| World War II (A Truly Global War) | ||||||||
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| Part of World Wars | ||||||||
 Clockwise from top left: German forces in the Battle of Kursk, British planes flying over Occupied France, The Spanish XI Brigade driving a tank in the Battle of Barcelona, Wilhelm Keitel signs Axis surrender agreement, U.S. troops in a landing craft during the Normandy Landings, Australian troops in the Siege of Tobruk
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| Belligerents | ||||||||
| Allied Powers
Co-belligerents
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Axis Powers
File:Flag of Bulgaria.png Kingdom of Bulgaria
Co-belligerents
Puppet States
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Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
Puppet States
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| Commanders and leaders | ||||||||
 Charles Maurras
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 Wilhelm II †
File:Flag of Bulgaria.png Boris III
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 Hirohito
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| Casualties and losses | ||||||||
| Military dead: Over 7,500,000 Civilian dead: Over 6,000,000 |
Military dead: Over 20,000,000 Civilian dead: Over 25,000,000 |
Military dead: Over 8,000,000 Civilian dead: Over 15,000,000 | ||||||
Introduction[]
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. It was the largest conflict in human history, far surpassing its predecessor. The war in Europe concluded with the liberation of German-occupied territories maintained in the former Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and the invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Russian State, culminating in the fall of Berlin to Russian troops, the abdication of Wilhelm III and the German unconditional surrender on 6 July 1945.
In a state of total war, directly involving more than 100 million personnel 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, resulting in 70 to 85 million fatalities, with more civilians than military personnel killed. Tens of millions of people died due to genocides, premeditated death from starvation, massacres, and disease. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, including in strategic bombing of population centres, the development of nuclear weapons, and the only two uses of such in war. While debated among most scholars; it is generally agreed that the war began on November 18, 1939 with the French invasion of Germany, and subsequent declarations of war on France by the German Empire and its allies, and one on Germany by the United Kingdom.
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, and the victorious great powers—France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—became the permanent members of its Security Council. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonization of Africa and Asia. Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery and expansion. Political integration, especially in Europe, began as an effort to forestall future hostilities, end pre-war enmities and forge a sense of common identity. The great powers that emerged victorious in the war each continue individual works of diplomacy continuing to the present.
Chronology[]
The war in Europe is generally considered to have started on 18 November 1939, beginning with the French invasion of Germany; and the declarations of war on France and the United Kingdom by Germany and its allies. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the earlier Japanese invasion of Manchuria, on 19 September 1931.
The exact date of the war's end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 6 July 1945, when Wilhelm Keitel signed the German instrument of surrender. German forces taking refuge in Bavarian mountain peaks continued the fight onwards well into 1946, and related competition between the German Empire's four successor states reached its height in the 1960s. When Germany reunited in 1990, most post-war border disputes were settled, though modern German industry has seen a decline since.
Background[]
Europe[]
World War I had radically altered the political European map, with the victory of the Central Powers—including Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire—along with the dissolution of Belgium and formation of new states in the western Russian Empire following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Meanwhile, the Allies of World War I, such as France, Belgium, Italy, and Romania, lost territory, and new nation-states were created out of the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1923, the Ottoman Empire in 1931, and the Russian Empire, which transitioned into a Republic following the February Revolution and subsequent Civil War that ensued.
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, which lost nearly 20% of its mainland territory, and roughly 60% of its overseas territories per the Treaty of Dresden. The French Third Republic, the government of France during World War I, collapsed only days within the signing of the treaty, disabling it from acknowledging the bounds and reparations Germany wished to promulgate.
The United Kingdom, France and Italy formed the Stresa Front in April 1935 in order to contain Germany, a key step towards military globalisation and an apolitical alternative towards opposition to the newly formed Axis; however, that June, the United Kingdom made an independent naval agreement with Germany, easing prior restrictions. The Russian State, exasperated by Germany's occupation of vast areas in Eastern Europe formerly under their rule, drafted a treaty of mutual assistance with France. The United States, concerned with events in Europe and Asia, passed the Neutrality Act in August of the same year.
Asia[]
The Kuomintang (KMT) party in China launched a unification campaign against regional warlords and nominally unified China in the mid-1920s, but was soon embroiled in an internal struggle against political corruption and new regional warlords. In 1931, an increasingly militaristic Empire of Japan, which had long sought influence in China as the first step of what its government saw as the country's right to rule Asia, staged the Mukden Incident as a pretext to invade Manchuria and establish the puppet state of Manchukuo.
China appealed to the Mitteleuropa alliances to stop the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, to which Germany accepted and sent a series of military detachments and officers. The two nations then fought several battles, in Shanghai, Rehe and Hebei, until the Tanggu Truce was signed in 1933. Thereafter, Chinese volunteer forces continued the resistance to Japanese aggression in Manchuria, and Chahar and Suiyuan. After the 1936 Xi'an Incident, the Kuomintang and Germany signed the Sino-German Pact of Mutual Assistance.
Nationalist sentiments[]
During the Interwar Period, waves of nationalistic revolutions spread throughout the globe, primarily in formerly defeated nations or other non-belligerents which had been impacted economically by the weakening of pacts after the war had strained munitions and civilian manufacturing on both sides, which was hard to redevelop. After the end of the French Civil War in 1922, the national monarchist Action Francaise took power, introducing mandatory military service and exploiting the unspecified bounds of the treaty (involving the imposition of military and resource restrictions) to support their demands. France reintroduced heavy claims over their former African colonies. The new government aid to the Fascist Blackshirts led by Benito Mussolini in Italy to reinvigorate Allied control and shipping in the Mediterranean.
Italy and France then formed the European Council of Affairs (ECA), which acted as an organization promoting the revanchist and irredentist sentiment that had been arising in the defeated Entente nations. To fabricate a buffer against the German alliance of Mitteleuropa, Russia also expressed interest and joined the alliance in 1936, laying groundwork and support along with the other two members in aiding Francisco Franco in his rise to power in Spain. Britain however refused to join as many Conservative politicians despised the alliance's primarily anti-democratic ideals which overruled ideas such as the Enlightenment, though it recognized the alliance's belligerent status.
The alliance also established close coordination with nationalist movements throughout the rest of Europe, and supported the ambitions of Swedish explorer Sven Hedin in convincing the government of Sweden to leave the German Mitteleuropa economic alliance. This would be done in exchange for grain, coal, and rubber imports. Antonio Salazar's regime in Portugal became a key ally, and France used an indirect loophole to establish Britain as a partner through the long-lasting Anglo-Portuguese Alliance. As a result, two political boundaries emerged in Europe, the ECA and the Reichspakt; mirroring the Central Powers and Entente in the last conflict.
In Romania, the proto-fascist Iron Guard led by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu seized power in the 1938 Revolution, bringing to an end the Conservative government led by Ion Duca. Though the movement was expansionist, it was unable to foster relationships with the ECA which would have brought Romania, and thus Russia through alliance, into the later war. The largely nationalist fervor that went through Europe did not go ignored in Germany. The Volkisch movement, a largely far-right anti-semitic alliance, gained a foothold throughout the prewar elections, however were unseated by moderate politicians such as Otto Strasser when war broke out.
Other tensions[]
Hoping to instigate further world revolution in nationalistic image, Italy and France intervened in the Revolution of 1930 in Brazil by sending military equipment and hardware to the Republican side led by Julio Prestes and carrying out various sabotages in the mainly liberal states of Rio Grande do Sul and Minais Gerais to delay any convoy tactics from being carried out. Though generally debated among historians on whether or not to be a foreign-influenced plot, the main oppositional leader to Prestes' rule, Getulio Vargas, was assassinated by João Dantas in Recife for political reasons. This ultimately kickstarted a secession crisis in the Liberal states, however any armed opposition to the First Republic was strained on logistics as most foreign nations (bribed by the European Council of Affairs) recognized the Prestes' government as legitimate and began supporting them. Conflicts were not immediately dispersed as the Tenente revolts (acting in support of Vargas' legacy) continued to run rampant in the manufacturing and suburban areas of the country, however encirclements and control of various railroads by the Republicans later led to their full capitulation by 1934. After Prestes resigned due to declining popularity, he was replaced by the Integralist Plinio Salgado, who established full military and economic relations with the ECA up until 1941.
Tensions arose with the United States as well. Following the Treaty of Dresden, Germany as part of the signing gained jurisdiction over French Guiana and various territories in the Caribbean, such as Martinique. Deeming this a violation of the Monroe Doctrine, the United States rejected the treaty's North American contents, and quickly occupied all French territories (with the addition of Dutch Suriname) to prevent the Central Powers from using them as landing points in the next major war. Germany had hoped that by funding the White Movement that Russia would be in a weaker position due to their lack of coal, however importation of coal, oil, and industry from these eastern territories had been difficult due to Slavic rebel groups primarily in Ukraine, which ambushed German convoys and prevented them from moving further. The Russian State under Kolchak had also followed France's rearmaments and had signed a defensive treaty a year earlier, reinvigorating the feeling that Germany was about to face another conflict.
Pre-war events[]
Japanese Invasion of Manchuria[]
(Main article: Japanese Invasion of Manchuria)
The Japanese invasion of Manchuria was a military conflict taking place from 1931 to 1934 in Modern-day Manchukuo in Asia. It was fought between the Empire of Japan, backed by Great Britain, and the Republic of China, backed by the German Empire. Germany had sought to envelop a larger presence in Asia by sending some of their own advisors and officers to Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist government, hoping to maintain a better sphere of influence against the Allies in the region. The main detachment was led by Alexander Falkenhausen, who served as a military and personal advisor to many Chinese generals, and provided them with valuable equipment for future conflicts.
The Japanese Empire had hoped to create a larger amount of influence in Asia following the end of World War I, and was displeasured over the fact some of their gains against the Central Powers had not been enforced in the treaty, either due to discrepancies in the treaty or lack of proper communication. In August of 1931, a month and a day before the main conflict started, Japan created the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, an extension of the Anglo-Japanese alliance which included Thailand and other puppet governments set up in their occupied territories.
Using their sphere in Occupied Korea, Japan was able to maintain their own mobilizations quite fairly, and began setting up mines along the south side of the Yalu River to deter any advisors, spies, or disguarded military detachments from moving across. Knowing that the Germans may be too slow to respond either due to British interception or geography, Japanese forces instigated their own incident by blowing up a railroad track along a nearby border city. This in turn caused a derailment of a Japanese support train, which in turn was used as an excuse to declare war.
The Amur region was soon fully occupied by Japanese troops, who were able to form a hook-formation guided against the border with Russia, which resulted in many Nationalists fleeing illegally into Outer Manchuria up until their arrest by Russian border guards. The Tributaries later proved of effective use, allowing easier confiscation of civilian supply routes, along with better movement of munitions from the moving current. Most of Manchuria (About a third based by military estimates in regards to occupied towns in the region) was occupied fully by Japanese forces by mid-1933, as a joint Sino-German counter-siege failed during the Battle of the Liaoning Gulf. By this time Japanese officers and generals (with assistance from various Manchurian groups) formed Manchukuo, a cooperative Japanese puppet state which would prove as a barrier against German influence in the area.
Collapse of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire[]
Despite having incurred success in their previous conflicts by acquiring various territories following the Treaty of Dresden, both Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans were unable to stay stable due to high ethnic tensions. Charles I attempted to institute a referendum calling for better local autonomy and formation of what the previous heir apparent, Franz Ferdinand, had proposed, the United States of Greater Austria. Franz Ferdinand had planned to redraw the map of Austria-Hungary radically, creating a number of ethnically and linguistically dominated semi-autonomous "states" which would all be part of a larger federation renamed the United States of Greater Austria, in a much more constitutionalist system modeled after that of the United States. Under this plan, language and cultural identification was encouraged, and the disproportionate balance of power would be corrected. The idea was set to encounter heavy opposition from the Hungarian part of the Dual Monarchy, since a direct result of the reform would have been a significant territorial loss for Hungary.
