A Brief Of — The Second World War

Published in

Nine Figure

10 min readSep 27, 2020

Lasting 6 Years and 1 Day the Second World War started on 1st September 1939 with Hitler’s invasion of Poland and ended with the Japanese surrender on 2 September 1945.

The Beginning

The instability created by World War 1 (1914–1918), planted the seeds for the roots of World War 2. It created instability in entire world, especially in Europe. Germany was very unstable politically and economically. Adlof Hitler leader of Nazi Party, rearmed the national and signed strategic treaties with Italy and Japan to accomplish his ambitions of world domination.

The front page of London’s *Evening Standard* newspaper on Sept. 1, 1939, announcing the German invasion of Poland

September 1, 1939 Hitler invaded Poland from west; two days later France and Britain declared war on Germany.

Allies vs Axis who is who in WW2

The main Allied powers were Great Britain, The United States, France, and the Soviet Union.

The common purpose of the Allies was to defeat the Axis powers and create a peaceful post-war world. Its creation was a response to the aggression and unprovoked war the Axis had unleashed upon the world. Each country had different ideas about what this post war world would look like.

On the other end The main Axis powers were Germany, Japan, and Italy.

The Axis alliance began with Germany partnering with Japan and Italy and was cemented in September 1940 with the Tripartite Pact, also known as the Three-Power Pact, which had the “prime purpose to establish and maintain a new order of things… to promote the mutual prosperity and welfare of the peoples concerned.” They supported each other’s goal for territorial expansion, wanted the destruction of the Soviet Union and acknowledged each other’s supremacy in their respective geographic areas.

From late 1939 to early 1941

In series of campaigns and attacks German concurred also all the European countries and formed the Axis alliance with Japan and Italy.

In Poland the Nazis terror was on high eventually there were more than 6 million victims of the terror, half of them Polish Jews murdered in extermination camps.

On May, 1940 Hitler attacked northern France. Holland capitulate only after five days of fighting, Belgium surrendered on 28th May. With success of German attacking British troops were now in danger of being cut-off and destroyed.

The Battle of Britain

Hitler almost concurred the entire Europe but the Great Britain was still remaining. Great Britain was surrounded by ocean from all the sides which made it hard to concur but in 1940 Hitler decided to attack Britain via sea route but the army captain warned him not to do because Britain has great air force and they can attack and win easily. Hitler paused for some time and armed his air forces so that they counter attack. After few months Hitler attacks on Britain. In this great battle more than thousands fighter jets of Britain and more than eighteen hundred fighter jets of German got destroyed.

This battle lasted for months and Hitler finally lost his patience and decided to pause this battle. Many says he would have easily won if he had continued for some more time.

German invasion of Russia

Hitler identified Russia with immense natural resources, and principle target of concur and expansion. Hitler believed that Russia will provide wide living space for German people.

Despite of many warnings Hitler sent more than 3 million soldiers to attack Russia with thousands of fighter jets. For the few months Germans achieved spectacular victories but soon winter arrived German soldiers couldn’t able to fight and survive in the extreme cold weather conditions of Russia and the result was more than 9 lakh German soldiers were lost and Russian soldiers came inside German borders.

Pearl Harbor

December 7, 1941 : Japanese Navy Air Service attacked on the Pearl Harbor. It was a surprise military strike against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, on Sunday morning.

Over 2,500 Americans were killed, while the Japanese lost only 29 planes. On the same day war was declared against Japan. Japan had also attacked British and Dutch colonial possessions.

On 11 December, Hitler declared war on the United States, and the war was now truly a global conflict. Japanese were winning everywhere initially.

Battle of Singapore

The Battle of Singapore, also known as the Fall of Singapore, was fought in the South-East Asian theatre of World War II when the Empire of Japan invaded the British stronghold of Singapore.

8 December 1941: The Japanese began their invasion of Malaya.

Over 130,000 British and empire troops surrendered to a much smaller Japanese force. Singapore was a big defeat for Britain.

Japanese forces continued concurring more territories Hong Kong, Malaya, Philippines and Dutch East Indies.

Now Japanese wanted to have more grip of the Pacific ocean side. Six months after Pearl Harbor Japanese again started attacking Americans troops once by one. In the meanwhile Americans cracked the codebreaker for the location and time of attack message that Japanese were using to attack. Once the code was cracked Japanese started loosing their carriers they lost one heavy cruiser and 248 aircraft, while American losses totalled one carrier, one destroyer and 98 planes.

