The Second World War: A Global War, 1937–1945

The deadliest war in history

The Second World War killed somewhere between 70 and 85 million people, most of them civilians. It was fought on every continent except Antarctica and on every ocean. In Grade 10 you studied Canada's war: the Battle of the Atlantic, Hong Kong, Dieppe, Italy, Juno Beach and the home front. This lesson looks at the war from a global angle: how it spread, who suffered, how technology changed it, and why it ended as it did.

War in Asia and Europe

• China, from 1937: Japan's invasion of China began a war that lasted eight years. In Nanjing in December 1937, Japanese troops killed huge numbers of civilians and prisoners and committed mass sexual violence; estimates of the dead range from tens of thousands to the 300 000 cited by the Chinese government. Many historians give figures of about 100 000 to 200 000 or more; estimates differ partly because researchers define the area, the time period and the victims (civilians only, or prisoners of war too) differently. China's Nationalists (under Chiang Kai-shek) and Communists (under Mao Zedong) both fought Japan while remaining rivals.
• Europe, 1939–1941: Germany's blitzkrieg ("lightning war") used tanks and aircraft together. Poland fell in weeks; the USSR occupied eastern Poland under the Nazi–Soviet Pact. In 1940 Germany conquered Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France. Britain, led by Winston Churchill, survived the Battle of Britain in the air (summer and autumn 1940). Canada had declared war on September 10, 1939.
• The war becomes global, 1941: On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor and, within hours, Hong Kong, Malaya and the Philippines. The United States entered the war. By early 1942 Japan controlled most of Southeast Asia, including Singapore, which fell in February 1942.

Turning points

• Midway (June 1942): the U.S. Navy sank four Japanese aircraft carriers, ending Japan's advance in the Pacific.
• El Alamein (late 1942): British Commonwealth forces stopped German and Italian forces in Egypt.
• Stalingrad (August 1942 to February 1943): the Red Army destroyed a German army. The Eastern Front was where most German soldiers fought and died; the Soviet Union lost about 27 million people in the war.
• D-Day (June 6, 1944): American, British and Canadian forces landed in Normandy; Canadians took Juno Beach.
• The end: Germany surrendered in May 1945 (V-E Day, May 8). The U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9); the USSR declared war on Japan on August 8. Japan announced its surrender on August 15 and signed on September 2, 1945.

A war fought by the whole world

• India raised about 2.5 million volunteers, often called the largest volunteer army in history, who fought in North Africa, Italy and Burma. At the same time, the Bengal famine of 1943 killed an estimated 2 to 3 million people; estimates vary because deaths were poorly recorded and historians reconstruct the toll from population data. Historians debate how far British wartime policies (such as continuing to export food and failing to send relief) worsened it.
• Africa: soldiers from British and French colonies fought in East Africa, North Africa, Italy and Burma. The Free French movement relied heavily on troops from French Africa.
• The Americas: Brazil sent an expeditionary force to Italy; Mexico sent a fighter squadron to the Philippines. Canada built one of the world's largest navies and trained more than 130 000 Commonwealth air crew.
• Occupied Asia: Japan claimed to be freeing Asia from Western empires (its "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere"), but occupation brought forced labour, such as the Burma–Thailand "Death Railway", famine and brutality. Tens of thousands of women and girls (some estimates run as high as 200 000) from Korea, China, the Philippines and elsewhere were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military; survivors are often called "comfort women", a term many of them reject as a euphemism.
• Prejudice at home: the U.S. and Canada forcibly removed people of Japanese descent from the West Coast and interned or dispersed them.

Science and technology at war (E1.2)

• Radar helped Britain win the Battle of Britain and the Allies win the Battle of the Atlantic.
• Code-breaking: at Bletchley Park in England, Allied code-breakers read German Enigma messages. To break another German cipher, engineers built Colossus (1944), one of the first programmable electronic computers.
• Rockets and jets: Germany fired V-2 rockets at London and Antwerp, built partly with concentration-camp labour; jet fighters first flew in combat.
• Medicine: mass production of penicillin saved many wounded soldiers.
• The atomic bomb: the American-led Manhattan Project (with British and Canadian participation) built the first nuclear weapons. By the end of 1945, an estimated 140 000 people had died in Hiroshima and 74 000 in Nagasaki, including Korean forced labourers. Survivors (hibakusha) suffered for decades from injuries and radiation illness.

Historians still debate the decision to use the bombs. One view stresses that the bombs ended the war quickly and avoided an invasion of Japan. Others stress that Japan was already near collapse, that the Soviet declaration of war also pushed Japan to surrender, and that the U.S. also wanted to impress the USSR.