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The beginning of the conflict is usually located on September 1, 1939, with the German invasion of Poland, the first warlike step of Nazi Germany in its attempt to found a German Third Reich on Europe. This produced the immediate declaration of war by France with most of the countries of the British Empire and the Commonwealth to the Third Reich.
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The United Kingdom and France gave Germany two days to withdraw from Poland. Once the deadline passed, on September 3, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand declared war on Germany, quickly followed by France, South Africa, and Canada. The French mobilized slowly and then made only a "demonstration" offensive in the Saar, which they soon abandoned, while the British were unable to take any direct action in support of the Poles in the time available.
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Germany conquered or subdued much of continental Europe. Under the agreements signed between the Nazis and the Soviets, the nominally neutral Soviet Union occupied or annexed territories of the six neighboring nations with which it shared a border in the west. The United Kingdom and the Commonwealth remained the only major force capable of fighting the Axis powers in North Africa and in extensive naval warfare.
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In June 1941 the European Axis powers began the invasion of the Soviet Union, thus initiating the most extensive land warfare operation in history, in which most of the Axis military power was used from that moment on.
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In 1943, as a result of the various setbacks of the Germans in Eastern Europe, the Allied invasion of Fascist Italy and the victories of the United States in the Pacific, the Axis lost the initiative and had to undertake a strategic retreat in all countries. fronts.
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In 1944 the Western Allies invaded France, at the same time that the Soviet Union regained territorial losses and both were invading Germany.
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The war ended with a total Allied victory over the axis in 1945 and the release of prisoners in death camps. The war in Europe ended with the capture of Berlin by Soviet and Polish troops and the consequent unconditional German surrender on May 8, 1945.
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The Imperial Japanese Navy was defeated by the United States and the invasion of the Japanese archipelago became imminent. After the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, the war in Asia ended on August 15, 1945 when Japan accepted unconditional surrender.
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The UN is governed by the Charter of the United Nations, which entered into force on October 24, 1945 and was signed on June 25 of the same year in the American city of San Francisco, by 51 countries, a few months before the end of World War II The preamble to the Charter explicitly mentions the two world wars
