World War II (abbreviated WWII), also known as the Second World War, was the largest and deadliest war in world history. Lasting from 1939 until 1945, it saw the Allied Powers, led by the "Big Three" of Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States, together with China, defeat the Axis Powers, led by Germany, Japan, and Italy. Numerous smaller powers were also involved.Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler put Germany on a war footing by forcing ever-increasing territorial demands on its neighbors. This led to all-out war in September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and Britain and France declared war on Germany. In 1940, Germany conquered most of western Europe but failed to subdue Britain. In 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, where massive battles went on continuously until the end of the war. Germany also implemented the "Final Solution", the systematic murder of Europe's Jews, Gypsies, and other minorities.On the other side of world, Japan invaded China in 1937. China was an informal ally of the United States. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and Britain. After six months of successes, the Japanese were turned back at sea and finally succumbed to the United States, a much larger industrial power. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the war represent the only time that nuclear weapons have ever been used in warfare.One of the key factors in that lead to an Allied victory was industrial production. The Allies built three times more weapons than the Axis powers and delivered more of them to the front lines. The war saw dramatic advances in weapons systems, especially regarding piston and jet airplanes, radar, rockets, sonar, proximity fuzes, and the atomic bomb.Vast areas of Europe, eastern Asia and North Africa, as well as the oceans, became battlefields. Some 62 million people, or 2.5% of the world population, died in the war, though estimates vary greatly. About 60% of all casualties were civilians, who died as a result of disease, starvation, genocide (in particular, the Holocaust), massacres, and aerial bombing.After World War II, Europe was informally split into Western and Soviet spheres of influence, which set the stage for the Cold War. There was a shift in power from Western Europe and the British Commonwealth to the two new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. In Asia, the defeat of Japan led to its democratization. China's civil war continued, resulting in the establishment of the People's Republic of China. The former colonies of the European powers began their road to independence.参考资料：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II
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