World War II, the largest and deadliest conflict in human history, involved more than 50 nations and was fought on land, sea and air in nearly every part of the world. Also known as the Second World War, it was caused in part by the economic crisis of the Great Depression and by political tensions left unresolved following the end of World War I.
The war began when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and raged across the globe until 1945, when Japan surrendered to the United States after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By the end of World War II, an estimated 60 to 80 million people had died, including up to 55 million civilians, and numerous cities in Europe and Asia were reduced to rubble.
Among the people killed were 6 million Jews murdered in Nazi concentration camps as part of Hitler’s diabolical “Final Solution,” now known as the Holocaust. The legacy of the war included the creation of the United Nations as a peacekeeping force and geopolitical rivalries that resulted in the Cold War.
Leading up to World War II
Did WWI Lead to WWII?
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..
Did you know? As early as 1923, in his memoir and propaganda tract "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle), Adolf Hitler had predicted a general European war that would result in "the extermination of the Jewish race in Germany."
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-Finnish 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)
Lend-Lease Act
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.
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)
The Path to Pearl Harbor
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)
Battle of Stalingrad
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
The National Archives
A tank and crew from the 761st Tank Battalion in front of the Prince Albert Memorial in Coburg, Germany, 1945.
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.
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
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.
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.
A sailor stands among wrecked airplanes at Ford Island Naval Air Station as he watches the explosion of the USS Shaw.
Smoke rises from the burning buildings on Ford Island, Pearl Harbor.
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.
Smoke pouring from sinking battleship USS California (center); capsized bulk of USS Oklahoma visible (at right).
The USS Arizona explodes after a Japanese attack.
Blasted into a pile of junk by the Japanese in the sneak raid of December 7, 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.
A cork life preserver with a white canvas cover from battleship USS Arizona after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
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.
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 a massive surprise attack.
A damaged B-17C Flying Fortress bomber sits on the tarmac near Hangar Number 5 at Hickam Field, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
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.
Two servicemen sit on the wreckage of a bomber, surrounded by dirt and sandbags, on Hickam Field after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Hawaii.
The wreckage of a Japanese torpedo plane shot down during the surprise attack on December 7 being salvaged from the bottom of Pearl Harbor, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, January 7, 1942.
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.
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 Japanese 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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A woman operating a hand drill while working on a "Vengeance" dive bomber, in Nashville, Tennessee.
A woman works on an airplane motor at the North American Aviation, Inc., plant in Inglewood, California.
A woman worker tightens the cowling for one of the motors of a B-25 bomber being assembled in the engine department of the Inglewood plant.
A group of women, with no previous industrial experience, are reconditioning used spark plugs in a converted Buick plant to produce airplane engines in Melrose Park, Illinois, 1942.
Two women workers are shown capping and inspecting tubing which goes into the manufacture of the "Vengeance" (A-31) dive bomber made at Vultee's Nashville division, Tennessee. The "Vengeance" was originally designed for the French and later adopted by the U.S. Air Force. It carried a crew of two men and was equipped with six machine guns of varying calibers.
A riveter sitting on huge piece of machinery during WWII, perfectly illustrating the Rosie the Riveter-type, at Lockheed Aircraft Corp.
Women workers at the Douglas Aircraft Company install fixtures and assemblies to a tail fuselage section of a B-17F bomber, better known as the "Flying Fortress." The high altitude heavy bomber was built to carry a crew of seven to nine men, and carried armament sufficient to defend itself on daylight missions.
Women at work on C-47 Douglas cargo transport at the Douglas Aircraft Company in Long Beach, California
A group of Black women welders kneel in coveralls and hold tools as they prepare to work on SS 'George Washington Carver,' Richmond, California, 1943.
Marcella Hart, mother of three children, works as a wiper at the at the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad roundhouse in Clinton, Iowa. She wears the iconic red bandana in "Rosie the Riveter" fashion.
A woman prepares for jobs in the Army or in industry in a camouflage class at New York University. This model has been camouflaged and photographed and she is correcting oversights detected in the camouflaging of the model defense plant.
Irma Lee McElroy, formerly an office worker, took a position at the Naval Air Base in Corpus Christi, Texas during the war. Her position was a civil service employee, and here she is seen painting the American insignia on airplane wings.
Mary Saverick stitches harnesses at the Pioneer Parachute Company Mills, in Manchester, Connecticut.
Eloise J. Ellis was appointed by civil service to be senior supervisor in the Assembly and Repairs Department at the Naval Air Base in Corpus Christi, Texas. She is said to have boosted morale in her department by arranging suitable living conditions for out-of-state women employees and by helping them with their personal problems.
Two Navy wives, Eva Herzberg and Elve Burnham, entered war work after their husbands joined the service. In a Glenview, Illinois, they assemble bands for blood transfusion bottles at Baxter Laboratories.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A pile of footwear are also a part of the Auschwitz Museum.
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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 forced into prison camps scattered throughout the country by that June.
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 forced the owner to a prison camp.
Accommodations for Japanese-Americans at the Santa Anita "reception center," Los Angeles County, California. April 1942.
The first group of 82 Japanese Americans arrive at the Manzanar "War Relocation Center" carrying their belongings in suitcases and bags, Owens Valley, California, in March 21, 1942. Manzanar was one of the first 10 prison camps opened in the United States, and its peak population, before it was closed in November 1945, was over 10,000 people.
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.
A young Japanese American girl standing with her doll, waiting to travel with her parents to Owens Valley, during the forced removal of Japanese Americans under the U.S. Army war emergency order, in Los Angeles, California, April 1942.
The last Redondo Beach residents of Japanese ancestry were forcibly moved out by truck to relocation camps.
Crowds seen waiting for registration at Reception Centers in Santa Anita, California, April 1942.
Japanese Americans were incarcerated in crowded conditions at Santa Anita.
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. Shigera served in the U.S. Army in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team while his family was incarcerated.
An American soldier guarding a crowd of Japanese American prisoners at an prisoner camp at Manzanar, California in 1944.
Japanese American prisoners 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
An Allied correspondent stands in rubble on September 7, 1945, looking to the ruins of a cinema after the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima.
Children in Hiroshima, Japan are shown wearing masks to combat the odor of death after the city was destroyed two months earlier.
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.
A parish priest waves a newspaper with news of Germany's unconditional surrender to elated pupils of a Roman Catholic parochial school in Chicago.
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.
Young people in a car celebrate victory in Europe at the end of World War II, in Baltimore, Maryland, May 8, 1945.
People crowd on top of a van during a V-E Day celebration in London.
Patients at England's Horley Military Hospital, all severely wounded in France and Italy, celebrate V-E Day with nursing staff.
U.S. war veterans returning home from Europe, on a converted troop ship.
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.
Wounded veteran Arthur Moore looks up as he watches the ticker tape rain down from New York buildings.
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.
A British soldier arrives home to a happy wife and son after serving in World War II.
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.
Soldiers hug while being lifted onto the shoulders of a crowd on VJ Day, in Newark, New Jersey, August 18, 1945.
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.
An apartment house on 107th Street in New York City is decorated for celebration at the end of World War II (V-J Day).
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.
Joyous American soldiers and WACS fresh from bed parade through the London night celebrating V-J Day and the end of WWII.
A women jumps into the arms of a soldier upon his return from World War II, New York, NY, 1945.
An American soldier with lipstick on his face after V-J day celebrations.
Soldiers celebrating victory over Japan in Honolulu, Hawaii, August 15, 1945.
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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