World War II: A Visual History

World War II began in Europe with Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 and in Asia arguably with Japan's invasion of China in 1937. It pitted the Axis (Germany, Italy, Japan and their partners) against the Allies, led by Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States and China. Fought on every continent except Antarctica and across every ocean, it ended with Germany's surrender in May 1945 and Japan's in August, after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It killed perhaps three percent of the world's population, produced the Holocaust, ended the age of European empires and left two superpowers facing each other across a divided world.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is World War II. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Estimated total deaths by country

Figures are contested and vary by source; these are commonly cited mid-range estimates.

Timeline of World War II

1. 1937
   Japan invades ChinaThe war in Asia begins at the Marco Polo Bridge.
2. 1939
   Germany invades Poland1 September; Britain and France declare war on 3 September.
3. 1940
   Fall of France; Battle of BritainDunkirk evacuated; the RAF holds.
4. 1941
   Barbarossa and Pearl HarborThe war becomes truly global.
5. 1942
   Midway, El Alamein, StalingradThe turning point year.
6. 1943
   Kursk; Italy invadedMussolini falls; Italy surrenders in September.
7. 1944
   D-DayNormandy landings, 6 June; Paris liberated in August.
8. 1945
   Germany surrenders8 May; Hitler dead since 30 April.
9. Aug 1945
   Hiroshima and NagasakiJapan surrenders; formal signing 2 September.

How it started

The peace of 1919 left Germany resentful and Italy and Japan dissatisfied, and the Depression brought aggressive nationalists to power. Japan seized Manchuria in 1931 and invaded China in 1937; Italy conquered Ethiopia in 1935-1936; Germany rearmed, annexed Austria and dismembered Czechoslovakia in 1938 while Britain and France appeased. The Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 secretly divided Poland and freed Hitler to strike.

Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939; Britain and France declared war two days later. Poland was crushed in five weeks, the Soviets taking the eastern half. A quiet winter, the 'Phoney War', ended in April 1940 with the German conquest of Denmark and Norway.

Axis high tide, 1940-1942

In May and June 1940 German armour broke through the Ardennes and France fell in six weeks; Britain evacuated its army from Dunkirk and stood alone under Churchill. The Luftwaffe failed to win the Battle of Britain, and Hitler turned east. Operation Barbarossa, launched on 22 June 1941 with over three million men, drove to the gates of Moscow and Leningrad and took millions of prisoners before the winter and the Red Army stopped it.

Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 brought in the United States, and Germany declared war on America four days later. By mid-1942 Japan held Southeast Asia and much of the Pacific, Rommel was in Egypt, and German troops were on the Volga. This was the Axis at its greatest extent.

The turn of the tide

Three battles in late 1942 changed everything: Midway in June, where the US Navy sank four Japanese carriers; El Alamein in October, Britain's first great land victory over Germany; and Stalingrad, where an entire German army was encircled and surrendered in February 1943. Allied bombing of German cities intensified, the Battle of the Atlantic against U-boats was won by mid-1943, and the Allies landed in Sicily and Italy.

On the Eastern Front the Red Army won at Kursk in July 1943 and never lost the initiative again. In the Pacific the Americans hopped from island to island toward Japan. Behind German lines the Holocaust reached its peak: about six million Jews were murdered, most of them between 1942 and 1944.

Victory and consequences

D-Day, 6 June 1944, opened the Western Front in Normandy while the Soviets destroyed Army Group Centre in Belorussia. Paris was liberated in August, the German Ardennes offensive failed in December, and the Red Army took Berlin in April 1945; Hitler killed himself on 30 April and Germany surrendered on 8 May. Japan fought on until the atomic bombs and Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August; the surrender was signed on 2 September 1945.

The war remade the world: the United Nations, the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, the partition of Germany and Korea, the beginning of decolonisation and of the Cold War, and the nuclear age. The Soviet Union lost about 27 million people, China perhaps 15 to 20 million, and Poland roughly a sixth of its population.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Nazi Germany (1933 to 1945)
• Empire of Japan (1868 to 1947)
• Soviet Union (USSR) (1922 to 1991)
• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• United States (1776 to present)
• Italian Empire (1882 to 1947)

Wars of the same era and region

• World War I (1914 to 1918)
• Chinese Civil War (1927 to 1949)
• Spanish Civil War (1936 to 1939)
• Cold War (1947 to 1991)
• Korean War (1950 to 1953)
• First Indochina War (1946 to 1954)

10 surprising things about World War II

1. The Soviet Union lost more people in the siege of Leningrad alone than Britain and the United States lost in the entire war.
2. The Enigma code was first broken by Polish mathematicians in 1932; they handed their work to Britain and France weeks before the war began.
3. Hitler and Stalin were briefly allies: the Soviets shipped Germany oil and grain right up to the morning of the invasion in June 1941.
4. The largest tank battle in history was Kursk (1943), and the largest naval battle was Leyte Gulf (1944), where over 300 warships fought.
5. The Allies dropped dummy paratroopers and used inflatable tanks, a fake army under George Patton and a corpse carrying false papers to deceive the Germans.
6. Only about 20 percent of American bombs in 1943 fell within five miles of their targets, which is one reason cities rather than factories were hit.
7. The Soviet Union and Japan were officially at peace until August 1945, so Japanese diplomats in Moscow were still asking the Soviets to broker a settlement when the Red Army invaded Manchuria.
8. Poland was never occupied by fewer than two of the war's great powers, changed hands entirely, and yet Polish pilots were the RAF's most successful squadron in the Battle of Britain.
9. The last German unit to surrender was a weather station on Svalbard, which gave up in September 1945 after nobody had come to collect it.
10. The most decorated unit in US Army history relative to its size was the Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, recruited partly from internment camps.

Sources

• World War II Encyclopaedia Britannica
• World War II casualties Wikipedia
• Research Starters: Worldwide Deaths in World War II The National WWII Museum
• Second World War Imperial War Museums
• Holocaust Encyclopedia United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Antony Beevor, The Second World War (2012) Weidenfeld and Nicolson
• Richard Overy, Blood and Ruins (2021) Allen Lane

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