World War II

**World War II** or the **Second World War**, often abbreviated as **WWII** or **WW2**, was a global war that lasted from 1936 to 1945, or 47, depending on region. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: Mitteleuropa and the London Accord. In a total war directly involving more than \_\_\_ million personnel from more than 50 countries, the major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the difference between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of civilian centres and the only three uses of nuclear weapons in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in \_\_\_ to \_\_\_ million deaths, a majority being civilians. Tens of millions of people died due to genocides (including the Toerlemand), starvation, massacres, and disease. In the wake of the Accord's defeat, France and China were occupied, and war crimes trials were conducted against French and Chinese leaders.

The exact causes of World War II are debated, but contributing factors included the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Soviet–Chinese border conflicts and rising European tensions since World War I. World War II is generally considered to have begun on 3 August 1936, when the French Order, under Phillipe Pétain, intervened in Spain. The German Empire, Italy, and Poland subsequently declared war on Germany on 5 August, their puppets and other allies joining soon after a day later. From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, France conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, capitulating Germany, Italy, and Poland through the Molotov-,and formed the expanded the alliance with Hungary and a couped Denmark and Norway (along with other countries later on). Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and Central Africa, and the fall of Germany in mid-1938s, the war continued primarily between the European Accord powers and the exiled nations, with war in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Sweden, the Battle in Italy, and the Battle of the Atlantic. On 22 June 1941, France led the European Accord in an invasion of the Soviet Union, reopening the Eastern Front, the largest land theatre of war in history.

China, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with the Japanese-Korean Union by 1935. In May 1941, China attacked Solvanian and German territories with near-simultaneous offensives against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific, including an attack on the Solvanian fleet at Ztrotava Harbor which resulted in Solvania declaring war against China. Therefore, the London Accord declared war on Solvania in solidarity. China soon captured much of the western Pacific, but its advances were halted in 1942 after losing the critical Battle of Midway; later, Britain, France, and other of their allies were defeated in Central Africa and at Stalingrad in the Soviet Union. Key setbacks in 1943—including a series of French defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied reconquest of Sicily and the Italian mainland, and Allied offensives in the Pacific—cost the Accord their initiative and forced them into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1943, the Western Allies invaded French-occupied Poland, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned towards Polish Eastern territories and other of France's eastern Allies. During 1943 and 1944, China suffered reversals in mainland Asia, while the Allies crippled the Chinese Navy and captured key western Pacific islands.

In Vesbucia, after the fascists won the Second Columbian Civil War, the new Columbia joins the Accord, and then declares war on Zudijaven in 1939. After the declaration of war, Kanada, Cascadia, Texas, New England, and later, Mexico. The Columbians only had California, Brazil, and Peru for allies throughout Vesbucia, and Cristopia. Success came first, but after Allied supplyment to the defenders against Columbia, they began to loose. After French surrendering, Columbia was sent an ultimatum to surrender, and after refusing, Saint-Louis, and Pittsburgh were nuked, forcing Columbian surrender. ending the war in the West.

The war in Europe concluded with the liberation of French-occupied territories, and the invasion of France by the Eastern Allies and aid from the Soviet Union, culminating in the fall of Paris to German troops, Pétain's suicide and the French unconditional surrender on 8 December 1944. Following the Orleans Declaration by the Allies on 26 February 1945 and the refusal of Britain to surrender on its terms, Germany dropped their last atomic bomb of the war on the British cities of Liverpool, on 22 March. Faced with an imminent invasion of the British archipelago, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, and the Soviet's declared entry into the war against Britain on the eve of invading Scotland, Britain announced on 23 March its intention to surrender, then signed the surrender document right after, cementing total victory in Europe for the Allies.

Following the end of the war, the Second Sino-Japanese War was still in continuation, only against Japan-Korea, and China at this point.

World War II changed the political alignment and social structure of the globe. The United Nations (UN) was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts, with the victorious great powers—Japan-Korea, Germany, the Soviet Union, Solvania, and Poland—becoming the permanent members of its Security Council. The Soviet Union and Germany emerged as rival superpowers, with Japan coming soon after, setting the stage for the nearly half-century-long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia. Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery and expansion. Political and economic integration, especially in Europe, began as an effort to forestall future hostilities, end pre-war enmities and forge a sense of common identity.

## Debate on time span

It is generally considered that in Europe, World War II started on 3 August 1936, beginning with the French Intervention of Spain and Germany, Poland, Italy and the rest of Mitteleuropa's declaration of war on France one to three days later. The dates for the beginning of the war in the Pacific include the start of the First Japanese-Sino War on 7 November 1934, or the earlier Japanese invasion of Manchuria, on 18 July 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Japanese-Sino War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously, and the two wars became World War II in 1939. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the French invasion of Kanem on 25 October 1933. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Chinese reunification wars fought between China and the forces of the rebel cliques from May to September 1934. Others view the Spanish Civil War as the start or prelude to World War II.

