Talk:World War II/Summary style

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Start and end dates[edit]

See also: Timeline of World War II

Background[edit]

This section is an excerpt from Causes of World War II.[edit]
During the Battle of Westerplatte, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein attacks Westerplatte at the start of the war, September 1, 1939
The destroyer USS Shaw explodes during the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

The causes of World War II have been given considerable attention by historians. The immediate precipitating event was the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939, and the subsequent declarations of war on Germany made by Britain and France, but many other prior events have been suggested as ultimate causes. Primary themes in historical analysis of the war's origins include the political takeover of Germany in 1933 by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party; Japanese militarism against China, which led to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Second Sino-Japanese War; Nationalist uprising in Spain, which led to the Spanish Civil War; or Italian aggression against Ethiopia, which led to the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.

During the interwar period, deep anger arose in the Weimar Republic over the conditions of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which punished Germany for its role in World War I with heavy financial reparations and severe limitations on its military that were intended to prevent it from becoming a military power again. The demilitarisation of the Rhineland, the prohibition of German unification with Austria, and the loss of its overseas colonies as well as some 12% of its pre-war land area and population all provoked strong currents of revanchism in German politics.

During the worldwide economic crisis of the Great Depression in the 1930s, many people lost faith in liberal democracy and countries across the world turned to authoritarian regimes.[1] In Germany, resentment over the terms of the Treaty of Versailles was intensified by the instability of the German political system, as many on both the Right and the Left rejected the Weimar Republic liberalism. The most extreme political aspirant to emerge from that situation was Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party. The Nazis took totalitarian power in Germany from 1933 and demanded the undoing of the Versailles provisions. Their ambitious and aggressive domestic and foreign policies reflected their ideologies of Antisemitism, unification of all Germans, the acquisition of "living space" (Lebensraum) for agrarian settlers, the elimination of Bolshevism and the hegemony of an "Aryan"/"Nordic" master race over "subhumans" (Untermenschen) such as Jews and Slavs. Other factors leading to the war included the aggression by Fascist Italy against Ethiopia and by Imperial Japan against China.

At first, the aggressive moves met with only feeble and ineffectual policies of appeasement from the other major world powers. The League of Nations proved helpless, especially regarding China and Ethiopia. A decisive proximate event was the 1938 Munich Conference, which formally approved Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Hitler promised it was his last territorial claim, nevertheless in early 1939, he became even more aggressive, and European governments finally realised that appeasement would not guarantee peace but by then it was too late.

Britain and France rejected diplomatic efforts to form a military alliance with the Soviet Union, and Hitler instead offered Stalin a better deal in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939. An alliance formed by Germany, Italy, and Japan led to the establishment of the Axis powers.

Europe[edit]

Asia[edit]

Pre-war events[edit]

Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935)[edit]

This section is an excerpt from Second Italo-Ethiopian War.[edit]

The Second Italo-Ethiopian War, also referred to as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was a war of aggression waged by Italy against Ethiopia, which lasted from October 1935 to May 1936. In Ethiopia it is often referred to simply as the Italian Invasion (Amharic: ጣልያን ወረራ, romanized: Ṭalyan warära), and in Italy as the Ethiopian War (Italian: Guerra d'Etiopia). It is seen as an example of the expansionist policy that characterized the Axis powers and the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations before the outbreak of the Second World War.

On 3 October 1935, two hundred thousand soldiers of the Italian Army commanded by Marshal Emilio De Bono attacked from Eritrea (then an Italian colonial possession) without prior declaration of war.[2] At the same time a minor force under General Rodolfo Graziani attacked from Italian Somalia. On 6 October, Adwa was conquered, a symbolic place for the Italian army because of the defeat at the Battle of Adwa by the Ethiopian army during the First Italo-Ethiopian War. On 15 October, Italian troops seized Aksum, and an obelisk adorning the city was torn from its site and sent to Rome to be placed symbolically in front of the building of the Ministry of Colonies.

Exasperated by De Bono's slow and cautious progress, Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini replaced him with General Pietro Badoglio. Ethiopian forces attacked the newly arrived invading army and launched a counterattack in December 1935, but their poorly armed forces could not resist for long against the modern weapons of the Italians. Even the communications service of the Ethiopian forces depended on foot messengers, as they did not have radio. It was enough for the Italians to impose a narrow fence on Ethiopian detachments to leave them unaware of the movements of their own army. Nazi Germany sent arms and munitions to Ethiopia because it was frustrated over Italian objections to its attempts to integrate Austria.[3] This prolonged the war and sapped Italian resources. It would soon lead to Italy's greater economic dependence on Germany and less interventionist policy on Austria, clearing the path for Adolf Hitler's Anschluss.[4]

The Ethiopian counteroffensive managed to stop the Italian advance for a few weeks, but the superiority of the Italians' weapons (particularly heavy artillery and airstrikes with bombs and chemical weapons) prevented the Ethiopians from taking advantage of their initial successes. The Italians resumed the offensive in early March. On 29 March 1936, Graziani bombed the city of Harar and two days later the Italians won a decisive victory in the Battle of Maychew, which nullified any possible organized resistance of the Ethiopians. Emperor Haile Selassie was forced to escape into exile on 2 May, and Badoglio's forces arrived in the capital Addis Ababa on 5 May. Italy announced the annexation of the territory of Ethiopia on 7 May and Italian King Victor Emmanuel III was proclaimed emperor. The provinces of Eritrea, Italian Somaliland and Abyssinia (Ethiopia) were united to form the Italian province of East Africa. Fighting between Italian and Ethiopian troops persisted until 19 February 1937.[5] On the same day, an attempted assassination of Graziani led to the reprisal Yekatit 12 massacre in Addis Ababa, in which between 1,400 and 30,000 civilians were killed.[6][7][8] Italian forces continued to suppress rebel activity until 1939.[9]

Italian troops used mustard gas in aerial bombardments (in violation of the Geneva Protocol and Geneva Conventions) against combatants and civilians in an attempt to discourage the Ethiopian people from supporting the resistance.[10][11] Deliberate Italian attacks against ambulances and hospitals of the Red Cross were reported.[12] By all estimates, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian civilians died as a result of the Italian invasion, which have been described by some historians as constituting genocide.[13] Crimes by Ethiopian troops included the use of dumdum bullets (in violation of the Hague Conventions), the killing of civilian workmen (including during the Gondrand massacre) and the mutilation of captured Eritrean Ascari and Italians (often with castration), beginning in the first weeks of war.[14][15]

Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)[edit]

This section is an excerpt from Spanish Civil War.[edit]
Clockwise from top-left: Members of the XI International Brigade at the Battle of Belchite; Granollers after being bombed by the Aviazione Legionaria in 1938; Bombing of an airfield in Spanish Morocco; Republican soldiers at the siege of the Alcázar; Nationalist soldiers operating an anti-aircraft gun; The Lincoln Battalion

The Spanish Civil War (Spanish: Guerra Civil Española)[note 1] was fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic, and consisted of various socialist, communist, separatist, anarchist, and republican parties, some of which had opposed the government in the pre-war period.[16] The opposing Nationalists were an alliance of Falangists, monarchists, conservatives, and traditionalists led by a military junta among whom General Francisco Franco quickly achieved a preponderant role. Due to the international political climate at the time, the war had many facets and was variously viewed as class struggle, a religious struggle, a struggle between dictatorship and republican democracy, between revolution and counterrevolution, and between fascism and communism.[17] According to Claude Bowers, U.S. ambassador to Spain during the war, it was the "dress rehearsal" for World War II.[18] The Nationalists won the war, which ended in early 1939, and ruled Spain until Franco's death in November 1975.

The war began after the partial failure of the coup d'état of July 1936 against the Republican government by a group of generals of the Spanish Republican Armed Forces, with General Emilio Mola as the primary planner and leader and General José Sanjurjo as a figurehead. The government at the time was a coalition of Republicans, supported in the Cortes by communist and socialist parties, under the leadership of centre-left President Manuel Azaña.[19][20] The Nationalist faction was supported by several conservative groups, including CEDA, monarchists, including both the opposing Alfonsists and the religious conservative Carlists, and the Falange Española de las JONS, a fascist political party.[21] After the deaths of Sanjurjo, Emilio Mola, and Manuel Goded Llopis, Franco emerged as the remaining leader of the Nationalist side.

The coup was supported by military units in Morocco, Pamplona, Burgos, Zaragoza, Valladolid, Cádiz, Córdoba, and Seville. However, rebelling units in almost all important cities—such as Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao, and Málaga—did not gain control. Those cities remained under the control of the government, leaving Spain militarily and politically divided. The Nationalists and the Republican government fought for control of the country. The Nationalist forces received munitions, soldiers, and air support from Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Portugal, while the Republican side received support from the Soviet Union and Mexico. Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, and the United States, continued to recognise the Republican government but followed an official policy of non-intervention. Despite this policy, tens of thousands of citizens from non-interventionist countries directly participated in the conflict. They fought mostly in the pro-Republican International Brigades, which also included several thousand exiles from pro-Nationalist regimes.

The Nationalists advanced from their strongholds in the south and west, capturing most of Spain's northern coastline in 1937. They also besieged Madrid and the area to its south and west for much of the war. After much of Catalonia was captured in 1938 and 1939, and Madrid cut off from Barcelona, the Republican military position became hopeless. Following the fall without resistance of Barcelona in January 1939, the Francoist regime was recognised by France and the United Kingdom in February 1939. On 5 March 1939, in response to an alleged increasing communist dominance of the republican government and the deteriorating military situation, Colonel Segismundo Casado led a military coup against the Republican government, intending to seek peace with the Nationalists. These peace overtures, however, were rejected by Franco. Following internal conflict between Republican factions in Madrid in the same month, Franco entered the capital and declared victory on 1 April 1939. Hundreds of thousands of Spaniards fled to refugee camps in southern France.[22] Those associated with the losing Republicans who stayed were persecuted by the victorious Nationalists. Franco established a dictatorship in which all right-wing parties were fused into the structure of the Franco regime.[21]

The war became notable for the passion and political division it inspired worldwide and for the many atrocities that occurred. Organised purges occurred in territory captured by Franco's forces so they could consolidate their future regime.[23] Mass executions on a lesser scale also took place in areas controlled by the Republicans,[24] with the participation of local authorities varying from location to location.[25][26]

Japanese invasion of China (1937)[edit]

This section is an excerpt from Second Sino-Japanese War.[edit]

The Second Sino-Japanese War was the war fought between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan from 1937 to 1945 as part of World War II. It is often regarded as the beginning of World War II in Asia. It was the largest Asian war in the 20th century[27] and has been described as "the Asian Holocaust", in reference to the scale of Japanese war crimes against Chinese civilians.[28][29][30] It is known in Japan as the Second China–Japan War, and in China as the Chinese War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.

On 18 September 1931, the Japanese staged a false flag event known as the Mukden Incident, a pretext they fabricated to justify their invasion of Manchuria. This is sometimes marked as the beginning of the war.[31][32] From 1931 to 1937, China and Japan engaged in skirmishes in mainland China. Japan achieved major victories, capturing Beijing and Shanghai by 1937. Despite having fought each other in the Chinese Civil War since 1927, the Communists and Nationalists formed the Second United Front in late 1936 to resist the Japanese invasion together.

Tensions escalated after what would become the first battle of the war - the Marco Polo Bridge incident on 7 July 1937, in which the Japanese and Chinese opened fire upon each other after a Japanese soldier went missing. This prompted a full-scale Japanese invasion of the rest of China. This incident is widely regarded as the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the Pacific theater of World War II.[33]

The Japanese captured the Chinese capital of Nanjing in 1937, which led to the Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanjing. After failing to stop the Japanese in the Battle of Wuhan, the Chinese central government relocated to Chongqing in the Chinese interior. Following the Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, material support bolstered the Republic of China Army and Air Force.

By 1939, after Chinese victories in Changsha and Guangxi, and with Japan's lines of communications stretched deep into the Chinese interior, the war reached a stalemate. The Japanese were unable to defeat Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forces in Shaanxi, who waged a campaign of sabotage and guerrilla warfare. In November 1939, Chinese nationalist forces launched a large scale winter offensive, and in August 1940, CCP forces launched an offensive in central China.

In December 1941, Japan launched its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and declared war on the United States. The US increased aid to China: the Lend-Lease act gave China a total of $1.6 billion (equivalent to $20 billion in 2023).[34] With Burma cut off, the US Army Air Forces airlifted material over the Himalayas. In 1944, Japan launched Operation Ichi-Go, the invasion of Henan and Changsha. In 1945, the Chinese Expeditionary Force resumed its advance in Burma and completed the Ledo Road linking India to China. China launched large counteroffensives in South China and repulsed a failed Japanese invasion of West Hunan and recaptured Japanese occupied regions of Guangxi.

