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Title: WWII Online
Genre: , , , , ,
Developer:
Publisher:
Release Date: 6 Jun, 2001
metacritic
, originally released in 2001.
What the developers have to say:
Why Early Access?
&WWII Online has a long history of development and over the years, the game has changed and progressed with the help of our community. As we approach a release on Steam, Early Access will allow us to be able to introduce the Steam Community to our game and allow us to solicit important feedback from this new group of players before a full release.
Our development team has been committed to very transparent communication throughout the development process and are excited to solicit feedback from not only our team members and veteran players, but also the Steam Community to help create a unique and immersive combined arms experience for all of our players!&
Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
&We anticipate that we will be in Early Access for at least 6 months as we make changes and improvements to game play and infrastructure&
How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
&We have laid out an ambitious roadmap for development that includes additional weapons,
infantry characters, vehicles, integrated voice communication, and an expansion on how many users can be online in the game world at one time.&
What is the current state of the Early Access version?
&Currently the game is stable and playable. There is plenty of content available. The game is also actively being developed and updates are being prepared that will add more playable content for users as well as bug fixes when they are necessary. The development team is actively engaging the community to help set priorities and solicit suggestions for new content and tweaks to game play.&
Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
&Our Starter and Subscription payment plans are planned to be the same throughout Early Access.&
How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?
&The WWII Online community has always been a large part of the game. The current development team is made up almost exclusively of people who started out as community members and players. This fact has led our team to highly value communication and transparency between the development team and the community. Everyone on our development team, from the top to the bottom of our organization, is both involved with and a part of the community. We already have a track record of involving the community in decisions regarding game play and vehicle sets, and we intend for this to continue as we release on Steam.&
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Downloadable Content For This Game
Recent updates
We've just made available a 1 year subscription plan that gives you maximum savings. This gives you all weapons, ranks and access (premium) and gives you plenty of time to experience all that the game has to offer. It is available now in all countries to purchase. Thanks for your support everyone, Salute!
After the release of 1.35.13.0 it was found that there were a few apparent errors that needed to be fixed quickly. The Development and Quality Assurance teams have been hard at work the last few days to get the fixed applied and fully tested. World War II Online: Version 1.35.13.1 - June 2018 Bug Fixes
Allied satchel damage reduced to match the German satchels (post HE Audit)
Fixed an issue with German and Italian riflemen having Allied satchels
Reduced the max damage needed to take down an FB to match the reduction of the satchel damage
Fixed the reload time and sound for the M1 ATG New Content
In Game Polls once again work and will show up on the Welcome screen right after logging in
Satchels now look better from the third person view S! Cornered Rat Software
Report bugs and leave feedback for this game on the discussion boards
“The battles that follow aren’t typical of most first-person action games.”“an incredibly fun and long lasting game for any war gamer or history buff. ... you’ll still be playing this months, or even years, from now.”8.4/10 – “it’s remarkably compulsive. The concept and the individual challenges are unique, and the sheer difficulty of it makes riding a tank for 20 miles peculiarly rewarding. ... there’s nothing else quite like it.”4/5 –
About This Game
World War II Online is a Massively Multiplayer FPS, simulation game set in the Western Front of WWII. The game offers a strategic and persistent winnable Campaign that is completely player-driven, both in the strategic planning and players fighting to control territory. The Virtual Battlefield Does Exist!Its scale is a massive 300,000 SQ KM that is an interconnected and zone-less game world offering total freedom for players. This scale allows for truly immersive combined arms pvp combat. Communication between the Army, Air Force, and Naval units that are engaged will help determine the outcome! There are no limitations to how many players can interact in a battle space.All weapons, vehicles, munitions and ordinance perform according to realistic values. We have achieved this through direct access to historical archives, a network of military experts and our advanced proprietary game engine that goes in depth like never before. Armor on tanks and aircraft, as well as their internal components, are modeled down to the millimeter.Our damage models go into extreme detail with each component being destroyable in vehicles including crew, weapon storage, gas tanks and more! You don’t just shoot a hitbox? NO! With every shot fired, multiple calculations take place that determine the round impact consequences. S angle of obliquity, speed of round at impact, thickness of the armor, internal spall, armor penetration, parts of tank damaged, etc.Just like in real life, the outcome of each engagement will be determined by strategy, tactics, teamwork, and your weapon handling skills! In WWII Online there are no special power ups or item buys giving someone a special advantage against other players.Since our original release in 2001, our community and game has provided memorable and challenging game play experiences. WWII Online’s game play is unmatched in terms of scale, realism and replay ability. (Expand for more game details below)Do you think you’re hardcore enough to play with and against some of the most battle-hardened WWII FPS gamers around?Sign up today and find out!The STARTER subscription is our base level game access. This will give you the ability to login and play WWII Online. It includes several weapons and vehicles for all countries on both sides.The PREMIUM subscription includes all of the access that is available to STARTER subscribers. However, as a Premium subscriber, you will be eligible to gain maximum rank and be able to join the strategic High Command on either side. You can create and command Squads and (within restrictions of your current in game rank) have access to all of the equipment and vehicles available in WWII Online. Please note, there are no micro-transactions in WWII Online. We believe in a fair and balanced game and our subscription model allows us to achieve that while continuing to provide the infrastructure for our massively multiplayer game.
System Requirements
Minimum:OS: Windows 7 / Windows 8Processor: Pentium 4 3.2 GHz or Athlon 64 3500+ (2.2 GHz) or better with SSE 2.0 supportMemory: 4 GB RAMGraphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 series or ATI Radeon HD 2600 ProNetwork: Broadband Internet connectionStorage: 2 GB available spaceSound Card: on-board or better
Recommended:OS: Windows 8.1 / Windows 10Processor: 3 GHz Dual Core or 2.66 GHz Quad CoreMemory: 8 GB RAMGraphics: GeForce GTX 250 or Radeon HD 4850 or betterNetwork: Broadband Internet connectionStorage: 2 GB available spaceSound Card: on-board or better
Minimum:OS: OS X 10.10 +Memory: 4 GB RAMGraphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 series or ATI Radeon HD 2600 ProNetwork: Broadband Internet connectionStorage: 1 GB available spaceSound Card: on-board or better
Recommended:OS: OS Sierra 10.12.2+Memory: 8 GB RAMGraphics: GeForce GTX 250 or Radeon HD 4850 or betterNetwork: Broadband Internet connectionStorage: 1 GB available spaceSound Card: on-board or better
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& 我爱秘籍 九年相伴WWII WORLD WAR TWO
earth is uniue in all the universe for its abundance and variety of
animals, every one of which should be protected
War II, also known as the Second World War, was a mid-20th
century conflict
that engulfed much of the globe and is accepted as the largest and
deadliest war in human
history. The war was fought between the Axis
Powers and the Allies.
