World War II
The instability created in Europe by the First World War (1914-18) set the stage for another international conflict–World War II–which broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating. Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, rearmed the nation and signed strategic treaties with Italy and Japan to further his ambitions of world domination. Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II. Over the next six years, the conflict would take more lives and destroy more land and property around the globe than any previous war. Among the estimated 45-60 million people killed were 6 million Jews murdered in Nazi concentration camps as part of Hitler’s diabolical “Final Solution,” now known as the Holocaust.
Leading up to World War II
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 particular, political and economic instability in Germany, and lingering resentment over the harsh terms imposed by the Versailles Treaty, fueled the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and National Socialist German Workers’ Party, abbreviated as NSDAP in German and the Nazi Party in English..
After becoming Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Hitler swiftly consolidated power, anointing himself Führer (supreme leader) in 1934. Obsessed with the idea of the superiority of the “pure” German race, which he called “Aryan,” Hitler believed that war was the only way to gain the necessary “Lebensraum,” or living space, for the German race to expand. In the mid-1930s, he secretly began the rearmament of Germany, a violation of the Versailles Treaty. After signing alliances with Italy and Japan against the Soviet Union, Hitler sent troops to occupy Austria in 1938 and the following year annexed Czechoslovakia. Hitler’s open aggression went unchecked, as the United States and Soviet Union were concentrated on internal politics at the time, and neither France nor Britain (the two other nations most devastated by the Great War) were eager for confrontation.
Outbreak of World War II (1939)
In late August 1939, Hitler and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, which incited a frenzy of worry in London and Paris. Hitler had long planned an invasion of Poland, a nation to which Great Britain and France had guaranteed military support if it were attacked by Germany. The pact with Stalin meant that Hitler would not face a war on two fronts once he invaded Poland, and would have Soviet assistance in conquering and dividing the nation itself. On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland from the west; two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany, beginning World War II.
On September 17, Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east. Under attack from both sides, Poland fell quickly, and by early 1940 Germany and the Soviet Union had divided control over the nation, according to a secret protocol appended to the Nonaggression Pact. Stalin’s forces then moved to occupy the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and defeated a resistant Finland in the Russo-Finish War. During the six months following the invasion of Poland, the lack of action on the part of Germany and the Allies in the west led to talk in the news media of a “phony war.” At sea, however, the British and German navies faced off in heated battle, and lethal German U-boat submarines struck at merchant shipping bound for Britain, sinking more than 100 vessels in the first four months of World War II.
World War II in the West (1940-41)
On April 9, 1940, Germany simultaneously invaded Norway and occupied Denmark, and the war began in earnest. On May 10, German forces swept through Belgium and the Netherlands in what became known as “blitzkrieg,” or lightning war. Three days later, Hitler’s troops crossed the Meuse River and struck French forces at Sedan, located at the northern end of the Maginot Line, an elaborate chain of fortifications constructed after World War I and considered an impenetrable defensive barrier. In fact, the Germans broke through the line with their tanks and planes and continued to the rear, rendering it useless. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was evacuated by sea from Dunkirk in late May, while in the south French forces mounted a doomed resistance. With France on the verge of collapse, Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini formed an alliance with Hitler, the Pact of Steel, and Italy declared war against France and Britain on June 10.
On June 14, German forces entered Paris; a new government formed by Marshal Philippe Petain (France’s hero of World War I) requested an armistice two nights later. France was subsequently divided into two zones, one under German military occupation and the other under Petain’s government, installed at Vichy France. Hitler now turned his attention to Britain, which had the defensive advantage of being separated from the Continent by the English Channel.
To pave the way for an amphibious invasion (dubbed Operation Sea Lion), German planes bombed Britain extensively beginning in September 1940 until May 1941, known as the Blitz, including night raids on London and other industrial centers that caused heavy civilian casualties and damage. The Royal Air Force (RAF) eventually defeated the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) in the Battle of Britain, and Hitler postponed his plans to invade. With Britain’s defensive resources pushed to the limit, Prime Minister Winston Churchill began receiving crucial aid from the U.S. under the Lend-Lease Act, passed by Congress in early 1941.
