
[[image:nagasakibomb.jpg|thumb|295px|Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km (over 11 miles) into the air. August 9, 1945]] World War II or the Second World War was a World War that began on 7 July 1937, in Asia and 1 September 1939, in Europe and lasted until 1945, involving the majority of the world's countries and every inhabited continent. Virtually all countries that participated in World War I were involved in World War II. It was the most extensive and expensive armed conflict in the history of the World. Attributed in varying degrees to the Treaty of Versailles, the Great Depression, nationalism, and militarism, the Causes of World War II are a matter of debate. On which date the war began is also debated, cited as either the German Polish September Campaign on 1 September 1939, the Japanese invasion of China on 7 July 1937 (the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War), or earlier yet the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Still others argue that the World War I are one conflict separated only by a "ceasefire". Fighting occurred across the Second Battle of the Atlantic, in European Theatre of World War II, in the Battle of the Mediterranean, African Theatres of World War II, the Middle East Theatre of World War II, in the Pacific War, and it continued in China. In Europe, the war ended with the surrender of Germany on 8 May 1945 (Victory in Europe Day and Victory Day Days), but continued in Asia until Japanese Instrument of Surrender on 15 August 1945 (V-J Day). Approximately 57 million people List of World War II casualties by country, including acts of genocide such as the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanking, and General Ishii Shiro's Unit 731 experiments in Pingfan. As a case of total war, it involved the "home front" and Strategic bombing to a new degree. Atomic weapons, jet aircraft, and RADAR are only a few of many Technology during World War II. Post-war Europe was partitioned into Western world and Soviet Union Sphere of influence, the former undergoing economic reconstruction under the Marshall Plan and the latter becoming satellite states of the Soviet Union. Western Europe largely aligned as NATO, and Eastern Europe largely as the Warsaw pact, alliances which were fundamental to the ensuing Cold War. In Asia, the United States' military occupation of Japan led to its democratization, and China came to split into the Communist People's Republic of China and the Nationalist Republic of China. ==Participants== [[Image:bigthreetime.jpg|thumb|right|200px|TIME Magazine cover, "The Big Three" (May 14, 1945)]] The belligerents of the Second World War are usually considered to belong to either of the two blocs: the Axis powers and the Allies. A number of smaller countries participated in the war, more or less voluntarily, on the side of the power that in their neighbourhood was the most influential. The Axis Powers consisted primarily of Germany, Italy, and Japan, which split the Earth into three Sphere of influence under the Tripartite Pact of 1940, and vowed to defend one another against aggression. This replaced the German-Japanese Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936 that Italy had joined in 1937. Spain's fascist government lead by Francisco Franco was a great asset in trade to the Axis powers during the war. A number of smaller countries were counted among the Axis powers, but these countries did not have a profound impact on the war, nor did they supply the Axis powers with any great abundance of troops or supplies. Until Operation Barbarossa by it in June 1941, the Soviet Union was effectively allied with Nazi Germany through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, invading and occupying parts or the whole of Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania. Among the Allied powers, the "Big Three" were the United Kingdom, from 3 September 1939, the Soviet Union, from June 1941, and the United States, from December 1941. China had been fighting Japan since 1937. The independent dominions and colonies of the British Empire, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Greece, and Denmark were also counted among the Allies, though many would ultimately be conquered and occupied by Axis forces. Countries that attempted to remain neutral country in the conflict were often viewed with suspicion by the participants, and often pressured to make contributions to the most influential power in their neighborhood. Sovereignty was often difficult to maintain as many countries that did not directly participate in the conflict nevertheless held vested interests in seeing a particular side prevail. For example, neutral Switzerland was generally considered to be "Allied-friendly" while neutral Spain was considered "Axis-friendly," despite the fact that neither country openly proclaimed any alliances. Such situations allowed neutral countries to become hotbeds of espionage. ==Europe, 1939–45== ''Main articles: European Theatre of World War II, End of World War II in Europe'' ===1939: Poland, Phony War, Tripartite Pact, Winter War=== [[Image:WWII Poland Invasion 1939-09-01.jpg|thumb|300px|German soldiers destroying Polish border checkpoint on 1 September, 1939. Second World War begins.]] War began in Europe on 1 September, 1939, with the German Polish September Campaign. France and the United Kingdom honored their defensive alliance of March 1939 by declaring war two days later on 3 September. Only partly mobilized, Poland fared poorly against the Wehrmacht's superior numbers and strategy of "blitzkrieg". In accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Red Army invaded Poland from the east on 17 September. Hours later, the Polish government-in-exile Romanian Bridgehead. The last Polish Army unit was defeated on 6 October. As Poland fell, the British and French remained largely inactive in what would be termed "Phony War," lasting until May 1940. There were isolated engagements during this period, including the sinking of the HMS Royal Oak (08) in the British port of Scapa Flow and Luftwaffe bombings of the naval bases at Rosyth and Scapa Flow. The Kriegsmarine pocket battleship "''Admiral Graf Spee''" was sunk in South America after the battle of the River Plate. The Tripartite Pact was signed between Germany, Italy, and Japan on 27 September, 1940, formalizing their alignment as the "Axis Powers." The Soviet Union invaded Finland on 30 November, 1939, beginning the Winter War, which lasted until March of 1940 with Finland ceding territory to the Soviet Union. ===1940: Denmark and Norway, France and Low Countries, Baltic Republics, Britain and Atlantic, Greece=== Suddenly, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway on 9 April 1940, in Operation Weserübung, ostensibly to counter the threat of an Allied invasion from the region. Heavy fighting ensued on land and at sea in Norway. British, French and Polish forces landed to support the Norwegians at Namsos in April 1940, Åndalsnes and Narvik, with more success at the latter. By early June, all Allied forces were evacuated and the Norwegian Army surrendered. France and the Low Countries were invaded on 10 May, ending the Phony War and beginning the Battle of France. The Allies had expected a WWI style of conflict, with the French and German soldiers firing at each other from the entrenchments, and were not prepared for this sudden invasion. In the first phase of the invasion, Operation Yellow, the Wehrmacht's Panzergruppe von Kleist bypassed the Maginot Line and split the Allies in two by driving to the English Channel. Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands fell quickly against the attack of Army Group B, and the British Expeditionary Force, trapped in the north, was evacuated at Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo. German forces then invaded France itself, in Operation Red, advancing behind the Maginot Line and near the coast. Defeated, an armistice was declared on 22 June and the Vichy France puppet government created. In June of 1940 the Soviet Union occupied Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and annexed Bessarabia and Bukovina from Romania. Not having secured a rapid peace with the United Kingdom, Germany began preparations to invade with the Battle of Britain. Fighter aircraft fought overhead for months as the Luftwaffe and Royal Air Force fought for control of Britain's skies. The Luftwaffe initially targeted RAF Fighter Command, but turned to terror bombing London. Germany was defeated and Operation Sealion, the proposed invasion of the British Isles, was abandoned. Similar efforts were made, though at sea, in the Battle of the Atlantic (1940). In a long-running campaign, German U-Boats attempted to deprive the British Isles of necessary Lend Lease cargo from the United States. Shipments were reduced considerably by the U-Boats; however, the United Kingdom refused to seek peace, with Prime Minister Winston Churchill stating that "We shall never surrender." Greco-Italian_War on 28 October 1940, from bases in Albania. Although outnumbered, Greek forces successfully repelled the Italian attacks and launched a full-scale counterattack deep into Albania. By mid-December they had liberated one-fourth of Albania. Claimed to be the first Allied victory of the war, that battle was actually The Battle of Narvik, in which Norwegian, British and French forces reconquered Narvik from the Germans. Winston Churchill declared "We are used to saying that the Greeks fight like heroes, from now on we shall say that the heroes fight like Greeks." President Roosevelt announced a shift in the American stance from neutrality to "non-belligerency". ===1941: Yugoslavia, Greece, Crete, Soviet Union, Continuation War, United States enters=== Kingdom of Yugoslavia government succumbed to the pressure of Italy and Germany and signed the Tripartite Treaty on March 25 1941. This was followed by anti-axis demonstrations in the country and a coup which overthrew the government and replaced it with a pro-allied one on March 27 1941. Hitler's forces then invaded Greece and Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941. Hitler reluctantly sent forces to assist Mussolini's bogged-down forces in Greece, principally to prevent a British buildup on Germany's strategic southern flank. Yugoslavia was occupied within eleven days of the invasion. Thousands of Yugoslavs, however, continued to fight an effective guerilla war. The struggle lasted somewhat longer in Greece. The main mass of the Greek army was already engaged against Italian forces in Albania. Seeing the bleakness of the situation, about 58,000 British soldiers were sent to the aid of the Greeks. The German invasion developed along the Greek-Bulgarian border where they met stiff resistance from the fortifications of the Metaxas Line. The rapid downfall of Yugoslavia, however, allowed German forces to pour into Greece with little resistance and were able to surround the Greek positions. German soldiers entered Athens on April 27 1941, symbolizing the end of organized Greek resistance. The British managed to evacuate about 43,000 of their men. The intervention in Greece delayed the German invasion of the Soviet Union by six weeks, which proved disastrous when the German army became bogged down on the outskirts of Moscow as a result of the Russian winter. A month later on May 20, 1941, the Battle of Crete began when tens of thousands of elite German paratroops and some 1,300 airplanes launched a massive airborne invasion of the Greek island of Crete. Crete was defended by an ill-equipped group of about 43,000 Greek, British, Australian, and New Zealand troops. The Germans attacked the island simultaneously on the three airfields. Their invasion on two of the airfields failed miserably, but they successfully captured one, which allowed them to reinforce their position by landing reinforcements (about three transport planes every five minutes). After a week it was decided that so many German troops had been flown in that there was no way to defeat them. The Allied soldiers had grown exhausted and were by now numerically inferior. An evacuation took place and about 17,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers were evacuated. About 12,000 Commonwealth and 5,500 Greek troops were made prisoners; however, over 10,000 Greek and 500 Commonwealth troops remained at large and caused serious problems for the German occupiers over the next four years. The Germans suffered over 17,000 casualties in Crete. So heavy were the losses that Hitler never launched another airborne assault. General Kurt Student, who commanded the invasion of Crete, would later say "Crete was the grave of the German parachutists." As a result, Airborne operations against Malta, Cyprus, and the Suez Canal never took place. Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, commenced on 22 June 1941. The "Great Patriotic War" (Russian language: Великая Отечественная Война, ''Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna'') had begun with surprise attacks by German panzer armies, which encircled and destroyed much of the Soviet's western military, capturing or killing hundreds of thousands of men. Soviet forces came to fight a war of scorched earth, withdrawing into the steppe of Russia to acquire time and stretch the German army. Industries were dismantled and withdrawn to the Ural mountains for reassembly. German armies pursued a three-pronged advance against Leningrad (modern-day St. Petersburg), Moscow, and the Caucasus. Having pushed to occupy Moscow before winter, German forces were delayed into the Russian Winter. Soviet counterattacks defeated them within sight of Moscow's spires, and a rout was only narrowly avoided. Some historians identify this as the "turning point" in the Allies' war against Germany; others identify the capitulation of the German Sixth Army outside Stalingrad (modern-day Volgograd) in 1943. The Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union began with Soviet air attacks shortly after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, on 25 June, and ended with an armistice in 1944. The Soviet Union was joined in the war by the United Kingdom but not by the United States. Germany declared war on the United States on 11 December 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It was not obligated to do so under the Tripartite Pact of 1940. 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 who could wage powerful attacks on both East and West simultaneously. ===1942: Turning of the war in Russia=== ====1942: Caucasus offensive, Stalingrad==== [[Image:Stalingrad.jpg|thumb|250px|German soldiers at the Battle of Stalingrad]] In 1942, an aborted German offensive was launched towards the Caucasus to secure oil fields and German armies reached Stalingrad. The Battle of Stalingrad continued for many months, with vicious urban warfare leading to high casualties on both sides. At night, the Soviet forces were resupplied from the east bank of the Volga, and the Wehrmacht forces were eventually ground down; especially after Adolf Hitler diverted the armor of the Sixth Army to the Caucasus. By early February 1943, it was clear that the Sixth Army would have to surrender. The Fuhrer made General Friedrich Paulus, who was in charge of the German forces, a Field Marshal in the vain hope it would deter him from surrendering. It didn't, and he surrendered completely on February 2. The results were the destruction of the city, millions of casualties, and the collapse of Germany's German Sixth Army as a viable fighting force. Nazi Propagandaministerium Joseph Goebbels responded with his Sportpalast speech to the German people. Some historians cite this as the European war's "turning point." ===1943: Kursk=== German forces repulsed Red Army offensives along the Don River, Russia near Stalingrad in January 1943. In July, the Wehrmacht launched a much-delayed offensive against the Soviet Union at Kursk. Their intentions were known by the Soviets, and the Battle of Kursk ended in a Soviet counteroffensive that threw the German Army back. ===1944: France invaded, Soviet-Finland armistice, surrender of minor Axis, Ardennes offensive=== On "D-Day", 6 June 1944, the western Allies Battle of Normandy German-held Normandy in a pre-dawn amphibious assault spearheaded by American (82nd and 101st), British (6th) and Canadian paratroops, opening the "second front" against Germany. Hedgerows aided the defending German units, and for months the Allies measured progress in hundreds of yards and bloody rifle fights. An Allied breakout was effected at Saint-Lô, and the most powerful German force in France, the German Seventh Army, was destroyed in the Falaise pocket while counterattacking. Operation Dragoon stationed in Italy invaded the French Riviera on 15 August and linked up with forces from Normandy. The Allies captured Paris on 25 August. By early 1944, the Red Army had reached the border of Poland and lifted the Siege of Leningrad. Shortly after Allied landings at Normandy, on 9 June, the Soviet Union began an offensive on the Karelian Isthmus that after three months would force Nazi Germany's co-belligerent Finland to an armistice. Operation Bagration, a Soviet offensive involving 2.5 million men and 6,000 tanks, was launched on 22 June, destroying the German Army Group Center and taking 350,000 prisoners. Finland's defense had been dependent on active, or in periods passive, support from the German Wehrmacht that also provided defense for the chiefly uninhabited northern half of Finland. After the Wehrmacht retreated from the southern shores of the Gulf of Finland, Finland's defense was untenable. The Allies' armistice conditions included further territorial losses and the internment or expulsion of German troops on Finnish soil executed in the Lapland War, now as co-belligerents of the Allies, who also demanded the political leadership to be prosecuted in "war-responsibility trials" that by the Finnish public were perceived as a mockery of the rule of law. Romania surrendered in August of 1944 and Bulgaria in September. British forces attempted a fast advance into Germany with Operation Market Garden in September, but were repulsed. The Warsaw Uprising was fought between 1 August and 2 October. Germany withdrew from the Balkans and held Hungary until February 1945. In December of 1944, the German Army made its last major offensive in the West, attempting to capture the vital port of Antwerp and cripple the Allies in the Battle of the Bulge. At first, Germans scored successes against the Americans stationed in the Ardennes. However, with the German failure to capture Bastogne and the arrival of Gen. Patton's Third Army, the Germans wer forces to retreat back into Germany. The offensive was defeated. By now, the Soviets had reached the eastern borders of pre-war Germany. ===1945: Yalta Conference, push into Germany, Berlin falls, occupation=== [[Image:Red army soldiers raising the soviet flag on the roof of the reichstag berlin germany.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Berlin fell to the Red Army on 2 May. Here, the Hammer and Sickle is flown over the Reichstag.]] Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Franklin D. Roosevelt made arrangements for post-war Europe at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. It resulted in an April meeting to form the United Nations: nation-states were created in Eastern Europe; it was agreed Poland would have free elections (in fact elections were heavily rigged by Soviets); Soviet nationals were to be Repatriation, and the Soviet Union was to attack Japan within three months of Germany's surrender. The Red Army (including 78,556 soldiers of the 1st Polish Army) began its Battle of Berlin on 16 April. Hitler and his staff moved into the F%FChrerbunker, a concrete bunker beneath the Chancellery, where on 30 April 1945, he committed suicide. The Soviets took a massive toll of 100,000 men killed. Karl Dönitz became leader of the German government and quickly dispatched the German High Command to travel to Reims, France, to sign an unconditional surrender with the Allies. Field Marschal Alfred Jodl surrended unconditionally on 7 May. The Western Allies celebrated "V-E Day" on 8 May and the Soviet Union "Victory Day" on 9 May. The Soviet Union forcefully occupied the Baltic states as part of Stalin's campaign to subjugate the nations of Eastern Europe. Japan's surrender to the United States did not end the war, because Japan and the Soviet Union never signed a peace agreement. In the last days of the armed conflict, the Soviet Union occupied the Southern Kurile Islands, an area previously held by Japan and claimed by the Soviets. Multiple efforts [http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/5/9261D82C-98F5-40AE-938A-EB14FA2CEA14.html] to bring to a peace agreement, and officially end the war. ==Pacific and East Asia, 1937–45== ''Main article: Pacific War'' ===1937: Sino-Japanese War=== ''Main article: Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)'' War conflict began in Asia years before fighting started in Europe. Japan had Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) in 1931, long before World War II started in Europe. On March 1st, the Japanese appointed Henry Pu Yi king in Manchukuo, the puppet state in Manchuria. By 1937, war had broken out as the Japanese sought control of China. Roosevelt signed an unpublished (secret) executive order in May of 1940 allowing U.S. military personnel to resign from the service so that they could participate in a covert operation in China: the All Volunteer Group, also known as Chennault's Flying Tigers. Over a seven-month period, Chennault's Flying Tigers destroyed an estimated 600 Japanese aircraft, sunk numerous Japanese ships, and stalled the Japanese invasion of Burma. With the United States and other countries cutting exports to Japan, Japan planned a attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, without warning or declaration of war, dealing severe damage to the American Pacific Fleet. The next day, Japanese forces arrived in Hong Kong, which later led to the Battle_of_Hong_Kong of the British colony on Christmas Day later that month. ===1940: Vichy France colonies=== In 1940, Japan occupied French Indochina (Vietnam) upon agreement with the Vichy Government despite local Free French, and joined Axis powers Germany and Italy. These actions intensified Japan's conflict with the United States and the United Kingdom, which reacted with an oil boycott. ===1941: Pearl Harbor, the United States enters the war, Japanese invasions in SE Asia=== ''Main article: Attack on Pearl Harbor'' On December 7 1941, Japanese warplanes commanded by Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo carried out a surprise air raid on Pearl Harbor, the largest U.S. naval base in the Pacific. The Japanese forces met little resistance and devastated the harbor. This attack resulted in eight battleships either sunk or damaged, damage to three light cruisers and damage to four destroyers in addition to damage to some auxilaries and approximately 300 aircraft either damaged or destroyed. No U.S. Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers were at the harbor at the time of Japanese attack. The following day, the United States declared war on Japan. Simultaneously to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan also attacked U.S air bases in the Philippines. Immediately following these attacks, Japan invaded the Philippines and also the British Colonies of Hong Kong, Malaya, Borneo and Burma with the intention of seizing the oilfields of the Dutch East Indies. In a matter of months, all these territories, and more, fell to the Japanese onslaught. The British island fortress of Singapore was Battle of Singapore in what Churchill considered one of the most humiliating British defeats of all time. ===1942: Coral Sea, Port Moresby, Midway, Guadalcanal=== In May 1942, a naval attack on Port Moresby, New Guinea, was thwarted by Allied navies in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Had the capture of Port Moresby succeeded, the Japanese Navy would have been within striking range of Australia. This was both the first successful opposition to Japanese plans and the first naval battle fought only between aircraft carriers. A month later the invasion of Battle of Midway was prevented, causing the loss of four carriers, which Japanese industry could not replace. The Japanese Navy was now on the defensive. However, in July an overland attack on Port Moresby was led along the rugged Battle of Kokoda trail. This was met with Australian reservists, many of them very young and untrained, fighting a stubborn rearguard action until the arrival of Australian regulars returning from action in North African Campaign, Greece and the Middle East. But amazingly, the outnumbered and untrained Australian militiamen, which consited of the 19th platoon and 39th battalion, defeated the 5000-strong Japanese army. This was considered one of the most significant victories in Australian military history. Even prior to the American entry to the war, the Allied leaders had agreed that priority should be given to the defeat of Nazi Germany. Nonetheless, U.S. forces began to attack captured territories, beginning with Battle of Guadalcanal, against a bitter and determined Japanese defense. On 7 August 1942, the United States assaulted the island. In late August and early September, while battle raged on Guadalcanal, an amphibious Japanese attack on the eastern tip of New Guinea was met by Australian forces at Battle of Milne Bay, and the Japanese land forces suffered their first conclusive defeat. On Guadalcanal, the Japanese resistance failed in February 1943. ===1943-45: Allied offensives in Asia and the Pacific=== Australian and U.S. forces then undertook the prolonged campaign to retake the occupied parts of the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, experiencing some of the toughest resistance of the war. The rest of the Solomon Islands were retaken in 1943, New Britain and New Ireland in 1944. As the Philippines were being re-taken in late 1944, the Battle of Leyte Gulf raged, arguably the largest naval battle in history. The last major offensive in the South West Pacific Area was the Borneo campaign (1945) of mid-1945, which was aimed at further isolating the remaining Japanese forces in South East Asia, and securing the release of Allied POWs. Allied submarines and aircraft also attacked Japanese merchant shipping, depriving Japan's industry of the raw materials it had gone to war to obtain. The effectiveness of this stranglehold increased as U.S. Marines captured islands closer to the Japanese mainland. The Nationalist Kuomintang Army, under Chiang Kai-shek, and the Communist Party of China Chinese Army, under Mao Zedong, both opposed the Japanese occupation of China, but never truly allied against the Japanese. Conflict between Nationalist and Communist forces continued after and, to an extent, even during the war. The Japanese had captured most of Burma Campaign, severing the Burma Road by which the Western Allies had been supplying the Chinese Nationalists. This forced the Allies to create a large sustained airlift, known as "flying the Hump". Northern Combat Area Command Chinese divisions, a British division and a few thousand U.S. ground troops, cleared the Japanese forces from northern Burma so that the Ledo Road could be built to replace the Burma Road. Further south the main Japanese army in the South-East Asian Theatre of World War II were fought to a standstill on the Burma-India frontier by the British Fourteenth Army (the "Forgotten Army"), which then counter-attacked, and having recaptured all of Burma was planning attacks towards Malaya when the war ended. ===1945: Iwo Jima, Okinawa, atomic bombings, Japan surrenders=== U.S. capture of islands such as Battle of Iwo Jima and Battle of Okinawa brought the Japanese homeland within range of naval and air attack. Amongst dozens of other cities, Tokyo was Bombing of Tokyo in World War II and on the inital attack alone upwards of 90,000 people died as the fire raced unchecked through the city. The high loss of life was attributed to the dense living conditions around production centers and the wood and paper residential construction common to that period. Later on 6 August 1945, the B-29 "Enola Gay", piloted by Paul Tibbets, dropped an nuclear weapon (Little Boy) on Hiroshima, effectively Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki it. On 8 August 1945 the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, as had been agreed to at Yalta, and launched a large scale invasion of Japanese occupied Manchuria (Operation August Storm). On August 9, the B-29 "Bock's Car", piloted by Charles Sweeney, dropped an atomic bomb (Fat Man) on Nagasaki. The combination of the use of atomic weapons and the new inclusion of the Soviet Union in the war were both highly responsible for the surrender of Japan, although the importance of the Soviet incursion has been largely overlooked in conventional American histories of the conflict. The Victory over Japan Day on August 14 1945, signing official Japanese Instrument of Surrender on September 2 1945, aboard the USS Missouri (BB-63) in Tokyo Bay. ==Mediterranean theatres, 1940-45== ===1940: Egypt and Libya === The North African Campaign began in 1940, Italian forces in Libya attacked British forces in Egypt. The aim was to make Egypt an Italian posession, especially the vital Suez Canal. British, British Indian Army and Australian Army forces counterattacked (see Operation Compass), but this offensive stopped in 1941 when much of the Commonwealth of Nations forces were transferred to Greece to defend it from German attack. However, German forces (known later as the Afrika Korps) under General Erwin Rommel landed in Libya, and renewed the assault on Egypt. ===1941: Syria, Lebanon, Afrika Korps to Tobruk=== In June 1941, Allied forces invaded Syria and Lebanon, capturing Damascus on 17 June (see Syria-Lebanon campaign). Meanwhile Rommel's forces advanced rapidly eastward, laying siege to the vital seaport of Tobruk. Australian and other Alllied troops in the city resisted all until relieved, but a renewed Axis offensive captured the city and drove the Eighth Army back to a line at El Alamein. ===1942: First and Second Battles of El Alamein=== The First Battle of El Alamein took place between July 1 and July 27 1942. German forces had advanced to the last defensible point before Alexandria and the Suez Canal. However, they had outrun their supplies, and a Commonwealth defense stopped their thrusts. The Second Battle of El Alamein occurred between October 23 and November 3, 1942, after Bernard Montgomery had replaced Claude Auchinleck as commander of the Commonwealth forces, now known as the British Eighth Army. Rommel, the brilliant German commander of the Afrika Corps, known as the "Desert Fox", was absent for this epic battle, because he was recovering from jaundice back in Europe. Commonwealth forces took the offensive, and although they lost more tanks than the Germans began the battle with, Montgomery was ultimately triumphant. The western Allies had the advantage of being close to their supplies during the battle. In addition, Rommel was getting little or no help by this time from the struggling Luftwaffe, which was now more tasked with defending Western European air space, and fighting the Soviet Union, than providing Rommel with support in North Africa. After the German defeat at El Alamein, Rommel made a brilliant strategic withdrawal to Tunisia. Many historians feel Rommel's successful strategic withdrawal of the Afrika Corps from Egypt was more impressive than his earlier victories, including Tobruk, because he managed to get his whole force back intact against the overwhelming air superiority and numbers of the Commonwealth now reinforced by the Americans. ===1942: Operation Torch, French North Africa=== During the Arcadia Conference from December 1941 to January 1942, the Allied leaders concluded that it was essential to keep Russia in the war. This consideration led to the overall strategy "Germany First"; i.e. giving priority of knocking out Germany before Japan. This decision resulted in a long debate as to where and when to open a Second Front against Germany. The American Chiefs of Staff favoured a cross-channel (France) amphibious operation in the summer. The British opposed this because of insufficient landing craft and logistical problems. It was also thought that American forces were in a process of expansion, organisation and exercise, not capable yet of fighting an experienced German army. Only if Russia collapsed would they approve a main landing in France. Churchill put forward the idea of a small invasion in Norway or landings in French North Africa. The plan for landings in Africa were approved in July 1942. Operation Torch was headed by General Dwight Eisenhower. The aim of Torch was to gain control of Morocco and Algiers through simultaneous landings at Casablanca, Oran and Algiers, followed a few days later with a landing at Bône, the gateway to Tunisia. The operation was launched on 8 November 1942. The first wave was almost entirely American troops, because it was thought that the French would react more favourably to Americans than British. It was hoped that the local forces of Vichy France would put up no resistance, and submit to the authority of Free French General Henri Giraud. In fact resistance was stronger than expected, but still sporadic. In Algiers, 400 French resistance captured much of the city, though it was retaken before Allied forces could arrive. The Vichy commander, Admiral Darlan, negotiated an end to hostilities, against orders from the Vichy government. He was allowed to retain local control by the Allies, to the annoyance of Free French leaders. Hitler invaded and occupied Vichy France in response. Rommel's Afrika Corps was not being supplied adequately because of the loss of transport shipments caused by Allied — mostly British — navies and air forces in the Mediterranean. This lack of supplies and air support destroyed any chance of a large offensive for the Germans in Africa. Ultimately, German and Italian forces were caught in the pincers of a twin advance from Algeria and Libya. The withdrawing Germans continued to put up stiff defense, and Rommel defeated the American forces decisively at the Battle of Kasserine Pass before finishing his strategic withdrawal back to the meager German supply chain. Inevitably, advancing from both the east and west, the Allies finally defeated the German Afrika Corps on May 13 1943. 250,000 Axis soldiers were taken prisoner. ==1943:Yugoslavia and Italy== Mid-1943 brought the fifth and final German Sutjeska offensive against the Yugoslav Partisans (Yugoslavia) before the invasion and subsequent capitulation of Italy, the other major occupying force in Yugoslavia. Newly captured North Africa was used as a springboard for the Operation Husky on 10 July 1943. On July 25 Mussolini was fired from office by the King of Italy, allowing a new government to take power. Having captured Sicily, the Allies Allied invasion of Italy on 3 September 1943. Italy surrendered on 8 September, but German forces continued to fight. Allied forces advanced north, but were stalled for the winter at the Gustav Line, until they broke through in the Battle of Monte Cassino. Rome was captured on 5 June 1944. The conflict would last until the spring of 1945. ==Home front== Home front is the name given to the activities of the civilians in a state of total war. In Britain and America women joined the work force in jobs that the men overseas used to occupy. Families also grew victory gardens, small home vegetable gardens, to supply themselves with food during the war. They did this because the food was limited and they had to use ration stamps to get food. Sugar and coffee were especially hard to get, and gasoline was also rationed, as was silk. Schools and organizations held scrap drives and money collections to help the war effort. Many things were conserved to turn into weapons later, such as fat left over from cooking. This was later used to make explosives such as nitroglycerin. Franklin D. Roosevelt stated that the efforts of civilians at home to support the war through personal sacrifice was as critical to winning the war as the efforts of the soldiers themselves, and that the civilian populace constituted an additional front at home. In Germany, at least for the first part of the war, there were surprisingly few restrictions on civilian activities. Most goods were freely available. Civilian populations were heavily involved in war production and subject to propaganda from their governments. ==Genocide, atrocities, war crimes, and internment== Acts of genocide against or mass internment of civilian populations occurred in the territories and/or occupied territories of most great powers of the war, including Germany, Japan, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Some of these were so unimaginably immense and horrific that they changed the psyche of Western civilization; bringing to an end the optimistic beliefs in continual improvement in human nature which had supported western civilization in its education and imperialism up to that point. ===Internment and genocide=== The worst conditions were imposed in Nazi concentration camps. Most camps were specialized into variously unfree labour Labor camps, starvation camps (Buchenwald) or later extermination camps (Treblinka, Sobibor); though Auschwitz concentration camp, the largest and most infamous, had a separate camp devoted to each purpose. In the The Holocaust extermination camps large numbers of people were killed using gas, usually immediately they disembarked from trains under the pretense of being given a shower to prevent disease. Grounds for this mass murder were variously racist (Jews, Roma people [Gypsies]) "eugenic" (mental patients, homosexuals), and military/political opposition: initially anarchist and communist militant opponents, then ideological opponents (pacifists, Jehovah's Witnesses and the Holocaust), then citizens of occupied countries (like Poles), later Soviet POWs and then military and underground opposition. Jews were the largest group of people killed, approximately 6 million. Next in reducing order were Poles, other Slavs, Soviet POWs and then other groups. Conditions as horrific as, or even worse than, Nazi concentration camps were in the USSR's gulags. Japanese POW camps also had high death rates. Many citizens of occupied countries like Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia as well as German POW's and even Soviet citizens themselves died in the Soviet Gulags or Labor camps, along with many opponents of Stalin's regime and large proportions of some ethnic groups (particularly Chechens). Many Japanese Prisoner-of-war camp were used as labour camps and starvation conditions among the mainly U.S. and Commonwealth prisoners were little better than many German concentration camps. Thousands of Japanese Americans were interned by the U.S. government and this has caused postwar outrage and compensation claims; but these seem based more in insulted patriotism, anti-racial prejudice (most German-Americans weren't interned), and economic loss than atrocious conditions. ===Atrocity and war crimes=== Few forms of atrocity were excluded from the Eastern Front (WWII) theatre, including the killing of millions of Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians in the name of Lebensraum, of over a million Yugoslavs in disproportionate reprisal killings for Partisan activity, plus medical experimentation on concentration camp inmates. The population of Kiev dropped by 90% between the early 1930s and 1945, partly from starvation under Stalin, mostly under the Nazis. Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention until after the war, and millions of Asian civilians and Allied POWs were killed by its military and/or used as forced labour. The most notorious atrocities occurred in China, including the Nanjing Massacre and Unit 731's experiments with biological warfare in Manchuria, with a view to killing a large part of the Chinese population. Japanese war crimes also included rape, pillage, murder, cannibalism and forcing female civilians to become sex slaves, known as "comfort women" . In 1940, the Soviet Union murdered over 22000 citizens of Poland, mainly Polish officers, but also scientists, politicians, doctors, lawyers, priests and others. This genocide is known as the Katyn Massacre. Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union of Poland between 1939 and 1941 resulted in the death or deportation of least 1.8 million former Polish citizens. Though Article XXII of the draft ''Hague Rules of Air Warfare'' (1923) stated "aerial bombardment for the purpose of terrorizing the civilian population, of destroying or damaging private property not of a military character, or of injuring non-combatants" was to be prohibited, these rules were not ratified by the Powers. Germany has been bombing civilian targets from the first days of the war. In the first months of the war the British Government ordered the RAF to adhere strictly to the draft rules, but this restriction was progressively relaxed and abandoned altogether in 1942. By 1945 the strategic bombing of cities had been employed extensively by all sides. German bombing of Poland, Britain and the USSR initially caused shock but was soon exceeded by allied bombing. The deliberate Firestorm of Japanese and German cities, including Bombing of Tokyo in World War II, Operation Gomorrah and Bombing of Dresden by Anglo-American forces and the American atomic bombing of 2 Japanese civilian populations Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have been subject to criticism during the post-war era as possible war crimes; no action was taken against those responsible. From 1945 to 1951, German and Japanese officials and personnel, but no Allied personnel, were prosecuted by Allied tribunals for war crimes. Accused of genocide and atrocities, many German officials were tried at the Nuremburg Trials, and many Japanese officials at the Tokyo War Crime Trial and Japanese_war_crimes#Other_trials. Such a trial for Allied war crimes, especially Soviet war crimes, has not taken place.During the Allied advances of 1943-45, many surrendering or abject Japanese were killed by Allied personnel. For identical behaviour against Americans during the Battle of the Bulge, German SS commanders were tried for war crimes after the war. As a consequence, the war crimes trials — as opposed to trials for crimes against humanity — have been described as an example of hypocritical "winners' justice". ==Technology in World War II== The massive research and development involved in the Manhattan Project in order to quickly achieve a working nuclear weapon design greatly impacted the scientific community, among other things creating a network of national laboratories in the United States. In addition, the pressing need for numerous calculations for various projects like Colossus computer and ballistics tables kick-started the development of electronic computer technology. While the war stimulated many technologies: radio development accelerated, and radar developed; it retarded others, most notably popular television which the BBC had been developing, but which was shelved, as it also was in Germany and the United States, until the end of the war. The jet_aircraft age began during the war with the development of the Heinkel He 178, the first true turbojet, the Messerschmitt 262—the first jet in combat, and the Gloster Meteor, the first reliable and useful jet fighter. The Nazi terror weapon, the V-2 rocket, was the first step into the space age as its trajectory took it through the stratosphere, higher than any aircraft. It led directly to the development of the ICBM. Wernher Von Braun led the V2 development team and later immigrated to the United States where he developed the Saturn 5 rocket, which took men to the moon in 1969. All military technology progressed at faster pace even than modern computers, and over six years there was a disorientating rate of change in combat in everything from aircraft to Technology_during_World_War_II. The best List of jet aircraft of World War II at the end of the war could have effectively combatted twenty Supermarine Spitfire, the best early war fighters. The best late war tank, the Iosef Stalin tank, may well have defeated thirty of the best tanks of 1939, Panzer IVDs. The early war bombers that caused such carnage would almost all have been shot down in 1945, many with one shot, by radar aimed, proximity fuse detonated anti-aircraft fire, just as the 1941 "invincible fighter", the Mitsubishi Zero, had by 1944 become the "turkey" of the Battle of the Philippine Sea. This future shock was capped by the atomic bomb. The chaotic impotence of opposed amphibious landings typical of Battle of Gallipoli was overcome; the DUKW, a six-wheel-drive amphibian vehicle, and amphibious tanks were developed by the United States to support beach landing attacks, and the organization and coordination of amphibious assaults became a science; laying the foundations for the methodology of Project Management used to organize most modern, large-scale technological and engineering development. ==Consequences== In contrast to World War I, the Western victors in the Second World War did not demand compensation from the defeated nations. On the contrary, a plan created by U. S. Secretary of State George Marshall, the "European Recovery Program", better known as the Marshall Plan, called for the Congress of the United States to allocate billions of dollars for the reconstruction of Europe. Also as part of the effort to rebuild global capitalism and spur post-war reconstruction, the Bretton Woods system was put into effect after the war. The end of the war