World War Two Explained: The Key Battles and

Dates
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The Second World War was the biggest, most destructive, bloodiest war in history. Every
continent was touched by the war. Yes, even the Antarctic.

There was military activity in China, France, Hawaii, Iceland, Somalia, Sri Lanka, the Arctic,
and far beyond. It was fought in trenches, on horseback, in the air, under the seas. It was
fought for the first time ever in space and with nuclear weapons.

World War II changed the world. The European empires of Britain, France, Holland and
others never recovered. The rest of the 20th century would be dominated by the
superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union.

In Asia, the war led eventually to the victory of the Chinese Communist Party. It also caused
the partition of Korea into two zones and the birth of India as an independent country. So,
when was it? What happened? And who fought where? This is all you need to know.

When did World War II start? Well, that depends on your point of view. World War II was
caused by the desire for empire, for territory, for power, for wealth and resources. Three
dictatorships, Germany, Italy and Japan, known as the Axis Powers, had spent the 1930s
expanding their empires.

Germany in Europe, Japan in Northern China, Italy in Africa. Japan and China had been
locked in a huge struggle since 1937 at least. Some people think this should count as the
start of the war.

The Americans were actually dragged into this Pacific Region War in December 1941 when
Japan attacked the American Navy in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. So, it started for the USA in
1941. Europeans, Canadians, Australians, Indians and anyone else in the European empires,
which at that time was nearly everyone, count the start of the war from September 1939.

At the start of that month, Adolf Hitler, the German dictator, invaded Poland. At that point,
lots of countries declared war on Germany and the Second World War in Europe was
underway. When the war ended, that's a little clearer.

Germany and Japan were catastrophically defeated and occupied in 1945. So why does
September 1939 matter? In Europe, Adolf Hitler's Nazi party had seized power in Germany.
He'd done away with democracy.

He was a dictator. He had started the persecution of political opponents, of Jews, of other
minorities. He is building concentration camps.

His aim? Expanding Germany. He wanted to seize back all the territory that Germany had
lost after it had been defeated in the First World War in 1918. So, in 1938, he seized Austria,
then parts of Czechoslovakia, but he wanted more.
He wanted an empire in the east, the rich farmlands of Ukraine, the oil of the Caucasus. He
dreamed of a vast German empire. So, he's grabbing bits of Europe that he claims have
always really been part of Germany.

He's returning Germany to greatness. His next target is Poland. Western Poland used to be
part of Germany until defeat in the First World War.

Hitler thinks it should be part of Germany again. So he does a deal with the communist
dictator, Joseph Stalin, in Russia, or the USSR as it was properly known at the time, and they
decide they're going to invade Poland and split it between them. 1st of September 1939,
boom, we're off.

German troops invade. Hitler thought Britain and France would let him do it. They'd
reluctantly agreed to allow him to snap up Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia over the
previous couple of years, but this was a step too far.

They declared war on Germany. Hitler has got himself into another world war. What now,
he asks his foreign minister.

With Britain and France come some mighty empires. Canada, India, Nigeria, South Africa,
New Zealand, Australia and lots beside, all now in the fight. So what happens? Buckle up.

Pretty quickly, Germany and the Soviets divide up Poland. The British and French aren't
much help. The French do launch a little invasion of Western Germany, but only advance a
couple of miles.

Their heart wasn't in it. They withdraw once German troops flooded back, flush from their
victory in Poland. The Soviets have less success with an invasion of Finland, which ends in an
embarrassing defeat.

Although the following year they try again and do take a bit of territory. On the oceans,
German submarines and ships try to destroy Britain's trade and cut off supplies. A German
U-boat or submarine sinks a passenger ship, the Athenia, within hours of the war starting.

This is known as the Battle of the Atlantic and it will rumble on until the last days of the
Second World War. Further afield, any German naval ship on the high seas is hunted down
and destroyed. A British force sank the German cruiser, Admiral Graf Spee, in the Battle of
the River Plate, off the coast of South America.

