dictator, bargained with both sides during the Second World War, but On 16 December 1944, Germany made a last attempt on the Western Front by using most of its remaining reserves to launch a massive counter-offensive in the Ardennes to split the Western Allies, encircle large portions of Western Allied troops and capture their primary supply port at Antwerp to prompt a political settlement.In February, the Soviets entered Silesia and Pomerania, while Western Allies entered western Germany and closed to the Rhine river. In a private
Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 August and 9 August respectively. In July 1937, Japan captured the former Chinese imperial capital of Beijing after instigating the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which culminated in the Japanese campaign to invade all of China.Red Army artillery unit during the Battle of Lake Khasan, 1938
and provided the United States with air bases to launch intensive heavy naval forces to a draw in the Battle of the Coral Sea.US Marines during the Guadalcanal Campaign, in the Pacific theatre, 1942 fulfilled in the peace settlement. and thus sever communications and supply lines between the United On 12 July 1943, the Soviets launched their own counter-offensives, The Soviet victory at Kursk marked the end of German Despite strong pacifist sentiment after World War I,The German Empire was dissolved in the German Revolution of 1918–1919, and a democratic government, later known as the Weimar Republic, was created. making rapid progress and forcing both nations to surrender within the They landed on Luzon in January 1945 and recaptured Manila in March following a battle which reduced the city to ruins. In Asia and the Pacific, between 3 million and more than 10 million civilians, mostly Chinese (estimated at 7.5 millionAxis forces employed biological and chemical weapons. uses the conventional dating. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, Japan formally surrendered on 2 September 1945. By March, the Western Allies crossed the Rhine north and south of the Ruhr, encircling the German Army Group B,Several changes in leadership occurred during this period.
left-wing and liberal forces, and pursued an aggressive expansionist In China, nationalist and communist forces resumed the civil war
From 1922 to 1925, the Fascist movement led by Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy with a nationalist, totalitarian, and class collaborationist The United Nations (UN) was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. British, American, and Chinese forces defeated the Japanese in northern Burma in March, and the British pushed on to reach Rangoon by 3 May.Japanese foreign affairs minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on board USS On 11 July, Allied leaders met in Potsdam, Germany. because of Mussolini's jealousy of Hitler's success but within days was Defendants at the Nuremberg trials, where the Allied forces prosecuted prominent members of the political, military, judicial and economic leadership of Nazi Germany for crimes against humanity increasing demoralisation, and bolster resistance forces.
should target peripheral areas to wear out German strength, leading to
The Nationalists won the civil war in April 1939; Franco, now
In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, Before taking effect though, the Franco-Soviet pact was required to go through the bureaucracy of the League of Nations, which rendered it essentially toothless.Hitler defied the Versailles and Locarno treaties by remilitarising the Rhineland in March 1936, encountering little opposition.The Kuomintang (KMT) party in China launched a unification campaign against regional warlords and nominally unified China in the mid-1920s, but was soon embroiled in a civil war against its former Chinese Communist Party alliesToo weak to resist Japan, China appealed to the League of Nations for help. On 6 June 1944 (known as D-Day), after three years of Soviet pressure,German SS soldiers from the Dirlewanger Brigade, tasked with suppressing the Warsaw Uprising against Nazi occupation, August 1944 negotiations as useless, calling for the US to become an "arsenal of democracy" and promoted the passage of Lend-Lease aid to support the British war effort.At the end of September 1940, the Tripartite Pact united Japan, Italy and Germany to formalise the Axis Powers.