Question

What event ended World war II?

Answer 1

Hint: During the years 1939–45, World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a conflict that engulfed nearly every country on the planet. The Axis powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan—were pitted against the Allies—France, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser degree, China. In several ways, the war was a continuation of the conflicts left unresolved by World War I, following a tense 20-year hiatus.

Complete answer:
Six years and one day after Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, the twentieth century's second global war came to an end. World War II took the lives of an estimated 60-80 million people, or around 3% of the world's population, by the time it ended on the deck of an American warship on September 2, 1945. Civilians made up the vast majority of those killed in history's worst battle, including the 6 million Jews killed in Nazi death camps during World War II.

German forces had controlled all of Europe from the Black Sea to the English Channel by the time the United States entered World War II in response to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Allies, on the other hand, reversed the tide of the war, and the big events that followed brought World War II to a close.

1. On Two Fronts, Germany was Defeated
Overextended Axis forces were placed on the defensive after the Soviet Red Army rebuffed them in the brutal Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted from August 1942 to February 1943, after storming through Europe in the first three years of the war. Nearly two million people died in the fierce fight for the city named after Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, including tens of thousands of Stalingrad citizens.

2. The Battle of the Bulge
As Soviet troops marched into Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania, while the Western Allies pushed eastward, Germany found itself squeezed on both sides. Faced with dwindling resources and a two-front battle, a desperate Hitler ordered a last-ditch attack on the Western Front in the hopes of breaking the Allied lines. On December 16, 1944, the Nazis conducted a surprise assault along an 80-mile heavily forested section of the Ardennes Forest in Belgium and Luxembourg.

3. Germany surrenders
Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, Hitler's successor, began peace talks on May 7 and allowed General Alfred Jodl to sign an unconditional surrender of all German forces the following day. Stalin, on the other hand, refused to recognise the surrender agreement signed at General Dwight D. Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims, France, and pressured the Germans to sign another the next day in Soviet-occupied Berlin.

4. Japan surrenders after the Soviets declare war.
On September 2, 1942, US General Douglas MacArthur acknowledged Japan's formal surrender aboard the US battleship Missouri, which was anchored in Tokyo Bay with a flotilla of over 250 Allied warships.

5. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed with atomic weapons.
The Enola Gay, an American B-29 bomber, dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, killing an estimated 80,000 people instantly. Thousands of people died as a result of the radiation. After Japan refused to surrender immediately after Hiroshima, the US dropped an even more powerful atomic bomb on Nagasaki three days later, killing 35,000 people instantly and another 50,000 in the aftermath.

Note: On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II in Europe. On September 3, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany. The German invasion of the Soviet Union started the war between the USSR and Germany on June 22, 1941. The Pacific War began on December 7/8, 1941, when Japan invaded the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, as well as other US, Dutch, and British military facilities throughout Asia.