Japan formally surrendered on 2 September 1945, following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Soviet declaration of war and subsequent invasions of Manchukuo and Korea. The war resulted in the deaths of around 20 million people, mostly civilians. China was recognized as one of the Big Four Allies, regained all territories lost, and became one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.[35][36] The Chinese Civil War resumed in 1946, ending with a communist victory, which established the People's Republic of China.

Soviet–Japanese border conflicts[edit]

This section is an excerpt from Soviet–Japanese border conflicts.[edit]
Japanese light tanks during the Battles of Khalkhin Gol

The Soviet–Japanese border conflicts,[37] also known as the Soviet-Japanese Border War, the First Soviet-Japanese War, the Russo-Mongolian-Japanese Border Wars or the Soviet-Mongolian-Japanese Border Wars, were a series of minor and major conflicts fought between the Soviet Union (led by Joseph Stalin), Mongolia (led by Khorloogiin Choibalsan) and Japan (led by Hirohito) in Northeast Asia from 1932 to 1939.

The Japanese expansion in Northeast China created a common border between Japanese-occupied Manchuria and the Soviet Far East. This led to growing tensions with the Soviet Union, with both sides often engaging in border violations and accusing the other of doing so. The Soviets and Japanese, including their respective client states of Mongolia and Manchukuo, fought in a series of escalating small border skirmishes and punitive expeditions from 1935 until Soviet-Mongolian victory over the Japanese in the 1939 Battles of Khalkhin Gol, which resolved the dispute and returned the borders to status quo ante bellum.

The Soviet–Japanese border conflicts heavily contributed to the signing of the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in 1941.

European occupations and agreements[edit]

Course of the war[edit]

This section is an excerpt from List of timelines of World War II.[edit]

This is a list of timelines of events over the period of World War II.

See also: Diplomatic history of World War II

War breaks out in Europe (1939–40)[edit]

This section is an excerpt from European theatre of World War II.[edit]
From left to right, top to bottom
* German Stuka dive bombers on the Eastern Front, 1943 * German soldiers take position near a Sturmgeschütz III on the Eastern Front, 1942 * American soldiers during the Italian campaign, 1943 * Stuka flying over Stalingrad, 1942 * Soviet soldier raising a flag over the Reichstag after the Battle of Berlin, 1945 * Destruction in Dresden after Allied air raids, 1945

The European theatre of World War II was one of the two main theatres of combat[nb 1] during World War II. It saw heavy fighting across Europe for almost six years, starting with Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 and ending with the Western Allies conquering most of Western Europe, the Soviet Union conquering most of Eastern Europe including the German capital Berlin, and Germany's unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945[nb 2] although fighting continued elsewhere in Europe until 25 May. On 5 June 1945, the Berlin Declaration proclaiming the unconditional surrender of Germany to the four victorious powers was signed. The Allied powers fought the Axis powers on two major fronts (Eastern Front and Western Front), but there were other fronts varying in scale from the Italian campaign (the 3rd largest campaign in Europe), to the Polish Campaign, as well as in a strategic bombing offensive and in the adjoining Mediterranean and Middle East theatre.

Western Europe (1940–41)[edit]

This section is an excerpt from Western Front (World War II).[edit]
Clockwise from top left: Rotterdam after the Blitz, German Heinkel He 111 planes during the Battle of Britain, Allied paratroopers during Operation Market Garden, American troops running through Wernberg, Germany, Siege of Bastogne, American troops landing at Omaha Beach during Operation Overlord


The Western Front was a military theatre of World War II encompassing Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. The Italian front is considered a separate but related theatre.[nb 3] The Western Front's 1944–1945 phase was officially deemed the European Theater by the United States, whereas Italy fell under the Mediterranean Theater along with North Africa. The Western Front was marked by two phases of large-scale combat operations. The first phase saw the capitulation of Luxembourg, Netherlands, Belgium, and France during May and June 1940 after their defeat in the Low Countries and the northern half of France, and continued into an air war between Germany and Britain that climaxed with the Battle of Britain. The second phase consisted of large-scale ground combat (supported by a massive strategic air war considered to be an additional front), which began in June 1944 with the Allied landings in Normandy and continued until the defeat of Germany in May 1945 with its invasion.

Mediterranean (1940–41)[edit]

This section is an excerpt from Mediterranean and Middle East theatre of World War II.[edit]
A map of the Mediterranean in 1941

The Mediterranean and Middle East Theatre was a major theatre of operations during the Second World War. The vast size of the Mediterranean and Middle East theatre saw interconnected naval, land, and air campaigns fought for control of the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and Southern Europe. The fighting lasted from 10 June 1940, when Italy entered the war on the side of Germany, until 2 May 1945 when all Axis forces in Italy surrendered. However, fighting would continue in Greece – where British troops had been dispatched to aid the Greek government – during the early stages of the Greek Civil War.

The British referred to this theatre as the Mediterranean and Middle East Theatre (so called due to the location of the fighting and the name of Middle East Command), the Americans called it the Mediterranean Theater of War and the German informal official history of the fighting is the Mediterranean, South-East Europe, and North Africa 1939–1941. Despite the large size of the theatre, the various campaigns were not seen as neatly separated areas of operations but part of a vast, contiguous theatre of war.

Fascist Italy aimed to carve out a new Roman Empire, while the Allies aimed to retain the status quo. Italy entered the war on June 10, 1940 and immediately invaded France and bombed Malta, which would remain under siege for over 2 years. Italian forces then attacked Greece, but it was not until the introduction of German forces that it and neighbouring Yugoslavia were overrun. Allied and Axis forces fought back and forth across North Africa, while Axis interference in the Middle East caused fighting to spread as far as Palestine and Iraq. With confidence high from early gains, German forces planned to capture the Middle East with a view to possibly attacking the southern border of the Soviet Union. Devastating losses in the Magreb, Egypt, and Tunisia halted Axis interference in North Africa by May 1943. The Allies then invaded Italy, resulting in an armistice authorized by the royal government, causing a civil war. A prolonged battle for Italy commenced between the Allied-aligned Kingdom of Italy in the south and Axis-aligned Italian Social Republic in the north, lasting until May 2, 1945 with the Surrender of Caserta.

