An outline, era by era

World War II (1939 – 1945); the Holocaust; atomic bombs

20th Century · 1914 – 2000

World War II was a global conflict fought from 1939 to 1945 between the Allied powers, chiefly Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States and China, and the Axis powers, led by Germany, Italy and Japan. It began in Europe with Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939, and in Asia the Sino-Japanese war had already been under way since 1937. Fighting spread across Europe, North Africa, the Atlantic, Asia and the Pacific, and it killed tens of millions of people, most of them civilians.

The Holocaust was the systematic, state-organized murder of about six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Nazi Germany also persecuted and killed millions of other people, including Roma, disabled people and Soviet prisoners of war, and these crimes are studied alongside the Holocaust but are historically distinct from it. The war in Europe ended with German surrender in May 1945. In August 1945 the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan surrendered soon afterwards. The war redrew borders, ended several empires' dominance and shaped the postwar world.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. The Treaty of Versailles and the rise of the Nazis

    Event

    What happened

    The Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919, ends the First World War with Germany. It requires Germany to lose territory, limit its army and pay reparations. After the economic crisis of the early 1930s, Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party becomes the largest party in the Reichstag in 1932, and Hitler is appointed chancellor on 30 January 1933.

    The rest is history

    Within months Hitler's government ended democratic rule in Germany and began persecuting Jews and political opponents. It also started rearming in breach of the treaty. Historians agree that resentment of Versailles and the Depression helped the Nazis, but they debate how much weight each deserves. Most reject the idea that the treaty alone made another war inevitable. Hitler became head of state as well after President Hindenburg died in August 1934.

    Sources

    1. BookEvans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich. London: Allen Lane, 2003.
    2. BookMacMillan, Margaret. Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World. New York: Random House, 2002.

  2. The Nuremberg Laws

    Event

    What happened

    On 15 September 1935 the Reichstag, meeting at Nuremberg, passes the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour. They strip German Jews of citizenship and forbid marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews. Further decrees define who counts as a Jew by ancestry.

    The rest is history

    The laws gave legal form to the exclusion of Jews from German society. Persecution grew worse after the Kristallnacht pogrom of 9 to 10 November 1938, when synagogues were burned and thousands of Jewish men were sent to concentration camps. Emigration was forced and many countries limited the number of refugees they would accept. These steps preceded the mass killing that began after the war started.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryReichsgesetzblatt I, 1935, no. 100: Reichsbürgergesetz and Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre, 15 September 1935.
    2. BookFriedländer, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 1: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.

  3. Munich Agreement and the Nazi-Soviet Pact

    Event

    What happened

    On 30 September 1938 Britain, France, Italy and Germany sign the Munich Agreement, which gives the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany. Germany occupies the rest of the Czech lands in March 1939. On 23 August 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression pact, with a secret protocol dividing eastern Europe into spheres of influence.

    The rest is history

    The pact removed the risk of a Soviet response to an attack on Poland. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, and Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September. Soviet forces entered eastern Poland on 17 September. The secret protocol was long denied by Soviet authorities and was officially acknowledged in 1989.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryTreaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, with secret additional protocol, Moscow, 23 August 1939.
    2. BookOvery, Richard. The Origins of the Second World War. London: Longman, 1987.

  4. The fall of France and the Battle of Britain

    Event

    What happened

    On 10 May 1940 Germany attacks the Netherlands, Belgium and France. German armoured forces break through the Ardennes, and some 338,000 Allied troops are evacuated from Dunkirk between 26 May and 4 June. France signs an armistice on 22 June. From July to October the Royal Air Force defends Britain against the German air force.

    The rest is history

    Britain, under Winston Churchill, kept fighting, and Germany failed to win air superiority needed for an invasion. Germany was left in control of most of western Europe, and Britain's survival gave the Allies a base for later operations. Free French forces under Charles de Gaulle continued the fight from exile. The German focus soon turned east.

    Sources

    1. BookJackson, Julian. The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
    2. BookOvery, Richard. The Battle of Britain: The Myth and the Reality. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001.

  5. Operation Barbarossa

    Event

    What happened

    On 22 June 1941 Germany and its allies invade the Soviet Union along a front of well over a thousand miles, breaking the 1939 pact. German forces advance deep into Soviet territory, reaching the outskirts of Moscow in December. The Red Army counterattacks there in December 1941.

    The rest is history

    The invasion opened the largest land war in history. Behind the front, German units and local collaborators shot Jews in mass killings from the first weeks, and millions of Soviet prisoners of war died in captivity. Soviet victory at Stalingrad, ending in February 1943, became a turning point on the Eastern Front. Most German military casualties of the war occurred in the east.

    Sources

    1. BookGlantz, David M., and Jonathan M. House. When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995.
    2. BookSnyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books, 2010.

  6. Pearl Harbor and the war in the Pacific

    Event

    What happened

    By 1941 Japan is at war in China and has occupied French Indochina, and the United States responds with an oil embargo. On 7 December 1941 Japanese carrier aircraft attack the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, while Japan also strikes Malaya, the Philippines and Hong Kong. The United States declares war on Japan on 8 December, and Germany and Italy declare war on the United States on 11 December.

    The rest is history

    These events joined the wars in Europe and Asia into one global conflict. Japan quickly took much of South-East Asia, but the naval battle of Midway in June 1942 cost it four fleet carriers and shifted the balance in the Pacific. The Allies then advanced island by island towards Japan. American industrial output became a major factor in Allied victory.

