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Second World War: World War Ii
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After World War II, Europe was partitioned into Western and Soviet spheres of influence, the former undergoing economic reconstruction under the Marshall Plan and the latter becoming satellite states of the Soviet Union. This partition was... informal; rather than coming to terms about the spheres of influence, the relationship between the victors steadily deteriorated, and the military lines of demarcation finally became the de facto country boundaries. Western Europe largely aligned as NATO, and Eastern Europe largely as the Warsaw pact countries, alliances which were fundamental to the ensuing Cold War. In Asia, the United States' military occupation of Japan led to Japan's democratization. China's civil war continued through and after the war, resulting eventually in the establishment of the People's Republic of China. There was a fundamental shift in power from Western Europe to the new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, with significant boundary changes and displacement of people as the Soviet Union's borders shifted westwards.
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The Eastern Front of the European Theatre of World War II encompassed the conflict in central and Eastern Europe from June 22, 1941 to May 8, 1945. It was the largest theatre of war in history in terms of numbers of soldiers, equipment and casualties and was notorious for its unprecedented ferocity, destruction, and immense loss of life. It was here that the bulk of the European war was fought; where the Red Army halted the Germans in 1941 and then inflicted the first major defeats at Stalingrad and Kursk in 1943. The fighting involved millions of German and Soviet troops along a broad front hundreds of kilometres long. It was by far the deadliest single theatre of World War II, with over 5 million Axis deaths; Soviet military deaths were about 10.6 million (out of which 2.8 - 3.5 million Soviet prisoners of war (of 5.5 million) died in German captivity), and civilian deaths were about 14 to 19 million. More people fought and died on the Eastern Front than in all other theatres of World War II combined; the German army suffered 80% to 93% of all its casualties there. Although the Soviet Union was victorious in the war, the cost to the nation was an estimated 27 million dead, about half of all World War II casualties and the vast majority of Allied deaths, and had devastated the Soviet economy in the struggle.
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The Japanese had already invaded China before World War II started in Europe. U.S. President Roosevelt signed an executive order in May of 1940 allowing U.S. military personnel to resign from the service so that they could participate in a covert operation in China. Hence was born the All Volunteer Group, more commonly known as Chennault's Flying Tigers. With the United States and other countries cutting exports to Japan, Japan decided to bomb Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 without warning or declaration of war. Severe damage was done to the American Pacific Fleet, although the aircraft carriers escaped as they were at sea. Japanese forces simultaneously invaded the British possessions of Malaya and Borneo and the American occupied Philippines, with the intention of seizing the oilfields of the Dutch East Indies.
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The date on which World War II started is a debated subject; historians do not all agree on which event signified the start of the war. The most common date used is 1 September 1939, marking the German invasion of Poland, which resulted in the British and French declarations of war two days later. Other candidates include the Japanese invasion of China on 7 July 1937, (the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War), or the entry of Hitler's armies to Prague in March 1939. Some historians argue that the Italian attack on Ethiopia (The Second Italo-Abyssinian War), which lasted seven months in 1935-1936, was the actual start of World War II. There are some other historians that argue the war started on the Manchurian Incident on 18 September 1931.
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The most transformative conflict in history, World War II impacted the entire globe and set the stage for the Cold War. As World War II raged, the leaders of the Allies met several times to direct the course of the fighting and to begin planning for the postwar world. With the defeat of Germany and Japan, their plans were put into action as both nations were occupied and a new international order took shape. As tensions grew between East and West, Europe was divided and a new conflict, the Cold War, began. As a result, the final treaties ending World War II were not signed until forty-five years later.
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During World War II, Arthur Levenson worked on efforts that ultimately led to the solving of the code of Germany's Enigma machine. As a member of the Army Signal Corps in 1943, he was assigned as a cryptanalyst to the British code-breaking team at Bletchley Park outside London. He worked on efforts that ultimately led to the solving of the mathematical code of Germany's Enigma machine, which created secret messages for Nazi military leaders. In a 1999 PBS documentary about the decoding project, Mr. Levenson said the team at Bletchley sometimes deciphered the German messages before German forces in the field could read them. In one case, Mr. Levenson said, the team decoded a message from German military leader Erwin Rommel and determined that German tanks were converging at a spot in Normandy where U.S. paratroopers were planning to jump. At the last moment, plans were changed, and the paratroopers averted disaster.
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World War Ii