World War II
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
World War II, or the Second World War, was a global military conflict, the joining of what had initially been two separate conflicts. The first began in Asia in 1937 as the Second Sino-Japanese War; the other began in Europe in 1939 with the German invasion of Poland. This global conflict split the majority of the world's nations into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis Powers. Spanning much of the globe, World War II resulted in the death of over 60 million people, making it the deadliest conflict in human history.[1] World War II involved the mobilization of over 100 million military personnel, making it the most widespread war in history. The war placed the participants in a state of "total war", erasing the distinction between civil and military resources. This resulted in the complete activation of a nation's economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities for the purposes of the war effort; a majority of those killed in the war were civilians. From 9 to 11 million of these civilian casualties, including around six million Jews, were systematically killed in the Holocaust.[2] The financial cost of the war is estimated at about a trillion 1944 U.S. dollars worldwide,[3][4] making it the most costly war in capital as well as lives. The Allies were victorious, and, as a result, the United States and Soviet Union emerged as the world's two leading superpowers. This set the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 45 years. The United Nations was formed in hopes of preventing another such conflict. The self determination spawned by the war accelerated decolonization movements in Asia and Africa, while Europe itself began moving toward integration.
Background
In the aftermath of World War I, the defeated German Empire was made to sign the Treaty of Versailles. This restricted German military and territorial growth and required the payment of massive war reparations. Civil war in Russia led to the creation of the communist Soviet Union which soon fell under the control of Joseph Stalin. In Italy, Benito Mussolini seized power as a fascist dictator promising to create a "New Roman Empire".[5] The ruling Kuomintang party in China launched a unification campaign against rebelling warlords in the mid-1920s, but was soon embroiled in a civil war against its former Chinese communist allies. In 1931, an increasingly militaristic Japan, which had long sought influence in China[6] as the first step of its right to rule Asia, used the Mukden Incident as justification to invade Manchuria; the two nations then fought several small conflicts until the Tanggu Truce in 1933. In 1934, National Socialist Adolf Hitler became leader of Germany and began a massive rearming campaign.[7] This worried France and the United Kingdom, who had lost much in the previous war, as well as Italy, which saw its territorial ambitions threatened by those of Germany.[8] To secure its alliance, the French allowed Italy a free hand in Ethiopia, which Italy desired to conquer. The situation was aggravated in early 1935 when the Saarland was legally reunited with Germany and Hitler repudiated the Treaty of Versailles, speeding up remilitarization and introducing conscription. Hoping to contain Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy formed the Stresa Front. The Soviet Union, also concerned due to Germany's goals of capturing vast areas of eastern Europe, concluded a treaty of mutual assistance with France. These alliances did not amount to much. The Franco-Soviet pact, required to go through the League of Nations bureaucracy before taking effect, was essentially toothless and in June of 1935, the United Kingdom made an independent naval agreement with Germany easing prior restrictions. The isolationist United States, concerned with events in Europe and Asia, passed the Neutrality Act in August. In October Italy invaded Ethiopia, but was soon politically isolated, with Germany the only major European nation supporting its aggression. Alliances shifted, with Italy revoking its objections to Germany's goal of making Austria a satellite state.[9] In March of 1936, Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland in direct violation of the Versailles and Locarno treaties, receiving little response from other European powers.[10] When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July, Hitler and Mussolini supported fascist Generalísimo Francisco Franco in his civil war against the Soviet-supported Spanish Republic. Both sides used the conflict to test new weapons and methods of warfare.[11] With tensions mounting, efforts to strengthen or consolidate power were made. In October, Germany and Italy formed the Rome-Berlin Axis and a month later Germany and Japan, each believing communism–and the Soviet Union in particular–to be a threat, signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, which Italy would join in the following year. In China, the Kuomintang and communist forces agreed on a ceasefire to present a united front to oppose Japan.[12] Course of the war
War breaks out
In mid-1937, following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Japan began a full invasion of China. The Soviets quickly lent support to China, effectively ending China's prior cooperation with Germany. Starting at Shanghai, the Japanese pushed Chinese forces back, capturing the capital Nanjing in December. In June of 1938 Chinese forces stalled the Japanese advance by flooding the Yellow River. Though this bought time to prepare their defenses at Wuhan, the city was still taken by October.[13] During this time, Japanese and Soviet forces engaged in a minor skirmish at Lake Khasan; in May of 1939, they became involved in a more serious border war. 
