WORLD WAR II

Never has there been a war that could have been avoided more easily than the one that has just destroyed (1939 - 1945) whatever was left of the world after the previous confrontation (1914 -1918).

When World War II began in 1939, Germany was the aggressor. Germany was later joined in June 1940, by Italy, and Japan in December 1941. The war against Japan was fought over two-thirds of the world's surface, with America and her allies taking part in vast air, land and sea battles. It turned WW II into a global conflict and ended it with the dawning of a nuclear era. Together they formed the major Axis nations and each had their own strengths and weaknesses. From 1900 until the late 1930's the armies of the world believed that mass infantry charges, heavy artillery, and static defenses could dominate and control any battlefield. But on the morning of September 1st 1939, the world was forever changed as Germany invaded Poland and executed its first "Blitzkrieg" or "Lightning attack", quickly crushing Polish resistance. The entry of France and Britain into the conflict on 3 September, marked not so much the beginning of a new war, as the beginning of a more intensive phase of a war that was already in progress. A possible opinion was that the conflict had never stopped at all during the years since 1914 when The Great War (or World War I) ended. A more moderate view, might take the outbreak of the Spanish revolt in July 1936 as the starting point. But to any informed observer it was at least clear that the struggle had waged, bloodlessly but with growing intensity, for a considerable period before the resort to armed hostilities.

World War II, global military conflict that, in terms of lives lost and material destruction, was the most devastating war in human history. It began in 1939 as a European conflict between Germany and an Anglo-French coalition but eventually widened to include most of the nations of the world. It ended in 1945, leaving a new world order dominated by the United States and the USSR.More than any previous war, World War II involved the commitment of nations' entire human and economic resources, the blurring of the distinction between combatant and noncombatant, and the expansion of the battlefield to include all of the enemy's territory. The most important determinants of its outcome were industrial capacity and personnel. In the last stages of the war, two radically new weapons were introduced: the long-range rocket and the atomic bomb. In the main, however, the war was fought with the same or improved weapons of the types used in World War I. The greatest advances were in aircraft and tanks.

A few websites with more information:

War Times Journal:
http://www.wtj.com/wars/wwtwo/

Eye Witness Reports of WWII Battles:
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/w2frm.htm

Encarta Encyclopedia Article On WWII:
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761563737/World_War_II.html

Grollier Encycopedia:
http://www.grolier.com/wwii/wwii_i.html