World War II

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Also called "World War Two", the "Second World War", and "WWII", this was the second world-wide war fought on the planet Earth.


Fought just 21 years after the First World War ended, this global war lasted from 1939 to 1945. The main combatants included the Allies' Alliance, the Soviet Union, and the Axis Powers. Of the Axis Powers, the German chancellor Adolf Hitler was the primary aggressor. Directly involving more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries, the major participants in this war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources.


Aircraft played a major role in this conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centers, and the first two uses of nuclear weapons in war. To this point, WWII was the deadliest conflict in Human history, resulting in 70 to 85 million fatalities, a majority being civilians. Tens of millions of people died due to genocides (including the Holocaust of the Jewish Peoples), starvation, massacres, and disease. In the wake of the Axis defeat, Germany and Japan were occupied, and war crimes tribunals were conducted against German and Japanese leaders.


With the exact causes of this war heavily debated, contributing factors included the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Soviet–Japanese border conflicts, and rising European tensions since World War I. On the 1st of September, 1939, Nazi Germany, under the command of Adolf Hitler, invaded the neighboring country of Poland. The United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany, and from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe. Germany formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan, among others, and the war consisted of conflicts between the European Axis powers, and the British Empire. On 22 June 1941, Germany led the European Axis powers in an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the Eastern Front, the largest land theatre of war in history.


Japan, aiming to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was currently at war with the Republic of China by 1937. In December 1941, Japan attacked both American and British territories with near-simultaneous offensives, against Southeast Asia, and the Central Pacific. This included an attack on the US fleet at naval base Pearl Harbor, which in turn resulted in the United States declaring war against Japan. The European Axis powers declared war on the United States in solidarity. Now both Japan and the United States were involved in the second world war. Key setbacks in 1943 forced Germany into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned towards Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945, Japan suffered reversals in mainland Asia, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key western Pacific islands.


In Europe, the war concluded with the liberation of German-occupied territories, and the invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. German chancellor Hitler committed suicide, and Germany offered their unconditional surrender in May 1945. Following the refusal of Japan to surrender on its terms, the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now faced with imminent invasion, Japan announced its intention to surrender, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies.


This world war completely changed the political alignment and social structure of Earth. The "United Nations" was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival super-powers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century-long Cold War. Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery and expansion.


Technology

German tanks advancing across territory
A pilot standing with his aircraft

Aircraft were put to good use during WWII: for reconnaissance, as fighters, bombers, and ground-support, and each was advanced considerably.

Innovations included airlift, strategic bombing, anti-aircraft weaponry, the use of jet aircraft, and the development of guided missiles were being developed.


Advances were made in nearly every aspect of naval warfare, most notably with aircraft carriers and submarines.


Land warfare changed from the static front lines of trench warfare of World War I. The tank, which had been used predominantly for infantry support in the First World War, had evolved into the primary weapon. Many means of destroying tanks, including indirect artillery, anti-tank guns, mines, short-ranged infantry antitank weapons, and other tanks were used. The portable machine gun spread, and various submachine guns which were suited to close combat in urban and jungle settings. The assault rifle, incorporating many features of the rifle and submachine gun, became the standard post-war infantry weapon for most armed forces.


With the passing of messages between powers, security was key. There were large codebooks for code-breaking use, and ciphering machines were designed to make the process faster. Another aspect of military intelligence was the use of deception, which the Allies used to great effect.


Other technological and engineering feats included the world's first programmable computers, guided missiles, modernized rockets, and the development of nuclear weapons.

The medicine known as penicillin was mass-produced for the first time, and used during the war for the prevention of infections.


Aftermath

Following the war, there were administrative occupations in Germany and Austria, divided into zones and controlled by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union for some years' time. A program designed to end Nazism was put in place in Germany, to rid the country and the world of the dangerous radical, political party. Prosecution of war criminals commenced, and Germany lost a quarter of its pre-war territory. In an effort to maintain world peace, the Allies formed the "United Nations," adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 as a common standard for all member nations.


The global economy suffered heavily from the war, although participating nations were affected differently. The United States emerged much richer than any other nation, leading to a baby boom, and the domination of the world economy. Because of international trade interdependencies, European economy became stagnate, and delayed European recovery for several years. The United Kingdom was in a state of economic ruin, and although receiving a quarter of the total monetary assistance, it continued in relative economic decline for decades. The Soviet Union, despite enormous human and material losses, experienced a rapid increase in production in the immediate post-war era. Japan recovered much later, and China returned to its pre-war industrial production by 1952.


Causalities

First estimates varied, due to many deaths going unrecorded. Most accounts suggest that more than 60 million people died in the years of the war, including roughly 20 million military personnel, and 40 million civilians. The Soviet Union alone lost about 27 million, including 8.7 million being military, and 19 million being civilians. A quarter of the total people in the Soviet Union were wounded or killed. Germany sustained 5.3 million military losses. An estimated 11 to 17 million civilians died as a direct or as an indirect result of German leader Hitler's racist policies. This included his intentional mass killing of around 6 million Jewish people, along with Roma, homosexuals, at least 1.9 million Polish people, and millions of others, including other ethnic and minority groups. According to some historians, the Japanese killed between 3 million and more than 10 million people.


Axis forces employed biological and chemical weapons. The Imperial Japanese Army used a variety of such weapons during its invasion and occupation of China, and in early conflicts against the Soviets. Both the Germans and the Japanese tested such weapons against civilians, and sometimes on prisoners of war.


Alternate Timelines

Temporal Cold War

A Na'kuhl in a German Nazi uniform

In one alternate timeline, the Na'kuhl helped the Germans and Axis Powers win the war. The Nazis subsequently sent troops and conquered Britain, the northeastern United States, parts of Russia, and parts of eastern Canada. The radical Nazi political party took over New York City after the US military ordered a hasty retreat to the Midwest, causing refugees to flood over the Brooklyn Bridge. However, this was described as Germany "stretching too far, too quickly".


Resistance fighters constantly attacked German supply lines and the frontlines were too thin. An American counterattack could – and was later trying to – break through the frontlines, when Captain Archer and the Enterprise showed up in New York City. The Germans also faced problems in their stronghold in Africa, while Russian forces attempted to retake Moscow. Following the destruction of the Xindi superweapon by the crew of Enterprise in 2154, Commander Trip Tucker, and Ensign Mayweather found themselves over what was apparently WWII-era San Francisco, under attack, while Captain Archer was lying unconscious in a field hospital – under the observation of a member of a previously-unknown alien in a Nazi general's uniform.


The Enterprise destroyed the Vosk time machine, thus closing this timeline and apparently preventing a major temporal war.

This was one of the major campaigns of the Temporal Cold War.



The Guardian of Forever

Guardian of Forever.jpg

An alternate timeline existed in which Germany won the Second World War, partly due to the delayed entry into the war by the United States. A butterfly effect to the German victory was the prevention of civilian Edith Keeler's accidental death, a social worker and anti-war activist. Had her death not been prevented by accidental time-traveler Dr. McCoy, the woman would have succeeded in persuading the United States into staying out of the war, thus consequentially ensuring a Nazi victory.


In the altered reality inadvertently created by Dr. McCoy, Edith Keeler met with the US President, and effectively organized pacifist movements. The US did not contribute to the escalation of the war, and in turn, Germany completed its heavy water molecular experiments, creating the atomic bomb first, in this new history. Numerous atomic bombs were launched by Germany, effectively capturing the world.


Able to pin-point the event where history had been changed, Captain Kirk and Chief Officer Spock were able to keep history from changing, and ensured that Edith Keeler's traffic accident happened as it was "supposed" to, thus restoring the timeline.



See also: