The Second World War is the bloodiest, most destructive and the biggest in the modern history of mankind. It lasted six years (from 1939 to 1945). During this period, 1 billion 700 million people fought, as 61 states participated, which accounted for 80% of the inhabitants of the entire globe. The main warring powers were Germany, the Soviet Union, France, Great Britain, the USA, and Japan. The bloodiest civil war is nothing compared to World War II, which engulfed the territories of forty states on three continents and all oceans. In total, 110 million people were mobilized in all these countries, tens of millions participated in guerrilla warfare and in the resistance movement, the rest worked in military factories and built fortifications. In general, the war covered 3/4 of the population of the entire Earth.
The Second World War is the bloodiest in world history
The destruction and casu alties caused by World War II were very great and almost unparalleled. Their justimpossible to calculate even approximately. In this hellish war, human losses approached 55 million people. In World War I, five times fewer people died, and material damage was estimated 12 times less. This war was of colossal proportions, as it was the most immeasurable event in world history.
In the Second, as in the First World War, the reasons lay in the redistribution of the world, territorial acquisitions, raw materials, markets. However, the ideological content was more pronounced. Fascist and anti-fascist coalitions opposed each other. The Nazis unleashed a war, they wanted to dominate the whole world, to establish their own rules and regulations. The states belonging to the anti-fascist coalition defended themselves as best they could. They fought for freedom and independence, for democratic rights and freedoms. This war was of a liberating nature. The resistance movement became the main feature of World War II. The anti-fascist and national liberation movement arose in the states of the bloc of aggressors and in the occupied countries.
Literature about the war. Reliability of facts
A lot of books and articles have been written about the most bloody war, a large number of films have been shot in all countries. The literary works written about this are immense, hardly anyone will be able to read them in their entirety. However, the flow of various kinds of publications does not come to an end even today. The history of the most bloody war has not yet been fully explored and is closely connected with the heated problems of the modern world. And all because this interpretation of military eventsstill serves as a kind of justification and justification in the revision of borders, the creation of new states, in order to positively or negatively evaluate the role of nations, parties, classes, rulers and political regimes. Such situations constantly agitate national interests and feelings. A lot of time has passed and so far, along with serious historical research, a large number of absolutely unreliable fabrications, writings and falsifications are being written.
The real history of the Second World War is already overgrown with some myths and legends, supported by government propaganda, which was sustainable and widely disseminated.
War films
In Russia, few people know about the maneuvers of the Anglo-American troops in Africa and in the waters of the Pacific Ocean during this period. And in the US and England, people also have a poor idea of the huge range of military battles on the Soviet-German front.
It is not surprising that the Soviet-American multi-part documentary about the bloodiest war in history (released in 1978) in America was given the name "Unknown War", because they really know almost nothing about it. One of the French films about World War II was also called "Unknown War". It is a pity that a public opinion poll in different countries (including Russia) showed that the generation born in the post-war period sometimes simply lacks the most ordinary knowledge about the war. Respondents sometimes do not really know when the war began, whosuch were Hitler, Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill.
Beginning, causes and preparation
The bloodiest war in the history of mankind began on September 1, 1939, and formally ended on September 2, 1945. It was unleashed by Nazi Germany (in alliance with Italy and Japan) with the anti-fascist coalition. The fighting took place in Europe, Asia and Africa. At the end of the war, at the final stage, atomic bombs were used against Japan (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) on September 6 and 9. Japan surrendered.
For the defeat in the First World War (1914-1918), Germany, with the support of its allies, wanted revenge. In the 1930s, two military centers were deployed in Europe and the Far East. The excessive restrictions and reparations that the victors imposed on Germany contributed to the development of a powerful nationalist impulse in the country, where extremely radical currents took power into their own hands.
Hitler and his plans
In 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power and turned Germany into a militaristic country dangerous to the whole world. The scale and pace of growth was impressive in its scope. The volume of military production increased 22 times. By 1935, Germany had 29 military divisions. The plans of the Nazis included the conquest of the whole world and absolute domination in it. Their main targets were Great Britain, France, the USA were also included in this list. However, the most important and most important goal was the destruction of the USSR. The Germans longed for a redistribution of the world, created their own coalition, and did a great job on this issue.
Firstperiod
On September 1, 1939, Germany treacherously invaded Poland. The most bloody war has begun. By that time, the German armed forces had reached 4 million people and possessed a huge amount of various kinds of equipment - tanks, ships, aircraft, guns, mortars, etc. In response, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany, but did not come to the aid of Poland. Polish rulers flee to Romania.
On September 17 of the same year, the Soviet Union sends troops into the territory of Western Ukraine and Belarus (which became part of the USSR since 1917) in order to prevent the Germans from advancing further to the east with the collapse of the Polish state in the event of an attack. This was stated in their secret documents. Along the way, the Germans took possession of Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, then took Bulgaria, the Balkans, Greece and about. Crit.
Mistakes
At this time, Italian troops, fighting on the side of Germany, captured British Somalia, parts of Sudan, Kenya, Libya and Egypt. In the Far East, Japan occupied the southern regions of China and the northern part of Indochina. September 27, 1940 was signed by the Berlin Pact of the three powers - Germany, Italy and Japan. The military leaders in Germany at that time were A. Hitler, G. Himmler, G. Goering, V Keitel.
