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World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a global conflict between two alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries, including all of the great powers, participated in the conflict, and many invested all available economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities in pursuit of total war, blurring the distinction between ...
- Allied victory
The victorious Allies of World War I—which included what would become the Allied powers of the Second World War—had imposed harsh terms on the opposing Central Powers in the Paris Peace Conference of 1919–1920.Germany resented signing the Treaty of Versailles, which required that it take full responsibility for the war, lose a significant portion of territory, and pay costly reparations ...
The Battle of Stalingrad[Note 8] (17 July 1942 – 2 February 1943)[27][28][29][30] was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II, beginning when Nazi Germany and its Axis allies attacked and became locked in a protracted struggle with the Soviet Union for control over the Soviet city of Stalingrad in what is now southern Russia. The ...
- Prelude
- Halt Order
- Battle
- Evacuation
- Aftermath
- "Dunkirk Spirit"
- Dunkirk Medal
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On 10 May 1940, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. By 26 May, the BEF and the French 1st Army were bottled up in a corridor to the sea, about 60 miles (97 km) deep and 15 miles (24 km) wide. Most of the British forces were still around Lille, over 40 miles (64 km) from Dunkirk, with the French farther south. Two massive ...
On 24 May, Hitler visited General von Rundstedt's headquarters at Charleville. The terrain around Dunkirk was thought unsuitable for armour. Von Rundstedt advised him the infantry should attack the British forces at Arras, where the British had proved capable of significant action, while Kleist's armour held the line west and south of Dunkirk to po...
"Fight back to the west"
On 26 May, Anthony Eden told Gort that he might need to "fight back to the west", and ordered him to prepare plans for the evacuation, but without telling the French or the Belgians. Gort had foreseen the order and preliminary plans were already in hand. The first such plan, for a defence along the Lys Canal, could not be carried out because of German advances on 26 May, with the 2nd and 50th Divisions pinned down, and the 1st, 5th and 48th Divisions under heavy attack. The 2nd Division took...
Battle of Wytschaete
Gort had sent Lieutenant General Ronald Adam, commanding III Corps, ahead to build the defensive perimeter around Dunkirk; his corps command passed to Lieutenant General Sydney Rigby Wason from the GHQ staff. Lieutenant General Alan Brooke, commanding II Corps, was to conduct a holding action with the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 50th Divisions along the Ypres-Comines canal as far as Yser, while the rest of the BEF fell back. The battle of Wytschaete, over the border in Belgium, was the toughest action...
Action at Poperinge
The route back from Brooke's position to Dunkirk passed through the town of Poperinge (known to most British sources as "Poperinghe"), where there was a bottleneck at a bridge over the Yser canal. Most of the main roads in the area converged on that bridge. On 27 May, the Luftwaffe bombed the resulting traffic jam thoroughly for two hours, destroying or immobilising about 80 percent of the vehicles. Another Luftwaffe raid, on the night of 28–29 May, was illuminated by flares as well as the li...
The War Office made the decision to evacuate British forces on 25 May. In the nine days from 27 May to 4 June 338,226 men escaped, including 139,997 French, Polish, and Belgian troops, together with a small number of Dutch soldiers, aboard 861 vessels (of which 243 were sunk during the operation). B. H. Liddell Hart wrote that Fighter Command lost ...
Following the events at Dunkirk, the German forces regrouped before commencing operation Fall Rot, a renewed assault southward, starting on 5 June. Although the French soldiers who had been evacuated at Dunkirk returned to France a few hours later to stop the German advance and two fresh British divisions had begun moving to France in an attempt to...
British press later exploited the successful evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, and particularly the role of the "Dunkirk little ships", very effectively. Many of them were private vessels such as fishing boats and pleasure cruisers, but commercial vessels such as ferries also contributed to the force, including a number from as far away as the Isle of...
A commemorative medal was established in 1960 by the French National Association of Veterans of the Fortified Sector of Flanders and Dunkirk on behalf of the town of Dunkirk.The medal was initially awarded only to the French defenders of Dunkirk, but in 1970 the qualification was expanded to include British forces who served in the Dunkirk sector a...
Battle of Dunkirk short documentary with footage, from British PathéBattle of the Bulge Part of the Western Front of World War IIAmerican soldiers of the 117th Infantry Regiment, Tennessee National Guard, part of the 30th Infantry Division, move past a destroyed American M5A1 "Stuart" tank on their march to recapture the town of St. Vith during the Battle of the Bulge, January 1945.
On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict. Japan surrendered to the Allies on 15 August, six days after the bombing of ...
World War II deaths by country World War II deaths by theater Soviet soldiers killed during the Toropets–Kholm Offensive, January 1942. Officially, roughly 8.6 million Soviet soldiers died in the course of the war, including millions of POWs. Einsatzgruppen murder Jewish civilians outside Ivanhorod, Ukraine, 1942. Over 6 million Jews were ...
