The World at War

World War I raged from 1914 to 1918, ignited in part by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

The Treaty of Versailles ended World War I in 1919 while imposing heavy reparations and blame on Germany.

The Battle of the Somme in 1916 became one of World War I's bloodiest, with catastrophic British losses on its opening day.

Trench warfare defined much of World War I, holding the Western Front largely static for years.

The League of Nations formed after World War I to prevent future wars but ultimately failed to stop World War II.

World War II, the deadliest conflict in history, ended in 1945 after Japan's surrender following the atomic bombings.

The attack on Pearl Harbor drew the United States into World War II and prompted Roosevelt's famous infamy speech.

D-Day's Normandy landings in June 1944 stand as the largest seaborne invasion in history.

The Holocaust was Nazi Germany's systematic genocide that murdered six million Jewish people and other targeted groups.

The Battle of Stalingrad turned the tide on the Eastern Front and ranks among the war's bloodiest confrontations.

The Battle of Britain was an air campaign in 1940 that the Royal Air Force fought to prevent a German invasion.

Victory in Europe Day, May 8, 1945, marked Germany's surrender and sparked mass celebrations across Allied nations.

The Battle of Midway turned the tide of the Pacific War as the US Navy sank four Japanese aircraft carriers.

Winston Churchill led Britain through World War II, rallying the nation with some of history's most famous speeches.

Franklin D. Roosevelt led the United States through most of World War II and remains its only four-term president.

Adolf Hitler led Nazi Germany, launching World War II in Europe and orchestrating the Holocaust.

Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union through World War II and remained its dictator until his death in 1953.

The Nuremberg trials prosecuted major Nazi war criminals and set lasting precedents in international law.

Anne Frank's diary, written while hiding from Nazi persecution in the Netherlands, became one of the war's most read accounts.

The United Nations was founded in 1945 after World War II, succeeding the earlier League of Nations.

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the only wartime use of nuclear weapons and led to Japan's surrender.

The Blitz bombed British cities for months, including fifty-seven straight nights of raids on London at its outset.

The Manhattan Project developed the atomic bomb in secret, led scientifically by J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Victory over Japan Day followed the atomic bombings and marked the final end of the Second World War.

The Yalta Conference brought Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin together to shape the postwar world order.

The Cold War pitted the US against the Soviet Union for decades without ever erupting into direct large-scale combat.

The Berlin Airlift supplied West Berlin almost entirely by air for nearly a year during a Soviet blockade.

The Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice rather than a formal peace treaty, a division that persists today.

The Vietnam War stretched across two decades and became one of the most divisive conflicts in American history.

Bletchley Park housed the British codebreaking effort that famously cracked the German Enigma code.