Unfortunately, Ferdinand's subsequent assassination delayed most of the proper planning for such a project, and the system that was instituted only made various autonomous regions acceptable with Vienna being the main center of trade and finance. Fearing Austrian dominance, ethnic rebellions began throughout the empire in hopes of maintaining better recognition from the former Entente nations (such as Romania), however in the end only created a series of buffer states that would fall irrelevant to future plans for Germany and its allies. In the end these rebellions did pose an issue to German/Mitteleuropa dominance in the Balkans, which lead Wilhelm II to consider sending aid to the Habsburg crown which attempted to consolidate itself in what was now the Hungarian embassy.
Due to his expansionist ideas, Wilhelm II did not choose to aid the Austrians in preserving their crown, and instead ordered the annexation of German Austria and the Sudetenland, whilst also supporting a regional government in Hungary. This was met with protest, though most of the conventional violence was caused by smaller non-German majorities (mainly Czechs) who had already lived in the region pre-collapse. The Condominium of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had been under Austrian rule since 1908, immediately declared independence following this quick assumption and requested unification with Serbia, which was almost immediately accepted. Alexander I of Serbia was crowned as the monarch of the new nation, with Milan Nedić being appointed as both Prime Minister and Chief of the Armed Forces.
Italy, hoping to reverse their losses in the Treaty of Dresden, were quick to re-occupy Venetia, though a reserve force blocked their attempts at seizing Tyrol and Trieste. Despite some ambitions to expand into the Adriatic Sea, Germany allowed Italy and what was now Yugoslavia to maintain their acquisitions and independence as long as they didn't interfere in trade or foreign affairs. If this request was not accepted a military invasion would follow, which pressured both nations to accept with hesitance. Setting up a military government in Hungary, Germany was allowed to keep their inner influence in the Balkans to a limited degree.
The Ottoman Empire was able to survive for a longer period due to the railroad from Berlin and Baghdad certifying industrial expansion in the area, which in turn led to less import duties. However, rivalries between British-sponsored Sunni/Shia Arabs soon escalated into a full civil war, which forced Germany to establish spheres of influence in Syria (and much later, Iraq). This decision is debated among historians, as British intervention in the region post-Ottoman collapse only ended up fueling future ethnic conflicts in the Middle East that persist to this day. Nonetheless it prevented Germany from maintaining their control of the Berlin-Baghdad Railroad which instead saw the destination being reduced from Berlin to Sofia. The Ottoman successor state, the Republic of Turkey led by Kemal Pasha, refused to cooperate with British or German demands, viewing colonialism as an antithesis towards independence.
Abyssinian Crisis[]
On 3 January 1935, Ethiopia appealed to the European Council of Affairs for settling of the dispute arising from the Walwal incident, which saw Italian troops, ordered by Mussolini, invade and occupy the Banaadir Coast in response from a lack of arbitration over the settled borders which were established decades prior. However, the Council's response was inconclusive (Due to the general pro-imperialist ideas held by them which favored enforced colonialism). A subsequent analysis by an arbitration committee of the League of Nations absolved both parties of any culpability from all events. Shortly after Ethiopia's initial appeal, French Minister of Foreign Affairs Pierre Laval and British Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare met Mussolini in Rome. On 7 January 1935, a meeting between Laval and Mussolini resulted in the Franco–Italian Pan-African Relations Committee, which gave Italy parts of French Somaliland (now Djibouti), redefined the official status of Italians in French-held Tunisia and Tripolitania and essentially gave Italy a free hand in dealing with Ethiopia. In exchange, France hoped for Italian support against Germany, to which Mussolini agreed. The agreement was mostly used as a third-party agreement to guarantee Franco-Italian friendship if the Council were to be rendered obsolete during wartime.
On 3 October 1935, shortly after the League had exonerated both parties in the Walwal incident, Italian armed forces from Eritrea invaded Ethiopia without a declaration of war, which prompted Ethiopia to declare war on Italy and thus started the Second Italo–Abyssinian War. Haile Selassie I, the current king, made various attempts to appeal for support from nations from Germany or Britain. German view on the conflict was ambivalent, though the German foreign minister, Georg Michaelis, responded by stating that they had no interest in a conflict in Somaliland due to difficult geography or lack of possible compensation. Even though the Ethiopian Army was less opportunistic or experienced, they still managed to fight off any initial invasions by the Italian African Corps by using the Highlands region to store equipment. In violation of the Zurich Accords that had been signed the previous November, Mussolini promptly imposed the use of chemical warfare against dissidents in the hills via planes, causing an additional 165,000 deaths (20,000 of which were unintentionally done on Italian troops attempting to advance, though this was censored from print) in both military and civilian casualties.
Haile Selassie was forced into exile on 2 May. Any of the reluctantly-placed economic sanctions that had been put in place by Italian foreign importers were dropped after the Italian capture of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on 5 May 1936. Ethiopia was then merged with the other Italian colonies to become Italian East Africa. Ethiopia never officially surrendered and pleaded for help from foreign nations, making it difficult for the occupational government to enforce its laws. As a result, six nations did not recognize Italy's occupation in 1937: China, New Zealand, the Russian State, Spain, Germany, Mexico and the United States. Italian control of Ethiopia was never total because of continued guerrilla activity, though by 1940 three quarters of the country were under their occupation.
Russo-Japanese border conflicts[]
In the mid-to-late 1930s, Japanese forces in Manchukuo had sporadic border clashes with the Russian State and Mongolia. The Japanese doctrine of Hokushin-ron, which emphasised Japan's expansion northward, was favoured by the Imperial Army during this time. With the Japanese defeat at Khalkin Gol in 1939, the ongoing Second Sino-Japanese War and ally United Kingdom pursuing conditional neutrality with the Russians, this policy would prove difficult to maintain. Japan and the Russian State eventually signed a Neutrality Pact in April 1941, and Japan adopted the doctrine of Nanshin-ron, promoted by the Navy, which took its focus southward, becoming a driving force behind its occupation of Indochina and the Dutch East Indies.
European occupations and agreements[]
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had, before the war, preached an ineffective diplomatic policy known as "appeasement", favoring the unconditional acceptance of demands of other nations if aggressive stakes were too high. The architecture of the strategy was developed by the Earl of Halifax, as a way to compensate for French revanchism and territorial ambitions in the years preceding the war. The lack of compliance by the French government to accept Britain's demands to end further expansionist foreign policy after their annexation of Tripolitania harmed the relations between the two nations. The British embassy in Berlin had sent multiple documents to the German government in 1938 requesting that they should not be alarmed in the event of French mobilization. The effect of the documents only served to worsen the attempted diplomatic reconciliation between Britain and Germany, as they fueled a mutual mistrust between both conservative governments.
The situation reached a general crisis in late August as French troops continued mobilizations along both colonial and continental frontlines, further threatening Germany's established sovereignties. The vast majority of the French parliament rallied to go to war with Germany, and ignored proposals by Chamberlain to avoid hostilities. The only major isolationist cause within the French legislature was led by the Minister of National Defence, Edouard Daladier, who had been removed from his position weeks before the war due to his Centre-Left political views, which did not act in tandem with the mostly far-right agenda of Maurras and his followers. In response to British requests for direct negotiations to avoid war, Germany increased military mobilization and demanded that both British and French plenipotentiaries meet in Hamburg to discuss possible French demilitarization. All French ministers and delegations refused to send a negotiator, further deteriorating relations between Britain and Germany.
Despite British parliamentary hostility towards France's territorial ambitions, Chamberlain and his cabinet were reluctant to suspend the now-tense alliance between the two countries, knowing that this would potentially diminish Britain's economic bargaining if France were to fall without British support. Nevile Henderson, the British ambassador to Germany before the war, suggested that as consequence for the French government's lack of compliance Britain should not tend large amounts of overseas volunteers to them in the next conflict. This would have exponentially decreased the number of military casualties, but would suffer the same detriment of economic isolation due to a lack of major support for the French war effort. It is often believed that these failed diplomatic efforts contributed to the Western Front's stalemate for the first 2 years of the war, and France's quick surrender after the British evacuation of Dunkirk.
Opening hostilities[]
War breaks out in Europe (1939-41)[]
On November 18, 1939, Following an instigated skirmish along the borderline, French divisions attacked the German border by invading through the former town of Nancy, catching any defenders off-guard in a relatively near encirclement. Initially French forces were successful as they had even managed to destroy the combined Dutch-German forces holding Nieuwpoort, leaving Rotterdam open for capture. However the war, against the hopes of both sides, again devolved into attrition, though this time it primarily involved taking control of cities and establishing barricades, similar to the tactics that had been used nearly 20 years earlier. Britain entered on the side of France following this attack, launching separate incursions into German territories in Syria, while also delivering air assaults on German military bases in Iraq, which had joined the Axis prior.
In their occupied sectors of Germany and the Netherlands, the French government established a constituent puppet state named the "Belgian Social Republic", a re-establishment of Belgium's sovereignty in coordination with the various Rexist resistance groups led by Leon Degrelle, who was appointed as head of state. French armies, under command of general Maurice Gamelin, engaged in close-quarters combat with Dutch troops during the Battle of Rotterdam, creating a theater of bitter street fighting in the following days. In the end, attempts to besiege the city failed after the 3rd Division was unable to cross the river Lek and the southern ports at Waalhaven, which continued to stand as strongholds for Dutch forces unable to move from their respective standpoints. Fourty German divisions reinforced the Dutch line and launched visible counter-attacks from the streets, forcing French armies to retreat to Dunkirk.
At the same time, Commonwealth nations in support of Great Britain and the Allied Powers joined the war, with divisions from Australia, New Zealand, and Canada participating with the British Expeditionary Force in aiding any forms of strategic defense being held. Continuous German aerial and land attacks forced the Allies to re-adopt different strategies and drop plans for entrenchment against ongoing assaults. French and British forces had not abandoned or destroyed any railroads that could be used by Germany, permitting German plans to use K5 Krupp railway guns to launch artillery strikes on retreating armies, further diminishing the French rear.
Fall of France (1941)[]
German squadrons flying over Jersey
Despite enthusiasm that the French offensive would successfully enable a full advance into the industrial German heartland, French forces and units failed to deal with overtaxed supply lines in their attempt to capture important cities such as Strasbourg. This was contributed to by the resistance of French generals to deal with a hypothetical German incursion across the Rhine. Instead, most committed their reserves to the line at the Mosel River, a region vulnerable to artillery strikes.
In a move modified from the original Schlieffen Plan and Marwitz Offensive, the German 10th division attacked through the thoroughly underdefended Ardennes region, an area which was underestimated by the Allies to be naturally impenetrable, to encircle the British expeditionaries and France's more skilled armies at Dunkirk. Using Stuka dive bombers, the vast majority of defenses were knocked out by January 8, leaving many English armies having to withdraw back across the English Channel. This rapid maneuver would later be called "Blitzkrieg" or "Lightning War" as it involved choking pockets of men, though this tactic had been copied from the French effort nonetheless. After the depletion of primary French forces, it was fairly easy to for Germany dilapidate the rest of military and civilian resistance, and soon take Paris. After the surrender of the French government, a treaty was signed with Germany partitioning the nation between the Kingdom of Occitania in the South, and Burgundy in the North, while Brittany would exist as a primarily independent state. The French government, along with any remaining divisions, retreated across the southern border into neighboring Andorra and eventually Spain, where they were offered asylum by Head of State Francisco Franco.
In a bid of frustration to Germany, Britain under leadership of Winston Churchill did not surrender following the capitulation of France, instead continuing air raids on shipyards and bases Germany was wishing to utilize. In an attempt to strategically outmaneuver Britain, Germany mobilized a large force in an attempt to invade the British Isles, though a combination of bad weather and British naval supremacy in the English Channel prevented this. For the next year, Germany would continue to target British civilian factories and RAF bases from the air, though in the end this only costed them valuable equipment.
Northern Europe (1939-44)[]
The majority of the populations in Scandinavia remained predominantly anti-German, though held more mixed sentiments toward the Allies. Initially, all Nordic nations (with the exception of Finland) remained neutral and declared they had no intention on joining either side, though various iron shipments were being given to both Britain and Germany by Sweden to prevent relations from becoming strained. The Swedish Prime Minister, Per Albin Hansson, was staunchly neutralist and worked around the clock to ensure no invasion or break of relations by either side could take place. (Even to the extent of removing Swedish vessels from the Gulf of Bothnia and Skagerrak). Denmark, despite contempt for their loss of wars in Schleswig, still remained a part of the Mitteleuropa alliance and took any economic demands or pressure given by Germany.