In Europe, Germany and Italy were becoming bolder. In March 1938, Germany annexed Austria, again provoking little response from other European powers.[14] Encouraged, Hitler began making claims on the Sudetenland; France and Britain conceded these for a promise of no further territorial demands.[15] Germany soon reneged, and in March 1939 fully occupied Czechoslovakia. Alarmed, and with Hitler making further demands on Danzig, France and Britain guaranteed their support for Polish independence; when Italy conquered Albania in April, the same guarantee was extended to Romania and Greece.[16] The Soviet Union also attempted to ally with France and Britain, but was rebuffed due to western suspicions about Soviet motives and capability.[17] Shortly after the Franco-British pledges to Poland, Germany and Italy formalized their own alliance with the Pact of Steel; following this, in a move that shocked all other major powers, Germany and the Soviet Union concluded a non-aggression pact, including a secret agreement to split Poland and eastern Europe between them.[18] By the start of September the Soviets had routed Japanese forces and the Germans invaded Poland. France, Britain and the Commonwealth declared war on Germany but lent little support other than a small French attack into the Saarland.[19] In mid-September, after signing an armistice with Japan, the Soviets launched their own invasion of Poland.[20] By early October, Poland had been divided between Germany and the Soviet Union, with the latter's troops also stationed in the Baltic states. During the battle in Poland, Japan launched its first attack against Changsha, a strategically important Chinese city, but was repulsed by early October.[21] Axis advances
Following the invasion of Poland, the Soviets began moving troops into the Baltics. Finnish resistance in late November led to a four-month war, ending with Finnish land concessions. By mid-1940, the Soviet Union's occupation of the Baltics was completed with the installation of pro-Soviet governments. In western Europe, British troops deployed to the Continent but neither Germany nor the Allies launched direct attacks on the other. In April, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway. Denmark immediately capitulated, and despite Allied support Norway was conquered within two months. British discontent over the Norwegian campaign led to the replacement of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain by Winston Churchill on May 10th. On that same day, Germany invaded France and the Low Countries, making rapid progress using blitzkrieg tactics. By the end of the month the Netherlands and Belgium had been overrun and British troops were forced to evacuate the continent, abandoning their heavy equipment. In early June Italy invaded, declaring war on both France and the United Kingdom. Paris fell to the Germans on June 14; on June 22 France surrendered and was divided into German and Italian occupation zones, and an unoccupied rump state under the Vichy Regime. In early July, the British attacked the French fleet in Algeria to prevent their seizure by Germany. With France neutralized, the Axis was emboldened. Germany began an air superiority campaign over Britain to prepare for an invasion and enjoyed success against an over-extended Royal Navy, using U-boats against British shipping in the Atlantic. Italy began operations in the Mediterranean, fighting an inconclusive naval battle with the Royal Navy near Calabria in early July, conquering British Somaliland in August, and making an incursion into British-held Egypt in early September. Japan increased its blockade of China in September by seizing several bases in the northern part of the now-isolated French Indochina. Throughout this period, the neutral United States took measures to assist the Allies. In November 1939, the American Neutrality Act was amended to allow Cash and carry purchases by the Allies. In September 1940, the United States agreed to a trade of American destroyers for British bases, and placed steel and oil embargoes on Japan. Further American assistance to China and Britain came with the Lend-Lease policy in March 1941. At the end of September 1940, the Tripartite Pact between Japan, Italy and Germany formalized the Axis Powers. As a warning to the United States, the pact stipulated that, with the exception of the Soviet Union, any country not currently in the war which attacked any Axis Power would be forced to go to war against all three. Soon after the pact, Italy's fortunes changed. In October, Italy invaded Greece but was halted by the end of November. Commonwealth forces put three Italian battleships out of commission via carrier attack at Taranto, and then launched offensives against Libya and Italian East Africa. By early February 1941 Italian forces had been pushed back into Libya, by the Commonwealth, and into Albania, by the Greeks. In March, Churchill ordered a number of Commonwealth troops from Africa to bolster the Greeks and the Royal Navy dealt the Italian Navy a crippling blow at the Cape Matapan. 