Back in Europe though, there was a standoff, both sides eyeballing each other across the
French-German border. In Britain at this time, more people were killed in road traffic
accidents because street lights were blacked out than members of the armed forces were
killed in combat. But that would change.

In April 1940, both the Allies and the Germans decided to invade Norway to secure its
precious resources. The iron ore, which was exported to Germany through the Norwegian
port of Narvik, was essential for German steel production. The Germans moved north
through Denmark, conquering it in the space of hours.
They also sent a fleet to invade Norway, which managed to avoid the British navy, partly due
to bad weather. The Allies attempted to move troops into Norway to bolster the
Norwegians, but the Germans were too strong. By the end of May, the final Allied troops
were evacuated, along with the Norwegian royal family.

This was very embarrassing for the British and French Allies, and after huge criticism in
Parliament of the way the war was being run, the British government collapsed. In came a
new Prime Minister, you might have heard of him, Winston Churchill. He didn't have long to
ease himself into the job.

The very day he went to see the King and move into Downing Street, the Germans launched
the invasion of Western Europe. A massive German force crossed into Luxembourg, Holland,
Belgium and France. What followed was one of the most dramatic upsets in the history of
war.

The Germans used tanks, aircraft and vehicles to surge through enemy territory,
surrounding and surprising. While the Allies moved to counter the German troops marching
through Belgium, as they had in the First World War, the Germans completely surprised
them with another thrust through the woody, hilly Ardennes region, which most planners
had thought was impassable. This thrust caught everyone off balance, and within just ten
days, the Germans were at the English Channel.

All the Allied troops that marched north into Belgium to stop the Germans were now cut off
from the rest of their forces in France. The British and French had been sliced in half. The
surrounding forces in Belgium had no choice.

They had to head to the coast and hope the Royal Navy would rescue them. The Allies
retreated to a defensive perimeter around the town of Dunkirk. The Navy frantically
organised ships to go to their rescue, including eventually little boats, rivercraft, barges and
yachts, which could pick soldiers up directly from the beach rather than rely on limited port
facilities, many of which had been ruined by German bombing.

The British hoped to evacuate 45,000 men in the two days before the Germans captured
Dunkirk. But Hitler called his forces to a halt. He was concerned that his tanks and men were
stretched and needed to consolidate.

The Germans were worried also the ground around Dunkirk was too boggy for heavy tanks.
This gave the British a precious window. Over a week, an astonishing 340,000 Allied soldiers
were rescued.

Some called it a miracle. Britain had rescued its army, even if they'd left nearly all their
heavy weapons behind. Hitler's Axis partner Italy thought the writing was on the wall and
chose this moment to jump into the war.

Italian troops launched an invasion of southern France. After Dunkirk, German forces were
free to turn south and concentrate on the rest of the French army. Within weeks, France
fell.
Hitler visited Paris for some gloating shots for social media. Germany now dominated
Western and Central Europe. Inspired by Winston Churchill, the British and their empire
beyond the seas made the firm decision not to give in.

Hitler had a British problem. He needed to make peace with Britain, or defeat Britain totally,
or they'd make a nuisance of themselves when Hitler turned east to fulfil his real dream,
that huge empire stretching off into the Russian steppes. So Hitler told his army to draw up
plans to invade, while he used his air force to try and force Britain to the negotiating table.

What followed was the Battle of Britain, the first battle fought in history predominantly in
the skies. German bombers flew over Britain, striking military targets. They focused at first
on the Royal Air Force, trying to knock them out so Germans could control the skies and
force the British government to yield through bombing.

But the RAF proved tenacious. German raids were pounced on by RAF Hurricane and Spitfire
fighters. German bombers were shot down in unsustainable numbers.

