Essay On WWII

2293 Words5 Pages

The United States has been involved in many wars since its inception. WWII in particular had a significant impact on the world and the United States. Through the years 1939 to 1945 the majority of the world suffered many tragedies and hardships. In total, 50 million people died including women, children, civilians, and innocent bystanders. Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, was responsible for a significant amount of these deaths. Hitler, aligned with Japan, wanted to seize all of Europe and Japan wanted to conquer Asia. A major cause of WWII was that Germany strongly disapproved of the Treaty of Versailles. Germany especially didn’t like that they had to accept all the blame for WWI, paying $ 6,600 million for the damage they caused in WWI, and they were only allowed to have a small army and six naval ships, no tanks, no air force and no submarines were allowed. Also, the Rhineland area was to be de-militarized and taken out of Germany’s possession. All of these conditions were written in the Treaty of Versailles. During the war the world formed two sides, the Allies and the Axis Powers. The Allies included Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States, known as “the Big 3”. The Axis Powers included Germany, Italy, and Japan. At the end of the war the Allies were triumphant and the world gained its peace.
WWII had a major effect on the United States economically. For starters, WW2 was right after the Great Depression so the citizens of the US were in the process of recovering from this crucial setback in the US economy. Ironically, WWII helped the county crawl out of this horrific depression. For example, businesses boomed because they were mass producing supplies for the war including many weapons and materials. Also...

... middle of paper ...

...rounded in Europe with the British and the U.S. pressing in from the west, and the Russians coming in from the east killing about half the German army in the war. Since Hitler committed suicide on April 30th, 1945 Germany was falling apart and didn’t have a powerful leader to guide them. So, Germany decided to invade Russia, and they were horribly equipped for winter warfare, and had summer equipment when they invaded. This was because Hitler anticipated they would have beaten Russia before winter. Russia kept the German army occupies while the other allies liberated France. On January 12th, 1945 the Soviet Union invaded Berlin, Germany at the Battle of Berlin and succeeded. In late April and early May of 1945 Germany surrendered to the Allies and World War Two came to an end. As General Eisenhower said in 1945, “The world must know what happened, and never forget”.

Open Document