Commonly held general causes for WWII are the rise of nationalism, the rise of militarism, and the presence of unresolved territorial issues. Fascist movements emerged in Italy and Germany during the global economic instability of the 1920s, and consolidated power during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In Germany, resentment of the Treaty of Versailles — specifically article 231 (the "Guilt Clause") —, the belief in the Dolchstosslegende, and the onset of the Great Depression fueled the rise to power of the militarist National Socialist German Workers Party (the Nazi party), of which Adolf Hitler was the leader. Meanwhile, the Treaty's provisions were laxly enforced from fear of another war. Closely related was the failure of the UK and French policy of appeasement, which sought to avoid or postpone another war but actually encouraged Hitler to become bolder. The Soviet Union's signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact freed Germany of fear of reprisal from the Soviet Union when Germany invaded Poland. The League of Nations, despite its efforts to prevent the war, relied on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions and was unable to prevent the start of the Second World War. In addition, France and Britain's prejudices when dealing with the Soviet Union before the war prevented an alliance between Western Europe and the only European power able to deter Hitler's ambitions.


Imperial Japan in the 1930s was ruled by a militarist clique of Army and Navy leaders who were devoted to Japan becoming a world colonial power (the Emperor had to personally intervene to finally terminate the war), Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1937 to bolster its meager stock of natural resources and extend its colonial control over a wider area. The United States and the United Kingdom reacted by making loans to China, providing covert military assistance, pilots and fighter aircraft to Kuomintang China and instituting increasingly broad embargoes of raw materials and oil against Japan. These embargoes would potentially have eventually forced Japan to give up its newly conquered possessions in China or find new sources of oil and other materials to run their economy. Japan was faced with the choice of withdrawing from China, negotiating some compromise, developing new sources of supply, buying what they needed some where else, or going to war to conquer the territories that contained oil, bauxite and other resources in the Dutch East Indies, Malay and the Philippines. Believing the French, Dutch and British governments were more than occupied with the war in Europe, the Soviets were reeling from German attacks and The United States could not be organized for war for years and would seek a compromise before waging full scale war they chose the latter, and went ahead with plans for the Greater East Asia War in the Pacific. They gambled they could pick up a new expanded empire for Japan. * The direct cause of the war with Japan was the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Singapore and the Philippines December 7, 8 1941. Germany, thinking the United States would be more than occupied with fighting the Japanese, declared war on the United States December 12 1941.

German policy aims and ideologies

The chief aim of the German policy at the time was the reacquisition of German territories taken by the Treaty of Versailles, and the addition of ethnic German regions of former Austria-Hungary to form a Greater Germany.
German foreign policy professed concern for the rights of ethnic Germans living in portions of Poland and Czechoslovakia which had been taken from Germany and Austria respectively. During his negotiations with Chamberlain, Hitler mentioned their plight as one of his key reasons for asserting claims to portions of these countries.

During one session with UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Hitler's aides brought him multiple reports alleging atrocities against ethnic Germans in nearby countries, which Hitler invoked in support of Germany's claims to its former territory.

When Hitler annexed parts of Czechoslovakia and Poland, he was welcomed enthusiastically by these ethnic Germans. When the war ended, many of these communities were forcibly compelled to return to Germany proper.

Another of the main reasons that German society moved towards war was due to the perceived inequities of the Versailles Treaty. More than anything else, this enabled the Nazis to make the case that only they could free Germany from international subjugation. Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland and the Ruhr, and overturned several territorial dispositions which were enacted by the treaty. In fact, the Versailles Treay did arguably constitute a uniquely excessive burden on Germany, in that the treaty did deprive Weimar Germany of many of the tools and conditions which would have enabled it to function as a viable state.

In the hands of the Nazis, this issue was used to rationalize brutal persecution of entire ethnic minorities and political groups. This effort against previous international settlements enabled a convergence of their political programs, war aims, and racist ideologies.



Appeasement and Pre-war alliances

The British and French governments followed a policy of appeasement in order to avoid a new European war. This was partially due to doubts about the willingness of their populations to fight another war so soon after the huge death tolls of the first World War. This policy culminated in the Munich Agreement in 1938, in which the seemingly inevitable outbreak of the war was averted when the United Kingdom and France agreed to Germany's annexation and immediate occupation of the German-speaking regions of Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain declared that the agreement represented "peace in our time". In March 1939, Germany invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia, effectively killing appeasement. Less than a year after the Munich agreement, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany.

The failure of the Munich Agreement showed that deals made with Hitler at the negotiating table could not be trusted and that his aspirations for power and dominance in Europe went beyond anything that England and France would tolerate. Poland and France pledged on May 19, 1939, to provide each other with military assistance in the event either was attacked. The British had already offered support to Poland in March. On August 23, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Pact included a secret protocol that would divide Central Europe into German and Soviet areas of interest, including a provision to partition Poland. Each country agreed to allow the other a free hand in its area of influence, including military occupation. The deal provided for sales of oil and food from the Soviets to Germany, thus reducing the danger of a UK blockade such as the one that had nearly starved Germany in World War I. Hitler was then ready to go to war with Poland and, if necessary, with the United Kingdom and France. He claimed there were German grievances relating to the issues of the Free City of Danzig and the Polish Corridor, but he planned to conquer all Polish territory and incorporate it into the German Reich. The signing of a new alliance between the United Kingdom and Poland on August 25 did not significantly alter his plans.

