Why ww2 happened

President Harry S. Post-war Germany would be divided into four occupation zones, to be controlled by the Soviet Union, Britain, the United States and France. Heavy casualties sustained in the campaigns at Iwo Jima February and Okinawa April-June , and fears of the even costlier land invasion of Japan led Truman to authorize the use of a new and devastating weapon.

Developed during a top secret operation code-named The Manhattan Project, the atomic bomb was unleashed on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. On August 15, the Japanese government issued a statement declaring they would accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, and on September 2, U. Although more than 1 million African Americans served in the war to defeat Nazism and fascism, they did so in segregated units.

The same discriminatory Jim Crow policies that were rampant in American society were reinforced by the U. Black servicemen rarely saw combat and were largely relegated to labor and supply units that were commanded by white officers.

There were several African American units that proved essential in helping to win World War II, with the Tuskegee Airmen being among the most celebrated. But the Red Ball Express, the truck convoy of mostly Black drivers were responsible for delivering essential goods to General George S. Yet, despite their role in defeating fascism, the fight for equality continued for African American soldiers after the World War II ended.

They remained in segregated units and lower-ranking positions, well into the Korean War , a few years after President Truman signed an executive order to desegregate the U. World War II proved to be the deadliest international conflict in history, taking the lives of 60 to 80 million people, including 6 million Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Civilians made up an estimated million deaths from the war, while military comprised 21 to 25 million of those lost during the war. Millions more were injured, and still more lost their homes and property. The legacy of the war would include the spread of communism from the Soviet Union into eastern Europe as well as its eventual triumph in China, and the global shift in power from Europe to two rival superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union—that would soon face off against each other in the Cold War.

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Food, gas and clothing were rationed. The Japanese forces met little resistance and devastated the harbor. This attack resulted in 8 battleships either sunk or damaged, 3 light cruisers and 3 destroyers sunk as well as damage to some auxiliaries and aircraft either damaged or destroyed.

Japan lost only 29 aircraft and their crews and five midget submarines. The survival of these assets have led many to consider this attack a catastrophic long term strategic blunder for Japan. The following day, the United States declared war on Japan. Simultaneously to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan also attacked U.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Germany declared war on the United States on 11 December , even though it was not obliged to do so under the Tripartite Pact of Hitler made the declaration in the hopes that Japan would support him by attacking the Soviet Union.

Japan did not oblige him, and this diplomatic move proved a catastrophic blunder which gave President Franklin D. Roosevelt the pretext needed for the United States joining the fight in Europe with full commitment and with no meaningful opposition from Congress. Some historians mark this moment as another major turning point of the war with Hitler provoking a grand alliance of powerful nations, most prominently the UK, the USA and the USSR, who could wage powerful offensives on both East and West simultaneously.

Simultaneous with the dawn raid on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese carried out an invasion of Malaya, landing troops at Kota Bharu on the east coast, supported by land based aircraft from bases in Vietnam and Taiwan.

The British attempted to oppose the landings by dispatching Force Z, comprising the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse, with their escorting destroyers, from the naval base in Singapore, but this force was intercepted and destroyed by bombers before even reaching their objective.

The Japanese were even using tanks, which the British had thought would not be able to penetrate the jungles but they were wrong. During a short two week campaign the Japanese crossed the Straits of Johor by amphibious assault and conducted a series of sharp battles, notably the battle of Kent Ridge when the Royal Malay Regiment put up a brave but futile effort to stem the tide.

Singapore fell on 15 February and with its fall, Japan was now able to control the sea approaches from the Indian Ocean through the Malacca Straits. The natural resources of the Malay peninsula, in particular rubber plantations and tin mines, were now in the hands of the Japanese.

Other Allied possessions, especially in the oil rich East Indies Indonesia were also swiftly captured, and all organised resistance effectively ceased, with attention now shifting to events closer to Midway, the Solomon Islands, the Bismark Sea and New Guinea. Following the attack on Pearl Harbour, the US military sought to strike back at Japan, and a plan was formulated to bomb Tokyo. As Tokyo could not be reached by land based bombers, it was decided to use an aircraft carrier to launch the attack close to Japanese waters.

The raid achieved little strategically, but was a tremendous morale booster in the dark days of It also led to the decision by the Japanese military to attack the only logical base of the attackers, the tiny atoll of Midway.

A powerful force of warships, with four large fleet carriers at its core Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu and Soryu attacked Midway. This was a devastating blow to the Japanese and is considered the turning point of the Pacific War. The Japanese had largely roamed the Pacific Ocean, the South China Sea, the Malacca Straits and the Indian Ocean with impunity, launching raids from these same four carriers on Allied bases in these areas including Darwin, Colombo and along the Indian east coast.

With the loss of these carriers and more importantly their cadre of irreplaceable hard core highly trained naval aviators, the Japanese could no longer maintain an effective offensive and became largely defensive from then on. Island hopping was a campaign of capturing key islands in the Pacific that were used as prerequisites, or stepping stones, to the next island with the eventual destination being Japan, rather than trying to capture every island under Japanese control.

Because the key figure in this history, of course, is not Chamberlain but Adolf Hitler. By , for example, the Nazis were planning for the German air force to be larger than any previous air fleet in the world — larger even than the eventual size of the American air force at the end of the Second World War. On this podcast, historian and journalist Tim Bouverie explores the failed diplomacy that led to World War Two and the Nazi domination of Europe:.

This is a man for whom politics is drama, a tragic drama that may not have a happy end. And so he is willing to take risks that he thinks are inescapable even if the odds are very highly stacked against Germany. The underlying, long-term cause of the conflict was a settlement at the end of the First World War which left Germans deeply aggrieved, both at the loss of their territory and the massive reparations the Allies demanded.

And I think there is a complex set of answers there. Adolf Hitler also ran several false flag operations such as the Gleiwitz incident, where he dressed his own men in Polish uniforms and ordered them to attack German stations.

Needless to say, the Germans believed that Germany had to retaliate and that war with Poland was justified. This article is part of our larger educational resource on World War Two.