Skip to main content
Loading Explore guides…
World War II Overview · Acedra
Home
Explore
History
World War II Overview
Sign in to save
Chat
If YouTube asks you to sign in, open the video on YouTube.
Watch on YouTube
Reload player
Transcript
75 segments
Copy
Hide video
0:10
The Second World War was the largest and most destructive military conflict in world history, and the most criminal too. Although mass murder of civilians had occurred before, it was the war that the German Nazis developed and applied technologies that allowed them to carry out mass extermination of entire ethnic groups.
0:35
In the First World War, 95% of the casualties were soldiers. In the second, this changed. Only 33% of casualties were soldiers in active service. 67% were civilians. This was a very different war. The fighting lasted six years. More than 60 countries were involved. Military operations were conducted on the territories of 40 of them. This means that 80% of the world, as it was then, participated in the war. More than 100 million people took an
1:10
active part in the fighting. Activities directly and indirectly linked with the combat cost of lives of at least 50 million people.
1:21
Some sources put the figure at 70 million.
1:26
The year 1939 began with Germany's political actions in Central Europe.
1:33
On the 15th of March of that year, the Wehrmacht invaded Czechoslovakia and occupied Prague. The Czechoslovak state ceased to exist. It was replaced by the Prectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, subordinated by the Third Reich and Slovakia, politically dependent on Germany.
1:53
This move gave Adolf Hitler a very good starting position for further expansion eastwards. The Second Republic of Poland, as the country was called then, was surrounded on three sides. The fourth side, the eastern border, was free of German pressure until August 1939 when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed not to attack each other. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact, was signed on the 23rd of August 1939 in Moscow. Under its
2:23
secret agreement, the two powers divided Central Europe into spheres of influence and split Poland into a German and Soviet occupation zone. The Germans, supported by the Slovak army, attacked Poland on the 1st of September 1939 at dawn. Among the first targets were the military transit depot at Westa Plata in Gdańsk and the medieval town of Wieluń, which although it had no military significance, was razed to the ground by German aircraft.
2:52
The invasion involved over 2,000 tanks, almost 900 bombers and over 400 fighter planes. On the front, the Germans used a total of 60 divisions, almost one and a half million men. Against the aggressors, Poland was able to field just 300 aircraft, most of which the Luftwaffe destroyed in the first days of the invasion. It was at that time that a new term was adopted to describe Germany's military tactics, blitzkrieg, which means lightning warfare.
3:29
Britain and France declared war on Germany on the 3rd of September 1939. But this did not result in any military action. On the 17th of September, Poland was attacked from the east by the Soviet Union, which meant that the country was at war on two fronts. On the same day, members of the government evacuated from Poland via the border with Romania. Warsaw, subjected to very heavy shelling and repeated aerial bombing, surrendered to the Germans on the 27th of September 1939. Two days
4:03
later, in accordance with the second protocol to the Hitler-Stalin Pact, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned Poland. The Soviet Red Army and the German Wehrmacht and the SS were now allies. The last Polish troops resisted until the 6th of October. Hitler arrived in Warsaw for the victory parade.
4:31
The Polish lands that came under German occupation were divided into two parts. The northern and western regions of the country were incorporated into the German Reich. A general government was now created from the remaining lands with the capital in Krakow. Its head, Governor Hans Frank, resided at Wawel Castle, the former seat of Polish kings. From the very beginning, the German occupation policy towards Polish society was extremely repressive. This was in line with a
5:02
declaration issued by Heinrich Himmler, one of the leading Nazis, who indicated that the extermination of Poles was the primary duty of the German people and that consequently, all Poles would disappear from the world. In the areas incorporated into the Third Reich over the first few months of the new rule, more than 40,000 members of the Polish elite were executed by shooting. In November 1939, just as the Germans were beginning their repressions in occupied Poland, Soviet Russia invaded
5:34
Finland, starting the so-called Winter War. The Fins put up a fierce resistance and so saved their independence. But in March 1940, they had to ask for an armistice and surrender the northern shores of Lake Ladoga to the Soviet Union. They also relinquished the small stretch of Finnish coastline in the Arctic Sea. Soviet Russia was not content with its partial victory over the Fins.... in June 1940, it seized the territories of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in
6:07
Romania, a state isolated in the international arena at the time.
