World War II
From the Call of Duty Wiki
World War II (abbreviated WWII or WW2), also known as the Second World War and the Second Great War, was a global military conflict, the joining of what had initially been two separate conflicts. The first began in Asia in 1937 as the Second Sino-Japanese War; the other began in Europe in 1939 with the German invasion of Poland.
This global conflict split the majority of the world's nations into two opposing military alliances: the Allies on one side, and the Axis powers on the other. It involved the mobilization of over 100 million military personnel, making it the most widespread war in history, and placed the participants in a state of total war, erasing the distinction between civil and military resources. This resulted in the complete activation of a nation's economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities for the purposes of the war effort. 62 million people, the majority of them civilians, were killed, making it the deadliest conflict in human history. The financial cost of the war is estimated at about 1944 US$1 trillion worldwide, making it the most costly war in capital as well as lives.
The Allies were victorious, and, as a result, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as the world's leading superpowers. This set the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 45 years. The United Nations was formed in hopes of preventing another such conflict. The self determination spawned by the war accelerated decolonization movements in Asia and Africa, while Europe itself began moving toward integration.
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[edit] Cause of the War
The seeds of World War II were sown with the aftermath of World War I and the almost complete neutering of Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. In 1922 Benito Mussolini and his fascists took control of Italy and set the model for Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party. Hitler's rise to power was aided by the civil unrest caused by the Great Depression, and this combined with his charismatic and polemic speeches resulted in growing support for the Nazis. After several incidents, including the burning of the Reichstag and the Enabling Act of 1933, the Weimar Republic was dissolved and Hitler took power in Germany.
Because of their expansionist views, Hitler and Mussolini began to re-militarize and become increasingly hostile. Mussolini soon conquered many parts of North Africa, while both Italy and Germany actively supported General Franco during the Spanish Civil War against the Second Spanish Republic (which was supported by the Soviet Union). Hitler then broke the Treaty of Versailles by increasing the size of Germany's military, and re-militarized the Rhineland. He started his own expansion by annexing Austria and sought the same against the German-speaking regions of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland.
The British and French governments followed a policy of appeasement in order to avoid military confrontation after the high cost of the First World War. This policy culminated in the Munich Agreement in 1938, which would give the Sudetenland to Germany as lebensraum or "living space" in exchange for Germany making no further territorial claims in Europe; British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain famously declared "Peace for our time" after the signing of the Agreement. However, in March 1939, Germany disregarded the agreement and annexed the remainder of Czechoslovakia. Mussolini, following suit, then annexed Albania in April.
The failure of the Munich Agreement showed that negotiations with Hitler could not be trusted, and that his aspirations for dominance in Europe went beyond anything that the United Kingdom and France could handle.
[edit] The Second Great War
On September 1939, Germany, with the aid of Slovakia, invaded Poland, and World War II broke out. The United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany in retaliation for its invasion of Poland. During the winter of 1939/1940 there was little indication of hostilities since neither side was willing to engage the other directly.
In 1940, Germany captured Denmark and Norway in the spring, and followed this with the capture of France and the Low Countries in the early summer. The United Kingdom was then targeted; Germany attempted to cut the island off from supplies and obtain air superiority in order to allow invasion. Germany never got to attack, but the Germans continued to bomb the British mainland throughout the war.
Unable to engage the German forces on the continent, the United Kingdom concentrated on combating German and Italian forces in the Mediterranean Basin. It had limited success, however, because it failed to prevent the Axis conquest of the Balkans and fought indecisively in the Western Desert Campaign. It had greater success in the Mediterranean Sea, causing severe damage to the Italian Navy.
On 1941, the war expanded dramatically when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June, bringing the Soviet Union into alliance with the United Kingdom. The German attack started strong, overrunning great tracts of Soviet territory, but began to stall by the winter.
On December 1941, the war again expanded when Japan, already into its fifth year of war with China, launched near-simultaneous attacks against the United States and the British in Southeast Asia. Four days later, Germany declared war on the United States. This brought the United States and Japan into the greater conflict and turned previously separate Asian and European wars into a single global one.
In 1942, though Axis forces continued to make gains, the tide began to turn. Japan suffered its first major defeat against American forces in the Battle of Midway, German forces in Africa were being pushed back by Anglo-American forces, and Germany's summer offensive in the Soviet Union had ground to a halt.
In 1943, Germany first suffered devastating losses against the Soviets at Stalingrad, and then again at Kursk. Axis forces were completely expelled from Africa, and Allied forces had chased them up into Italy. The Japanese continued to lose ground as the American forces seized island after island in the Pacific Ocean.
In 1944, the outcome of the war was becoming clearly unfavorable for the Axis. Germany became boxed in as the Soviet offensive became a juggernaut in the east, pushing the Germans out of Russia and pressing into Poland and Romania; in the west, the Western Allies invaded mainland Europe soon liberating France and the low countries and soon got to Germany's western borders. Japan launched a successful major offensive in China, in the Pacific, their navy suffered continued heavy losses as American forces captured airfields within bombing range of Tokyo.
In 1945, the war ended. In Europe, a final German counter-attack in the west failed, and Soviet forces overran Berlin by May, forcing the Germans to surrender. In Asia, American forces fought hard earned victories in the Japanese islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa while British forces in Southeast Asia finally managed to get rid of the Japanese forces. Unwilling to surrender, the Japanese finally capitulated after the Soviet Union invaded Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state, and the United States dropped two atomic bombs: "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, and "Fat Man" on Nagasaki, which finally marked the complete end of the war.
[edit] Results
The United Nations (UN) was formed as a direct result of the war. The cold war between the Western Allies and the USSR started. Much of Eastern Europe was annexed by Russia, while Poland and also the Eastern half of Germany was also taken by Russia, while the rest of the Allies took the Western half of the country.
[edit] Factions
[edit] Allied Powers
- Main article: Allied Powers
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Canada
- China
- India
- Australia
- New Zealand
- South Africa
- France
- Soviet Union
- Poland
- Yugoslavia
- Brazil
- Greece
[edit] Axis Powers
- Main article: Axis Powers
- Nazi Germany
- Italy
- Japan
- Finland
- Hungary
- Bulgaria
- Romania
- Croatia
[edit] Call of Duty games
World War II is the war played in every Call of Duty game, with the exception of Call of Duty 4 and the new release Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Call of Duty 1, 2 and 3 focus upon the European theatre. Call of Duty World at War focuses on the U.S.M.C. in the Pacific theatre and the Red Army in the European theatre.