The Mediterranean and Middle East theatre had the longest duration of the World War II, resulted in the destruction of the Italian Empire, and severely undermined the strategic position of Germany, resulting in German divisions being deployed to Africa and Italy and total German losses (including those captured upon final surrender) being over two million.[a] Italian losses amounted to around 177,000 men with a further several hundred thousand captured during the process of the various campaigns. British losses amount to over 300,000 men killed, wounded, or captured, and total American losses in the region amounted to 130,000.

Axis attack on the Soviet Union (1941)[edit]

This section is an excerpt from Eastern Front (World War II).[edit]
Clockwise from top left: Soviet T-34 tanks storming Berlin; German Tiger I tanks during the Battle of Kursk; German Stuka dive bombers on the Eastern Front, December 1943; Ivanhorod Einsatzgruppen photograph of German death squads murdering Jews in Ukraine; Wilhelm Keitel signing the German Instrument of Surrender; Soviet troops in the Battle of Stalingrad

The Eastern Front[b] was a theatre of World War II fought between the European Axis powers and Allies, including the Soviet Union (USSR) and Poland. It encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltics), and Southeast Europe (Balkans), and lasted from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. Of the estimated 70–85 million deaths attributed to World War II, around 30 million occurred on the Eastern Front, including 9 million children.[40][41] The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome in the European theatre of operations in World War II, eventually serving as the main reason for the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Axis nations.[42] It is noted by historian Geoffrey Roberts that "More than 80 percent of all combat during the Second World War took place on the Eastern Front".[43]

The Axis forces, led by Nazi Germany, began their advance into the Soviet Union under the codename Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941, the opening date of the Eastern Front. Initially, Soviet forces were unable to halt the Axis forces, which came close to Moscow. Despite their many attempts, the Axis failed to capture Moscow and soon focused on the oil fields in the Caucasus. German forces invaded the Caucasus under the Fall Blau ("Case Blue") plan on 28 June 1942. The Soviets successfully halted further Axis advance at Stalingrad — the bloodiest battle in the war — costing the Axis powers their morale and becoming the turning point of the front.

Seeing the Axis setback from Stalingrad, the Soviet Union routed its forces and regained territories at its expense. The Axis defeat at Kursk terminated the German offensive strength and cleared the way for Soviet offensives. Its setbacks caused many countries friendly with Germany to defect and join the Allies, such as Romania and Bulgaria. The Eastern Front concluded with the capture of Berlin, followed by the signing of the German Instrument of Surrender on 8 May, a day that marked the end of the Eastern Front and the War in Europe.

The battles on the Eastern Front of World War II constituted the largest military confrontation in history.[44] In pursuit of its "Lebensraum" settler-colonial agenda, Nazi Germany waged a war of annihilation (Vernichtungskrieg) throughout Eastern Europe. Nazi military operations were characterised by vicious brutality, scorched-earth tactics, wanton destruction, mass deportations, forced starvations, wholesale terrorism, and massacres. These also included the genocidal campaigns of Generalplan Ost and Hunger Plan, which aimed at the extermination and ethnic cleansing of more than a hundred million Eastern European natives. German historian Ernst Nolte called the Eastern Front "the most atrocious war of conquest, enslavement, and annihilation known to modern history",[45] while British historian Robin Cross expressed that "In the Second World War no theatre was more gruelling and destructive than the Eastern Front, and nowhere was the fighting more bitter".[46]

The two principal belligerent powers in the Eastern Front were Germany and the Soviet Union, along with their respective allies. Though they never sent in ground troops to the Eastern Front, the United States and the United Kingdom both provided substantial material aid to the Soviet Union in the form of the Lend-Lease program, along with naval and air support. The joint German–Finnish operations across the northernmost Finnish–Soviet border and in the Murmansk region are considered part of the Eastern Front. In addition, the Soviet–Finnish Continuation War is generally also considered the northern flank of the Eastern Front.

War breaks out in the Pacific (1941)[edit]

This section is an excerpt from Pacific War.[edit]

The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia–Pacific War or the Pacific Theater,[47] was the theater of World War II that was fought in eastern Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania. It was geographically the largest theater of the war, including the vast Pacific Ocean theater, the South West Pacific theater, the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the Soviet–Japanese War.

The Second Sino-Japanese War between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China had been in progress since 7 July 1937, with hostilities dating back to 1931 with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.[48] However, it is more widely accepted[c] that the Pacific War itself began on 7 December (8 December Japanese time) 1941, when the Japanese simultaneously attacked American military bases in Hawaii, Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines and invaded Thailand and the British colonies of Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong.[51][52][53]

The Pacific War saw the Allies pitted against Japan, the latter aided by Thailand and to a lesser extent by the Axis powers, Germany and Italy. The Japanese achieved great success in the initial phase of the campaign, but were gradually driven back using an island hopping strategy. The Allies adopted a Europe first stance, giving first priority to defeating Nazi Germany, but still managed to bring to bear the vast industrial might of the United States. The Japanese had great difficulty replacing their losses in ships and aircraft, while American factories and shipyards produced ever increasing numbers of both. Fighting included some of the largest naval battles in history and massive Allied air raids over Japan, as well as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Japan surrendered unconditionally on 15 August 1945 and was occupied by the Allies. Japan lost its former possessions in Asia and the Pacific and had its sovereignty limited to the four main home islands and other minor islands as determined by the Allies.[54]

Axis advance stalls (1942–43)[edit]

Pacific (1942–43)[edit]

Eastern Front (1942–43)[edit]

Western Europe/Atlantic and Mediterranean (1942–43)[edit]

Allies gain momentum (1943–44)[edit]

Allies close in (1944)[edit]

Axis collapse, Allied victory (1944–45)[edit]

Aftermath[edit]

This section is an excerpt from Aftermath of World War II.[edit]

The aftermath of World War II saw the rise of two global superpowers, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US). The aftermath of World War II was also defined by the rising threat of nuclear warfare, the creation and implementation of the United Nations as an intergovernmental organization, and the decolonization of Asia and Africa by European and East Asian powers, most notably by the United Kingdom, France, and Japan.

Once allies during World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union became competitors on the world stage and engaged in the Cold War, so called because it never resulted in overt, declared total war between the two powers. It was instead characterized by espionage, political subversion and proxy wars. Western Europe and Asia were rebuilt through the American Marshall Plan, whereas Central and Eastern Europe fell under the Soviet sphere of influence and eventually behind an "Iron Curtain". Europe was divided into a US-led Western Bloc and a USSR-led Eastern Bloc. Internationally, alliances with the two blocs gradually shifted, with some nations trying to stay out of the Cold War through the Non-Aligned Movement. The war also saw a nuclear arms race between the two superpowers; part of the reason that the Cold War never became a "hot" war was that the Soviet Union and the United States had nuclear deterrents against each other, leading to a mutually assured destruction standoff.

As a consequence of the war, the Allies created the United Nations, an organization for international cooperation and diplomacy, similar to the League of Nations. Members of the United Nations agreed to outlaw wars of aggression in an attempt to avoid a third world war. The devastated great powers of Western Europe formed the European Coal and Steel Community, which later evolved into the European Economic Community and ultimately into the current European Union. This effort primarily began as an attempt to avoid another war between Germany and France by economic cooperation and integration, and a common market for important natural resources.

The end of the war opened the way for decolonization from the great powers. Independence was granted to India and Pakistan (from the United Kingdom), Indonesia (from the Netherlands), the Philippines (from the US) and a number of Arab nations, from specific mandates which had been granted to great powers from League of Nations Mandates. Independence for the nations of Sub-Saharan Africa came later.

The aftermath of World War II saw the rise of communist influence in East Asia, with the People's Republic of China, as the Chinese Communist Party emerged victorious from the Chinese Civil War in 1949.

See also: Consequences of Nazism

Impact[edit]

This section is an excerpt from Historiography of World War II.[edit]

The historiography of World War II is the study of how historians portray the causes, conduct, and outcomes of World War II.

There are different perspectives on the causes of the war; the three most prominent are the Orthodox from the 1950s, Revisionist from the 1970s, and Post-Revisionism which offers the most contemporary perspective. The orthodox perspective arose during the aftermath of the war. The main historian noted for this perspective is Hugh Trevor-Roper. Orthodox historians argue that Hitler was a master planner who intentionally started World War II due to his strong beliefs on fascism, expansionism, and the supremacy of the German state.[55] Revisionist historians argue that it was an ordinary war by world standards and that Hitler was an opportunist of the sort who commonly appears in world history; he merely took advantage of the opportunities given to him. This viewpoint became popular in the 1970s, especially in the revisionism of A. J. P. Taylor. Orthodox historians argue that, throughout the course of the war, the Axis powers were an evil consuming the world with their powerful message and malignant ideology, while the Allied powers were trying to protect democracy and freedom. Post-revisionist historians of the causes, such as Alan Bullock, argue that the cause of the war was a matter of both the evil and the banal. Essentially Hitler was a strategist with clear aims and objectives, that would not have been achievable without taking advantage of the opportunities given to him.[56] Each perspective of World War II offers a different analysis and provides different perspectives on the blame, conduct and causes of the war.

On the result of the war, historians in countries occupied by the Nazis developed strikingly similar interpretations celebrating a victory against great odds, with national liberation based on national unity. That unity is repeatedly described as the greatest source of future strength. Historians in common glorified the resistance movement (somewhat to the neglect of the invaders who actually overthrew the Nazis). There is great stress on heroes — including celebrities such as Charles de Gaulle, Winston Churchill and Josip Broz Tito — but also countless brave partisans and members of the resistance. Women rarely played a role in the celebrity or the histories, although since the 1990s, social historians have been piecing together the role of women on the home fronts. In recent years much scholarly attention has focused on how popular memories were constructed through selection, and how commemorations are held.

Casualties and war crimes[edit]

This section is an excerpt from World War II casualties.[edit]
World War II deaths by country
World War II deaths by theater
Soviet soldiers killed during the Toropets–Kholm Offensive, January 1942. Officially, roughly 8.6 million Soviet soldiers died in the course of the war, including millions of POWs.
Einsatzgruppen murder Jewish civilians outside Ivanhorod, Ukraine, 1942. Over 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators in the Holocaust.
Bodies of U.S. Marines on the beach of Tarawa. The Marines secured the island after 76 hours of intense fighting. Over 1,000 American and ~4600 Japanese troops died in the fighting.

World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history. An estimated total of 70–85 million people perished, or about 3% of the estimated global population of 2.3 billion in 1940.[57] Deaths directly caused by the war (including military and civilian fatalities) are estimated at 50–56 million, with an additional estimated 19–28 million deaths from war-related disease and famine. Civilian deaths totaled 50–55 million. Military deaths from all causes totaled 21–25 million, including deaths in captivity of about 5 million prisoners of war. More than half of the total number of casualties are accounted for by the dead of the Republic of China and of the Soviet Union. The following tables give a detailed country-by-country count of human losses. Statistics on the number of military wounded are included whenever available.

Recent historical scholarship has shed new light on the topic of Second World War casualties. Research in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union has caused a revision of estimates of Soviet World War II fatalities.[58] According to Russian government figures, USSR losses within postwar borders now stand at 26.6 million,[59][60] including 8 to 9 million due to famine and disease.[60][61][58] In August 2009 the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) researchers estimated Poland's dead at between 5.6 and 5.8 million.[62] Historian Rüdiger Overmans of the Military History Research Office (Germany) published a study in 2000 estimating the German military dead and missing at 5.3 million, including 900,000 men conscripted from outside of Germany's 1937 borders, in Austria, and in east-central Europe.[63][64] The Red Army claimed responsibility for the majority of Wehrmacht casualties during World War II.[65] The People's Republic of China puts its war dead at 20 million,[66] while the Japanese government puts its casualties due to the war at 3.1 million.[67] An estimated 7–10 million people died in the Dutch, British, French and US colonies in South and Southeast Asia, mostly from war-related famine.[68][69][70][71][72]

See also: List of war crimes committed during World War II

Genocide, concentration camps, and slave labour[edit]

This section is an excerpt from The Holocaust.[edit]
Jews arriving at Auschwitz II in German-occupied Poland, May 1944. Most were selected to go to the gas chambers.

The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chełmno in occupied Poland.

The Nazis developed their ideology based on racism and pursuit of "living space", and seized power in early 1933. Meant to force all German Jews regardless of means to attempt to emigrate, the regime passed anti-Jewish laws, encouraged harassment, and orchestrated a nationwide pogrom in November 1938. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, occupation authorities began to establish ghettos to segregate Jews. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot by German forces and local collaborators.