The Axis initially consisted of an alliance
between Germany
and Italy,
which later expanded to include Japan
and Eastern European countries such as Romania
and Bulgaria.
For almost two years, from August 1939 to June 1941, the Soviet Union (USSR)
was an active partner with Germany in dividing up Eastern Europe before a
confrontation between the two nations saw them become enemies and the USSR
was itself attacked by Germany.&
Mussolini and
Some of the nations that Germany conquered
sent military forces, particularly to the Eastern
front. Among the expeditionary
forces that joined Germany were forces from Vichy
France, Spain
(though Spain was itself a neutral
country), and armies of Russians
and Ukrainians
under the command of the general Andrey
Vlasov. The Allies initially consisted of the , along with the British
Empire and most of the Commonwealth,
France and Poland, later joined (in 1940) by Norway, Belgium
and the Netherlands
and in 1941 by the USSR (after Germany broke its pact with the Soviet
Union) and the . Other notable allies included China,
which had been engaged in war with Japan since the mid-1930s, and Brazil.
Approximately
62 million people died
as a result of the war. This figure includes acts of genocide
such as the
Holocaust and General Ishii
Shiro's Unit
731 experiments in Pingfan,
incredibly bloody battles in Europe, North Africa and the Pacific
Ocean, and massive bombings of cities, including the atomic bombings
of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in Japan, the firebombing
of Dresden
and Pforzheim
in Germany
and the blitz
on British
cities such as Coventry
Few areas of the w the war involved the &home
front& and bombing
of civilians to a greater degree than any previous conflict. Atomic
weapons, jet
aircraft, rockets
and radar,
the blitzkrieg
(or &lightning war&), the massive use of tanks, submarines,
bombers and destroyer/tanker
formations, are only a few of many wartime
inventions and new tactics that changed the face of conflict. It was
the first time that a number of newly developed technologies, including nuclear
weapons, were used against either military or civilian targets. It is
estimated to have cost about 1 trillion US dollars in 1945 (adjusted for
roughly 10.5 trillion
in 2005), not including subsequent reconstruction. The vast outcomes of
the war, including new technology and changes to the world's geopolitical,
cultural and economic arrangement, were unprecedented in human history.
World War II, Europe was partitioned into Western
and Soviet spheres
of influence, the former undergoing economic reconstruction under the Marshall
Plan and the latter becoming satellite
states of the Soviet Union. This partition was, however,
rather than coming to terms about the spheres of influence, the
relationship between the victors steadily deteriorated, and the military
lines of demarcation finally became the de
facto country boundaries. Western Europe largely aligned as NATO,
and Eastern Europe largely as the Warsaw
pact countries, alliances which were fundamental to the ensuing Cold
War. In Asia, the United States' military occupation of Japan led to
Japan's democratization.
China's civil
war continued through and after the war, resulting eventually in the
establishment of the People's
Republic of China. There was a fundamental shift in power from Western
Europe to the new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union,
with significant boundary changes and displacement of people as the Soviet
Union's borders shifted westwards.
&Big Three&: Winston
Churchill& Franklin
D. Roosevelt Joseph
Conference in 1945
causes of World War II are naturally a debated subject, but a common view,
particularly among the allies in the early post-war
years, ties them to the policy
of appeasement, which was directed by Britain and France after the
First World War and expansionism
of Germany and Japan: Germany had lost wealth, power and status following
World War and the main purpose of the economic, military, and
(eventually) territorial expansion was to give Germany a place as a world
power again and, in addition, to obtain resource rich land at the expense
of Poles and Ukranians.
there was a strong national desire to escape the bonds of the World
War I Treaty
of Versailles, and eventually, Hitler
and the Nazis
assumed control of the country by calling for a heroic mass effort to
restore past glory. They led Germany through a chain of events:
rearmament, reoccupation of the Rhineland,
incorporation of Austria Anschluss,
dismemberment and occupation of Czechoslovakia
and finally the invasion
of Poland. Some academics have gone so far in linking the Treaty of
Versailles directly to the conflict as to claim that the European theatres
of World War I and II actually constitute a single conflict with a 22-year
ceasefire (much as the
Years War is treated as a single conflict). The London
School of Economics has gone so far along its route that its history
department now teaches a course entitled &European
Civil War 1890 to 1945&.
The two conflicts are also described in this way by Duke
University's J.M. Roberts.
Asia, Japan's
efforts to become a world
power and the rise of militarist
leadership (in the 1930s, the government in Japan was undermined as
militarists rose to power and gained de facto totalitarian
control) led to conflicts first with China and later the United States.
Japan also sought to secure additional natural
resources, such as oil
ore, due in part to the lack of natural resources on Japan's own home
of Nations was powerless and mostly silent in the face of many major
events leading to World War II such as Hitler's re-militarisation of the Rhineland,
annexation of Austria,
and occupation of Czechoslovakia.
The League commissioner in Danzig
was unable to deal with German
claims on the city. This was a significant contributing factor in the
outbreak of World War II in 1939.
Participants
belligerents of the Second World War are usually considered to belong to
either of the two blocs: the Axis
and the Allies.
A number of smaller countries participated in the war, some of them under occupation
or as proxies of one of the large powers. Some nations participated on
different sides at different times.
&Big Three& on the cover of
(May 14, 1945)
Axis Powers consisted primarily of Germany, Italy,
and Japan,
which split the earth into three spheres
of influence under the Tripartite
Pact of 1940, and vowed to defend one another against aggression.
Smaller countries participating on the Axis side were Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary,
Slovakia, Croatia, Carpathia,
and Finland.
Spain's fascist
government never joined the Axis but signed the Anti Comintern Pact of
1941 with Germany and sent volunteers to fight on Germany's Eastern Front.
The Soviet Union was actually an ally of Germany at the beginning of the
war, sharing with Germany the division of Poland and Baltic states. The
Soviet Union provided supplies to Germany, while the United Kingdom and
France were attempting to fend off Germany's successful 1940 advance into
Western Europe. As discussed below, the Soviet Union remained an ally of
Germany, as a supplier, until Germany ended that relationship on June 22,
1941 by invading that country.
the Allied powers, what emerged to be the Big Three were the United
Kingdom (from September
the Soviet
Union (from June 1941) and the United
States (from December 1941), though some consider smaller countries
like Australia and Canada to be part of the Big Five as it is
called. The nations, which declared war on Germany in September 1939,
included Britain and the Commonwealth, France,
and Poland. China
had been at war with Japan since 1937.
just before the war broke out, the USSR and Germany signed the non-aggression
Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact, which, among other things, divided Eastern Europe into regions
of influence. But Germany violated the pact when it invaded
the USSR in 1941. Similarly, the US had the (much older) unilateral Monroe
Doctrine, which stated that Europe should not interfere in the
Americas and, in turn, the U.S. would not interfere in European affairs.