The Germans soon intervened to assist Italy. Hitler sent German forces to Libya in February and by the end of March they had launched an offensive against the diminished Commonwealth forces. In early April the Germans invaded Greece and Yugoslavia. By the end of April, the Germans had pushed the Commonwealth forces back into Egypt, with the exception of besieged port of Tobruk, and had conquered Yugoslavia and mainland Greece. The Germans also supported a rebellion in Iraq from bases within Vichy-controlled Syria and Lebanon. By the end of May, the Commonwealth had quelled the Iraqi rebellion and scored a propaganda victory by sinking the German flagship Bismarck; the Germans had repelled a British attempt to relieve Tobruk and conquered the Greek island of Crete. In June, Commonwealth forces successfully invaded French Syria and Lebanon, but failed in a second operation against Axis forces in Libya. In Asia, in spite of several offensives by both sides, the war between China and Japan was stalemated by 1940. In August of that year, Chinese communists launched an offensive in Central China; in retaliation, Japan instituted harsh measures in occupied areas to reduce human and material resources for the communists. Mounting tensions between Chinese communist and nationalist forces culminated in January 1941, effectively ending their co-operation. With the situation in Europe and Asia relatively stable, Germany and Japan began to individually plan their next moves. In April, 1941, the Japanese, preparing for war against Britain and the United States, signed a neutrality agreement with the Soviet Union. By contrast, in May the Germans called off their campaign over Britain in order to concentrate forces for an attack on the Soviet Union. The war becomes global
In late June, Germany, along with other European Axis members and Finland, invaded the Soviet Union. Axis forces made significant gains into Soviet territory and inflicted large numbers of casualties until the offensive began to stall as winter approached. In September, the siege of Leningrad began, and in October Sevastopol was besieged and a renewed offensive was made against Moscow, the Soviet capital. After the halt of the German offensive in December, the Soviet's launched a winter counter-offensive using reserve troops brought up from the border near Japanese Manchuria. Following the German attack on the Soviets, the United Kingdom began to regroup. In August, they jointly issued the Atlantic Charter with the United States and then, along with the Soviet Union, invaded Iran to secure the Persian Corridor and Iran's oilfields. In December, they launched a counter-offensive in the desert, reclaiming all gains the Germans and Italians had made. In Asia, the Empire of Japan was preparing for war. The Imperial General Headquarters plan was to create a large perimeter stretching into the western-central Pacific in order to facilitate a defensive war while exploiting the resources of Southeast Asia; as a further precaution, the Imperial General Headquarters also planned to neutralize the United States Pacific Fleet. In preparation, Japan seized military control of southern Indochina in July, 1941; an action the United States, United Kingdom and other western governments responded to by freezing all Japanese assets. On December 1st, Hirohito authorized the war against United States, Great Britain and Holland, which began on the 7th by the launching of near simultaneous offensives against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific, including an attack on the American naval base of Pearl Harbor. 