Later in 1941 or early 1942, the highest levels of the German government decided to murder all Jews in Europe. Victims were deported by rail to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were killed with poison gas. Other Jews continued to be employed in forced labor camps where many died from starvation, abuse, exhaustion, or being used as test subjects in deadly medical experiments. Although many Jews tried to escape, surviving in hiding was difficult due to factors such as the lack of money to pay helpers and the risk of denunciation. The property, homes, and jobs belonging to murdered Jews were redistributed to the German occupiers and other non-Jews. Although the majority of Holocaust victims died in 1942, the killing continued at a lower rate until the end of the war in May 1945. Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and POWs; the term Holocaust is sometimes used to also refer to the persecution of these other groups.

Many Jewish survivors emigrated outside of Europe after the war. A few Holocaust perpetrators faced criminal trials. Billions of dollars in reparations have been paid, although falling short of the Jews' losses. The Holocaust has also been commemorated in museums, memorials, and culture. It has become central to Western historical consciousness as a symbol of the ultimate human evil.

See also: Nazi concentration camps, Extermination camp, Forced labour under German rule during World War II, Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany, Nazi human experimentation, and Gulag

Occupation[edit]

This section is an excerpt from German-occupied Europe.[edit]

German-occupied Europe (or Nazi-occupied Europe) refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly militarily occupied and civil-occupied, including puppet governments, by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 and 1945, during World War II, administered by the Nazi regime under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.[73]

The German Wehrmacht occupied European territory:

In 1941, around 280 million people in Europe, more than half the population, were governed by Germany or their allies and puppet states.[74] It comprised an area of 3,300,000 km2 (1,300,000 sq mi).[75]

Outside of Europe, German forces controlled areas of North Africa, including Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia between 1940 and 1945. German military scientists established the Schatzgraber Weather Station as far north as Alexandra Land in Francis Joseph Land. Manned German weather stations also operated in North America included three in Greenland, Holzauge, Bassgeiger, and Edelweiss. German Kriegsmarine ships also operated in all oceans of the world throughout World War II.

See also: Resistance during World War II, Collaboration with the Axis Powers, and Nazi plunder

Home fronts and production[edit]

This section is an excerpt from Military production during World War II.[edit]
Women metalworkers during the siege of Leningrad
Russian women working in city factory at the height of the Siege of Leningrad
Assembly line of Messerschmitt Bf 109G-6s fighters in a German aircraft factory
Indian workers check new fuel tanks at the Hindustan Aircraft Factory in Bangalore, 1944

Military production during World War II was the production or mobilization of arms, ammunition, personnel and financing by the belligerents of the war, from the occupation of Austria in early 1938 to the surrender and occupation of Japan in late 1945.

The mobilization of funds, people, natural resources and material for the production and supply of military equipment and military forces during World War II was a critical component of the war effort. During the conflict, the Allies outpaced the Axis powers in most production categories. Access to the funding and industrial resources necessary to sustain the war effort was linked to their respective economic and political alliances.

This section is an excerpt from Home front during World War II.[edit]
INF3-160 Fighting Fit in the Factory. British poster by A. R. Thomson

The term "home front" covers the activities of the civilians in a nation at war. World War II was a total war; homeland military production became vital to both the Allied and Axis powers. Life on the home front during World War II was a significant part of the war effort for all participants and had a major impact on the outcome of the war. Governments became involved with new issues such as rationing, manpower allocation, home defense, evacuation in the face of air raids, and response to occupation by an enemy power. The morale and psychology of the people responded to leadership and propaganda. Typically women were mobilized to an unprecedented degree.

All of the powers used lessons from their experiences on the home front during World War I. Their success in mobilizing economic output was a major factor in supporting combat operations. Among morale-boosting activities that also benefited combat efforts, the home front engaged in a variety of scrap drives for materials crucial to the war effort such as metal, rubber, and rags. Such drives helped strengthen civilian morale and support for the war effort. Each country tried to suppress negative or defeatist rumors.
Salvage – Help put the lid on Hitler by saving your old metal and paper

The major powers devoted 50–61 percent of their total GDP to munitions production. The Allies produced about three times as much in munitions as the Axis powers.

Munitions Production in World War II
(Expenditures in billions of dollars, US 1944 munitions prices)
Country/Alliance Year
Average
1935-39		 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 Total
1939–44
United States U.S.A. 0.3 1.5 4.5 20.0 38.0 42.0 106.3
United Kingdom Britain 0.5 3.5 6.5 9.0 11.0 11.0 41.5
Soviet Union U.S.S.R. 1.6 5.0 8.5 11.5 14.0 16.0 56.6
Allies Total 2.4 10.0 20.0 41.5 64.5 70.5 204.4
Nazi Germany Germany 2.4 6.0 6.0 8.5 13.5 17.0 53.4
Japan Japan 0.4 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.5 6.0 16.9
Axis Total 2.8 7.0 8.0 11.5 18.0 23.0 70.3

Source: Goldsmith data in Harrison (1988) p. 172

Real Value Consumer Spending
Country Year
1937 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945
Japan Japan 100 107 109 111 108 99 93 78
Nazi Germany Germany 100 108 117 108 105 95 94 85
United States U.S.A. 100 96 103 108 116 115 118 122

Source: Jerome B Cohen, Japan's Economy in War and Reconstruction (1949) p 354

Advances in technology and warfare[edit]

This section is an excerpt from Technology during World War II.[edit]
The Trinity explosion, which took place at New Mexico's White Sands Proving Ground on July 16, 1945, marked the beginning of the Atomic Age.[76]

Technology played a significant role in World War II. Some of the technologies used during the war were developed during the interwar years of the 1920s and 1930s, much was developed in response to needs and lessons learned during the war, while others were beginning to be developed as the war ended. Many wars have had major effects on the technologies that we use in our daily lives, but World War II had the greatest effect on the technology and devices that are used today. Technology also played a greater role in the conduct of World War II than in any other war in history, and had a critical role in its outcome.