Hitler vs. Stalin: Operation Barbarossa (1941-42)
By early 1941, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria had joined the Axis, and German troops overran Yugoslavia and Greece that April. Hitler’s conquest of the Balkans was a precursor for his real objective: an invasion of the Soviet Union, whose vast territory would give the German master race the “Lebensraum” it needed. The other half of Hitler’s strategy was the extermination of the Jews from throughout German-occupied Europe. Plans for the “Final Solution” were introduced around the time of the Soviet offensive, and over the next three years more than 4 million Jews would perish in the death camps established in occupied Poland.
On June 22, 1941, Hitler ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union, codenamed Operation Barbarossa. Though Soviet tanks and aircraft greatly outnumbered the Germans’, Russian aviation technology was largely obsolete, and the impact of the surprise invasion helped Germans get within 200 miles of Moscow by mid-July. Arguments between Hitler and his commanders delayed the next German advance until October, when it was stalled by a Soviet counteroffensive and the onset of harsh winter weather.
World War II in the Pacific (1941-43)
With Britain facing Germany in Europe, the United States was the only nation capable of combating Japanese aggression, which by late 1941 included an expansion of its ongoing war with China and the seizure of European colonial holdings in the Far East. On December 7, 1941, 360 Japanese aircraft attacked the major U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, taking the Americans completely by surprise and claiming the lives of more than 2,300 troops. The attack on Pearl Harbor served to unify American public opinion in favor of entering World War II, and on December 8 Congress declared war on Japan with only one dissenting vote. Germany and the other Axis Powers promptly declared war on the United States.
After a long string of Japanese victories, the U.S. Pacific Fleet won the Battle of Midway in June 1942, which proved to be a turning point in the war. On Guadalcanal, one of the southern Solomon Islands, the Allies also had success against Japanese forces in a series of battles from August 1942 to February 1943, helping turn the tide further in the Pacific. In mid-1943, Allied naval forces began an aggressive counterattack against Japan, involving a series of amphibious assaults on key Japanese-held islands in the Pacific. This “island-hopping” strategy proved successful, and Allied forces moved closer to their ultimate goal of invading the mainland Japan.
Toward Allied Victory in World War II (1943-45)
In North Africa, British and American forces had defeated the Italians and Germans by 1943. An Allied invasion of Sicily and Italy followed, and Mussolini’s government fell in July 1943, though Allied fighting against the Germans in Italy would continue until 1945.
On the Eastern Front, a Soviet counteroffensive launched in November 1942 ended the bloody Battle of Stalingrad, which had seen some of the fiercest combat of World War II. The approach of winter, along with dwindling food and medical supplies, spelled the end for German troops there, and the last of them surrendered on January 31, 1943.
On June 6, 1944–celebrated as “D-Day”–the Allies began a massive invasion of Europe, landing 156,000 British, Canadian and American soldiers on the beaches of Normandy, France. In response, Hitler poured all the remaining strength of his army into Western Europe, ensuring Germany’s defeat in the east. Soviet troops soon advanced into Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania, while Hitler gathered his forces to drive the Americans and British back from Germany in the Battle of the Bulge (December 1944-January 1945), the last major German offensive of the war.
An intensive aerial bombardment in February 1945 preceded the Allied land invasion of Germany, and by the time Germany formally surrendered on May 8, Soviet forces had occupied much of the country. Hitler was already dead, having died by suicide on April 30 in his Berlin bunker.
World War II Ends (1945)
At the Potsdam Conference of July-August 1945, U.S. President Harry S. Truman (who had taken office after Roosevelt’s death in April), Churchill and Stalin discussed the ongoing war with Japan as well as the peace settlement with Germany. Post-war Germany would be divided into four occupation zones, to be controlled by the Soviet Union, Britain, the United States and France. On the divisive matter of Eastern Europe’s future, Churchill and Truman acquiesced to Stalin, as they needed Soviet cooperation in the war against Japan.