These actions prompted the United States, United Kingdom, China, and other Western Allies to declare war on Japan. Italy, Germany, and the other members of the Tripartite Pact responded by declaring war on the United States. In January, the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union and China issued the Declaration by United Nations, formalizing their alliance against the Axis Powers with the exception that the Soviet Union maintained its neutrality agreement with Japan. The Axis Powers, however, were able to continue their offensives. Japan had almost fully conquered Southeast Asia with minimal losses by the end of April, 1942, chasing the Allies out of Burma and taking large numbers of prisoners in the Philippines, Malaya, Dutch East Indies and Singapore. They further bombed the Allied naval base at Darwin in Australia and sunk significant Allied warships not only at Pearl Harbor, but also in the Java Sea, South China Sea and Indian Ocean. The only real successes against Japan were a repulsion of their renewed attack on Changsha in late December and a psychological strike from a bombing raid on Japan's capital Tokyo in April. Germany was able to regain the initiative as well. Exploiting American inexperience with submarine warfare, the German Navy sunk significant resources near the American Atlantic coast. In the desert, they launched an offensive in January, pushing the British back to positions at the Gazala Line by early February. In the Soviet Union, the Soviet's winter counter-offensive had tapered off by March. In both the desert and the Soviet Union, there followed a temporary lull in combat which Germany used to prepare for their spring offensives. The tide turns
In early May, Japan initiated operations to capture Port Moresby, the last major Allied stronghold in south-east Asia, via amphibious assault; the Allies, however, intercepted and turned back Japanese naval forces, preventing the invasion. Japan's next plan, motivated by the earlier bombing on Tokyo, was to seize the Midway Atoll as this would seal a gap in their perimeter defenses, provide a forward base for further operations, and lure American carriers into battle to be eliminated; as a diversion, Japan would also send forces to occupy the Aleutian Islands. In early June, Japan put their operations into action but the Americans, having broken Japanese naval codes in late May, were fully aware of the Japanese plans and force dispositions and used this knowledge to achieve a decisive victory over the Imperial Japanese Navy. With their capacity for amphibious assault greatly diminished as a result of the Midway battle, Japan chose to focus on an overland campaign on the Territory of Papua in another attempt to capture Port Moresby. For the Americans, they planned their next move against Japanese positions in the southern Solomon Islands, primarily against the island of Guadalcanal, as a first step towards capturing Rabaul, the primary Japanese base in southeast Asia. Both plans started in July, but by mid-September the battle for Guadalcanal took priority for the Japanese, and troops in New Guinea were ordered to withdraw from the Port Moresby area to the northern part of the island.[22] Guadalcanal soon became a focal point for both sides with heavy commitments of troops and ships in a battle of attrition. By the start of 1943, the Japanese were defeated on the island and withdrew their troops. In Burma, Commonwealth forces mounted two operations. The first, an offensive into the Arakan region in late 1942 went disastrously, forcing a retreat back to India by the spring of 1943. The second was the insertion of irregular forces behind Japanese front-lines in February which, by the end of April, had achieved dubious results. 
In the west, concerns that the Japanese might occupy bases in Vichy-held Madagascar caused the British to invade the island in early May, 1942. This success was off set soon after by a Axis offensive in Libya, which pushed the Allies back into Egypt until Axis forces were stopped at El Alamein, and a disastrous amphibious raid on the German held port of Dieppe in France. In August, Axis forces attempted a second attack against Allied forces at El Alamein but again were turned back, a few months later the Allies commenced an attack of their own, dislodging the Axis forces and beginning a drive west across Libya. This was followed up shortly after by an Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa which resulted in the region joining the Allies. Hitler responded to the defection by ordering the occupation of Vichy France, though the Vichy Admiralty managed to scuttle their fleet to prevent its capture by German forces. The now pincered Axis forces in Africa withdrew into Tunisia, which was conquered by the Allies by May, 1943. On the German's eastern front, they launched their main summer offensive against southern Russia in June, 1942, after defeating Soviet offensives in the Kerch Peninsula and at Kharkov in the previous month. By mid-November the Germans had nearly taken Stalingrad in bitter street fighting when the Soviet's launched their counter-attack, encircling a large number of German troops. The Germans attempted to relieve these forces in December, but the Soviet's repelled the operation and in January, 1943, launched their general counter-offensive in the south and in the north. By early February, the German Army had taken tremendous losses; their troops at Stalingrad had been forced to surrender and the front-line had been pushed back roughly to its position prior to their offensives. In mid-February, after the Soviet push had tapered off, the Germans launched another attack on Kharkov, creating a salient in their front-line around the Russian city of Kursk. Allies gain momentum