Starting in the spring of 1940, the British Admiralty began to view Scandinavia as a viable base of aerial operations in a future conflict with Germany. The British government was reluctant to engage in another land conflict on the continent that it believed would be a repetition of the First World War. Therefore, it began considering a blockade strategy in an attempt to weaken Germany indirectly. German industry was heavily dependent on the import of iron ore from the northern Swedish mining district, and much of this ore was shipped through the northern Norwegian port of Narvik during the winter months. Control of the Norwegian coast would serve to tighten a blockade against Germany.
In February 1940, the vice-director of the German Kaiserliche Marine, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, discussed with Wilhelm II the danger posed by potential British bases in Norway and the possibility of Germany seizing these bases before the United Kingdom could. The navy argued that possession of Norway would allow control of the nearby seas and serve as a platform for staging submarine operations against the United Kingdom. However, the other branches of the German Army were not then interested, and general Hermann Goering (commander of all land forces commencing a thorough invasion of France) had just issued a directive stating that the main effort would be a land offensive through the Ardennes.
Subsequently after hostilities between France and Germany were seeing more success on the side of the Axis, Germany intended to circumvent iron shipments from Norway to the Western European allies, and sent an ultimatum to Norwegian Prime Minister Johan Nygaardsvold to cease the operations. No response was given to the ultimatum until the very day it was to expire, and the response given by Nygaardsvold was a refusal to comply. After the ultimatum was not met, Germany declared war on 11 June, and would be followed with Denmark a day later. The casus belli (cause of war) was never specified despite the ignored request, and instead it was blamed on the sinking of the Karlsruhe, a German ship which was attacked by Norwegian artillery for being too close to the shoreline without permission.
German marines landed in Larvik on 15 June, and secured the beachheads with very little opposition despite minor British reinforcements. The city that showed the most resistance was Oslo, which surrendered after 5 days of fighting once Haakon VII fled to Britain to establish a government in exile. During Operation Dragonfly, Germany mined the waters around Norway to prevent any fleeing government troops or civilians from reaching outer trade ports, though in a series of naval (and aerial) battles, the Royal Navy was able to prevent most of this. Finland went ahead and invaded Norway's northern Arctic territories, leaving any resistance movements to stay present in the mountains.
A lack of Allied success in seizing Norwegian air fields before Germany could use them for aerial purposes was viewed as a heavy embarrassment by the British public. After the Allies failed to prevent the German occupation of Southern Norway, the British House of Commons held an open debate from 7 to 9 May on the government's conduct of the war. This came to be known as the Norway Debate, and lead to the resignation of Chamberlain's government after the Labour opposition called for a division which was in effect a vote of no confidence. Despite the vote having been conducted by the Labour Party, the two main candidates were Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax and First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. Halifax was ruled out after expressing the idea of a white peace between the United Kingdom and Germany, which did not sit well with the Tories who opposed the war but did not want to risk completely abandoning France as an ally. Churchill was thus made Prime Minister on 10 May.
The German occupation force didn't see much disruption due to a smaller present population, however still was unable to prohibit large amounts of refugees from fleeing into neighboring Sweden via the unoccupied center of the country. Ultimately the denser regions would eventually be liberated following a British amphibious landing at Bergen 3 years later, causing what remained of the client government to retreat back into Denmark. Finland, against Germany's wishes, signed an armistice with the Allies in late 1944, and withdrew from its occupied territories in compensation for better diplomatic recognition post-war.
Axis attempts to invade Great Britain[]
German plans for an outright invasion of Great Britain, contrary to popular belief, had already been in the works since as early as 1923. The bankrupt situation of the United Kingdom following World War I and the later Irish War of Independence left them unable to provide enough funds into the navy for futuristic and better designs, allowing Germany to keep up the pace by well-placed spies in London who took advantage of the tense situation by stealing or copying blueprints. The Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) had not seen any decreases in funding despite rather perpetual economic situations during the 1930s, and had successfully established a large naval base outside of Hamburg complete with 15 battlecruisers, 1 aircraft carrier, 16 cruisers, 40 destroyers, and 200 submarines. However, Germany only surpassed Britain in the amount of submarines, and the majority of their unfinished models were rushed or abandoned when war broke out.
After the fall of France, the majority of the battlecruisers were destroyed in a bombing campaign off the Northern French coast, which left many of the naval repair yards (which had already been destroyed by fleeing French engineers following the German capture of Dunkirk) unsuitable to continue running, forcing the German High Command to leave many reliable cruisers beached for the rest of the war. Despite this predicament, the Germans continued to control the skies and managed to shoot down any RAF aircraft that attempted further manual attacks on their ships. The initial plan to invade the Isles at the current point in the war was considered primary, but not exclusive as it would risk future successes. Under urging from the Kaiser, lead admiral Karl Donitz was forced to lift the midday docked status of the ships in port, and pushed for an all-out attack across the Channel. Various other naval commanders refused to authorize the decision, and around 15 submarines were forcibly sunk after refusal to engage in the attack. The offered conditions of pertaining to such an attack were as follows:
- The RAF was to be "beaten down in its morale so that it can no longer display any appreciable aggressive force in opposition to the German crossing".
- The English Channel was to be swept of British mines at the crossing points, and the Strait of Dover must be blocked at both ends by German mines.
- The coastal zone between occupied France and England must be dominated by heavy artillery.
- The Royal Navy must be sufficiently engaged in the North Sea and the Mediterranean so that it could not intervene in the crossing. British home squadrons must be damaged or destroyed by air and torpedo attacks.
Only 1 of these goals were met at the time of the attack, which referred to the domination of heavy artillery, though ammunition for the weapons that were foreplanned were not scheduled to arrive until March 4 due to a French resistance ambush. Following the invasion of Norway, the German navy had proven itself to be capable against smaller escort carriers, though following the Battle of the Dogger Bank made it clear it was no match for any heavier British cruisers, which tended to have guidance from better and more experienced admirals.
On 2 March 1942, Wilhelm III instructed intensified air and sea warfare to "establish the necessary conditions for the permanent conquest of England". From 5 March, subject to weather delays, the Luftwaffe was "to overpower the English Air Force with all the forces at its command, in the shortest possible time." Attacks were then to be made on ports and food stocks, while leaving alone ports to be used in the invasion, and "air attacks on enemy warships and merchant ships may be reduced except where some particularly favourable target happens to present itself." The Luftwaffe was to keep sufficient forces in reserve for the proposed invasion, and was not to target civilians without a direct order from Donitz in response to RAF terror bombing. No decision had been reached on the choice between immediate decisive action and a siege. The Germans hoped the air action would force the British to negotiate, and make invasion unnecessary.
Churchill, even despite receiving proposals for peace, continued to hold out and kept the promise that he would never surrender, stating in his later speech: "Then we shall prove ourselves once more to defend our island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny if necessary for years". It is alleged that Wilhelm listened to the speech and hastened his attempts to invade as soon as possible, though this is likely a myth from a British newspaper that reported on the incident days prior. On 15 March, the Kaiserliche Marine focused their attacks on Southampton with aid from the air, but failed to reach the anticipated goal of firebombing London or destroying key ammunition plants or (by war plans) the Buckingham Palace.
The invasion force organized into two army groups drawn from the 6th Army, the 9th Army and the 16th Army. The first wave of the landing would have consisted of eleven infantry and mountain divisions, the second wave of eight panzer and motorized infantry divisions and finally, the third wave was formed of six further infantry divisions. The initial assault would have also included two airborne divisions and the special forces of the Brandenburg Regiment. Due to improper planning, these troops were carried on cruisers and not their expected landing crafts or escorts. The mountain divisions, scheduled to land on the beaches of Dover at 2:30 A.M. GMT that following day, were sunk in an RAF air attack which had been perpetuated by the lack of German radio silence, or the recent breaking of the enigma code. In the resulting raid, only 4 of the escort carriers and 2 of the battlecruisers survived, the rest either being disabled due to the command bridges being destroyed, or the rest being set aflame which left the vulnerable oil tanks on fire, creating the largest naval explosion aboard the German battleship Hannoveria.
UK Home Forces Command correctly considered East Anglia and the East coast to be the most likely landing sites for a second German invasion force, as this would have offered much greater opportunities to seize ports and natural harbors, and would be further from naval forces at Portsmouth, along with its natural gateway from the main naval dock at Hamburg. German strategic plans failed to note the fact that the outer banks of England had already been mined if they somehow managed to get past the main naval defense force stationed at Portsmouth. The HMS Hood, one of Britain's main reliable battleships, successfully sunk the vessel Adlerauge on 18 March, leaving the German navy without a guiding force. Fog and tapped communications also played a role, as the German invasion force directed Northeast instead of their intended goal, leading them into a larger undamaged naval presence which in the ensuing campaign sank the rest of the main invasion force, leaving behind a few carriers. The 1 aircraft carrier, which Germany had near the front, was also disabled following an attack by the American submarine Nautilus, and yet another air rad destroyed many of the better-designed planes ready to take off.
Exploiting the unclear fog, British and Canadian long-range mortars opened fire on the remaining fleet, forcing many to turn to their starboard sides and collide with one another. On March 20, with most of the invasion force decimated, Donitz (now aboard an armed Dinghy), broke radio silence to call for a retreat back to Cherbourg. However, a severe thunderstorm in the early morning destroyed the majority of the beached ships under repair, and prevented many of the returning crafts to come ashore. The storm's winds also forced various vessels and debris to collide, sparing only one landing craft and leaving the rest capsized, causing an additional 4,000 deaths by drowning.
The conflict and the theater itself were often called "Queen Elizabeth's War" by the media, as the German defeat mirrored the defeat of the Spanish Armada 354 years earlier.
Iberian Campaign[]
German preparations[]
With the retreat of the disarrayed French army into their Iberian ally, Germany rightfully feared that a general reorganization of Allied forces in the region would drive them into a continuation of a two front-war. However, the Axis never registered a peace pamphlet that the flailing French department of defense had issued. Axis objectives largely did make preparations for a war with Spain, however the plans that were used in the theater itself were ones that focused on Germany maintaining defensive positions against presumed Spanish attacks.
The interval between the capitulation of the French State and the German invasion was also repeatedly challenged by the roguelike actions of Spanish field marshal Jose Sanjurjo, who made calls for a "liberation of the French peoples from the tyrannical jackboot of the German imperium" during parliamentary sessions taking place that year. Additionally, Sanjurjo had consistently launched raids on German armaments across the border, but avoided direct combat by retreating his troops whenever Axis regiments began to mobilize in response. Still, this action in its own was not officially used as a reason for war between Germany and Spain, and it was in fact the German puppet of Occitania that made the first response to the Spanish raids.
Military response[]
With the declaration of war on Spain by their semi-autonomous puppet state, German forces, aided by 3 Luftwaffe divisions, began an attack on the Spanish border. Roughly 17,000 men were dropped airborne into Spanish territory to carry out sabotages on nearby border stations before the main advance could pursue, as a direct invasion of the Pyrenees mountains would allow the Spanish to strategically retreat and evade the less mobile German troops, who were slowed due to both refugees and heavy equipment. Bombing campaigns were launched over targets which the German High Command deemed logistical, though these missions failed to knock out any guerilla targets held by the Spanish in the mountains as the bombs dropped had either missed their targets or had blown up mountaineering stations unrelated to military purposes.