Battle Of Stalingrad

Russian forces were initially able to slow the German Wehrmacht’s advances during a series of brutal skirmishes just north of Stalingrad. Stalin’s forces lost more than 200,000 men, but they successfully held off German soldiers.

The number of civilian casualties is unknown. However, it’s believed that tens of thousands were killed, and that tens of thousands more were captured and forced into slave labor in camps in Germany.

Although they again sustained significant losses, Russian forces were able to form what in essence was a defensive ring around the city by late November 1942, trapping the nearly 300,000 German and Axis troops in the 6th Army. This effort became the subject of a propaganda film produced after the war, The Battle of Stalingrad.

With the Russian blockade limiting access to supplies, German forces trapped in Stalingrad slowly starved. The Russians would seize upon the resulting weakness during the cold, harsh winter months that followed.

As Russia’s brutal winter began, Soviet generals knew the Germans would be at a disadvantage, fighting in conditions to which they weren’t accustomed. They began consolidating their positions around Stalingrad, choking off the German forces from vital supplies and essentially surrounding them in an ever-tightening noose.

By February 1943, Russian troops had retaken Stalingrad and captured nearly 100,000 German soldiers, though pockets of resistance continued to fight in the city until early March. Most of the captured soldiers died in Russian prison camps, either as a result of disease or starvation.

Operation Overlord

Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy landings. A 1,200-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault involving more than 5,000 vessels. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June, and more than two million Allied troops were in France by the end of August.

The Allies failed to accomplish their objectives for the first day, but gained a tenuous foothold that they gradually expanded when they captured the port at Cherbourg on 26 June and the city of Caen on 21 July. A failed counterattack by German forces on 8 August left 50,000 soldiers of the 7th Army trapped in the Falaise pocket. The Allies launched a second invasion from the Mediterranean Sea of southern France (code-named Operation Dragon) on 15 August, and the Libration of Paris followed on 25 August. German forces retreated east across the Seine on 30 August 1944, marking the close of Operation Overlord.

Yalta Conference

Held February 4–11, 1945, meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union to discuss the postwar reorganisation of Germany and Europe.

The aim of the conference was to shape a post-war peace that represented not just a collective security order but a plan to give self-determination to the liberated peoples of post-Nazi Europe. The meeting was intended mainly to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe. However, within a few short years, with the Cold War dividing the continent, Yalta became a subject of intense controversy.

Bombing of Dresden

On 13 February 1945, British aircraft launched an attack on the eastern German city of Dresden. In the days that followed, they and their US allies would drop nearly 4,000 tons of bombs in the assault.

The ensuing firestorm killed 25,000 people, ravaging the city centre, sucking the oxygen from the air and suffocating people trying to escape the flames.

Dresden was not unique. Allied bombers killed tens of thousands and destroyed large areas with attacks on Cologne, Hamburg and Berlin, and the Japanese cities of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But the bombing has become one of the most controversial Allied acts of World War Two. Some have questioned the military value of Dresden. Even British Prime Minister Winston Churchill expressed doubts immediately after the attack.

The Horrors Of Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp

A site of unimaginable horror, some 52,000 prisoners from across Europe died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany during the Holocaust, including the famous diarist Anne Frank. A further 14,000 inmates, sick or injured, died after the camp was liberated in 1945.

Victory in Europe Day (VE Day)

With Berlin surrounded, Adolf Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945. His named successor was Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz. During his brief spell as Germany’s president, Dönitz negotiated an end to the war with the Allies — whilst seeking to save as many Germans as possible from falling into Soviet hands.

Victory in Europe Day is the day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany’s unconditional surrender of its armed forces on Tuesday, 8 May 1945, marking the end of World War II in Europe.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

After the conclusion of World War II in 1945, the relations between Japan and the US worsened, especially after Japan forces decided to take an aim at Indochina with the intention of capturing the oil-rich areas of the East Indies. Therefore, US president Harry Truman authorised the use of atomic bombs in order to make Japan surrender in WWII.

On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939–45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.”

Surrender of Japan

Japan signed unconditional surrender on 2nd September 1945, and this was the official end of World War 2.

While this was the official end of World War 2 there were many places where fights were still ongoing. As the war was widely operated across the globe it ended in many stages later.

An estimated total of 70–85 million people perished, or about 3% of the 1940 world population (est. 2.3 billion). Deaths directly caused by the war (including military and civilians fatalities) are estimated at 50–56 million, with an additional estimated 19–28 million deaths from war-related disease and famine.