But the U.S. entered the war after, first, Japan and, then, Germany
declared war on it and launched direct attacks on its navy, shipping and
other interests.
other countries, including ,
Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Greece,
the Netherlands, New
Zealand, Norway, the
Philippines, Poland, Thailand
and Yugoslavia
are also considered important Allies, although some of these were
conquered and occupied by Axis forces or even officially
joined the Axis as a result of coercion.
that attempted to remain neutral
in the conflict were often viewed with suspicion by the participants, and
pressured to make contributions to the most influential power in their
neighbourhood. Sovereignty
was difficult to maintain, as many countries that did not directly
participate in the conflict nevertheless held vested interests in seeing a
particular side prevail. For example, neutral Switzerland
was generally considered to be &Allied-friendly&, while neutral Spain
was considered &Axis-friendly&, despite the fact that neither
country openly proclaimed any alliances. Such situations allowed neutral
countries to become hotbeds of espionage.
soldiers destroy Polish border
checkpoint
event days after war declared for propaganda
Chronology
debated starting date
date on which World War II started
historians do not
all agree on which event signified the start of the war. The most common
date used is 1
September 1939,
marking the German invasion
of Poland, which resulted in the British and French declarations of
war two days later. Other candidates include the Japanese invasion of
China on 7
July 1937,
(the start of the Second
Sino-Japanese War), or the entry of Hitler's armies to Prague
in March 1939. Some historians argue that the Italian attack on Ethiopia
(The Second Italo-Abyssinian War), which lasted seven months in , was the
actual start of World War II. There are some other historians that argue
the war started on the Manchurian
Incident on 18
September 1931.
Second Sino-Japanese War
7 July 1937, Japan,
after occupying northeastern China
as Manchuria
in 1931, launched another attack against China near Beijing
(see Marco
Polo Bridge Incident). Rather than retreating swiftly, as in previous
engagements with the Japanese, the Chinese government began a war of
resistance, marking the official start of the Second
Sino-Japanese War, which would soon become part of the World War. The
Japanese made vast initial advances, but were stalled in Shanghai
for months in the Battle
of Shanghai. The city eventually fell to the Japanese and in December
1937, the capital
city, Nanking (now Nanjing),
fell and the Chinese government moved its seat to Chongqing
for the rest of the war. Surprised by the unanticipated level of
resistance from China, the Japanese forces committed brutal atrocities
against civilians and POWs
when Nanking was occupied (see Nanjing
Massacre), killing as many as 300,000 civilians within a month.
War breaks out in Europe
broke out in Europe on 1 September 1939,
with the German invasion
of Poland. France and the United Kingdom honoured their defensive
alliance of March 1939 by declaring war two days later on 3
September. Australia and New Zealand declared war the same day,
although through the quirk of the international date line, New
Zealand then Australia
were the first to declare war on Germany. Canada
followed a week later, on 10
September. Only partly mobilized
and with troops inadequately equipped with largely outdated weapons (which
included large numbers of horse-mounted cavalry), and without the
anticipated support of French or British forces, Poland was overrun by the
Wehrmacht's
superior numbers and &blitzkrieg&
tactics. In accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact, the Soviet Red
Army invaded Poland from the east on 17
September, so the Polish
Army was completely surrounded by the German and Soviet forces. Hours
later, the Polish
government escaped
to Romania.
last Polish Army unit was defeated on 6
October. As Poland fell, the British and French were either caught
unaware of German intentions or had not allowed themselves to believe that
Germany would invade Poland. Germany paused to regroup as the British and
French waited for them at the frontline during a period that would be
jokingly termed &the
Phony War&, or the &Sitzkrieg&, because no
actual fighting was taking place. The &Sitzkrieg& lasted until
May 1940. Polish forces continued to fight the Axis powers after their
country fell. A prominent example was the assistance of Polish
pilots during the Battle
of Britain.
during the Polish
September Campaign September 1939
Soviet Union honoured the Molotov-Ribbentrop
pact and did not fight the Germans: Stalin was happy to have those he
felt were his natural and true enemies—the capitalist
West and Nazi Germany—fight each other. Indeed, the Soviets had their
agents in the U.S., working alongside German sympathisers, advocate that
the U.S. remain neutral in the war, a position that the majority of
Americans, reluctant to join in what they saw as &someone else's
war,& welcomed.
were isolated engagements during the &Phony War& or &Sitzkrieg&
period, including the sinking of HMS
Royal Oak in the anchorage at Scapa
Flow and Luftwaffe
bombings of the naval
bases at Rosyth
and Scapa Flow. The Kriegsmarine
battleship Admiral
Graf Spee was sunk in South America after the battle
of the River Plate. The Tripartite
Pact was signed between Germany, Italy, and Japan on 27
September 1940,
formalising their alignment as the &Axis
Powers&. The Soviet Union invaded Finland on 30
November 1939,
beginning the Winter
War, which lasted until March 1940 with Finland ceding territory to
the Soviet Union.
soldier weeps after the Battle
of France May 1940
The war spreads
Germany invaded Denmark and Norway on 9
April 1940,
in Operation
Weserübung, ostensibly to counter the threat of an Allied invasion
from the region. Denmark was occupied without resistance. Norway fought
back, with British, French and Polish exile forces landing to support the
Norwegians at Namsos, ?ndalsnes
and Narvik.
By late June, German forces were in complete control of Norway. All Allied
forces had been evacuated
and what remained of the Norwegian
Army surrendered. France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg
were invaded on 10
May, ending the Phony
War and beginning the Battle
of France.
Allies had hoped to establish a static continuous front
and were ill-prepared for the German Blitzkrieg
tactics. In the first phase of the invasion, Case Yellow, the Wehrmacht's Panzergruppe
von Kleist bypassed the Maginot
Line and split the Allies in two by driving to the English Channel
through northern France. Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands fell
quickly against the attack of Army Group B, and the British
Expeditionary Force, trapped in the north, being encircled, was
evacuated from Dunkirk
in Operation
Dynamo. German forces then continued the conquest of France with Case
Red, advancing behind the Maginot Line and near the coast. While some
units from the French army were still fighting, a number of top
politicians and military leaders decided that it would be better to surrender
France signed an armistice
with Germany on June
leading to the establishment of the Vichy
France puppet
government in the unoccupied part of France.