Upon crossing the mountains successfully after about 3 weeks, the German Army was able to cross the border with relative ease, only facing minimal resistance primarily from civilians or funded paramilitaries with mainly ineffective or incomplete training. At first, they succeeded in taking towns such as San Sebastian which gave away control of the Basque Country, however they found themselves deadlocked upon reaching Barcelona and the Ebro River. Germany adapted to a defensive form of occupation and remained stationary in their efforts to capitulate Spain while also preventing overextension. The Portuguese government, commanded by Antonio Salazar, made preparations for a declaration of war due to previous German aggression and their long-standing alliance with Britain, though only kept commercial and military ties. The initial decision was to remain neutral, however after German forces retained a standstill at the key city of Barcelona, Portugal began sending extensive aid to Spain along with their own volunteers. Germany did not choose to declare war on Portugal simultaneously, though mainly forced their hand after various submarine attacks were launched on civilian and neutral ships (which did contain anti-submarine weapons in the wake of the Atlantic campaign). On 6 July 1942, Portugal entered the war officially, with Salazar stating in a telegram a week later: "It has been made clear that no forged alliances or reliability can be placed upon the prospects of the German war machine, and that to protect our values we must defend our political allies"
On 16 November, the central government in Lisbon was made aware of a German attack on their respective bases in Cape Verde and was forced to withdraw men and material from the mainland to the islands to prevent them from falling to Axis control. The islands were easily resecured with help from the British Navy, though they had significantly lowered amiable forces which could have been used to prevent a German assault. On 14 January, the Axis launched a westward offensive with support from what they believed the Spanish lacked, involving around a doubled amount of Luftwaffe divisions and troops, however though were only able to threaten the region of Galicia, which was not of exclusive importance as Spain had other reliable ports with Portugal's entry. Axis forces also stalled in the dense forests of the Basque Country, where several anarchist groups, opposed to both sides, were continuing a push for independence from foreign control.
Much to the pleasure of the Allies, Italy entered the war in August of 1942 in an attempt to aid Spain, opening up a front in the Alps and in Southeastern France, putting further pressure on German forces struggling to quell their adversaries in Iberia. Francisco Franco, the current Prime Minister, gave urges to the Spanish troops to continue the fight in hopes of making the war attritionary for the German units struggling to maintain their position. While this wasn't well received, it did provide a somewhat welcome morale boost which allowed them to keep up the fight long enough to widdle down Germany's overextended war effort. In February of 1943, shortly after Russian success in the Eastern front counter-offensive was launched by the Spanish 3rd and 4th divisions in a maneuver to choke various points controlled by the Germans along the Ebro River. This went fairly well despite formidable losses, and soon the Axis were forced to withdraw as British-supplied spitfire planes wreaked havoc on their stationary positions below. By January of 1944, the Axis completely abandoned their operational bases in Iberia and withdrew to focus on a defense of occupied France, though in their path left roughly 60 miles of destroyed infrastructure and housing.
During Operations Overlord and Dragoon that later year, Spain and Italy contributed to the landings in Southern France, restoring a provisional government until the end of the war.
Africa[]
Previous competitions[]
Skirmishes within the African continent had begun roughly before the war started in Europe, taking place in either ports or borders which hadn't been fully characterized and defined in the last treaty, which France used as an excuse for exploiting resources within German territory. In South Africa, an authoritarian and pro-Apartheid government led by Oswald Pirow and the Fascist Party was elected in a staged election and sought to seize the German territory of Namibia. South African troops were mobilized under the pretext of an oncoming German attack, and were told to open fire on "any Germans" that crossed. Pirow moved the Oranje River boundary up an additional 30 miles and mobilized troops along that frontier, so that he and his government would have a reason for war if a confrontation occurred between South African and German troops.
The war in Africa mainly blended in with the war in the Middle East, as the Suez Canal, the main area which separated the continent from Asia, was largely contested between the Germans and British, who commonly staged naval buildups to lay their own respective interests. France had annexed the Senussi-held State of Tripolitania prior to the conflict to prevent a German or Italian seizure of the area, and to compensate for their loss of Equatorial colonies. Following the declaration of war on Germany by Britain and France on November 19, 1939, conflicts immediately began, as Britain was quick to seize German ports and islands in the exterior of Africa and carrying out naval raids at Malabo and Porto Novo, damaging shipyards and challenging the German naval hold in the Mid-Atlantic. In an act that retributed direct American intervention in the war, German squadrons bombed Liberia to prevent the Allies from using it as a landing point, and followed with an invasion from various conscripted divisions. Despite some close victories, the Afrika Corps were halted at Tapeta as their naval sphere collapsed following British interception.
Western Desert campaign[]
After the conclusive Battle of France in 1941, French North African territories were absorbed into the Axis sphere of influence, further establishing what was coined a "hegemony" over the continent. Félix Éboué, the French-African governor of the territories at the time, refused to accept German dominance in the territories, and established an independent regime in his governorship of Chad under support of general Charles de Gaulle. With assistance from their Egyptian allies, British forces under Archibald Wavell drew back on their support from the more experienced sixth company, and pushed the smaller German reserves advancing into western Egypt back towards the disputed borderline. General Erwin Rommel, a distinguished tank commander, was deployed to the North African front to prevent the British forces there from breaking the relatively weak German right line, which was to be reinforced by 14 divisions; 8 represented by land, 2 represented by sea, and 4 represented by air. Although Rommel had been ordered to simply hold his position, an armoured reconnaissance soon became a full-fledged offensive from El Agheila in March, planting the Axis forces in a stationary post at Darnah, 30 mi (48.2 km) behind their original defense. In March–April, Allied forces were forced back by Rommel's 3rd Corps with assistance from Dutch volunteers, and leading general officers were captured.
An Australian artillery position during the Battle of El Alamein, 1942
The Australian 9th Infantry Division fell back to the fortress port of Tobruk, and the remaining British and Commonwealth forces withdrew a further 100 mi (160 km) east to the Libyan–Egyptian border. With Tobruk under siege by the main Axis force, a small battlegroup continued to press eastwards. Capturing Fort Bronzen and Bardia in passing, it then advanced into Egypt, and by the end of April it had taken Sollum and the tactically important Halfaya Pass. Rommel garrisoned these positions, reinforcing the battle-group and ordering it onto the defensive.
Though isolated on land, Tobruk's Australian garrison continued to receive supplies and replacements, delivered by the Royal Navy at night. Rommel's forces did not have the strength or training to take the fortress. This created a supply problem for his forward units. His front-line positions at Sollum were at the end of an extended supply chain that stretched back to Tripoli and had to bypass the coast road at Tobruk. Further, he was constantly threatened with a breakout of the British forces at Tobruk. Without Tobruk in Axis hands, further advances into Egypt were impractical.
Operation Torch and aftermath[]
The Allies launched Operation Torch in November 1942, easily managing to secure their control over the western areas due to extensive German concentration towards preventing outright British incursions into Libya. A series of Axis occupational government concessions that month led to many divisions surrendering without a fight. By the end of December, 60,000 Axis men and operatives had been captured. After three days of talks and threats, Generals Mark Clark and Dwight Eisenhower compelled French Admiral François Darlan and General Alphonse Juin to contribute their men towards an offensive in Tunisia, which, in case of Italian entry onto the Allied side, would rob Germany of needed efforts in capitulating Spain.
By mid-November, the Allies were able to advance into Tunisia, but only in single division strength. By early December, the Eastern Task Force—which had been redesignated as the British First Army under Lieutenant-General Kenneth Anderson—was composed of the British 78th Infantry Division, British 6th Armoured Division, 1st Parachute Brigade, No. 6 Commando and elements of US 1st Armored Division. But by this time, six German divisions had been shipped from Europe and the remoteness of Allied airfields from the front line gave the Axis clear air superiority over the battlefield. The Allies were halted and pushed back having advanced eastwards to within 30 kilometres (19 mi) of Tunis. The Axis attempted an operational advance with the purpose of pushing the Allies off of commanding heights situated on sand dunes, however a severe sandstorm delayed their attempts to move towards the Allied center. After the weather was clear, both lines entered a military standoff as both sides continued building up their forces. Italian entry into the war by 1943 granted the Allies further manpower capabilities, enabling them to push past the Mareth Line after harsh fighting.
The First Armies within Tunisia successfully squeezed out German resistance, and forced the Dutch reinforcements into a weeks-long siege that ended in an unconditional surrender by September. Axis forces surrendered by 13 September, forcing the Axis to yield their main bases of operations within Africa, and thus the majority of the continent. Allied landings within Angola, South African offensives into Namibia, and various coup d'états within the equatorial region led to most of Mittelafrika surrendering by 1944, though German military resistance continued in high mountain peaks up until 1945.
Atlantic (1939-45)[]
Immediately following the beginning of hostilities, Germany hastily resumed the process of unrestricted submarine warfare with newer designs of U-boats, hoping to starve out the British Isles before any major overseas intervention or military support could occur. On 14 March of 1941, the German submarine U-110 sank the RMS Queen Mary, a civilian-turned-military vessel that carried 206 American volunteers when it was sunk, creating a more volatile environment in the United States and allowing any pro-war politicians in Congress to use such incidents as leverage. In another action, president Al Smith extended the Pan-American Protection Zone as far as Greenland, whilst also sending a series of predesignated planes with depth charges to the Atlantic.
At the same time, the British were working on a number of technical developments which would address the German submarine superiority. Though these were British inventions, the critical technologies were provided freely to the US, which then renamed and manufactured them. In many cases this has resulted in the misconception these were American developments. Likewise, the US provided the British with Catalina flying boats and Liberator bombers, that were important contributions to the war effort. On July 9, 1941, British cryptologists led by Alan Turing successfully broke Germany's land-to-air and later naval enigma code, making hidden radio frequencies given by the U-boats detectable and decipherable. This, combined with the various advancements made in anti-submarine weaponry made the threat of cut supplies less and less inconspicuous. Escort carriers made their way onto the Atlantic front as early as 1942, when the Allies began gaining momentum. The island of Bermuda was the main base of operations for resupply stations and Allied radio transmissions. SB2U Vindicators were used to scout ahead for any oncoming fleets or submarines, and largely contributed to the protection of aircraft carriers or frigates during the entirety of the theater.
The sinking of the German battleship Bismarck effectively ended what superiority Germany had in the naval theater, and the far-reached extension of the Allies allowed them to make possible preparations for an amphibious landing in Northern France, with additional help from Italy and Spain in the south.
Mediterranean (1943-45)[]
The Mediterranean remained dominated by the Allied war effort and shipping as part of the ECA's alliance which was present in Spain, Italy, and France, though saw a few notable excursions during the war itself. Blending in with the African conflicts, Italy had went ahead and annexed Ethiopia in 1936, as retribution for what Mussolini called "hoodwinking national pride" during brief Ethiopian occupation of Italian East Africa following the end of World War I. After the Fall of France, Germany had access to France's now defunct ports, and would have utilized the shipping yards there if not for a large British bombing raid that took place in August, destroying various fleets at Marseille, Cherbourg, Bordeaux, and Nice. Mussolini, despite close alliances with Spain and France, was not able to instigate a declaration of war due to both parliament and his cabinet rejecting such a demand. After mass dismissing his neutralist cabinet and dissolving Parliament in a military plot, he was able to organize the Italian expeditionary forces in direct support of Spain during the Iberian Campaign. Sending a heavy amount of well-trained and well-experienced troops to fight in Spain would later prove an issue to Mussolini's leadership, since the mountaineering divisions up north had received heavy losses inflicted from either German bombing raids or mounted MG nests, culminating in a strategic retreat following the failed Battle of Bolzano Bozen which saw them move back to Venice.
Despite these retreats, morale still held firm, especially following the successful Dominio (Domination) Offensive in 1944 after the German Army needed to retreat due to severe overextension on the Eastern and Western Fronts, which had only emboldened the idea of an allied landing in France. Following the landings in Normandy, German reorganization up north left their puppet of Occitania relatively underdefended. Unknowingly, Italy's entry into the war in 1943 may have been beneficial as it occurred during a time when the Axis military hold on Europe began to collapse, thus inhibiting any attempts by Germany to invade the Italian heartland in a swift maneuver. (Though in the end it didn't save various cities in Northern Italy from being firebombed by Axis bombers). By 1945 the Allies controlled the Mediterranean following the entrance of Greece and Turkey, and the nearly immediate collapse of German forces in Venetia and Tyrol due to pressure on all fronts. After the war, Mussolini would be ousted on account of war crimes in various invasions, and executed in 1946 after a referendum concluded the end of the monarchy.
Balkans[]
Prewar changes[]
The primary situation in the Balkans was different, as the borders had seen little alteration since the end of the Interwar Period, minus the unification of Bosnia, Serbia, and Montenegro in 1925 after the collapse of Austria-Hungary. Germany didn't oppose this as long as the new nation didn't interfere with trade in the Adriatic, which the nation, now called Yugoslavia, reluctantly complied with.