German and Soviet invasion of Poland


On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, using the false pretext of a faked "Polish attack" on a German border post.

On September 3, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany, followed quickly by Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

The French mobilized slowly and then mounted only a token offensive in the Saar, which they soon abandoned, while the British could not take any direct action in support of the Poles in the time available (see Western betrayal). Meanwhile, on September 8, the Germans reached Warsaw, having slashed through the Polish defenses.

On September 17, the Soviet Union, pursuant to its secret agreement with Germany, invaded Poland from the east, throwing Polish defences into chaos by opening the second front. A day later, both the Polish president and commander-in-chief fled to Romania. On October 1, hostile forces, after a one-month siege of Warsaw, entered the city. The last Polish units surrendered on October 6. Poland, however, never officially surrendered to the Germans. Some Polish troops evacuated to neighboring countries. In the aftermath of the September Campaign, occupied Poland managed to create a powerful resistance movement and contributed significant military forces to the Allies for the duration of World War II.

Phony War


After Poland fell, Germany paused to regroup during the winter of 1939-1940 until April 1940, while the British and French stayed on the defensive. The period was referred to by journalists as “the Phony War” or the “Sitzkrieg” because so little ground combat took place.

Battle of the Atlantic


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

After 1943, Germany had no serious chance of victory at sea. The Allies produced ships faster than they were sunk, and lost fewer ships by adopting the convoy system. Improved anti-submarine warfare meant that the life expectancy of a typical U-boat crew would be measured in months. The vastly improved Type 21 U-boat appeared as the war was ending, but too late.

In the South Atlantic, the ''Admiral Graf Spee'' sank nine UK Merchant Navy vessels. She was then engaged by British cruisers HMS ''Ajax'', HMS ''Exeter'', and HMNZS ''Achilles'' in the Battle of the River Plate, and forced into Montevideo Harbor. Rather than face battle again, Captain Langsdorff made for sea and scuttled his battleship just outside the harbor.

Soviet-Finnish War and occupation of Baltic Republics


In a secret Soviet-German agreement, Finland was designated a Soviet buffer zone, and the Soviets attacked on November 30, 1939, which started the Winter War. Despite outnumbering Finnish troops by 4 to 1, the Red Army found the attack embarrassingly difficult, and the Finnish defence prevented an all-out invasion. Finally, however, the Soviets prevailed and the peace treaty saw Finland cede strategically important border areas near Leningrad. The war triggered an international outcry, and, on December 14, the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations. In June 1940, the Soviet Union occupied Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, sending the local leadership to the Gulag; in addition, it annexed Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina from Romania.

German invasion of Denmark and Norway


Germany invaded Denmark and Norway on April 9, 1940, in Operation Weserübung, in part to counter the threat of an impending Allied invasion of Norway. Denmark did not resist, but Norway fought back. The United Kingdom, whose own invasion was ready to launch, landed in the north. By late June, the Allies were defeated and withdrew, Germany controlled most of Norway, and the Norwegian Army had surrendered, while the royal family escaped to London. Germany used Norway as a base for air and naval attacks on Arctic convoys headed to the Soviet Union.

German invasion of France and the Low Countries


On May 10, 1940, the Germans invaded Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, ending the Phony War. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and the French Army advanced into northern Belgium and planned to fight a mobile war in the north, while maintaining a static continuous front along the Maginot Line further south. The Allied plans were immediately smashed by the most classic example in history of Blitzkrieg. The Dutch city of Rotterdam was destroyed in a bombing raid.

In the first phase of the invasion, Fall Gelb (CACA), the Wehrmacht's Panzergruppe von Kleist, raced through the Ardennes, a heavily forested region which the Allies had thought impenetrable for a modern, mechanized army. The Germans broke the French line at Sedan, held by reservists rather than first-line troops, then drove west across northern France to the English Channel, splitting the Allies in two. Meanwhile, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands fell quickly following the attack of German Army Group B.

The BEF and French forces, encircled in the north, were evacuated from Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo. The operation was one of the biggest military evacuations in history, as 338,000 British and French troops were transported across the English Channel on warships and civilian boats.



On June 10, Italy joined the war, attacking France in the south. German forces then continued the conquest of France with Fall Rot (Case Red). France signed an armistice with Germany on June 22 1940, leading to the direct German occupation of Paris and two-thirds of France, and the establishment of a neutral (but pro-German) state headquartered in southeastern France known as Vichy France.