The RAF had invented an ingenious system to identify and attack German raids. Pioneering
radar was used to spot German aircraft. The information was then passed to groups of
fighter aircraft who could dash up into the sky and shoot them down.

As the summer went on, the RAF seemed unbreakable. The Germans switched tactics and
started pounding London, hoping to force the British to change their minds and sue for
peace. It was the start of what Brits call the Blitz, the systematic bombing of civilians in cities
by the Germans.

By the middle of September it was clear the Germans had been defeated in the air. The RAF
was still a formidable presence and the bombing of London was taking far higher toll on
German aircraft and crew. Hitler admitted he would not be able to knock Britain out of the
war.

He certainly couldn't launch an invasion with the RAF undefeated and the Royal Navy ready
to pounce on any German invasion fleet. Germany switched to bombing British cities at
night but the invasion plans were shelved. While Britain had been fighting for survival, it also
had to fight the Italians in the Mediterranean where their empires rubbed up alongside each
other in North and East Africa.

The British seized Italian Ethiopia but the fighting in Libya and Egypt would prove much
tougher. 1941 would be a big year. As fighting between the Axis and the British seesawed in
North Africa, the Italian invasion of Greece, which they'd launched right at the end of 1940,
was going badly wrong.

The Italians were forced into humiliating retreats. They turned to Hitler to bail them out but
he couldn't stand by and let his allies embarrass him. So he invaded South East Europe,
overrunning Yugoslavia and Greece pretty quickly.

But that wasted valuable time and resources for the Axis because that summer they had a
big plan. The invasion of the Soviet Union. One of history's most terrible struggles was about
to begin.
In June, Hitler shocked his former ally Stalin by launching the most massive invasion in
history. Nearly four million men, three and a half thousand tanks, over eight thousand other
vehicles and thousands of aircraft, plus over half a million horses. The Soviets were
completely outclassed.

Millions of men were killed or captured and sent to camps where most of them starved to
death. Even Stalin's son was among the prisoners who would perish. By December, German
spearheads were at the outskirts of Moscow but ferocious Soviet resistance and shocking
cold weather stopped them in their tracks and the Soviets launched a counter-attack that
was even able to push them back.

Hitler had believed, as he put it, that by kicking in the front door the whole rotten structure
would come crashing down. Instead, the Soviets had retreated but they hadn't collapsed.
They were still in the fight.

The stage was set for a long, terrible struggle. While the Germans were falling just short of
taking Stalin's capital, thousands of miles away, another surprise attack was about to take
place. Japan was struggling to win its war in China.

They needed raw materials, rubber and oil. These could be found in Southeast Asia, places
like Malaysia. The Japanese thought the United States would stop them from invading these
territories, so they decided to strike first.

Knock out the American navy in the Pacific, then they could seize all the territory they liked.
So, in early December 1941, six Japanese aircraft carriers headed for Hawaii. On the 7th of
December 1941, the Japanese struck.

Bombs and torpedoes rained down on the US Pacific Fleet headquarters at Pearl Harbor on
Oahu. Eight battleships were sunk or damaged. Two and a half thousand Americans were
killed.

President Roosevelt called it a day of infamy and declared war on Japan. Then, remarkably,
Adolf Hitler declared war on America. The USA was in the war with both Japan and
Germany.

The war in Europe and the war in Asia was now a global one. The Japanese didn't just attack
the Americans. They also put into plan their attempt to secure the resources of Southeast
Asia.

At the same time those bombs were falling on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded British-
controlled Malaya, then Indonesia and the Philippines. Within months, all of them would fall
to Japan. 1942 would be the decisive year.

1942 started with Axis advances but ended in terrible defeats. The Japanese continued to
expand across Asia and the Pacific. They captured Burma, they arrived at the gates of India,
they bombed Australia and Sri Lanka.

The Germans and their Axis allies charged through Ukraine into southern Russia. By late
summer they'd reached the city of Stalingrad but their momentum stopped as they
struggled to secure the city in the face of house-to-house fighting. That summer too, the
Japanese suffered a catastrophic defeat.