Conflicts between Axis and Allies[]
The region did not see much fighting until the beginning of 1942, as the regions military powers were either neutral and non-cooperative, or had strong ties to Germany and could easily outmaneuver an invasion. The main exception of this was in Greece, where the situation was much more volatile as the nation found itself engulfed in another schism between conflicting Axis/Allied loyalties. Greece had remained officially neutral during World War I after engulfing itself in a national schism, however various radicalizations and shifts in political authority left opinion divided on the issue of joining another conflict. Germany's main ally in the Balkans was Bulgaria, which had gone through economic troubles on and off through the 30s, primarily due to ethnic rebellions in parts of former Serbia, or prime ministers who failed to properly stimulate trade and tariffs, creating a deficit that lasted up until the early 1940s.
Greece had cut ties to the German Empire and Bulgaria beforehand, quickly ordering the mobilization of 350,000 men along the Bulgarian border. The situation remained in a standoff until finally shots were fired at Salonika in February between Greek and Bulgarian troops, escalating to a border conflict, and later another theater in the war. To the luck of Greece, British forces had arrived in Crete and provided reliable training and support to most of their men. Using the geography to maintain an upper advantage (primarily by usage of underground tunnels and tapped communications which would be used to sabotage ongoing convoys), the Greeks were able to halt any major motorized incursions made by the Bulgarians in their own territory.
With the British occupations of the islands of Crete and Lemnos, Germany became aware that the British aiding Greece could potentially allow them to secure valuable resources from Romania, as the oil fields in the region had not been conceded in the Treaty of Dresden. Axis mobilization through Hungary would be slow due to the rough terrain of the forests in Transylvania, and the relatively short border between it and Bulgaria. Needing to quickly circumvent or divide the Greek offensive, Germany planned an invasion of Yugoslavia to get troops through into Albania. The invasion, taking place on 5 April, was spearheaded by the German 2nd Army with elements of the 12th Army, First Panzer Group, and an independent panzer corps combined with overwhelming Luftwaffe support. The Hungarian 3rd Army also participated in the invasion, with support available from over 500 aircraft. The Yugoslav government led by Dimitrije Ljotić immediately fled into Albania after German saboteurs crossed the border, in a maneuver that resembled the tactic used by the Serbian army during World War I. However, during their flee the Royal Guard had blown up important bridges over creeks, divided railroad tracks, or had cut communication lines, delaying the 2nd Army's encroachment on Savnik.
A paratrooper attack was launched by Axis forces on Podgorica on 8 April, aided by the Hungarian 4th army crossing through the Adriatic Coast, and successfully allowed the Germans to besiege the retreating Yugoslavians, though repeated attempts at climbing fortified hills ended in failure to pyrrhic victory for Axis units. The Yugoslav government eventually was able to flee into Greece before the entire fall of Podgorica on 29 April, moving through the lesser populated areas of Bulgaria and regrouping at Thrace early in the following month. With the intervention of Italy in the Alps, Germany was forced to withdraw the 12 Army and the 2nd Panzer Group, leaving general Walther von Brauchitsch in command of the main land offensive with roughly 16,000 extra men at his disposal. The inexperience of most of the men of the 12th Army prevented them from successfully taking out the British force at Ioannina, with the latter engagement taking place at the city forced the army to retreat following a desperate bayonet charge by regional Greek forces.
Under Allied pressure, and also facing anticipation of full German capitulation in their eastern territories of Ukraine and Belarus, Romania joined the Allies in 1944 and linked with the Russian 4th army and 6th armored division in Ukraine, and developed a supply route for Russian mechanized tanks and divisions to follow. Beginning in December of that year, the Russian Dnieper–Carpathian Offensive pushed Axis forces all the way back to Cluj-Napoca. After the Normandy landings, the Allied UN telegram to non-belligerent nations influenced Turkey to join, supplying enough weapons to distract the Bulgarians in the East. The Bucharest Offensive succeeded in destroying the 1st and 2nd Axis Panzer Groups in their attempts to launch an offensive into southern Romania, and forced the Bulgarian army to strategically retreat and use forms of scorched earth policy to avoid full occupation of many essential keypoints and cities. Bulgarian Prime Minister Bogdan Filov, fearing a possible coup or popular uprising signed an official surrender on 5 January 1945, and joined the Allies under a provisional government for the last few months of the war.
Eastern Front[]
Previous orders of battle[]
The Russian State had held lukewarm relations with Finland during much of the interwar period. This was, in part, due to the victory of the Whites on both the Finnish and Russian sides in the Russian Civil War. However, following Finland's admission into the Reichspakt (the military branch of Germany's Mitteleuropa alliance), relations dented heavily, and were also shattered by Supreme Leader Kolchak's decision to purge all non-Russian minorities. These purges included minority Finns along the Russo-Finnish border and Murmansk. Russian leadership also viewed Finland's borders (which Germany recognized as legitimate to their security) as an ultimate threat, due to their close proximity to Petrograd.
Winter War[]
On 5 October 1939, the Russian State invited a Finnish delegation to Moscow for negotiations. J.K. Paasikivi, the Finnish envoy to Sweden, was sent to Moscow to represent the Finnish Government. The Russian delegation request that the border between them and Finland on the Karelian Isthmus be moved westward to a point only 30 kilometers east of Vyborg and that Finland destroy all existing fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus. Likewise, the delegation demanded the cession of islands in the Gulf of Finland as well as Rybachy Peninsula. The Finns would have to lease the Hanko Peninsula for thirty years and permit the Russians to establish a military base there. In exchange, the Russians would cede Repola and Porajärvi municipalities from Eastern Karelia, an area twice the size of the territory demanded from Finland. The current head of the Finnish government, C.G.T Mannerheim, pressured Paasikivi to refuse this offer (since it was rather unlikely the Russians would withdraw from their promised territories due to common revanchist sentiment), and sent a telegram to the Russian foreign minister, Anton Denikin, that stated Finland, in accordance with its sovereignty, would not comply with these negotiations.
To keep relations from reaching a low point, the Finns made two other counteroffers whereby Finland would cede the Terijoki area to the Russians, which would double the distance between Leningrad and the Finnish border, far less than the Russians had demanded, as well as the islands in the Gulf of Finland. The status of these offers was never recognized nor acknowledged, leading to speculation that the Russians had either ignored them or not received them (or a private delegation could have refused, as there were reported embassies willing to negotiate a week before the conflict). The last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, made several attempts during his reign to russify Finland, which Kolchak, an ardent nationalist, wished to continue at some point with all former Russian territories.
On 30 November 1939, Russian forces invaded Finland with 21 divisions, totalling 450,000 men, and bombed Helsinki, killing about a hundred citizens and destroying more than fifty buildings. The casus belli was not specified, however Kolchak pinned the declaration of war over the exaggerated claim that Finland had unlawfully occupied and executed native Russians in their border territories. This claim was not true, as no major incident like this ever occurred before the war, though there were exceptions that stood out following the beginning of hostilities between Germany and Russia in 1941.
The Mannerheim Line, an array of Finnish defence structures, was located on the Karelian Isthmus approximately 30 to 75 kilometers from the Russian border. The White Army soldiers on the Isthmus numbered 250,000, facing 130,000 Finns. The Finnish command deployed a defence in depth of about 21,000 men in the area in front of the Mannerheim Line to delay and damage the Russians before it reached the line. In combat, the most severe cause of confusion among Finnish soldiers was Russian tanks. The Finns had few anti-tank weapons and insufficient training in modern anti-tank tactics. According to Trotter, the favored Russian armored tactic was a simple frontal charge, the weaknesses of which could be exploited. The Finns learned that at close range, tanks could be dealt with in many ways; for example, logs and crowbars jammed into the bogie wheels would often immobilize a tank.
The Finns were outnumbered 5 to 1 by current Russian military strength, however had more experience when faced with the regional climates in Lapland and the Karelian Isthmus. Russian forces had effectively been stalled by 14 December, due to varying combinations of inexperience, attrition, frostbite, and underequipment. Russian forces tended to wear light brown uniforms (as these were mainly reserves or regional guard forces coming from Northeastern areas) without proper winter gear, making them easy targets for disguised machine guns along the Mannerheim perimeter. Finnish forces also held the advantage by using skis, which were used in modified "slide-fire" maneuvers to fire upon Russian forces in faster manners. At the Battle of Tolvajärvi, Russian forces led by general Kirill Meretskov were defeated by a regional Finnish force under command of Paavo Talvela, mainly done through the visible nature of Russian forces. Finnish snipers tended to be much more experienced and readied, and would commonly stay under a snowdrift and use the direction of the sun's glare to wipe out other units of snipers or enemies from afar. One of these men was Simo Häyhä, who notably was able to kill around 500-530 Russian troops with a standard training rifle.
Although the Karelian Isthmus front was less active in January than in December, the Russians increased artillery bombardments, wearing down the defenders and softening their fortifications. During daylight hours, the Finns took shelter inside their fortifications from the bombardments and repaired damage during the night. The situation led quickly to war exhaustion among the Finns, who lost over 3,000 soldiers in trench warfare. The Russians also made occasional small infantry assaults with one or two companies. Because of the shortage of ammunition, Finnish artillery emplacements were under orders to fire only against directly threatening ground attacks. On 1 February, the Russians further escalated their artillery and air bombardments, forcing many of the frontal Finnish brigades to move underground.
Although the Russian refined their tactics and morale improved, the generals were still willing to accept massive losses to reach their objectives. Attacks were screened by smoke, heavy artillery, and armor support, but the infantry charged in the open and in dense formations. Unlike their tactics in December, Russian tanks advanced in smaller numbers. The Finns could not easily eliminate tanks if infantry troops protected them. After 10 days of constant artillery barrage, the Russians achieved a breakthrough on the Western Karelian Isthmus in the Second Battle of Summa. However, the Russians were unable to use any form of naval warfare against the enemy, as the freezing of Lake Ladoga and the outer banks of the Gulf of Finland made warships or military ferries unable to cross forward. Submarines also had difficulty in getting through the rough ice, as it would commonly cause the temperatures inside them to drop below freezing.
On 5 March, the Russian Army advanced 10 to 15 kilometers past the Mannerheim Line and entered the suburbs of Vyborg. The same day, the Russians established a beachhead on the Western Gulf of Vyborg. The Finns proposed an armistice on 6 March, but the Russians, wanting to keep the pressure on the Finnish Government, declined the offer. The Finnish peace delegation travelled to Moscow via Stockholm and arrived on 7 March. The Russians made further demands as their military position was strong and improving. On 9 March, the Finnish military situation on the Karelian Isthmus was dire as troops were experiencing heavy casualties. Artillery ammunition was exhausted and weapons were wearing out. The Finnish government, realizing that no aid could be sent from their German allies due to the ongoing war with France and Britain, requested unconditional surrender, which the Russians accepted two days later.
The Moscow Peace Treaty was signed in Moscow on 12 March 1940. A cease-fire took effect the next day at noon Leningrad time, 11 a.m. Helsinki time. With it, Finland ceded a portion of Karelia, the entire Karelian Isthmus and land north of Lake Ladoga. The area included Finland's fourth-largest city of Vyborg, much of Finland's industrialized territory, and significant land still held by Finland's military—all in all, 11 percent of the territory. Finland also lost 30 percent of the economic assets since March 1938. Twelve percent of Finland's population, 422,000 to 450,000 Karelians, were evacuated and lost their homes. Finland ceded a part of the region of Salla, Rybachy Peninsula in the Barents Sea, and four islands in the Gulf of Finland. The concessions, which were larger than Russian pre-war negotiations, further diminished Finland's outer industrial capacity, and eventually ended up being conceded back following the outbreak of war between Russia and Germany
Russo-German hostilities[]
Shortly before France had fallen, Russia pledged its obligations to the Allied war effort and attempted a relatively unsuccessful invasion of the Eastern territories held by Germany, only to be swiftly routed after a timid defeat near Vitsyebsk. Germany accused the Russian government of plotting against them, and declared the Russian State to be the nation's number one enemy. They were joined shortly by Finland and Hungary in their declaration of war. The primary targets of the Axis counter-offensive were Petrograd, Moscow and Murmansk, with the ultimate goal of ending the 1941 campaign near the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line, from the Caspian to the White Seas. Germany's objectives were to eliminate the Russian State as a military power, exterminate any post-war nationalism, generate Lebensraum ("living space") by dispossessing the native population and guarantee access to the strategic resources needed to defeat Germany's remaining rivals. Russian forces were remotely successful in capitulating Crimea, with assistance of native Russians who with dissatisfied with German rule since the 1920s.
