World War 2
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The war becomes global

German soldiers in the Soviet Union, 1941In late June, Germany, along with other European Axis members and Finland, invaded the Soviet Union. They made significant gains into Soviet territory, a inflicting large numbers of casualties, and by the start of December had almost reached Moscow, with only the besieged cities of Leningrad and Sevastopol behind their front-lines left unconquered.  With the onset of a fierce Soviet winter though, the Axis offensive was ground to a halt and the Soviets launched a counter-offensive using reserve troops brought up from the border near Japanese Manchukuo.

Following the German attack on the Soviets, the United Kingdom began to regroup. In July, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union formed a military alliance against Germany and shortly after jointly invaded Iran to secure the Persian Corridor and Iran's oilfields.  In August, the United Kingdom and United States jointly issued the Atlantic Charter, a vision for a post-war world which included "the right of all peoples to choose their form of government".  In November, Commonwealth forces launched a counter-offensive in the desert, reclaiming all gains the Germans and Italians had made.

In Asia, Japan was preparing for war. The Imperial General Headquarters plan was to create a large perimeter stretching into the Central Pacific in order to facilitate a defensive war while exploiting the resources of Southeast Asia; to prevent intervention while securing the perimeter it was further planned to neutralize the United States Pacific Fleet on the outset.  In preparation, Japan seized military control of southern Indochina in July, 1941; an action the United States, United Kingdom and other western governments responded to by freezing all Japanese assets.   On December 7th Japan attacked British, Dutch and American holdings with near simultaneous offensives against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific, including an attack on the American naval base of Pearl Harbor.

These actions prompted the United States, United Kingdom, China, and other Western Allies to declare war on Japan. Italy, Germany, and the other members of the Tripartite Pact responded by declaring war on the United States. In January, the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union and China, along with twenty-two smaller or exiled governments, issued the Declaration by United Nations, affirming the Atlantic Charter and formalizing their alliance against the Axis Powers. The Soviet Union did not adhere fully to the declaration though, as they maintained their neutrality agreement with Japan and exempted themselves from the principle of self-determination.

British soldiers surrendering at SingaporeThe Axis Powers, however, were able to continue their offensives. Japan had almost fully conquered Southeast Asia with minimal losses by the end of April, 1942, chasing the Allies out of Burma and taking large numbers of prisoners in the Philippines, Malaya, Dutch East Indies and Singapore.    They further bombed the Allied naval base at Darwin, Australia and sunk significant Allied warships not only at Pearl Harbor, but also in the South China Sea, Java Sea and Indian Ocean.   The only real successes against Japan were a repulsion of their renewed attack on Changsha in early January, 1942, and a psychological strike from a bombing raid on Japan's capital Tokyo in April.

Germany was able to regain the initiative as well. Exploiting American inexperience with submarine warfare, the German Navy sunk significant resources near the American Atlantic coast.   In the desert, they launched an offensive in January, pushing the British back to positions at the Gazala Line by early February.   In the Soviet Union, the Soviet's winter counter-offensive had ended by March.   In both the desert and the Soviet Union, there followed a temporary lull in combat which Germany used to prepare for their upcoming offensives.

The tide turns

American aircraft attacking a Japanese cruiser at MidwayIn early May, Japan initiated operations to capture Port Moresby via amphibious assault and thus sever the line of communications between the United States and Australia. The Allies, however, intercepted and turned back Japanese naval forces, preventing the invasion.  Japan's next plan, motivated by the earlier bombing on Tokyo, was to seize the Midway Atoll as this would seal a gap in their perimeter defenses, provide a forward base for further operations, and lure American carriers into battle to be eliminated; as a diversion, Japan would also send forces to occupy the Aleutian Islands.   In early June, Japan put their operations into action but the Americans, having broken Japanese naval codes in late May, were fully aware of the Japanese plans and force dispositions and used this knowledge to achieve a decisive victory over the Imperial Japanese Navy.   With their capacity for amphibious assault greatly diminished as a result of the Midway battle, Japan chose to focus on an overland campaign on the Territory of Papua in another attempt to capture Port Moresby.   For the Americans, they planned their next move against Japanese positions in the southern Solomon Islands, primarily against the island of Guadalcanal, as a first step towards capturing Rabaul, the primary Japanese base in Southeast Asia.   Both plans started in July, but by mid-September the battle for Guadalcanal took priority for the Japanese, and troops in New Guinea were ordered to withdraw from the Port Moresby area to the northern part of the island.  Guadalcanal soon became a focal point for both sides with heavy commitments of troops and ships in a battle of attrition. By the start of 1943, the Japanese were defeated on the island and withdrew their troops.

