Key setbacks in 1943-including a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and the Italian mainland, and Allied offensives in the Pacific-cost the Axis powers their initiative and forced them into strategic retreat on all fronts. Japan soon captured much of the western Pacific, but its advances were halted in 1942 after losing the critical Battle of Midway later, Germany and Italy were defeated in North Africa and at Stalingrad in the Soviet Union. The European Axis powers declared war on the United States in solidarity. fleet at Pearl Harbor which resulted in the United States and United Kingdom declaring war against Japan. In December 1941, Japan attacked American and British territories with near-simultaneous offensives against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific, including an attack on the U.S.
Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with the Republic of China by 1937. On 22 June 1941, Germany led the European Axis powers in an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the Eastern Front, the largest land theatre of war in history. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, and the fall of France in mid-1940, the war continued primarily between the European Axis powers and the British Empire, with war in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz of the United Kingdom, and the Battle of the Atlantic. From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, in a military alliance with Italy, Japan and other countries called the Axis.
Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union had partitioned Poland and marked out their " spheres of influence" across Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania. The United Kingdom and France subsequently declared war on Germany on 3 September. World War II is generally considered to have begun on 1 September 1939, when Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, invaded Poland. The causes of World War II are debated, but contributing factors included the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, Spanish Civil War, Second Sino-Japanese War, Soviet–Japanese border conflicts, the rise of fascism in Europe, and European tensions in the aftermath of World War I. In the wake of the Axis defeat, Germany and Japan were occupied, and war crimes tribunals were conducted against German and Japanese leaders. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, massacres, and disease. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in history, resulting in an estimated 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians.
Aircraft played a major role, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and the delivery of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. Many participants threw their economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind this total war, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. The vast majority of the world's countries, including all of the great powers, fought as part of two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a global conflict that lasted from 1939 to 1945.
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