World War II

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 356.

The basic causes of World War II, or the Second World War, were nationalistic tensions, unresolved issues, and resentments resulting from the First World War and the interwar period in Europe, plus the effects of the Great Depression in the 1930s.

On September 30, 1938 Great Britain, France and Germany signed the Munich Agreement. It gave Germany the right to take over the Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia. The two Allies hoped it would satisfy Hitler and keep them out of the war. The agreement, however, was broken and Hitler not only invaded the Sudetenland but took over all of Czechoslovakia.

It was clear that Poland, on Germany's eastern border, would be the next target. Great Britain and France promised to help Poland if it were attacked. In August 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union signed a "non-aggression pact", in which they promised not to attack each other. Germany did this so that it would not have to fight on two fronts.

The culmination of events that led to the outbreak of war are generally understood to be the 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the 1937 invasion of the Republic of China by the Empire of Japan. These military aggressions were the decisions made by authoritarian ruling Nazi elite in Germany and by the leadership of the Kwantung Army in the case of Japan. World War II started after these aggressive actions were met with an official declaration of war and armed resistance.

During 1939 to early 1941, in a series of successful military campaigns and political treaties, Germany conquered or politically subdued most of continental Europe apart from the Soviet Union. Two opposing military alliances, the Allies and the Axis, were formed.

During the 1930s Germany, Italy and Japan led a group of nations called the Axis. The leaders of these countries were dictators. They wanted their own countries to grow and others to become weaker. In the years before the beginning of World War II all three Axis powers had strengthened and modernized their armies.

The Allies were led by Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States and opposed the Axis. By 1945, almost the whole world was at war with the Axis. In all, there were a total of 51 allied nations by the end of the war.

In June 1941, the European Axis launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, giving a start to the largest land theatre of war in history, which, from this moment on, was tying down the major part of the Axis military power. In December 1941, Japan, which had already been at war with China since 1937, and which aimed to establish dominance over East Asia and Southeast Asia, attacked the US Pearl Harbor naval base in the Pacific Ocean, quickly conquering a significant part of the region. Again neutrality was the initial American response to the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939. But the bombing of Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war, first against Japan and then against itsallies, Germany and Italy.

The Axis advance was stopped in 1942 after the defeat of Japan in a series of naval battles and after devastating defeats of European Axis troops in North Africa and at Stalingrad.

American, British, and Soviet war planners agreed to concentrate on defeating Germany first. British and American forces landed in North Africa in November 1942.

In 1943, with a series of German defeats in Eastern Europe, the Allied invasion of Fascist Italy, and American victories in the Pacific, the Axis had lost strategic initiative and passed to strategic retreat on all fronts.

In June 1944, the Allied forceslanded in Normandy (D-Day), whereas the Soviet Union regained all territorial losses and invaded the territory of Germany and its allies. By September American units crossed the Germanborder.

The war in Europe ended with the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops and subsequent German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. By that time, the Japanese Navy was defeated by the USA.

The war against Japan came to a swift end in August of 1945, when President Harry Truman ordered the use of atomic bombs against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nearly 200,000 civilians were killed. Although the matter can still provoke heated discussion, the argument in favor of dropping the bombs was that casualties on both sides would have been greater if the Allies had been forced to invade Japan.

The war ended with the total victory of the Allies over Germany and Japan. World War II left the political alignment and social structure of the world significantly altered.

World War IIwas a global military conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, which involved most of the world's nations. It was the most widespread war in history, with more than 100 million military personnel mobilized. In a state of "total war," the major participants placed their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Marked by significant events involving the mass death of civilians, including the Holocaust and the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, it was the deadliest conflict in human history, resulting in 50 million to over 70 million fatalities.

Task 1. Expand the ideas explaining the reasons for World War II:

· nationalistic tensions,

· resentments resulting from the First World War and the interwar period in Europe,

· the effects of the Great Depression .

Task 2. Answer the questions.

1) What events led to the outbreak of the war?

2) What were the warring parties of World War II?

3) Why was World War II estimated as “total war”?

4) What events changed the character of the war in:

· 1941

· 1942

· 1943

· 1944

· 1945?

5) Prove that World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history.