is also seen by many as the end of Britain's position as a global superpower and the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as the dominant powers in the world. Friction had been building up between the two before the end of the war, and with the collapse of Nazi Germany relations spiraled downward. The Cold War had begun. At the end of the second world war, the European economy had collapsed, and 70% of the European industrial infrastructure was destroyed. There was also a moral crisis, because people could not understand how Western civilisation could produce death camps and atom bombs. Millons of refugees were homeless. After the war, some German and Japaneese leaders were tried for crimes against humanity. On the political side, the war increased the strength of independence movements in the European powers' African, Asian, and American colonies, and most of them became independent in the following twenty years. ===United Nations and the Cold War=== Since the League of Nations had obviously failed to prevent the war, a new international order was constructed. In 1945 the United Nations was founded. Also, in order to prevent such devastating war from occurring again and to establish a lasting peace in Europe, the ECSC was born in 1951 (Treaty of Paris (1951)), the predecessor of the European Union. In the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947, the Soviet Union's enemies, Hungary, Finland and Romania, were required to pay war reparations of $300,000,000 each (in 1938 dollars) to the Soviet Union. Italy was required to pay $360,000,000, shared chiefly between Greece, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. In the areas occupied by Western Allied troops, democratic governments were created; in the areas occupied by Soviet troops, including the territories of former Allies like Poland, communist puppet governments were created, giving rise to the western betrayal sentiment in many of those countries. Soviet pressure further deleyed their economic development, forcing them to ignore the Marshall Plan. Germany was partitioned into four zones of occupation, with the American, British and French zones grouped as West Germany and the Soviet zone as East Germany. Austria was once again separated from Germany and it, too, was divided into four zones of occupation, which eventually re-united and became the state of Austria. The Cold War had begun, and soon NATO and the Warsaw Pact would form. The repatriation, pursuant to the terms of the Yalta Conference, of two million Russian soldiers serving under Germany, who had surrendered to advancing American and British forces, resulted for the most part in their deaths. ==Notes== See the front page of [http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/images/uc68a.1.jpg the 6 June, 1944 edition] of The New York Times. The text of Germany's surrender documents is available [http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/germsurr.html here]. ==References== * Winston Churchill (1948-53), ''The Second World War'', 6 vols. * Martin Gilbert (1995) ''Second World War'', Phoenix, ISBN 1857993462 * John Keegan (1989) ''The Second World War'' * B.H. Liddell Hart (1970), ''History of the Second World War'' Cassel & Co; Pan Books,1973, London * Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett (2000) ''A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War'' ISBN 067400163X * Richard Overy, ''Why the Allies Won'', Pimlico, 1995. ISBN 0712674535 * Gerhard L. Weinberg, ''A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II'' (1994) ISBN 0521443172 ==See also== *List of World War II conferences *List of World War II topics *List of battles of World War II *History of Europe *History of the Balkans *World War II in Contemporary Culture *Total war ==External links== * [http://www.ww2incolor.com/ Color photographs of the war] * [http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/ WW2 People's War] - A project by the BBC to gather the stories of ordinary people from World War II * [http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwtwo/ BBC History: World War Two] * [http://www6.dw-world.de/en/worldwarII.php Deutsche Welle special section on World War II] created by one of Germany's public broadcasters on World War II and the world 60 years after. * [http://warmuseum.ca/cwm/newspapers/intro_e.html Online Newspaper Archive] * [http://www.worldwar-2.net/ WorldWar-2.net] *[http://www.cafebabel.com/en/dossier.asp?id=169 WWII, divisive memories (en)], * [http://ww2db.com WW2DB: The World War II Database] * [http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/keys/webtours/GE_P4_5_EN.html World War II Through Cartoons] * [http://web.mala.bc.ca/davies/letters.images/collection.pages/WWII.htm The Canadian Letters and Images Project, World War II] *[http://www.tunnelrats.org.au Recovering the Past] Information on Australian World War 2 Fortifications and their later discovery, unearthing and exploration. World War II fa:جنگ جهانی دوم la:Bellum Orbis Terrarum II lv:Otrais pasaules karš li:Twiede Wereldoorlog ms:Perang Dunia II nds:Tweet Weltorlog simple:World War II th:สงครามโลกครั้งที่สอง vi:Đệ nhị thế chiến
''An event mentioned in this article is a Template:September 1 selected anniversaries''. ----- Archived at: * Talk:World War II/Archive 1 * Talk:World War II/Archive 2 * Talk:World War II/Archive 3 * Talk:World War II/Archive 4 * Talk:World War II/Archive 5 == date for the ending of the war (V-J day) == Right now it says in the second paragraph that the war: ''... continued in Asia and the Pacific until (...) the Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945 (V-J Day).'' but September 2 was only the day for the formal signing of the terms of surrender. The war is much more frequently said to have ended on August 15, when Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam declaration and laid down her arms. And this day, August 15, is indeed the V-J day as it says in the V-J Day article. I was about to change the date, but thought I'd ask about it here first. User:Shanes 02:10, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC) Make note of both, indicating which is which and why. --User:naryathegreat | User talk:Naryathegreat 00:16, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC) == Treaty ending WWII == Is there any information anywhere about the treaties Germany, Japan, and Italy signed ending the war? There is lots of stuff on the internet about the Treaty of Versailles, but not on the end of WWII. There needs to be something about this. :As far as I understand it, World War II was not ended by treaty, it was ended by surrender - of the Germans and Japanese separately. There were no 'terms' worth mentioning, so the exact nature of the documents is not important. User:DJ Clayworth 06:33, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC) :I know that there were only surrender documents signed, but the article on the Gulf War mentions something about Germany and Japan paying without sending soldiers, because of the agreement after WWII. I never heard of that, and just want confirmation on that. Also, if memory servers, the 1974(?) edition of the New Book of Knowledge Encyclopedia mentions something about the war officialy ending in 1950 or something. But I read that about 5 years ago, and it was only a small little thing. ::The Allies wrote restriction on the use of military force into the constitutions of Japan and Germany that were adopted after the war. West Germany gained full sovereignty in 1955 and Japan in 1952 except for Okinawa (held until 1972). User:Rmhermen 19:17, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC) == Article Re-write == The current World War II article is very burdened. The war is a HUGE topic, and there are billions of details. Unfortunately I think too many of these details have been presented in the main article, and not enough is presented in orderly sub-articles. I have made a re-write of the article, aiming to present a concise and orderly picture of the war to a researcher, especially a novice to the war (because that's the point isn't it?). I have posted the current incarnation of it on my user page user:joshbaumgartner and would appreciate some commentary on whether it represents an improvement over the current article or not. I have not completed adding all of the links, and undoubtably am missing some chunk somewhere that should be there. However, it is missing many details that I have intentionally dropped as material that would be better presented in a sub-article. I don't want to lose information, but the main article shouldn't be bogged with minutae, especially on a topic as big as WWII. Thank you ahead of time for any commentary, you can post it here or on my user talk page. Thanks!!! User:Joshbaumgartner 07:42, 2005 Jan 17 (UTC) : In general, it looks good. A few notes: :# I believe some if not all of the most common names for WWII are redirects here, but so many things do that Special:Whatlinkshere is overloaded and I can't verify. Should the names be mentioned in the first paragraph? :# How much of the information that has been removed from the main article is suitable for adding to sub-articles? :# In the "Civil impacts" section, are there articles that each of the subsections can link to? :# A good deal of wikification is needed, but that can be done later. :--User:Carnildo 08:53, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC) :: Thanks for the input. As for common names, you are probably right that at least the most common should be there in the lead paragraph, such as Great Patriotic War. As for sub-articles, ideally, yes, each heading should contain a paragraph or so about the item, and should have a ''Main article'' listed for more information. I think I will create the links and at least provide a stub as a starting point for the sub-article if a relevant one does not already exist. As for wikification, naturally that will take time and is probably best done by the community once at least the highlights are done. User:Joshbaumgartner 18:02, 2005 Jan 17 (UTC) If there is no objection, I will post the re-write at the end of the week so all can edit (or sooner if requested). User:Joshbaumgartner 00:46, 2005 Jan 19 (UTC) :I don't know exactly how to do this, but I would advice you to try to get in touch with other experienced Wikipedians, whose input surely would be valuable. Until then, I hope you have analyzed how the focus of your proposal is different than the focus of the article as it stands today — at least in order to prepare yourself on (from where to expect) the most intense criticism. /User:Tuomas 07:02, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC) ::Thank you, I will assume that there will be such reaction. I was hoping to be able to get some of that from posting on the talk page here. User:Joshbaumgartner 02:57, 2005 Jan 20 (UTC) :::I object to your rewrite as it is now, at 04:33, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC). :::*Questionable neutrality from words such as "tragedy", "carnage", "Unfortunately". :::*Poor writing, such as "Another friend of Hitler's, Japan...", "War had been going in East Asia for...". :::*Introduction is less useful. The article in general also omits too much in my opinion. :::User:119 04:33, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC) ::::119, in response, I admit that it is impossible to be entirely neutral. I have edited the sections you noted to make them more objective. Same for your second point. As for the last, it is a difficult matter. The subject is obviously impossible to cover fully in a single article, thus it is necessary to omit items from the top-level article, and address them in sub-article. Please clarify if you are merely referring to such things, or if there are omissions that actually are lost information. ::::Additionally, it is much more helpful to providing good criticism if you not only identify what you don't like (easy for anyone to do about any submission), but suggest what might be an improvement you would make. For example, instead of merely saying a particular phrase is poorly written, suggest a possible re-write that you would find positive. This not only will help the recipient of your criticism better address your concerns, but will also help demonstrate that you are genuinely interested in helping improve their work, and are not just being negative and counter-productive about the matter. ::::Thanks, User:Joshbaumgartner 10:21, 2005 Jan 23 (UTC) As an experienced Wikipedian, I suggest you write it on a temp page first, have others help you polish it up, and then move it here. User:Raul654 04:35, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC) :Excellent point, Raul, I will certainly do that! User:Joshbaumgartner 10:21, 2005 Jan 23 (UTC) The article re-write has been posted to a temp page: World War II/temp for further improvement and comment. User:Joshbaumgartner 10:43, 2005 Jan 23 (UTC) ==Peer review== Article listed on peer review at Wikipedia:Peer review/World War II. User:119 05:01, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC) ==Requesting references== Does anyone have references or, on the latter, POV attribution on these bits in ''Consequences''? :The repatriation, pursuant to the terms of the Yalta Conference, of two million Russian soldiers who had come under the control of advancing American and British forces, resulted for the most part in their deaths. :The destruction of Europe and the destruction, via aerial bombing, of a significant proportion of the United Kingdom's cities would also symbolically destroy the aura of invincibility the European nation had in the eyes of their colonies. Coupled with the enormous amount of money it had expended during the war, an empire was perceived to be an unnecessarily expensive possession. Thus this would provoke the rapid decolonisation process that would see the empires of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and others swept away. == Temp version == I've made a few edits to the temp article on the subject of the Italian campaign, which was rather garbled before. However, I'm concerned that this version of the article is simply too short. It outlines the course of military campaigns, but doesn't explain why. The political background is hardly mentioned. There is no mention of Yalta, Tehran, Lend-Lease, the Atlantic Charter, Stalingrad, and so on and so on and so on. Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt seem only to be mentioned in that picture from Yalta (or Tehran). There is the usual bias against the Eastern Front - why does Operation Torch get mentioned, but none of the individual Soviet offensives? And China is also barely discussed. I realize that any article has to pick and choose, but it feels like this article simply leaves too much out. The main article on World War II ought to be a solid article, and not just a portal for links to other, more detailed articles. I think this is especially true in terms of the high politics stuff, which simply isn't going to get covered elsewhere. User:John Kenney User_talk:John Kenney 21:42, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC) : Excellent input re: World War II/temp. I agree that more should be said about the Eastern Front in the main article, and I have added a new paragraph giving greater information about the events of that front and giving the reader a better idea of the sheer size of the conflict. Naturally, it is impossible to do true justice to such a front that was such a critical part of the war. : As for the political aspects, this is also, I agree, a must-have for the main article. I do think a section covering the politics of World War II would be great, and it sounds like you may have the knowledge to really make a concise entry on the matter. : China is tough, especially since while it is an integral part of the war, the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) is considered by many to be an ancillary and contributory conflict (not unlike the Winter War). It bears some discussion though. I have created an Events preceding World War II in Asia page--there was one for Europe, but none for Asia--to start gathering some of that information. How much to move to the main article? I'm not really sure. :I look forward to more input, User:Joshbaumgartner 01:38, 2005 Jan 26 (UTC) In terms of the politics, I feel like the current organization makes it a bit difficult - A more chronological framework, where we talk about the war in each theatre in each year, would make it easier. For instance, Tehran makes sense in the context of being in late 1943, as the western allies prepare their second front, and so forth, and the context gets lost if you just have one big section on high politics. As to China - I agree about the early part of the Chinese conflict. But after December 1941 it becomes pretty closely related to the Pacific War, particular the China-Burma-India Theatre, which was one of the main fronts of the war against Japan. By the way, I agree with you that the current version is pretty awful. User:John Kenney User_talk:John Kenney 02:15, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC) In terms of Wikipedia procedures, I am sorry to see that the rewrite at /temp can't be transparently substituted with the current version. Having read both versions, I see advantages with Josh's approach and particularly with his language, but the appearent coherence of the narrative, that is one of the chief advantages of the /temp-version, will most probably not last for very long once the article is put in place. As a result, many of its disadvantages, including the UK/US-POV, may remain for a longer time than its advantages. That's why, if given the choice, I would support the old version staying. However, I propose that we ''either'' agree to change the structure of the article according to Josh's proposal, but keep the old text and in particular the existing links until the new structure has stood the test of time for some months, ''or'' that Josh replace the text of the current article paragraph by paragraph or section by section in a moderate pace, which makes it easier to spot, discuss, and correct errors, introduced bias, and omission of links to other Wikipedia-articles. --User:Johan Magnus 16:20, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Deadline for temp == I was wondering if we could have a deadline (obviously in a reasonable timeframe) for the temp page (which is quite excellent at the moment, even if it still needs improving!) to be shifted to the normal page? I say this because I'd hate to have editors edit the current page and discover all their hard work wiped out! Also, maybe a note on the temp version could be added to the page so that editors know of the work being done? - User:Ta bu shi da yu 02:07, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Date of beginning == World War II started in Europe, namely in Poland, in Danzig (Gdańsk), at dawn of 1 Sept. 1939. The German warship "Schlezwig Holstein" shot at the Polish coast-guard station. This is the fact that all educated children know as the beginning of WW2, which then spread nearly all over the world. No debate over this date, please! :There are multiple views on this throughout the world. Please see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. User:119 00:35, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC) OK, then no. 119, the most neutral point is when you remain silent and percept nothing. If anyone wishing to learn something about WW2 finds this article on the web, they will find also a piece of information that there is "a debate", which is perhaps some niche conflict between historians, not a commonly accepted fact. Namely, later in the article we can read, when exactly the war started, i.e. on 1st Sept. 1939. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. These fact are most remarkable. We should highlight the most imortant facts if we are to treat Wikipedia as a real encyclopaedia, shouldn't we? :Don't you consider Japan to be a participant in the war? And if you do, is there any principled method for deciding which parts of Japan's expansionism are part of the war and which aren't? Arguably WWII was two separate wars that merged, giving various options for defining "the starting date". You can opt for when the first started (1931 or 1937), or when the two sub-wars merged (1941), or you can list the starting date of the two sub-wars separately. But there's absolutely no justification for picking the starting date of the second sub-war as the starting date of the entire war. — User:Bobby D. Bryant 12:03, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::Keep in mind that this is the English Wikipedia, mostly catering to the U.S. and British Commonwealth. Being that the case, the generally accepted start date for the war in these nations is the invasion of Poland, leading the British and the French (the Allies) to declare war on Germany (principle member of the Axis). Wikipedia's in other locales, such as East Asia, will probably state otherwise. User:Oberiko 12:48, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC) :::The article is about WWII, not the West's involvement in WWII. — User:Bobby D. Bryant 13:13, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::::Perhaps not, but our audience is Western. Considering how many different interpretations there could be for a "start" date (The Winter War, The Norwegian Campaign, The Second Sino-Japanese War, The Attack on Pearl Harbour, The invasion of Poland, Annexation of Austria and Czechoslavakia... etc.) depending on whom you're speaking to, and then compound that with the belief some people have that it's the same conflict as World War I (which has it's own starting time debates) and there's not going to be any clear or 100% technically right answer. Instead, we'll go by what is commonly accepted by professionals within our target audience (English speaking countries: ie. The United States and British Commonwealth) and use the Invasion of Poland which brought France, the United Kingdom, Poland and Germany into direct and declared war. User:Oberiko 15:07, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC) :::::I would rather like to say that Wikipedia's audience is ''predominantly'' Western, or at least an audience that is used to Western sources. We have reason to have this in mind, pragmatically, when writing prominent passages of the text, as for instance the introductory sentence. But, and this is one thing I like about this project, Wikipedia strives to be an ''international'' encyclopedia, not geared towards common myths in specific nations such as the UK, the US, or Australia. We actively strive to get rid of biases, including pro-Western and pro-Anglosaxon bias. Hence I would be happier with some weaseling at places where the issue can't be carefully investigated. ''...often held to have begun at September 1, 1939, when...'' could be one suitable wording. --User:Johan Magnus 16:06, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::::::Though I myself am from the west and believe 1939 to be the year World War II started, I disagree with Oberiko. Just saying that wikipedia's main audience is one particular group doesn't mean we should sacrifice our integrity by omitting other views simply to appeal to that group. The day wikipedia does that I'd blow my brains out... Anyway, I think that the way the start of the war is shown on the article is perfect. --User:Rocafella 14:16, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC) == 60 million or 57 million? == Both figures are given for the total number of deaths - one in the first paragraph, the second in the third paragraph. Which is correct? It looks not very good right now to have both figures there. User:Moncrief 20:03, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC) :57 million is given at World War II casualties, 60 million was added by User:Bluemoose. User:119 20:07, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC) :As if there ''can'' be given a correct figure! :Without any doubt, the uncertainity is far greater than the difference between 57 and 60, and I would suggest that we hang on to ''about 60 million'' as a hint of this. --User:Johan Magnus 16:08, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC) Why does the link behind the figure show even more deaths? 