The Second World War expands

German expansion, Italian aggression, and Japanese warfare changed the 1930s. China fought a full-scale war from 1937. Germany invaded Poland in 1939, followed by British and French declarations. German occupation spread through Europe. The invasion of the Soviet Union and Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 widened the conflict further. Shipping, resources, and strategic decisions linked warfare in Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Pacific.

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Occupation brought forced labour, requisition, and violence against inhabitants. Nazi government carried out persecution and systematic extermination. States mobilized factories, agriculture, and populations; women entered industrial work, and colonies supplied personnel and materials. Bombing made cities battlefields. Blockades, submarines, and resistance movements affected supplies and authority. Soldiers and civilians suffered enormous losses, while rationing, displacement, propaganda, and administrative control reorganized everyday life in many societies.

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Allied advances ended in German surrender in May 1945. Atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan, and Japanese surrender followed. Trials addressed war crimes, the UN formed, and reconstruction began. Independence movements challenged colonial empires. Migration, changed borders, and US–Soviet rivalry continued to reshape society. The end of fighting produced new arrangements and extensive reconstruction tasks rather than an immediate return to earlier conditions.

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