June 1940 the Soviet Union occupied Latvia, Lithuania,
and Estonia,
and annexed Bessarabia
and Northern
Bukovina from Romania. Not having secured a rapid peace with the
United Kingdom, Germany began preparations to invade with the Battle
of Britain. Fighter
aircraft fought overhead for months as the Luftwaffe
Air Force fought for control of Britain's skies. The Luftwaffe
initially targeted RAF
Fighter Command but turned to terror
bombing London. The Luftwaffe was not successful, and Operation
Sealion, the proposed invasion of the British
Isles, was abandoned. Similar efforts were made, though at sea, in the Battle
of the Atlantic. In a long-running campaign, German U-Boats
attempted to deprive the British Isles of necessary Lend
Lease cargo
from the United States. The U-Boats reduced sh
however, the United Kingdom refused to seek peace, with Prime
Minister Winston
Churchill stating that &We shall never surrender&.
President Roosevelt announced a shift in the American stance from
neutrality to &non-belligerency&.
Air Force Spitfire fighters helped win the Battle
of Britain
Mediterranean:
invaded Greece on 28
October 1940,
from bases in Albania.
Greek forces successfully repelled the Italian attacks and launched a
full-scale counter-attack
deep into Albania. By mid-December they had occupied one-fourth of
Albania. The North
African Campaign began in 1940; Italian forces in Libya
attacked British forces in .
The aim was to make Egypt an Italian possession, especially the vital Suez
Canal. British, Indian
and Australian
forces counter-attacked (see Operation
Compass), but this offensive stopped in 1941 when much of the Commonwealth
forces were transferred to Greece to defend it from German attack.
However, German forces (known later as the Afrika
Korps) under General Erwin
Rommel landed in Libya and renewed the assault on Egypt. Italian
troops invaded
and captured British Somaliland in August 1940.
the other hand, the Italian declaration of war challenged the British
supremacy of this sea, a supremacy hinged on ,
Malta and Alexandria.
While Gibraltar was never under direct attack, Alexandria and to a
deadlier degree Malta were hit repeatedly by Axis attacks: the thrusts
towards the Suez Canal for the former, and the 1940/42 Blitz for the
latter, making the island of Malta the most heavily bombed place on earth.
In 1940, Japan occupied French
Indochina (Vietnam)
upon agreement with the Vichy
Government and allied with the Axis powers, Germany and Italy. These
actions intensified Japan's conflict with the United States and the United
Kingdom, who reacted with an oil boycott.
The war becomes global
Yugoslavia's
government succumbed to the pressure of Italy and Germany and signed the
Tripartite Treaty on 25
March 1941.
This was followed by anti-Axis demonstrations
in the country and a coup
which overthrew the government and replaced it with a pro-Allied one on 27
March 1941.
Hitler's forces then invaded Greece and Yugoslavia on 6
April 1941.
Hitler reluctantly sent forces to assist Mussolini's
forces in their attempt to capture Greece, principally to prevent a
British build-up on Germany's strategic southern flank. With these new
troops the Axis succeeded in driving the Greek forces back.
troops were diverted from North Africa to assist with the defence but
failed to prevent Greece's capture. On 20
the Battle
of Crete began when elite German Fallschirmj?ger
and glider-borne mountain troops and some 539 aeroplanes launched a
massive airborne invasion of the Greek island of Crete. Crete was defended
by an group of about 43,000 Greek, New Zealand, Australian and British
troops, not all of them fully equipped. The Germans attacked the island
simultaneously on the three airfields.
Their invasion on two of the airfields failed, but they successfully
captured one, which allowed them to reinforce their position by landing
reinforcements.
a week it was decided that so many German troops had been flown in that
there was no way to defeat them, and about 17,000 Commonwealth soldiers
were evacuated. However, over 10,000 Greek and 500 Commonwealth troops
remained at large and caused problems for the German occupiers. The German
invasion troops suffered 6,200 casualties (with almost 4,000 dead) out of
14,000 used. So heavy were the losses that Hitler decided never to launch
an airborne
invasion again. General Kurt
Student would later say, &Crete was the grave of the German
parachutists&. The Allies, on the other hand, came to the
conclusion that every major invasion should be supported by paratroopers.
Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the largest
invasion in history, commenced on 22
June 1941.
The &Great
Patriotic War& (Russian:
&#1042;&#1077;&#1083;&#1080;&#1082;&#1072;&#1103;
&#1054;&#1090;&#1077;&#1095;&#1077;&#1089;&#1090;&#1074;&#1077;&#1085;&#1085;&#1072;&#1103;
&#1042;&#1086;&#1081;&#1085;&#1072;, Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna)
had begun with surprise attacks by German panzer armies, which encircled
and destroyed much of the Soviet's western military, capturing or killing
hundreds of thousands of men. Soviet forces came to fight a war of scorched
earth, withdrawing into the steppe
of Russia to acquire time and stretch the German army. Industries were
dismantled and withdrawn to the Ural
mountains for reassembly.
WW II in Asia and the Pacific: Allies (green)
Japanese (yellow)
armies pursued a three-pronged advance against Leningrad, Moscow,
and the Caucasus.
Having pushed to occupy Moscow before winter, German forces were delayed
into the Soviet
Winter. Soviet counter-attacks defeated them within sight of Moscow's
spires, and a rout
was only narrowly avoided. Some historians identify this as the
&turning point& in the Allies' war against G others
identify the capitulation
of the German
Sixth Army outside Stalingrad
(modern-day Volgograd) in 1943. The Continuation
War between Finland and the Soviet Union began with Soviet air attacks
shortly after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, on 25
June, and ended with an armistice in 1944.
Mediterranean: In June 1941, Allied forces invaded Syria
and Lebanon,
capturing Damascus
on 17 June
(see Syria-Lebanon
campaign). Meanwhile, Rommel's forces advanced rapidly eastward,
laying siege
to the vital seaport
of Tobruk.
Australian and other Allied troops in the city resisted all until
relieved, but a renewed Axis offensive
captured the city and drove the Eighth Army back to a line at El
The Sino-Japanese War
war had begun in Asia years before World War II started in Europe. Japan
had invaded
China in 1931. By 1937, war had broken out as the Japanese sought
control of China. Roosevelt signed an unpublished (secret) executive
order in May 1940 allowing U.S. military personnel to resign from the
service so that they could participate in a covert operation in China: the
American Volunteer Group, also known as Chennault's Flying
Tigers. Over a seven-month period, Chennault's Flying Tigers destroyed
an estimated 115 Japanese aircraft, sunk numerous Japanese ships, and had
a notable participation in the campaign of Burma.
the United States and other countries cutting exports
to Japan, particularly fuel oil, Japan planned a
on Sunday, 7
December 1941,
to cripple the U.S.
Pacific Fleet while consolidating oil
fields in Southeast Asia. It is hard to determine whether the Japanese
intended to release an advance declaration of war, however, as means of
coordinating secret directives with public communication, particularly
during a weekend in the U.S., were limited. Despite what warning signs
remained, the attack on Pearl Harbor achieved military surprise and dealt
severe damage to the American Fleet's battleships,
though the primary targets, , remained safely at sea.
Japanese forces arrived at Hong
Kong, which later led to the Battle
of Hong Kong. With a combined force of only 14,000, the Canadian
Army, British
Army and the British
Indian Army, the vastly outnumbered Allied troops held out until the surrender
of the British colony on Christmas
Day (known to locals as 'Black Christmas').
Harbor attacked on 7 December 1941
The United States enters the war
December 1941,
Japanese warplanes commanded by Vice
Admiral Chuichi
Nagumo carried out a surprise air
raid on Pearl
Harbor, Hawaii,
the largest U.S. naval base in the Pacific. The Japanese forces met little
resistance and devastated the harbor. This attack resulted in 8 battleships
( including the California, the Utah, the West Virginia, the Oklahoma, the
Arizona,and the Tennesee) either sunk or damaged, 3 light
cruisers and 3 destroyers
sunk as well as damage to some auxiliaries and 343 aircraft either damaged
or destroyed. 2408 Americans were killed including 68 1178 were
wounded. Japan lost only 29 aircraft and their crews and five midget
submarines. However, the attack failed to strike targets that could have
been crippling losses to the US Pacific Fleet such as the aircraft
carriers which were out at sea at the time of the attack or the base's
ship fuel storage and repair facilities. The survival of these assets have
led many to consider this attack a catastrophic long term strategic blunder
for Japan.
following day, the
on Japan. The same day, China officially declared
war on Japan despite having been engaged in warfare for over four years
(it had done so in order to receive military aid as to avoid neutrality
complications). Simultaneous to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan also
attacked U.S. air bases in the Philippines. Immediately following these
attacks, Japan invaded the Philippines and also the British Colonies of Hong
Kong, Malaya, Borneo
with the intention of seizing the oilfields of the Dutch
East Indies. In a matter of months, all these territories and more
fell to the Japanese. The British island fortress of Singapore
was captured
in what Churchill considered one of the most humiliating British defeats
of all time.
the Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor, Germany declared war on the United States on 11
December 1941,
even though it was not obliged to do so under the Tripartite
Pact of 1940. Hitler made the declaration in the hopes that Japan
would support him by attacking the Soviet Union. Japan did not oblige him,
and this diplomatic move proved a catastrophic blunder which gave
President Franklin
D. Roosevelt the pretext needed for the United States joining the
fight in Europe with full commitment and with no meaningful opposition
from Congress. Some historians mark this moment as another major turning
point of the war with Hitler provoking a grand alliance of powerful
nations, most prominently the UK, the USA and the USSR, who could wage
powerful offensives on both East and West simultaneously.
soldiers at the Battle
of Stalingrad
May 1942, one of the most powerful Nazis, Reinhard
Heydrich, was assassinated in Prague in the Operation
Anthropoid. In the Eastern front, an aborted German offensive was
launched towards the Caucasus
to secure oil fields, and German armies reached Stalingrad. The siege
of Stalingrad continued for many months, with vicious urban
warfare leading to high casualties on both sides. At night, the Soviet
forces were resupplied from the east bank of the Volga,
and the Wehrmacht forces were ev especially
after Hitler
diverted the armour of the Sixth Army to the Caucasus.
In November a Soviet offensive encircled
the Sixth Army. By early February 1943, it was clear that the Sixth Army
would have to surrender.
General Friedrich
Paulus, who was in charge of the German forces in the area, to Field
Marshal in the vain hope it would deter him from surrendering because
never before has a German Field Marshall had ever surrendered. It did not,
and he surrendered completely on 2
February. The results were the destruction of the city, millions of
casualties, and the collapse of Wehrmacht's Sixth
Army as a viable fighting force. Nazi Propaganda
Minister Joseph
Goebbels responded with his Sportpalast
speech to the German people. Some historians cite this as the European
war's &turning point&.
Korps 1942 - British infantry attack Second Battle of El
Mediterranean
Battle of El Alamein took place between 1
July and 27
July 1942.
German forces had advanced to the last defensible point before Alexandria
and the . However, they had outrun their supplies, and a Commonwealth
defence stopped their thrusts. The Second
Battle of El Alamein occurred between October
23 and November
after Field Marshal Bernard
Montgomery had replaced Claude
Auchinleck as commander of the Commonwealth forces, now known as the Eighth
Army. Erwin
Rommel, German commander of the Afrika Korps, known as the
&Desert Fox&, was absent from the battle because he was
recovering from jaundice back in Europe. Commonwealth forces took the
offensive, and although they lost more tanks than the Germans began the
battle with, Montgomery was ultimately triumphant. The western Allies had
the advantage of being close to their supplies during the battle. In
addition, Rommel was getting little or no help by this time from the
struggling Luftwaffe, which was now more tasked with defending
Western European air space, and fighting the Soviet Union, than providing
Rommel with support in North Africa.
Marauder 17th Bomb Group (432nd Squadron) damaged by flak fire over
Algeria during North African Campaign in 1942
the German defeat at El Alamein, Rommel made a successful strategic
withdrawal to Tunisia.
During the Arcadia
Conference from December 1941 to January 1942, the Allied leaders
concluded that it was essential to keep Russia in the war. This
consideration led to the overall strategy &Germany First&; i.e.
giving priority of knocking out Germany before Japan. This decision
resulted in a long debate as to where and when to open a Second Front
against Germany. The American Chiefs of Staff favoured a cross-channel
(France) amphibious
operation in the summer. The British opposed this because of
insufficient landing
craft and logistical
problems. It was also thought that American forces were in a process of
expansion, organization and exercise, not capable yet of fighting an
experienced German army. Only if Russia collapsed would they approve a
main landing in France. Churchill put forward the idea of a small invasion
in Norway or landings in French
North Africa. The plan for landings in Africa was approved in July
Torch was headed by General Dwight
Eisenhower. The aim of Torch was to gain control of Morocco
and Algiers
through simultaneous landings at Casablanca, Oran and
Algiers, followed a few days later with a landing at B?ne,
the gateway to Tunisia. The operation was launched on 8
November 1942.
The first wave was almost entirely American troops, because it was thought
that the French would react more favourably to Americans than British. It
was hoped that the local forces of Vichy
France would put up no resistance and submit to the authority of Free
French General Henri
Giraud. In fact, resistance was stronger than expected but still
sporadic. In Algiers, 400 members of the French resistance captured much
of the city, though it was retaken before Allied forces could arrive.
Vichy commander, Admiral Darlan, negotiated
an end to hostilities, against orders from the Vichy government. He was
allowed to retain local control by the Allies, to the annoyance of Free
French leaders. Hitler invaded and occupied Vichy France in response.