Although the Russian army was preparing for strategic counter-offensives before the war, the sheer size of the Axis advance forced the Russian supreme command to adopt a strategic defence. During the summer, the Axis made significant gains into Russian territory, inflicting immense losses in both personnel and materiel. By mid-August, however, the German Army High Command decided to suspend the offensive of a considerably depleted Army Group Centre, and to divert the 2nd Panzer Group to reinforce troops advancing towards Smolensk, Rostov, and Leningrad. The Kiev offensive was overwhelmingly successful, resulting in encirclement and elimination of four Russian armies, and made possible further counter-advance into Crimea and industrially developed Eastern Ukraine (the First Battle of Kharkov).
Kolchak's decision to join the war during the ensuing fall of France created heavy friction between him and his cabinet, and had partially contributed to mutinies in his army as many Russian men had already assumed the war was lost due to vastly superior German industry. In what could be considered sheer luck, motorized German divisions had to be delayed in initial advancements towards Moscow's outer suburbs due to partisans or muddy conditions. By the time advancements resumed, the Russians had minimal time to reorganize along a frontier east of Moscow, and thus began using the various armories that lied within minor gaps of occupied territory to supply any advances. Axis advancements reached limits tremendously close towards the Kremlin, but failed to dispossess the Russians of their armories and force them off their commanding heights.
The German Luftwaffe, in the weeks following the war, emanated a series of leaflets across mostly agricultural regions to urge citizens to engage in open arms against Kolchak, appealing mostly to monarchists who had embroiled themselves in the White cause but disapproved of the government's Republican agenda. In hopes of inciting and promoting possible insurrection to weaken the Russian war effort, Germany also employed the Black Hundreds, a pro-Tsarist group which had fled into Belarus and Ukraine following their failed rebellion in the 1920s. Set in command was renegade general Andrey Vlasov, who was often viewed as a "double-agent" by the group due to his lack of allegiance to the former Tsardom. Any further endeavors by Germany to invoke monarchist sentiment collapsed after the House of Romanov, in exile in the United Kingdom, recognized Kolchak's government as legitimate and refused to be restored to the throne if the Russian state were to capitulate.
In the middle of Axis operational objectives to seize Moscow directly, a sudden switch of season caused temperatures to drop lower than -7 degrees °C, and the converged divisions Germany had sent began seeing increasing numbers of frostbite in the wake of combat. Kolchak, knowing that this predicament could be exploited, called in Siberian reserves, who were specially trained to fight in immensely low temperatures. In the next 4 weeks, the German Army was placed on a retreat back to a perimeter held by Erich von Manstein, which extended along 190 miles. During this time Wilhelm II passed away, with his heir Wilhelm III taking the throne in the wake of a global war.
Wilhelm III, not having complete military experience, established a committee of his generals to run the nation during wartime, as doing so had led the nation to victory in the First War. After assigning a few detachments to measure the size of Russian forces, the focus was instead shifted to the Caucasus, and area full of oil needed to supply tanks and planes with. Knowing that a lack of oil in the Middle East and the Balkans would pose an issue to their dominance in the war, the first plans were drawn up and 50 German divisions entered. While they were able to take a quarter of the required refineries, they were unable to reach the Caspian Sea by anticipated time due to high Russian civilian/military resistance, which lopsided their attempts to take cities such as Tsaritsyn.
The diversion of three quarters of the Axis troops and the majority of their air forces from France and the central Mediterranean to the Eastern Front prompted the United Kingdom to reconsider its grand strategy. In July, the UK and the Russian State formed a military alliance against Germany and in August, the United Kingdom and the United States jointly issued the Atlantic Charter, which outlined British and American goals for the postwar world. In late August the British and Russians invaded neutral Iran to secure the Persian Corridor, Iran's oil fields, and preempt any Axis advances through Iran toward the Baku oil fields or British India.
After maneuvering German forces out of the Caucasus, larger amounts of Russian men and armor arrived to the Eastern frontlines and what followed was a "military steamroll, assisted mainly through circulatory industry between the Allied Powers, which granted Russia the ability to use more efficient equipment. The Siege of Petrograd concluded after Lake Ladoga fell into control of Russian ferries, cutting off the Finnish movements in Karelia following a counter-offensive and allowing mutual supplies to be given to the troops who had been holding out for nearly 3 years. Kolchak then ordered Operation Inclination which called for a full paved offensive into the grain-producing and rural regions in Belarus and Ukraine to outsource any remaining industrial centers that remained following intense bombing runs.
The operation did knock out various pockets of resistance, however did not reach its strategic goal due to the mainly fierce defense of Minsk by Belarusian reserves. Knowing traditional manpower could not break the line alone, Russian forces instead used various artillery barrages to knock out any further spheres of resistance inside of buildings or military compartments followed by an advance of heavy armor, culminating in the largest tank battle taking place at Kursk that following year. Due to the repercussions of this, all remaining German forces were placed on the defensive, however miscoordination left gaps open which paved entrance for the White Army to enter the Baltics with relative ease, culminating in a disastrous loss at Narva and Tallinn. Nonetheless the German Army was able to forestall the Russian Army at the Dnieper River, making Kiev now the main defensive standpoint.
Axis advances stall (1942-43)[]
On 1 January 1942, the Allied Big Three—the Russian State, the United Kingdom and the United States—and 22 smaller or exiled governments issued the Declaration by United Nations, thereby affirming the Atlantic Charter, and agreeing not to sign a separate peace with the Axis powers.
During 1942, Allied officials debated on the appropriate grand strategy to pursue. All agreed that defeating Germany was the primary objective. The Americans favoured a straightforward, large-scale attack on Germany through France. The Russians were also demanding a second front be opened through Southern Europe which would allow them to focus on more frontal (and less costly) advances during Operation Inclination. The British, on the other hand, argued that military operations should target peripheral areas to wear out German strength, leading to increasing demoralisation, and bolster resistance forces. Germany itself would be subject to a heavy bombing campaign. An offensive against Germany would then be launched primarily by Allied armour without using large-scale armies. Eventually, the British persuaded the Americans that a landing in France was infeasible in 1942 and they should instead focus on driving the Axis out of North Africa, Iberia, and Eastern Europe. Churchill stated that signing charters with other nations against the Axis were part of the "necessities" towards demoralizing Germany's war effort.
At the Casablanca Conference in early 1943, the Allies reiterated the statements issued in the 1942 Declaration and demanded the unconditional surrender of their enemies. The British and Americans agreed to continue to press the initiative in the Mediterranean by landing in Sicily in support of Italy to fully secure the Mediterranean supply routes. Although the British argued for further operations in the Balkans to bring Turkey into the war, in May 1943, the Americans extracted a British commitment to limit Allied operations in the Mediterranean to military aid to Spain and Italy and to invade France in 1944.
Pacific[]
Pre-war conflicts between China and Japan[]
War had been going on in the pacific for the last decade, as Japan had found itself at war with China and its neighboring allies since 1931 after they invaded Manchuria. Fumimaro Konoe was the main Japanese general guiding the war effort, and lead the army and navy to limited success, notably at the Battle of Taierzhuang in late 1938-early 1939. Nonetheless they found themselves halted by reserves at Nanking for most of the war, though most of the northern tributaries and mountains proved somewhat suitable for creating consolidated guerilla pockets, though various resistance delayed most of the counter-advances. The Kwantung Army, which served as Japan's main suitable military detachment in the region, was oftentimes successful in relaying plans to outmaneuver the Chinese in logistics. Thailand, one of Japan's main allies since the beginning of the Sino-Japanese wars had originally created forms of neutrality, though in the end sided with Japan's sphere after German forces now stationed in Indochina posed threats to various border territories and claims. Japan, in addition, stated that they would act in support of Thailand's other invasions and would recognize their independent sovereignty against European colonial expansion. Many historians argue that this declaration made Japan's economic and military sphere a separate faction in the war, and not just a part of the Allies' subordination in Asia.
By 1937, Japan controlled all of Manchuria and it was also ready to move deeper into China. The Marco Polo Bridge Incident on 7 July 1937 provoked full-scale war between China and Japan. In August 1937, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek deployed his best army to fight about 300,000 Japanese troops in Shanghai, but, after three months of fighting, Shanghai fell. The Japanese continued to push the Chinese forces back, capturing the capital Nanjing in December 1937 and conducted the Nanjing Massacre. In March 1938, Nationalist forces won their first victory at Taierzhuang, but then the city of Xuzhou was taken by the Japanese in May. In June 1938, Japan deployed about 350,000 troops to invade Wuhan and captured it in October. The Japanese achieved major military victories, but world opinion—in particular in the United States—condemned Japan, especially after the Panay incident.
The Japanese High Command, by 1939, concluded that the Dutch East Indies were of considerable importance due to their amounts of oil reserves which could be supplemented for their underdeveloped tanks. After conflicts broke out in Europe, Japan launched an invasion of the East Indies in February of 1940 and quickly knocked out the small amounts of Dutch troops defending the islands, hoping to seize the oil reserves before Australian or British troops could utilize them. Due to the lush geography of forests in the region, Japan instituted their "Three Alls Policy", involving techniques of pickpocketing, looting, burning, and executing civilians in their invasions, to the condemnation of the international community. The Japanese continued this proposed policy in their wars in China, causing widespread famine in the following years.
Japanese offensives, 1941-1942[]
After failing to stop the Japanese in the Battle of Wuhan, the Chinese central government was relocated to Chongqing in the Chinese interior. The mountainous geography of China made it incredibly difficult for the Japanese High Command to consider operations towards an early capitulation of the Kuomintang. While Japan ruled the large cities, they lacked sufficient manpower to control China's vast countryside. In November 1939, Chinese nationalist forces launched a large scale winter offensive, which was largely successful in halting the Kwantung Army's 30,000 grouped divisions from capturing areas of strategic importance near and inside the Yangtze Plain. China was not officially at war with the United States when Germany declared war and invaded Liberia in 1941, however eventually joined on the side of the Axis after attacking various American ports in the Philippines under false assumption that they had been utilizing various Chinese-owned ports and ships in the South China Sea.
By 1941 the conflict had become a stalemate in mainland China. Although Japan had occupied much of northern, central, and coastal China, the Nationalist Government had retreated to the interior with a provisional capital set up at Chungking. In addition, Japanese control of northern and central China was somewhat tenuous, in that Japan was usually able to control railroads and the major cities ("points and lines"), but did not have a major military or administrative presence in the vast Chinese countryside. The Japanese found its aggression against the retreating and regrouping Chinese army stalled by the mountainous terrain in southwestern China.
On 4 March 1942, China invaded the cities of Hong Kong and Macau, respectively, following the entry of Portugal into the war. Hong Kong fell within 48 hours, while Macau surrendered a day later following an extended siege. However, with the American entry into the war, Chinese troops were unable to cross the South China Sea to invade the Philippines and knock out stationed American troops, with British and Japanese naval presence in the area, forcing them to adapt a defensive position to ward off any landings. One advantage held by the Chinese was their ability to conscript a large amount of the population, making it substantially easier to replace losses in intense offensives. However, the embargoes placed by the Allies and non-belligerent nations significantly damaged China's wartime industry, and the majority of the given weapons were rushed and inaccurate due to crooked magazines.
China, using the minor advantage of frontal assaults, was able to stall combined Anglo-Japanese advances into the populated interior of the country, and hid behind mountain peaks to avoid attacks by air. On 15 March 1943, Japanese forces under command of Yoshijirō Umezu launched a spring offensive towards Changsha with around 146,700 men at his disposal. The battle had high casualties and forged a retreat alongside the second division in the southeast, though the city was eventually besieged 6 days later after roughly 30% of the main force had been depleted. A later counter-assault circumvented another attempt by the Japanese to invade the Chinese interior and pushed the Allies back another 95 miles to the southern coast, though Hong Kong was successfully recaptured by British forces on 19 February 1944.