Following the Guadalcanal Campaign, the Allies initiated several operations against Japan. In May, 1943, American forces were sent to eliminate Japanese forces from the Aleutians, and in June the Allies began a major operation to isolate Rabaul by capturing points in the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and other surrounding islands. By mid-August, the Japanese had withdrawn from the Aleutians and in November Allied forces began to attack the Japanese perimeter in the Gilbert and Marshall islands. By the end of March, 1944, the Allies had isolated Rabaul, neutralized another major Japanese base in the Caroline Islands, and completed their invasions of the Gilbert and Marshall islands. In April, the Allies then launched an operation to retake Western New Guinea. In mainland Asia, the Japanese launched two major offensives in the spring of 1944: the first was against British positions in Assam, India, while the second was in China with the goal of linking Japanese-held territory in Indochina, Hong Kong and Manchuria. The Chinese had also gone on the offensive in the spring, invading northern Burma from Yunnan. By the start of June, Japanese forces were besieging Commonwealth positions at Imphal and Kohima, and were themselves being besieged by the Chinese in Myitkyina; in China, the Japanese had conquered the province of Henan and begun a renewed attack against Changsha. In the Mediterranean, Allied forces launched an invasion of Sicily in early July, 1943. The attack on Italian soil, compounded with previous failures, resulted in the ousting and arrest of Mussolini on July 23rd. The Allies soon followed up with an invasion of the Italian mainland in early September, prompting the Italians to agree to an armistice with the Allies. When this armistice was made public on September 8th, Germany responded by disarming Italian forces, seizing military control of Italian areas, and setting up a series of defensive lines. On September 12th, German special forces further rescued Mussolini who then soon established a new client state in German occupied Italy. The Allies fought through several lines until reaching the main German defensive line in mid-November. In January, 1944, the Allies launched a series of attacks against the line at Monte Cassino and attempted to outflank it with landings at Anzio. By late May both of these offensives had succeeded and, at the expense of allowing several German divisions to retreat, on June 4th Rome was captured. 
German operations in the Atlantic also suffered. By May 1943, losses were so significant that the U-boat campaign was temporarily called to a halt as Allied counter-measures became increasingly effective. In the Soviet Union, the Germans spent the spring and early summer of 1943 making preparations for a large offensive in the region of Kursk; the Soviet's anticipated such an action though and spent their time fortifying the area. On July 4th, the Germans launched their attack, though by July 17th, Hitler cancelled the operation. The Soviet's were then able to mount a massive counter-offensive and, by June 1944, had largely expelled Axis forces from the Soviet Union. In November, 1943, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo and then with Joseph Stalin in Tehran. At the former conference, the post-war return of Japanese territory was determined and in the latter, it was agreed that the Western Allies would invade Europe in 1944 and that the Soviet Union would declare war on Japan within three months of Germany's defeat. Allies close in
In June, 1944, the Western Allies invaded northern France and in August, after reassiging several Allied divisions in Italy, then invaded southern France; by the 25th of August the Allies had liberated Paris. During the latter part of the year, the Western Allies continued to push back German forces in western Europe and in Italy ran into the last major defensive line. On the Germans eastern front, they continued to be pressed back by Soviet forces. In early June the Soviets launched a large offensive against Finland and another major operation to retake Belarus later that month. In July, Soviet forces invaded Ukraine and eastern Poland, prompting Polish resistance forces to initiate several uprisings in Poland, though the largest of these, in Warsaw, was conducted without Soviet assistance and put down by German forces. In mid-August the Soviets invaded eastern Romania, prompting the country to switch alliance from Germany to the Soviets in early September. In mid-September, Finland also signed an armistice with the Soviet Union, and entered conflict against Germany. In October, the Soviets initiated an