The Second World War
The deadliest conflict in human history
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The war was global in a way the first was not: campaigns across Europe, North Africa, Asia and the Pacific, with industrial output as the decisive factor. It moved the world's centre of gravity from Europe to the United States and Soviet Union, triggered decolonisation, and produced the institutions we still live with — the UN, Bretton Woods, NATO. Technologically it drove radar, the jet engine, the computer, the rocket and nuclear physics. The Holocaust, the systematic murder of six million Jews, stands as the defining moral collapse of modern history.
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Germany invaded Poland, and the war spread to nearly the whole world. Around 70–85 million people died, most of them civilians. Norway was occupied for five years. The war ended when two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan.
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Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org