INDRODUCTION For almost six years from 1939 to 1945 Britain fought the toughest war it had ever

experienced. World War II was total war - every person, every business, every service was involved.Britain did not fight alone, the war also involved many countries. World War II involved 61 countries with 1.7 billion people (three quarters of the world's population).Fifty million people lost their lives and hundreds of millions people were injured.

How did the Second World War start?

After World War One ended in 1918, Germany had to give up land and was banned from having armed forces. In 1933 the German people voted for a leader named Adolf Hitler, who led a political party in Germany called the National Socialists or Nazis. Hitler promised to make his country great again and quickly began to arm Germany again and to seize land from other countries. Shortly before 5am on Friday 1st September, 1939, German forces stormed the Polish frontier. Tanks and motorised troops raced into the country over ground, supported by Stuka dive bombers overhead. A total of 1.25 million Germans soldiers swept into Poland

Why did the Second World War start?

The Second World War was started by Germany in an unprovoked attack on Poland. Britain and France declared war on Germany after Hitler had refused to abort his invasion of Poland.

What were the two sides in World War Two?

The war was fought chiefly between two major alliances: the Axis and the Allies.

The Axis
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The Allies
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German Italy Japan

Slovakia (Nov. 1940) Hungary (Nov. 1940) Romania (Nov. 1940) Bulgaria (March 1941)

Australia Belgium Brazil Canada China Czechoslovakia Denmark Estonia France Greece India Latvia Lithuania Malta The Netherlands New Zealand Norway Poland South Africa United Kingdom United States USSR Yugoslavia

The Tripartite Pact of September 27, 1940, allied (brought together) Germany, Italy, and Japan. The Allies included:
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Commonwealth countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada Countries in the British Empire such as India.

THE ALLIES
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Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin F D Roosevelt Harry Truman Charles de Gaulle William King Robert MenzIes Michael Savage

The Axis Power

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler was born on April 20th 1889 in a small Austrian town called Braunau, near to the German border.Hitler served in the Bavarian army during World War I and rose to become the leader of Nazi Germany during World War II. Under his leadership, the Nazis sought to make Germany the most powerful empire in the world and exterminate all they viewed as inferior. In pursuit of this, he ordered the extermination of over 11 million people, the majority of them Jewish, but also including Roman Catholics, Roma (gypsies), Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, the physically and mentally handicapped, and any others who did not meet Hitler's standards for "racial purity."This mass killing is known as the Holocaust.As the war was ending, and it became clear that the Germans would not win, Hitler retreated to a bunker with his mistress, Eva Braun. He arranged for the their marriage and then it is believed that Eva poisoned herself while Hitler killed himself with a pistol shot on April 30, 1945. What was Hitlers role ww2?
He led a political group that followed the doctrines of an ideological group called Nazism. "Once Hitler was in power, he banned all political parties except the Nazi Party. He took control of all newspapers and radio, and forced schools and university to teach Nazi ideas. Children had to join Nazi youth groups, and anyone who disagreed with the Nazi was arrested by the secret police, which was called the Gestapo." - exert from the Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History.

Hideki Tojo Emperor Hirohito Benito Mussolini ENd of world war 2

The final battles of the European Theatre of World War II as well as the German surrender took place in late April and early May 1945.
It ended with the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers. Germany surrendered on May 7th to the Western Allies, and May 8th to the Soviet Union, 1945, about a week after Adolf Hitler had committed suicide. Japan was able to hold out for another few months and was preparing for a desperate and bloody defense in the event of an American invasion of the home islands. Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 respectively. After that the Imperial government sought the Emperor's personal authority to surrender which he granted. He made a personal radio address announcing the decision on August 15, 1945. The surrender was signed on Sept. 2, 1945 aboard the battleship A.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay. <br /> President Truman officially declared an end to hostilities by Presidential Proclamation on December 31, 1946 (Proc. no. 2714, 61 Stat. 1048)

American forces had been steadily gaining ground in the Pacific since late 1942. By 1945 we were able to begin using large fleets of bombers operating out of China and Islands in the Pacific to destroy utterly their cities. On top of that our navy had cut them off from the supplies of raw materials, oil, rubber, iron, etc. that they had been importing and that they needed to produce weapons and ammunition. In addition, Japan imported a great deal of its food. Those imports were also cut off. Thus by mid 1945 Japan was unable to maintain industrial production at anywhere near the level needed to supply their armies, their cities were subject to raids by over a thousand bombers at a time against which they had no defense and their population was in danger of starvation. Then, on August 6 and August 9 the United States dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That finally convinced the Japanese government that they had no choice but to surrender.

WW2 ended by the dropping of the A bombs on Japan during August 1945. I was involved in the last battle against the Japanese on the Island of Okinawa located only 300 miles from Japan. We invaded the Island on Easter Sunday Apr.1st.1945 and the Island was declared secured the last week of June 1945. During the fighting we suffered 32,000 U.S. casualties with over 14,000 killed in action. During this same period we killed 118,000 Japanese defenders. It was a terrible experience but would have been nothing compared to our having to invade Japan itself. In fact should this have been necessary I am strongly convinced I would not have survived. The reason the Japanese KIA was so high is because they refused to be taken prisoner. Make no mistake about it. The Japanese soldier had been in military training since childhood and they were good well trained soldiers. They were also barbarians who killed American POWs & butchered the Chinese people including women & children. .

Germany & Japan surrender!

World War 2 ended with the unconditional surrender of the Axis Powers.

he bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is no official date for Europe, only for Japan: There is no set date of surrender in the European Theater (Germany and Italy). Germany signed two surrender documents, May 7th to the US and May 8th with Russia. Both are recognized. In the morning of 2 September 1945, General Yoshijiro Umezu signed the formal surrender of Japan aboard the U.S.S. Missouri Japa gave up on the U.S. Answer: the WWII was ended when the Allied forces had successfully defeated the Germans in the battle...it was just a first turning point...but the very event that really made the war ended was when the US Bomber plane bombed the the two cities: nagasaki and hiroshima, which led the japanese to surrender unconditionally.... Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_did_World_War_2_end#ixzz1IQtXOnA0