Heavy casualties sustained in the campaigns at Iwo Jima (February 1945) and Okinawa (April-June 1945), 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.S. General Douglas MacArthur accepted Japan’s formal surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
African American Servicemen Fight Two Wars
A tank and crew from the 761st Tank Battalion in front of the Prince Albert Memorial in Coburg, Germany, 1945.
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World War II exposed a glaring paradox within the United States Armed Forces. 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.S. military. 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. Patton’s troops on the front lines in France. The all-Black 761st Tank Battalion fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and the 92 Infantry Division, fought in fierce ground battles in Italy. 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.S. military in 1948.
READ MORE: Black Americans Who Served in WWII Faced Discrimination Abroad and at Home
World War II Casualties and Legacy
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 50-55 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.
Photo Galleries
After German soldiers swept through Belgium and Northern France in a blitzkrieg in May of 1940, all communication and transport between Allied forces were cut, leaving thousands of troops stranded. Soldiers waded through the water hoping to escape by rescue vessels, military ships, or civilian ships. More than 338,000 soldiers were saved during what would be later called, the “Miracle of Dunkirk.”
On December 7, 1941, the U.S. naval base Pearl Harbor was the scene of a devastating surprise attack by Japanese forces that would push the U.S. into entering WWII. Japanese fighter planes destroyed nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight battleships, and over 300 airplanes. More than 2,400 Americans (including civilians) died in the attack, with another 1,000 Americans wounded.
Women stepped in to fill the empty civilian and military jobs once only seen as jobs for men. They replaced men in assembly lines, factories and defense plants, leading to iconic images like Rosie the Riveter that inspired strength, patriotism and liberation for women. This photograph was taken by photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White, one of the first four photographers hired for Life Magazine.
This photograph, taken in 1942 by Life Magazine photographer Gabriel Benzur, shows Cadets in training for the U.S. Army Air Corps, who would later become the famous Tuskegee Airmen. The Tuskegee Airmen were the first black military aviators and helped encourage the eventual integration of the U.S. armed forces.
In April 1943, residents of the Warsaw ghetto staged a revolt to prevent deportation to extermination camps. However, in the end the Nazi forces destroyed many of the bunkers the residents were hiding in, killing nearly 7,000 people. The 50,000 ghetto captives who survived, like this group pictured here, were sent to labor and extermination camps.
This 1944 photograph shows a pile of remaining bones at the Nazi concentration camp of Majdanek, the second largest death camp in Poland after Auschwitz.
This photograph titled “Taxis to Hell- and Back- Into the Jaws of Death” was taken on June 6, 1944 during Operation Overlord by Robert F. Sargent, United States Coast Guard chief petty officer and “photographer’s mate.”
On January 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz and found approximately 7,6000 Jewish detainees who had been left behind. Here, a doctor of the 322nd Rifle Division of the Red Army helps take survivors out of Auschwitz. They stand at the entrance, where its iconic sign reads “Arbeit Mecht Frei,” (“Work Brings Freedom”). The Soviet Army also discovered mounds of corpses and hundreds of thousands of personal belongings.
This Pulitzer Prize winning photo has become synonymous with American victory. Taken during the Battle of Iwo Jima by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, it is one of the most reproduced, and copied, photographs in history.
The Battle of Iwo Jima image was so powerful in it’s time that it even caused copycats to stage similar images. This photograph was taken on April 30, 1945, during the Battle of Berlin. Soviet soldiers took their flag in victory and raised it over the rooftops of the bombed-out Reichstag.
On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay dropped the world’s first atom bomb over the city of Hiroshima. The bomb exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima with an impact equal to 12-15,000 tons of TNT. This photograph captured the mushroom cloud. Approximately 80,000 people died immediately, with tens of thousands more dying later due to radiation exposure. In the end, the bomb wiped out 90 percent of the city.
Sailor George Mendonsa saw dental assistant Greta Zimmer Friedman for the first time among the celebration at V-J Day. He grabbed and kissed her. This photograph would go on to become one of the most well-known in history, while also stirring up controversy. Many women have claimed to be the nurse over the years, some saying it depicts a nonconsensual moment, even sexual harassment.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) and Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965) speak on the lawn of the President's villa in Casablanca, Morocco during a January 1943 conference.
