World War II, or the Second World War (often abbreviated as WWII or WW2), was a global

war that was underway by 1939 and ended in 1945. It involved a vast majority of the world's
nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances:
the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, with more than 100 million
people serving in military units. In a state of "total war", the major participants placed their
entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, erasing the
distinction between civilian and military resources. Marked by significant events involving the
mass death of civilians, including the Holocaust and the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare,
it resulted in 50 million to over 73 million fatalities. These deaths make World War II by far the
deadliest conflict in all of human history.[1]

The Empire of Japan aimed to dominate East Asia and was already at war with the Republic of
China in 1937,[2] but the world war is generally said to have begun on 1 September 1939 with
the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France
and Britain. From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany
formed the Axis alliance with Italy, conquering or subduing much of continental Europe.
Following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and
annexed territories between themselves of their European neighbours, including Poland. The
United Kingdom, with its empire and Commonwealth, remained the only major Allied force
continuing the fight against the Axis, with battles taking place in North Africa as well as the
long-running Battle of the Atlantic. In June 1941, the European Axis launched an invasion of the
Soviet Union, giving a start to the largest land theatre of war in history, which tied down the
major part of the Axis' military forces for the rest of the war. In December 1941, Japan joined
the Axis, attacked the United States and European territories in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly
conquered much of the West Pacific.

The Axis advance was stopped in 1942, after Japan lost a series of naval battles and European
Axis troops were defeated in North Africa and, decisively, at Stalingrad. In 1943, with a series of
German defeats in Eastern Europe, the Allied invasion of Italy, and American victories in the
Pacific, the Axis lost the initiative and undertook strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the
Western Allies invaded France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and
invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the United States defeated the Japanese
Navy and captured key West Pacific islands.

The war in Europe ended with the capture of Berlin by Soviet and Polish troops and the
subsequent German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. In August 1945, the United States
dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese as the invasion of the Japanese archipelago became
imminent, and the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, invading Manchuria. The Empire of
Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945, ending the war in Asia and cementing the total victory of
the Allies over the Axis.

stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European
great powers started to decline, while the decolonisation of Asia and Africa began. Most
countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political
integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to stabilise postwar relations.
Pre-war events
Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935)

Main article: Second Italo-Abyssinian War

The Second Italo–Abyssinian War was a brief colonial war that began in October 1935 and
ended in May 1936. The war was fought between the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy
(Regno d'Italia) and the armed forces of the Ethiopian Empire (also known as Abyssinia). The
war resulted in the military occupation of Ethiopia and its annexation into the newly created
colony of Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana, or AOI); in addition, it exposed the
weakness of the League of Nations as a force to preserve peace. Both Italy and Ethiopia were
member nations, but the League did nothing when the former clearly violated the League's own
Article X.[29]

War breaks out in Europe (1939)

Common parade of German Wehrmacht and Soviet Red Army on 23 September 1939 in Brest,
Eastern Poland at the end of the Invasion of Poland. At centre is Major General Heinz Guderian
and at right is Brigadier Semyon Krivoshein.

On 1 September 1939, Germany and Slovakia—a client state in 1939—attacked Poland.[46] On

3 September France and Britain, followed by the countries of the Commonwealth,[47] declared
war on Germany but provided little support to Poland other than a small French attack into the
Saarland.[48] Britain and France also began a naval blockade of Germany on 3 September which
aimed to damage the country's economy and war effort.[49][50]

On 17 September, after signing a cease-fire with Japan, the Soviets also invaded Poland.[51]
Poland's territory was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union, with Lithuania and
Slovakia also receiving small shares. The Poles did not surrender; they established a Polish
Underground State and an underground Home Army, and continued to fight with the Allies on
all fronts outside Poland.[52]

About 100,000 Polish military personnel were evacuated to Romania and the Baltic countries;
many of these soldiers later fought against the Germans in other theatres of the war.[53] Poland's
Enigma codebreakers were also evacuated to France.[54] During this time, Japan launched its
first attack against Changsha, a strategically important Chinese city, but was repulsed by late
September.[55]

Following the invasion of Poland and a German-Soviet treaty governing Lithuania, the Soviet
Union forced the Baltic countries to allow it to station Soviet troops in their countries under
pacts of "mutual assistance."[56][57][58] Finland rejected territorial demands and was invaded by
the Soviet Union in November 1939.[59] The resulting conflict ended in March 1940 with Finnish
concessions.[60] France and the United Kingdom, treating the Soviet attack on Finland as
tantamount to entering the war on the side of the Germans, responded to the Soviet invasion by
supporting the USSR's expulsion from the League of Nations.[58]

Immediate effects

Warsaw: Aftermath of war.

At the end of the war, millions of people were homeless, the European economy had collapsed,
and much of the European industrial infrastructure had been destroyed. The Soviet Union, too,
had been heavily affected. In response, in 1947, U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall devised
the "European Recovery Program", which became known as the Marshall Plan. Under the plan,
during 1948-1952 the United States government allocated US$13 billion (US$135 billion in
2011 dollars) for the reconstruction of Western Europe.

[edit] United Kingdom

By the end of the war, the economy of the United Kingdom was exhausted. More than a quarter
of its national wealth had been spent. Until the introduction in 1941 of Lend-Lease aid from the
US, the UK had been spending its assets to purchase American equipment including aircraft and
ships - over £437 million on aircraft alone. Lend-lease came just before its reserves were
exhausted. Britain put 55% of its total labor force into in war production.

In spring 1945, the Labour Party withdrew from the wartime coalition government, forcing a
general election. Following a landslide victory, Labour held more than 60% of the seats in the
House of Commons and formed a new government on 26 July 1945 under Clement Attlee.

Britain's war debt was described by some in the American administration as a "millstone round
the neck of the British economy". Although there were suggestions for an international
conference to tackle the issue, in August 1945 the U.S. announced unexpectedly that the Lend-
Lease programme was to end immediately.

The abrupt withdrawal of American Lend Lease support to Britain on 2 September 1945 dealt a
severe blow to the plans of the new government. It was only with the completion of the Anglo-
American loan by the United States to Great Britain on 15 July 1946 that some measure of
economic stability was restored. However, the loan was made primarily to support British
overseas expenditure in the immediate post-war years and not to implement the Labour
government's policies for domestic welfare reforms and the nationalisation of key industries.
Although the loan was agreed on reasonable terms, its conditions included what proved to be
damaging fiscal conditions for the Sterling. From 1946-1948, the UK introduced bread rationing
which it never did during the war.[1][2][3][4]

[edit] Soviet Union

Ruins in Stalingrad, typical of the destruction in many Soviet cities.

The Soviet Union suffered enormous losses in the war against Germany. The Soviet population
decreased by about 40 million during the war; of these, 8.7 million were combat deaths. The 19
million non-combat deaths had a variety of causes: starvation in the siege of Leningrad;
conditions in German prisons and concentration camps; mass shootings of civilians; harsh
labour in German industry; famine and disease; conditions in Soviet camps; and service in
German or German-controlled military units fighting the Soviet Union.[5] The population would
not return to its pre-war level for 30 years.[6]

Soviet ex-POWs and civilians repatriated from abroad were suspected of having been Nazi
collaborators, and 226,127 of them were sent to forced labour camps after scrutiny by Soviet
intelligence, NKVD. Many ex-POWs and young civilians were also conscripted to serve in the
Red Army. Others worked in labour battalions to rebuild infrastructure destroyed during the
war.[7][8]

The economy had been devastated. Roughly a quarter of the Soviet Union's capital resources
were destroyed, and industrial and agricultural output in 1945 fell far short of pre-war levels. To
help rebuild the country, the Soviet government obtained limited credits from Britain and
Sweden; it refused assistance offered by the United States under the Marshall Plan. Instead, the
Soviet Union compelled Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe to supply machinery and raw materials.
Germany and former Nazi satellites made reparations to the Soviet Union. The reconstruction
programme emphasised heavy industry to the detriment of agriculture and consumer goods. By
1953, steel production was twice its 1940 level, but the production of many consumer goods and
foodstuffs was lower than it had been in the late 1920s.[9]

The immediate post-war period in Europe was dominated by the Soviet Union annexing, or
converting into Soviet Socialist Republics,[10][11][12] all the countries captured by the Red Army
driving the German invaders out of central and eastern Europe. New Soviet satellite states rose
in Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary,[13] Czechoslovakia,[14] Romania,[15][16] Albania,[17] and East
Germany; the last of these was created from the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany.[18]
Yugoslavia emerged as an independent Communist state allied but not aligned with the Soviet
Union, owing to the independent nature of the military victory of the Partisans of Josip Broz Tito
on the Yugoslav Front. The Allies established the Far Eastern Commission and Allied Council
for Japan to administer their occupation of that country while the establishment Allied Control
Council, administered occupied Germany. In accordance with the Potsdam Conference
agreements, the Soviet Union occupied and subsequently annexed the strategic island of
Sakhalin.

[edit] Germany

Main articles: History of Germany (1945–1990), Forced labor of Germans after World War II,
Morgenthau Plan, Industrial plans for Germany, Denazification, Territorial changes of Germany
after World War II, and Legal status of Germany
Post-WWII occupation zones of Germany, in its 1937 borders, with territories east of the Oder-
Neisse line shown as annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union, plus the Saar protectorate and
divided Berlin. East Germany was formed by the Soviet Zone, while West Germany was formed
by the American, British, and French zones in 1949 and the Saar in 1957.

In the west, Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France. The Sudetenland reverted back to
Czechoslovakia following the European Advisory Commission's decision to delimit German
territory to be the territory it held on December 31, 1937. Close to one quarter of pre-war
(1937) Germany was de facto annexed by the Allies; roughly 10 million Germans were either
expelled from this territory or not permitted to return to it if they had fled during the war. The
remainder of Germany was partitioned into four zones of occupation, coordinated by the Allied
Control Council. The Saar was detached and put in economic union with France in 1947. In
1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was created out of the Western zones. The Soviet zone
became the German Democratic Republic.

Germany paid reparations to the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union, mainly in the
form of dismantled factories, forced labour, and coal. German standard of living was to be
reduced to its 1932 level.[19] Beginning immediately after the German surrender and continuing
for the next two years, the U.S. and Britain pursued an "intellectual reparations" programme to
harvest all technological and scientific know-how as well as all patents in Germany. The value of
these amounted to around US$10 billion[20] (US$119 billion in 2011 dollars). In accordance
with the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947, reparations were also assessed from the countries of Italy,
Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland.

The hunger-winter of 1947, thousands protest against the disastrous food situation (March 31,
1947).

U.S. policy in post-war Germany from April 1945 until July 1947 had been that no help should
be given to the Germans in rebuilding their nation, save for the minimum required to mitigate
starvation. The Allies' immediate post-war "industrial disarmament" plan for Germany had been
to destroy Germany's capability to wage war by complete or partial de-industrialization. The
first industrial plan for Germany, signed in 1946, required the destruction of 1,500
manufacturing plants to lower German heavy industry output to roughly 50% of its 1938 level.
Dismantling of West German industry ended in 1951. By 1950, equipment had been removed
from 706 manufacturing plants, and steel production capacity had been reduced by 6.7 million
tons.[21] After lobbying by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Generals Lucius D. Clay and George
Marshall, the Truman administration accepted that economic recovery in Europe could not go
forward without the reconstruction of the German industrial base on which it had previously had
been dependent.[22] In July 1947, President Truman rescinded on "national security grounds"[23]
the directive that had ordered the U.S. occupation forces to "take no steps looking toward the
economic rehabilitation of Germany." A new directive recognised that "[a]n orderly, prosperous
Europe requires the economic contributions of a stable and productive Germany."[24] From mid-
1946 onwards Germany received U.S. government aid through the GARIOA programme. From
1948 onwards West Germany also became a minor beneficiary of the Marshall Plan. Volunteer
organisations had initially been forbidden to send food, but in early 1946 the Council of Relief
Agencies Licensed to Operate in Germany was founded. The prohibition against sending CARE
Packages to individuals in Germany was rescinded on 5 June 1946.