Battle of Britain


Germany had begun preparations in summer of 1940 to invade the United Kingdom in Operation Sea Lion. Most of the UK Army's heavy weapons and supplies had been lost at Dunkirk. The Germans had no hope of overpowering the Royal Navy, but they did think they had a chance of success, if they could gain air superiority. To do that, they first had to deal with the Royal Air Force. The ensuing contest in the late Summer of 1940 between the two air forces became known as the Battle of Britain. The Luftwaffe initially targeted RAF Fighter Command aerodromes and radar stations. Hitler, angered by retaliatory UK bombing raids on Berlin, switched his attentions towards the bombing of London, in an operation known as The Blitz. The Luftwaffe was eventually beaten back by Hurricanes and Spitfires, while the Royal Navy remained in control of the English Channel. Thus, the invasion plans were cancelled indefinitely, as Hitler turned to the East.

Italian invasion of Greece


Italy invaded Greece on October 28, 1940, from Italian occupied Albania. The Greek army forced the Italians to retreat back to Albania. By mid-December, the Greeks occupied one-quarter of Albania, tying down 530,000 Italians. Meanwhile, in fulfillment of Britain's guarantee to Greece the Royal Navy struck at the Italian fleet. Torpedo bombers from British Aircraft Carriers attacked the Italian fleet in the southern port of Taranto. One battleship was sunk and several other ships were put temporarily out of action. The success of aerial torpedoes at Taranto was noted with interest by Japan's naval chief, Yamoto, who was considering ways of "taking out" the U.S. Pacific fleet.

North Africa


With the French fleet neutralized, the UK Royal Navy battled the Italian fleet for supremacy in the Mediterranean. The British had strong bases at Gibraltar, Malta, and Alexandria, Egypt. In Africa, Italian troops invaded and captured British Somaliland in August. In September, the North African Campaign began when Italian forces in Libya attacked British forces in Egypt. The aim was to capture the Suez Canal, a vital link between the United Kingdom and India. UK, Indian, and Australian forces counter-attacked in Operation Compass, but this offensive stopped in 1941 when much of the Australian and New Zealand forces were transferred to Greece to defend it from German attack. German forces (known later as the Afrika Korps) under General Erwin Rommel, however, landed in Libya and renewed the assault on Egypt.

Lend-Lease


After France had fallen in 1940, the United Kingdom was out of money. Franklin Roosevelt persuaded the U.S. Congress to pass the Lend-Lease act on March 11 1941, which provided the United Kingdom and 37 other countries with US$50 billion dollars in military equipment and other supplies, US$31.4 billion of it going to the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.

Canada operated a similar program that sent $4.7 billion in supplies to the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union.

German invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece


On April 6, 1941, German, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian forces invaded Yugoslavia, ending with the surrender of the Yugoslavian army on April 17, and the creation of a puppet state in Croatia. Two rival resistance movements endured in Yugoslavia for the remainder of the war. The Communist group, AVNOJ, led by Tito finally prevailed over the Chetniks led by Draža Mihailović. Also on April 6, Germany invaded Greece from Bulgaria. Greek troops put up a brave fight, but the army was outnumbered and collapsed. Athens fell on April 27, yet the United Kingdom managed to evacuate over 50,000 troops. The stubborn Greek resistance and the attack on Yugoslavia, however, delayed the German invasion of the Soviet Union by a critical six weeks.

German airborne invasion of Crete


Nazi Germany invaded the island with soldiers from the elite divisions of the 7th Flieger Division and 5 Mountain Division. Crete was defended by about 11,000 Greek and 28,000 ANZAC troops (see Creforce), who had just escaped Greece without their artillery or vehicles. The Germans attacked the three main airfields of the island of Maleme, Rethimnon, and Heraklion. After one day of fighting, none of the objectives were reached and the Germans had suffered appalling casualties. German plans were in disarray and Commanding General Kurt Student was contemplating suicide. During the next day, through miscommunication and failure of Allied commanders to grasp the situation, Maleme airfield in western Crete fell to the Germans. The loss of Maleme enabled the Germans to fly in heavy reinforcements and overwhelm the Allied forces on the island. In light of the heavy casualties suffered by the parachutists, however, Adolf Hitler forbade further airborne operations.

German invasion of the Soviet Union


From the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August, 1939, through half of 1941, Stalin and the Soviet Union fed and equipped Hitler and Germany as Germany invaded Western Europe and attacked the United Kingdom by air. Germany then betrayed its Soviet partner.

On June 22, 1941, Operation Barbarossa began, the largest military invasion in history. Three German Army Groups, an Axis force of over four million men, advanced rapidly deep into the Soviet Union, destroying almost the entire western Red Army in huge battles of encirclement. Nevertheless, the Soviets dismantled as much industry as possible ahead of the advancing Axis forces, moving it to areas east of the Ural Mountains for reassembly, and ultimately resupplying the Soviet armies and contributing mightily to the destruction of Germany. By late November, the Axis had reached a line at the gates of Leningrad, Moscow, and Rostov, at the cost of about 23 percent casualties. Their advance then ground to a halt as the harsh Russian winter set in. The German General Staff had underestimated the size of the Soviet army and its ability to draft new troops. German soldiers were ill-equipped for harsh weather, and logistics were poor because of the distances, the rudimentary rail and road system, and the breakdown of men, animals and machinery in extreme cold.