6:13
In the spring of 1940, the Germans, their rapid conquest of Poland complete, turned towards Denmark, where they encountered no significant resistance, and then Norway. There, in contrast, they had to fight heavy battles with the Norwegian army and the English, French, and Polish troops coming to its relief. Norway had a strategic location, extremely important for both warring sides. It was through the ice-free port of Narvik that iron ore, a key raw material fueling the German war
6:45
machine, was transported from the Swedish city of Kiruna. The battle for Narvik was therefore essential for the whole of Scandinavia. The allies managed to take the port and the surrounding area. But with the deteriorating situation on the western front, they had to withdraw, allowing the Germans to take control of all of Norway. During an offensive that began on the 10th of May, 1940, the Germans rapidly overran Luxembourg, which capitulated on the very first day. The
7:18
Netherlands surrendered on the 14th of May. The German troops entered the French territory having bypassed the heavily fortified Maginot Line. And once there, they launched an attack towards the English Channel. As a result, significant allied forces found themselves surrounded on all sides. Some of those were British. The British soldiers were evacuated from Dunkirk in dramatic circumstances. The success of the German thrust was again assured by blitzkrieg tactics.
7:49
French defensive fortifications on the Maginot Line, which ran along the border with the Third Reich, proved useless in the face of a rapid German offensive through Luxembourg and Belgium. After the victory over France, Hitler decided that the act of surrender would be signed by the French on the 22nd of June, 1940, in the same railway carriage in which years before France had dictated to Germany the terms of the armistice ending the First World War. The defeat of France and the
8:19
Third Reich's military domination on the continent caused Hitler to make another peace proposal, one directed at Great Britain. Yet the British were determined to fight. The Battle of Britain began in early July 1940. Aerial attacks were to be a prelude to Operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of the British Isles. The British proved to be a difficult opponent, but they had a major problem, a shortage of pilots. The British command decided to make use of pilots from allied
8:50
forces. New fighter squadrons were formed, two Polish, a Czech, and a Canadian one. The German attack was brutal. On the 7th of September, 1940, London was bombed by more than 900 Luftwaffe aircraft. During the first week of the German air offensive, more than 2,000 inhabitants of the British capital were killed. Yet despite the losses, Britain's industrial might was not broken. The Germans failed to gain dominance in their air and called off the invasion.
9:26
In the spring of 1941, the military situation in the Balkans took an unfavorable turn for the Germans. During the invasion of Greece, the ineptitude of the Italian army, and Italy was then a close ally of the Third Reich, forced the Germans to launch an armed intervention. They were assisted by a few Hungarian units. After an anti-German turn in Belgrade's policy and a short period of fighting, Yugoslavia capitulated on the 17th of April, 1941, and its territories
9:57
came under occupation by Germany, Italy, and Hungary. The establishing of the independent state of Croatia controlled by the Third Reich was announced in Zagreb. On the 27th of April, 1941, the Germans entered Athens and mainland Greece came under German, Italian, and Bulgarian occupation. On the island of Crete, heavy fighting between the German landing forces and the Greek and British defenders continued until the end of May.
10:27
With 134 divisions in full combat readiness and 73 divisions to deploy at the rear of the front, Germany attacked the Soviet Union on the 22nd of June, 1941. The largest invasion in history began less than two years after Hitler and Stalin had signed the non-aggression pact. The Soviets ceased to be Hitler's allies and became his next target. The strike against the Soviet Union was aimed at suppressing communism, acquiring what the Germans called Lebensraum, living
10:59
space for the nation, as well as gaining access to regions which had the fertile black soil and regions rich in oil deposits, and opening the way to Iran, Afghanistan, India, and perhaps even China. The Red Army was initially overwhelmed by the speed of the German attack. Millions of soldiers cut off from the rest of the army and deprived of supplies were forced to surrender. Front line troops were immediately followed up by the SS and the police organized into
11:29
all special task forces, which began mass shootings. The victims were mainly Jews, as well as functionaries of the Communist Party, Soviet state officials, and the Romani people.
11:43
In the first six weeks after the attack, the Soviet Union suffered great losses in men and equipment. The Germans managed to occupy vast areas, but their soldiers were exhausted after several months of fighting and the army's supply routes were overstretched.
12:00
To add to this, the German planners, expecting the rapid collapse of the Soviet Union, had failed to prepare the army for the winter warfare. As a result, the German forces stretched over 1,600 kilometers of the eastern front lost momentum.... in December 1941, Soviet counterattacks drove them back from Moscow. But on other sections on the front, particularly in the south, German troops continued to advance.
12:31
On the 7th of December 1941, Japan bombed the US fleet and the Port of Pearl Harbor. A day later, the United States declared war on Japan, and thus joined the Second World War. Japanese troops landed in the Philippines and in French Indochina, a colony comprising the present territory of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. They occupied British Singapore and soon took control of Burma, the Dutch East Indies, modern-day Indonesia, and the Philippines. This made the war a truly global one.
