The pact with Stalin meant that Hitler would not face a war on two fronts once he invaded Poland, and would have Soviet assistance in conquering and dividing the nation itself. On September 17, Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east.
Under attack from both sides, Poland fell quickly, and by early Germany and the Soviet Union had divided control over the nation, according to a secret protocol appended to the Nonaggression Pact.
On April 9, , Germany simultaneously invaded Norway and occupied Denmark, and the war began in earnest. In fact, the Germans broke through the line with their tanks and planes and continued to the rear, rendering it useless. Hitler now turned his attention to Britain, which had the defensive advantage of being separated from the Continent by the English Channel.
To pave the way for an amphibious invasion dubbed Operation Sea Lion , German planes bombed Britain extensively beginning in September until May , known as the Blitz , including night raids on London and other industrial centers that caused heavy civilian casualties and damage.
Arguments between Hitler and his commanders delayed the next German advance until October, when it was stalled by a Soviet counteroffensive and the onset of harsh winter weather. With Britain facing Germany in Europe, the United States was the only nation capable of combating Japanese aggression, which by late included an expansion of its ongoing war with China and the seizure of European colonial holdings in the Far East.
On December 7, , Japanese aircraft attacked the major U. Germany and the other Axis Powers promptly declared war on the United States. After a long string of Japanese victories, the U.
Pacific Fleet won the Battle of Midway in June , which proved to be a turning point in the war. On Guadalcanal, one of the southern Solomon Islands, the Allies also had success against Japanese forces in a series of battles from August to February , helping turn the tide further in the Pacific.
In mid, Allied naval forces began an aggressive counterattack against Japan, involving a series of amphibious assaults on key Japanese-held islands in the Pacific. The approach of winter, along with dwindling food and medical supplies, spelled the end for German troops there, and the last of them surrendered on January 31, Soviet troops soon advanced into Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania, while Hitler gathered his forces to drive the Americans and British back from Germany in the Battle of the Bulge December January , the last major German offensive of the war.
An intensive aerial bombardment in February preceded the Allied land invasion of Germany, and by the time Germany formally surrendered on May 8, Soviet forces had occupied much of the country. Hitler was already dead, having died by suicide on April 30 in his Berlin bunker.
President Harry S. Post-war Germany would be divided into four occupation zones, to be controlled by the Soviet Union, Britain, the United States and France. Heavy casualties sustained in the campaigns at Iwo Jima February and Okinawa April-June , and fears of the even costlier land invasion of Japan led Truman to authorize the use of a new and devastating weapon.
Developed during a top secret operation code-named The Manhattan Project, the atomic bomb was unleashed on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. On August 15, the Japanese government issued a statement declaring they would accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, and on September 2, U. Although more than 1 million African Americans served in the war to defeat Nazism and fascism, they did so in segregated units.
There was clear public support in Germany for the second aim, but much less so for the first. And the moment at which the British realised Hitler had been misleading them came in March when the Germans invaded the remaining Czech lands — territory that had not been given to them as a result of the Munich agreement the year before. According to Professor Prazmowska, the British decision to offer a guarantee to the Poles had no ideological dimension — it was straightforward, pragmatic politics.
One can still argue backwards and forwards, of course, about the relative competence of Chamberlain at Munich and subsequently over the question of the Polish guarantee, but, ultimately, all of this debate comes back to Hitler, because he was the key driver of events. And the truth is that he was driven not by rational argument but by fervent ideological belief.
And so with that in mind the balance of force in Europe in looks extremely ominous, because British rearmament is beginning with real intensity from the beginning of Indeed, on the contrary, he was someone who knew that the odds were stacked against his own country — and yet still wanted violent conflict. Someone prepared to gamble the future lives of millions of his people on the chance that the Germans could win a swift, decisive war.
Someone who believed with all his heart in a deeply pessimistic view of the human spirit. Manchuria was vast and thinly populated, and would serve as excellent elbow room for an already overcrowded Japan. It was also thought that Manchuria was rich in forests, natural resources, and fertile land. The fact that the Japanese believed themselves to be far superior to the Chinese only moved Japan towards conflict faster.
Additionally, the warlord of Manchuria went against Japanese expectations and declared his allegiance to a growing Chinese military movement. So, in , the army staged an explosion at a section of railway near Mukden, a city in Manchuria, as a pretext to invade and annex China. Japan met little resistance, although it did not have support of its own government, and Manchuria was completely occupied by the end of the year. Japan subsequently set up the puppet state of Manchukuo to oversee the newly acquired region.
The s saw a weak and politically chaotic China. Warlords of the many provinces of China constantly feuded, and the central government was weak and decentralized, unable to do anything to stop conflict. Chiang led an expedition to defeat southern and central Chinese warlords and gain the allegiance of northern warlords. He was successful, and he soon focused on what he perceived to be a greater threat than Japan, which was communism.
But in , the deposed warlord general of Manchuria kidnapped Chiang and refused to release him until he at least temporarily united with the communists against the Japanese threat. The Japanese army responded by staging the Battle of Lugou Bridge, which was supposed to provoke open war between China and Japan.
It worked and the Sino-Japanese War began. The beginning of the conflict was marked by the Chinese strategy of giving up land in order to stall the Japanese. It is important to note that the Japanese was not to completely take over China; rather, the Japanese wanted to set up puppet governments in key regions that would protect and advance Japanese interests.
The fall of Nanjing in the early stages of this conflict saw the beginning of Japanese war atrocities. Other war crimes committed included widespread rape, arson, and looting. These were pacts between Germany, Italy, and Japan. The Anti-Comintern pact had been a pact that denounced communism and it was initially signed by Japan and Germany.
However, later, as German and Italian relations improved, Italy also signed and this was made stronger later by the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis in The Japanese forces met little resistance and devastated the harbor. This attack resulted in 8 battleships either sunk or damaged, 3 light cruisers and 3 destroyers sunk as well as damage to some auxiliaries and aircraft either damaged or destroyed.
Japan lost only 29 aircraft and their crews and five midget submarines. The survival of these assets have led many to consider this attack a catastrophic long term strategic blunder for Japan. The following day, the United States declared war on Japan. Simultaneously to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan also attacked U. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Germany declared war on the United States on 11 December , even though it was not obliged to do so under the Tripartite Pact of Hitler made the declaration in the hopes that Japan would support him by attacking the Soviet Union.
Japan did not oblige him, and this diplomatic move proved a catastrophic blunder which gave President Franklin D. Roosevelt the pretext needed for the United States joining the fight in Europe with full commitment and with no meaningful opposition from Congress.
Some historians mark this moment as another major turning point of the war with Hitler provoking a grand alliance of powerful nations, most prominently the UK, the USA and the USSR, who could wage powerful offensives on both East and West simultaneously. Simultaneous with the dawn raid on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese carried out an invasion of Malaya, landing troops at Kota Bharu on the east coast, supported by land based aircraft from bases in Vietnam and Taiwan.
The British attempted to oppose the landings by dispatching Force Z, comprising the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse, with their escorting destroyers, from the naval base in Singapore, but this force was intercepted and destroyed by bombers before even reaching their objective. The Japanese were even using tanks, which the British had thought would not be able to penetrate the jungles but they were wrong. During a short two week campaign the Japanese crossed the Straits of Johor by amphibious assault and conducted a series of sharp battles, notably the battle of Kent Ridge when the Royal Malay Regiment put up a brave but futile effort to stem the tide.
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