The Germans became dismayed by the presence of new forces, including fresh Siberian troops under General Zhukov, and by the onset of a particularly cold winter.

German forward units had advanced within distant sight of the golden onion domes of Moscow's Saint Basil's Cathedral, but then on December 5, the Soviets counterattacked and pushed the Axis back some 150-250 kilometers (100-150 mi), the first major German defeat of World War II.
Meanwhile, on June 25, the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union began with Soviet air attacks shortly after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa.

Allied conferences

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

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

North Africa and the Middle East


In North Africa, Rommel's forces advanced rapidly eastward, laying siege to the vital seaport of Tobruk. Two Allied attempts to relieve Tobruk were defeated, but a larger offensive at the end of the year (Operation Crusader) drove Rommel back after heavy fighting.

In April-May 1941, there a was short war in Iraq that resulted in a renewal of UK occupation. In June, Allied forces invaded Syria and Lebanon and captured Damascus on June 17. Later, in August, UK and Red Army troops occupied neutral Iran, securing its oil and a southern supply line to the Soviet Union.

Mediterranean


Good Intelligence accounted for a British victory on March 28 in the largest naval battle of the war so far, when Admiral Cunningham's ships encountered the main Italian fleet south of Cape Matapan, at the southern extremity of the Greek mainland. At the cost of a couple of aircraft shot down, the British sank five Italian cruisers and three destroyers. The Italian navy was emasculated as a fighting force, and the British task of moving troops across the Mediterranean to Greece was eased.

Battle of the Atlantic


On May 9, the UK destroyer HMS ''Bulldog'' captured a German U-Boat and recovered a complete, intact Enigma Machine. This was a vital for the Allies in the Battle of the Atlantic, and in their code-breaking efforts. The machine was taken to Bletchley Park, where it was used to help decipher and understand German encryption techniques.

On May 24, the German battleship Bismarck left port, threatening British shipping in the Atlantic. After UK battlecruiser HMS ''Hood'' was sunk in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, the Royal Navy engaged in a massive hunt across the North Atlantic for Bismarck.
The German battleship was sunk after a 1,700-mile (2,700 kilometers) chase in which the British employed eight battleships and battle cruisers, two aircraft carriers, 11 cruisers, 21 destroyers, and six submarines.
After an extensive chase, Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers from aircraft carrier HMS ''Ark Royal'' struck the Bismarck, resulting in only minor damage to the ship, but causing her rudder to jam and allowing the pursuing Royal Navy Task Force to catch and sink her.

Japan and United States enter the War


In the summer of 1941, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands began an oil embargo against Japan, threatening its ability to fight a major war at sea or in the air. However, Japanese forces continued to advance into China. Japan planned an attack on Pearl Harbor to cripple the U.S. Pacific Fleet, then seize oil fields in the Dutch East Indies. On December 7, a Japanese carrier fleet launched an unexpected air attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The raid destroyed most of the American aircraft on the island and knocked the main American battle fleet out of action (six battleships sank, but four of them along with two other badly damaged battleships eventually returned to service). However, the four American aircraft carriers that had been the intended main target of the Japanese attack were off at sea. At Pearl Harbor, the main dock, supply, and repair facilities were quickly repaired.

The attack united American public opinion to demand vengeance against Japan. The following day, December 8, the United States declared war on Japan. On the same day, Japan invaded Malaya, and China officially declared war against Japan. Disaster struck the British on the 10th, as they lost two major battleships, HMS ''Prince of Wales'' and HMS ''Repulse''. Both ships had been attacked by 85 Japanese bombers and torpedo planes based in Saigon, and 840 UK sailors perished. Churchill was to say of the event, "In all of the war I have never received a more direct shock."

Germany declared war on the United States on December 11, even though it was not obliged to do so under the Tripartite Pact. Hitler hoped that Japan would support Germany by attacking the Soviet Union. Japan did not oblige because it had signed a non-aggression treaty with the Soviet Union. Instead, Germany's declaration largely removed any significant opposition to the United States' joining the fight in the Europe Theater with full commitment.

Japanese offensive


Less than 24 hours after the Attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan invaded Hong Kong. The Philippines and the British colonies of Malaya, Borneo, and Burma soon followed, with Japan's intention of seizing the oilfields of the Dutch East Indies. Despite fierce resistance by Philippine, Australian, New Zealand, British, Canadian, Indian, and American forces, all these territories capitulated to the Japanese in a matter of months. The British island fortress of Singapore was captured in what Churchill considered one of the most humiliating British defeats of all time.

