The Second World War

The Second World War was a conflict that affected nearly every country in the world, also Finland. The principal belligerents were the Axis powers (German, Italy and Japan) and the Allies (Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent China.

The war started because Germany wasn't treated well after the first world war. In 1934 when Hidenburg, the president of Germany, died, Adolf Hitler became the new leader, "Führer", of Germany. He was at the same time the president, the prime minister and the chief of German's army.

In 1936 Germany sent soldiers to Rein which was demilitarised in the Threaty of Versailles. The next year Nazis started to put pressure on Poland. In March 1938 Hitler sent German troops to occupy Austria, which was promptly incorporated into Germany and the next year German occupied Czechoslovakia.

On first September 1939 the German army crossed the Polish border without a declaration of war and the airforces of Germany bombed Warsaw. Poland surrendered a month later and the Jews of Poland were sent to concentration camps. France and Great-Britain hadn't any change to help Poland because their arming was unfinished. They declared war to Germany and rejected Hitler's peace offers.

On the westfront nothing happened during the next half year and in the winter 1939-1940 the world's attention was turned to Finland's winterwar against the Soviet Union. In 1940 Germany occupied Denmark, Norway and France. Hitler was planning to make an invasion to the British islands but it was impossible to carry out because the strong British navy ruled the Channel.

On 22nd June 1941 the German army attacked the Soviet Union. First Germany was winning but in Stalingrad the German army was beaten by the Soviet Union. On 7th December 1941 it started to happen in the Far East. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and destroyed about twenty warships and two hundred aeroplanes. The United States declared war to Japan. As Hitler declared war to USA the war became really global.

On 6th June 1944 the invasion of Normandy began where 156000 British, Canadian and U.S. troops under the command of the U.S. general Eisenhower landed in France. Germany hadn't any change to win the war anymore.

In 1945 the troops of America and the Soviet Union faced each other in the Elbe-River and surrounded Berlin. Hitler committed a suicide, but his body was never found. Germany surrounded on 8th May 1945. The war in Europe was over.

But in the Far East the war still continued. American airforces bombed the big cities of Japan and on 6th August the American aeroplane "Enola Gey" dropped an atomic bomb to Hiroshima and it killed 80000 people. Three days later America dropped another atomic bomb in Nagasaki and Japan surrendered on 15th August 1945. The Second World War was over.