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The principal belligerents were the Axis powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan—and the Allies—France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, China.
The chief leaders were Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany, Benito Mussolini of Fascist Italy, and Hirohito of Imperial Japan. Unlike what happened with the Allies, there was never a joint meeting of the main Axis heads of government, although Mussolini and Hitler met on a regular basis.
In World War II, the three great Allied powers—Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union—formed a Grand Alliance that was the key to victory.
There was minimal fighting. Japan already had a military alliance with Britain, but that did not obligate it to enter the war. It joined the Allies in order to make territorial gains. It acquired Germany's scattered small holdings in the Pacific and on the coast of China.
On one side, were the “good” forces called Allies, viz., United States of America, Great Britain and Soviet Union and on the other side were the enemy called “Axis”, Viz., Germany, Italy and Japan.
Hershel W. “Woody” Williams' actions in battle helped clear the way for American tanks and infantry.
Military heroes
Dwight Eisenhower (1890–1969) Supreme Allied Commander for the D-Day Landings. Eisenhower oversaw the Allied coalition and was successful in keeping the coalition together. He also oversaw the successful liberation of Europe. General Patton (1885–1945).
The previous spring Japan in fact had almost experienced a military coup. As he mulled it over, Hitler envisaged an alliance with Tokyo primarily for what it meant in the struggle against “Jewish” Bolshevism. This was to be a pact emphatically denouncing Marxist revolution.
The United States and China Became Allies
After the United States and the United Kingdom joined the fight against Japan after Pearl Harbor, the flow of equipment, money and military advisors to China increased along with its global stature.
Calvin Leon Graham (April 3, 1930 – November 6, 1992) was the youngest U.S. serviceman to serve and fight during World War II. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the United States Navy from Houston, Texas on August 15, 1942, at the age of 12.
Simo Häyhä (Finnish: [ˈsimo ˈhæy̯hæ] ( listen); 17 December 1905 – 1 April 2002), often referred to by his nickname, The White Death (Finnish: Valkoinen kuolema; Russian: Белая смерть, romanized: Belaya smert'), was a Finnish military sniper in World War II during the 1939–1940 Winter War against the Soviet Union.
The people listed below are, or were, the last surviving members of notable groups of World War II veterans, as identified by reliable sources. About 70 million people fought in World War II between 1939 and 1945 and, as of 2022, there are still approximately 167,000 living veterans in the United States alone.
The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the war, including 8.7 million military and 19 million civilians. This represents the most military deaths of any nation by a large margin. Germany sustained 5.3 million military losses, mostly on the Eastern Front and during the final battles in Germany.
Private First Class Charles Havlat (November 4, 1910 – May 7, 1945) is recognized as being the last United States Army soldier to be killed in combat in the European Theater of Operations during World War II.
World War II was the most destructive war in history. Estimates of those killed vary from 35 million to 60 million. The total for Europe alone was 15 million to 20 million—more than twice as many as in World War I.
Sir Winston Churchill was one of the greatest war leaders. From 10 May 1940 to 26 July 1945, he led Britain to the ultimate goal, the defeat of Nazi Germany. Churchill possessed many qualities which enabled Germany's defeat.
In September 1939 the Allies, namely Great Britain, France, and Poland, were together superior in industrial resources, population, and military manpower, but the German military, or Wehrmacht, because of its armament, training, doctrine, discipline, and fighting spirit, was the most efficient and effective fighting ...
Italy wanted to gain the territory of Turkey and Africa but they didn't get what they wanted at end of WWI. Also, they were unhappy with the treaty of Versailles, they thought that injustice had been done to them. So it joined the side of Japan and Germany to get its territories back.
But relatively few will remember a historical fact that underpins the ceremony: China was the first country to enter what would become the Second World War, and it was the ally of the United States and the British empire from just after Pearl Harbor in 1941, to the Japanese surrender in 1945.
There are no recorded instances of Japanese and German troops actually fighting alongside one another, although the Japanese did allow the Germans to use some of their submarine bases in return for rocket and jet propulsion technology.
One of them was Sergei “Seryozha” Aleshkov, the youngest soldier of World War II.