Western and Central Europe

Soviet winter and early spring offensives

Axis summer offensive

Stalingrad

Eastern North Africa

Central and Southwest Pacific



On February 19, 1942, Roosevelt signed United States Executive Order 9066, leading to the internment of thousands of Japanese, Italians, German Americans, and some emmingrants from Hawaii who fled after the bombing of Pearl Harbor for the duration of the war.

In April, the Doolittle Raid, the first U.S. air raid on Tokyo, boosted morale in the United States and caused Japan to shift resources to homeland defense, but did little physical damage.

In early May, a Japanese naval invasion of Port Moresby, New Guinea, was thwarted by Allied navies in the Battle of the Coral Sea. This was both the first successful opposition to a Japanese attack and the first battle fought between aircraft carriers. The U.S. did however lose the major aircraft carrier USS Lexington, giving Japan a tactical victory.

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

In July, a Japanese overland attack on Port Moresby was led along the rugged Kokoda Track. An outnumbered, untrained and ill equipped Australian battalion defeated the 5,000-strong Japanese force, the first land defeat of Japan in the war and one of the most significant victories in Australian military history.

Between late July and mid September, Australian forces, hampered by the terrain and the inefficiencies of High command, fought back two concerted Japanese thrusts towards Port Moresby, the Battle of Milne Bay and the Kokoda Track.

The battle for Kokoda was a costly and desperate battle. The Australian forces, under the command of AIF officers, held back the Japanese forces long enough for the 21st Brigade to reinforce the ravaged militia.

On August 7, U.S. Marines began the Battle of Guadalcanal. For the next six months, U.S. forces fought Japanese forces for control of the island. Meanwhile, several naval encounters raged in the nearby waters, including the Battle of Savo Island, Battle of Cape Esperance, Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, and Battle of Tassafaronga.

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

Sino-Japanese War


Japan launched a major offensive in China following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The aim of the offensive was to take the strategically important city of Changsha, which the Japanese had failed to capture on two previous occasions. For the attack, the Japanese massed 120,000 soldiers under four divisions. The Chinese responded with 300,000 men, and soon the Japanese army was encircled and had to retreat.

Soviet and German spring offensives


After the surrender of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad on February 2, 1943, the Red Army launched eight offensives during the winter. Many were concentrated along the Don basin near Stalingrad. These attacks resulted in initial gains until German forces were able to take advantage of the over extended and weakened condition of the Red Army and launch a counter attack to re-capture the city of Kharkov and surrounding areas. This was to be the last major strategic German victory of World War II.

German summer offensive




The rains of spring inhibited campaigning in the Soviet Union, but both sides used the interval to build up for the inevitable battle that would come in the summer. The start date for the offensive had been moved repeatedly as delays in preparation had forced the Germans to postpone the attack. By July 4, the Wehrmacht after assembling their greatest concentration of firepower during the whole of World War II, launched their offensive against the Soviet Union at the Kursk salient. Their intentions were known by the Soviets, who hastened to defend the salient with an enormous system of earthwork defenses. The Germans attacked from both the north and south of the salient and hoped to meet in the middle, cutting off the salient and trapping 60 Soviet divisions. The German offensive in the Northern sector was ground down as little progress was made through the Soviet defenses but in the Southern Sector there was a danger of a German breakthrough. The Soviets then brought up their reserves, and the ensuing Battle of Kursk became the largest tank battle of the war, near the city of Prokhorovka. The Germans lacking any sizable reserves had exhausted their armored forces and could not stop the Soviet counteroffensive that threw them back across their starting positions.

Soviet fall and winter offensives


The Soviets captured Kharkov following their victory at Kursk and with the Autumn rains threatening, Hitler agreed to a general withdrawal to the Dnieper line in August. As September proceeded into October, the Germans found the Dnieper line impossible to hold as the Soviet bridgeheads grew. Important Dnieper towns started to fall, with Zaporozhye the first to go, followed by Dnepropetrovsk. Early in November the Soviets broke out of their bridgeheads on either side of Kiev and recaptured the Ukrainian capital. The 1st Ukrainian Front attacked at Korosten on Christmas Eve, and the Soviet advance continued along the railway line until the 1939 Soviet-Polish border was reached.

Allied invasion of Italy


The surrender of Axis forces in Tunisia on May 13, 1943, yielded some 250,000 prisoners. The North African war proved to be a disaster for Italy, and when the Allies invaded Sicily on July 10 in Operation Husky, capturing the island in a little over a month, the regime of Benito Mussolini collapsed. On July 25, he was removed from office by Victor Emmanuel III, the King of Italy, and arrested with the positive consent of the Great Fascist Council. A new government, led by Pietro Badoglio, took power and declared ostensibly that Italy would stay in the war. Badoglio had already begun secret peace negotiations with the Allies.

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

In the north, Mussolini, with Nazi support, created what was effectively a puppet state, the Italian Social Republic or Republic of Salò, named after the new capital of Salò on Lake Garda.

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

Battle of the Atlantic


The turning point of the Battle of the Atlantic took place in early 1943 as the Allies refined their naval tactics, effectively making use of new technology to counter the U-Boats. Although two convoys suffered heavy losses, the U-Boats were also taking increasingly heavy casualties, and were forced to abandon their main offensive in the mid-Atlantic.

The Allies had also resumed running the Arctic convoys to the Soviet Union. In December, the last major sea battle between the Royal Navy and the German Navy took place. At the Battle of North Cape, Germany's last battlecruiser, the Scharnhorst, was sunk by HMS ''Duke of York'', HMS ''Belfast'', and several destroyers.

Soviet winter and spring offensives


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

In the south, in March, two Soviet formations encircled Generaloberst Hans-Valentin Hube's First Panzer Army north of the Dniestr river. The Germans escaped the pocket in April, saving most of their men but losing their heavy equipment.

In early May, the Red Army's 3rd Ukrainian Front engaged German Seventeenth Army of Army Group South which had been left behind after the German retreat from the Ukraine. The battle was a complete victory for the Red Army, and a botched evacuation effort across the Black Sea led to over 250,000 German and Romanian casualties.

During April 1944, a series of attacks by the Red Army near the city of Iaşi, Romania, aimed at capturing the strategically important sector. The German-Romanian forces successfully defended the sector throughout the month of April. The attack at Târgul Frumos was the final attempt by the Red Army to achieve its goal of having a springboard into Romania for a summer offensive.

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

Finland sought a separate peace with Stalin in February 1944, but would not accept the initial terms offered. On June 9, the Soviet Union began the Fourth strategic offensive on the Karelian Isthmus that, after three months, forced Finland to accept an armistice.

Italy and the Balkans


Following Italy's surrender, German troops took over the defense of the Italian peninsula and established the Gustav line in the southern Apennine Mountains south of Rome. The Allies were unable to break this line, and so attempted to bypass it with an amphibious landing at Anzio on January 22, 1944. The landing, named Operation Shingle, quickly became encircled by the Germans and bogged down, leading Churchill to comment, "Instead of hurling a wildcat onto the shore all we got was a stranded whale."

Unable to circumvent the Gustav line, the Allies again attempted to break through with frontal assaults. On February 15, the monastery of Monte Cassino, founded in 524 by St. Benedict was destroyed by American B-17 and B-26 bombers, upon the erroneous belief that the Germans made use of it for artillery spotting. Two days after the bombing, crack German paratroopers poured into the ruins to defend it. From January 12 to May 18, it was assaulted four times by Allied troops, for a loss of over 54,000 Allied and 20,000 German soldiers.

After months, the Gustav line was broken and the Allies marched north. On June 4, Rome was liberated, and the Allied army reached Florence in August. It then was held at the Gothic Line on the Tuscan Apennines during the winter.

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

Romania turned against Germany in August 1944, threatening German lines of retreat from the Ukraine. Bulgaria surrendered in September.


V Weapons



In June 1944, the Germans used the world's first cruise missile, the V-1 flying bomb, to attack UK targets. Later, they would employ the V-2 rocket, a liquid-fuelled guided ballistic missile.

Area bombing raids


The U.S., UK, and Canadian air forces counterattacked the Luftwaffe and began large-scale strategic bombing, eventually targeting major cities inside Germany. This effort was orchestrated by Air Chief Marshall Harris, who became known as 'Bomber Harris'. Additionally, Winston Churchill ordered "terror raids" intended to wipe out whole cities in one go, by incendiary devices causing firestorms, thus depriving German workers of their homes. Mass raids involving upwards of 500 to 1000 heavy bombers at a time were undertaken against airfields, industrial centers, submarine bases, rail-marshalling yards, oil depots and, in the later stages of the war, launching sites for weapons such as the V-1 missile (nicknamed 'doodlebug'), the V-2 rocket and a jet-engined plane, the Messerschmitt Me 262. The Luftwaffe was overwhelmed and had only a few operational planes left by late 1944 on the Western Front. By 1945, all major German cities were burnt-out ruins.

Soviet summer offensive


Operation Bagration, a Soviet offensive involving 2.5 million men and 6,000 tanks, was launched on June 22, 1944. Its objective was to clear German troops from Belarus. The subsequent battle resulted in the destruction of German Army Group Centre and over 800,000 German casualties, the greatest defeat for the Wehrmacht during the war. The Soviets swept forward, reaching the outskirts of Warsaw on July 31.


Warsaw Uprising


The proximity of the Red Army led the Poles in Warsaw to believe they would soon be liberated. On August 1, they revolted as part of the wider Operation Tempest. Nearly 40,000 Polish resistance fighters seized control of the city. The Soviets, however, were unable to advance any further. * The only assistance given to the Poles was artillery fire, as German army units moved into the city to put down the revolt. The resistance ended on October 2. German units then destroyed most of what was left of the city.

Soviet autumn and winter offensives


After the destruction of Army Group Center, the Soviets attacked German forces in the south in mid-July 1944, and in a month's time they cleared Ukraine of German presence.