operation to clear Hungary of German forces. By the start of July, Commonwealth forces in south-east Asia had repelled the Japanese sieges in Assam, pushing the Japanese back to the Chindwin River while the Chinese captured Myitkyina. In China, the Japanese were having greater successes, having finally captured Changsha in mid-June and the remainder of the Hengyang province by early August. Soon after, they further invaded the province of Guangxi, winning major engagements against Chinese forces at Guilin and Liuzhou by the end of November and successfully linking up their forces in China and Indochina by the middle of December. In the Pacific, American forces continued to press back the Japanese perimeter. In the middle of June, 1944, they began their offensive against the Mariana and Palau islands, scoring a decisive victory against Japanese forces in the Philippine Sea within a few days. By the end of September, American forces had conquered the Mariana and Palau islands and in late October, invaded the Filipino island of Leyte; soon after, Allied naval forces scored another large victory against the Japanese in the Leyte Gulf. Axis collapse, Allied victory
On the 16th of December, the Germans launched a large offensive in the Ardennes. In mid-January, the Soviets launched a major offensive themselves. By the start of February, the Western Allies had defeated the German offensive and the Soviets had progressed up to the Oder river in Germany. On February 4th, the leaders of the United States, United Kingdom and Soviet Union met in Yalta and came to agreement regarding Soviet assistance against Japan and the partitioning of post-war Germany. In February, soon after the Yalta Conference, Western Allied forces crossed the Rur river. In early March, German forces initiated their last major offensive against Soviet forces, but it was defeated within ten days. In late March, the Western Allies then crossed the Rhine river and quickly encircled a large number of German divisions. By mid-April Soviet forces were able to attack Berlin itself and near the end of the month, Mussolini's remnant fascist government in Italy was overthrown. During this period there were several changes in leadership. On April 12th, American President Roosevelt died, succeeded by Harry Truman. On the 28th, Mussolini, having been captured by Allied Italian partisans, was executed. Two days later, with the Soviets fast approaching, Hitler committed suicide, designating naval commander Karl Dönitz as the new head of state. On April 29th, German forces in Italy surrendered to the Allies. Soon after, on May 8th, the Allies accepted Germany's surrender, essentially ending the war in Europe. Sporadic fighting continued for a few days though, notably in Prague. 
In mainland Asia, Commonwealth and Chinese forces continued to press back the Japanese in Burma, steadily retaking the country. In early March the Japanese overthrew the Vichy government in Indochina, creating the short lived Empire of Vietnam. In the Pacific, American forces captured Leyte by the end of the year and invaded Luzon and Iwo Jima in January and February of 1945. In March, American forces continued their campaign in the Philippines, invading Mindanao. By the beginning of April, American forces had captured Iwo Jima and moved on to invade Okinawa, which they captured by late June. In late July, Allied leaders met in Potsdam, Germany, and concluded agreements of Germany occupation and reconstruction as well as the terms of Japanese surrender; it was specifically stated in the latter that "the alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction". During the conference, the United Kingdom held its general election and Churchill was replaced by Clement Attlee. In early August, after Japan's refusal to the terms of Potsdam, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the short period between the bombings, the Soviets fulfilled their part of the agreements at Yalta and invaded Japanese-held Manchuria. On August 15th, Japan surrendered, thus bringing the war to an end. Aftermath
The end of the war hastened the independence of many British crown colonies (such as India) and Dutch territories (such as Indonesia) and the formation of new nations and alliances throughout Asia and Africa. The Philippines were granted their independence in 1946 as previously promised by the United States. France attempted and failed to regain control of its colonies in Indochina. Poland's boundaries were re-drawn to include portions of pre-war Germany, including East Prussia and Upper Silesia, while ceding most of the areas taken by the Soviet Union in the Molotov-Ribbentrop partition of 1939, effectively moving Poland to the west. Germany was split into four zones of occupation, and the three zones under the Western Allies were reconstituted as a constitutional democracy. The Soviet Union's influence increased as they, with the tacit approval of the West, established hegemony over most of eastern Europe and incorporated parts of Finland and Poland into their new boundaries. This appeasement of Stalin by the West became known as the Western betrayal among the Soviet-dominated countries. Europe was informally split into Western and