Many types of technology were customized for military use, and major developments occurred across several fields including:

  • Weaponry: ships, vehicles, submarines, aircraft, tanks, artillery, small arms; and biological, chemical, and atomic weapons
  • Logistical support: vehicles necessary for transporting soldiers and supplies, such as trains, trucks, tanks, ships, and aircraft
  • Communications and intelligence: devices used for remote sensing, navigation, communication, cryptography and espionage
  • Medicine: surgical innovations, chemical medicines, and techniques
  • Rocketry: guided missiles, medium-range ballistic missiles, and automatic aircraft

Military weapons technology experienced rapid advances during World War II, and over six years there was a disorientating rate of change in combat in everything from aircraft to small arms. Indeed, the war began with most armies utilizing technology that had changed little from that of World War I, and in some cases, had remained unchanged since the 19th century. For instance cavalry, trenches, and World War I-era battleships were normal in 1940, but six years later, armies around the world had developed jet aircraft, ballistic missiles, and even atomic weapons in the case of the United States.

World War II was the first war where military operations often targeted the research efforts of the enemy. This included the exfiltration of Niels Bohr from German-occupied Denmark to Britain in 1943; the sabotage of Norwegian heavy water production; and the bombing of Peenemunde. Military operations were also conducted to obtain intelligence on the enemy's technology; for example, the Bruneval Raid for German radar and Operation Most III for the German V-2.

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ While the fighting around the Mediterranean formed the longest fought over theatre of war during the Second World War, the Battle of the Atlantic was fought from 1939 to 1945, the war's longest continuous military campaign.[38][39]
  2. ^ Also known as:
    • The Great Patriotic War (Russian: Вели́кая Оте́чественная война́, romanized: Velíkaya Otéchestvennaya voyná) in the Soviet Union – and still is in some of its successor states.
    • The German–Soviet War (German: Deutsch-Sowjetische Krieg; Ukrainian: Німе́цько-радя́нська війна́, romanized: Niméts'ko-radiáns'ka viiná), which is typically used in contemporary German and Ukrainian historiographies.
  3. ^ "For fifty-three long months, beginning in July 1937, China stood alone, single-handedly fighting an undeclared war against Japan. On 9 December 1941, after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, what had been for so long a war between two countries now became part of a much wider Pacific conflict."[49][50]

Citations[edit]