13:05
Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan, whose alliance was called the Axis, formally declared war on the United States. This was certainly one of the key moments of the conflict. On the 1st of January 1942, in Washington, DC, representatives of 26 countries signed the declaration by the United Nations to formalize the alliance against the Axis states. This document later became the basis for the United Nations. The Soviet Union had started the war as Hitler's ally, but by signing the
13:38
declaration it officially moved into the anti-Nazi camp.
13:46
On the 20th of January 1942, a conference was held at Wannsee near Berlin, attended by 15 senior officials, representatives of the SS, the police, and a number of Reich ministries. They deliberated on coordinating and accelerating the "final solution of the Jewish question." This was the euphemism used to describe the plan to murder all Jews residing in German-occupied and German-controlled areas of Europe. The action was headed by Reinhard Heydrich, then the head of
14:20
the Reich Security Main Office.
14:25
The first American triumph in the Pacific war was the victory over Japan in the Battle of Midway, which began on the 4th of June 1942. After this great sea and air battle, the United States moved to counterattack. To the victory at sea and in the air, the Americans soon added a victory on land. In this case, the turning point was a series of fierce clashes in the Solomon Islands known as the Battle of Guadalcanal. This victory opened the way for an American offensive in that area.
14:57
The allies were moving forward in North Africa as well. The Battle of El Alamein was fought in late October and early November 1942. It was there that the British finally stopped the Axis offensive and forced the German and Italian forces to retreat. For the first time in this war, the worldwide offensive of the Axis countries was halted on multiple fronts. Immediately after the victory at El Alamein, the Allies launched Operation Torch, a naval landing of British and
15:29
American troops on the North African coast at Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers. The result was an Allied victory. The Allies decided to keep up the momentum. On the 22nd of November 1942, the First Cairo Conference began. The leaders of China, Britain, and the USA discussed there a plan to fight Japan until its unconditional surrender and to regain the occupied territories. The late 1942 and early 1943 brought some of the most important events of the Second World War.
16:03
The military successes of the Germans and their allies came to an end. On the 2nd of February 1943, the fierce battle of Stalingrad on the Eastern Front, which had lasted since August 1942, ended with a German defeat. It was the turning point of the war in Europe. Immediately after this great victory, the Soviets launched an offensive. On the 14th of January 1943 in Casablanca, the leaders of the anti-Nazi alliance, Roosevelt and Churchill, had announced a
16:36
joint decision to fight until an unconditional surrender of Germany with no guarantees whatsoever for the losing side. Even though the Germans had already incurred their first defeats on more than one front, they continued to pursue the extermination of European Jews, which they regarded as one of the main objectives of this war. Thousands died every day in extermination and concentration camps. In occupied Poland, the extermination campaign known as Operation
17:05
Reinhard was taking a terrible toll. By the end of 1943, the Germans had murdered there more than 1.7 million Jews.
17:16
In the occupied territories, the Germans established ghettos, i.e. closed off and guarded zones of cities to which Jews were forcibly resettled. Ghettos were created in occupied Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. The largest was the Warsaw Ghetto, holding over 450,000 people. In the spring of 1943, the German authorities began the final liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. A few hundred troops of the Jewish Combat Organization and the Jewish Military Union
17:49
were prepared for this moment. On the 19th of April, an uprising broke out in the Warsaw Ghetto.
17:58
The fighting lasted almost a month, until the 16th of May 1943, when the Germans blew up the Great Synagogue at Tumelska Street. As a result of the uprising, 12,000 Jews were killed in action, or executed, and most of the 60,000 still living in the ghetto at the time were deported to extermination camps.
18:19
The search for Jews hiding in the ruins of the ghetto continued for several months.On the 5th of July 1943, the Battle of Kursk laid the beginning to the great counteroffensive of the Red Army on the Eastern Front. The Russians owed their equipment advantage over the Germans largely to American aid in military gear and raw materials. By the end of June 1943, the Red Army had lost, according to the latest research, more than 14 million soldiers. Among them, 6,768,914 dead, taken prisoner
19:01
or missing and 7,294,420 wounded and sick. German losses at the time amounted to 1,150,000 soldiers killed in action. At the time, the key clash of that campaign was taking place at Prokhorovka. On the 12th and 13th of July 1943, Hitler summoned the two commanders of troops in the Kursk salient area and ordered them to halt the offensive. This allowed the Russians to prevail in battle that had hitherto remained inconclusive.
19:36
This was probably the most important turning point in the Second World War.