The Red Army's 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts engaged German Heeresgruppe Südukraine, which consisted of German and Romanian formations, in an operation to occupy Romania and destroy the German formations in the sector. The result of the battle was complete victory for the Red Army, and a switch of Romania from the Axis to the Allied camp.

In October 1944, General der Artillerie Maximilian Fretter-Pico's Sixth Army encircled and destroyed three corps of Marshal Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky's Group Pliyev near Debrecen, Hungary. This was to be the last German victory in the Eastern front.

The Red Army's 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Baltic Fronts engaged German Army Group Center and Army Group North to capture the Baltic region from the Germans. The result of the series of battles was a permanent loss of contact between Army Groups North and Centre, and the creation of the Courland Pocket in Latvia. From December 29, 1944, to February 13, 1945, Soviet forces laid siege to Budapest, which was defended by German Waffen-SS and Hungarian forces. It was one of the bloodiest sieges of the war.

Allied invasion of Western Europe




On "D-Day" (June 6, 1944), the western Allies of mainly the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada invaded German-held Normandy. German resistance was stubborn, especially on Omaha Beach and in the city of Caen. During the first month, the Allies measured progress in hundreds of yards and bloody rifle fights in the Bocage. An Allied breakout (Operation Cobra) was effected at St.-Lô.



During August 1944, the German Seventh Army and Fifth Panzer Army were almost completely encircled in the Falaise pocket after they mounted a counterattack. Some 50,000 were captured, but 100,000 managed to escape the pocket. Allied forces stationed in Italy invaded the French Riviera on August 15 and linked up with forces from Normandy. The clandestine French Resistance in Paris rose against the Germans on August 19, and a French division under General Jacques Leclerc, pressing forward from Normandy, received the surrender of the German forces there and liberated the city on August 25.

Allied autumn offensive



Logistical problems plagued the Allies' advance east as the supply lines still ran back to the beaches of Normandy. Allied paratroopers and armor attempted a war-winning advance through the Netherlands and across the Rhine River with Operation Market Garden in September, but they were repulsed. A decisive victory by the Canadian First Army in the Battle of the Scheldt secured the entrance to the port of Antwerp, which freed it to receive supplies by late November 1944. Meanwhile, the Americans launched an attack through the Hurtgen Forest in September, but the Germans despite having smaller numbers were able to use the difficult terrain and find good defensive positions. In October, the Americans captured Aachen, the first major German city to be occupied.

German winter offensive


In December 1944, the German Army made its last major offensive in the West, known as the Battle of the Bulge. Hitler sought victory similar to the 1940 Ardennes offensive, which he envisioned would drive back the Western Allies and force them to agree to a separate peace. At first, the Germans scored successes against the unprepared Allied forces. The lead group of panzers, Kampfgruppe Peiper led by Jochen Peiper, got so far out in front that he created a "bulge" in the American lines, hence the name of the battle.

Poor weather during the initial days of the offensive favored the Germans, because Allied aircraft were grounded. Stubborn U.S. resistance at St. Vith and by the surrounded 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne, an important crossroads, blunted the German advance. The arrival of the United States Third Army under General George Patton ended the German threat, and further counterattacks trapped many German units in the resulting pocket. The remaining Germans were forced to retreat back into Germany. It was the bloodiest battle in U.S. military history.

Central and southwest Pacific


The American advance continued in the southwest Pacific with the capture of the Marshall Islands before the end of February. Some 42,000 U.S. Army soldiers and U.S. Marines landed on Kwajalein atoll on January 31. Fierce fighting occurred, and the island was taken on February 6. U.S. Marines next defeated the Japanese in the Battle of Eniwetok.

The U.S. strategic objective was to gain airbases within bombing range of the new B-29s on the Mariana Islands, especially Saipan, Tinian and Guam. On June 11, the battle fleet bombarded Saipan, defended by 32,000 Japanese troops; 77,000 Marines landed starting the 15th, and the island was secure by July 9. The Japanese committed much of their declining naval strength in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, but suffered severe losses in both ships and aircraft. After the battle, the Japanese aircraft carrier force was no longer militarily effective. With the capture of Saipan, Japan was finally within range of B-29 bombers.

Guam was invaded on July 21 and taken on August 10, but the Japanese fought fanatically. Mopping-up operations continued long after the Battle of Guam was officially over. The island of Tinian was invaded on July 24 and was conquered on August 1. This operation saw the first use of napalm in the war.


General MacArthur's troops liberated the Philippines, landing on the island of Leyte on October 20. The Japanese had prepared a rigorous defense and used the last of their naval forces in a failed attempt to destroy the invasion force in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, October 23 through October 26, 1944, the largest naval battle in history. This was the first battle that employed Japanese kamikaze attacks. The Japanese battleship ''Musashi'', one of the two largest battleships ever built, was sunk by 19 American torpedoes and 17 bombs.