The Americans had broken the Japanese naval codes which allowed them to ambush the
Japanese fleet off Midway Island. U.S. naval dive bombers destroyed four Japanese aircraft
carriers, ripping the heart out of the Japanese navy. The tide had turned.

The tide had also turned in Africa as well. An impressive Axis advance had taken their forces
deep into Egypt, threatening the entire British position in the Middle East. But the British
attacked El Alamein in October and forced the Axis back.

It was the start of a long retreat. Days later the Americans arrived in the Western theatre for
the first time in the war. They and the British landed in Morocco and Algeria, threatening to
crush the Axis between them and the British army advancing from Egypt.

In November 1942 the Soviets launched a massive counter-attack on the German troops at
Stalingrad. Within days they were surrounded. The Germans held out, desperately, but by
February 1943 the final remnant surrendered.

It was a devastating defeat. In 1943 the Allies really turned the screws. In the skies of
Europe fleets of bombers smashed German cities and factories night after night.

A daring raid in May saw British bombers strike at German dams to disrupt hydroelectric
and water supplies in the industrial region of the Ruhr. In the Soviet Union the Germans
attempted one last big offensive. They attacked the Soviets around the city of Kursk, but the
British had broken German codes and gave Stalin detailed intelligence.

The Soviets built massive defences which took a terrible toll on the Germans and then struck
back at them, sending them reeling back. The Germans would know only retreats from this
point forward. In the Atlantic British, American, Canadian and other Allied ships and planes
developed techniques to overcome the threat of German submarines.

In a series of battles Allied ships sunk German submarines in such large numbers the
German admirals suspended all operations. They would never again enjoy the upper hand.
In the spring of 1943 Axis troops surrendered in North Africa and in July the invasion of Italy
began with landings in Sicily, the first Allied boots on the home turf of an Axis power.

Later that month the fascist leader Mussolini was ousted from power and arrested. The
Allies then invaded the Italian mainland in early September. Italy agreed to surrender but
German forces in Italy seized control and ensured that the Allies would have to fight their
way right up the Italian peninsula.

In the Pacific the Americans were on the offensive. They hopped from island to island in two
main thrusts. There was a southern drive in which New Guinea and its surrounding islands
would be captured.

Then there was a thrust up through the central Pacific with attacks on the Gilbert and
Marshall Islands. The Axis were on the retreat. They now had no chance of winning the war.
As the situation worsened for the Germans their genocidal campaign against Europe's Jews
and other groups accelerated. Millions of Jews were killed in industrial murder camps across
Germany's shrinking empire. The walls really closed in on the Axis powers in 1944.

The Soviets launched offensive after offensive, millions of men surging forward driving the
Axis forces before them. Vast numbers of people were now locked into bloody, destructive,
awful fighting. By the end of the year the Soviets were on German soil.

In the Pacific the USA inflicted defeat after defeat on the Japanese. Most their navy was
wiped out in massive battles like the Philippine Sea and the Leyte Gulf. They captured island
after island.

Saipan, Tinian, Guam all fell. From these islands American bombers could now reach the
Japanese home islands and unleash terrible destruction. The Japanese attempted a pathetic
attempt to strike at America.

They released balloons with explosives tied onto them. One of them killed six civilians in
Oregon, the only Americans killed in the continental US by Axis powers during the Second
World War. The Japanese also tried to invade India but were held at battles at Kohima and
Imphal before falling back.

The Americans, British, Canadians and their allies launched their invasion of Western Europe
on the 6th of June 1944, D-Day. In just 24 hours around 150,000 men were landed in
Norman. Some dropped from aircraft but the majority coming across the channel in 7,000
ships and boats and storming up the beaches.

