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World War II was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries - including all the great powers - eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from more than 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 70 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.
World War II is generally considered to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
The war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender on its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August, respectively. Faced with an imminent invasion of the Japanese archipelago, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, and the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria on 9 August, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. In the wake of the war, Germany and Japan were occupied and war crimes tribunals were conducted against German and Japanese leaders....
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World War II was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries - including all the great powers - eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from more than 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 70 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.
World War II is generally considered to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
The war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender on its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August, respectively. Faced with an imminent invasion of the Japanese archipelago, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, and the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria on 9 August, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. In the wake of the war, Germany and Japan were occupied and war crimes tribunals were conducted against German and Japanese leaders....
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Chamberlain, British Prime Minister
The Right Honourable Arthur Neville Chamberlain was a British politician and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1937 to 1940. Chamberlain is perhaps the most ill-regarded British Prime Minister of the 20th century, largely because of his polic... |
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Sir Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill was a politician, a soldier, an artist, and the 20th century's most famous and celebrated Prime Minister. His father was Lord Randolph Churchill, a Nineteenth Century Tory politician. He was educated at Harrow and at Sandhurst Royal... |
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Joseph Stalin, Dictator of the Soviet Union
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was a Georgian-born Soviet revolutionary and political leader. He governed the Soviet Union as dictator from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953, serving as Premier of the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1953 and as General S... |
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Douglas MacArthur, US General WW2
Douglas MacArthur is a major figure in the US military and diplomatic history of WWII and post-WWII. As general of the army, he helped conquer the Japanese Empire and played a major role in rebuilding the nation and drafting its first democratic cons... |
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George Marshall, Leader Allied victory in WWII
George Catlett Marshall Jr. was an American statesman and soldier. He was Chief of Staff of the United States Army under presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, and served as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense under Truman. He... |
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Franklin Roosevelt, 32nd US President, 1933-1945
Thirty-Second President USA, 1933-1945. Assuming the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt helped the American people regain faith in themselves. He brought hope as he promised prompt, vigorous action, and asserted in... |
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Mussolini, Il Duce, Dictator of Italy
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician, journalist, and leader of the National Fascist Party, ruling the country as Prime Minister from 1922 until his ousting in 1943. He ruled constitutionally until 1925, when he dropped all pret... |
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Hideki Tojo, Japanese General, WW2
Hideki Tojo was a general of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), the leader of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, and the 27th Prime Minister of Japan during much of World War II, from October 17, 1941, to July 22, 1944. As Prime Minister, he wa... |
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Daladier, Premier of France at the start of WW II
Édouard Daladier was a French Radical-Socialist (centre-left) politician and the Prime Minister of France at the outbreak of World War II.
Daladier was born in Carpentras and began his political career before World War I. During the war, he fought... |
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General George S. Patton, USA WW2
General George Smith Patton Jr. was a senior officer of the United States Army who commanded the U.S. Seventh Army in the Mediterranean and European theaters of World War II, but is best known for his leadership of the U.S. Third Army in France and G... |
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General Montgomery, Britain WW2
Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, nicknamed "Monty" and "The Spartan General", was a senior British Army officer who fought in both the First World War and the Second World War.
He saw action in the First World War as a junior officer of the R... |
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Adolf Hitler, Der Führer
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, abbreviated NSDAP), commonly known as the Nazi Party. He was Chancellor of Germ... |
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Charles de Gaulle
Leader of the French resistance in WWII - A lifetime military man, de Gaulle was minister for National Defense and War in June, 1940 when France capitulated to Germany. DeGaulle escaped to Britain, where he made a famous broadcast calling on the Fren... |
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Dwight Eisenhower, 34th US President, 1953-1961
Thirty-Fourth President USA,1953-1961. Bringing to the Presidency his prestige as commanding general of the victorious forces in Europe during World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower obtained a truce in Korea and worked incessantly during his two terms to... |
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Rommel, German Marshal WW2
Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel was one of the best known German Field Marshals and commander of the Deutsches Afrika Korps in World War II. He is also known by his nickname The Desert Fox (Wüstenfuchs).
In a classic blitzkrieg, Allied forces were com... |
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Karl Dönitz, German Naval Commander
Karl Dönitz was a German naval Commander who served in the Imperial German Navy during World War I, commanded the German submarine fleet during World War II, and eventually was given control of the entire German Navy (Kriegsmarine). In the final days... |
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Josip Broz Tito, Leader Yugoslavia
Josip Broz Tito was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman, serving in various roles from 1943 until his death in 1980. During World War II he was the leader of the Partisans, often regarded as the most effective resistance movement in occupied Europ... |
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Hermann Goering, Hitler's Successor
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (also Goering in English) was a German politician and military leader, a leading member of the Nazi Party, second in command of the Third Reich, and commander of the Luftwaffe. He was tried for war crimes and crimes against hum... |
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Harry Truman, 33rd US President, 1945-1952
Harry Truman was president of America (1945-1952) after the death of F.D. Roosevelt in April 1945. Harry Truman gave the order for the atomic bombs to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and he represented the United States at Potsdam, the last of t... |
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Marshal Georgi Zhukov, USSR WW2
Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov was a Soviet Red Army officer who became Chief of General Staff, Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Minister of Defence and a member of the Politburo. During World War II he participated in multiple battles, ultimately commandin... |
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Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer SS, WW2
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and later the Minister of the Interior, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security fo... |
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Lord Mountbatten, Last Viceroy of India
Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was a British statesman and naval officer. During World War II, he was Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia Command (1943–46).