103 mil to be exact. We should at least try to keep both pages the same. Or at least figure out which page is wrong. --User:Soyweiser 09:07, 22 May 2005 (UTC) == "The repatriations..." == "The repatriation, pursuant to the terms of the Yalta Conference, of two million Russian soldiers who had come under the control of advancing American and British forces, resulted for the most part in their deaths." I am not sure what that ''means''. User:Kingturtle 06:15, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC) ==24.214.192.86 and 1932== 24.214.192.86 has revised the intro to state as fact that the war's starting date is 1932. Please note that this violates WP:NPOV. If you are familiar with a reference which states the war's opening date as 1932, that would be very useful in attribution. However, Wikipedia does not assume one view is fact. User:119 01:23, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC) == See Also's - Strategic Bombing == The link points to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Bombing_During_World_War_II but this turns up as a untouched page. The link maybe should lead to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing#World_War_II ? --User:macaddct1984 4:55, 8 March 2005 (UTC) == radar vs RADAR == I thought I changed "radar" to RADAR since it is an acronym; however, it doesn't look like the change is taking effect.--User:Ptdecker 03:41, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC) Well now it seems to have been commited.--User:Ptdecker 03:43, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC) == Pearl Harbor == Does anyone else see anything wrong with this statement? "On December 7, 1941 Japan bombed the U.S. naval base called Pearl Harbor. Thus making the U.S. bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki." :It makes some sense. It is referencing the US' counterattack with the A-Bombs, which was years later anyway. If it hasn't already, it should be removed. Also, it skips everything that hapenned in between that time. On another note, the grammar doesn't flow correctly. --User:Zeerus 18:44, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC) I agree with Zeerus. That statement can be a little misleading, and really just does not look like encyclopedia material. --User:Rocafella 14:06, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC) == Stub == I have a few suggestions for the stub article under the heading Contemporary Culture. I think we should remove that entire section, and put the given link tot he main article under the See Also section. Also, I think the stub label should be removed under the genocide section of this entry. The same goes for the Home Front part of the page. If anything we can try and expand the Home Front and Genocide sections with some more information. Just enought o get the stub label removed. I'm open to suggestions on those. For now, I'm going to remove the section on contemporary culture and move the link to the see also section --User:Zeerus 19:10, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC) :I agree, we have an entire article on World War II related topics, we can simply put that in the See also section and clear off quite a bit of this. User:Oberiko 19:15, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::Thanks for the quick response. The temp article is coming along pretty well. Who exactly is working on it now? I'd like to try and contribute what I can. What do you think about the other two stubs I mentioned? --User:Zeerus 19:58, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC) :::I personally think that the Genocide and Home Front should be left relatively small and linked to from the main article. The Genocide is much more closely linked to Nazi Germany then the actual War itself. The Home Front is more of an effect of the war rather then about the war itself. User:Oberiko 20:39, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::::In my opinion, I think the stub tags are holding back this page. Get rid of those, and this article has a better chance of being a Featured Article. We don't necessarily have to get rid of them, just expand on them a little bit more. As far as the genocide part goes, it doesn't even give statistics of the Holocaust and the war. Another thing, in this case, would you attribute the word genocide to the Holocaust, or the entire war? I think it better suits the former. --User:Zeerus 21:07, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC) ==Balkans in Europe or Mediterranean?== I see that the Balkan states are in the European theatre of WWII, can I recommend they be moved to the Mediterranean section? User:Oberiko 23:25, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC) :I think it should be moved. Then again, most of the fighting the Balkans were involved in was in the European campaign. But, i ultimately think it should be moved. It would be less confusing for some people. --User:Zeerus 17:41, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC) ==Continents== Just reading this, but I don't think WWII involved all continents. If my suspicions are correct Antartica was exempt from WWII. And so was South America in most respects, I think. User:Bgohla 10:45, 2005 May 8 (UTC) ==1938-1939== This period should be covered in more detail: along with Soviet treaty with Hitler 1939 the similar treaty of the West with Hitler 1938 should be mentioned (I tried to introduce it). Also to be included: Soviet proposal for the treaty with the West (declined by the latter) against Nazi Germany in April 1939 should be present etc. For the timeline of events see, e.g. [http://www.worldwar-2.net/prelude-to-war/prelude-to-war-index.htm]. User:213.115.184.126 14:11, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC) :I'm sorry, but I don't think your recent edit is an accurate and NPOV way of describing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and why it was signed. :*First: "Soviet Union, trying to protect itself from anticommunist Nazi Germany, signed..." is POV. It could just as well be written the other way (Nazi Germany trying to protect itself from communist Soviet Union signed...). But that's also POV. Why not just keep it as it was, and leave the debate over who wanted to protect itself against who to the Molotov-Ribbentrop article where all this is discussed. Discussing it here will make this already long article way too long. :*Second: "In this sense it was pretty similar to Munich Agreement". No, it wasn't. The Munic agreement didn't have any seecret clause sharing a country between the signers of the agrement as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had. :In short I think your edits should be reverted. But I'd like to get your (and others) comments before I do so. User:Shanes 16:03, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::I agree with you Shane. Let's leave opinions and comparions (unless extremely relevant) out of this article, if for no other reason then length. User:Oberiko 16:20, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::I agree totally (with Shane and Oberiko). --User:Johan Magnus 16:22, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC) :::Thanks. Reverted it now. User:Shanes 18:57, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC) ==Pearl Harbor== In the section on Pearl Harbor I found this: "The attack is widely seen as the final straw that drew the United States into the war." ''widely seen''? I would have thought there was no need for this qualifier. Any objections? User:DJ Clayworth 13:51, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC) :Not really, though I think it should be mentioned that, for the European Theatre, it was Germany that declared war on the United States. IIRC, the U.S. likely would not have become actively involved in Europe otherwise. User:Oberiko 15:27, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC) It could be argued that the US was already actively engaged in WW2 before Pearl Harbour as they were sailing supplies and war material across the Atlantic. While the military participation in this was limited, it can be seen as an act of violence against Germany to supply war materials to Great Britain. ==Minor Ally "Surrender"?== Romania and Bulgaria did not "surrender", they switched sides and fought the Nazis till the V-E Day and later. --User:Vladko 04:08, 12 May 2005 (UTC) :If you are fighting against someone, and then stop and fight for them, that's usually a surrender (unless there is a negotiated peace). For example Italy surrendered, and then joined the Allied cause. Is there any evidence to show that Romania and Bulgaria behaved differently? User:DJ Clayworth 05:36, 22 May 2005 (UTC) == graffiti on page that cannot be edited == In the section regarding the Battle of Britain, the phrase "The war sucked major balls!" has been inserted at the end of the paragraph, but I don't see that line when I switched to edit mode. Not sure how this graffitit can be removed, but thought I'd pass this along. :It was probably due to a delay in updating the article. Sometimes the displayed version gets behind the version in the database by a few minutes, so you don't see a change that was just made. When you edit the article it gets the most recent version from the database. The problem should correct itself after a few minutes. User:DJ Clayworth 13:44, 18 May 2005 (UTC) == WW I and WW II one conflict separated by a ceasefire? == The article says :Still others argue that the two world wars are one conflict separated only by a "ceasefire". One conflict separated by a 19+ year ceasefire in which Italy and Japan change sides? Who argues this? Clearly the wars are connected, but to say that they were one conflict seems very strained. User:Quale 07:05, 18 May 2005 (UTC) ::When the Treaty of Versailles was signed, war was technically over. However, it's no doubt that parts and effect of that Treaty actually caused WWII to break out. One example of ceasefire that is still currently occuring is the Korean War. The two Korean nations are still technically at war. No peace treaty was signed so far. --User:Kvasir 07:26, 18 May 2005 (UTC) ==The Picture== Does anyone else think the nuclear explosion is not the best picture to head up this article? I know it's a significant event, but it's not typical of the war. I wondered if we could maybe head the article up with a stack of three pictures of battle in progress - one land, one sea, one air. Ideally they could be from different theatres, maybe Battle of Britain, Russian front and Pacific naval. We could move the mushroom cloud down to the appropriate section. User:DJ Clayworth 21:35, 21 May 2005 (UTC) :I think that mushroom cloud is a very good as a representation of the enormous impact the war had on 20th century history; the unpresentend scale of death and desctruction, the ushering in of the atomic age and the rise of the US as one of the superpowers. I can't really think of a better candidate myself. :User:Karmosin User talk:Karmosin 01:14, May 22, 2005 (UTC) ::I agree with DJ Clayworth and would argue it is not the best picture. The mushroom cloud is the defining image of the Cold War, not World War II. The War was more or less won by Hiroshima/Nagasaki — the bombs were dropped as the Allies were planning post-war polcy — as Germany was beaten (though invading Japan by conventional means would of course have had horrific consequences). Surely images which sum up the war better are: ::*Signing of acts of surrender (Japan or Germany) ::*D-Day landings ::*Soviet flag over the Reichstag ::User:Mark83 22:46, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC) I've added one example of what it might be here. User:DJ Clayworth 23:08, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC) :Please try not to introduce even more militarycruft to the article. WW II was a lot more than just a long string of battles. The political and civilian impact needs to be focused on a lot more, and in this context the mushroom cloud is a lot more appropriate. If not Fat Man, at least find a pic that would appeal to more than just WW II-"fans". :User:Karmosin User talk:Karmosin 23:14, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC) :I agree with DJ Clayworth as well. Honestly, my first thinking about WWII is always about the Atlantic theatre. I wonder if there'd be a way to get a couple smaller pictures in the first part of the article, one for each theatre, perhaps, rather than the HUGE image of the mushroom cloud. (I think the stack of three photos above would be decent, btw, but I think one non-military picture would be good, something perhaps to symbolize the Holocaust, or perhaps a picture of the destroyed Hiroshima...) It's a sensitive issue, though, because there's always the risk that such an edit could be seen as a pro-America (i.e., try to ignore America's use of nuclear weapons) change. User:Kmccoy User_talk:Kmccoy 03:08, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC) :While I'm not actually a military 'fan', I take Peter's point. Maybe we could add some non-military scenes, such as the aftermath of an air raid, or a concentration camp. I think the mushroom cloud is even more 'militarycruft'. User:DJ Clayworth 13:19, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC) ==Merging in the temp page== What's the status of World War II/temp? Should it be merged back into this article? OR what? User:Raul654 00:56, May 23, 2005 (UTC) :I'm willing to replace it as soon as I'm done copyediting it. It'll just take a few days or so. :User:Karmosin User talk:Karmosin 06:20, May 23, 2005 (UTC) =="Japanese, American and Australian troops"== There is a sentence: "During the Allied island advances in the Pacific, surrendering troops were almost routinely killed by Japanese, American and Australian troops." Should it be Chinese here instead of Japanese? I wouldn't think the Japanese were killing troops that surrendered during allied advances. I would have thought, if anything, they ''were'' the troops that surrendered during allied advances. User:Open4D 22:57, 26 May 2005 (UTC) I think the point is that all sides killed surrendering troops. However, to my knowledge there were very few engagements in which Japanese troops actually surrendered in significant numbers. --User:Cavgunner 11:31, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC) :The Pacific War was fought with a less than perfect adherence to the Geneva Convention (to which Japan was not a signatory until the post way years) by both sides. But to say such things happened "routinely" is worse than inaccurate. It's positively defamatory. There were thousands of Japanese POWs in camps in Australia, the US and New Zealand. Without them, the Cowra breakout (for example) would not have been possible. User:Grant65User talk: Grant65 15:06, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC) :I have now rewritten the whole section, which was poor, in my opinion. By the way, check this excerpt from a post in an online discussion, by T. F. Mills of the University of Denver. The last paragraph cited below suggests that the worst excesses occurred not in the Pacific but in Burma: ::9 million Japanese served in the armed forces. 41,500 were captured. ::This compares to: ::6 million British in the armed forces, and 172,600 POW. ::2.6 million Indians in the armed forces, and 79,500 POW. ::1.3 million Australians in the armed forces, and 26,400 POW. ::These figures demonstrate the relative shame the Japanese attached to being captured. And as Judy mentioned, it went both ways: enemy POWs were not worthy of humane treatment. ::Of the Japanese POWs, 37,280 were captured in the Pacific, and only 3,100 in South East Asia, and 1,080 in China. (That makes for 100 short of the grand total estimated Japanese POWs.) ::From various other sources: More than half of the Japanese POWs (23,571) seem to have been taken in the exceptionally fierce Bougainville campaign. But it is hard to ascertain how many of these prisoners were taken at the final Japanese surrender when they heard that the war was over. I am pretty sure the 41,500 total does not include any from the final surrender in August 1945. At that surrender the Japanese still held many of their 1941 conquests, and the Allies were hard pressed to send forces everywhere to accept surrenders. Particularly in Indonesia the British arrived to take the Japanese surrender on behalf of the Dutch, but were spread much too thin to manage a Military Administration and they actually used the Japanese to administer and police the region. This was just part and parcel of the incredibly massive human displacement and chaos at the end of the war. As the Australian Army demobilised and combat battalions disbanded, two whole new battalions of men whose terms of service were not completed were formed in August 1945 simply to manage surrendering Japanese. ::The comparatively low number of Japanese prisoners taken in SE Asia is further illustrated by some microscopic views. In one day of the Meiktila campaign, the British counted 800 Japanese dead and 36 prisoners. In one week of the Pyawbwe campaign, the British counted 2,900 Japanese dead and 29 prisoners. Normally in warfare such numbers are reversed.[http://listserv.dom.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind9906&L=stumpers-l&D=0&O=D&P=33872] :And so on. User:Grant65User talk: Grant65 16:06, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC) == Needs a slight fix == It seems that the article has been copied upon itself at the end, I don't have time to but someone should fix that. :Thanks. I reverted back 9 edits to fix it. User:Shanes 14:56, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC) == The Italian Front == Currently, the information given on the Italian Front is far from detailed. At the moment, the entire section is one paragraph: "North Africa was used as a springboard for the invasion of Sicily on 10 July 1943. Operation control was, for the first few months, based on the island of Malta. Having captured Sicily, the Allies invaded mainland Italy on 3 September 1943. On July 25 Mussolini was fired from office by the King of Italy, allowing a new government to take power. Shortly before the main invasion of 8 September, the new Italian government surrendered. The German Army continued to fight from the Gothic Line and then Winter Line in Italy's mountains. The conflict would last until the spring of 1945." Somehow, I think this is not up to Wikipedia standards. It should say more on the major battles, such as the Battles of Monte Cassino and Anzio. It should also include more on the situation with Mussolini and the fall of Rome, the first Axis capitol to be captured. :Feel free to add. But let's not go too far. Remember this is already a very long article, and users can always go to the more detailed articles if they wish to know more. User:DJ Clayworth 21:05, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC) ==The French Resistance and Darlan== In the section on Operation Torch: is there a source to back up the statement that it was the French Resistance who captured Darlan and Juin? All the English language sources I've been able to find did not say this; they also said that the Algiers coup was put down by the end of 8 November, at which time as far as I can tell Darlan was still at large. User:DJ Clayworth 21:37, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC) :Actually I've found some sources that pretty much discredit the 'coup' account. I'm going to erase all but the bare bones and then build up the Operation Torch article. User:DJ Clayworth 13:23, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC) ==Too many links== Does anyone agree with me that there are too many links to other articles on this page? Too much blue linked text doesn't make it easy to read. Obviously a lot of links are very relevant and have to stay - I'm thinking more of removing links to all the years and dates, and all the individual countries. Do people think doing that would be OK? User:Jez 12:17, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC) :I don't think unrelated events occuring on these dates are very important. Maybe keep the basic years linked, tho. :The country links can go, tho. It's a World War for crying out loud! Every major country was involved at some point in one way or another. :--User:Ashmodai 12:35, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC) :The date/year links should be kept because they allow for the dates to automatically formatted to the user's preference. I'm sure we can cut down some other stuff though. User:DJ Clayworth 13:22, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC) == Okinawa (Pacific front) == Can anyone expand Naha, Okinawa#History section? Thanks. --User:AphaiaUser talk:Aphaia 03:52, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC) == Cannonical abbreviation for World War II? == I've noticed that a number of articles will abbreviate this was as 'WWII', others will use 'WW2', and I'm sure that others are in use. I'd like to try my hand at standardizing these across Wikipedia, but I'm not sure which is more popular. Opinions? --User:Bletch 17:07, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC) In my opinion, WWII is more appropriate, since it is commonly World War II, and that is the name of the article.--User:naryathegreat | User talk:Naryathegreat 01:03, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)
World War II was the war fought across the globe between the Allies and the Axis powers between September 1, 1939 and September 2, 1945. Wars Danish wars French wars German wars Polish wars Soviet wars United States wars Wars of the United Kingdom
World War II
