World War II was officially started in 1939, when Germany captured Poland and added it to the Nazi Empire. The tensions that led to the war had started as early as 1918, when Germany lost World War I, and the Allies organized the Treaty of Versailles, and used it to mistreat the Germans, forcing them to pay drastic reparations to the Allies, unable to make or organize military machines and troops, as well as several other punishments that served only to cause unrest among the german people. One of the terms was the splitting of Germany into several countries, such as Poland and Czechoslovakia. The uniting of these Germanic countries was the first order of business for Hitler when he decided on conquering Europe. He held an almost-certainly rigged vote among the German people and the Austrian people in 1938, resulting in more than 99% of the people wanting to join the two countries into one. With this he was able to convince the Allies that it was alright to join the countries, though they could see plainly that the vote had been tampered with. They didn’t say anything, however, not wishing for WWII. When Adolf asked for Czechoslovakia later in 1938 in the Munich Agreement, the Allies tentatively agreed to his terms, but no more. So when Hitler took Poland and added it to the quickly growing Germany, Britain and France finally decided enough was enough, and declared war.
However, Germany had been building war machines and organizing Armies in secret, and attacked europe with a new war strategy, known as blitzkrieg. Blitzkrieg is german for “lightning war” or “fast war” and used it extremely well, conquering Belgium, the Netherlands, and France in barely over a month. It reached the height of it’s power in 1942, before anyone could engage them in war, though Britain did begin preparing for massive efforts. The first failure for Nazi Germany was the Battle of Britain, in 1940, when Germany began continuous air-bombing Britain, but failed to conquer it. The first major failure, however, came in 1941, when project Barbarossa didn’t conquer Russia, costing the Third Reich some million soldiers, though they slayed some 4 million Russians. The reason that they failed wasn’t really because of the Russians, but because it took to long to conquer Moscow, and the cold winter came and guarded the Russian landscape.
1942 is when the Allies began to take back ground against the Germans, and America joined the fight in earnest. Germany’s ally, Italy, fell to the allies in 1943 when Benito Mussolini was killed. In 1944 the Allies fought and captured land in Normandy, a French territory, on what is now known as D-Day. From there the Germans were pushed back to Berlin in 1945, where the Russian Army landed the final blow at the Battle of Berlin. Hitler committed suicide, and Germany surrendered.
The war wasn’t over yet, however, since Germany had another Ally, not in Europe at all, but Asia. The Japanese Empire was extensive, and powerful, and originally planned to conquer all of the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately for them, the USA had many holdings in the Pacific Ocean, such as the Philippines and Hawaii. America had a military base in Hawaii, Pearl Harbor, and Japan bombed it in 1941. This gave America an excuse to get into the war, and despite their slow start in the fighting and few early successes, the Japanese were slowly rolled back from their territories, until 1945, when the Japanese began digging their heels into the ground (sea?) and making the Americans fight for every inch. Then, in May, 1945, an Atomic Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a Japanese city, destroying it. When they still refused to surrender, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Destroying another city. Finally, Japan surrendered, and the most deadly war in history was over.
School Essays 