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INTRODUCTION: World War II was years in the making, as Adolf Hitler used lies, threats, and diplomacy to grab more and more territory, while the democratically elected leaders of Europe hoped to prevent war by appeasing him. In 1936, Germany occupied the Rhineland (which had been demilitarized), Italy conquered Ethiopia, and they both intervened in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Fascists. In March 1938 Germany annexed Austria (the "Anschluss"), and at Munich in September, Britain and France agreed to have Czechoslovakia transfer land to Germany. In March 1939 Germany annexed the rest of Czechoslovakia, and hopes for peace faded fast. In East Asia, meanwhile, Japan had occupied Manchuria in 1931, and in 1937 it embarked on a war of aggression against China.

In March, Hitler occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia (creating a puppet regime in Slovakia) in spite of his promises at the Munich summit, and Mussolini took control of Albania one month later. After months of escalating demands that Poland return former German territory, in August 1939 Hitler signed a secret non-aggression treaty with Stalin, agreeing to divide eastern Europe into respective spheres of influence. Germany then invaded Poland on September 1 and conquered it in less than a month, using new "blitzkrieg" tactics, spearheaded by massed tanks and dive bombers. Soviet troops occupied the eastern half of Poland. Britain and France declared war but failed to take any meaningful action other than mobilizing and gradually building up their forces. In December, Soviet forces invaded Finland, but encountered fierce resistance, and did not achieve victory until March 1940.

In April 1940 German troops quickly overran Denmark, and paratroopers seized key points in Norway with the help of naval gunfire. Britain and France sent troops, but Germany prevailed in spite of heavy naval losses. In May Germans launched a blitzkrieg in the Low Countries, and conquered France in less than six weeks. All of Western Europe lay under Hitler's control, while French possessions in North Africa, the Mideast, etc. were inherited by the Vichy France puppet government. Fears of a possible German invasion of England subsided in September, as the Royal Air Force fended off the Luftwaffe in the "Battle of Britain." Italian dictator Mussolini entered the war on Germany's side, but advances into Egypt (from Libya), into France, and into Greece (from Albania) were military fiascos.

Notwithstanding the German-Soviet non-aggression treaty, in June 1941 German forces launched a sudden surprise attack on the Soviets. For the first three weeks, progress was amazingly swift, but after that, providing supplies to the panzer units became a problem. Interference by Hitler with his army's direction of attack wasted valuable time, enabling the Soviets to prepare defenses around Moscow. The push toward the capital city resumed in October, but mud slowed the advance. The onset of winter weather favored the Russian defenders, and a counterattack in December resulted in the first major defeat for the German army in the war. In North Africa, Gen. Rommel led the "Afrika Korps" to victories, but he was obliged to retreat because of supply shortages. In April the German battleship Bismarck threatened ships in the north Atlantic, but it was sunk by the British in May.

Hitler put a priority on economic objectives (namely, petroleum) in his 1942 offensive, which began in July. Although the Germans gained vast new territory in southeast Russia, they failed to reach the oil center of Baku on the Caspian Sea, and got bogged down in street fighting in Stalingrad. In November the Soviets surrounded the German Sixth Army in Stalingrad, and the ensuing defeat was a catastrophe. In Egypt, Gen. Montgomery decisively defeated Rommel's Afrika Korps in October, after nearly two years of see-saw battles in that theater. Within a few weeks, U.S. and British forces landed in the French colonies of Morocco and Algeria. French forces soon switched sides and joined the Allies once again. In July, German subs and aircraft sank 24 ships in Allied convoy PQ17, but the Allies scored a victory in the Battle of Barents Sea in December.

After the German Sixth Army surrendered at Stalingrad in early February 1943, Soviet forces swept westward into Ukraine. Only a brilliant counteroffensive led by General Manstein, retaking the key city of Kharkov, saved the Germans from utter collapse. Both sides built up their forces during the spring, and the Germans launched a major attack in July, hoping to surround Soviet armies as they had before. It didn't work this time, and in fact, the Soviets pushed the Germans back across a broad front, taking Kiev late in the year. In North Africa, Axis forces surrendered in early May. In July, the Allies invaded Sicily, and in September they invaded southern Italy, just as Mussolini was deposed and the new Italian government surrendered.

Early in 1944, the Allies landed forces at Anzio, hoping to catch the Germans off guard and seize Rome in an "end run," but it didn't work. Not until June did they finally break through and liberate the Italian capital. At the same time, the Allies invaded northern France (in Normandy), and after several weeks of heavy fighting, broke through. Paris was liberated in late August, but the advance slowed as it neared the German border. Hitler ordered a surprise offensive in December ("Battle of the Bulge"), but the U.S. Army managed to stop it. On the eastern front, the Soviets launched a massive offensive in June, surrounding huge numbers of German troops, and by July were approaching Warsaw. During the fall, the Soviets were moving into the Balkans.

