World War II

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1918
The first world war had ended in German defeat.
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1929

Photo  declared in public domain at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Crowd_outside_nyse.jpg

Scared people gathered at the stock exchange.
The crash touched off  unemployment in the whole world.

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1933

Hitler became the legal ruler of Germany, and soon all the Germans had again an income as soldiers or workers newly employed by the arms industry.
Hitler did away with unemployment.

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1939

The Germans overran Czechoslovakia and Poland, and Britain under Churchill went to war.

http://espliego.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/sir-winston-churchill/

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1940

France and the Low Countries, the Netherlands and Belgium were invaded overnight.
The people stood in the street watching the Germans parade:

This photo and its history is at http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/

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1940 Dunkirk

The British came across with all kinds of ships

to rescue the 200 000 soldiers trapped between the devil and the dark blue sea at Dunkirk.
Winston Churchill called it “a miracle of deliverance”, and all across Europe a glimmer of hope lit up.

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Брошенная английская техника на пляже Дюнкерка :
abandoned vehicles on the Dunkirk shore from the  Russian war photo collection at http://waralbum.ru/5468/

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Meanwhile, London was getting blitzed and people took shelter in their subway

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1941

Germany attacked Russia.
Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, and the US entered the war.

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1942

Everywhere, in all the countries, people were asked to join the army.
The war reached the African deserts.

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1942

The Germans started to assassinate their prisoners in special jails created mostly outside Germany according to published but not explicit policy.
The prisoners were nearly all Jewish from all of Europe.

The policy  could not be mentioned on the telephone and code words had to be used in written communications.
Goebbels for instance, even in his personal dairy, uses euphemisms of the sarcastic kind.

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Nazi Europe :
Blue = countries under Hitler
Red = countries fighting Hitler
White = countries trying to stay out of the war

Quote: “A thing like this gets hold of you bit by bit”: Churchill on watching the Germans preparing to invade England.

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1943

Stalingrad : a German army was taken prisoner
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1944

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The US and the British landed at Omaha beach June 6 = D-day:

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General Eisenhower

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1945

The Germans surrendered.

Mussolini got hanged.
Hitler killed himself.
The Allied dropped their first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in Japan.

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Map of WWII death in Europe according to Putzger.

The black crosses are soldiers.
The grey crosses are civilians.
The black stars are Jews.

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In short:

1939 …. beginning of war in Europe ………
1941 …. Germany invades Russia: Japan attacks the US = war turns global ………
1943 …. Stalingrad disaster = Germany fatally weakened ………
1944 …. Normandy landing = Germany crumbles ………
1945 …………. . end of war……...

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This omits events in the oceans and in Asia.

Look at the graph below to see how a war that started on very narrow notions in Europe killed many million people as far away as China and Japan:

See Hiroshima: 6th August, 1945 for photos and a report of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.

For a detailed timeline see The History Place

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Norman Rockwell’s famous painting of a US soldier coming home from the war talking to his neighbours at his workshop.

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….Britain

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Russian soldiers setting up the Communist flag in Berlin,  on the German parliament= Reichstag from http://waralbum.ru/5460/

# Время съемки: Dated 02.05.1945
# Автор: Author Евгений Халдей = Eugene Caldej

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