LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Second World War: World War Ii
built 634 days ago
The Japanese had already invaded China before World War II started in Europe. 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. The British island fortress of Singapore was captured in what Churchill considered one of the most humiliating British defeats of all time.
Source:
During the 50 years following the end of World War II, Japan established itself as a leading economic power and the largest donor of international aid. Japan and Germany, former "enemy" states in World War II, are now widely considered to be suitable to join the five "victorious" powers of the war for permanent membership in the Security Council of the United Nations. Despite such a significant recovery from the war, certain war-related issues have continued to arise in Japan. Women forced into prostitution for the military during the war ("comfort women") are fighting their cases for compensation. At the official level, tensions have flared up on occasion between Japan and the neighbouring countries due to perceived insensitive actions or remarks made by Japanese politicians. The textbook revisions in 1982 by the Ministry of Education were particularly controversial, with various Asian countries stating that Japan had "whitewashed" history by using vocabulary that did not describe the aggressive behaviour of the Japanese military in Asia during the war.
Source:
World War II began on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany. In a series of very fast battles, Germany controlled most of Europe by 1941, including France. Some French and British soldiers were able to escape from Dunkirk, across the English Channel, to Britain.
Source:
The rationing period during World War II is often described as a difficult time and yet ... remembered nostalgically as a time of unity and good sacrifice. In fact, many of its rules and guidelines could still be applied today. "Make Do and Mend" focuses on clothes rationing, which was introduced in June 1940. With the nation's industrial output concentrated on the war effort, basic clothes were in short supply and high fashion was an unknown commodity. Adults were issued as little as 36 coupons a year to spend on clothes. But a man's suit could cost 22 coupons, a coat 16 and a lady's dress 11, so the need to recycle and be inventive with other materials became more and more necessary.
Source:
During World War II the Swiss National Bank (SNB) bought gold worth 1,212,600 million Swiss Francs from the German Reichsbank, which was far more than the gold reserves of the Reichsbank had amounted to before the war. Buying and selling gold was quite a normal thing for a national bank at this time because gold was the very base of the international currency system. In the same period, SNB ... bought even more gold (worth 2,243,900 Swiss Francs) from the USA. The problem was, that much of the gold sold by the German Reichbank was either stolen from national banks in occupied countries, especially Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and other gold was stolen from people the Nazis had murdered.
PARIS - A Cubist masterpiece by Georges Braque, hanging in the Georges Pompidou Center, may have been stolen from a wealthy Parisian Jew during World War II, the newspaper Le Monde reported yesterday. Le Monde said ''Le Joueur de Guitare,'' (The Guitar Player), one of the center's prized possessions, was plundered during the occupation. The report surfaced a week after the government issued a report describing the theft of Jewish assets during the war, both by German forces occupying France as well as France's pro-Nazi Vichy regime. The report confirmed the existence of about 2,000 art works confiscated from their owners and now in the possession of French national museums and waiting to be claimed. The case of ''The Guitar Player'' is likely to set a legal precedent because it was bought by a government-owned museum, the Pompidou Center, in 1981 for $2 million. Jean-Jacques Aillagon, the head of the Pompidou Center, told Le Monde he would appeal to the owner's family to allow ''The Guitar Player'' to remain on display.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
World War Ii