World War Two Ends

World War Two ended in 1945, when Germany surrendered in May and Japan followed in August and September. The war had lasted about six years and reached nearly every part of the world. Estimates of the dead range from roughly 70 to 85 million people, most of them civilians, which makes it the deadliest conflict in human history. Its end reshaped borders, created new international institutions, and set the stage for the Cold War.

The war began in Europe in September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, and Britain and France declared war in response. Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime had spent years rearming and seizing territory, and Germany went on to conquer much of Europe. In Asia, Japan had been at war with China since the 1930s and expanded across the Pacific and Southeast Asia. The conflict became truly global in 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union and Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States in. The Allies, led by the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain, gradually turned the tide against the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan.

In Europe, the final phase saw Allied armies advancing from east and west into Germany. Soviet forces fought their way into Berlin in April 1945, and Hitler died by suicide as the city fell. Germany's armed forces signed surrender documents in early May, and the Allies marked Victory in Europe Day on 8 May, though celebrations in the Soviet Union took place on 9 May. The full scale of Nazi crimes, including the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered, became widely known as camps were liberated.

The war in Asia continued for a few more months. In August, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. Japan announced its surrender on 15 August, and the formal signing took place on 2 September aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Historians still debate how much the bombs, compared with the Soviet entry, drove Japan's decision.

The consequences were enormous. Germany was divided into occupation zones and later into two states, and Nazi leaders were tried at Nuremberg. The United Nations was founded in 1945 to help prevent future wars. Europe's old colonial powers were weakened, which encouraged independence movements in Asia and Africa. The United States and Soviet Union emerged as rival superpowers, and their rivalry shaped world politics for the next four decades.