19:46
On the 10th of July 1943, the allies, taking advantage of the Russian victory in the east, made a landing in Sicily and, in a short time, took over the entire island. As a consequence of the defeat, Benito Mussolini's government was overthrown and Italy withdrew from the war. The withdrawal was announced on the 8th of September 1943, simultaneously with the allied landing in southern Italy. This was the effect of Operation Husky, the invasion of
20:16
Sicily. During this period, the leaders of the Free World decided to meet in person for the first time since the outbreak of the war. The conference began on the 28th of November 1943 in Tehran. It was the first of the conferences of the so-called Big Three, that is, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, devoted to plans for the final defeat of the Third Reich. The three leaders decided to open a new front in France as soon as possible. In Southern Europe, the allied front was halted at
20:50
the town of Cassino in Italy. The bloody battle for the monastery on top of the strategic mountain of Monte Cassino, a key barrier on the road to Rome, began on the 17th of January 1944. As part of Operation Dickens, 575 bombers and 200 fighter bombers dropped around 1,000 tons of bombs on the town itself and on the area around the monastery.
21:16
The area was constantly shelled by artillery. On the 17th and 18th of May, after unsuccessful attacks by British, American, New Zealand and Indian troops, the Poles, under General Anders, broke through the German defenses and captured the monastery. The road to Rome was open. On the 6th of June 1944, the allies embarked on the largest landing operation of the Second World War, the landing in Normandy. This was part of Operation Overlord, aimed at opening up another
21:52
front in Europe. One and a half thousand transport ships put to sea, carrying nearly 4,000 landing barges laden with soldiers and equipment. The action was covered and supported by 1,200 warships. More than 10,000 aircraft, bombers and fighters circled over the beaches where infantry and tanks came under fire. In heavy fighting, the troops of the anti-Nazi coalition gained footholds in France and began their march eastwards towards Berlin.
22:27
At that time, Adolf Hitler was staying in his field quarters at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia. On the 20th of July 1944, at 12:42 AM, a bomb exploded during a meeting in which he participated. It had been planted by a Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who belonged to a group of conspirators intent on assassinating the Fuhrer, seizing power in Germany and ending the war. Hitler survived the assassination attempt, suffering only superficial wounds. Later
22:59
that day, the Nazis stopped the conspirators' attempt to seize power. The leaders of the conspiracy were captured and executed on the spot. A wave of repression swept through Germany, claiming hundreds of victims.
23:14
On the 23rd of July 1944, Red Army soldiers liberated the camp at Majdanek. About a thousand prisoners held in the camp barracks were freed. Then the world saw for the first time what Nazism was in essence. Then the world saw for the first time what Nazism was in its essence. The gas chambers where people were killed and the crematoria where their bodies were burnt were filmed for the first time at Majdanek. On the 1st of August 1944, an armed uprising broke out in the
23:46
German-occupied Warsaw. The Home Army, the Polish underground armed forces operating during the operation, mobilized some 20,000 poorly armed soldiers who liberated a large part of the city. The insurgents were not helped by the Soviet Army, which soon after reached the right bank of the Vistula and stood opposite the fighting city. On Stalin's orders, the Soviets waited for the Poles to bleed out. Upon hearing of the uprising, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler issued an order: "Every
24:20
inhabitant must be killed. No prisoners are to be taken. Warsaw is to be razed to the ground, and in this way an intimidating example for the whole of Europe is to be created."...
24:49
15th of August 1944 saw the beginning of Operation Dragoon, the Allied landing in southern France, which was designed to create another front in Southern Europe. In mid-September, Allied troops advancing from southern France met up with victorious troops from Normandy to form a unified western front.
25:13
An armed uprising in Paris began on the 19th of August 1944 and lasted for six days. Soon after, the western Allies liberated the city. On the 29th of August 1944, an uprising broke out in Slovakia. It was a gesture of armed resistance against a regime that openly collaborated with the Nazis and unhesitatingly sent Jewish citizens of their own country to extermination camps. The uprising lasted for two months and was brutally suppressed. After its collapse, terror was unleashed on Slovakia.
25:54
On the 17th of October 1944, the Battle of Leyte began, ending in an Allied victory. It was the key battle for the Philippines, the largest naval battle of the Second World War and the last attempt by the Japanese navy to muster a significant force.
26:17
The Red Army's winter offensive began on the 12th of January 1945. Soviet plans called for a rapid strike from the Vistula line with the forces of four fronts and the capture of Berlin as soon as possible. During the offensive, the Polish territory was cleared of German troops. For the Poles, however, this did not mean the return of freedom. The Red Army installed a new government there, one wholly subordinated to Moscow. The country was taken over by the communist regime.