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Sir Winston Churchill served as Prime Minister of Britain from 1940-1945 and again from 1951-1955.
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Prime Minister Winston Churchill speaks to D-Day veterans in Caen, France on July 22, 1944.
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Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, American President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill seated together during the Yalta Conference, February 4-11, 1945.
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Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, serving as dictator and leader of the Nazi Party, or National Socialist German Workers Party, for most of his time in power.
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A January 1975 photo of Spanish General Francisco Franco (1872-1975) who ruled Spain from the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in 1938 to his death.
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An October 1932 cover of the magazine Il Mattino Illustrato featuring Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), surrounded by women and children.
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Hideki Tojo (1884-1948) was prime minister of Japan from 1941-1944. He was a leading advocate of Japan's Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. After the end of World War II he was tried for war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. He was found guilty and hanged.
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On December 7, 1941 the Japanese military launched a surprise attack on the US Naval base at Pearl Harbor. The attack killed 2,403 service members and wounded 1,178 more, and sank or destroyed six U.S. ships. They also destroyed 169 U.S. Navy and Army Air Corps planes.
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Japanese torpedo bombers flew just 50 feet above the water as they fired at the U.S. ships in the harbor, while other planes strafed the decks with bullets and dropped bombs.
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A sailor stands among wrecked airplanes at Ford Island Naval Air Station as he watches the explosion of the USS Shaw.
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Smoke rises from the burning buildings on Ford Island, Pearl Harbor.
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A sailor runs for cover past flaming wreckage hit by dive bombers that had already blasted Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field at the Kaneohe Bay Naval Station.
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Smoke pouring from sinking battleship USS California (center); capsized bulk of USS Oklahoma (at right).
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The USS Arizona explodes after a Japanese attack.
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Blasted into a pile of junk by the Japanese, the battleship USS Arizona lies in the mud at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Three of the dread naught's guns, at left, project from an almost completely submerged turret. The control tower leans over at a perilous angle.
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A cork life preserver with a white canvas cover from battleship USS Arizona.
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Japanese forces trained for about a year to prepare for the attack. The Japanese attack force—which included six aircraft carriers and 420 planes—sailed from Hitokappu Bay in the Kurile Islands, on a 3,500-mile voyage to a staging area 230 miles off the Hawaiian island of Oahu.
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This December 7 file image shows an aerial view of battleships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet consumed by the flames at Pearl Harbor after 360 Japanese warplanes made the massive surprise attack.
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A damaged B-17C Flying Fortress bomber sits on the tarmac near Hangar Number 5 at Hickam Field.
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In a flooded dry dock, the destroyer, Cassin, lies partly submerged and leaning against another destroyer, the Downes. The battleship, Pennsylvania, shown in the rear, remained relatively undamaged.
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Two servicemen sit on the wreckage of a bomber, surrounded by dirt and sandbags, on Hickam Field after the Japanese attack.
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The wreckage of a Japanese torpedo plane shot down during the December 7 attack being salvaged from the bottom of Pearl Harbor on January 7, 1942.
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Military personnel pay their respects beside the mass grave of 15 officers and others killed in the bombing attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. A U.S. flag is draped over the coffins.
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May 1942: Enlisted men of the Naval Air Station at Kaneohe, Hawaii, place leis on the graves of their comrades killed in the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Graves were dug along the shore of the Pacific Ocean. Ulupa'U Crater at the Marine Corps Base Kaneohe can be seen in the background.
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As the U.S. sent troops to the front lines, artists were recruited to encourage those at home to do their part. Shown: "Defend Your Country: Enlist Now in the United States Army" recruitment poster.
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Citizens were invited to purchase war bonds and take on factory jobs to support production needs for the military.
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The private “USO” (United Service Organization) was created in 1941. During the war, the group provided soldiers with recreational options during their leave.
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To preserve resources for the war effort, posters championed carpooling to save on gas, warned against wasting food and urged people to collect scrap metal to recycle into military materials.
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Rosie the Riveter became the iconic star of a campaign aimed at recruiting female workers for defense industries during the war.