    Sources

    1. BookPrange, Gordon W. At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981.
    2. BookToland, John. The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945. New York: Random House, 1970.

  7. The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution

    Event

    What happened

    From mid-1941 German forces in the occupied Soviet Union carry out mass shootings of Jews. On 20 January 1942 senior Nazi officials and civil servants meet at a villa at Wannsee, Berlin, chaired by Reinhard Heydrich, to coordinate the deportation of Europe's Jews. Killing centres at Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau operate through 1942 and after.

    The rest is history

    Jews from across occupied Europe were deported to the killing centres, where most of those sent there were murdered in gas chambers. Many other Jews died in mass shootings, ghettos, forced labour, starvation and disease. The meeting's minutes survive in a copy found in German Foreign Office files after the war. Historians generally hold that the killing policy developed in stages during 1941, with Wannsee coordinating a programme already under way. About six million Jews were killed by 1945. Soviet troops reached Auschwitz on 27 January 1945.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryWannsee Protocol. Minutes of the meeting of 20 January 1942, German Foreign Office archives, copy no. 16.
    2. BookBrowning, Christopher R. The Origins of the Final Solution. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.

  8. D-Day and the defeat of Germany

    Event

    What happened

    On 6 June 1944 Allied forces land on the beaches of Normandy in the largest seaborne invasion in history. Meanwhile the Red Army pushes the Germans back through Soviet territory and Poland. Soviet troops enter Berlin in April 1945, Hitler kills himself on 30 April, and Germany surrenders on 8 May 1945.

    The rest is history

    Germany was caught between two advancing fronts and collapsed. The Allies divided Germany into occupation zones and later tried leading Nazis at Nuremberg, starting in November 1945. The war in Europe ended, but the occupation lines helped shape the division of the continent. The fight with Japan continued until August.

    Sources

    1. BookBeevor, Antony. D-Day: The Battle for Normandy. London: Viking, 2009.
    2. BookKershaw, Ian. The End: Hitler's Germany, 1944-45. London: Allen Lane, 2011.

  9. The atomic bombs were the only reason Japan surrendered

    Popular belief

    The legend

    In the usual telling, the United States drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and Nagasaki on 9 August. Japan, shocked by the new weapon, surrenders at once, and the bombs saved a million lives that an invasion would have cost.

    The rest is history

    The bombs killed well over a hundred thousand people in the two cities by the end of 1945. Emperor Hirohito announced surrender on 15 August. Historians debate what mattered most, since the Soviet Union declared war on Japan on 8 August and invaded Manchuria on 9 August, and Japan's leaders were also facing blockade and firebombing. Some scholars give the bombs the greatest weight and others the Soviet entry. The figure of a million saved lives comes from postwar statements, and wartime estimates of invasion casualties were much lower and varied widely. Japan formally surrendered on 2 September 1945.

    Sources

    1. BookFrank, Richard B. Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. New York: Random House, 1999.
    2. BookHasegawa, Tsuyoshi. Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.

  10. The Germans did not know about the Holocaust

    Popular belief

    The legend

    A common claim after 1945 is that ordinary Germans knew nothing of the mass murder, which was hidden in remote camps in the east and carried out by a few fanatics.

    The rest is history

    The killing was kept secret officially, but much was widely known or suspected. Soldiers, police and civil servants took part, and soldiers wrote home about shootings. Allied radio and leaflets reported the murders, and the deportation of Jews from German towns took place in public view. Historians continue to debate how far knowledge extended and what people understood, but most agree that many Germans knew a good deal. After the war, Allied authorities made civilians tour liberated camps such as Buchenwald.

    Sources

    1. BookBankier, David. The Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion under Nazism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
    2. BookGellately, Robert. Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

  11. The Maginot Line failed because the Germans went around it

    Popular belief

    The legend

    France builds a vast line of fortresses along its German border, and it is said to have been useless because the Germans simply walked around it through Belgium.

    The rest is history

    The Maginot Line, built from the late 1920s, did largely do what it was designed to do, which was to protect Alsace and Lorraine and funnel an attack towards Belgium. French and British forces expected to meet the main thrust in Belgium. The German attack in May 1940 came through the Ardennes, which French commanders considered hard going for tanks, and crossed the Meuse near Sedan. Most of the line's forts were not taken in the fighting, and the garrisons surrendered after the armistice. The failure was one of strategy and command rather than of the fortifications alone.

    Sources

    1. BookKemp, Anthony. The Maginot Line: Myth and Reality. London: Frederick Warne, 1981.
    2. BookMay, Ernest R. Strange Victory: Hitler's Conquest of France. New York: Hill and Wang, 2000.

  12. Hitler was a failed artist who ruled alone

    Popular belief

    The legend

    A familiar story says Hitler was an unremarkable man who ruled by sheer will, and that the German people were simply under his spell.

    The rest is history

    Hitler was refused entry to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in 1907 and 1908, but he developed his politics after serving in the First World War. His regime relied on the cooperation of the army, civil service, industry and many ordinary people, and its policies were carried out by thousands of officials. Historians describe a system in which subordinates often acted to anticipate what Hitler wanted. The picture of a lone dictator hides the wide participation that made the regime work.

    Sources

    1. BookKershaw, Ian. Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris. London: Allen Lane, 1998.
    2. BookKershaw, Ian. The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation. London: Arnold, 1985.

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