Rommel's Afrika Corps was not being supplied adequately because of the
loss of transport shipments caused by Allied—mostly British—navies and
air forces in the Mediterranean. This lack of supplies and air support
destroyed any chance of a large German offensive in Africa. Ultimately,
German and Italian forces were caught in the pincers of a twin advance
from Algeria and Libya. The withdrawing Germans continued to put up stiff
defence, and Rommel defeated the American forces decisively at the Battle
of Kasserine Pass before finishing his strategic withdrawal back to
the meagre German supply chain. Inevitably, advancing from both the east
and west, the Allies finally defeated the German Afrika Corps on May
Some 250,000 Axis soldiers were taken prisoner.
bombers over burning Japanese cruiser Mikuma during Battle of Midway
April 1942, Americans succeeded in attacking Japan itself for the first
time in the Doolittle
raid, which boosted morale on the home front and caused Japan to shift
some resources to homeland defense. In May 1942, a naval attack on Port
Moresby, New
Guinea, was thwarted by Allied navies in the Battle
of the Coral Sea. Had the capture of Port Moresby succeeded, the
Japanese Navy would have been within striking range of Australia. This was
both the first successful opposition to Japanese plans and the first naval
battle fought only between aircraft carriers. The two sides suffered
roughly equal losses. A month later the invasion
of Midway Island was prevented by decoding
secret Japanese messages, and hence alerted U.S. naval leaders that Midway
was the Japanese target. American pilots sunk four Japanese carriers,
which the Japanese industry could not replace swiftly. The loss of many
planes and skilled pilots (many of them took part in the attack on Pearl
Harbor) was also difficult to redress.
Americans lost one carrier and fewer planes. It was a complete victory for
the Americans, and the Japanese Navy was now on the defensive. However, in
July an overland attack on Port Moresby was led along the rugged Kokoda
Track. This was met with Australian militia,
many of them very young and undertrained, fighting a stubborn rearguard
action until the arrival of Australian regulars returning from action in North
Africa, Greece and the Middle East. But amazingly, the outnumbered and
untrained Australian 39th battalion defeated the 5,000-strong Japanese
army. This was one of the most significant victories in Australian
military history.
prior to the American entry to the war, the Allied leaders had agreed that
priority should be given to the defeat of Nazi
Germany. Nonetheless, U.S. forces began to attack captured
territories, beginning with Guadalcanal
Island, against a bitter and determined Japanese defense. On 7
August 1942,
the United States assaulted the island. In late August and early
September, while battle raged on Guadalcanal, an amphibious Japanese
attack on the eastern tip of New Guinea was met by Australian forces at Milne
Bay, and the Japanese land forces suffered their first conclusive
defeat. On Guadalcanal, the Japanese resistance failed in February 1943.
substantial element of the Asian campaign was played out, starting in
1942, in the Aleutian
Islands. On August
a combined American-Canadian
force invaded the Aleutian
Island only to find them abandoned.
landing craft awaiting orders during the invasion of&
Torokina, Bougainville, 1 November 1943
The war turns
victory at Stalingrad, the Red
Army launched eight offensives during the winter, many concentrated
along the Don
basin near Stalingrad, which resulted in initial gains until German
forces were able to take advantage of the weakened condition of the Red
Army and regain the territory it lost. In July, the Wehrmacht launched a
much-delayed offensive against the Soviet Union at Kursk.
Their intentions were known by the Soviets, and the Battle
of Kursk ended in a Soviet counteroffensive that threw the German Army
Newly captured North Africa was used as a springboard for the invasion
of Sicily on 10
July 1943.
On 25 July Benito
Mussolini was fired from office by the King of Italy, allowing a new
government to take power. Having captured Sicily,
the Allies invaded
mainland Italy on 3
September 1943.
Italy surrendered on 8
September, but German forces continued to fight. Allied forces
advanced north but were stalled for the winter at the Gustav
Line, until they broke through in the Battle
of Monte Cassino. Rome
was captured on 5
June 1944.
Mid-1943 brought the fifth and final German Sutjeska
offensive against the Yugoslav Partisans
before the invasion and subsequent capitulation of Italy, the other major
occupying force in Yugoslavia.
ennsylvania
(BB-38) leads Colorado
(BB-45), Louisville
(CA-28), Portland
(CA-33) & Columbia
(CL-56) into Lingayen Gulf, Philippines, January 1945
(1943–45): Australian and U.S. forces then undertook the
prolonged campaign to retake the occupied parts of the Solomon
Islands, New Guinea and the Dutch
East Indies, experiencing some of the toughest resistance of the war.
The rest of the Solomon Islands were retaken in 1943, New
Britain and New
Ireland in 1944. As the Philippines were being retaken in late 1944,
the Battle
of Leyte Gulf raged, arguably the largest
naval battle in history. The last major offensive in the south-west
Pacific Area was the Borneo
campaign of mid-1945, which was aimed at further isolating the
remaining Japanese forces in South East Asia and securing the release of
Allied POWs.
Allied submarines
and aircraft also attacked Japanese merchant shipping, depriving Japan's
industry of the raw
materials it had gone to war to obtain.
effectiveness of this stranglehold increased as U.S.
Marines captured islands closer to the Japanese mainland. The
Nationalist Kuomintang
Army, under Chiang Kai-shek, and the Communist
Chinese Army, under Mao
Zedong, both opposed the Japanese occupation of China but never truly
allied against the Japanese. Conflict between Nationalist and Communist
forces emerged it continued after and, to an extent,
even during the war, though more implicitly. The Japanese had captured
most of Burma,
severing the Burma
Road by which the Western Allies had been supplying the Chinese
Nationalists. This forced the Allies to create a large sustained airlift,
known as &flying the
Hump&. U.S.
led and trained Chinese divisions, a British division and a few
thousand U.S. ground troops cleared the Japanese forces from northern
Burma so that the Ledo
Road could be built to replace the Burma Road. Further south the main
Japanese army in the theatre
were fought to a standstill on the Burma-India frontier by the British
Fourteenth Army (the &Forgotten Army&), which then
counter-attacked, and having recaptured all of Burma was planning attacks
towards Malaya when the war ended.
troops disembark Omaha Beach on D-Day 6 June 1944
The beginning of the end
(6 June 1944)
the western Allies invaded
German-held Normandy
in a pre-dawn amphibious
assault spearheaded by American (82nd
and 101st),
British (6th)
and Canadian paratroopers,
opening the &second front& against Germany. The allies suffered
large casualties during the beach assault. German artillery
batteries pounded the beaches. But the airborne divisions secured the
rear, enabling the seaborne troops to break inland.
aided the defending German units by giving them perfect areas for MG 42
emplacemtents. The narrow causeways of the hedgerow lanes caused great
difficulty for tankers and eliminated their ability to rotate it's turret.
Troops also refered to the causeways as death-alleys because the Germans
had the entire length zeroed in with mortars and 88's. The hedgerows
themselves proved impossible to penetrate and if a Sherman attempted to
run-over these walls they exposed their vulnerable underbellies to
panzerfaust fire.
months the Allies measured progress in hundreds of yards and bloody rifle
fights in the Bocage.
An Allied breakout was effected at St.-L?,
and the most powerful German force in France, the Seventh
Army, was almost completely destroyed in the Falaise
pocket while counter-attacking. Allied
forces stationed in Italy invaded the French
Riviera on 15
August and linked up with forces from Normandy. The clandestine French
Resistance in Paris
rose against the Germans on 19
August, and a French division under General
Jacques Leclerc, pressing forward from Normandy, received the
surrender of the German forces there and liberated the city on August 25.
By early 1944, the Red Army had reached the border of Poland and lifted
of Leningrad.
3rd Division & 2nd
Canadian Armoured Brigade land on Juno Beach
after Allied landings at Normandy, on 9
June, the Soviet Union began an offensive on the Karelian
Isthmus that after three months would force Nazi
Germany's co-belligerent Finland to an armistice. Operation
Bagration, a Soviet offensive involving 2.5 million men and 6,000
tanks, was launched on 22
June, destroying the German Army
Group Centre and taking 350,000 prisoners. Finland's defence had been
dependent on active, or in periods passive, support from the German Wehrmacht
that also provided defence for the chiefly uninhabited northern half of
Finland. After the Wehrmacht retreated from the southern shores of the Gulf
of Finland, Finland's defence was untenable. The Allies' armistice
conditions included further territorial losses and the internment or
expulsion of German troops on Finnish soil executed in the Lapland
War, now as co-belligerents of the Allies, who also demanded the
political leadership to be prosecuted in &war-responsibility
trials&, which the Finnish public perceived as a mockery of the
rule of law.
paratroopers attempted a fast advance into Germany with Operation
Market Garden in September but were repulsed. Logistical
problems were starting to plague the Allies' advance west as the supply
lines still ran back to the beaches of Normandy. A decisive victory by the
First Army in the Battle
of the Scheldt secured the entrance to the port of Antwerp,
freeing it to receive supplies by late November 1944. Romania
surrendered in August 1944 and Bulgaria
in September. The Warsaw
Uprising was fought between 1
August and 2
October. Germany withdrew from the Balkans
and held Hungary
until February 1945.
British paratroopers
move through damaged house in Oosterbeek&
Market Garden
December 1944, the German Army made its last major offensive in the West,
largely because even if successful in the east it would have had no effect
on the massive Red Army rolling towards the Reich. Thus, Hitler thought he
could drive a wedge between the frequently feuding Western Allies, causing
them to agree to a favourable armistice,
after which Germany could concentrate all her efforts on the Eastern front
and have a chance to defeat the Soviets. The mission was unrealistic to
begin with, since German plans largely relied on capturing Allied fuel
dumps in order to keep their vehicles
moving with the goal of capturing the vital port of Antwerp, and thus
crippling the Allies in the Battle
of the Bulge. At first, the Germans scored successes against the
Americans stationed in the Ardennes.
Allied forces, largely unprepared for this sudden attack, suffered heavy
casualties. In addition, the weather during the initial days of the
invasion favoured the Germans because the bad weather grounded Allied
aircraft. However, with the overcast skies clearing allowing Allied air
supremacy to enter the equation, and with the German failure to capture Bastogne,
as well as the arrival of General
Patton's Third Army, the Germans were forced to retreat back into
Germany. The offensive was defeated. By now, the Soviets had reached the
eastern borders of pre-war Germany.
paratroopers in positions on the southern bank of Rhine (Arnhem)
this time the Soviet
steamroller had become so powerful that some historians argue that the
U.S., British and Canadian landing at Normandy was more to prevent a
coast-to-coast Soviet block than to fight Germany. On the other hand, some
say that throughout the war Stalin called on the U.S. to open up a second
front. Throughout the war, the Soviet Union engaged roughly 80%[citation
needed] of all Germany's forces.
of Dresden by the British Royal
Air Force (RAF) and the United
States Army Air Force (USAAF) between February 13 and February 15,
1945 remains one of the more controversial
events of World War II.
to British historian Frederick
destruction of Dresden
has an epically tragic quality to it. It was a wonderfully beautiful city
and a symbol of baroque humanism and all that was best in Germany. It also
contained all of the worst from Germany during the Nazi period. In that
sense it is an absolutely exemplary tragedy for the horrors of 20th
Century warfare...&
fell to the Red Army on 2
and Sickle is flown over the Reichstag
THE END OF THE WAR
and Franklin
D. Roosevelt made arrangements for post-war Europe at the Yalta
Conference in February 1945. It resulted in an April meeting to form
the United
Nations: nation-states were created in Eastern E it was agreed
Poland would have free elections
(in fact elections were heavily rigged by Soviets); Soviet nationals were
to be repatriated,
and the Soviet Union was to attack Japan within three months of Germany's
surrender. The Red Army (including 78,556 soldiers of the 1st
Polish Army) began its final
assault on Berlin on 16
April. By now, the German Army was in full retreat and Berlin had
already been battered due to preliminary air bombings. Most of the Nazi
leaders had either been killed or captured. Hitler, however, was still
alive, and was slowly going mad. As a final resistance effort, he called
for civilians, including children, to fight the oncoming Red Army in the Volkssturm
When this failed, Hitler went into delusion, imagining that everyone was
against him and that he still had battalions of troops to send into
and his staff moved into the Führerbunker,
a concrete bunker beneath the Chancellery, where on 30
April 1945, he
committed suicide. Admiral Karl
D?nitz became leader of the German government, but the German war
effort quickly disintegrated. German forces in Italy were surrendered on 2nd
those in northern Germany, Denmark, and The Netherlands on the 4th
and the German High Command under Generaloberst Alfred
Jodl surrendered unconditionally all German forces on 7
May in Reims,
France. The Western Allies celebrated &V-E
May and the Soviet Union &Victory
after atomic bombing& - Japan surrenders USS
Missouri in Tokyo
capture of islands such as Iwo
Jima and Okinawa
brought the Japanese homeland within range of naval and air attack.
