WW II At A Glance

The Second World War begins in 1939 The Second World War begins in 1939. It officially ends on 2 September 1945 when Japan formally signs documents of unconditional surrender. Over 46 million Europeans died as a result of the war, including:

Over 26 million Soviets, Over seven million Germans, About 6.8 million Poles, Between one million and 1.7 million Yugoslavs, 985,000 Romanians, 810,000 French, 750,000 Hungarians, 525,000 Austrians, 520,000 Greeks, 410,000 Italians, 400,000 Czechs, 388,000 British, 250,000 Dutch, 88,000 Belgians, 84,000 Fins, 22,000 Spaniards, 21,000 Bulgarians, 10,000 Norwegians, and 4,000 Danes.

The war has also claimed over 13 million people from other lands, including: 11.3 million Chinese, Almost two million Japanese, 298,000 Americans, 118,000 Filipinos, 42,000 Canadians, 36,000 Indians, 29,000 Australians, 12,000 New Zealanders, and 9,000 South Africans. Close to 60% of the European war dead are from the Soviet Union. Of the more than 26 million Soviets killed, nearly 18 million are civilians. About nine million servicemen and women from the Red Army died.

The Holocaust was the murder by Nazi Germany of six million Jews The Holocaust was the murder by Nazi Germany of six million Jews. While the Nazi persecution of the Jews began in 1933, the mass murder was committed during World War II. It took the Germans and their accomplices four and a half years to murder six million Jews. They were at their most efficient from April to November 1942 – 250 days in which they murdered some two and a half million Jews. They never showed any restraint, they slowed down only when they began to run out of Jews to kill, and they only stopped when the Allies defeated them The Holocaust

The Japanese military during the 1930s and 1940s is often compared to the military of Nazi Germany during 1933–45 because of the sheer scale of suffering. Much of the controversy regarding Japan's role in World War II revolves around the death rates of prisoners of war and civilians under Japanese occupation. The historian Chalmers Johnson has written that: It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two Axis aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimised. The Germans killed six million Jews and 20 million Russians [i.e. Soviet citizens] the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians, and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese. Both nations looted the countries they conquered on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions and exploited them as forced labourers—and, in the case of the Japanese, as forced prostitutes for front-line troops. If you were a Nazi prisoner of war from Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand or Canada (but not Russia) you faced a 4% chance of not surviving the war; [by comparison] the death rate for Allied POWs held by the Japanese was nearly 30% Japanese Atrocities

Japanese-American Internment Japanese American internment was the forcible relocation and internment by the United States government in 1942 of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese residing along the Pacific coast of the United States to camps called "War Relocation Camps," in the wake of Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. The internment of Japanese Americans was applied unequally throughout the United States. Japanese Americans residing on the West Coast of the United States were all interned, whereas in Hawaii, where more than 150,000 Japanese Americans composed nearly a third of that territory's population, only 1,200 to 1,800 Japanese Americans were interned. Of those interned, 62% were United States citizens.[ Japanese-American Internment

US/Allied Failure to Intervene 1937-38- Rape of Nanking- though US missionaries stationed in the city write home telling of the massacre and asking for US intervention, the US fails to respond. 1939- Voyage of the St. Louis- a passenger ship filled with Jewish refugees is denied entrance into the US. The passengers are sent back to Europe, where most will perish in the Holocaust. 1942-45- Failure to bomb Auschwitz- though the US has detailed plans of the facility gained by two Jewish escapees, and though US planes regularly fly in the vicinity to bomb a refinery a few miles from the camp, American forces fail to bomb the most notorious death camp. The Allies have a stated policy of not using military force to aid refugees. US/Allied Failure to Intervene