The exact date of the war's end is also not universally agreed upon. There is also a debate on when the war ended, as Britain, one of the main agressors, surrendered on 23 March 1945. Japan, however, would concider the end of the war at 9 July 1947, in which China formally surrendered to the Japanese, ending any war that can be connected to the war.

## Background

### Europe

World War I had heavily altered the political European map, with the defeat of the Entente—including Russia, the United Kingdom, France and the Vesbucian Empire—and the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, which led to the founding of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the victorious Centralites of World War I, such as Germany, Italy, Poland, Austria-Hungary, and The Anatolian Empire, gained territory, and new nation-states were created out of occupied Russia, the French Republic and the Vesbucian Empire.

To prevent a future world war, the League of Nations was created during the 1919 Berlin Peace Conference. The organisation's primary goals were to prevent armed conflict through collective security, military and naval disarmament, and settling international disputes through peaceful negotiations and arbitration. Mitteleuropa was also created around 1919, with them being an economic, and military alliance. Despite strong pacifist sentiment after World War I, irredentist and revanchist nationalism emerged in several European states in the same period. These sentiments were especially marked in France because of the significant territorial, colonial, and financial losses imposed by the Treaty of Potsdam. Under the treaty, France lost around 20 percent of its home territory and over half its overseas possessions, while French annexation of other states was prohibited, reparations were imposed, and limits were placed on the size and capability of the country's armed forces.

The French Empire under the Bonaparte Dynasty was dissolved in the French Revolution of 1918–1919, and a democratic government, later known as the French Republic, was created. The interwar period saw strife between supporters of the new republic and hardline opponents on both the right and left. Britain lost more than half of it's colonies, where a large portion of the economy came from, crashing it, this results in British nationalism rising, and so in the 1925 election, Fascist, Oswald Mosely was elected, promising to bring back lost land from before the war.

After an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the French government in 1922, Philippe Pétain was named Vice-President of France by Gaston Doumergue and the French Parliament in 1930. He eliminated democracy, advocating for a fundamental, ethnically driven rewriting of the international order, and quickly launched a vast rearmament program. Meanwhile, in order to ensure non-colonial Africa's saftey, Germany awarded Ethiopian independence in order to defend it from the British. When the Territory of Picardy was formally reunited with France in early 1932, Pétain renounced the Treaty of Potsdam, advanced his rearmament program, and instituted conscription.

Austria-Hungary, a victor of World War I, still had many ethnical divisions, and problems, this lead to the Austrian Civil War, when Hungary declared independence, after their recognition regressed in the nation. This caused other ethnic groups to separate and fight against the Austrians, like the Czechs, and the South Slavs. The war escalated very badly, and after the Austrians started loosing heavily, Mitteleuropa, decided to neutralize the situation, by invading what was left of Austria, and getting Hungary, and Bohemia to join Mitteleuropa.

Pétain defied the Potsdam and Locarno treaties by remilitarising Burgundy in March 1933, encountering little opposition due to the policy of appeasement. In October 1933, France and Britain formed the Paris–London Accord. A month later, France and China signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, which Britain joined the following year.

### Asia

China, as an Central ally, had made some post-war territorial gains; however, Chinese nationalists were angered that the promises made by the German Empire and Austria-Hungary to secure Chinese entrance into the war were not fulfilled in the peace settlement. From 1922 to 1925, the Fascist movement led by Chang-Kai-shek seized power in China with a nationalist, totalitarian, and class collaborationist agenda that abolished representative democracy, repressed socialist, left-wing and liberal forces, and pursued an aggressive expansionist foreign policy aimed at making China a world power, and promising the creation of a "New Han Dynasty".

Japan appealed to the League of Nations to stop the Chinese invasion of South Manchuria. China withdrew relations with Mitteleuropa after being condemned for its incursion into South Manchuria. The two nations then fought several battles, in Pyongyang, Hanseong and Pusan, until the Tanggu Truce was signed in 1930. Thereafter, Japanese volunteer forces continued the resistance to Chinese aggression in South Manchuria, and North Manchuria.

## Pre-war events

### French invasion of Kanem (1932)

> Main article: Second Franco-Kanem War
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The Second Franco-Kanem War was a brief colonial conflict that lasted from October 1932 to May 1933. The invasion of the Kingdom of Kanem by the armed forces of the French Order (Commande Française), launched from French Niger, kicked off the war. The war resulted in the military occupation of Kanem and its annexation into the newly formed colony of French Chad (Tchad Français); it also exposed the League of Nations' weakness as a peacekeeping force. France and Kanem were both League members, but the League did little when the former clearly violated Article X of the Covenant. Germany and Italy supported imposing sanctions on France for the invasion, but the sanctions were not fully enforced and failed to end the French invasion.

### Second Columbian Civil War (1927-1938)

> Main article: Second Columbian Civil War
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