In August 1940, the bombing of Great Britain by the Nazis began. In the first period of the bloodiest war in history, Germany's military successes were due to the fact that her opponents acted separately and could not immediately develop a single system.leadership of joint warfare, draw up effective plans for military action. Now the economy and resources from the occupied European countries went to prepare for war with the Soviet Union.
Second period of the war
The Soviet-German non-aggression treaties of 1939 did not play their role, so on June 22, 1941, Germany (together with Italy, Hungary, Romania, Finland, Slovakia) attacked the Soviet Union. The Great Patriotic War began with the bloodiest battles and the heaviest human losses.
It was a new phase of the war. The governments of Great Britain and the USA supported the USSR, signed an agreement on joint actions and military-economic cooperation. The USSR and Great Britain sent their troops to Iran in order to prevent the Nazis from creating strongholds in the Middle East.
First steps to victory
The Soviet-German front has acquired an exceptionally violent form. All the most powerful armed forces of the Nazis, according to the Barbarossa plan, were sent to the USSR.
The Red Army suffered huge losses, but it was able to thwart the plans for a "lightning war" (blitzkrieg) in the summer of 1941. There were heavy battles that exhausted and bled the enemy groups. As a result, the Germans were unable to capture Leningrad, they were held back for a long time by the Odessa defense of 1941 and the Sevastopol defense of 1941-1942. The defeat in the Moscow battle of 1941-1942 dispelled the myths about the omnipotence and omnipotence of the Wehrmacht. This fact inspired the occupied peoples to fight against the oppression of enemies and create the MovementResistance.
December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the US military base at Pearl Harbor and unleashed a war against America. On December 8, the United States and Great Britain, along with their allies, declared war on Japan. On December 11, Germany, together with Italy, declared war on America.
Third period of the war
At the same time, the main events were taking place on the Soviet-German front. It was here that all the military power of the Germans was concentrated. The bloodiest battle of the Great Patriotic War began on November 19. It was a counteroffensive near Stalingrad (1942-1943), which ended with the encirclement and destruction of the 330,000-strong group of German troops. The victory at Stalingrad of the Red Army was a fundamental turning point in the Great Patriotic War. Then the Germans themselves already had doubts about victory. From that moment began the mass expulsion of enemy troops from the Soviet Union.
Mutual Aid
The turning point in the victory occurred in the Battle of Kursk in 1943. The battles for the Dnieper in 1943 led the enemy to a protracted defensive war. When all German forces participated in the Battle of Kursk, British and American troops (July 25, 1943) destroyed the fascist regime in Italy, she withdrew from the fascist coalition. Great victories were demonstrated by the allies in Africa, Sicily, in the south of the Apennine Peninsula.
In 1943, at the request of the Soviet delegation, the Tehran Conference was held, at which it was decided to open a second front no later than 1944. In the third period, the Nazi army did notwas able to win a single victory. The war in Europe has reached its final stage.
Fourth Period
From January, the Red Army launched a new offensive. Crushing blows fell on the enemy, by May the USSR managed to drive the Nazis out of the country. During the ongoing offensive, the territories of Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Austria, northern Norway were liberated. Finland, Albania and Greece withdrew from the war. Allied troops, having carried out Operation Overlord, launched an offensive against Germany and thus opened a second front.
In February 1945, a conference of leaders of three countries - the USA, Great Britain and the USSR - was held in Y alta. At this meeting, plans for the defeat of the Nazi army were finally agreed upon, political decisions were made on the control and reparation of Germany.
Fifth period
Three months after the victory at the Berlin Conference, the USSR agrees to wage war on Japan. At the 1945 conference in San Francisco, representatives from fifty countries drafted the UN Charter. The United States wanted to demonstrate its power and new weapons by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9) in 1945.
USSR, entering the war with Japan, defeated its Kwantung Army, liberated part of China, North Korea, South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. On September 2, Japan surrendered. World War II is over.
Losses
In the bloodiest war, approximately 55 million people died at the hands of the Nazis. The Soviet Union bore the bruntwar, having lost 27 million people, having received huge damage from the destruction of material values. For Soviet people, the Great Patriotic War is the bloodiest and most monstrous in its cruelty.
Poland - 6 million, China - 5 million, Yugoslavia - 1.7 million, other states suffered heavy casu alties. The total losses of Germany and its allies amounted to about 14 million. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, died of wounds or went missing.
Results
The main result of the war was the defeat of the reactionary aggression on the part of Germany and its allies. Since that time, the alignment of political forces in the world has changed. Many peoples of “non-Aryan origin” were saved from physical destruction, which, according to the plan of the Nazis, were to die in concentration camps or become slaves. The Nuremberg trials of 1945-1949 and the Tokyo trials of 1946-1948 gave legal assessments to the perpetrators of misanthropic plans and the conquest of world domination.
Now, I think, there should no longer be a question about which war is the bloodiest. This must always be remembered and not let our descendants forget about it, because “whoever does not know history is doomed to repeat it.”
