World War II Collection

World War II Collection

WWII Collection

World War II, 1939-1945

Veterans--Florida

Although Japan and China were already engaged war since 1937, September 1, 1939 is generally considered the beginning date of World War II. It was on this day that Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the Führer of Nazi Germany, invaded Poland, inciting France and the United Kingdom to declare war. Through the course of the war, belligerents were general divided into two groups: the Allied Powers, consisting of the United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union, China, Poland, Canada, Australia, India, Yugoslavia, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa, New Zealand, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, Brazil, Denmark, Luxembourg, Cuba, Mexico, the Philippines, Mongolia, and Iran; and the Axis Powers, consisting of Germany, Japan, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria.

The United States did not join the Allies until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. War was waged for several years. On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered to Soviet and Polish troops in response to the capture of Berlin just a few days earlier, in effect ending the war in Europe. The war in the Pacific theater did not end until Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, in response to the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

World War II transformed the globe's geopolitical context. The United Nations (UN) was established and the United States and Soviet Union emerged as opposing superpowers, setting the stage for the 46-year long Cold War. Much of Europe was left in economic collapse and decolonization began in Asia and Africa.

UCF Community Veterans History Project Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.

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Collection

Naval Training Center, Orlando, Florida

Cepero, Laura

Black, Jeremy. World War Two: A Military History. London: Routledge, 2003.

Maddox, Robert James. The United States and World War II. Boulder: Westview Press, 1992.

Davies, Norman, and Norman Davies. No Simple Victory: World War II in Europe, 1939-1945. New York: Viking, 2007

Zeiler, Thomas W. Unconditional Defeat: Japan, America, and the End of World War II. Wilmington, Del: Scholarly Resources, 2004.

Ferguson, Niall. The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.

Reynolds, David. From World War to Cold War Churchill, Roosevelt, and the International History of the 1940s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.