Soviet spheres of influence, which heightened existing tensions between the two camps and helped establish the Cold War. To prevent (or at least minimize) future conflicts, the allied nations, led by the United States, formed the United Nations in San Francisco, California in 1945. One of the first actions of the United Nations was the creation of the State of Israel, partly in response to the Holocaust. In 1947, U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall devised the "European Recovery Program", better known as the Marshall Plan. Effective from 1948 to 1952, it allocated 13 billion dollars for the reconstruction of Western Europe. Of Germany’s four zones of occupation, coordinated by the Allied Control Council, the American, British, and French zones joined in 1949 as the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic. In Germany, economic suppression and denazification took place for several years. Millions of Germans and Poles were expelled from their homelands as a result of the territorial annexations in Eastern Europe agreed upon at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. Mainstream estimates of German casualties from this process range one–two million. In the West, Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France, and the Saar area was separated from Germany and put in economic union with France. Austria was divided into four zones of occupation, which were united in 1955 to become the Republic of Austria. The Soviet Union occupied much of Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans. In all the USSR-occupied countries, with the exception of Austria, the Soviet Union helped Communist regimes to power. It also annexed the Baltic countries Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In Asia, Japan was occupied by the U.S, aided by Commonwealth troops, until the peace treaty took effect in 1952. The Japanese Empire's government was dismantled under General Douglas MacArthur and replaced by a constitutional monarchy with the emperor as a figurehead. The defeat of Japan also led to the establishment of the Far Eastern commission, which set out policies for Japan to fulfill under the terms of surrender. In accordance with the Yalta Conference agreements, the Soviet Union occupied and subsequently annexed Sakhalin and the Kuril islands. Japanese occupation of Korea also ended, but the peninsula was divided between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, along 38th parallel. The U.S.-backed South Korea would fight the communist North Korea in the Korean War, with Korea remaining divided. World War II was a pivotal point in China's history. Before the war against Japan, China had suffered nearly a century of intervention at the hands of various imperialist powers and was relegated to a semi-colonial status. However, the war greatly enhanced China's international status. The central government under Chiang Kai-shek was able to abrogate most of the unequal treaties China had signed in the past century, and China became a founding member of the United Nations and a permanent member of the Security Council. China also reclaimed Manchuria and Taiwan. Nevertheless, eight years of war greatly taxed the central government, and many of its nation-building measures adopted since it came to power in 1928 were disrupted by the war. Communist activities also expanded greatly in occupied areas, making post-war administration of these areas difficult. Vast war damages and hyperinflation thereafter demoralized the populace, along with the continuation of the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and the Communists. Partly because of the severe blow his army and government had suffered during the war against Japan, the Kuomintang, along with state apparatus of the Republic of China, retreated to Taiwan in 1949 and in its place the Chinese communists established the People's Republic of China on the mainland. Casualties, civilian impact, and atrocities
Estimates for the total casualties of the war vary, but most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million soldiers and 40 million civilians.[23][24][25] Many civilians died because of disease, starvation, massacres, genocide. The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the war, about half of all World War II casualties.[26] Of the total deaths in World War II, approximately 85% were on the Allied side (mostly Soviet and Chinese) and 15% on the Axis side. One estimate is that 12 million civilians died in Holocaust camps, 1.5 million by bombs, 7 million in Europe from other causes, and 7.5 million in China from other causes.[27] Figures on the amount of total casualties vary to a wide extent because the majority of deaths were not documented. Concentration camps and slave work
