History of World War II

Seven decades after Nazi Germany's attack on Poland, the answer to that question depends on where you are standing. As reported by AFP, most historians agree that the first world war broke out on 1 September 1939 when a German battleship opened fire on a Polish fort in Danzig (now Gdansk), and Nazi troops crossed the Polish border without a formal declaration of war. But it remained a German-Polish conflict until September 3 when Britain and France, bound to Poland by military pacts, declared war on Germany for their vast empires into the war.

World War II was formally involve almost every nation on the planet to varying degrees.

Another view comes from Asia. Chinese leader, Chiang Kai-shek, in his diaries traced the start of World War II in 1931, when Japan seized Manchuria in northeast China and turned into a puppet state. A number of other people in China consider the war began on July 7, 1937, when Japanese forces launched a massive attack to all parts of China. While in Russia, which is known as the "Great Patriotic War", began on June 22, 1941, when Nazi forces invaded the Soviet Union.

Poland, however, remember that Soviet troops entered the east of the country on 17 September 1939, under the Pact Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Nazis. At the same time, Soviet troops fought the Japanese in 1938 and 1939 attacked Finland a few weeks after moving to Poland, and also occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1940. For Western European countries, the conflict was still categorized as "Quasi War" until 1940 when Nazi troops move to Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and Holland, and attacked Britain from the air.

Germany's allies, the ruling fascist Italy, also plunged into the global conflict in 1940. While the United States, World War II began on December 7, 1941, after the Japanese bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Hey, there are different interpretations of the end of World War II. In Western Europe, the focus is on May 8, 1945, while Russia believes it happened on May 9, 1945 when Germany signed its surrender. While in the Pacific region, considered a world war ended on 2 September 1945, when Japan surrendered to the United States after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.