By late 1944, Japan was able to break the stalemate in China, bombing the flood gates of the Yellow River to flush out Chinese reserves at Jinan, which halted Chinese convoys and prevented reinforcements from coming in. With American and British aid, Shanghai and Peking (Beijing) soon fell with tank divisions seizing the valuable armories and stations which the Chinese required for deployment. That same year, Japan launched Operation Ichi-Go, advancing into the Chinese interior and occupying the cities of Changsha, Hengyang, Guilin and Liuzhou. Even despite these defeats, the Chinese didn't surrender immediately, with Chiang not being vocal towards ending the war believing that it would lead to worse renegotiation afterhand. (Notably the British plans to expand Hong Kong once the war ended, which would leave China's influence in the South China Sea diminished). Though they had held a mutual alliance before the war, Russia, with its wartime industrial capacity in full swing, launched an invasion of Xinjiang with the support of warlord Sheng Shicai and knocked out the Chinese forces of 120,000, forcing the Nationalists to move material westward. The defeats on both fronts forced the Kuomintang to consider an act of peace, as prolonging the war would lead the allies to harshen their terms. Chiang Kai-shek was ousted by the party establishment in February of 1945, and a provisional government named the "Chinese Second Republic" was created under a unitary federal system.
After General Yan Xishan was elected to lead the new government, China began negotiations for surrender under the one condition that Japan cease all mistreatment of Chinese citizens in their occupied regions. This was promptly dismissed by the Japanese High Command, though the UK and US pressured them to accept, ultimately causing an increased age of tension following the war.
Closing theaters[]
Americas[]
Prelude[]
In order to possibly divert Allied resources in the Americas, Germany convinced Bolivia and Argentina, who had both just successfully invaded Chile in late 1939, to sign a treaty which made themselves part of the Axis against the Allied nation of Brazil, bringing the war's devastation to South America. German persuasion was done on account of the 1930 Revolution in Brazil, which saw France and Italy intervene on the side of the First Brazilian Republic and Julio Prestes. Additionally, German ambassadors had noted that with current military production rates in the United States, it would be impossible to directly supply Mexico, their only American ally beforehand.
At the beginning of World War Two, in 1939, Roberto María Ortiz was the president of Argentina. The country was in a period of political conservatism and economic crisis known as the Infamous Decade. The Concordancia was accused of electoral fraud and corruption. The Radical Civic Union was divided between FORJA, a line supporting the deposed radical president Hipólito Yrigoyen, and the official leadership of Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear, close to the Concordancia. The Socialist Party and the Progressivist Democracy were conservative as well. In 1940, German officers, and members of the espionage group Abteilung 4B, supported a plot which placed Juan Peron in executive power.
The Argentine army was highly Germanophile, an influence that predated both world wars, having been steadily growing since 1904. It did not involve a rejection of democracy but rather an admiration of German military history, which combined with an intense Argentine nationalism influenced the main stance of the army towards the war, which tended to hold a general form of Anglophobia (as Argentina remained dissatisfied over the disputed status of the Falkland Islands). Germany capitalized off of the fact that the Argentine government was not openly supportive of the incumbent Integralist president of Brazil, Plinio Salgado, and had aided the Liberal Alliance during the 1930 Revolution.
In Mexico, the status quo had been changed repetitively, at least politically. Following the post-war economic deficit, the Mexican economy collapsed in 1928, and forced the government to adopt better concessions to politicians with more radical beliefs. Lazaro Cardenas of the National Revolutionary Party was elected in 1934, and set about various reforms which allowed the nationalization of the oil industry, and the creation of Pemex, the government oil company. He also revived agrarian reform in Mexico, expropriating large landed estates and distributing land to small holders in collective holdings. However, due to the reluctance of bankers, these reforms only brought about a brief moment of economic resurgence before dropping to below-average levels in 1937. During this time, a group known as the National Synarchist Union, led by Salvador Abascal, came to power. The NSU amended the current constitution to hold an emergency election a year later, and had Abascal elected president for an indefinite amount of time under military supervision.
Hostilities in South America[]
During the opening hostilities of the theater, German supplies, loans, and munitions remained heavily unreliable, as the British blockade via South Georgia island made outside commitment impossible. Ecuador also openly expressed interest and joined the alliance, however was quickly capitulated by its neighbors Colombia and Peru, who placed a pro-Allied regime in place until the end of the war. Argentina began the conflict with an invasion of Uruguay, which was a close ally of Brazil. 25,000 Argentine conscripts crossed the Río de la Plata on July 6, 1941 in small riverboats and outdated ironclads, and used 5-inch mortar shells to knock out any smaller Uruguayan defenses present in the skyline. The 145 mile gulf easily fell into Argentine hands, and an Uruguayan counter-attack at San Jose de Mayo failed on July 25, with German-supplied armored tanks and blitzkrieg tactics leaving them swiftly overrun. However, Argentina was wrong in their assessments of Brazilian mobilization, and had largely ignored the proposals to increase military spending in Brazil following several U-Boat attacks in the mid-Atlantic during 1940.
While they did succeed in capitulating Uruguay by September, the Argentine invasion of Brazil proper failed to take Porto Alegre even after firebombing the city, as it was heavily fortified by Brazilian troops, who were able to hold their position and mow down the oncoming Argentine forces. Bolivia also suffered heavy resistance both from civilians and Peruvian troops, who made occupying Atacama (And the desert Oasis in Peru) difficult. Facing retreat after their dismissal in the outskirts and suburbs of the city, Argentina redirected the 3rd Corps, aided by German officers, to maneuver around the Brazilian 1st division comprising of much more skilled men, however a miscalculation and bad weather prediction saw their advance refuted, and soon Brazil was able to make ground in Uruguay. On 28 December 1944, following the collapse of regional Bolivian forces to a Brazilian offensive in the east, the Integralist government established a puppet in their occupied territories named the "Bolivian National Republic", placing Gualberto Villarroel, a fascist, in the disputed position of President of the nation.
Ongoing strikes by both civilians and defected paramilitary units in Buenos Aires pressured the Argentine to sign a peace deal which saw them losing large amounts of territory. (Though the loss of territory in Argentina was considerably less worse than the reparations on Bolivia). The South American Peace Accords, signed on November 5, 1945 and revised in 1948, guaranteed these losses and established the OAS (Organization of American States).
Hostilities in North America[]
The National Synarchist Union, despite advice and warnings from military advisors, largely believed that the United States would not opt for a fight in the event of a sudden attack, and made preparations for possible mobilization. However, Mexican industry was slow to use enough material to make weapons and artillery as seen in the last conflict, due to an ongoing economic embargo by the western powers and the reluctance of Brazil and Colombia to send loans. To avoid public opposition to the war, the upcoming 1940 presidential and congressional elections were suspended, as was the constitution. After the United States extended the Pan-American protection zone to Greenland due to extensive U-boat attacks, the NSU created the "Commission of Overseas Preservation", and allowed German submarines to use Mexican ports as refueling stations. Abascal renewed Mexico's alliance with Germany in January of 1941, and began mobilizing an estimated 400,000 men to the American border and placing them on standby for unknown reasons. Following the German attack on Liberia, Mexico launched a direct invasion of American territory, though found themselves unable to take or besiege major cities other than Laredo, Texas, or Chula Vista, California, respectively.
Mexico did not take the chance to offer invasions of Colombia or Panama due to geographic reasons, and instead resorted to launching extended air raids on ports there to deny access to the Panama Canal. Mexico's industrial capabilities were rendered obsolete by 1942, due to an embargo taking a toll on their capacity to build weaponry, coupled with the outdated status of the weapons used in direct combat. American troops made ground in Northern Mexico by the summer of that year, and forced regional governments to accept peace after the decisive Battle of Monclova. American leadership largely prioritized the quick defeat of Mexican forces, as Mexico's uranium reserves created widespread fear of a possible nuclear program by the Synarchists. On 14 August 1942, American forces with assistance from Colombia successfully landed in Veracruz, knocking out the city's defenses with 5-inch mortar shells and bombardment from frigates, which allowed them to take the city's urban hotspots and leave Mexico City open. Salvador Abascal and the Synarchists, fearing a contingent insurgency as a result of the loss in Mexico City, fled the city by train to establish a provisional loyalist regime in Oaxaca, but were stopped mid-transport by Republican rebel groups.
Mexico signed the Treaty of Veracruz on March 8, 1943, and gave away Baja California to the United States and granted the restored Republic of Guatemala control over regions in Chiapas. The Mexican Republic was restored two months later with Manuel Ávila Camacho as president.
Amphibious landings in France[]
By this time the Allied leaders met in Cairo to discuss the decisions of post-war Europe, whilst several amphibious landings would be considered to liberate France from German forces, under the planning of Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower. Anticipating Germany's defeat after this, an agreement was made to create a peace-keeping organization called the United Nations which would mediate future treaties. The Allies then sent telegrams to all non-cooperative governments allowing them to have a special seat in the Security Council if they entered the war, which was followed by a wave of war declarations on the Axis Powers by non-belligerent nations. On June 6, the landings took place in Normandy, but even despite an intense airbombing campaign the fighting was rather indecisive for both sides, notably at Omaha which saw the second highest amount of casualties so far. The target 50-mile (80 km) stretch of the Normandy coast was divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. Strong winds blew the landing craft east of their intended positions, particularly at Utah and Omaha. The men landed under heavy fire from gun emplacements overlooking the beaches, and the shore was mined and covered with obstacles such as wooden stakes, metal tripods, and barbed wire, making the work of the beach-clearing teams difficult and dangerous. This was coupled with the high coastal cliffs, which disabled proper climbing techniques to secure the machine gun nests and the beachhead itself. However, enough pressure was guaranteed and led Germany to relocate its divisions fighting in Spain and Italy to withdraw which allowed gains to be steadier along the southern fronts. Upon squeezing out the smaller gaps of armed defenses on the coast, the Allies in the south launched Operation Dragoon, landing a smaller but more experienced force to liberate southern France. Marseille was recaptured on 11 June, and a provisional government was established under command of general-president Charles de Gaulle.
Unable to take the immense losses on both sides, German forces withdrew from primary hotspots whilst leaving behind a "scorched-earth policy", though in the end this only destroyed valuable munitions and technology which could have been used to hold out these positions for the next few months. Ongoing air strikes left the urban regions in the Rhineland destroyed, further cementing economic fracture for the Axis Powers, who by now only encompassed Denmark, Germany, and their puppet in Norway, which was already seeing simultaneous reverse following a British landing at Bergen. The Dutch Prime Minister, Pieter Sjoerds Gerbrandy, had entered negotiations with the Allies shortly before the landings and made a deal which offered various border territories with industrial potential. Though their enigma code was not successful in relaying most of these commissions, Germany became aware of the decisions and launched an invasion, shortly after Wilhelmina had declared Dutch neutrality and non-intervention for the rest of the war. The timing of neutrality (and the Allied success in liberating Calais) allowed enough British reinforcements to land in the country by 17 July. Knowing a conventional advance would risk the destruction of cities such as Leeuwarden, the Dutch opened their flood gates after Axis reserves began nearing Amsterdam, slowing them enough to guarantee a slowdown.
Pleading for a distraction, the Dutch called upon the 12 American Marines to engage in a minor assault onto the former Belgian city of Bastogne. The main detachment led by Omar Bradley succeeded in scattering the provincial guard force, however were quickly encircled in a repeated tactic carried out by an Axis force of 250,000, who were able to stall nearby divisions of M26 Pershings due to combinations of mud or anti-tank weapons. The Axis attack proved successful, however it was the last major offensive attack they could carry out. By the 3rd attempted skirmish to prevent the Allies from entering the city, British general Bernard Montgomery was able to hold the line at Libramont, and begin a series of hit-and-run tactics on the Southwestern flank, just enough to put them in a position of strategic retreat/defense, placing the initiative of offense in Allied favor.