[[image:nagasakibomb.jpg|thumb|295px|Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km (over 11 miles) into the air. August 9, 1945]] World War II or the Second World War was a World War that began on 7 July 1937, in Asia and 1 September 1939, in Europe and lasted until 1945, involving the majority of the world's countries and every inhabited continent. Virtually all countries that participated in World War I were involved in World War II. It was the most extensive and expensive armed conflict in the history of the World. Attributed in varying degrees to the Treaty of Versailles, the Great Depression, nationalism, and militarism, the Causes of World War II are a matter of debate. On which date the war began is also debated, cited as either the German Polish September Campaign on 1 September 1939, the Japanese invasion of China on 7 July 1937 (the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War), or earlier yet the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Still others argue that the World War I are one conflict separated only by a "ceasefire". Fighting occurred across the Second Battle of the Atlantic, in European Theatre of World War II, in the Battle of the Mediterranean, African Theatres of World War II, the Middle East Theatre of World War II, in the Pacific War, and it continued in China. In Europe, the war ended with the surrender of Germany on 8 May 1945 (Victory in Europe Day and Victory Day Days), but continued in Asia until Japanese Instrument of Surrender on 15 August 1945 (V-J Day). Approximately 57 million people List of World War II casualties by country, including acts of genocide such as the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanking, and General Ishii Shiro's Unit 731 experiments in Pingfan. As a case of total war, it involved the "home front" and Strategic bombing to a new degree. Atomic weapons, jet aircraft, and RADAR are only a few of many Technology during World War II. Post-war Europe was partitioned into Western world and Soviet Union Sphere of influence, the former undergoing economic reconstruction under the Marshall Plan and the latter becoming satellite states of the Soviet Union. Western Europe largely aligned as NATO, and Eastern Europe largely as the Warsaw pact, alliances which were fundamental to the ensuing Cold War. In Asia, the United States' military occupation of Japan led to its democratization, and China came to split into the Communist People's Republic of China and the Nationalist Republic of China. ==Participants== [[Image:bigthreetime.jpg|thumb|right|200px|TIME Magazine cover, "The Big Three" (May 14, 1945)]] The belligerents of the Second World War are usually considered to belong to either of the two blocs: the Axis powers and the Allies. A number of smaller countries participated in the war, more or less voluntarily, on the side of the power that in their neighbourhood was the most influential. The Axis Powers consisted primarily of Germany, Italy, and Japan, which split the Earth into three Sphere of influence under the Tripartite Pact of 1940, and vowed to defend one another against aggression. This replaced the German-Japanese Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936 that Italy had joined in 1937. Spain's fascist government lead by Francisco Franco was a great asset in trade to the Axis powers during the war. A number of smaller countries were counted among the Axis powers, but these countries did not have a profound impact on the war, nor did they supply the Axis powers with any great abundance of troops or supplies. Until Operation Barbarossa by it in June 1941, the Soviet Union was effectively allied with Nazi Germany through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, invading and occupying parts or the whole of Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania. Among the Allied powers, the "Big Three" were the United Kingdom, from 3 September 1939, the Soviet Union, from June 1941, and the United States, from December 1941. China had been fighting Japan since 1937. The independent dominions and colonies of the British Empire, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Greece, and Denmark were also counted among the Allies, though many would ultimately be conquered and occupied by Axis forces. Countries that attempted to remain neutral country in the conflict were often viewed with suspicion by the participants, and often pressured to make contributions to the most influential power in their neighborhood. Sovereignty was often difficult to maintain as many countries that did not directly participate in the conflict nevertheless held vested interests in seeing a particular side prevail. For example, neutral Switzerland was generally considered to be "Allied-friendly" while neutral Spain was considered "Axis-friendly," despite the fact that neither country openly proclaimed any alliances. Such situations allowed neutral countries to become hotbeds of espionage. ==Europe, 1939–45== ''Main articles: European Theatre of World War II, End of World War II in Europe'' ===1939: Poland, Phony War, Tripartite Pact, Winter War=== [[Image:WWII Poland Invasion 1939-09-01.jpg|thumb|300px|German soldiers destroying Polish border checkpoint on 1 September, 1939. Second World War begins.]] War began in Europe on 1 September, 1939, with the German Polish September Campaign. France and the United Kingdom honored their defensive alliance of March 1939 by declaring war two days later on 3 September. Only partly mobilized, Poland fared poorly against the Wehrmacht's superior numbers and strategy of "blitzkrieg". In accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Red Army invaded Poland from the east on 17 September. Hours later, the Polish government-in-exile Romanian Bridgehead. The last Polish Army unit was defeated on 6 October. As Poland fell, the British and French remained largely inactive in what would be termed "Phony War," lasting until May 1940. There were isolated engagements during this period, including the sinking of the HMS Royal Oak (08) in the British port of Scapa Flow and Luftwaffe bombings of the naval bases at Rosyth and Scapa Flow. The Kriegsmarine pocket battleship "''Admiral Graf Spee''" was sunk in South America after the battle of the River Plate. The Tripartite Pact was signed between Germany, Italy, and Japan on 27 September, 1940, formalizing their alignment as the "Axis Powers." The Soviet Union invaded Finland on 30 November, 1939, beginning the Winter War, which lasted until March of 1940 with Finland ceding territory to the Soviet Union. ===1940: Denmark and Norway, France and Low Countries, Baltic Republics, Britain and Atlantic, Greece=== Suddenly, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway on 9 April 1940, in Operation Weserübung, ostensibly to counter the threat of an Allied invasion from the region. Heavy fighting ensued on land and at sea in Norway. British, French and Polish forces landed to support the Norwegians at Namsos in April 1940, Åndalsnes and Narvik, with more success at the latter. By early June, all Allied forces were evacuated and the Norwegian Army surrendered. France and the Low Countries were invaded on 10 May, ending the Phony War and beginning the Battle of France. The Allies had expected a WWI style of conflict, with the French and German soldiers firing at each other from the entrenchments, and were not prepared for this sudden invasion. In the first phase of the invasion, Operation Yellow, the Wehrmacht's Panzergruppe von Kleist bypassed the Maginot Line and split the Allies in two by driving to the English Channel. Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands fell quickly against the attack of Army Group B, and the British Expeditionary Force, trapped in the north, was evacuated at Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo. German forces then invaded France itself, in Operation Red, advancing behind the Maginot Line and near the coast. Defeated, an armistice was declared on 22 June and the Vichy France puppet government created. In June of 1940 the Soviet Union occupied Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and annexed Bessarabia and Bukovina from Romania. Not having secured a rapid peace with the United Kingdom, Germany began preparations to invade with the Battle of Britain. Fighter aircraft fought overhead for months as the Luftwaffe and Royal Air Force fought for control of Britain's skies. The Luftwaffe initially targeted RAF Fighter Command, but turned to terror bombing London. Germany was defeated and Operation Sealion, the proposed invasion of the British Isles, was abandoned. Similar efforts were made, though at sea, in the Battle of the Atlantic (1940). In a long-running campaign, German U-Boats attempted to deprive the British Isles of necessary Lend Lease cargo from the United States. Shipments were reduced considerably by the U-Boats; however, the United Kingdom refused to seek peace, with Prime Minister Winston Churchill stating that "We shall never surrender." Greco-Italian_War on 28 October 1940, from bases in Albania. Although outnumbered, Greek forces successfully repelled the Italian attacks and launched a full-scale counterattack deep into Albania. By mid-December they had liberated one-fourth of Albania. Claimed to be the first Allied victory of the war, that battle was actually The Battle of Narvik, in which Norwegian, British and French forces reconquered Narvik from the Germans. Winston Churchill declared "We are used to saying that the Greeks fight like heroes, from now on we shall say that the heroes fight like Greeks." President Roosevelt announced a shift in the American stance from neutrality to "non-belligerency". ===1941: Yugoslavia, Greece, Crete, Soviet Union, Continuation War, United States enters=== Kingdom of Yugoslavia government succumbed to the pressure of Italy and Germany and signed the Tripartite Treaty on March 25 1941. This was followed by anti-axis demonstrations in the country and a coup which overthrew the government and replaced it with a pro-allied one on March 27 1941. Hitler's forces then invaded Greece and Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941. Hitler reluctantly sent forces to assist Mussolini's bogged-down forces in Greece, principally to prevent a British buildup on Germany's strategic southern flank. Yugoslavia was occupied within eleven days of the invasion. Thousands of Yugoslavs, however, continued to fight an effective guerilla war. The struggle lasted somewhat longer in Greece. The main mass of the Greek army was already engaged against Italian forces in Albania. Seeing the bleakness of the situation, about 58,000 British soldiers were sent to the aid of the Greeks. The German invasion developed along the Greek-Bulgarian border where they met stiff resistance from the fortifications of the Metaxas Line. The rapid downfall of Yugoslavia, however, allowed German forces to pour into Greece with little resistance and were able to surround the Greek positions. German soldiers entered Athens on April 27 1941, symbolizing the end of organized Greek resistance. The British managed to evacuate about 43,000 of their men. The intervention in Greece delayed the German invasion of the Soviet Union by six weeks, which proved disastrous when the German army became bogged down on the outskirts of Moscow as a result of the Russian winter. A month later on May 20, 1941, the Battle of Crete began when tens of thousands of elite German paratroops and some 1,300 airplanes launched a massive airborne invasion of the Greek island of Crete. Crete was defended by an ill-equipped group of about 43,000 Greek, British, Australian, and New Zealand troops. The Germans attacked the island simultaneously on the three airfields. Their invasion on two of the airfields failed miserably, but they successfully captured one, which allowed them to reinforce their position by landing reinforcements (about three transport planes every five minutes). After a week it was decided that so many German troops had been flown in that there was no way to defeat them. The Allied soldiers had grown exhausted and were by now numerically inferior. An evacuation took place and about 17,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers were evacuated. About 12,000 Commonwealth and 5,500 Greek troops were made prisoners; however, over 10,000 Greek and 500 Commonwealth troops remained at large and caused serious problems for the German occupiers over the next four years. The Germans suffered over 17,000 casualties in Crete. So heavy were the losses that Hitler never launched another airborne assault. General Kurt Student, who commanded the invasion of Crete, would later say "Crete was the grave of the German parachutists." As a result, Airborne operations against Malta, Cyprus, and the Suez Canal never took place. Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, commenced on 22 June 1941. The "Great Patriotic War" (Russian language: Великая Отечественная Война, ''Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna'') had begun with surprise attacks by German panzer armies, which encircled and destroyed much of the Soviet's western military, capturing or killing hundreds of thousands of men. Soviet forces came to fight a war of scorched earth, withdrawing into the steppe of Russia to acquire time and stretch the German army. Industries were dismantled and withdrawn to the Ural mountains for reassembly. German armies pursued a three-pronged advance against Leningrad (modern-day St. Petersburg), Moscow, and the Caucasus. Having pushed to occupy Moscow before winter, German forces were delayed into the Russian Winter. Soviet counterattacks defeated them within sight of Moscow's spires, and a rout was only narrowly avoided. Some historians identify this as the "turning point" in the Allies' war against Germany; others identify the capitulation of the German Sixth Army outside Stalingrad (modern-day Volgograd) in 1943. The Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union began with Soviet air attacks shortly after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, on 25 June, and ended with an armistice in 1944. The Soviet Union was joined in the war by the United Kingdom but not by the United States. Germany declared war on the United States on 11 December 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It was not obligated to do so under the Tripartite Pact of 1940. 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 who could wage powerful attacks on both East and West simultaneously. ===1942: Turning of the war in Russia=== ====1942: Caucasus offensive, Stalingrad==== [[Image:Stalingrad.jpg|thumb|250px|German soldiers at the Battle of Stalingrad]] In 1942, an aborted German offensive was launched towards the Caucasus to secure oil fields and German armies reached Stalingrad. The Battle of Stalingrad continued for many months, with vicious urban warfare leading to high casualties on both sides. At night, the Soviet forces were resupplied from the east bank of the Volga, and the Wehrmacht forces were eventually ground down; especially after Adolf Hitler diverted the armor of the Sixth Army to the Caucasus. By early February 1943, it was clear that the Sixth Army would have to surrender. The Fuhrer made General Friedrich Paulus, who was in charge of the German forces, a Field Marshal in the vain hope it would deter him from surrendering. It didn't, and he surrendered completely on February 2. The results were the destruction of the city, millions of casualties, and the collapse of Germany's German Sixth Army as a viable fighting force. Nazi Propagandaministerium Joseph Goebbels responded with his Sportpalast speech to the German people. Some historians cite this as the European war's "turning point." ===1943: Kursk=== German forces repulsed Red Army offensives along the Don River, Russia near Stalingrad in January 1943. In July, the Wehrmacht launched a much-delayed offensive against the Soviet Union at Kursk. Their intentions were known by the Soviets, and the Battle of Kursk ended in a Soviet counteroffensive that threw the German Army back. ===1944: France invaded, Soviet-Finland armistice, surrender of minor Axis, Ardennes offensive=== On "D-Day", 6 June 1944, the western Allies Battle of Normandy German-held Normandy in a pre-dawn amphibious assault spearheaded by American (82nd and 101st), British (6th) and Canadian paratroops, opening the "second front" against Germany. Hedgerows aided the defending German units, and for months the Allies measured progress in hundreds of yards and bloody rifle fights. An Allied breakout was effected at Saint-Lô, and the most powerful German force in France, the German Seventh Army, was destroyed in the Falaise pocket while counterattacking. Operation Dragoon stationed in Italy invaded the French Riviera on 15 August and linked up with forces from Normandy. The Allies captured Paris on 25 August. By early 1944, the Red Army had reached the border of Poland and lifted the Siege of Leningrad. Shortly after Allied landings at Normandy, on 9 June, the Soviet Union began an offensive on the Karelian Isthmus that after three months would force Nazi Germany's co-belligerent Finland to an armistice. Operation Bagration, a Soviet offensive involving 2.5 million men and 6,000 tanks, was launched on 22 June, destroying the German Army Group Center and taking 350,000 prisoners. Finland's defense had been dependent on active, or in periods passive, support from the German Wehrmacht that also provided defense for the chiefly uninhabited northern half of Finland. After the Wehrmacht retreated from the southern shores of the Gulf of Finland, Finland's defense was untenable. The Allies' armistice conditions included further territorial losses and the internment or expulsion of German troops on Finnish soil executed in the Lapland War, now as co-belligerents of the Allies, who also demanded the political leadership to be prosecuted in "war-responsibility trials" that by the Finnish public were perceived as a mockery of the rule of law. Romania surrendered in August of 1944 and Bulgaria in September. British forces attempted a fast advance into Germany with Operation Market Garden in September, but were repulsed. The Warsaw Uprising was fought between 1 August and 2 October. Germany withdrew from the Balkans and held Hungary until February 1945. In December of 1944, the German Army made its last major offensive in the West, attempting to capture the vital port of Antwerp and cripple the Allies in the Battle of the Bulge. At first, Germans scored successes against the Americans stationed in the Ardennes. However, with the German failure to capture Bastogne and the arrival of Gen. Patton's Third Army, the Germans wer forces to retreat back into Germany. The offensive was defeated. By now, the Soviets had reached the eastern borders of pre-war Germany. ===1945: Yalta Conference, push into Germany, Berlin falls, occupation=== [[Image:Red army soldiers raising the soviet flag on the roof of the reichstag berlin germany.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Berlin fell to the Red Army on 2 May. Here, the Hammer and Sickle is flown over the Reichstag.]] Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Franklin D. Roosevelt made arrangements for post-war Europe at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. It resulted in an April meeting to form the United Nations: nation-states were created in Eastern Europe; it was agreed Poland would have free elections (in fact elections were heavily rigged by Soviets); Soviet nationals were to be Repatriation, and the Soviet Union was to attack Japan within three months of Germany's surrender. The Red Army (including 78,556 soldiers of the 1st Polish Army) began its Battle of Berlin on 16 April. Hitler and his staff moved into the F%FChrerbunker, a concrete bunker beneath the Chancellery, where on 30 April 1945, he committed suicide. The Soviets took a massive toll of 100,000 men killed. Karl Dönitz became leader of the German government and quickly dispatched the German High Command to travel to Reims, France, to sign an unconditional surrender with the Allies. Field Marschal Alfred Jodl surrended unconditionally on 7 May. The Western Allies celebrated "V-E Day" on 8 May and the Soviet Union "Victory Day" on 9 May. The Soviet Union forcefully occupied the Baltic states as part of Stalin's campaign to subjugate the nations of Eastern Europe. Japan's surrender to the United States did not end the war, because Japan and the Soviet Union never signed a peace agreement. In the last days of the armed conflict, the Soviet Union occupied the Southern Kurile Islands, an area previously held by Japan and claimed by the Soviets. Multiple efforts [http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/5/9261D82C-98F5-40AE-938A-EB14FA2CEA14.html] to bring to a peace agreement, and officially end the war. ==Pacific and East Asia, 1937–45== ''Main article: Pacific War'' ===1937: Sino-Japanese War=== ''Main article: Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)'' War conflict began in Asia years before fighting started in Europe. Japan had Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) in 1931, long before World War II started in Europe. On March 1st, the Japanese appointed Henry Pu Yi king in Manchukuo, the puppet state in Manchuria. By 1937, war had broken out as the Japanese sought control of China. Roosevelt signed an unpublished (secret) executive order in May of 1940 allowing U.S. military personnel to resign from the service so that they could participate in a covert operation in China: the All Volunteer Group, also known as Chennault's Flying Tigers. Over a seven-month period, Chennault's Flying Tigers destroyed an estimated 600 Japanese aircraft, sunk numerous Japanese ships, and stalled the Japanese invasion of Burma. With the United States and other countries cutting exports to Japan, Japan planned a attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, without warning or declaration of war, dealing severe damage to the American Pacific Fleet. The next day, Japanese forces arrived in Hong Kong, which later led to the Battle_of_Hong_Kong of the British colony on Christmas Day later that month. ===1940: Vichy France colonies=== In 1940, Japan occupied French Indochina (Vietnam) upon agreement with the Vichy Government despite local Free French, and joined Axis powers Germany and Italy. These actions intensified Japan's conflict with the United States and the United Kingdom, which reacted with an oil boycott. ===1941: Pearl Harbor, the United States enters the war, Japanese invasions in SE Asia=== ''Main article: Attack on Pearl Harbor'' On December 7 1941, Japanese warplanes commanded by Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo carried out a surprise air raid on Pearl Harbor, the largest U.S. naval base in the Pacific. The Japanese forces met little resistance and devastated the harbor. This attack resulted in eight battleships either sunk or damaged, damage to three light cruisers and damage to four destroyers in addition to damage to some auxilaries and approximately 300 aircraft either damaged or destroyed. No U.S. Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers were at the harbor at the time of Japanese attack. The following day, the United States declared war on Japan. Simultaneously to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan also attacked U.S air bases in the Philippines. Immediately following these attacks, Japan invaded the Philippines and also the British Colonies of Hong Kong, Malaya, Borneo and Burma with the intention of seizing the oilfields of the Dutch East Indies. In a matter of months, all these territories, and more, fell to the Japanese onslaught. The British island fortress of Singapore was Battle of Singapore in what Churchill considered one of the most humiliating British defeats of all time. ===1942: Coral Sea, Port Moresby, Midway, Guadalcanal=== In May 1942, a naval attack on Port Moresby, New Guinea, was thwarted by Allied navies in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Had the capture of Port Moresby succeeded, the Japanese Navy would have been within striking range of Australia. This was both the first successful opposition to Japanese plans and the first naval battle fought only between aircraft carriers. A month later the invasion of Battle of Midway was prevented, causing the loss of four carriers, which Japanese industry could not replace. The Japanese Navy was now on the defensive. However, in July an overland attack on Port Moresby was led along the rugged Battle of Kokoda trail. This was met with Australian reservists, many of them very young and untrained, fighting a stubborn rearguard action until the arrival of Australian regulars returning from action in North African Campaign, Greece and the Middle East. But amazingly, the outnumbered and untrained Australian militiamen, which consited of the 19th platoon and 39th battalion, defeated the 5000-strong Japanese army. This was considered one of the most significant victories in Australian military history. Even prior to the American entry to the war, the Allied leaders had agreed that priority should be given to the defeat of Nazi Germany. Nonetheless, U.S. forces began to attack captured territories, beginning with Battle of Guadalcanal, against a bitter and determined Japanese defense. On 7 August 1942, the United States assaulted the island. In late August and early September, while battle raged on Guadalcanal, an amphibious Japanese attack on the eastern tip of New Guinea was met by Australian forces at Battle of Milne Bay, and the Japanese land forces suffered their first conclusive defeat. On Guadalcanal, the Japanese resistance failed in February 1943. ===1943-45: Allied offensives in Asia and the Pacific=== Australian and U.S. forces then undertook the prolonged campaign to retake the occupied parts of the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, experiencing some of the toughest resistance of the war. The rest of the Solomon Islands were retaken in 1943, New Britain and New Ireland in 1944. As the Philippines were being re-taken in late 1944, the Battle of Leyte Gulf raged, arguably the largest naval battle in history. The last major offensive in the South West Pacific Area was the Borneo campaign (1945) of mid-1945, which was aimed at further isolating the remaining Japanese forces in South East Asia, and securing the release of Allied POWs. Allied submarines and aircraft also attacked Japanese merchant shipping, depriving Japan's industry of the raw materials it had gone to war to obtain. The effectiveness of this stranglehold increased as U.S. Marines captured islands closer to the Japanese mainland. The Nationalist Kuomintang Army, under Chiang Kai-shek, and the Communist Party of China Chinese Army, under Mao Zedong, both opposed the Japanese occupation of China, but never truly allied against the Japanese. Conflict between Nationalist and Communist forces continued after and, to an extent, even during the war. The Japanese had captured most of Burma Campaign, severing the Burma Road by which the Western Allies had been supplying the Chinese Nationalists. This forced the Allies to create a large sustained airlift, known as "flying the Hump". Northern Combat Area Command Chinese divisions, a British division and a few thousand U.S. ground troops, cleared the Japanese forces from northern Burma so that the Ledo Road could be built to replace the Burma Road. Further south the main Japanese army in the South-East Asian Theatre of World War II were fought to a standstill on the Burma-India frontier by the British Fourteenth Army (the "Forgotten Army"), which then counter-attacked, and having recaptured all of Burma was planning attacks towards Malaya when the war ended. ===1945: Iwo Jima, Okinawa, atomic bombings, Japan surrenders=== U.S. capture of islands such as Battle of Iwo Jima and Battle of Okinawa brought the Japanese homeland within range of naval and air attack. Amongst dozens of other cities, Tokyo was Bombing of Tokyo in World War II and on the inital attack alone upwards of 90,000 people died as the fire raced unchecked through the city. The high loss of life was attributed to the dense living conditions around production centers and the wood and paper residential construction common to that period. Later on 6 August 1945, the B-29 "Enola Gay", piloted by Paul Tibbets, dropped an nuclear weapon (Little Boy) on Hiroshima, effectively Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki it. On 8 August 1945 the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, as had been agreed to at Yalta, and launched a large scale invasion of Japanese occupied Manchuria (Operation August Storm). On August 9, the B-29 "Bock's Car", piloted by Charles Sweeney, dropped an atomic bomb (Fat Man) on Nagasaki. The combination of the use of atomic weapons and the new inclusion of the Soviet Union in the war were both highly responsible for the surrender of Japan, although the importance of the Soviet incursion has been largely overlooked in conventional American histories of the conflict. The Victory over Japan Day on August 14 1945, signing official Japanese Instrument of Surrender on September 2 1945, aboard the USS Missouri (BB-63) in Tokyo Bay. ==Mediterranean theatres, 1940-45== ===1940: Egypt and Libya === The North African Campaign began in 1940, Italian forces in Libya attacked British forces in Egypt. The aim was to make Egypt an Italian posession, especially the vital Suez Canal. British, British Indian Army and Australian Army forces counterattacked (see Operation Compass), but this offensive stopped in 1941 when much of the Commonwealth of Nations forces were transferred to Greece to defend it from German attack. However, German forces (known later as the Afrika Korps) under General Erwin Rommel landed in Libya, and renewed the assault on Egypt. ===1941: Syria, Lebanon, Afrika Korps to Tobruk=== In June 1941, Allied forces invaded Syria and Lebanon, capturing Damascus on 17 June (see Syria-Lebanon campaign). Meanwhile Rommel's forces advanced rapidly eastward, laying siege to the vital seaport of Tobruk. Australian and other Alllied troops in the city resisted all until relieved, but a renewed Axis offensive captured the city and drove the Eighth Army back to a line at El Alamein. ===1942: First and Second Battles of El Alamein=== The First Battle of El Alamein took place between July 1 and July 27 1942. German forces had advanced to the last defensible point before Alexandria and the Suez Canal. However, they had outrun their supplies, and a Commonwealth defense stopped their thrusts. The Second Battle of El Alamein occurred between October 23 and November 3, 1942, after Bernard Montgomery had replaced Claude Auchinleck as commander of the Commonwealth forces, now known as the British Eighth Army. Rommel, the brilliant German commander of the Afrika Corps, known as the "Desert Fox", was absent for this epic battle, because he was recovering from jaundice back in Europe. Commonwealth forces took the offensive, and although they lost more tanks than the Germans began the battle with, Montgomery was ultimately triumphant. The western Allies had the advantage of being close to their supplies during the battle. In addition, Rommel was getting little or no help by this time from the struggling Luftwaffe, which was now more tasked with defending Western European air space, and fighting the Soviet Union, than providing Rommel with support in North Africa. After the German defeat at El Alamein, Rommel made a brilliant strategic withdrawal to Tunisia. Many historians feel Rommel's successful strategic withdrawal of the Afrika Corps from Egypt was more impressive than his earlier victories, including Tobruk, because he managed to get his whole force back intact against the overwhelming air superiority and numbers of the Commonwealth now reinforced by the Americans. ===1942: Operation Torch, French North Africa=== During the Arcadia Conference from December 1941 to January 1942, the Allied leaders concluded that it was essential to keep Russia in the war. This consideration led to the overall strategy "Germany First"; i.e. giving priority of knocking out Germany before Japan. This decision resulted in a long debate as to where and when to open a Second Front against Germany. The American Chiefs of Staff favoured a cross-channel (France) amphibious operation in the summer. The British opposed this because of insufficient landing craft and logistical problems. It was also thought that American forces were in a process of expansion, organisation and exercise, not capable yet of fighting an experienced German army. Only if Russia collapsed would they approve a main landing in France. Churchill put forward the idea of a small invasion in Norway or landings in French North Africa. The plan for landings in Africa were approved in July 1942. Operation Torch was headed by General Dwight Eisenhower. The aim of Torch was to gain control of Morocco and Algiers through simultaneous landings at Casablanca, Oran and Algiers, followed a few days later with a landing at Bône, the gateway to Tunisia. The operation was launched on 8 November 1942. The first wave was almost entirely American troops, because it was thought that the French would react more favourably to Americans than British. It was hoped that the local forces of Vichy France would put up no resistance, and submit to the authority of Free French General Henri Giraud. In fact resistance was stronger than expected, but still sporadic. In Algiers, 400 French resistance captured much of the city, though it was retaken before Allied forces could arrive. The Vichy commander, Admiral Darlan, negotiated an end to hostilities, against orders from the Vichy government. He was allowed to retain local control by the Allies, to the annoyance of Free French leaders. Hitler invaded and occupied Vichy France in response. Rommel's Afrika Corps was not being supplied adequately because of the loss of transport shipments caused by Allied — mostly British — navies and air forces in the Mediterranean. This lack of supplies and air support destroyed any chance of a large offensive for the Germans in Africa. Ultimately, German and Italian forces were caught in the pincers of a twin advance from Algeria and Libya. The withdrawing Germans continued to put up stiff defense, and Rommel defeated the American forces decisively at the Battle of Kasserine Pass before finishing his strategic withdrawal back to the meager German supply chain. Inevitably, advancing from both the east and west, the Allies finally defeated the German Afrika Corps on May 13 1943. 250,000 Axis soldiers were taken prisoner. ==1943:Yugoslavia and Italy== Mid-1943 brought the fifth and final German Sutjeska offensive against the Yugoslav Partisans (Yugoslavia) before the invasion and subsequent capitulation of Italy, the other major occupying force in Yugoslavia. Newly captured North Africa was used as a springboard for the Operation Husky on 10 July 1943. On July 25 Mussolini was fired from office by the King of Italy, allowing a new government to take power. Having captured Sicily, the Allies Allied invasion of Italy on 3 September 1943. Italy surrendered on 8 September, but German forces continued to fight. Allied forces advanced north, but were stalled for the winter at the Gustav Line, until they broke through in the Battle of Monte Cassino. Rome was captured on 5 June 1944. The conflict would last until the spring of 1945. ==Home front== Home front is the name given to the activities of the civilians in a state of total war. In Britain and America women joined the work force in jobs that the men overseas used to occupy. Families also grew victory gardens, small home vegetable gardens, to supply themselves with food during the war. They did this because the food was limited and they had to use ration stamps to get food. Sugar and coffee were especially hard to get, and gasoline was also rationed, as was silk. Schools and organizations held scrap drives and money collections to help the war effort. Many things were conserved to turn into weapons later, such as fat left over from cooking. This was later used to make explosives such as nitroglycerin. Franklin D. Roosevelt stated that the efforts of civilians at home to support the war through personal sacrifice was as critical to winning the war as the efforts of the soldiers themselves, and that the civilian populace constituted an additional front at home. In Germany, at least for the first part of the war, there were surprisingly few restrictions on civilian activities. Most goods were freely available. Civilian populations were heavily involved in war production and subject to propaganda from their governments. ==Genocide, atrocities, war crimes, and internment== Acts of genocide against or mass internment of civilian populations occurred in the territories and/or occupied territories of most great powers of the war, including Germany, Japan, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Some of these were so unimaginably immense and horrific that they changed the psyche of Western civilization; bringing to an end the optimistic beliefs in continual improvement in human nature which had supported western civilization in its education and imperialism up to that point. ===Internment and genocide=== The worst conditions were imposed in Nazi concentration camps. Most camps were specialized into variously unfree labour Labor camps, starvation camps (Buchenwald) or later extermination camps (Treblinka, Sobibor); though Auschwitz concentration camp, the largest and most infamous, had a separate camp devoted to each purpose. In the The Holocaust extermination camps large numbers of people were killed using gas, usually immediately they disembarked from trains under the pretense of being given a shower to prevent disease. Grounds for this mass murder were variously racist (Jews, Roma people [Gypsies]) "eugenic" (mental patients, homosexuals), and military/political opposition: initially anarchist and communist militant opponents, then ideological opponents (pacifists, Jehovah's Witnesses and the Holocaust), then citizens of occupied countries (like Poles), later Soviet POWs and then military and underground opposition. Jews were the largest group of people killed, approximately 6 million. Next in reducing order were Poles, other Slavs, Soviet POWs and then other groups. Conditions as horrific as, or even worse than, Nazi concentration camps were in the USSR's gulags. Japanese POW camps also had high death rates. Many citizens of occupied countries like Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia as well as German POW's and even Soviet citizens themselves died in the Soviet Gulags or Labor camps, along with many opponents of Stalin's regime and large proportions of some ethnic groups (particularly Chechens). Many Japanese Prisoner-of-war camp were used as labour camps and starvation conditions among the mainly U.S. and Commonwealth prisoners were little better than many German concentration camps. Thousands of Japanese Americans were interned by the U.S. government and this has caused postwar outrage and compensation claims; but these seem based more in insulted patriotism, anti-racial prejudice (most German-Americans weren't interned), and economic loss than atrocious conditions. ===Atrocity and war crimes=== Few forms of atrocity were excluded from the Eastern Front (WWII) theatre, including the killing of millions of Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians in the name of Lebensraum, of over a million Yugoslavs in disproportionate reprisal killings for Partisan activity, plus medical experimentation on concentration camp inmates. The population of Kiev dropped by 90% between the early 1930s and 1945, partly from starvation under Stalin, mostly under the Nazis. Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention until after the war, and millions of Asian civilians and Allied POWs were killed by its military and/or used as forced labour. The most notorious atrocities occurred in China, including the Nanjing Massacre and Unit 731's experiments with biological warfare in Manchuria, with a view to killing a large part of the Chinese population. Japanese war crimes also included rape, pillage, murder, cannibalism and forcing female civilians to become sex slaves, known as "comfort women" . In 1940, the Soviet Union murdered over 22000 citizens of Poland, mainly Polish officers, but also scientists, politicians, doctors, lawyers, priests and others. This genocide is known as the Katyn Massacre. Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union of Poland between 1939 and 1941 resulted in the death or deportation of least 1.8 million former Polish citizens. Though Article XXII of the draft ''Hague Rules of Air Warfare'' (1923) stated "aerial bombardment for the purpose of terrorizing the civilian population, of destroying or damaging private property not of a military character, or of injuring non-combatants" was to be prohibited, these rules were not ratified by the Powers. Germany has been bombing civilian targets from the first days of the war. In the first months of the war the British Government ordered the RAF to adhere strictly to the draft rules, but this restriction was progressively relaxed and abandoned altogether in 1942. By 1945 the strategic bombing of cities had been employed extensively by all sides. German bombing of Poland, Britain and the USSR initially caused shock but was soon exceeded by allied bombing. The deliberate Firestorm of Japanese and German cities, including Bombing of Tokyo in World War II, Operation Gomorrah and Bombing of Dresden by Anglo-American forces and the American atomic bombing of 2 Japanese civilian populations Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have been subject to criticism during the post-war era as possible war crimes; no action was taken against those responsible. From 1945 to 1951, German and Japanese officials and personnel, but no Allied personnel, were prosecuted by Allied tribunals for war crimes. Accused of genocide and atrocities, many German officials were tried at the Nuremburg Trials, and many Japanese officials at the Tokyo War Crime Trial and Japanese_war_crimes#Other_trials. Such a trial for Allied war crimes, especially Soviet war crimes, has not taken place.During the Allied advances of 1943-45, many surrendering or abject Japanese were killed by Allied personnel. For identical behaviour against Americans during the Battle of the Bulge, German SS commanders were tried for war crimes after the war. As a consequence, the war crimes trials — as opposed to trials for crimes against humanity — have been described as an example of hypocritical "winners' justice". ==Technology in World War II== The massive research and development involved in the Manhattan Project in order to quickly achieve a working nuclear weapon design greatly impacted the scientific community, among other things creating a network of national laboratories in the United States. In addition, the pressing need for numerous calculations for various projects like Colossus computer and ballistics tables kick-started the development of electronic computer technology. While the war stimulated many technologies: radio development accelerated, and radar developed; it retarded others, most notably popular television which the BBC had been developing, but which was shelved, as it also was in Germany and the United States, until the end of the war. The jet_aircraft age began during the war with the development of the Heinkel He 178, the first true turbojet, the Messerschmitt 262—the first jet in combat, and the Gloster Meteor, the first reliable and useful jet fighter. The Nazi terror weapon, the V-2 rocket, was the first step into the space age as its trajectory took it through the stratosphere, higher than any aircraft. It led directly to the development of the ICBM. Wernher Von Braun led the V2 development team and later immigrated to the United States where he developed the Saturn 5 rocket, which took men to the moon in 1969. All military technology progressed at faster pace even than modern computers, and over six years there was a disorientating rate of change in combat in everything from aircraft to Technology_during_World_War_II. The best List of jet aircraft of World War II at the end of the war could have effectively combatted twenty Supermarine Spitfire, the best early war fighters. The best late war tank, the Iosef Stalin tank, may well have defeated thirty of the best tanks of 1939, Panzer IVDs. The early war bombers that caused such carnage would almost all have been shot down in 1945, many with one shot, by radar aimed, proximity fuse detonated anti-aircraft fire, just as the 1941 "invincible fighter", the Mitsubishi Zero, had by 1944 become the "turkey" of the Battle of the Philippine Sea. This future shock was capped by the atomic bomb. The chaotic impotence of opposed amphibious landings typical of Battle of Gallipoli was overcome; the DUKW, a six-wheel-drive amphibian vehicle, and amphibious tanks were developed by the United States to support beach landing attacks, and the organization and coordination of amphibious assaults became a science; laying the foundations for the methodology of Project Management used to organize most modern, large-scale technological and engineering development. ==Consequences== In contrast to World War I, the Western victors in the Second World War did not demand compensation from the defeated nations. On the contrary, a plan created by U. S. Secretary of State George Marshall, the "European Recovery Program", better known as the Marshall Plan, called for the Congress of the United States to allocate billions of dollars for the reconstruction of Europe. Also as part of the effort to rebuild global capitalism and spur post-war reconstruction, the Bretton Woods system was put into effect after the war. The end of the war is