
Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with the Republic of China by 1937. On 22 June 1941, Germany led the European Axis powers in an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the Eastern Front, the largest land theatre of war in history. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, and the fall of France in mid-1940, the war continued primarily between the European Axis powers and the British Empire, with war in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz of the UK, and the Battle of the Atlantic.
#CHINESE ARTILLERY WW2 AXIS HISTORY FORUM SERIES#
From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan (along with other countries later on). Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union had partitioned Poland and marked out their " spheres of influence" across Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. The United Kingdom and France subsequently declared war on Germany on 3 September.


World War II is generally considered to have begun on 1 September 1939, when Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, invaded Poland. In the wake of the Axis defeat, Germany and Japan were occupied, and war crimes tribunals were conducted against German and Japanese leaders. Tens of millions of people died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, massacres, and disease. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, a majority being civilians. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and the only two uses of nuclear weapons in war to this day. In a total war directly involving more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries, the major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries-including all of the great powers-forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945.
