The Second World War

The story

The road to war

The Second World War did not break out suddenly. It was prepared by the mistakes made after the previous war: the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 had left Germany angry and humiliated; the economic crisis of 1929 had brought millions of unemployed, and many Germans had believed the promises of Adolf Hitler, who became chancellor in 1933. Hitler wanted to rearm Germany, take back the lost territories and create a great German empire.

Little by little Hitler took everything he wanted. In 1936 he sent soldiers into the Rhineland, a demilitarised zone; in March 1938 he annexed Austria; in September 1938, at the Munich conference, he obtained from Britain and France part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, in exchange for a promise not to ask for anything more. The western governments, who wanted to avoid another war, hoped that this would be enough. It was the policy of “appeasement”, that is, giving way. But in March 1939 Hitler occupied the rest of the country.

1 September 1939

On 23 August 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union, sworn enemies, surprisingly signed a non-aggression pact, with a secret agreement to divide Poland. A week later, at dawn on 1 September, the German army invaded Poland using a very fast tactic of tanks and aeroplanes, called “lightning war” (Blitzkrieg). On 3 September Britain and France, allies of Poland, declared war on Germany. On 17 September the Soviet Union attacked Poland from the east. In less than a month Poland no longer existed as an independent state.

The war spreads

In the spring of 1940 the Germans attacked in the west: they invaded Denmark and Norway, then the Netherlands, Belgium and France. A large British and French army was surrounded on the coast at Dunkirk, and in a few days almost 340,000 soldiers were carried to safety in England by an improvised fleet of ships and small boats. France fell in June. On 10 June 1940, convinced that the war was almost won, Mussolini declared war on France and Britain.

Britain, led by Winston Churchill, stood alone. In the summer and autumn of 1940 the German air force tried to destroy the British air force and then to bomb London and other cities, but the British pilots held out: this was the Battle of Britain. Hitler gave up the invasion. On 22 June 1941 Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, despite the pact, and the war moved east with immense battles.

A world conflict

On 7 December 1941 Japan, which had been fighting in China for years, made a surprise attack on the American base at Pearl Harbor, in the Hawaiian Islands. The United States entered the war, with Britain and the Soviet Union, against Germany, Italy and Japan. It was now truly a world war, fought in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, on land, at sea and in the air.

The turning point and the end

In 1942–43 things changed: the Soviets held out and won at Stalingrad, the British at El Alamein, in Africa, the Americans at Midway, in the Pacific. In July 1943 the Allies landed in Sicily, Mussolini fell, and on 8 September the armistice, secretly signed on 3 September, was announced. The country was split in two, with Germany occupying the centre and north, while the Allies advanced in the south; the Resistance was born too. On 6 June 1944, “D-Day”, the Allies landed in Normandy, and in 1945 they crushed Germany from west and east. Hitler killed himself on 30 April, and Germany surrendered on 8 May.

In Asia the war went on until August: on 6 and 9 August 1945 the Americans dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrendered and on 2 September 1945 signed the surrender. The war was over.