00:00The world was on a knife's edge.
00:01The 1930s were a decade of rising tension,
00:04with aggressive powers in Europe and Asia expanding their territories.
00:08The Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I,
00:10had left a bitter taste and economic turmoil
00:13from the Great Depression fueled extremist ideologies.
00:16In Germany, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power,
00:20rearming the nation and making bold territorial claims.
00:22Italy, under Benito Mussolini, and Japan,
00:25with its own imperial ambitions, formed an alliance with Germany.
00:30The policy of appeasement by other European powers,
00:32hoping to avoid another devastating war, only emboldened them.
00:36On September 1, 1939, the breaking point was reached.
00:39Germany invaded Poland, and two days later, Britain and France declared war.
00:44World War II had begun.
00:46The opening phase of the war was shockingly fast.
00:49Germany unleashed a new military tactic called Blitzkrieg, or Lightning War.
00:53Combining air power with fast-moving tanks and infantry,
00:56they overwhelmed their opponents.
00:58Poland fell in weeks.
00:59Then, in 1940, the war machine turned west.
01:03Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg were all swiftly occupied.
01:09The main prize, France, was next.
01:12German forces bypassed the heavily fortified Magina Line,
01:15trapping British and French soldiers on the beaches of Dunkirk.
01:19In a miraculous effort, over 300,000 Allied troops were evacuated
01:23by a flotilla of naval vessels and civilian boats.
01:26But France fell, and Britain stood alone.
01:29The Battle of Britain raged in the skies,
01:31as the Royal Air Force valiantly fought off the German Luftwaffe, preventing a Fuskal invasion.
01:36Hitler, unable to secure air superiority, turned his attention east.
01:40In June 1941, Germany launched Operation Barber, a massive invasion of the Soviet Union.
01:46This opened the enormous and brutal Eastern Front, where the bulk of the German army would fight and ultimately be
01:52broken.
01:53The initial advance was swift, reaching the outskirts of Moscow.
01:56But the harsh Russian winter, coupled with fierce, Soviet resistance, halted the German war machine.
02:02The turning point on the Eastern Front, and perhaps the entire war in Europe, was the Battle of Stalin.
02:08From late 1942 to early 1943, the city became a brutal, grinding battle of attrition.
02:15Trapped and starving, the German 6th Army was annihilated.
02:18It was a catastrophic defeat, from which the German military would never fully recover.
02:22The Soviet Red Army began its long, relentless pushback, towards Berlin.
02:27While Europe was engulfed in conflict, tensions were escalating in the Pacific.
02:31The United States had remained officially neutral, though it supplied the Allies through the Lend-Lease Act.
02:36Japan, seeking to dominate Asia and secure vital resources, saw the U.S. Pacific fleet as a major obstacle.
02:42On the morning of December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the U.S. naval base, at Pearl
02:48Harbor, Hawaii.
02:49The attack was devastating, sinking or damaging numerous battleships, and killing over 2,400 Americans.
02:56The next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared it a date, which will live in infamy, and the United States
03:03officially entered World War II.
03:05The war was now a truly global conflict.
03:08The Pacific Theater became a vast and brutal arena of war.
03:11In the months after Pearl Harbor, Japan achieved a string of victories, capturing the Philippines, Singapore, and much of Southeast
03:20Asia.
03:20But the tide began to turn at the Battle of Midway, in June 1942, where the U.S. Navy inflicted
03:26a decisive defeat on the Japanese fleet, sinking four of their aircraft carriers.
03:30This victory allowed the U.S. to go on the offensive, beginning a long and costly island-hopping campaign.
03:36The strategy involved bypassing heavily fortified Japanese islands, and instead capturing strategically, important ones to use as basis for the
03:44next advance toward Japan.
03:45This led to some of the most ferocious battles of the war, fought on islands like Guadalcanal, Saipan, Iwo Jima,
03:52and Okinawa.
03:54The fighting was characterized by jungle warfare, desperate amphibious assaults, and the fanatical resistance of Japanese soldiers, who often fought
04:01to the last man.