After the German surrender, the International Red Cross was prohibited from providing aid such
as food or visiting POW camps for Germans inside Germany. However, after making
approaches to the Allies in the autumn of 1945 it was allowed to investigate the camps in the UK
and French occupation zones of Germany, as well as to provide relief to the prisoners held there.
On February 4, 1946, the Red Cross was permitted to visit and assist prisoners also in the U.S.
occupation zone of Germany, although only with very small quantities of food. The Red Cross
petitioned successfully for improvements to be made in the living conditions of German
POWs.[25]

[edit] Japan

Main article: Occupation of Japan

After the war, the Allies rescinded Japanese pre-war annexations such as Manchuria, and Korea
became independent. At the Yalta Conference, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had secretly
traded the Japanese Kurils and south Sakhalin to the Soviet Union in return for Soviet entry in
the war with Japan.[neutrality is disputed][improper synthesis?][26][verification needed] In response, the Soviet Union
annexed the Kuril Islands, provoking the Kuril Islands dispute, which was ongoing as of 2012.

Hundreds of thousands of Japanese were forced to relocate to the Japanese main islands.
Okinawa became a main U.S. staging point. The U.S. covered large areas of it with military
bases and continued to occupy it until 1972, years after the end of the occupation of the main
islands. The bases still remain. To skirt the Geneva Convention, the Allies classified many
Japanese soldiers as Japanese Surrendered Personnel instead of POWs and used them as forced
labour until 1947.[citation needed] The UK, France, and the Netherlands conscripted some Japanese
troops to fight colonial resistances elsewhere in Asia.[citation needed] General Douglas MacArthur
established the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. The Allies collected reparations
from Japan.

To further remove Japan as a potential future military threat, the Far Eastern Commission
decided to de-industrialise Japan, with the goal of reducing Japanese standard of living to what
prevailed between 1930 and 1934.[neutrality is disputed][27][not in citation given][28] In the end, the de-
industrialisation program in Japan was implemented to a lesser degree than the one in
Germany.[27] Japan received emergency aid from GARIOA, as did Germany. In early 1946, the
Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia were formed and permitted to supply Japanese with food
and clothes. In April 1948 the Johnston Committee Report recommended that the economy of
Japan should be reconstructed due to the high cost to U.S. taxpayers of continuous emergency
aid.
Little Boy
.

Little Boy (atomic bomb)

A post-war "Little Boy" model

Type Nuclear weapon

Place of origin United States

Specifications

Weight 9,700 pounds (4,400 kg)[1]

Length 120 inches (3.0 m)[1]

Diameter 28 inches (710 mm)[1]

"Little Boy" was the codename for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 by
the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets of the 393rd
Bombardment Squadron, Heavy, of the United States Army Air Forces.[3] It was the first atomic
bomb to be used as a weapon. The second, the "Fat Man", was dropped three days later on
Nagasaki.[4]

The weapon was developed by the Manhattan Project during World War II. It derived its
explosive power from the nuclear fission of uranium 235. The Hiroshima bombing was the
second artificial nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity test, and the first uranium-based
detonation. Approximately 600 to 860 milligrams of matter in the bomb was converted into the
active energy of heat and radiation (see mass-energy equivalence for detail). It exploded with an
energy of 16 kilotons of TNT (67 TJ).[5] It has been estimated that 130,000 to 150,000 people had
died as a result of its use by the end of December 1945.[6] Its design was not tested in advance,
unlike the more complex plutonium bomb (Fat Man). The available supply of enriched uranium
was very small at that time, and it was thought that the simple design of a uranium "gun" type
bomb was so sure to work that there was no need to test it at full scale.