also seen by many as the end of Britain's position as a global superpower and the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as the dominant powers in the world. Friction had been building up between the two before the end of the war, and with the collapse of Nazi Germany relations spiraled downward. The Cold War had begun. At the end of the second world war, the European economy had collapsed, and 70% of the European industrial infrastructure was destroyed. There was also a moral crisis, because people could not understand how Western civilisation could produce death camps and atom bombs. Millons of refugees were homeless. After the war, some German and Japaneese leaders were tried for crimes against humanity. On the political side, the war increased the strength of independence movements in the European powers' African, Asian, and American colonies, and most of them became independent in the following twenty years. ===United Nations and the Cold War=== Since the League of Nations had obviously failed to prevent the war, a new international order was constructed. In 1945 the United Nations was founded. Also, in order to prevent such devastating war from occurring again and to establish a lasting peace in Europe, the ECSC was born in 1951 (Treaty of Paris (1951)), the predecessor of the European Union. In the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947, the Soviet Union's enemies, Hungary, Finland and Romania, were required to pay war reparations of $300,000,000 each (in 1938 dollars) to the Soviet Union. Italy was required to pay $360,000,000, shared chiefly between Greece, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. In the areas occupied by Western Allied troops, democratic governments were created; in the areas occupied by Soviet troops, including the territories of former Allies like Poland, communist puppet governments were created, giving rise to the western betrayal sentiment in many of those countries. Soviet pressure further deleyed their economic development, forcing them to ignore the Marshall Plan. Germany was partitioned into four zones of occupation, with the American, British and French zones grouped as West Germany and the Soviet zone as East Germany. Austria was once again separated from Germany and it, too, was divided into four zones of occupation, which eventually re-united and became the state of Austria. The Cold War had begun, and soon NATO and the Warsaw Pact would form. The repatriation, pursuant to the terms of the Yalta Conference, of two million Russian soldiers serving under Germany, who had surrendered to advancing American and British forces, resulted for the most part in their deaths. ==Notes== See the front page of [http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/images/uc68a.1.jpg the 6 June, 1944 edition] of The New York Times. The text of Germany's surrender documents is available [http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/germsurr.html here]. ==References== * Winston Churchill (1948-53), ''The Second World War'', 6 vols. * Martin Gilbert (1995) ''Second World War'', Phoenix, ISBN 1857993462 * John Keegan (1989) ''The Second World War'' * B.H. Liddell Hart (1970), ''History of the Second World War'' Cassel & Co; Pan Books,1973, London * Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett (2000) ''A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War'' ISBN 067400163X * Richard Overy, ''Why the Allies Won'', Pimlico, 1995. ISBN 0712674535 * Gerhard L. Weinberg, ''A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II'' (1994) ISBN 0521443172 ==See also== *List of World War II conferences *List of World War II topics *List of battles of World War II *History of Europe *History of the Balkans *World War II in Contemporary Culture *Total war ==External links== * [http://www.ww2incolor.com/ Color photographs of the war] * [http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/ WW2 People's War] - A project by the BBC to gather the stories of ordinary people from World War II * [http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwtwo/ BBC History: World War Two] * [http://www6.dw-world.de/en/worldwarII.php Deutsche Welle special section on World War II] created by one of Germany's public broadcasters on World War II and the world 60 years after. * [http://warmuseum.ca/cwm/newspapers/intro_e.html Online Newspaper Archive] * [http://www.worldwar-2.net/ WorldWar-2.net] *[http://www.cafebabel.com/en/dossier.asp?id=169 WWII, divisive memories (en)], * [http://ww2db.com WW2DB: The World War II Database] * [http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/keys/webtours/GE_P4_5_EN.html World War II Through Cartoons] * [http://web.mala.bc.ca/davies/letters.images/collection.pages/WWII.htm The Canadian Letters and Images Project, World War II] *[http://www.tunnelrats.org.au Recovering the Past] Information on Australian World War 2 Fortifications and their later discovery, unearthing and exploration. World War II fa:جنگ جهانی دوم la:Bellum Orbis Terrarum II lv:Otrais pasaules karš li:Twiede Wereldoorlog ms:Perang Dunia II nds:Tweet Weltorlog simple:World War II th:สงครามโลกครั้งที่สอง vi:Đệ nhị thế chiến
World War II
''An event mentioned in this article is a Template:September 1 selected anniversaries''. ----- Archived at: * Talk:World War II/Archive 1 * Talk:World War II/Archive 2 * Talk:World War II/Archive 3 * Talk:World War II/Archive 4 * Talk:World War II/Archive 5 == date for the ending of the war (V-J day) == Right now it says in the second paragraph that the war: ''... continued in Asia and the Pacific until (...) the Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945 (V-J Day).'' but September 2 was only the day for the formal signing of the terms of surrender. The war is much more frequently said to have ended on August 15, when Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam declaration and laid down her arms. And this day, August 15, is indeed the V-J day as it says in the V-J Day article. I was about to change the date, but thought I'd ask about it here first. User:Shanes 02:10, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC) Make note of both, indicating which is which and why. --User:naryathegreat | User talk:Naryathegreat 00:16, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC) == Treaty ending WWII == Is there any information anywhere about the treaties Germany, Japan, and Italy signed ending the war? There is lots of stuff on the internet about the Treaty of Versailles, but not on the end of WWII. There needs to be something about this. :As far as I understand it, World War II was not ended by treaty, it was ended by surrender - of the Germans and Japanese separately. There were no 'terms' worth mentioning, so the exact nature of the documents is not important. User:DJ Clayworth 06:33, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC) :I know that there were only surrender documents signed, but the article on the Gulf War mentions something about Germany and Japan paying without sending soldiers, because of the agreement after WWII. I never heard of that, and just want confirmation on that. Also, if memory servers, the 1974(?) edition of the New Book of Knowledge Encyclopedia mentions something about the war officialy ending in 1950 or something. But I read that about 5 years ago, and it was only a small little thing. ::The Allies wrote restriction on the use of military force into the constitutions of Japan and Germany that were adopted after the war. West Germany gained full sovereignty in 1955 and Japan in 1952 except for Okinawa (held until 1972). User:Rmhermen 19:17, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC) == Article Re-write == The current World War II article is very burdened. The war is a HUGE topic, and there are billions of details. Unfortunately I think too many of these details have been presented in the main article, and not enough is presented in orderly sub-articles. I have made a re-write of the article, aiming to present a concise and orderly picture of the war to a researcher, especially a novice to the war (because that's the point isn't it?). I have posted the current incarnation of it on my user page user:joshbaumgartner and would appreciate some commentary on whether it represents an improvement over the current article or not. I have not completed adding all of the links, and undoubtably am missing some chunk somewhere that should be there. However, it is missing many details that I have intentionally dropped as material that would be better presented in a sub-article. I don't want to lose information, but the main article shouldn't be bogged with minutae, especially on a topic as big as WWII. Thank you ahead of time for any commentary, you can post it here or on my user talk page. Thanks!!! User:Joshbaumgartner 07:42, 2005 Jan 17 (UTC) : In general, it looks good. A few notes: :# I believe some if not all of the most common names for WWII are redirects here, but so many things do that Special:Whatlinkshere is overloaded and I can't verify. Should the names be mentioned in the first paragraph? :# How much of the information that has been removed from the main article is suitable for adding to sub-articles? :# In the "Civil impacts" section, are there articles that each of the subsections can link to? :# A good deal of wikification is needed, but that can be done later. :--User:Carnildo 08:53, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC) :: Thanks for the input. As for common names, you are probably right that at least the most common should be there in the lead paragraph, such as Great Patriotic War. As for sub-articles, ideally, yes, each heading should contain a paragraph or so about the item, and should have a ''Main article'' listed for more information. I think I will create the links and at least provide a stub as a starting point for the sub-article if a relevant one does not already exist. As for wikification, naturally that will take time and is probably best done by the community once at least the highlights are done. User:Joshbaumgartner 18:02, 2005 Jan 17 (UTC) If there is no objection, I will post the re-write at the end of the week so all can edit (or sooner if requested). User:Joshbaumgartner 00:46, 2005 Jan 19 (UTC) :I don't know exactly how to do this, but I would advice you to try to get in touch with other experienced Wikipedians, whose input surely would be valuable. Until then, I hope you have analyzed how the focus of your proposal is different than the focus of the article as it stands today — at least in order to prepare yourself on (from where to expect) the most intense criticism. /User:Tuomas 07:02, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC) ::Thank you, I will assume that there will be such reaction. I was hoping to be able to get some of that from posting on the talk page here. User:Joshbaumgartner 02:57, 2005 Jan 20 (UTC) :::I object to your rewrite as it is now, at 04:33, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC). :::*Questionable neutrality from words such as "tragedy", "carnage", "Unfortunately". :::*Poor writing, such as "Another friend of Hitler's, Japan...", "War had been going in East Asia for...". :::*Introduction is less useful. The article in general also omits too much in my opinion. :::User:119 04:33, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC) ::::119, in response, I admit that it is impossible to be entirely neutral. I have edited the sections you noted to make them more objective. Same for your second point. As for the last, it is a difficult matter. The subject is obviously impossible to cover fully in a single article, thus it is necessary to omit items from the top-level article, and address them in sub-article. Please clarify if you are merely referring to such things, or if there are omissions that actually are lost information. ::::Additionally, it is much more helpful to providing good criticism if you not only identify what you don't like (easy for anyone to do about any submission), but suggest what might be an improvement you would make. For example, instead of merely saying a particular phrase is poorly written, suggest a possible re-write that you would find positive. This not only will help the recipient of your criticism better address your concerns, but will also help demonstrate that you are genuinely interested in helping improve their work, and are not just being negative and counter-productive about the matter. ::::Thanks, User:Joshbaumgartner 10:21, 2005 Jan 23 (UTC) As an experienced Wikipedian, I suggest you write it on a temp page first, have others help you polish it up, and then move it here. User:Raul654 04:35, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC) :Excellent point, Raul, I will certainly do that! User:Joshbaumgartner 10:21, 2005 Jan 23 (UTC) The article re-write has been posted to a temp page: World War II/temp for further improvement and comment. User:Joshbaumgartner 10:43, 2005 Jan 23 (UTC) ==Peer review== Article listed on peer review at Wikipedia:Peer review/World War II. User:119 05:01, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC) ==Requesting references== Does anyone have references or, on the latter, POV attribution on these bits in ''Consequences''? :The repatriation, pursuant to the terms of the Yalta Conference, of two million Russian soldiers who had come under the control of advancing American and British forces, resulted for the most part in their deaths. :The destruction of Europe and the destruction, via aerial bombing, of a significant proportion of the United Kingdom's cities would also symbolically destroy the aura of invincibility the European nation had in the eyes of their colonies. Coupled with the enormous amount of money it had expended during the war, an empire was perceived to be an unnecessarily expensive possession. Thus this would provoke the rapid decolonisation process that would see the empires of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and others swept away. == Temp version == I've made a few edits to the temp article on the subject of the Italian campaign, which was rather garbled before. However, I'm concerned that this version of the article is simply too short. It outlines the course of military campaigns, but doesn't explain why. The political background is hardly mentioned. There is no mention of Yalta, Tehran, Lend-Lease, the Atlantic Charter, Stalingrad, and so on and so on and so on. Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt seem only to be mentioned in that picture from Yalta (or Tehran). There is the usual bias against the Eastern Front - why does Operation Torch get mentioned, but none of the individual Soviet offensives? And China is also barely discussed. I realize that any article has to pick and choose, but it feels like this article simply leaves too much out. The main article on World War II ought to be a solid article, and not just a portal for links to other, more detailed articles. I think this is especially true in terms of the high politics stuff, which simply isn't going to get covered elsewhere. User:John Kenney User_talk:John Kenney 21:42, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC) : Excellent input re: World War II/temp. I agree that more should be said about the Eastern Front in the main article, and I have added a new paragraph giving greater information about the events of that front and giving the reader a better idea of the sheer size of the conflict. Naturally, it is impossible to do true justice to such a front that was such a critical part of the war. : As for the political aspects, this is also, I agree, a must-have for the main article. I do think a section covering the politics of World War II would be great, and it sounds like you may have the knowledge to really make a concise entry on the matter. : China is tough, especially since while it is an integral part of the war, the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) is considered by many to be an ancillary and contributory conflict (not unlike the Winter War). It bears some discussion though. I have created an Events preceding World War II in Asia page--there was one for Europe, but none for Asia--to start gathering some of that information. How much to move to the main article? I'm not really sure. :I look forward to more input, User:Joshbaumgartner 01:38, 2005 Jan 26 (UTC) In terms of the politics, I feel like the current organization makes it a bit difficult - A more chronological framework, where we talk about the war in each theatre in each year, would make it easier. For instance, Tehran makes sense in the context of being in late 1943, as the western allies prepare their second front, and so forth, and the context gets lost if you just have one big section on high politics. As to China - I agree about the early part of the Chinese conflict. But after December 1941 it becomes pretty closely related to the Pacific War, particular the China-Burma-India Theatre, which was one of the main fronts of the war against Japan. By the way, I agree with you that the current version is pretty awful. User:John Kenney User_talk:John Kenney 02:15, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC) In terms of Wikipedia procedures, I am sorry to see that the rewrite at /temp can't be transparently substituted with the current version. Having read both versions, I see advantages with Josh's approach and particularly with his language, but the appearent coherence of the narrative, that is one of the chief advantages of the /temp-version, will most probably not last for very long once the article is put in place. As a result, many of its disadvantages, including the UK/US-POV, may remain for a longer time than its advantages. That's why, if given the choice, I would support the old version staying. However, I propose that we ''either'' agree to change the structure of the article according to Josh's proposal, but keep the old text and in particular the existing links until the new structure has stood the test of time for some months, ''or'' that Josh replace the text of the current article paragraph by paragraph or section by section in a moderate pace, which makes it easier to spot, discuss, and correct errors, introduced bias, and omission of links to other Wikipedia-articles. --User:Johan Magnus 16:20, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Deadline for temp == I was wondering if we could have a deadline (obviously in a reasonable timeframe) for the temp page (which is quite excellent at the moment, even if it still needs improving!) to be shifted to the normal page? I say this because I'd hate to have editors edit the current page and discover all their hard work wiped out! Also, maybe a note on the temp version could be added to the page so that editors know of the work being done? - User:Ta bu shi da yu 02:07, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Date of beginning == World War II started in Europe, namely in Poland, in Danzig (Gdańsk), at dawn of 1 Sept. 1939. The German warship "Schlezwig Holstein" shot at the Polish coast-guard station. This is the fact that all educated children know as the beginning of WW2, which then spread nearly all over the world. No debate over this date, please! :There are multiple views on this throughout the world. Please see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. User:119 00:35, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC) OK, then no. 119, the most neutral point is when you remain silent and percept nothing. If anyone wishing to learn something about WW2 finds this article on the web, they will find also a piece of information that there is "a debate", which is perhaps some niche conflict between historians, not a commonly accepted fact. Namely, later in the article we can read, when exactly the war started, i.e. on 1st Sept. 1939. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. These fact are most remarkable. We should highlight the most imortant facts if we are to treat Wikipedia as a real encyclopaedia, shouldn't we? :Don't you consider Japan to be a participant in the war? And if you do, is there any principled method for deciding which parts of Japan's expansionism are part of the war and which aren't? Arguably WWII was two separate wars that merged, giving various options for defining "the starting date". You can opt for when the first started (1931 or 1937), or when the two sub-wars merged (1941), or you can list the starting date of the two sub-wars separately. But there's absolutely no justification for picking the starting date of the second sub-war as the starting date of the entire war. — User:Bobby D. Bryant 12:03, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::Keep in mind that this is the English Wikipedia, mostly catering to the U.S. and British Commonwealth. Being that the case, the generally accepted start date for the war in these nations is the invasion of Poland, leading the British and the French (the Allies) to declare war on Germany (principle member of the Axis). Wikipedia's in other locales, such as East Asia, will probably state otherwise. User:Oberiko 12:48, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC) :::The article is about WWII, not the West's involvement in WWII. — User:Bobby D. Bryant 13:13, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::::Perhaps not, but our audience is Western. Considering how many different interpretations there could be for a "start" date (The Winter War, The Norwegian Campaign, The Second Sino-Japanese War, The Attack on Pearl Harbour, The invasion of Poland, Annexation of Austria and Czechoslavakia... etc.) depending on whom you're speaking to, and then compound that with the belief some people have that it's the same conflict as World War I (which has it's own starting time debates) and there's not going to be any clear or 100% technically right answer. Instead, we'll go by what is commonly accepted by professionals within our target audience (English speaking countries: ie. The United States and British Commonwealth) and use the Invasion of Poland which brought France, the United Kingdom, Poland and Germany into direct and declared war. User:Oberiko 15:07, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC) :::::I would rather like to say that Wikipedia's audience is ''predominantly'' Western, or at least an audience that is used to Western sources. We have reason to have this in mind, pragmatically, when writing prominent passages of the text, as for instance the introductory sentence. But, and this is one thing I like about this project, Wikipedia strives to be an ''international'' encyclopedia, not geared towards common myths in specific nations such as the UK, the US, or Australia. We actively strive to get rid of biases, including pro-Western and pro-Anglosaxon bias. Hence I would be happier with some weaseling at places where the issue can't be carefully investigated. ''...often held to have begun at September 1, 1939, when...'' could be one suitable wording. --User:Johan Magnus 16:06, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::::::Though I myself am from the west and believe 1939 to be the year World War II started, I disagree with Oberiko. Just saying that wikipedia's main audience is one particular group doesn't mean we should sacrifice our integrity by omitting other views simply to appeal to that group. The day wikipedia does that I'd blow my brains out... Anyway, I think that the way the start of the war is shown on the article is perfect. --User:Rocafella 14:16, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC) == 60 million or 57 million? == Both figures are given for the total number of deaths - one in the first paragraph, the second in the third paragraph. Which is correct? It looks not very good right now to have both figures there. User:Moncrief 20:03, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC) :57 million is given at World War II casualties, 60 million was added by User:Bluemoose. User:119 20:07, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC) :As if there ''can'' be given a correct figure! :Without any doubt, the uncertainity is far greater than the difference between 57 and 60, and I would suggest that we hang on to ''about 60 million'' as a hint of this. --User:Johan Magnus 16:08, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC) Why does the link behind the figure show even more deaths? 