He was the la... |
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Albert Speer, German Architect
Albert Speer was a German architect who was, for part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office. As "the Nazi who said sorry", he accepte... |
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Thommy Flowers, Designed Colossus
Thomas "Tommy" Harold Flowers was an English engineer. During World War II, Flowers designed Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, to help solve encrypted German messages.
Flowers's first contact with the wartime codebreaki... |
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Alan Turing, Father of Modern Computing, Enigma
Alan Mathison Turing OBE FRS was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation... |
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John Frost, Battle of Arnhem
Major General John Dutton was a British airborne officer best known for being the leader of the small group of airborne forces that actually got to Arnhem bridge during the Battle of Arnhem. He was one of the first to join the newly formed Parachute... |
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World War I, WW1
World War I (WWI), also called the First World War or Great War, was a major war centered in Europe that began in the summer of 1914 and lasted until November 1918. It involved all of the world's great powers, which were assembled in two opposing all... |
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Harry Belafonte, Jamaican-American Artist
Harry Belafonte is a Jamaican-American singer, songwriter, activist, and actor. One of the most successful Jamaican-American pop stars in history, he was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Trinidadian Caribbean musical style with an in... |
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The Chinese Civil War & Communist Revolution
The Chinese Civil War was a civil war in China fought between the Kuomintang (KMT)-led government of the Republic of China (ROC) and forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lasting intermittently between 1927 and 1949.
The war is generally div... |
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Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank was a German-born diarist. One of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust, she gained fame posthumously with the publication of The Diary of a Young Girl (originally Het Achterhuis; English: The Secret Annex), i... |
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Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War was the result of complex political differences between the Republicans — supporters of the government of the day, the Second Spanish Republic, mostly subscribing to electoral democracy and ranging from centrists to those advoca... |
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The Katyn Forest Massacre, Poland
The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre was a mass murder of thousands of Polish prisoners of war (primarily military officers), intellectuals, policemen, and other public servants by the Soviet NKVD, based on a proposal from Lavr... |
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The Holocaust, Genocide World War II
The Holocaust, also referred to as the Shoah, was a genocide in which Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany and its World War II collaborators killed some six million European Jews. The victims included 1.5 million children and constituted about two-thirds of... |
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Pearl Harbor Raid, US joins WW2
The 7 December 1941 Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor was one of the great defining moments in history. A single carefully-planned and well-executed stroke removed the United States Navy's battleship force as a possible threat to the Japanese Empire's so... |
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Manhattan Project, Development Atomic Bomb
The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under... |
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Battle of the Java Sea, WW2
The Battle of the Java Sea was a decisive naval battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II, that sealed the fate of the Netherlands East Indies. Allied navies suffered a disastrous defeat at the hand of the Imperial Japanese Navy, on 27 February... |
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The Battle of Midway, WW2
The Battle of Midway is widely regarded as the most important naval battle of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the... |
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Rosie the Riveter, Cultural Icon of World War II
Rosie the Riveter is an allegorical cultural icon of World War II, representing the women who worked in factories and shipyards during World War II, many of whom produced munitions and war supplies. These women sometimes took entirely new jobs replac... |
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D-Day, June 6 : The Normandy Invasion
May 1944 had been the time chosen at Washington in May 1943 for the invasion. Difficulties in assembling landing craft forced a postponement until June, but June 5 was fixed as the unalterable date by Eisenhower on May 17. As the day approa... |
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Korean War
North Korea launched its invasion of the South with every confidence that they would win the war in a month or two. They were well armed by the USSR, their ranks filled with battle-hardened veterans of China's Civil War, and the Truman administration... |
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Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, WW2
The United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively, with the consent of the United Kingdom, as required by the Quebec Agreement. The two bombings killed between 129... |
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Indian Independence Act 1947
The Indian Independence Act 1947 was as an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that partitioned British India into the two new independent dominions of India and Pakistan. The Act received the royal assent on 18 July 1947, and Pakistan came i... |
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The European Union, EU
The European Union (EU) is a family of democratic European countries, committed to working together for peace and prosperity. It is not a State intended to replace existing states, but it is more than any other international organisation. The EU is,... |
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