10.6 World War II

Notes

World War II (1939 to 1945) was the deadliest war in history, with an estimated 70 to 85 million deaths.

• Aggression: Japan invaded Manchuria (1931) and China (1937); Italy invaded Ethiopia (1935); Germany rearmed, took back the Rhineland (1936), annexed Austria (March 1938) and took the Sudetenland.
• Appeasement: at the Munich Conference (1938), Britain and France let Hitler take the Sudetenland to avoid war.
• In August 1939, Germany and the USSR signed a nonaggression pact. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and Britain and France declared war.
• Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, Japan. Allies: Britain, France, later the USSR, the U.S., China and others.
• Germany used blitzkrieg ("lightning war") to conquer France (1940). Britain held out in the Battle of Britain. Germany invaded the USSR in June 1941.
• Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, bringing the U.S. into the war.
• Turning points: Midway (1942) in the Pacific; Stalingrad (1942 to 1943) on the Eastern Front; D-Day (June 6, 1944) invasion of Normandy.
• Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945 (V-E Day). After the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 1945), Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945.