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American women entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers during the war, as male enlistment left gaping holes in the industrial labor force.
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The War Manpower Commission was an agency established by FDR in April 1942 to oversee the nation's domestic labor needs during the war. This poster encouraged women to join the workforce.
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The Red Cross recruited more than 104,000 nurses for the armed forces during World War II.
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The Marine Corps Women’s Reserve was established in early 1943 to recruit women in the heavily-taxed arm service in "all possible [non-combat] positions."
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During the war, labor and transportation shortages made it hard to harvest and move fruits and vegetables to markets. So the government encouraged citizens to plant "Victory Gardens" to grow their own produce. Nearly 20 million Americans dug in.
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Families were also encouraged to can their own vegetables. In 1943, families bought 315,000 pressure cookers (used in the process of canning), compared to 66,000 in 1942.
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The government strongly encouraged carpooling to conserve fuel for the war effort.
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It became unpatriotic, even treasonous, to drive to work alone.
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The U.S. government popularized this phrase to warn servicemen and other citizens to avoid careless talk that might undermine the war effort.
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There was constant concern that people might spill facts that could find their way into enemy hands.
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Men were admonished to be cautious around women who might be spies.
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This British propaganda poster features Nazi leader Adolf Hitler depicted as a monster.
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Blatantly racist “Tokio Kid Say” propaganda posters were posted in Douglas Aircraft Co. factories to encourage waste reduction.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) was supreme commander of the Allied forces in western Europe during World War II.
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General Dwight D. Eisenhower is shown with his staff. L to R, seated: Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur Tedder, General Eisenhower and General Sir Bernard Montgomery. L to R, standing: Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey, Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh Mallory and Lieutenant General W. Bedell Smith.
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General George S. Patton Jr. (1885-1945) distinguished himself as the commanding general of US operations in North Africa. He was an adept strategist at tank warfare, and is known for his role in the Battle of the Bulge.
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General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, commanded the Southwest Pacific in World War II (1939-1945). He's shown here in Manila, Philippines in 1945.
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General MacArthur signs the Japanese surrender document aboard the battleship, U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan, on September 2, 1945. At left is Lieutenant General A.E. Percival, British Army.
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Admiral Chester William Nimitz, shown on board his ship, served as a U.S. Naval officer and commander of the 1st Battleship Division.
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General Charles de Gaulle at Casablanca Conference 1943. De Gaulle was a soldier-turned-statesman who fought for France in exile.
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British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery commanded the Eighth Army in the Allied campaigns in Sicily and then on the Italian mainland. He then took part in the planning of Operation Overlord, the D-Day invasion of Normandy.
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Lt. General Omar Bradley commanded the 12th Army Group during World War II.
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Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germany’s Nazi Party, was one of the most powerful and notorious dictators of the 20th century.
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Himmler (1900-1945) was a German National Socialist (Nazi) politician, police administrator, and military commander. He was the head of the SS and the Nazi secret police. He established the Third Reich's first concentration camp at Dachau and organized the extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Poland.
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Joseph Goebbels served as minister of propaganda for the German Third Reich under Adolf Hitler. This picture shows Dr. Joseph Goebbels speaking at the German Socialist Convention in Berlin in 1937.
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German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (1891-1944) was given the nickname "Desert Fox" because of his success as a commander in the North African theater of World War II.
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Rudolph Hess (1894-1987) was a Nazi party leader known for his fierce loyalty to Hitler. He spend time with Hitler in Landsberg Prison where he recorded and edited Hitler's dictation of Mein Kampf.
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Hermann Goering (1893-1946) was a Nazi Party leader who established the Gestapo, the secret political police of the Nazi party. In 1934 he ceded his position as security chief to Himmler.
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Spanish General Francisco Franco (1872-1975) ruled Spain from the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in 1938 to his death. He's shown here in 1975.
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Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) was an Italian political leader who became the fascist dictator of Italy from 1925 to 1945. Here, an October 1932 cover of the magazine Il Mattino Illustrato shows Mussolini surrounded by women and children.