103 mil to be exact. We should at least try to keep both pages the same. Or at least figure out which page is wrong. --User:Soyweiser 09:07, 22 May 2005 (UTC) == "The repatriations..." == "The repatriation, pursuant to the terms of the Yalta Conference, of two million Russian soldiers who had come under the control of advancing American and British forces, resulted for the most part in their deaths." I am not sure what that ''means''. User:Kingturtle 06:15, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC) ==24.214.192.86 and 1932== 24.214.192.86 has revised the intro to state as fact that the war's starting date is 1932. Please note that this violates WP:NPOV. If you are familiar with a reference which states the war's opening date as 1932, that would be very useful in attribution. However, Wikipedia does not assume one view is fact. User:119 01:23, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC) == See Also's - Strategic Bombing == The link points to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Bombing_During_World_War_II but this turns up as a untouched page. The link maybe should lead to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing#World_War_II ? --User:macaddct1984 4:55, 8 March 2005 (UTC) == radar vs RADAR == I thought I changed "radar" to RADAR since it is an acronym; however, it doesn't look like the change is taking effect.--User:Ptdecker 03:41, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC) Well now it seems to have been commited.--User:Ptdecker 03:43, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC) == Pearl Harbor == Does anyone else see anything wrong with this statement? "On December 7, 1941 Japan bombed the U.S. naval base called Pearl Harbor. Thus making the U.S. bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki." :It makes some sense. It is referencing the US' counterattack with the A-Bombs, which was years later anyway. If it hasn't already, it should be removed. Also, it skips everything that hapenned in between that time. On another note, the grammar doesn't flow correctly. --User:Zeerus 18:44, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC) I agree with Zeerus. That statement can be a little misleading, and really just does not look like encyclopedia material. --User:Rocafella 14:06, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC) == Stub == I have a few suggestions for the stub article under the heading Contemporary Culture. I think we should remove that entire section, and put the given link tot he main article under the See Also section. Also, I think the stub label should be removed under the genocide section of this entry. The same goes for the Home Front part of the page. If anything we can try and expand the Home Front and Genocide sections with some more information. Just enought o get the stub label removed. I'm open to suggestions on those. For now, I'm going to remove the section on contemporary culture and move the link to the see also section --User:Zeerus 19:10, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC) :I agree, we have an entire article on World War II related topics, we can simply put that in the See also section and clear off quite a bit of this. User:Oberiko 19:15, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::Thanks for the quick response. The temp article is coming along pretty well. Who exactly is working on it now? I'd like to try and contribute what I can. What do you think about the other two stubs I mentioned? --User:Zeerus 19:58, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC) :::I personally think that the Genocide and Home Front should be left relatively small and linked to from the main article. The Genocide is much more closely linked to Nazi Germany then the actual War itself. The Home Front is more of an effect of the war rather then about the war itself. User:Oberiko 20:39, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::::In my opinion, I think the stub tags are holding back this page. Get rid of those, and this article has a better chance of being a Featured Article. We don't necessarily have to get rid of them, just expand on them a little bit more. As far as the genocide part goes, it doesn't even give statistics of the Holocaust and the war. Another thing, in this case, would you attribute the word genocide to the Holocaust, or the entire war? I think it better suits the former. --User:Zeerus 21:07, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC) ==Balkans in Europe or Mediterranean?== I see that the Balkan states are in the European theatre of WWII, can I recommend they be moved to the Mediterranean section? User:Oberiko 23:25, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC) :I think it should be moved. Then again, most of the fighting the Balkans were involved in was in the European campaign. But, i ultimately think it should be moved. It would be less confusing for some people. --User:Zeerus 17:41, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC) ==Continents== Just reading this, but I don't think WWII involved all continents. If my suspicions are correct Antartica was exempt from WWII. And so was South America in most respects, I think. User:Bgohla 10:45, 2005 May 8 (UTC) ==1938-1939== This period should be covered in more detail: along with Soviet treaty with Hitler 1939 the similar treaty of the West with Hitler 1938 should be mentioned (I tried to introduce it). Also to be included: Soviet proposal for the treaty with the West (declined by the latter) against Nazi Germany in April 1939 should be present etc. For the timeline of events see, e.g. [http://www.worldwar-2.net/prelude-to-war/prelude-to-war-index.htm]. User:213.115.184.126 14:11, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC) :I'm sorry, but I don't think your recent edit is an accurate and NPOV way of describing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and why it was signed. :*First: "Soviet Union, trying to protect itself from anticommunist Nazi Germany, signed..." is POV. It could just as well be written the other way (Nazi Germany trying to protect itself from communist Soviet Union signed...). But that's also POV. Why not just keep it as it was, and leave the debate over who wanted to protect itself against who to the Molotov-Ribbentrop article where all this is discussed. Discussing it here will make this already long article way too long. :*Second: "In this sense it was pretty similar to Munich Agreement". No, it wasn't. The Munic agreement didn't have any seecret clause sharing a country between the signers of the agrement as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had. :In short I think your edits should be reverted. But I'd like to get your (and others) comments before I do so. User:Shanes 16:03, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::I agree with you Shane. Let's leave opinions and comparions (unless extremely relevant) out of this article, if for no other reason then length. User:Oberiko 16:20, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::I agree totally (with Shane and Oberiko). --User:Johan Magnus 16:22, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC) :::Thanks. Reverted it now. User:Shanes 18:57, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC) ==Pearl Harbor== In the section on Pearl Harbor I found this: "The attack is widely seen as the final straw that drew the United States into the war." ''widely seen''? I would have thought there was no need for this qualifier. Any objections? User:DJ Clayworth 13:51, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC) :Not really, though I think it should be mentioned that, for the European Theatre, it was Germany that declared war on the United States. IIRC, the U.S. likely would not have become actively involved in Europe otherwise. User:Oberiko 15:27, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC) It could be argued that the US was already actively engaged in WW2 before Pearl Harbour as they were sailing supplies and war material across the Atlantic. While the military participation in this was limited, it can be seen as an act of violence against Germany to supply war materials to Great Britain. ==Minor Ally "Surrender"?== Romania and Bulgaria did not "surrender", they switched sides and fought the Nazis till the V-E Day and later. --User:Vladko 04:08, 12 May 2005 (UTC) :If you are fighting against someone, and then stop and fight for them, that's usually a surrender (unless there is a negotiated peace). For example Italy surrendered, and then joined the Allied cause. Is there any evidence to show that Romania and Bulgaria behaved differently? User:DJ Clayworth 05:36, 22 May 2005 (UTC) == graffiti on page that cannot be edited == In the section regarding the Battle of Britain, the phrase "The war sucked major balls!" has been inserted at the end of the paragraph, but I don't see that line when I switched to edit mode. Not sure how this graffitit can be removed, but thought I'd pass this along. :It was probably due to a delay in updating the article. Sometimes the displayed version gets behind the version in the database by a few minutes, so you don't see a change that was just made. When you edit the article it gets the most recent version from the database. The problem should correct itself after a few minutes. User:DJ Clayworth 13:44, 18 May 2005 (UTC) == WW I and WW II one conflict separated by a ceasefire? == The article says :Still others argue that the two world wars are one conflict separated only by a "ceasefire". One conflict separated by a 19+ year ceasefire in which Italy and Japan change sides? Who argues this? Clearly the wars are connected, but to say that they were one conflict seems very strained. User:Quale 07:05, 18 May 2005 (UTC) ::When the Treaty of Versailles was signed, war was technically over. However, it's no doubt that parts and effect of that Treaty actually caused WWII to break out. One example of ceasefire that is still currently occuring is the Korean War. The two Korean nations are still technically at war. No peace treaty was signed so far. --User:Kvasir 07:26, 18 May 2005 (UTC) ==The Picture== Does anyone else think the nuclear explosion is not the best picture to head up this article? I know it's a significant event, but it's not typical of the war. I wondered if we could maybe head the article up with a stack of three pictures of battle in progress - one land, one sea, one air. Ideally they could be from different theatres, maybe Battle of Britain, Russian front and Pacific naval. We could move the mushroom cloud down to the appropriate section. User:DJ Clayworth 21:35, 21 May 2005 (UTC) :I think that mushroom cloud is a very good as a representation of the enormous impact the war had on 20th century history; the unpresentend scale of death and desctruction, the ushering in of the atomic age and the rise of the US as one of the superpowers. I can't really think of a better candidate myself. :User:Karmosin User talk:Karmosin 01:14, May 22, 2005 (UTC) ::I agree with DJ Clayworth and would argue it is not the best picture. The mushroom cloud is the defining image of the Cold War, not World War II. The War was more or less won by Hiroshima/Nagasaki — the bombs were dropped as the Allies were planning post-war polcy — as Germany was beaten (though invading Japan by conventional means would of course have had horrific consequences). Surely images which sum up the war better are: ::*Signing of acts of surrender (Japan or Germany) ::*D-Day landings ::*Soviet flag over the Reichstag ::User:Mark83 22:46, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC) I've added one example of what it might be here. User:DJ Clayworth 23:08, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC) :Please try not to introduce even more militarycruft to the article. WW II was a lot more than just a long string of battles. The political and civilian impact needs to be focused on a lot more, and in this context the mushroom cloud is a lot more appropriate. If not Fat Man, at least find a pic that would appeal to more than just WW II-"fans". :User:Karmosin User talk:Karmosin 23:14, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC) :I agree with DJ Clayworth as well. Honestly, my first thinking about WWII is always about the Atlantic theatre. I wonder if there'd be a way to get a couple smaller pictures in the first part of the article, one for each theatre, perhaps, rather than the HUGE image of the mushroom cloud. (I think the stack of three photos above would be decent, btw, but I think one non-military picture would be good, something perhaps to symbolize the Holocaust, or perhaps a picture of the destroyed Hiroshima...) It's a sensitive issue, though, because there's always the risk that such an edit could be seen as a pro-America (i.e., try to ignore America's use of nuclear weapons) change. User:Kmccoy User_talk:Kmccoy 03:08, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC) :While I'm not actually a military 'fan', I take Peter's point. Maybe we could add some non-military scenes, such as the aftermath of an air raid, or a concentration camp. I think the mushroom cloud is even more 'militarycruft'. User:DJ Clayworth 13:19, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC) ==Merging in the temp page== What's the status of World War II/temp? Should it be merged back into this article? OR what? User:Raul654 00:56, May 23, 2005 (UTC) :I'm willing to replace it as soon as I'm done copyediting it. It'll just take a few days or so. :User:Karmosin User talk:Karmosin 06:20, May 23, 2005 (UTC) =="Japanese, American and Australian troops"== There is a sentence: "During the Allied island advances in the Pacific, surrendering troops were almost routinely killed by Japanese, American and Australian troops." Should it be Chinese here instead of Japanese? I wouldn't think the Japanese were killing troops that surrendered during allied advances. I would have thought, if anything, they ''were'' the troops that surrendered during allied advances. User:Open4D 22:57, 26 May 2005 (UTC) I think the point is that all sides killed surrendering troops. However, to my knowledge there were very few engagements in which Japanese troops actually surrendered in significant numbers. --User:Cavgunner 11:31, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC) :The Pacific War was fought with a less than perfect adherence to the Geneva Convention (to which Japan was not a signatory until the post way years) by both sides. But to say such things happened "routinely" is worse than inaccurate. It's positively defamatory. There were thousands of Japanese POWs in camps in Australia, the US and New Zealand. Without them, the Cowra breakout (for example) would not have been possible. User:Grant65User talk: Grant65 15:06, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC) :I have now rewritten the whole section, which was poor, in my opinion. By the way, check this excerpt from a post in an online discussion, by T. F. Mills of the University of Denver. The last paragraph cited below suggests that the worst excesses occurred not in the Pacific but in Burma: ::9 million Japanese served in the armed forces. 41,500 were captured. ::This compares to: ::6 million British in the armed forces, and 172,600 POW. ::2.6 million Indians in the armed forces, and 79,500 POW. ::1.3 million Australians in the armed forces, and 26,400 POW. ::These figures demonstrate the relative shame the Japanese attached to being captured. And as Judy mentioned, it went both ways: enemy POWs were not worthy of humane treatment. ::Of the Japanese POWs, 37,280 were captured in the Pacific, and only 3,100 in South East Asia, and 1,080 in China. (That makes for 100 short of the grand total estimated Japanese POWs.) ::From various other sources: More than half of the Japanese POWs (23,571) seem to have been taken in the exceptionally fierce Bougainville campaign. But it is hard to ascertain how many of these prisoners were taken at the final Japanese surrender when they heard that the war was over. I am pretty sure the 41,500 total does not include any from the final surrender in August 1945. At that surrender the Japanese still held many of their 1941 conquests, and the Allies were hard pressed to send forces everywhere to accept surrenders. Particularly in Indonesia the British arrived to take the Japanese surrender on behalf of the Dutch, but were spread much too thin to manage a Military Administration and they actually used the Japanese to administer and police the region. This was just part and parcel of the incredibly massive human displacement and chaos at the end of the war. As the Australian Army demobilised and combat battalions disbanded, two whole new battalions of men whose terms of service were not completed were formed in August 1945 simply to manage surrendering Japanese. ::The comparatively low number of Japanese prisoners taken in SE Asia is further illustrated by some microscopic views. In one day of the Meiktila campaign, the British counted 800 Japanese dead and 36 prisoners. In one week of the Pyawbwe campaign, the British counted 2,900 Japanese dead and 29 prisoners. Normally in warfare such numbers are reversed.[http://listserv.dom.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind9906&L=stumpers-l&D=0&O=D&P=33872] :And so on. User:Grant65User talk: Grant65 16:06, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC) == Needs a slight fix == It seems that the article has been copied upon itself at the end, I don't have time to but someone should fix that. :Thanks. I reverted back 9 edits to fix it. User:Shanes 14:56, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC) == The Italian Front == Currently, the information given on the Italian Front is far from detailed. At the moment, the entire section is one paragraph: "North Africa was used as a springboard for the invasion of Sicily on 10 July 1943. Operation control was, for the first few months, based on the island of Malta. Having captured Sicily, the Allies invaded mainland Italy on 3 September 1943. On July 25 Mussolini was fired from office by the King of Italy, allowing a new government to take power. Shortly before the main invasion of 8 September, the new Italian government surrendered. The German Army continued to fight from the Gothic Line and then Winter Line in Italy's mountains. The conflict would last until the spring of 1945." Somehow, I think this is not up to Wikipedia standards. It should say more on the major battles, such as the Battles of Monte Cassino and Anzio. It should also include more on the situation with Mussolini and the fall of Rome, the first Axis capitol to be captured. :Feel free to add. But let's not go too far. Remember this is already a very long article, and users can always go to the more detailed articles if they wish to know more. User:DJ Clayworth 21:05, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC) ==The French Resistance and Darlan== In the section on Operation Torch: is there a source to back up the statement that it was the French Resistance who captured Darlan and Juin? All the English language sources I've been able to find did not say this; they also said that the Algiers coup was put down by the end of 8 November, at which time as far as I can tell Darlan was still at large. User:DJ Clayworth 21:37, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC) :Actually I've found some sources that pretty much discredit the 'coup' account. I'm going to erase all but the bare bones and then build up the Operation Torch article. User:DJ Clayworth 13:23, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC) ==Too many links== Does anyone agree with me that there are too many links to other articles on this page? Too much blue linked text doesn't make it easy to read. Obviously a lot of links are very relevant and have to stay - I'm thinking more of removing links to all the years and dates, and all the individual countries. Do people think doing that would be OK? User:Jez 12:17, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC) :I don't think unrelated events occuring on these dates are very important. Maybe keep the basic years linked, tho. :The country links can go, tho. It's a World War for crying out loud! Every major country was involved at some point in one way or another. :--User:Ashmodai 12:35, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC) :The date/year links should be kept because they allow for the dates to automatically formatted to the user's preference. I'm sure we can cut down some other stuff though. User:DJ Clayworth 13:22, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC) == Okinawa (Pacific front) == Can anyone expand Naha, Okinawa#History section? Thanks. --User:AphaiaUser talk:Aphaia 03:52, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC) == Cannonical abbreviation for World War II? == I've noticed that a number of articles will abbreviate this was as 'WWII', others will use 'WW2', and I'm sure that others are in use. I'd like to try my hand at standardizing these across Wikipedia, but I'm not sure which is more popular. Opinions? --User:Bletch 17:07, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC) In my opinion, WWII is more appropriate, since it is commonly World War II, and that is the name of the article.--User:naryathegreat | User talk:Naryathegreat 01:03, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)
World War II
World War II was the war fought across the globe between the Allies and the Axis powers between September 1, 1939 and September 2, 1945. Wars Danish wars French wars German wars Polish wars Soviet wars United States wars Wars of the United Kingdom