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World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis
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The Atlantic Charter was a statement issued on 14 August 1941 that set out American and British goals for the world after the end of World War II. -
The Lend-Lease policy, formally titled An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States, was a program under which the United States supplied the United Kingdom, Free France, the Republic of China, and later the Soviet Union and other Allied nations with food, oil, and materiel between 1941 and August 1945 -
The Attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, just before 08:00, on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941 -
The Battle of Bataan was fought by the United States and the Philippine Commonwealth against Japan during World War II. The battle represented the most intense phase of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines during World War II. -
The internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II was the forced relocation and incarceration in concentration camps in the western interior of the country of about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of whom lived on the Pacific Coast. -
The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea -
The Guadalcanal campaign, also known as the Battle of Guadalcanal and code named Operation Watchtower by American forces, was a military campaign fought between 7 August 1942 and 9 February 1943 on and around the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific theater of World War II. -
Operation Torch was an Allied invasion of French North Africa during the Second World War. While the French colonies formally aligned with Germany via Vichy France, the loyalties of the population were mixed. Reports indicated that they might support the Allies. -
The Italian campaign of World War II, also called the Liberation of Italy, consisted of Allied and Axis operations in and around Italy, from 1943 to 1945 -
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Code named Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history. -
Island hopping: A military strategy employed by the Allies in the Pacific War against the Axis powers (most notably Japan) during World War II. It entailed taking over an island and establishing a military base there. The base was in turn used as a launching point for the attack and takeover of another island. -
The Battle of Berlin, designated as the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, and also known as the Fall of Berlin, was one of the last major offensives of the European theatre of World War II. -
On July 16, 1945, the world's first atomic bomb was detonated 200 miles south of Los Alamos at Trinity Site. This test proved that scientists at the Laboratory had successfully weaponized the atom. By this time, Hitler had been defeated in Europe, but the Japanese Empire continued an aggressive war. -
The Potsdam Conference was held in Potsdam, Germany, from July 17 to August 2, 1945. The participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, represented respectively by Premier Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, and President Harry S. Truman -
The United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict.