Lesson 15 World War II

The outbreak of the Second World War and the main battlefields

After the July 7 Incident in 1937, China's national war of resistance began. In the early morning of September 1, 1939, the German army attacked Poland in a "blitzkrieg". Poland's allies, Britain and France, were forced to declare war, and the Second World War broke out. As the war progressed, major battlefields emerged, including the Western Front in Europe, the North African Front, the Eastern Front in Europe and the Pacific Front.

In April 1940, Germany attacked Denmark and Norway in Northern Europe. In May, the German army unexpectedly entered northern France and forced the English Channel. France, which had millions of troops, was defeated in six weeks. After the German attack on France, Italy took advantage of the situation and declared war on France. Then the Germans carried out heavy bombing of Britain. British soldiers and civilians persisted in the fight.

In June 1941, Germany assembled more than 5.5 million troops, thousands of tanks and several thousand aircraft on a front of about 1,500 kilometers and launched a surprise attack on the Soviet Union. In just a few months, the Germans occupied a large part of Soviet territory, and in October, they approached Moscow. However, the Soviet army and people resisted stubbornly and won the Battle of Moscow, shattering the myth of German invincibility.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. The following day, the United States and Britain declared war on Japan. Germany and Italy also declared war on the United States. Japan also launched attacks on Southeast Asia and other regions. The Second World War reached its greatest scale. In Asia, China held most of the Japanese land forces in check and contributed greatly to the victory of the World Anti-Fascist War. The Chinese battlefield was the main battlefield in the East of the world anti-fascist war.

The establishment of the anti-fascist alliance and the turn of the war situation

In January 1942, representatives of 26 countries, including the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and China, signed the Declaration of the United States in Washington, D.C. The signatories pledged to use all their military and economic resources to fight against Germany, Japan, Italy and their subordinate countries, to cooperate with each other and never to make a truce and negotiate peace with the enemy alone. Twenty-one more countries signed the declaration.

The signing of the Declaration of the United States marked the formal formation of the World Anti-Fascist Alliance. With a common goal, all countries supported each other and fought together, gradually turning the situation of the war around.

In July 1942, Germany concentrated its forces on the strategic town of Stalingrad in the Soviet Union. The Soviet army and people fought bravely against the enemy. In February of the following year, the Germans surrendered. In July 1943, Mussolini's government collapsed, and soon afterwards, Italy announced its unconditional surrender. In June 1944, the American and British allies successfully landed in Normandy, France, opening up a second front in Europe, and Germany was caught in the crossfire between the east and west.

The Yalta Conference and the end of the war

In 1945, the situation of the world anti-fascist war was fundamentally changed. In order to coordinate the actions of the Allies and achieve final victory in the war, in February of the same year, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, the heads of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union, held a conference in Yalta. It was decided that German fascism would be completely eliminated and Germany would be occupied by the U.S., Britain and the Soviet Union after the war; it was decided that the United Nations would be established after the war. In July, the heads of the U.S., U.K. and Soviet Union met in Potsdam. The conference reaffirmed the spirit of the Yalta Conference and issued the Potsdam Proclamation in the name of China, the U.S. and Britain urging Japan to surrender, which reaffirmed that the conditions of the Cairo Declaration must be implemented.

In the spring of 1945, Soviet troops, together with British and American troops, entered the German homeland to fight from the east and west respectively. on May 8, 1945, Germany formally signed the unconditional surrender and the war in Europe ended. In Asia and the Pacific, the people of China and other Asian countries launched a fierce counter-offensive against the Japanese invaders. in early August, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, and the Soviet Union sent troops to northeast China and Korea to join the war against Japan. on August 15, the Japanese fascists announced their unconditional surrender. on September 2, Japan formally signed the surrender. The Second World War ended.

The Second World War was a war of unprecedented scale in human history, in which a large part of the world and its population were involved. The victory of the Second World War completely shattered the ambition of fascism and militarism to dominate the world through war, put an end to the history of the world being divided among the powers through the struggle for colonies, promoted the disintegration of the world colonial system, and had a significant and far-reaching impact on the maintenance of world peace and the promotion of common development.

（890words）