04:02The battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa, in particular, were incredibly bloody, showcasing the horrific costs of invading the Japanese
04:09home islands.
04:10As the Allied armies fought across the globe, they began to uncover the full extent of a horror that defied
04:15imagination.
04:16Central to the Nazi ideology was a virulent anti-Semitism, which blamed Jews for Germany's problems.
04:22Beginning in 1933, the Nazi regime implemented systematic policies of persecution.
04:27Jews were stripped of their citizenship, their property was confiscated, and they were forced into ghettos.
04:32But this persecution escalated into a plan for mass extermination, known as the Final Solution.
04:38The Holocaust was the state's...
04:39Systematic murder of 6 million European Jews.
04:42Millions of other people were also targeted for extermination, including Roma people, Poles, and other Slavic peoples, Soviet prisoners of
04:50war, people with disabilities, and political and religious opponents.
04:55They were rounded up and transported to a network of concentration and extermination camps like Auschwitz, Treblinker, and some...
05:03Here, they were subjected to forced labor, starvation, and mass murder in gas chambers.
05:08The Holocaust stands as one of the darkest chapters in human history.
05:12A chilling testament to the depths of human cruelty, and the catastrophic consequences of unchecked hatred and intolerance.
05:18By 1944, the tide had decisively turned against the Axis powers.
05:22In the East, the Soviet Union was pushing relentlessly towards Germany.
05:26In the West, the Allies had been planning the largest amphibious invasion in history, to open a new front in
05:31Western Europe.
05:32On June 6, 1940, 4DD Operation Overlord was launched.
05:36Over 150,000 Allied soldiers from the United States, Britain, Canada, and other nations, landed on the beaches of Normandy,
05:44France, under intense German fire.
05:46The landings at beaches codenamed Utah, Omaha Gold, Juno, and Sod were costly, but they were successful.
05:53A foothold was established.
05:55After breaking out from Normandy, the Allies liberated Paris in August, and began their advance across France and towards Germany's
06:02border.
06:02The Germans mounted one last major counter-offensive in the winter of 1944, known as the Battle of the Bulge,
06:09but it ultimately failed.
06:10The Allied forces from the West, and the Soviet forces from the East, closed in on Germany like a vice.
06:15The final months of the war in Europe were a race to Berlin.
06:18As Allied bombers pounded German cities into rubble, ground forces pushed deeper into the heart of the Reich.
06:24The Soviet Red Army, having borne the brunt of the war, reached the German capital first in April 1945.
06:31The Battle of Berlin was a final, desperate, and bloody struggle, fought amidst the ruins of the city.
06:36As Soviet soldiers closed in on his bunker, Adolf Hitler took his own life on April 30th.
06:42A few days later, on May 8th, 1945, Germany officially surrendered.
06:47The day, was celebrated as Victory in Europe Day, or V-Day, marking the end of the war in Europe.
06:53But the war was not over yet.
06:54Japan, despite facing overwhelming odds, refused to surrender.
06:58The prospect of invading the Japanese home islands, after the bloody experiences on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, was daunting.
07:05With casualty estimates running into the millions for both sides, President Harry S. Truman, who took office after Roosevelt's death,
07:12was faced with a monumental decision.
07:14The United States had successfully developed a new, terrifying weapon.
07:18The atomic bomb.
07:19On August 6th, 1945, an American B-29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima.
07:26The blast and its after-facts killed an estimated 140,000 people.
07:30When Japan still did not surrender, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later.
07:35The war was the deadliest conflict in human history, with an estimated 70 to 85 million fatalities.
07:41It reshaped the world map, led to the decline of old European empires, and saw the rise of two new
07:47superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union.
07:51The horrors of the war led to the creation of the United Nations, in the hope of preventing future global
07:56conflicts, and the establishment of new international laws on human rights.
08:00The legacy of World War II is complex and enduring.
08:03It's a story of immense sacrifice, unimaginable horror, and the global struggle between tyranny and freedom.
08:09It serves as a permanent reminder of the cost of war, and the preciousness of peace.
08:14Thank you for watching.
08:16If you found this history compelling, please consider liking this video, and subscribing for more content.
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