The World War II Portal
World War II, or the Second World War, was a global military conflict. It began as the joining of what had initially been two separate conflicts, with the first beginning in Asia in 1937 (the Second Sino-Japanese War) and the other beginning in Europe in 1939 (the German and Soviet invasion of Poland).
The war split the majority of the world's nations into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. It involved the mobilization of over 100 million military personnel, making it the most widespread war in history, and placed the participants in a state of "total war", which erased the distinction between civil and military resources and resulted in the complete activation of a nation's economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities for the purposes of the war effort. Over 70 million people, the majority of them civilians, were killed, making it the deadliest conflict in human history.
The Allies won the war, and as a result, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as the world's leading superpowers. This set the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 45 years. The United Nations was formed in the hope of preventing another such conflict. The self determination spawned by the war accelerated decolonization movements in Asia and Africa, while Europe itself began moving toward integration.
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Selected equipment
The
Enigma machine was a
cipher machine used to
encrypt and decrypt secret messages. More precisely, Enigma was a family of related electro-mechanical
rotor machines, comprising a variety of different models.The Enigma was used commercially from the early 1920s on, and was also adopted by the military and governmental services of a number of nations—most famously by
Nazi Germany before and during
World War II.The German military model, the
Wehrmacht Enigma, is the version most commonly discussed.The machine has gained notoriety because
Allied cryptologists were able to
decrypt a large number of messages that had been enciphered on the machine. Decryption was made possible in 1932 by
Polish cryptographers
Marian Rejewski,
Jerzy Różycki and
Henryk Zygalski from
Cipher Bureau. In mid-1939 reconstruction and decryption methods were delivered from
Poland to
Britain and
France. The
intelligence gained through this source, codenamed
ULTRA, was a significant aid to the Allied war effort.
Selected battle
The
Battle of Cape Esperance, also known as the
Second Battle of Savo Island and, in Japanese sources, as the
Sea Battle of Savo Island (サボ島沖海戦?), took place October 11 – 12, 1942, and was a
naval battle of the
Pacific campaign of
World War II between the
Imperial Japanese Navy and
United States Navy. The battle was the third of five major naval engagements during the
Guadalcanal campaign and took place at the entrance to the
strait between
Savo Island and
Guadalcanal in the
Solomon Islands.On the night of
October 11, Japanese naval forces in the Solomon Islands area, under the command of
Gunichi Mikawa, sent a major supply and reinforcement convoy to their forces on Guadalcanal. The convoy consisted of two
seaplane tenders and six
destroyers and was commanded by
Rear Admiral Takatsugu Jojima. At the same time but in a separate operation, three heavy
cruisers and two destroyers under the command of Rear Admiral
Aritomo Gotō were to
bombard the
Allied airfield on Guadalcanal (called
Henderson Field by the Allies) with the object of destroying Allied aircraft and the airfield's facilities.
Selected picture
US Air Force photographs the destruction in central Berlin in July 1945
Selected biography
Air Marshal Sir George Jones KBE,
CB,
DFC (18 October 1896 – 24 August 1992) was a senior commander in the
Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). He rose from being a
private soldier in
World War I to Air Marshal in 1948. He served as
Chief of the Air Staff from 1942 to 1952, the longest continuous tenure of any RAAF chief. Jones was a surprise appointee to the Air Force’s top role, and his achievements in the position were coloured by a divisive relationship during
World War II with his head of operations and nominal subordinate,
Air Vice Marshal William Bostock.Jones first saw action as an
infantryman in the
Gallipoli campaign of 1915, before transferring to the Australian Flying Corps the following year. Initially an air mechanic, he undertook flying training in 1917 and was posted to a
fighter squadron in
France, achieving seven victories to become an
ace. After a short spell in civilian life following World War I, he joined the newly-formed RAAF in 1921, rising steadily through training and personnel commands prior to World War II.
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