The History of WWII

 By: Malaya Sylvia Pace

Allies & Axis Powers

During the 1930s, a new leader in Germany came to power named Adolf Hitler. Hitler had blamed the Jewish people for the loss of Germany in WWI and was sending them into concentration camps that would kill or gas Jewish people upon arrival. Seeing this happen, some countries decided to stop Germany by declaring war on them. Later on, the United States would declare war on Germany along with the Soviet Union who would change sides after Germany had tried to invade them.  On the Axis side, Germany, Soviet Union (USSR) Italy & Japan. 

Concentration Camps

Not many people survived the concentration camps. Out of the 6 million people who died in them, half of the people were Jewish. The deadliest camp was Auschwitz, located in southern Poland. (Poland was under German rule at the time.) About 1.1 million people died in Auschwitz. One of the most famous persons who was forced into a concentration camp was Anne Frank. Anne Frank wrote in a diary about her life as a Jewish person living in Germany during WWII. Her diary is one of the reasons why we know so much about what happened during the holocaust.

Pearl Harbor

During 1941, Japan had decided to bomb Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, because Japan did not want the United States to interfere in their military plans in Southeast Asia. But by doing so, Japan got into a war with the United States, eventually losing the war to them in 1945, about a month after Hiroshima & Nagasaki were bombed. The bombing of Pearl Harbor was the biggest loss in United States history. About 2,403 U.S soldiers died during the bombing. 
                                      

D-Day

        D-Day (Also known as Operation Neptune) was the Allied invasion of Normandy, France while the country was still under German rule. It was the largest known invasion in human history. During the invasion, the allied forces were able to liberate northwestern France from German rule, however, many allied soldiers died during the combat.

Hiroshima & Nagasaki

        Between 1941-1945, the United States had been working on two different atomic bombs to bomb Japan if they did not surrender. (They surrendered after the bombing) The bombs were called Little Boy and Fat Man. Little boy was the first bomb to be dropped on Japan on August 6, 1945 in Hiroshima, Japan killing about 80,000 people. Three days later, Fat Man was dropped in Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945 killing about 190,000 people. These were the only times atomic bombs were used in war.

The Surrender

During 1945, after the allied forces invasion of France (Which was then under German rule), Germany’s  capital, Berlin, was then taken over by the Soviet Union, leading to Germany’s surrender. Most people say that the war ended when Hitler took his own life when there was no way to run, but the war continued until Japan’s surrender on September 2, 1945 about a month after the bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki.