When the world went to war

On September 1, 1939, the world stood at the precipice of destruction. Six years later, with 85 million people dead, the horrors of the war came to haunt humanity. Here are some important markers of the World War II.

AIR OBSERVER: Watching out for raiders over London.

At 4.45 am on September 1, 1939, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein began to shoot at a military depot in Danzing, Poland. This armed offensive signalled the beginning of a global conflict that lasted six years and involved over 100 million people from 30 countries. We know it today as World War II.

Though the world has seen other conflicts, none has been as deadly: Around 85 million people died, with the majority being civilians, due to large-scale killing, genocide, starvation, disease… World War II also has the dubious distinction of being the only time nuclear weapons were used in warfare.

DETONATION: Mushroom cloud after Fat Man exploded over Nagasaki.

The Atom Bomb ushered in the nuclear age. Research on nuclear weapons had begun in 1939, in the U.S. with support of the U.K. and Canada. Called the Manhattan Project, two kinds of atomic bombs were developed. As the war in Asia continued even after Germany’s surrender on the Western Front, the U.S. decided to use nuclear weapons to bring Japan to its knees. Two bombs, nicknamed Little Boy and Fat Man, were dropped over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 causing death and destruction on a scale never seen before. August 6 — the day Hiroshima was bombed — is now known as Hiroshima Day so that we don’t forget the horror of nuclear war.

SINKING: The U.S. Navy battleship USS California (BB-44) sinking alongside Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (USA), after being bombed and torpedoed.

Pearl Harbour was an American naval base bombed by the air wing of the Imperial Japanese navy on December 7, 1941. Until this point, the U.S. had stayed away from the war but it formally joined the Allies the next day. Around 2500 people — both civilians and defence personnel — were killed and over 1000 injured. With British colonies in Asia being attacked, the Asia-Pacific theatre saw Britain and the US battle the Japanese forces in China, Vietnam, The Philippines, parts of Indonesia, and even India.

TRANSPORTED: Jews in a railway car on their way to a Nazi death camp.

The Holocaust refers to the genocide of Jews in Europe from 1941 to 1945. Around six million Jews were killed in a systematic organised manner through lynchings, mass shooting, use of poisonous gas and hard labour in concentration camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buchenwald, Dachau, Treblinka and Sachsenhausen among others. Apart from Jews, the Nazi state of Germany also killed political dissenters, homosexuals, prisoners of war, the Roma or gypsies, people of African descent and those who were physically and mentally challenged. When the war ended, the Allies ( France, Poland and the United Kingdom, as well as their dependent states, such as British India) began a series of trials, known as the Nuremberg Trials, to bring those who had participated in these killings to justice. German businesses and companies that had used forced labour were asked to pay reparations. January 27 is known as Holocaust Memorial Day; the day Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated.

The Battle for Britain between Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) and the German Luftwaffe is perhaps the first time a major military campaign was fought in the skies. From July to October 1940 , the Germans bombed British ports, shipping convoys, airfields, factory centres and radar stations to try and force the country to negotiate for peace. When this did not work, they began bombing British cities, both during the day and at night, from October 1940 to June 1941 in an attempt to break the spirit of the people. Apart from London and Liverpool, coastal cities like Hull, Bristol, Cardiff, Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Swansea and industrial centres like Birmingham, Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester and Sheffield bore the brunt of the Blitz. Around 40,000 civilians were killed during the war and around a million houses were either destroyed or damaged. Some historians see Germany’s failure here as a turning point in the war.

TIMELINE

September 1, 1939: Germany invades Poland.

September 3, 1939: Britain and France declare war on Germany.

April-June 1940: Germany overruns Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France.

July 10, 1940 : Italy joins the war on Germany’s side.

July 1940-June 1941: The Battle for Britain rages between the German and British air forces.

September 22, 1940: Germany, Italy and Japan form the Tripartite Pact

June 22, 1941: Germany invades Russia.

December 7, 1941: Japan bombs American naval base Pearl Harbour thereby bringing the neutral US into the war.

June 6, 1944: Invasion of Normandy by Allied forces and beginning of German retreat.

December 16, 1944: German army loses the Battle of the Bulge.

February 19, 1945: American Marines capture the island of Iwo Jima after a pitched battle.

April 30, 1945: Adolf Hitler, the German leader, commits suicide in a bunker in Berlin

May 7, 1945: Germany surrenders to the Allied forces.

August 6 & 9, 1945: Two atom bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force Japan to surrender.

September 2, 1945: Japan surrenders formally.