Throughout 1944, U.S. submarines and aircraft attacked Japanese merchant shipping and deprived Japan's industry of the raw materials it had gone to war to obtain. The main target was oil, and Japan ran almost dry by late 1944. In 1944, submarines sank over two million tons of cargo,• while the Japanese were only able to replace less than one million tons.•

Sino-Japanese War


In April 1944, the Japanese launched Operation Ichigo to secure the railway route across Japanese-occupied territories of northeast China, Korea, and Southeast Asia, and to destroy U.S. airbases in the area. In June 1944, the Japanese deployed 360,000 troops and invaded Changsha for the fourth time. This campaign involved more Japanese troops than any other in the Sino-Japanese war, and after 47 days of bitter fighting, the city was taken. By November, the Japanese had also taken the cities of Guilin and Liuzhou, which had served as U.S. airbases for bombing raids on Japan. However, the USAAF could still strike Japan from newly acquired bases. By December, Japanese forces reached French Indochina and achieved the purpose of the operation, but only after incurring heavy losses.

Southeast Asia


While the Americans steadily built the Ledo Road from India to China, in March 1944, the Japanese began their own offensive into India. This "march to Delhi" was instigated by local commanders, and the leadership of the Japanese auxiliaries, the Indian National Army. The Japanese attempted to destroy the main British and Indian forces at Imphal, resulting in some of the most ferocious fighting of the war. While the encircled allied troops were reinforced and resupplied by transport aircraft until fresh troops broke the siege, the Japanese ran out of supplies and starved. They eventually retreated losing 85,000 men, one of the largest Japanese defeats of the war.

Soviet winter offensive


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

On January 17, Zhukov took Warsaw. On January 19, his tanks took Łódź. That same day, Konev's forces reached the German pre-war border. At the end of the first week of the offensive, the Soviets had penetrated 160 kilometers (100 mi) deep on a front that was 650 kilometers (400 mi) wide. By February 13, the Soviets took Budapest. The Soviet onslaught finally halted on the Oder River at the end of January, only 60 kilometers (40 mi) from Berlin.

Allied winter offensive

On January 14th, the XII Corps / 2nd British Army launched Operation Blackcock in order to clear the Roer Triangle, a German-held salient between the rivers Maas and Roer south of Roermond. By January 27th, the German forces were driven east of the Roer.

Yalta Conference


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

An April meeting would be held to form the United Nations;

Poland would have free elections;

The borders of Poland were to be drastically moved westwards, at the expense of Germany.

Soviet nationals were to be repatriated;

The Soviet Union was to attack Japan within three months of Germany's surrender.

Central and Southwest Pacific

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

The last major offensive in the South West Pacific Area was the Borneo campaign of mid-1945, which was aimed at further isolating the remaining Japanese forces in Southeast Asia and securing the release of Allied prisoners of war.

Southeast Asia

In Southeast Asia, during the monsoon from August to November 1944, the Japanese were pursued to the Chindwin River in Burma after their failed attack on India. With the onset of the dry season in early 1945, while the American and Chinese forces finally completed the Ledo Road, although too late to have any decisive effect, the British Fourteenth Army, consisting of Indian, British, and African units, launched an offensive into Central Burma. The Japanese forces were heavily defeated, and the Allies pursued them southward, taking Rangoon on May 2 (see
Operation Dracula).

Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

President Harry Truman decided to use the new atomic super-weapon to bring the war to a swifter end. The battle for Okinawa had shown that an invasion of the Japanese mainland (planned for November) would result large numbers of American casualties. The official estimate given to the Secretary of War was 1.4 to four million Allied casualties, though some historians dispute whether this would have been the case. Invasion would have meant the death of millions of Japanese soldiers and civilians, who were being trained as militia.

On August 6, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress, the Enola Gay, dropped a nuclear weapon dubbed Little Boy on Hiroshima, destroying the city. On August 9, a B-29 named Bockscar dropped the second atomic bomb, dubbed Fat Man, on the port city of Nagasaki.

Soviet offensive in the Far East

On August 8, two days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the Soviet Union, having renounced its nonaggression pact with Japan, attacked the Japanese in Manchuria, fulfilling its Yalta pledge to attack the Japanese within three months after the end of the war in Europe. The attack was made by three Soviet army groups. In less than two weeks, the Japanese army in Manchuria, consisting of over a million men, had been destroyed by the Soviets. The Red Army moved into North Korea on August 18. Korea was subsequently divided at the 38th parallel into Soviet and U.S. zones.

Japan surrenders

The American use of atomic weapons against Japan and the Soviet invasion of Manchukuo prompted Hirohito to bypass the existing government and intervene to end the war. In his radio address to the nation, the Emperor did not mention the entry of the Soviet Union into the war, but in his "Rescript to the soldiers and sailors" of August 17th, ordering them to cease fire and lay down arms, he stressed the relationship between Soviet entrance into the war and his decision to surrender, omitting any mention of the atomic bombs.

The Japanese surrendered on August 14, 1945, or V-J day, signing the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on September 2. The Japanese troops in China formally surrendered to the Chinese on September 9, 1945.