Amongst dozens of other cities, Tokyo
was firebombed,
and about 90,000 people died from the initial attack. The dense living
conditions around production centres and the wooden residential
constructions contributed to the large loss of life. In addition, the
ports and major waterways of Japan were extensively mined by air in Operation
Starvation which seriously disrupted the logistics of the island
nation. Later on 6
August 1945,
Gay&, piloted by Colonel
Paul Tibbets, dropped an atomic
bomb (Little
Boy) on Hiroshima,
effectively destroying
August 1945,
the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, as had been agreed to at Yalta,
and launched a large-scale invasion of Japanese occupied Manchuria
(Operation
August Storm). On 9
August, the B-29 &Bock's
Car&, piloted by Major
Charles Sweeney, dropped an atomic bomb (Fat
Man) on Nagasaki.
use of atomic weapons allowed the
emperor of Japan to bypass the existing government and intervene to
end the war. The new inclusion of the Soviet Union in the war may have
also played a part, but in his radio address to the nation the emperor did
not mention it as a major reason for the surrender of Japan. The Japanese
surrendered on 15
August 1945
(V-J day),
signing official surrender
papers on 2
September 1945,
aboard the USS
Missouri in Tokyo
Bay. Japan's surrender to the Allied powers did not fully end the war,
however, because Japan and the Soviet Union never signed a peace
agreement. In the last days of the armed conflict, the Soviet Union
occupied the southern Kuril
Islands, an area previously held by Japan and claimed by the Soviets.
Multiple efforts to bring about a peace agreement, and officially end the
war, have as of yet not succeeded.
Resistance
Resistance
during World War II occurred in every occupied country by a variety of
means, ranging from non-cooperation, disinformation and propaganda to
hiding crashed pilots
and even to outright warfare
and the recapturing
of towns. Resistance movements are sometimes also referred to as &the
underground&.
the most notable resistance movements were the Polish
Home Army, the French
Maquis and the Yugoslav
Partisans. The Communist
resistance was among the fiercest since they were already organized and
militant even before the war and their ideology was in many respects
directly opposite of that of the Nazis.
D-Day there
were also many operations performed by the French
Resistance to help with the upincoming invasion. Communications lines
were cut, trains derailed, roads, water towers and ammunition depots were
destroyed and some German garrisons
were attacked.
countries had resistance movements dedicated to fighting the Axis
invaders, and Germany
itself also had an anti-Nazi movement. Although mainland Britain
did not suffer invasion
in World War II, the British made preparations for a British resistance
movement, called the Auxiliary
Units, in the event of a German invasion. Various organisations were
also formed to establish foreign resistance cells or support existing
resistance movements, like the British SOE and the American OSS (the
forerunner of the CIA).
supported the ware effort in factories throughout the West and
Home fronts - Dad's Army
front is the name given to the activities of the civilians
in a state of total war.
the United Kingdom, women joined the work force in jobs that the men used
to occupy. Food, clothing, petrol
and other items were rationed.
Access to luxuries was severely restricted, though there was also a
significant black
market. Families also grew victory
gardens, small home vegetable
gardens, to supply themselves with food. Civilians also served as Air
Raid Wardens, volunteer emergency services and other critical
functions. Schools
and organizations held scrap drives and money collections to help the war
effort. Many things were conserved to turn into weapons later, such as fat
to turn into nitroglycerin.
A notable case was the collection of street railings as scrap iron, which
changed the 'feel' of many older urban
the United States and Canada women also joined the workforce. In the
United States these women are now called &Rosies& for Rosie
the Riveter. Franklin D. Roosevelt stated that the efforts of
civilians at home to support the war through personal sacrifice were as
critical to winning the war as the efforts of the soldiers themselves. In
Canada, the government established three military compartments for women:
the CWAAF (Canadian Women's Auxiliary Air Force), CWAC (Canadian Women's
Army Corps) and WRCNS (Women's Royal Canadian Naval Services).
Germany, at least for the first part of the war, there were few
restrictions on civilian activities. Most goods were freely available.
This was due in large part to the reduced access to certain luxuries
already experienced by German civilians prior to the beginning of
the war made some less available, but many were in short
supply to begin with. It was not until comparatively late in the war that
the civilian German population was effectively organized to support the
war effort. For example, women's labour was not mobilized
as thoroughly as in the United Kingdom or the United States. Foreign slave
labour was more significant as a substitute for the males enlisted
into the armed forces.
machine for encryption
Technologies
massive research and development demands of the war, including the Manhattan
Project's efforts to quickly develop the atomic
bomb, had a great impact on the scientific
community, among other things creating a network of national
laboratories in the United States and new sciences like cybernetics.
In addition, the pressing need for numerous time-critical calculations for
various projects like code-breaking
and ballistics
tables accentuated the need for the development of electronic computer
technology. While the war stimulated many technologies, such as radio
development, it slowed down related yet non-critical fields such as television
in the major powers.
aircraft age began during the war with the development of the Heinkel
He 178, the first true turbojet,
the Messerschmitt
262, the first jet in combat, and the Gloster
Meteor, the first Allied jet fighter. During the war the Germans
produced various Glide
bomb weapons, which were the first smart
flying bomb, which was the first cruise
and the V-2
rocket, the first ballistic
missile weapon. The last of these was the first step into the space
age as its trajectory
took it through the stratosphere,
higher and faster than any aircraft. This later led to the development of
the Intercontinental
ballistic missile (ICBM). Wernher
Von Braun led the V-2 development team and later immigrated
to the United States where he contributed to the development of the Saturn
V rocket, which took
men to the moon in 1969.
technology progressed at rapid pace, and over six years there was a
disorientating rate of change in combat in everything from aircraft to small
arms. The best jet
fighters at the end of the war easily outflew any of the leading
aircraft of 1939, such as the Spitfire
Mark I. The early war bombers that caused such carnage would almost
all have been shot down in 1945, many with one shot, by radar-aimed, proximity
fuze detonated anti-aircraft
fire, just as the 1941 &invincible fighter&, the Zero,
had by 1944 become the &turkey& of the &Marianas
Turkey Shoot&. The best late-war tanks, such as the Soviet JS-3 heavy
tank or the German Panther medium
tank, handily outclassed the best tanks of 1939 such as Panzer
IVs. In the navy the battleship, long seen as the dominate element of
sea power, was displaced by the greater range and striking power of the aircraft
chaotic impotence of opposed amphibious
landings typical of WW
I disasters was overcome: the Higgins
boat, primary the DUKW,
a six-wheel-drive amphibious
and amphibious
tanks were developed by the Western Allies to enable beach landing
attacks, and increased organisation and coordination of amphibious
assaults coupled with the resources necessary to sustain them caused the
complexity of planning to increase by orders of magnitude requiring formal
systematization and this gave rise to what became the modern management
methodology/science of Project
Management by which almost all modern engineering, construction
and software
developments are organized.
prisoners Ebensee concentration
camp Austria
The camp was reputedly used for &scientific& experiments
impact & atrocities
Second World War saw large-scale atrocities aimed against the}