The War in brief......

The Second World War can roughly be divided into three phases and for
the purposes of giving a quick overview of the conflict, we have
summarised these below.

FIRST PHASE.
On Friday,Sept 1st the German armies invaded Poland. Two days later,
Britain and then France declared war on Germany. Within less than a
month Poland had been overrun. Shortly after the German invasion, the
Soviets also invaded Poland from the East.
The rapid overruning of Poland was followed by six months lull - the
so called Phoney War but the appearence of calm was deceptive. A truer
name would have been the `Winter of Illusion`. The leaders of Western
countries spent the time in fanciful plans for attacking Germany`s
flanks.
The loud talk of the Allies in attacking Germany`s flanks, prompted
Hitler to forstall them and the Germans occupied Denmark and Norway in
April 1940. On May 10 the Germans struck at France through Holland and
Belgium and the world was introduced to the concept of `Blitzkrieg` or 
`lightning war`. German tanks made wide pincer movements around enemy
forces and then these in turn were surrounded and smashed by the German
infantry followingin the wake of the armour. Within a few weeks France
capitulated and the British escaped from Dunkirk, saving most of
the British Expeditionary Force but loosing vast quantities of arms 
and equipment.

SECOND PHASE
Britain was now the only remaining opponent of Germany , but she was 
left in the most perilous situation, militarily naked whilst enveloped
by a 2000-mile stretch of enemy coastline.
The Germans threatened invasion under the code name `Operation Sea-Lion`
but first needed control of the air. This never happened as the Luftwaffe
were soundly beaten by the Royal Air Force and by October 1940, the 
battle was called off by the Germans.Hitlers attitude to Britain was
in fact very ambiguous and his desire to see the British Empire preserved
may also have had a bearing on the invasion being called off.
In April 1941 the Germans to help out their Axis allies, the Italians
struck at the Balkans and then in June 1941, Hitler launched `Operation
Barbarossa` , the invasion of the Soviet Union. Rapid success and the
destruction of millions of red army troops did not bring the collapse
of the Soviet Empire the Germans had hoped for and by the Winter of 1941
the attack on Moscow had petered out with big German losses and the
Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front faced the Russian winter and the Russian
counter attacks.
Hitlers new offensive in the spring of 1942 again swept all before it
with the Germans conquering most of southern Russian and the Caucasus
until they were checked at Stalingrad. Their defeat there was one of the
turning points of the war and marked the high tide of Axis expansion.
In the winter of 1941/42, the Germans were thrown back and lost over
300,000 men at Stalingrad from then on in Russia, apart from a few
local successes, they were on the retreat.
In 1940, the war had extended to the Mediterranean and the Germans
again going to the rescue of the Italians became embroiled in North
Africa. Under Rommel`s brilliant leadership, the Germans kept the
Allies in check but with US involvement and the strains of the other 
fronts eventual defeat for the Afrika Korps was certain.
In December 1941, Japan made a suprise attack on the U.S fleet at
Pearl harbour enabling the Japanese to overrun the Allied positions
in the South-west pacific - Malaya,Burma,the Phillipines,and  the Dutch East
Indies.But in this rapid expansion, they became stretched out far beyond
their capacity for holding their gains.For Japan was a small island
state with limited industrial power.

THIRD PHASE
Once America`s strength developed, and Russia survived to develop hers,
the defeat of the Axis powers, Germany,Italy and Japan -was certain, as
their allied potential was much smaller.
The only question was - how long it would take and how complete it would
be.There was no real turning point in this phase of the war, but only
an incoming tide. The tide flowed more easily in Russia and the Pacific
because in these areas and ever growing superiority of force was
combined with ample space for manouvre.In southern and western Europe
the tide met more checks because space was more cramped.
During 1943 the Allies threw the Germans out of North Africa and followed
this by an invasion of Sicily and then Italy and the slow advance up the
leg of Italy which ended in April 1945, began.
On June 6th 1944, the Allies landed in Normandy,France and the Germans
faced a three front European war.The invasion was succesful and from the 
East and West the Germans were squeezed but massive Allied armies until
April 1945 when with Hitler and Mussolini dead the war in Europe was
over.
In the Far East, the master-key of airpower made the collapse of Japan
certain and with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, the Second World War came to a close.