Wars before the world war
Manchuria (1931), Ethiopia (1935), Spain (1936-39) and China (from 1937) were already industrial wars. Munich 1938 bought time, not peace.
The diplomatic fuse ran through Manchuria, Ethiopia, Spain, the Anschluss, Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. A European general war began on 1 September 1939; a truly global war after December 1941.
Periodising matters: China was already in a full-scale war in 1937, and Japan's 1931 seizure of Manchuria is the other common start-date in East Asian historiography.
Timeline
- China full-scale war
After the Marco Polo Bridge clash, Japan and China enter full-scale war; Nanjing falls in December with mass civilian killing.
- Poland invaded
Germany invades Poland on 1 September; Britain and France declare war on 3 September. The USSR invades eastern Poland on 17 September under the Molotov-Ribbentrop protocols.
- Fall of France
German offensive in May-June overruns the Low Countries and France. The Dunkirk evacuation (26 May-4 June) saves much of the BEF; Britain remains at war.
- Barbarossa and Pearl Harbor
Germany invades the USSR on 22 June. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor on 7 December; the US declares war. Germany and Italy declare war on the US.
- Midway and El Alamein
US Navy victory at Midway (4-7 June) blunts Japan's Pacific offensive. El Alamein (October-November) and Operation Torch open a clearer Allied path in North Africa.
- Stalingrad and Kursk
German 6th Army surrenders at Stalingrad in February. Kursk in July is the last major German strategic offensive in the east. Italy surrenders in September.
- Overlord and Bagration
Normandy landings on 6 June. Soviet Operation Bagration wrecks Army Group Centre. The Warsaw Uprising and the liberation of Paris mark a violent summer of politics as well as arms.
- VE Day
Hitler dies on 30 April; German surrender is effective 8 May in the West (9 May in the Soviet calendar). The UN Charter is signed in San Francisco in June.
- Atomic bombs and Soviet entry
Hiroshima on 6 August, Soviet invasion of Manchuria on 8 August, Nagasaki on 9 August. Japan announces surrender on 15 August.
- Missouri surrender
Formal Japanese surrender on 2 September in Tokyo Bay. Allied occupations of Germany, Japan, Korea and parts of Southeast Asia begin in earnest.
Eras
German-Italian run of victories
Poland, Norway, France, the Balkans and the first year in the USSR looked like a new form of rapid war. Britain survived in the air and at sea.
Globalisation and turning points
Pearl Harbor, Midway, Stalingrad and Alamein shifted initiative. Genocide in Europe accelerated as German victory receded.
Coalition offensives
Italy, the Combined Bomber Offensive, island-hopping, and the build-up to Overlord. Tehran (1943) set the cross-Channel date.
Collapse, bombs, occupation
The Reich and Imperial Japan collapsed under multi-front assault. Nuclear weapons and Soviet entry in Asia closed the last theatre.
Milestones
Grand Alliance
The US-UK-USSR coalition, formalised in 1942, held until victory despite deep postwar disagreement -- the rare case of a winning coalition that immediately became a cold war.
Holocaust documentation
Camps liberated in 1944-45, the Nuremberg evidence and survivor testimony made industrial genocide a permanent subject of law and education.
Nuclear break
The Manhattan Project and August 1945 bombings opened a weapons category that later ICBMs would deliver at intercontinental range.
VE and VJ days ended organised Axis resistance, not violence: civil wars, partitions and anti-colonial wars followed immediately.
The documentary record -- Ultra, Soviet archives opened after 1991, and Japanese and German records -- keeps revising operational detail without changing the war's scale.