The Holocaust was the killing of approximately six million European Jews, as well as six million others who were deemed "unworthy of life" (including the disabled and mentally ill, Soviet POWs, homosexuals, Freemasons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Roma) as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by the National Socialist government in Germany led by Adolf Hitler. About 12 million forced laborers, most of whom were Eastern Europeans, were employed in the German war economy inside the Nazi Germany.[28] In addition to the Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet Gulag, or labor camps, led to the death of citizens of occupied countries such as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, as well as German prisoners of war (POW) and even Soviet citizens themselves who had been or were thought to be supporters of the Nazis.[29] Sixty percent of Soviet POWs died during the war.[30] Vadim Erlikman estimates the number at 2.6 million Soviet POWs that died in German Captivity.[31] Richard Overy gives the number of 5.7 million Soviet POWs. Of those, 57% died or were killed, a total of 3.6 million.[32] The survivors on their return to the USSR were treated as traitors (see Order No. 270).[33] 
Japanese POW camps also had high death rates, many were used as labour camps. According to the findings of the Tokyo tribunal, the death rate of Western prisoners was 27.1% (American POWs died at a rate of 37%),[34] seven times that of POW's under the Germans and Italians[35] The death rate of Chinese was much larger as, according to the directive ratified on 5 August 1937 by Hirohito, the constraints of international law were removed on those prisoners.[36] Thus, if 37,583 prisoners from the UK, 28,500 from Netherlands and 14,473 from USA were released after the surrender of Japan, the number for the Chinese was only 56.[37] According to a joint study of historians featuring Zhifen Ju, Mark Peattie, Toru Kubo, and Mitsuyoshi Himeta, more than 10 million Chinese were mobilized by the Japanese army and enslaved by the Kōa-in for slave labor in Manchukuo and north China.[38] The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between 4 and 10 million romusha (Japanese: "manual laborer"), were forced to work by the Japanese military. About 270,000 of these Javanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia. Only 52,000 were repatriated to Java, meaning that there was a death rate of 80%.[39] According to Mitsuyoshi Himeta, at least 2.7 million died during the Sankō Sakusen implemented in Heipei and Shantung by General Yasuji Okamura. 
On February 19, 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, interring thousands of Japanese, Italians, German Americans, and some emigrants from Hawaii who fled after the bombing of Pearl Harbor for the duration of the war. 150,000 Japanese-Americans were interned by the U.S. and Canadian governments, as well as nearly 11,000 German and Italian residents of the U.S. Chemical and bacteriological weaponsDespite the international treaties and a resolution adopted by the League of Nations on 14 May 1938 condemning the use of toxic gas by Japan, the Imperial Japanese Army frequently used chemical weapons. Because of fears of retaliation, however, those weapons were never used against Westerners but only against other Asians judged "inferior" by the imperial propaganda. According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, the authorization for the use of chemical weapons was given by specific orders (rinsanmei) issued by Hirohito himself. For example, the Emperor authorized the use of toxic gas on 375 separate occasions during the invasion of Wuhan, from August to October 1938.[40] The biological weapons were experimented on human beings by many units incorporated in the Japanese army, such as the infamous Unit 731, integrated by Imperial decree in the Kwantung army in 1936. Those weapons were mainly used in China and, according to some Japanese veterans, against Mongolians and Soviet soldiers in 1939 during the Nomonhan incident.[41] According to documents found in the Australian national archives in 2004 by Yoshimi and Yuki Tanaka, cyanide gas was tested on Australian and Dutch prisoners in November 1944 in the Kai islands.[42] BombingsMassive aerial bombing by both Axis and Allied air forces took the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Anglo-American bombing of German cities claimed up to 600,000 civilian lives, [43] most notably, the bombing of Dresden. The city of London was heavily bombed by the German Luftwaffe from September, 1940 to May, 1941 during their blitz of Britain; at one point the city was bombed for 57 straight nights. For the first, and so far only, time, nuclear weapons were used in combat: two atomic bombs released by the United States over Japan devastated Hiroshima and, three days later, Nagasaki. The number of total casualties in these bombings has been estimated at 200,000.[44] War trialsFrom 1945 to 1951, German and Japanese officials and personnel were prosecuted for war crimes. Charges included crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, waging wars of aggression, and other crimes. The most senior German officials were tried at the Nuremberg Trials, and many Japanese officials at the Tokyo War Crime Trial and other war crimes trials in the Asia-Pacific region. Many other minor officials were convicted in minor trials, including subsequent trials by the Nuremberg Tribunal, the Dachau Trials, and the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials. See also
References
External links
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