Battle of Berlin[]
With the fall of German puppets and clients in the east, west, and south, the remaining armies were put under emergency control of Wilhelm III, as any remaining skilled officers and generals had either defected, were captured, or had died in battle. Allied forces entered through the demilitarizing Rhineland and later Hamburg from the North, whilst captured Polish armies were rehired by Russian officers to provide larger manpower in the east. 250,000 German troops stood defending Berlin from the oncoming White Army which was numerically superior, however even despite having the advantage in manpower had capturing the armory at Konigsberg, which contained the locations of all stations vital to the survival of the city. For the Allies, invading mainland Germany was a logistical task despite having firebombed most of the industrial and urban heartland. Germany's military despite rapid routing and underequipment was still very much capable of guerilla war, which made taking most of the suburbs rather difficult due to a combination of strong civilian resistance or larger pockets of consolidated German troops.
The unexpected delay in any strategic advancements into Germany's more densely populated cities forced the Allies to take into account the usage of more destructive weaponry. The Manhattan Project, a nuclear program stationed in New Mexico, had produced two types of atomic bombs with aid of German-born scientist Albert Einstein. The "Fat Man", a plutonium implosion-type nuclear weapon; and "Little Boy", an enriched uranium gun-type fission weapon. 2 Boeing B-29 Superfortresses were deployed from bases in Cherbourg, France, and Genoa, Italy to carry out the atomic run. The plan; codenamed "Operation Burning Charcoal" was authorized by U.S. President Harry S. Truman on 3 May. At roughly 2:35 in the morning CST, the first Superfortress (named Enola Gay by the pilots) dropped the Little Boy on Hamburg, destroying the city's middle borough of Wilhelmsburg, and leaving any infrastructure within a 13 mile executive radius on fire. The other Superfortress successfully dropped the "Fat Man" on Munich the following day, though it only destroyed half the intended areas of the city (but did wipe out the sizeable military garrison that was holding it). Immediately following Munich's vaporization, Italian forces who witnessed the event 16 miles away launched their own advance, capturing the city a day later with little to no resistance (though with minor complications of skin infection due to the radiation). For months afterward, large numbers of both civilians and military personnel continued to die from the effects of burns, radiation sickness, and injuries, compounded by illness and malnutrition.
Nonetheless, the bombings were a fine gesture for the Allies as it crippled any command structures which could have been set up in the city's main industrial areas suitable for underground communication. The decision to drop atomic bombs on Germany to end the war is still widely debated, and most modern scholars have rendered it unnecessary. A Russian offensive in the east began on 20 May, and two Russian fronts (army groups) attacked Berlin from the east and south, while a third overran German forces positioned north of Berlin. Before the main battle in Berlin commenced, the White Army encircled the city after successful battles of the Seelow Heights and Halbe, guaranteeing strategic fortification on manmade mounds or overgrown creek lines, which the Russians exploited by setting up landmines to delay or halt any reserve tank divisions.
On 25 May, the Russian 3rd division commanded by Konstantin Rokossovsky succeeded in reaching the eastern banks of the Elbe river, taking Rostock and establishing a regional puppet government. Following this, Rokossovsky's smaller group led by Lieutenant General Anton Denikin began advancing from the east and north, started shelling Berlin's city centre, while Marshal Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front broke through Army Group Centre and advanced towards the southern suburbs of Berlin. On 26 May General Helmuth Weidling assumed command of the forces within Berlin. The garrison consisted of several depleted and disorganized Reichswehr and Royal Guard forces who were quickly scattered by an ongoing artillery barrage from Katyusha rocket launchers, having been set off from a U-formation in the early morning to confuse any reorganizing enemy units.
Axis collapse, Allied victory (1945)[]
On 30 May, Wilhelm III abdicated in a private ceremony, however informed the rest of his divisions through a radio broadcast that he would re-assume the throne if they began a "Teutonic advance" to wipe out the Allied center. Berlin's garrison surrendered on 2 May but fighting continued to the north-west, west, and south-west of the city until the end of the war in Europe on 6 June. After preparing for a counter-attack that never came, the German commander-in-chief Wilhelm Keitel announced publicly that the war was over and that all Axis armies were to surrender within the next 3 weeks. The German instrument of surrender was officially signed on 6 July, with Denmark and Bohemia-Moravia signing similar documents a day later.
On 11 July, Allied leaders met in Potsdam, Germany. They confirmed earlier agreements about Germany, and the American, British and Russian governments concluded that the complete breakdown of Germany was required to avoid such large-scale war in the future, stating specifically: "Germany must be neutralised accordingly to its cultural and historical lines, which will each be represented by a primary Allied power". During this conference, the United Kingdom held its general election, and Clement Attlee replaced Churchill as Prime Minister.
The Allies established occupation administrations in Austria and Germany. The former was occupied between 5 separate powers, including Italy which had incurred into the region post-Axis collapse. The latter was divided into western and eastern occupation zones controlled by the Western Allies and the Russian State. A "reidentification programme" was launched in Germany, the purpose being to erode all imperial influences and beneficiaries within Germany to avoid a hypothesized possibility of another German rise, although this policy later moved towards amnesty and re-integration of German politicians into the new nations.
Treaty of London[]
The Treaty of London decided the fate of post-war Europe, its primary contents are as follows:
- Germany will be partitioned into several Allied-influenced sectors, of these are Hanover, Prussia, Bavaria, and the Rhineland.
- Germany will pay 20 billion in war reparations.
- The United Nations will be founded to prevent such large-scale wars from repeating.
- All Polish-speaking areas (with the addition of Silesia and a large portion of upper Prussia) will be given to the Republic of Poland.
- Wallonia is given to France, while East Frisia and Flanders are given to the Netherlands.
- Hungary will cede Transylvania to Romania, and Croatia along with Banat to Yugoslavia.
- Bulgaria will cede its southern coastline to Greece, and Dobruja to Romania.
- Luxembourg and the Saarland are given to France.
- Austria gains independence from Germany.
- Tyrol and Trieste are Given to Italy (along with some islands in the Adriatic Sea)
- Greece gains the Ionian Islands.
- Iceland is granted independence, while Greenland is acquired by the United States.
Aftermath[]
Post-war alliances[]
In an effort to maintain world peace, the Allies formed the United Nations, which officially came into existence on 24 October 1945, and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 as a common standard for all member nations. The great powers that were the victors of the war—France, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States—became the permanent members of the UN's Security Council. The five permanent members remain so to the present. Unlike its precursor, World War I, World War II had far more excessive civilian and military casualties, the amount of which is still being counted due to the scale of the war worldwide. The UN issued a law two years later in 1948 outlawing specific wars of conquest, much like the ones waged by Japan in the Pacific.
Nearly every nation involved had to face economic damages following the intensive production of planes, shipping, and importation of supplements for either side. Due to these bankruptcies, various independence movements sprang up worldwide (notably in Africa) in hopes of retaining independence from European colonization. Ghana and Sudan declared independence first in 1950, followed by Cameroon, the Congo, and Gabon in 1951.
The United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, and France emerged as the global superpowers economically and militarily, each gaining a seat in the UN Security Council. Germany would later be partitioned into 4 spheres of influence (or controlled sectors) which would be occupied by each military power until 1952. This would remain the status quo until Germany reunited under a Federal Republic in 1990. While there was a debate to re-establish the monarchy with a constitutionalist system, negotiations for this eventually broke down after the current monarch-apparent, Prince Louis Ferdinand, declined to be reinstated as the emperor. To prevent forms of extremism from continuing to resist Allied occupation, the Allies eased reparations by 15 billion and aided several programs in re-industrializing most of Germany's architecture.
Resulting conflicts[]
At the formal conference which split Germany into separate zones, Russia was hostile towards letting the Western Allies implement the Deutschmark currency into their territory, believing that it could possibly "guarantee" another German rise through a possible recession, and eventually, political instability. To counteract the idea, the Allies agreed on a plan which focused on a slower form of debt payment for the new German states, and an initiative nicknamed the "Marshall Plan" in which the United States transferred over $13 billion (equivalent of about $114 billion in 2021) in economic recovery programs to European economies damaged by the conflict.
Conflicts in Germany still pursued well on into the 1960s, as the governments of the occupied sectors chose to maintain a more sovereign identity. These incidents culminated into the April Crisis in 1962, which saw the Prussian Free State (the successor state to the German Empire's northern sector) invaded briefly to restore order. The German Army, the Reichswehr, was not put out of service and continued to serve as a UN-supported paramilitary which sought to keep order maintained throughout the badlands of the country. Upon German reunification in 1990, the Reichswehr was returned to service as a federal agency, though would not take direct orders from executive powers unless absolutely required.
Japan, despite the official end of the war worldwide, continued their war in China for the next year, claiming that the Chinese still had yet to repay their debts for "crimes" which had been committed by them in the previous decades. Following urging from Britain and the United States, Japan reluctantly agreed to relinquish their territories of Mengjiang and Outer Mongolia as compensation for war crimes against China during the Siege of Nanking, and fully withdrew a year later. In 1948, Japan broke off relations with the Allies in violation of various accords, however reformed into a constitutional monarchy following a nationwide embargo and later referendum. Manchukuo remained independent with Puyi as Emperor and would be renamed the Kingdom of Manchuria after a royal proclamation in 1967 declared the restoration of the Qing dynasty.
Impact[]
Casualties and war crimes[]
Estimates for the total number of casualties in the war vary, because many deaths went unrecorded. Most suggest that some 81 million people died in the war, including about 20 million military personnel and 40 million civilians. Many of the civilians died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass bombings, disease, and starvation.
The Russian State alone lost around 17 million people during the war, including 8.7 million military and 9 million civilian deaths. A fifth of the people in Russia alone were wounded or killed. Germany sustained 5.3 million military losses, mostly on the Eastern Front and during the final battles in Germany.
The majority of war crimes tended to be committed by pre-occupational governments. The Kingdom of France, which suffered the sixth-highest casualty amount of the war, engaged in various anti-Semitic and anti-German activities during their brief occupations of the Alsace regions. This was justified off of the fact that Germany had used a similar approach during their first occupations of French territory, coined the Peacetime Massacre by historians. There were less indirect casualties as a result of French war policies, however other methods, such as the use of concentration camps, significantly impacted post-war politics. In Yugoslavia, Spain, Russia, and Italy, harsh penalties were induced on anti-war civilians and rebellious militias with disdain towards their governments.
In Asia and the Pacific, between 3 million and more than 10 million civilians, mostly Chinese (estimated at 7.5 million), were killed by the Japanese occupation forces. The most infamous Japanese atrocity was the Nanking Massacre, in which 300,000 Chinese civilians were murdered by Japanese troops. Japan had adopted a "Three-Alls" policy in their theater, and had used it against both Chinese and Indonesian civilians in each of their invasions. As a result, the UN issued a charter in 1947 (ratified in 1948) which prohibited specific wars of and for conquest.
Both sides used chemical warfare as a method to flush out both military and civilian resistance, using them in similar techniques to that of the First World War. By estimates, Germany is often concluded to be the nation with the most usage of such weapons, as seen by the destruction and casualties of civilians during the Siege of Guernica.
Home fronts and production[]
Aircraft were used for reconnaissance, as fighters, bombers, and ground-support, and each role was advanced considerably. Innovation included airlift (the capability to quickly move limited high-priority supplies, equipment, and personnel); and of strategic bombing (the bombing of enemy industrial and population centers to destroy the enemy's ability to wage war). Anti-aircraft weaponry also advanced, including defenses such as radar and surface-to-air artillery. The use of the jet aircraft was pioneered and, though late introduction meant it had little impact, it led to jets becoming standard in air forces worldwide. Although guided missiles were being developed, they were not advanced enough to reliably target aircraft until some years after the war.
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Land warfare changed from the static front lines of trench warfare of World War I, which had relied on improved artillery that outmatched the speed of both infantry and cavalry, to increased mobility and combined arms. The tank, which had been used predominantly for infantry support in the First World War, had evolved into the primary weapon. In the late 1930s, tank design was considerably more advanced than it had been during World War I, and advances continued throughout the war with increases in speed, armor and firepower. At the start of the war, most commanders thought enemy tanks should be met by tanks with superior specifications. This idea was challenged by the poor performance of the relatively light early tank guns against armor, and German doctrine of avoiding tank-versus-tank combat. This, along with Germany's use of combined arms, were among the key elements of their highly successful blitzkrieg tactics across Russia and France.