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Hideki Tojo (1884-1948) was prime minister of Japan from 1941-1944. He was a leading advocate of Japan's Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. He was tried for war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. He was found guilty and hanged.
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Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime set up networks of concentration camps before and during World War II to carry out a plan of genocide. Hitler's "final solution" called for the eradication of Jewish people and other "undesirables," including homosexuals, Roma and people with disabilities. The children pictured here were held at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
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Emaciated survivors in Ebensee, Austria are seen here on May 7, 1945 just a few days after their liberation. The Ebensee camp was opened by the S.S. in 1943 as a subcamp to the Mauthausen concentration camp, also in Nazi-occupied Austria. The S.S. used slave labor at the camp to build tunnels for military weapon storage. More than 16,000 prisoners were found by the U.S. 80th Infantry on May 4, 1945.
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Survivors at the Wobbelin concentration camp in northern Germany were found by the U.S. Ninth Army in May 1945. Here, one man breaks out in tears when he finds he is not leaving with the first group to be taken to the hospital.
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Survivors at Buchenwald concentration camp are shown in their barracks after liberation by the Allies in April 1945. The camp was located in a wooded area in Ettersberg, Germany, just east of Weimar. Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Prize winning author of Night, is on the second bunk from the bottom, seventh from the left.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Fifteen-year-old Ivan Dudnik was brought to Auschwitz from his home in the Oryol region of Russia by the Nazis. While being rescued after the liberation of Auschwitz, he had reportedly gone insane after witnessing mass horrors and tragedies at the camp.
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Allied troops are shown in May 1945 discovering Holocaust victims in a railroad car that did not arrive at its final destination. It was believed this car was on a journey to the Wobbelin concentration camp near Ludwigslust, Germany where many of the prisoners died along the way.
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A total of 6 million lives were lost as a result of the Holocaust. Here, a pile of human bones and skulls is seen in 1944 at the Majdanek concentration camp in the outskirts of Lublin, Poland. Majdanek was the second largest death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland after Auschwitz.
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A body is seen in a crematory oven in the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany in April 1945. This camp not only imprisoned Jews, it also included Jehovah’s Witnesses, gypsies, German military deserters, prisoners of war, and repeat criminals.
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A few of the thousands of wedding rings removed by Nazis from their victims that were kept to salvage the gold. U.S. troops found rings, watches, precious stones, eyeglasses and gold fillings in a cave adjoining the Buchenwald concentration camp on May 5, 1945.
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Auschwitz camp, as seen in April 2015. Nearly 1.3 million people were deported to the camp and more than 1.1 million perished. Although Auschwitz had the highest death rate, it also had the highest survival rate of all the killing centers.
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Battered suitcases sit in a pile in a room at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which now serves as a memorial and museum. The cases, most inscribed with each owner’s name, were taken from prisoners upon arrival at the camp.
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Prosthetic legs and crutches are a part of a permanent exhibition in the Auschwitz Museum. On July 14, 1933, the Nazi government enforced the “Law for Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases” in their attempt to achieve a purer “master” race. This called for the sterilization of people with mental illness, deformities, and a variety of other disabilities. Hitler later took it to more extreme measures and between 1940 and 1941, 70,000 disabled Austrians and Germans were murdered. Some 275,000 disabled people were murdered by the end of the war.
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A pile of footwear are also a part of the Auschwitz Museum.
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During World War II, American women entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers. The munitions industry heavily recruited women workers, as represented by the U.S. government's "Rosie the Riveter" propaganda campaign.
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Here, a woman rivets an airplane wing at a munitions factory.
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A male and a female riveter work side by side at a factory in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1942.
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Fee Perez inspects .30 caliber rifle and machine gun bullets at Remington Arms Company's Bridgeport, Connecticut, plant alongside a photo of her husband, Melburn, who is serving overseas.
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Members of a riveting team at an aircraft factory use rivet guns and bucking bars to work on a basis trainer plane wing center section.
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Women went to work on both sides of the Atlantic. This picture, taken in England, shows women working in a munitions factory.