26:51
The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, the largest German Nazi concentration and extermination camp in occupied Poland, was liberated on the 27th of January 1945. According to the latest findings, its death toll amounted to 960,000 Jews, 70 to 75,000 Poles, 21,000 Romani and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and 10 to 15,000 prisoners from other countries.
27:24
At the Yalta Conference, which began on the 4th of February 1945, the Big Three decided to divide Germany into four occupation zones and establish the eastern border of Poland on the Curzon Line.
27:38
This meant the loss of almost a half of Poland's pre-war territory to the Soviets. In return, the territorial compensation was envisaged in the West. Following the conference, the Soviet Union considerably expanded its sphere of influence in Central Europe. On the 13th of February 1945, Dresden was bombed by the Allies. The air raid almost completely destroyed the city and killed thousands of civilians.
28:08
The decisive battle for Berlin began on the 16th of April 1945. The Fuhrer ordered his troops to fight to the last soldier. A few days later, soldiers of the Red Army finally broke through the German defense lines. The total number of Red Army forces sent to attack the German capital was around one and a half million men. The 30th of April, units of the Soviet 150th Division took up positions around the parliament building, the Reichstag. On the same day, Adolf Hitler committed suicide
28:41
in his bunker. Berlin had been taken. On the 5th of May 1945, an uprising broke out in Prague, lasting five days. The Red Army came to the aid of the insurgents and helped the Czechs to save and liberate their historic capital.
29:01
On the morning of the 7th of May 1945 in the French city of Reims, Germany signed an unconditional surrender on all fronts.
29:11
None of the top commanders of the Soviet army were present at the event. However, as they had not managed to reach France, Joseph Stalin firmly demanded that the act of surrender be signed again. The Allies agreed. A German delegation headed by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel was taken to Berlin to sign the act of surrender again, this time in the presence of Marshal Georgy Zhukov. This happened on the 8th of May at 10:30 PM Central European Time in the Berlin suburb of Karlshorst.
29:45
Hostilities ceased on the same day shortly after 11:00 PM.
29:54
Having claimed tens of millions of lives worldwide, the most tragic conflict in human history came to its end in Europe. At the same time, a conference was under way in San Francisco, where the United Nations was established. From the outset, the group of founding states made it their primary objective to maintain world peace and to pay particular attention to respecting human rights.
30:23
On the 17th of July 1945, the Big Three Conference in Potsdam began. During the talks, the victors of the war established the principles by which the Allies were to govern Germany and laid out the new borders of post-war Germany and Poland.They also decided to resettle the German population from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. At the end of the conference, an ultimatum was issued to Japan calling on it to surrender unconditionally. On the
31:03
6th of August 1945, the United States launched the first ever nuclear attack by dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in Japan. The aim of the bombing was to force the Japanese to surrender. The attack resulted in the annihilation of the city and the immediate deaths of some 90,000 of its residents. On the 9th of August 1945, the second and final American nuclear attack took place as a bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. The explosion destroyed a large part of
31:37
the city. Some 74,000 people were killed on the spot or died before the end of the year as a result of injuries or radiation sickness. Parallel to the American nuclear attacks on Japan, the Soviet Union attacked Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state in Manchuria and the northern part of Korea. Faced with an inevitable collapse, on the 2nd of September 1945, the Japanese government signed an act of unconditional surrender, thereby ending the entire Second World War.
32:15
The trial of the chief war criminals began on the 20th of November 1945 at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. 21 of Nazi Germany's leading dignitaries were in the dock, including Hermann Göring and Joachim von Ribbentrop. One person was tried in absentia. The indictment concerned participation in a conspiracy to commit international crimes, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity on a hitherto unknown scale. After a trial that lasted
32:50
over 10 months, the tribunal sentenced 12 defendants to death, one in absentia, three to life imprisonment, and four to long-term imprisonment. Three dignitaries were acquitted. Judicial decisions of the Nuremberg trial constituted an important contribution to international law and an important benchmark for future trials on the crime of genocide. Yet even though the Nuremberg trial was a historical precedent, it did not bring about a universal settlement of Nazi crimes. Many
33:23
of the perpetrators escaped responsibilities and lived in peace to old age, not a few of them making successful careers in post-war Germany.
33:36
The Second World War changed the world in a fundamental way. It cost the lives of millions of casualties, changed the borders, caused entire nations to migrate, and had political consequences that are still felt today. One of its effects was that the USSR and the USA became the global powers that dominated international politics in the second half of the 20th century. As a result, the world was divided into two political and military blocks that remained in conflict in the next several decades.
Here to help you learn
Sign in to keep a private conversation with your course tutor.
Ask me anything about the material…
Sign in to chat