Quick questions on Conduct of WWII and the post-war settlement: HSC Modern History Core Study

Axis ascendancy (1939-1941). Germany overran Poland (Sept 1939), Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, and France by June 1940. The Battle of Britain (July to October 1940) was the first German setback. Operation Barbarossa (22 June 1941) opened the Eastern Front with 3.8 million Axis troops.

The Final Solution was decided in 1941 and systematised at the Wannsee Conference (20 January 1942) under Reinhard Heydrich. The Einsatzgruppen (SS mobile killing squads) shot around 1.3 million Jews and Soviet civilians on the Eastern Front from 1941. The death camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Chelmno, and Majdanek industrialised the killing. By 1945, around 6 million Jews had been murdered, alongside Roma, Soviet POWs, disabled people, gay men, Jehovah's Witnesses, and political prisoners.

The Potsdam Declaration (26 July 1945) demanded unconditional Japanese surrender. Hiroshima was bombed on 6 August 1945 (around 80,000 killed immediately, total deaths to year-end around 140,000). The USSR declared war on Japan on 8 August. Nagasaki was bombed on 9 August (around 40,000 killed immediately).

Yalta (4 to 11 February 1945). Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin agreed on the division of Germany into occupation zones, free elections in liberated Europe (in practice, ignored by the USSR), Soviet entry into the war against Japan, and the establishment of the United Nations.

Richard Overy (Why the Allies Won, 1995) attributes Allied victory to industrial production and leadership rather than inevitability. Antony Beevor (Stalingrad, 1998; Berlin, 2002) is the standard narrative military history. Tony Judt (Postwar, 2005) is the standard history of the immediate post-war settlement.

Germany overran Poland (Sept 1939), Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, and France by June 1940. The Battle of Britain (July to October 1940) was the first German setback. Operation Barbarossa (22 June 1941) opened the Eastern Front with 3.8 million Axis troops.

Japan attacked Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941). Germany declared war on the United States (11 December 1941). By mid-1942, Axis forces held continental Europe, North Africa, and much of South-East Asia.

Midway (4 to 7 June 1942) destroyed four Japanese carriers. El Alamein (October to November 1942) turned North Africa. Stalingrad (August 1942 to February 1943) cost Germany the Sixth Army (around 800,000 casualties).

The invasion of Italy (September 1943) toppled Mussolini. D-Day (6 June 1944) opened the Western Front with 156,000 Allied troops. The Soviet Operation Bagration (June to August 1944) destroyed German Army Group Centre.

Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin agreed on the division of Germany into occupation zones, free elections in liberated Europe (in practice, ignored by the USSR), Soviet entry into the war against Japan, and the establishment of the United Nations.

Truman, Churchill (then Attlee), and Stalin agreed on de-Nazification, demilitarisation, and reparations from Germany. Disagreements over Poland and Eastern Europe foreshadowed the Cold War.

The UN Charter was signed in San Francisco on 26 June 1945 and entered into force on 24 October 1945. Five permanent Security Council members (US, USSR, UK, France, China) had veto power.

The International Military Tribunal prosecuted 24 senior Nazis on four charges, including the new category of crimes against humanity. 12 were sentenced to death. The principles were codified by the UN in 1946 and informed the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Cite Midway, El Alamein, and Stalingrad together; the global war turned in late 1942.

Systematic killing began in 1941 with the Einsatzgruppen; the Wannsee Conference (January 1942) coordinated rather than initiated it.