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On June 6, 1944, more than 156,000 American, British and Canadian troops stormed 50 miles of Normandy's fiercely defended beaches in northern France in an operation that proved to be a critical turning point in World War II.
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Allied leaders Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill knew from the start of the war that a massive invasion of mainland Europe would be critical to relieve pressure from the Soviet army fighting the Nazis in the east.
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Since Operation Overlord was launched from England, the U.S. military had to ship 7 million tons of supplies to the staging area, including 450,000 tons of ammunition. Here, ammunition is shown in the town square of Morten-in-Marsh, England ahead of the invasion.
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The D-Day invasion began in the pre-dawn hours of June 6 with thousands of paratroopers landing inland on the Utah and Sword beaches in an attempt to cut off exits and destroy bridges to slow Nazi reinforcements.
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U.S. Army infantry men approaching Omaha Beach, Normandy, France on June 6, 1944. The first waves of American fighters were cut down in droves by German machine gun fire as they scrambled across the mine-riddled beach.
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At Omaha Beach, U.S. forces persisted through the day-long slog, pushing forward to a fortified seawall and then up steep bluffs to take out the Nazi artillery posts by nightfall. Shown, wounded U.S. soldiers lean against chalk cliffs after storming Omaha Beach.
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Anticipating an Allied invasion somewhere along the French coast, German forces had completed construction of the “Atlantic Wall,” a 2,400-mile line of bunkers, landmines and beach and water obstacles. Here, a land mine is blown up by Allied engineers.
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Shown are massive landings at Omaha Beach after it was secured by U.S. troops. Barrage balloons keep watch overhead for German aircraft while scores of ships unload men and materials. D-Day was the largest amphibious invasion in military history. Less than a year later, on May 7, 1945, Germany would surrender.
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in February 1942 calling for the internment of Japanese-Americans after the attacks on Pearl Harbor.
The Mochida family, pictured here, were some of the 117,000 people that would be evacuated to internment camps scattered throughout the country by that June.
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This Oakland, California grocery was owned by a Japanese-American and graduate of the University of California. The day after the Pearl Harbor attacks he put up his 'I Am An American' sign to prove his patriotism. Soon afterward, the government shut down the shop and relocated the owner to an internment camp.
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Accommodations for Japanese-Americans at the Santa Anita reception center, Los Angeles County, California. April 1942.
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The first group of 82 Japanese-Americans arrive at the Manzanar internment camp (or 'War Relocation Center') carrying their belongings in suitcases and bags, Owens Valley, California, in March 21, 1942. Manzanar was one of the first ten internment camps opened in the United States, and its peak population, before it was closed in November 1945, was over 10,000 people.
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Children of the Weill public school, from the so-called international settlement, are shown in a flag pledge ceremony in April of 1942. Those of Japanese ancestry were soon moved to War Relocation Authority centers.
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A young Japanese-American girl standing with her doll, waiting to travel with her parents to Owens Valley, during the forced relocation of Japanese-Americans under the U.S. Army war emergency order, in Los Angeles, California, April 1942.
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The last Redondo Beach residents of Japanese ancestry were forcibly moved out by truck to relocation camps.
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Crowds seen waiting for registration at Reception Centers in Santa Anita, California, April 1942.
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Japanese-Americans were interned in crowded conditions at Santa Anita.
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Risa and Yasubei Hirano pose with their son George (left) while holding a photograph of their other son, U.S. serviceman Shigera Hirano. The Hiranos were held at the Colorado River camp, and this image captures both the patriotism and the deep sadness these proud Japanese Americans felt. Shigera served in the U.S. Army in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team while his family was confined.
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An American soldier guarding a crowd of Japanese American internees at an internment camp at Manzanar, California, USA, in 1944.
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Japanese-American internees at the Gila River Relocation Center greet First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Dillon S Myer, director of the War Relocation Authority, on a tour of inspection in Rivers, Arizona.
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An atomic bomb, codenamed "Little Boy," was dropped over Hiroshima Japan on August 6, 1945. The bomb, which detonated with an energy of around 15 kilotons of TNT, was the first nuclear weapon deployed in wartime.
