflank the Germans with a surprise amphibious landing at Anzio and Nettuno. After months of stalemate and fierce fighting, German defenses finally collapse. The road to Rome opens.
In early 1944, the German retreat on the Eastern Front turns to a full rout. The Soviet Red Army offensives push rapidly westward, breaking through German lines and recapturing vast territories. The Wehrmacht, overstretched and demoralized, cannot hold its ground. Soviet forces encircle and destroy German divisions with growing speed and precision. Hitler refuses to authorize withdrawals, worsening the losses. What begins as an organized retreat ends as a chaotic flight. By February 1945, Soviet advances threaten the borders of Germany itself.
American forces capture Kwajalein, the world’s largest coral atoll, which comprises 93 Pacific islands and islets. In the island-hopping march to Japan, the US achieves a significant victory by penetrating the “outer ring” of the Japanese Pacific sphere for the first time. The US Navy also bombards the Kuril Islands, the northernmost islands of the Japanese homeland.
British Major General Orde Charles Wingate’s Chindits, officially known as Long Range Penetration Groups, make successful forays behind enemy lines in Burma. They launch operations against the Imperial Japanese Army and target its lines of communication. Long marches by underfed troops in extremely difficult terrain against a formidable enemy lead to extremely high casualties. Diseases like malaria and dysentery exacerbate the troops’ misery.
The Imperial Japanese Army enters British India and besieges the cities of Kohima and Imphal. After ferocious fighting, the British beat back the Japanese, who suffer the biggest defeat until that time. Like the Chindits, many Japanese die from starvation, disease and exhaustion, marking the turning point of the Burma campaign.
In April 1944, Japan launches Operation Ichi-Go, a massive land offensive aimed at neutralizing American airbases in southern China and linking its forces across occupied territory. The Japanese sweep through with ease, confirming Stilwell’s fears. Both Chinese and American forces are routed. When Japan retreats in 1945, Chiang’s forces, weakened by years of inaction and internal division, fail to reoccupy the region. The Communists move quickly to fill the vacuum, seizing southern strongholds and gaining support. This shift drastically alters China’s postwar balance of power.
The Soviet Red Army launches Operation Bagration against the German Army Group Center in Belarus. Within weeks, Soviet forces kill, wound or capture 350,000 German troops and advance hundreds of miles. Stalin has spent months urging the Allies to open a second front in the West to relieve pressure. As Soviet armies surge forward in the east, Allied leaders finally act. The German position in Europe weakens on both fronts at once, marking a turning point and precipitating the complete collapse of Nazi forces.
The Germans launch the V-1 flying bomb, an early cruise missile, against London on June 13. They also launch the V-2 rocket into space on June 20. This is the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile developed as a Vergeltungswaffe (“Vengeance Weapon”) to attack Allied cities. The Nazis aim to respond to the increasingly destructive Allied bombings of German cities. From now on, the Allied troops race to seize launch sites, manufacturing facilities, technology and scientists.
As German forces retreat north, they declare Rome an open city on June 3, agreeing not to defend it in order to spare civilians and prevent the destruction of its irreplaceable heritage. Rome holds incomparable historical and architectural value: the ancient capital of an empire, the seat of the Catholic Church and a city layered with monuments from millennia of civilization. Allied troops enter on June 4 without major resistance. Though a symbolic victory, the liberation is quickly overshadowed by the Normandy landings two days later.
In the last and largest of five major “carrier-versus-carrier” engagements, 24 aircraft carriers and roughly 1,350 carrier-based aircraft participate. The US Navy wins decisively, destroying the Imperial Japanese Navy’s ability to conduct large-scale carrier actions. American aviators nickname this battle, “the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot,” because better technology, tactics and training, along with advance knowledge of enemy plans, enable them to inflict disproportionate losses on their enemy.
De Gaulle enters Paris hours after French troops and Resistance fighters drive out the Germans. He walks through cheering crowds on the Champs-Élysées avenue, then into Notre-Dame Cathedral — ignoring sniper fire that erupts nearby. He refuses to take cover, projecting calm and authority. De Gaulle claims the city’s liberation for France, not the Allies. He rejects Allied military rule, arrests Vichy officials and sets up a provisional French government. After years of exile, he plants his flag in Paris and takes power on his own terms.
US submarines turn the screws on Japan. Although they make up less than 2% of the US Navy, submarines sink over 30% of the Japanese Navy, including eight aircraft carriers, over the course of the war. They also sink nearly five million tons of shipping, over 60% of the enemy merchant marine. By 1944, submarines and other US vessels have virtually strangled the Japanese economy.
German defeat becomes inevitable after D-Day landings and Soviet victories. Some German officers plot to kill Hitler, seize power and sue for peace. Claus von Stauffenberg plants a bomb in the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s field headquarters in East Prussia. The blast kills four but misses Hitler, and the plot fails. The Nazis arrest 7,000 and execute nearly 5,000, including Rommel, whom they coerce to commit suicide. The conspiracy reveals that some Germans try to stop the Nazis but Hitler’s grip on the country holds until the very end.
The Red Army liberates the Auschwitz concentration camp while pushing west through Poland. Soviet troops find gas chambers, crematoria and mountains of corpses and stolen belongings. Only a few thousand emaciated survivors remain. Most prisoners were forced on death marches days earlier. Auschwitz becomes the most infamous symbol of the Holocaust, in which the Nazis murdered around six million Jews, along with millions of Poles, Roma, disabled people, Soviet POWs and others. The scale and systematization of the killings stun the world.
Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin meet at Yalta, in the Crimea, to decide the postwar order. Stalin demands control over Eastern Europe and a Soviet zone in Germany. Roosevelt, already ill, prioritizes quick Soviet entry into the Pacific war and the founding of the United Nations. Churchill warns against Soviet expansion but accepts the compromises. The three agree to divide Germany and Berlin into zones and hold free elections in liberated Europe. Stalin conveniently ignores this later. Yalta kicks off the Cold War even as World War II rages.
American troops cross the Rhine on February 23, capturing 280,000 German soldiers. Hitler orders his forces to fight where they stand, refusing any withdrawal behind the river. The collapse of the Western Front is now inevitable. From this moment, the Americans and Soviets race toward Berlin. Both armies advance through devastated territory, facing scattered resistance. The Soviets reach the German capital first, entering Berlin on April 21.
As Allied forces advance into Germany, US and British troops halt west of Berlin. Churchill and Montgomery push to take the city, but Roosevelt honors his prior agreement with Stalin to let the Red Army take Berlin. Eisenhower instead redirects US forces south to cut off retreating Germans and prevent a redoubt in the Alps mountain range. The Soviets reach Berlin on April 21 and take it after brutal street fighting. Critics later call Roosevelt’s decision a strategic blunder that hands Stalin Germany’s prize city and gives him postwar leverage.
Italian partisans capture and summarily execute Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, as they try to flee to Switzerland. They transport the bodies to Piazzale Loreto in Milan, where a crowd hangs them upside down. People pelt the corpses with vegetables, spit and urinate on them, and shoot and kick them in a brutal display of vengeance. Mussolini, the founder of Fascism, meets a humiliating end.
On April 30, Hitler commits suicide in his bunker as Soviet troops fight their way into Berlin. In his political testament, he makes Admiral Karl Dönitz president of Germany. Dönitz forms a short-lived government in Flensburg, Germany, and tries to negotiate a partial surrender to the Western Allies. His efforts fail. With Berlin in ruins and surrounded, Germany surrenders unconditionally on May 7. In Europe, the war ends, and the Allies begin preparing for the final reckoning in the Pacific.
A day after Hitler’s suicide, Goebbels assumes his role as chancellor. He lasts one day. As Soviet troops close in, Goebbels poisons his six children in Hitler’s bunker, then commits suicide with his wife, Magda. He leaves behind a trail of lies, terror and propaganda that helped turn Germans into loyal servants of a genocidal regime. Goebbels had vowed to follow Hitler to the end — and he does. With their deaths, the Nazi leadership dissolves and the Third Reich collapses in ruin.
In Japan, the war rages on. From February 19 to March 26, US Marines fight fiercely to capture Iwo Jima, suffering heavy losses to take the island. Just days later, on April 1, Allied forces launch the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific, landing on the island of Okinawa. The 82-day battle becomes one of the bloodiest of the war. Japanese forces unleash waves of kamikaze (suicide) attacks, sinking 34 Allied ships and damaging hundreds more. Combined casualties exceed 160,000. The cost of invading Japan becomes grimly clear.
Soon after midnight, just hours before the bombing of Nagasaki, Soviet forces invade Japanese-held territories in northeast Asia. The Red Army overruns Manchuria, seizes Inner Mongolia, occupies northern Korea and captures southern Karafuto (Sakhalin) and the Kuril Islands. The speed and scale of the offensive stun Japan and hasten its surrender. The Soviet advance shatters Japan’s last strategic hopes. Some islands — Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan and the Habomai — remain under Russian control, and Japan still claims them.
In the end, the two US atomic bombs and the Soviet invasion achieve their intended goal. Faced with unprecedented destruction from the air and a new front opening in the north, Japan decides to surrender. On August 14, Emperor Hirohito announces the decision in a radio address to the nation. The war that began in Manchuria in 1931 and engulfed the Pacific from Pearl Harbor to Okinawa finally ends. For the first time in its history, Japan accepts defeat and World War II comes to a close.
Between 1939 and 1945, World War II mobilizes over 100 million people for war. The conflict kills an estimated 50–80 million. Many more are wounded, displaced and psychologically scarred. Cities across Europe and Asia lie in ruin. Industrial centers are leveled, cultural treasures destroyed and entire populations uprooted. The war delivers a fatal blow to the old European empires, which begin to unravel in its aftermath. The world emerges transformed, divided and haunted by the scale of the destruction.
Allied powers put top Nazi leaders on trial in Nuremberg, Germany, for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The tribunal includes judges from the US, Britain, the Soviet Union and France. Prosecutors use Nazi records, film and survivor testimony to expose the regime’s atrocities. Judges give 12 defendants death sentences and send many more to prison. Some commit suicide before execution. The trials establish legal precedents for bringing those guilty of genocide and aggression to justice.
Out of the ashes of World War II, two superpowers emerge: the United States and the Soviet Union. Their ideologies, ambitions and global reach soon dominate international politics. Europe lies weakened and divided and former colonies push for independence. The old order is gone. The atomic bomb, mass mobilization and global devastation mark the beginning of a new era. Everything changes. A new world is born, shaped by power blocs, proxy wars and a fragile hope that total war will never reoccur.