The devastation of the Great War (as World War I was known
at the time) had greatly destabilized Europe, and in many respects, World War
II grew out of issues left unresolved by that earlier conflict. In June 1914, a
Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the
Austro-Hungarian throne. Austria-Hungary then declared war on Serbia, and
hostilities rapidly escalated. Soon, all the great European powers were drawn
into the conflict, including the Russian Empire on the side of the Serbs, and
the empires of Germany and Ottoman Turkey joining Austria-Hungary.
For the first year and a half of the war, the conflict
remained confined to Europe, as the great armies of Germany, France, and Russia
fought back and forth across Belgium and northeastern France without gaining a
decisive advantage. Then in early 1915, the Ottoman Empire entered the war on
the side of the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary), opening up a new
front in the Middle East. In April 1915, the Allies (principally France,
Russia, and Britain) landed troops at the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey with
the goal of capturing the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (now Istanbul) and
opening up a supply route to Russia through the Dard
why did world war II start
The primary cause of World War II was the rise of the Nazi
Party in Germany and its subsequent aggression against other European
countries. This aggression led to the outbreak of war in September 1939.
world war ii history
world war ii location
World War II was a global conflict that lasted from 1939 to
1945. It involved most of the world’s nations, including all of the great
powers, eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the
Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more
than 100 million people from more than 30 countries. In a state of “total
war”, the major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and
scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between
civilian and military resources. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including
the Holocaust (in which approximately 11 million people were killed) and the
strategic bombing of industrial and population centres (in which approximately
one million people were killed, and which included the atomic bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki), it resulted in an estimated 50 million to 85 million
fatalities. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history.
world war ii end date
The official end date of World War II is September 2, 1945,
when Japan signed the surrender agreement and capitulated.