World War II

While there were certainly many differences between World War I and World War II, there were also many notable similaities worth examining. This list could be very extensive, but I will mention...

There were similarities between Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini. One similarity is that both leaders were dictators who had total control of the government, and both men used propaganda to...

In the early 1930s, the League of Nations was powerless to do much of anything regarding the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. After the Lytton Commission was sent to examine the situation and...

The Japanese hoped that by crippling the US Navy with a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, they would score a decisive victory and head off a longer war that they expected would follow. The Japanese...

The name World War II seems to indicate that ever country around the globe was involved in some way. However, there were a few countries who were able to keep out of the war, or at least remain...

Although the fighting took place simultaneously, the European theater and the Pacific theater of World War II had significant differences. In Europe, more nations were engaged with each other. On...

There are many differences between the European and Pacific theaters during World War II, including that the US entered the Pacific theater in response to the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor....

I would certainly argue that appeasement was a mistake. I suppose you could argue that it was a mistake before WWII and not a mistake in that war. However, it seems hard to say that appeasement...

In connection to Germany, it’s reasonable to claim that militarism contributed to the origin of World War II to a great extent. Many acclaimed historians, like Richard J. Evans, speak to the...

In the wake of the Second World War, international communism was in a greatly strengthened position. Soviet troops were in Eastern Europe, including the eastern half of Germany. These boots on the...

While Churchill objected strongly to the Munich agreement, he had earlier made positive statements about Hitler, saying, according to Richard Holmes's book In the Footsteps of Hitler "I will not...

Tanks became a war weapon during WWI. The tanks of that war were quite slow but they could be used against enemy fortifications since they were nearly impervious to machine gun fire. Tanks could...

World War II allied military strategy for Europe: Churchill and Roosevelt and their advisers met in Washington in late 1941. They decided that they must fiirst make a big effort at defeating...

Even though the United States did not enter World War II until the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, it had been preparing for the likely possibility of joining the conflict for some...

The Allied invasion of Italy was significant for several reasons. One reason was that the invasion of Italy meant that the Allies were successful with their invasion of North Africa. The Allies...

1. European victory was accomplished through the size of the Soviet force, American military might, Germany's flawed strategy of a two-front assault, and allied aerial bombardment. Although...

These are very thorough answers, but in short the world did not take Hitler seriously because he was not their problem. He was targeting Jews, an unpopular people, and he was in a country far away...

The consequences of President Roosevelt's decision to issue Executive Order 9066 was to remove many Japanese Americans from their homes in the US and relocate them to detention camps for the...

The most important single motive shared by the so-called Axis powers was the establishment of empire. To that end, Germany, Italy, and Japan felt unable to subscribe to the prevailing norms of...

Winston Churchill opposed Neville Chamberlain mainly because of the events leading to the start of World War II and how the Allies were doing when World War II began. When Germany was taking land...

It seems weird to call one of the bloodiest wars in history “the good war,” but that is the nickname that World War II is known by. World War II took place between 1939 and 1945, and its nickname...

On May 10, 1940, Germany began invading the nations to its west. The advanced and overpowering German army cut through France using blitzkrieg tactics. In six weeks, France was defeated, and...

From a strategic perspective, the Bataan Death March had little impact on the course of the war. The march happened after American forces surrendered the Philippines to the Japanese. The Japanese...

While global decolonization was already under way by the time World War II broke out, the devastation suffered by colonial powers during that war made their ability to sustain colonial holdings far...

The nature of Mussolini's dictatorship was somewhat different to those of Hitler and Stalin. For one thing, he was never able to exert complete control over his party. The Italian Fascist Party was...

The day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. entered World War II. Hawaii was at that time a U.S. territory, rather than a state. The day after the attack,...

The most powerful Western European democracies, Great Britain and France, responded to Axis aggression with a policy of appeasement. This meant they did not interfere militarily with Nazi land...

To add to what was already stated, and an important fact that is almost always overlooked when looking at 20th century Germany is that the United States kept the Weimar Republic afloat during the...

If we are discussing goals rather than what actually occurred in the messiness of reality, yes, the goals of the United States overseas were consistent with its goals on the home front at that...

The end of World War II shaped the postwar world because it gave the Allies the opportunity to make decisions about Europe as a whole. Particularly important were the Allies’ decisions about...

I am basing my answer to this question on the excerpt in the link below. In this excerpt, Hand starts by saying that all Americans either chose to come to America or are the descendants of those...

Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan changed the future of international relations in a number of ways. First, in the short term, this move led to further distrust between the...

The main advantage that Britain had over Germany in this battle was the fact that it was fighting a defensive battle and therefore would have an easier time being victorious. One aspect of this was...

The primary reason for the Nazi party's rise to power was economic desperation. Before the Great Depression hit Germany and put millions out of work, the National Socialist party of Germany was a...

The United States military entered World War II in December 1941, in the aftermath of the Japanese bombing of American vessels in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. A number of drastic economic impacts were...

The most positive effect of World War II was that it brought about the defeat of a number of truly barbaric regimes, most notably the Third Reich. It is undoubtedly the case that, without some kind...

In the Pacific, we also did not really have a forward base from which to stage invasions, like we did in Europe with England against Germany, and the bombing raids against Japan had to assemble...

During World War II, our military was segregated. The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of African-American men who flew for the United States during World War II. They trained at Tuskegee Army Airfield...

The fate of Poland was very important to both the United States and the Soviet Union, though the Soviet Union managed to maintain control of Poland. The war against the Nazis had left Stalin's army...

Hitler’s foreign policy was pegged on the Nazi Party policies which sought to bring to an end Germany’s restrictions under the Versailles treaty, promote Germany’s re-armament, expand Germany’s...

Coming out of World War II, the primary consequence was the rise of the United States as one of two dominant world powers along with the Soviet Union. The United States and Soviet Union had the...

President Franklin Roosevelt signed the declaration of war against Japan one day after the unanticipated attack on Pearl Harbor. The government spending on military expansion surged significantly...

The focus on the European theatre represented one of the major elements of the Allied plan to win the war. It consisted of full commitment to the European theatre in air and ground campaigns...

A good war is surely a contradiction in terms as all wars involve death, suffering, and misery, often on a massive scale. And World War II was no exception. It's estimated that somewhere in the...

The significance of the D-Day landings lies in the fact that they represented a major turning point in the war. In retrospect, D-Day can be said to have marked the beginning of the end of World War...

In 1936, Japan and Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, an anti-communist alliance that Italy joined in 1937. In 1940, Germany, Italy, and Japan (the Axis powers) signed the Tripartite Pact and...

The overwhelming threat of a centralized authority figure that faced no internal check or limitation was reality under the rule of Hitler and Mussolini. Both leaders were quite "efficient" in...

World War II broke out in 1939 because Germany invaded Poland, but there is a long background leading up to the conflict. Since Hitler's rise to power in 1933, the western allies in Europe,...

While there were many countries involved in World War II on both sides, only a few of them were really relevant to the course of the war as a whole. I will list the major countries for each side...

The League of Nations was unable to intervene in conflicts that preceded World War II; it was an independent organization that lacked its own military power, and it was additionally limited because...