World War Ii
...been two separate conflicts. The first began in Asia in 1937 as the Second Sino-Japanese War; the other began in Europe in 1939 with the German invasion of Poland.
This global conflict split the majority of the world's nations into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. It involved the mobilization of over 100 million military personnel, making it the most widespread war in history, and placed the participants in a state of "total war", erasing the distinction between civil and military resources. This resulted in the complete activation of a nation's economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities for the purposes of the war effort. Over 60 million people, the majority of them civilians, were killed, making it the deadliest conflict in human history.[2] The financial cost of the war is estimated at about a trillion 1944 U.S. dollars worldwide,[3][4] making it the most costly war in capital as well as lives.
The Allies were victorious, and, as a result, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as the world's leading superpowers. This set the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 45 years. The United Nations was formed in hopes of preventing another such conflict. The self determination spawned by the war accelerated decolonization movements in Asia and Africa, while Europe itself began moving toward integration.[5]
In the aftermath of World War I, the defeated German Empire signed the Treaty of Versailles.[6] This restricted German military and territorial growth and required the payment of massive war reparations. Civil war in Russia led to the creation of the communist Soviet Union which soon was under the control of Joseph Stalin. In Italy, Benito Mussolini seized power as a fascist dictator promising to create a "New Roman Empire".[7] The ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party in China launched a unification...
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