  1. ^ Dahl, Robert (1989). Democracy and Its Critics. Yale UP. pp. 239–40. ISBN 0300153554.
  2. ^ Leckie 1987, p. 645.
  3. ^ Leckie 1987, p. 64.
  4. ^ Nehru, Jawaharlal (1934). Glimpses Of World History.
  5. ^ Mockler 2003, pp. 172–73.
  6. ^ Campbell, Ian (2017). The Addis Ababa Massacre: Italy's National Shame. London. ISBN 978-1-84904-692-3. OCLC 999629248.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  7. ^ Barker 1968, pp. 292–293.
  8. ^ Martel, Gordon (1999). The origins of the Second World War reconsidered: A. J. P. Taylor and the Historians (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. p. 188. ISBN 0-203-01024-8. OCLC 252806536.
  9. ^ Barker 1968, pp. 281, 300.
  10. ^ Belladonna, Simone (20 April 2015). Gas in Etiopia: I crimini rimossi dell'Italia coloniale (in Italian). Neri Pozza Editore. ISBN 978-8-85-451073-9.
  11. ^ Mack Smith 1983, pp. 231, 417.
  12. ^ Rainer Baudendistel, Between bombs and good intentions: the Red Cross and the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–1936. Berghahn Books. 2006 pp. 239, 131–132
  13. ^ Labanca 2004, pp. 300–313.
  14. ^ Sbacchi 1978, p. 43.
  15. ^ Antonicelli 1975, p. 79.
  16. ^ Graham, Helen; Preston, Paul (1987). "The Spanish Popular Front and the Civil War". The Popular Front in Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 106–130. ISBN 978-1349106189.
  17. ^ Juliá, Santos (1999). Un siglo de España. Política y sociedad. Madrid: Marcial Pons. ISBN 8495379031. Fue desde luego lucha de clases por las armas, en la que alguien podía morir por cubrirse la cabeza con un sombrero o calzarse con alpargatas los pies, pero no fue en menor medida guerra de religión, de nacionalismos enfrentados, guerra entre dictadura militar y democracia republicana, entre revolución y contrarrevolución, entre fascismo y comunismo.
  18. ^ Bowers 1954, p. 272.
  19. ^ Beevor 2006, p. 43.
  20. ^ Preston 2006, p. 84.
  21. ^ a b Payne 1973, pp. 200–203.
  22. ^ "Refugees and the Spanish Civil War". History Today.
  23. ^ Beevor 2006, p. 88.
  24. ^ Beevor 2006, pp. 86–87.
  25. ^ Beevor 2006, pp. 260–271.
  26. ^ Julius Ruiz. El Terror Rojo (2011). pp. 200–211.
  27. ^ Bix, Herbert P. (1992), "The Showa Emperor's 'Monologue' and the Problem of War Responsibility", Journal of Japanese Studies, 18 (2): 295–363, doi:10.2307/132824, JSTOR 132824
  28. ^ Hsiung & Levine 1992, p. 171.
  29. ^ Todd, Douglas. "Douglas Todd: Lest we overlook the 'Asian Holocaust'". Vancouver Sun. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 2 July 2021.
  30. ^ Kang, K. (4 August 1995). "Breaking Silence : Exhibit on 'Forgotten Holocaust' Focuses on Japanese War Crimes". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 19 January 2022. Retrieved 2 July 2021.
  31. ^ Hotta, E. (25 December 2007). Pan-Asianism and Japan's War 1931–1945. Palgrave Macmillan US. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-230-60992-1. Archived from the original on 12 October 2022. Retrieved 28 November 2017.
  32. ^ Paine, S. C. M. (20 August 2012). The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949. Cambridge University Press. p. 123. ISBN 978-1-139-56087-0. Archived from the original on 12 October 2022. Retrieved 28 November 2017.
  33. ^ "Articles published during wartime by former Domei News Agency released online in free-to-access archive | The Japan Times". 2019-06-04. Archived from the original on 4 June 2019. Retrieved 2024-04-11.
  34. ^ Wolfgang Schumann (et al.): Deutschland im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1982, Bd. 3, S. 468.(German Language)
  35. ^ Mitter (2013), p. 369.
  36. ^ Brinkley, Douglas (2003). The New York Times Living History: World War II, 1942–1945: The Allied Counteroffensive. Macmillan. ISBN 9780805072471. Archived from the original on 12 October 2022. Retrieved 2 September 2015.
  37. ^ (romanized: Russian: Советско-Японские Пограничные Конфликты/Mongolian : Зовлолт-Японы Хилийн Морголдоонууд/Japanese: 日ソ国境戦争/Korean: 소련-일본국경분쟁
  38. ^ Blair (1996), p. xiii
  39. ^ Woodman (2004), p. 1
  40. ^ Edwards, Robert (15 August 2018). The Eastern Front: The Germans and Soviets at War in World War II. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-8117-6784-2 – via Google Books.
  41. ^ According to Krivosheev 1997, in the Eastern Front, Axis countries and German co-belligerents sustained 1,468,145 irrecoverable losses (668,163 KIA/MIA), Germany itself– 7,181,100 (3,604,800 KIA/MIA), and 579,900 PoWs died in Soviet captivity. So the Axis KIA/MIA amounted to 4.8 million in the East during the period of 1941–1945. This is more than a half of all Axis losses (including the Asia/Pacific theatre). The USSR sustained 10.5 million military losses (including PoWs who died in German captivity, according to Vadim Erlikman. Poteri narodonaseleniia v XX veke : spravochnik. Moscow 2004. ISBN 5-93165-107-1), so the number of military deaths (the USSR and the Axis) amounted to 15 million, far greater than in all other World War II theatres. According to the same source, total Soviet civilian deaths within post-war borders amounted to 15.7 million. The numbers for other Central European and German civilian casualties are not included here.
  42. ^ Bellamy 2007, p. xix: "That conflict, which ended sixty years before this book's completion, was a decisive component – arguably the single most decisive component – of the Second World War. It was on the eastern front, between 1941 and 1945, that the greater part of the land and associated air forces of Nazi Germany and its Axis partners were ultimately destroyed by the Soviet Union in what, from 1944, its people – and those of the fifteen successor states – called, and still call, the Great Patriotic War"
  43. ^ Geoffrey, Roberts (2002). Victory at Stalingrad (1st ed.). Routledge. p. 9. ISBN 978-0582771857.
  44. ^ "World War II: The Eastern Front". The Atlantic. 18 September 2011. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
  45. ^ Nolte, Ernst (1966). Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism (1st ed.). Holt, Rinehart & Winston. p. 358.
  46. ^ Cross, Robin (2002). The Battle of Kursk: Operation Citadel 1943. Penguin Publishing. pp. viii. ISBN 9780141391090.
  47. ^ Murray & Millett 2001, p. 143.
  48. ^ MacLeod 1999, p. 1.
  49. ^ Ch'i 1992, p. 157.
  50. ^ Sun 1996, p. 11.
  51. ^ Drea 1998, p. 26.
  52. ^ Costello 1982, p. 129–148.
  53. ^ Japan Economic Foundation, Journal of Japanese Trade & Industry, Volume 16, 1997
  54. ^ Takemae 2003, p. 516.
  55. ^ Trevor-Roper, Hugh (2011). The Wartime Journals. London: I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1848859906.
  56. ^ Bullock, Alan (1992). Hitler And Stalin: Parallel Lives. New York: Knopf. ISBN 9780771017742.
  57. ^ "International Programs – Historical Estimates of World Population – U.S. Census Bureau". 2013-03-06. Archived from the original on 2013-03-06. Retrieved 2020-03-28.
  58. ^ a b Geoffrey A. Hosking (2006). "Rulers and victims: the Russians in the Soviet Union". Harvard University Press. p. 242; ISBN 0-674-02178-9
  59. ^ Michael Ellman and S. Maksudov, Soviet Deaths in the Great Patriotic War: a note – World War II – Europe Asia Studies, July 1994.
  60. ^ a b Andreev EM; Darsky LE; Kharkova TL, Population dynamics: consequences of regular and irregular changes. in Demographic Trends and Patterns in the Soviet Union Before 1991. Routledge. 1993; ISBN 0415101948
  61. ^ Rossiiskaia Akademiia nauk. Liudskie poteri SSSR v period vtoroi mirovoi voiny: sbornik statei. Sankt-Peterburg 1995; ISBN 5-86789-023-6, pp. 124–31 (these losses are for the territory of the USSR in the borders of 1946–1991, including territories annexed in 1939–40).
  62. ^ Wojciech Materski and Tomasz Szarota. Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), Warsaw, 2009; ISBN 978-83-7629-067-6
  63. ^ Overmans, Rüdiger (2000). Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg (in German). Oldenbourg. p. Bd. 46. ISBN 3-486-56531-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  64. ^ Overmans 2000, p. 228.
  65. ^ Pauwels, Jacques (2015). The Myth of the Good War (Revista ed.). Toronto: James Laurimer & Company. p. 73. ISBN 978-1459408722.
  66. ^ China's Anti-Japanese War Combat Operations. Guo Rugui, editor-in-chief Huang Yuzhang Jiangsu People's Publishing House, 2005; ISBN 7-214-03034-9, pp. 4–9.
  67. ^ Ishikida, Miki (July 13, 2005). Toward Peace: War Responsibility, Postwar Compensation, and Peace Movements and Education in Japan. iUniverse, Inc. p. 30. ISBN 978-0595350636. Retrieved March 4, 2016.
  68. ^ Archived copy Archived May 16, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
  69. ^ "The Great Vietnamese Famine of 1944-45 Revisited1944−45". 24 January 2011.
  70. ^ Pierre van der Eng (2008). "Food Supply in Java during War and Decolonisation, 1940–1950". Munich Personal RePEc Archive | No. 8852. pp. 35–38.
  71. ^ John W. Dower. War Without Mercy 1986; ISBN 0-394-75172-8, p. 296 (300,000 forced laborers)
  72. ^ Werner Gruhl, Imperial Japan's World War Two, 1931–1945 Transaction 2007 ISBN 978-0-7658-0352-8, pp. 143–44
  73. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica, German occupied Europe. World War II. Retrieved 1 September 2015 from the Internet Archive.
  74. ^ "WWII: population of Germany and occupied areas 1941". Statista. Archived from the original on February 7, 2023. Retrieved 11 March 2023.
  75. ^ Cite error: The named reference German-occupied Europe Berend was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  76. ^ Roberts, Susan A.; Calvin A. Roberts (2006). New Mexico. University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 9780826340030.


Cite error: There are <ref group=note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}} template (see the help page).
Cite error: There are <ref group=nb> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=nb}} template (see the help page).

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:World_War_II/Summary_style&oldid=1084556582"