In January 1945, the Red Army launched an offensive in Poland that not only liberated Warsaw (about six months late) but came within 40 miles of Berlin. Clearly, the end was drawing near. In February, the Soviets captured Budapest after a two-month siege, while the British and Americans pushed into western Germany, crossing the Rhine River in March. By April the Ruhr industrial region was surrounded and the eastern and western Allies met each other in central Germany. It was then that the true magnitude of The Holocaust first became known to the outside world. Berlin was conquered by the Red Army in a truly apocalyptic fight to the bitter end, and the suicide of Hitler in late April presaged the end of the war in Europe.

In July 1937, Japanese troops from Manchuria moved south and occupied Peking, which had been occupied by military forces of various European countries ever since the 1910 Boxer Rebellion. Other Japanese units landed by sea at Shanghai, and then moved inland to take other Chinese cities. The infamous "Rape of Nanking" in December outraged the world. In response, many Americans joined the "Flying Tigers" mercenary air force to help China resist Japanese aggression. The military situation was complicated by the decade-old civil war between Chinese Nationalists (under Chiang Kai-shek) and Communists (under Mao Zedong); the two sides called a truce and more or less cooperated in the fight against Japan until the end of the war.

In February 1939, Japan seized control of the island of Hainan while consolidating control of Manchuria. In August its forces engaged in skirmishes with the Soviet Red Army at Khalkin-Gol along the Mongolian border. The Japanese suffered a rude setback at the hands of Gen. Zhukov's mechanized forces. In September 1940, Japan persuaded the Vichy French government (essentially a German puppet) to allow its forces to enter French Indochina. This paved the way for further aggression in southeast Asia.

On December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise naval air attack at Pearl Harbor, wrecking all eight U.S. battleships there. (Most of them were eventually rebuilt, but it took years.) The three U.S. aircraft carriers in the Pacific happened to be elsewhere, or else there would have been nothing left to stop Japan from taking over the ocean. Japanese forces also invaded the Philippines and the British colony of Malaya, and seized Hong Kong, Guam, Wake, and Tarawa. On December 10, Japanese aircraft sank two British battleships northeast of Singapore, another stunning loss for the Allies.

In the early months of 1942, Japan conquered the Dutch East Indies, as well as Malaya. British forces at Singapore surrendered in February. With the cooperation of Thailand (Siam), Japan invaded Burma and came close to the British colony of India. It also set up bases in the Solomon Islands, but the menace to Australia was eased by the inconclusive Battle of Coral Sea. Gen. MacArthur had to evacuate the Philippines, and most U.S. forces there surrendered in April. In June, Japan lost four aircraft carriers in the Battle of Midway, the turning point in the Pacific war. In August, U.S. Marines landed in Guadalcanal, where months of bloody jungle combat ensued. Australians fought the Japanese in New Guinea, under similar harsh conditions.

Japanese forces withdrew from Guadalcanal in February, and U.S. forces soon made landings further west in the Solomon Islands. American and Australian forces retook land in New Guinea, etc. from the Japanese. In November, U.S. forces retook Tarawa (in the Gilbert Islands) from Japan. This was the first step of a prolonged campaign across the central Pacific. In the far north, Americans retook the Aleutian islands (Alaska) which the Japanese had seized at the time of their attack on Midway the year before. The slowness of the Allied advance in the Pacific during 1943 reflected the decision by U.S. and Britain to prioritize defeating the Germans in Europe.

In early 1944, Allied forces pushed further west along the north coast of New Guinea, and captured islands west of Rabaul, effectively isolating that key Japanese base. U.S. forces landed at Kwajalein in Februrary and at the Mariana Islands in June and July, bypassing some islands held by Japan such as Truk. Japan focused its attention on the land war, conquering more land in China and invading India in hopes of wooing Asian colonies away from western rule. Late in the year British-Indian forces began an offensive in Burma. The battles of the Philippine Sea (in June) and Leyte Gulf (in October) destroyed much of the Japanese navy, which thereafter was unable to challenge U.S. warships. U.S. forces began landing in the Philippines late in the year.

In January, U.S. forces landed in Luzon, Philippines, fulfilling MacArthur's vow "I shall return." Manila was liberated in February, but some Japanese forces continued resisting in the interior mountains. Meanwhile, British-Indian forces continued their march south through Burma, liberating Rangoon in April. In February, U.S. Marines landed at Iwo Jima and U.S. B-29s began heavy incendiary bombing of Tokyo and other cities. U.S. forces invaded Okinawa in April, but fighting there dragged on for several weeks. In August, the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, and Soviet forces belatedly invaded Japanese-held Manchuria. In September hostilities ceased when Japan formally surrendered.

Introduction