Hours of savage fighting were needed to get off some of the beaches as the German
defenders unleashed a storm of machine gun fire from concrete bunkers. But by the end of
the day the allies had penetrated this defensive wall and cleared the beaches and huge
numbers of men and vehicles would land in the coming days. German reinforcements
rushed to Normandy and a brutal attritional battle followed.

It wasn't until early August that the allies defeated the German forces comprehensively and
they raced across northern France liberating Paris at the end of the month. It seemed like
the end of the war might be near. The allies launched an ambitious attempt to seize the
bridge across the Rhine at Arnhem but the Germans were not defeated yet.

They fought back and frustrated the plan. The war would drag on through another terrible
winter and at midwinter Hitler would launch his last offensive. With snow thick on the
ground the Germans struck at allied troops in Luxembourg and Belgium.

They bent back the allied line into a bulge but could not break through. Massive
reinforcements were rushed to the region and this battle of the bulge ended as another
German defeat. They'd lost men, tanks and fuel they could not afford.

It was all over in 1945 but the Axis fought hard to the end causing huge unnecessary
hardship, trauma and loss of life. As the snows melted in the spring of 1945 the allies swept
through northern Italy finally completing the liberation. On their western front the Germans
blew up one of their biggest dams causing flooding to slow the allied advance but in March
the western allies gained footholds on the east side of the mighty river Rhine and advanced
across Germany.

By April they were just 50 miles from Berlin. In the east the Soviets rampaged across Poland
and East Germany. Nearly two and a half million men proved far too much for the German
defenders.

Stalin was desperate to get to Berlin, the enemy's first and he pushed his generals to beat
the western allies to it. They succeeded. Berlin was surrounded by Soviet troops by late
April.

On the 30th of April Hitler married his long-time partner Eva Braun then killed her and
committed suicide. The Third Reich's short-lived second Admiral Dönitz surrendered
unconditionally a week later on the 7th of May. The war in the west was over.

43 million had died, two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population had been murdered, cities had
been erased, treasures destroyed, a continent lay in ruins. Japan remained in the fight for
the moment. Its cities were incinerated, its empire humbled.

American forces moved ever closer to the home islands. They captured islands like Iwo Jima
and Okinawa after horrific fighting which saw suicidal yet hopeless Japanese defence. Plans
were made to invade Japan itself but then the USA stunned the world.

A single plane dropped the most powerful weapon in history, a miracle weapon, the atomic
bomb. A top secret massive industrial and scientific effort had been underway in America to
harness the power of the atom and create a bomb of hitherto unimaginable strength. In July
1945 there had been a successful test which had turned a patch of New Mexico desert into
glass.

In August the new American president Truman who had succeeded after the death of
Roosevelt in April, took the decision to drop the bomb on Japan to force their unconditional
surrender. On the 6th of August a single bomb was dropped on Hiroshima followed by a
second bomb three days later on Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed or
suffered horrific injuries in the two strikes.

At the same time the Soviet Union finally entered the war in the Pacific. The day after
Hiroshima Stalin launched a massive offensive against Japanese forces in northern China.
Bowing to the inevitable the Japanese government surrendered.

The official ceremony took place on the 2nd of September 1945 on an American battleship
in Tokyo Bay. The Second World War was over. The world was transformed.

In Europe the eastern part of the occupation. Germany was divided in two. The east
occupied by the Soviets, the west by the western democracies.

Nuclear armed America was now a global superpower totally replacing the British and the
French empires which were weakened by the exertions and the expense of war. In Asia
Japan was occupied and rebuilt by the Americans. Korea was divided like Germany between
the democracies who controlled the south and Soviet forces who installed a communist
regime in the north.

Vietnam had thrown off the French imperial yoke during the war and began its independent
struggle as the French arrived back to take control. China was devastated by the war and
the communist forces there redoubled their efforts to seize power. By 1949 mainland China
was in the grip of the Chinese Communist Party.

In so many ways we are still living in a world forged by World War II. Thanks for watching
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