In Burma, Commonwealth forces mounted two operations. The first, an offensive into the Arakan region in late 1942 went disastrously, forcing a retreat back to India by May of 1943.   The second was the insertion of irregular forces behind Japanese front-lines in February which, by the end of April, had achieved dubious results.

Soviet soldiers at StalingradOn the German's eastern front, they launched their main summer offensive against southern Russia in June, 1942, after defeating Soviet offensives in the Kerch Peninsula and at Kharkov in the previous month.   By mid-November the Germans had nearly taken Stalingrad in bitter street fighting when the Soviets began their second winter counter-offensive, starting with an encirclement of German forces at Stalingrad  and an assault on the Rzhev salient near Moscow, though the latter failed disastrously.   By early February, the German Army had taken tremendous losses; their troops at Stalingrad had been forced to surrender and the front-line had been pushed back beyond its position prior to their summer offensive. In mid-February, after the Soviet push had tapered off, the Germans launched another attack on Kharkov, creating a salient in their front-line around the Russian city of Kursk.

In the west, concerns that the Japanese might utilize bases in Vichy-held Madagascar caused the British to invade the island in early May, 1942.  This success was off set soon after by an Axis offensive in Libya which pushed the Allies back into Egypt until Axis forces were stopped at El Alamein.   On the Continent, Allied commandos had conducted a series of increasingly ambitious raids on strategic targets, culminating in the a disastrous amphibious raid on the German held port of Dieppe.   In August the Allies succeeded in repelling a second attack against El Alamein and, at a high cost, managed to get desperately needed supplies to the besieged Malta.  A few months later the Allies commenced an attack of their own in Egypt, dislodging the Axis forces and beginning a drive west across Libya.  This was followed up shortly after by an Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa which resulted in the region joining the Allies.    Hitler responded to the defection by ordering the occupation of Vichy France, though the Vichy Admiralty managed to scuttle their fleet to prevent its capture by German forces.  The now pincered Axis forces in Africa withdrew into Tunisia, which was conquered by the Allies by May, 1943.

Allies gain momentum

U.S. soldiers in the Solomon IslandsFollowing the Guadalcanal Campaign, the Allies initiated several operations against Japan. In May, 1943, American forces were sent to eliminate Japanese forces from the Aleutians,  and soon after began major operations to isolate Rabaul by capturing surrounding islands, and to breach the Japanese Central Pacific perimeter at the Gilbert and Marshall Islands.  By the end of March, 1944, the Allies had completed both of these objectives, and additionally neutralized another major Japanese base in the Caroline Islands. In April, the Allies then launched an operation to retake Western New Guinea.

In mainland Asia, the Japanese launched two major offensives. The first, started in March, 1944, was against British positions in Assam, India  and soon led to Japanese forces besieging Commonwealth positions at Imphal and Kohima;  by May however, other Japanese forces were being besieged in Myitkyina by Chinese forces which had invaded Northern Burma in late 1943.   The second was in China, with the goal of destroying China's main fighting forces, securing railways between Japanese-held territory, and capturing Allied airfields.  By June the Japanese had conquered the province of Henan and begun a renewed attack against Changsha in the Hunan province.

In the Mediterranean, Allied forces launched an invasion of Sicily in early July, 1943. The attack on Italian soil, compounded with previous failures, resulted in the ousting and arrest of Mussolini later that month.  The Allies soon followed up with an invasion of the Italian mainland in early September, following an armistice with the Allies.  When this armistice was made public on September 8th, Germany responded by disarming Italian forces, seizing military control of Italian areas, and setting up a series of defensive lines.  On September 12th, German special forces further rescued Mussolini who then soon established a new client state in German occupied Italy.   The Allies fought through several lines until reaching the main German defensive line in mid-November.  In January, 1944, the Allies launched a series of attacks against the line at Monte Cassino and attempted to outflank it with landings at Anzio. By late May both of these offensives had succeeded and, at the expense of allowing several German divisions to retreat, on June 4th Rome was captured.

A Soviet tank during the Battle of KurskGerman operations in the Atlantic also suffered. By May 1943, German submarine losses were so high that the naval campaign was temporarily called to a halt as Allied counter-measures became increasingly effective.

In the Soviet Union, the Germans spent the spring and early summer of 1943 making preparations for a large offensive in the region of Kursk; the Soviets anticipated such an action though and spent their time fortifying the area.  On July 4th, the Germans launched their attack, though only about a week later Hitler cancelled the operation.   The Soviets were then able to mount a massive counter-offensive and, by June 1944, had largely expelled Axis forces from the Soviet Union and made incursions into Romania.

In November, 1943, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo and then with Joseph Stalin in Tehran. At the former conference, the post-war return of Japanese territory was determined and in the latter, it was agreed that the Western Allies would invade Europe in 1944 and that the Soviet Union would declare war on Japan within three months of Germany's defeat.    next