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The crew of the Boeing B-29 bomber, Enola Gay, which made the flight over Hiroshima to drop the first atomic bomb. Left to right kneeling; Staff Sergeant George R. Caron; Sergeant Joe Stiborik; Staff Sergeant Wyatt E. Duzenbury; Private first class Richard H. Nelson; Sergeant Robert H. Shurard. Left to right standing; Major Thomas W. Ferebee, Group Bombardier; Major Theodore Van Kirk, Navigator; Colonel Paul W. Tibbetts, 509th Group Commander and Pilot; Captain Robert A. Lewis, Airplane Commander.
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A view of the atomic bomb as it is hoisted into the bay of the Enola Gay on the North Field of Tinian airbase, North Marianas Islands, early August, 1945.
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Hiroshima in ruins after the dropping of the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. The circle indicates the target of the bomb. The bomb directly killed an estimated 80,000 people. By the end of the year, injury and radiation brought the total number of deaths to between 90,000 and 166,000.
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The plutonium bomb, nicknamed "Fat Man," is shown in transport. It would be the second nuclear bomb dropped by U.S. forces in World War II.
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An Allied correspondent stands in rubble on September 7, 1945, looking to the ruins of a cinema after the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima.
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Children in Hiroshima, Japan are shown wearing masks to combat the odor of death after the city was destroyed two months earlier.
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Survivors hospitalized in Hiroshima show their bodies covered with keloids caused by the atomic bomb.
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World War II was more destructive than any war before it. An estimated 45-60 million people lost their lives and millions more were injured. Here, Private Sam Macchia from New York City returns home, wounded in both legs, to his elated family.
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A crowd gathers in Times Square to celebrate Victory in Europe Day.
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A parish priest waves a newspaper with news of Germany's unconditional surrender to elated pupils of a Roman Catholic parochial school in Chicago.
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Merchant Marine Bill Eckert wildy impersonates Hitler as a reveler playfully chokes him amidst a crowd in Times Square during a massive V-E Day celebration.
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People crowd on top of a van during a V-E Day celebration in London.
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Patients at England's Horley Military Hospital, all severely wounded in France and Italy, celebrate V-E Day with nursing staff.
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U.S. war veterans returning home from Europe, on a converted troop ship.
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Wall Street is jammed as Financial District workers celebrate the reported end of the war in Europe. Celebrants clamber over the statue of George Washington as thousands of others stand amid falling ticker tape.
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Wounded veteran Arthur Moore looks up as he watches the ticker tape rain down from New York buildings.
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General of the Army, Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, signs the Japanese surrender document aboard the battleship, U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan, on September 2, 1945. At left is Lietenant General A.E. Percival, British Army.
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New York City June 17, 1945. Cheering and waving from the deck of the transport which brought them back to the United States today, men of the 86th Infantry Division of the third Army stand on deck of their ship while women on the dock wave to them, awaiting their arrival.
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Private B. Potts of the Middlesex Regiment makes a "V" sign from the porthole of the hospital ship "Atlantis" as he arrives home from World War II with an injury.
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A British soldier arrives home to a happy wife and son after serving in World War II.
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Sailors and Washington, D.C. residents dance the conga in Lafayette Park, waiting for President Truman to announce the surrender of Japan in World War II.
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U.S. servicemen in the sick bay of the S.S. Casablanca smile and point to a newspaper on August 15, 1945 with the headline "JAPS QUIT!" after the Japanese surrender in World War II.
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An apartment house on 107th Street in New York City is decorated for celebration at the end of World War II (V-J Day).
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A V-J Day rally in New York City's Little Italy on September 2, 1945. Local residents set fire to a heap of crates to celebrate the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II.
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Joyous American soldiers and WACS fresh from bed parade through the London night celebrating V-J Day and the end of WWII.
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A women jumps into the arms of a soldier upon his return from World War II, New York, NY, 1945.
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An American soldier with lipstick on his face after V-J day celebrations.
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The 42nd Regiment arrive back home to Hawaii on July 2, 1946. They are greeted by cheering friends and loved ones throwing leis.
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