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World War II

Explorer · ages 7 and underAdapted from Wikipedia
Soldiers raising a flag over the Reichstag building in Berlin in May 1945, at the end of World War II in Europe.

What Was World War II?

World War II was a very big and difficult time when many countries did not get along. It is also called the Second World War. Nearly all of the world's countries took part in it.

People still study its causes today to learn why it happened. Learning about the past helps us understand the world we live in now.

When Did It Happen?

Most people agree that it began on 1 September 1939. It came to an end in September 1945. Some people think it started at other times, so historians look at the facts carefully.

A Better Future

After this difficult time, the countries of the world wanted to help each other. The Allies formed the United Nations to help keep world peace. Many countries also worked hard to rebuild their homes and towns through economic recovery and expansion.

Pictures

The battleship USS Pennsylvania leads a group of U.S. Navy ships into Lingayen Gulf in the Philippines in January 1945, before the landing on Luzon during World War II.
A large mushroom cloud rises above the city of Nagasaki, Japan, after the atomic bomb was dropped on August 9, 1945. Photo taken from the northwest.
German Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" aircraft flying in formation over the Eastern Front during World War II. A destroyed city can be seen below them, a reminder of the war's terrible damage.
Soviet soldiers try to raise a red flag on a ruined building in Stalingrad during the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II (1942–1943).
The assembly hall of the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, photographed in the 1930s. The League was an international organization founded after World War I to help countries settle disagreements peacefully.
Benito Mussolini, the leader of Fascist Italy, inspecting soldiers in uniform. Mussolini ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943, and his government sent troops to invade Ethiopia in 1935.
Chinese soldiers fighting house to house during the Battle of Tai'erzhuang in 1938, a major clash in the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Leaders from Britain, France, Italy and Germany meeting in Munich on 29 September 1938, where they signed the Munich Agreement about the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.
Joseph Stalin and Joachim von Ribbentrop, Germany's Foreign Minister, talk together in the Kremlin in Moscow after signing a non-aggression pact on 23 August 1939.
A staged photo from September 1939, taken for German propaganda, showing officials at a border crossing in Sopot. It was posed to look like the border was being taken over, but it does not show what really happened on September 1, 1939.
An animated map showing how German forces advanced across Western Europe in May 1940, during the early part of World War II.
At the 1933 Nuremberg Rally in Germany, Ernst Röhm, leader of the SA (a Nazi paramilitary group), reports to Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party. This photo shows an important moment in the rise of Nazi Germany.
A map of the Karelian Isthmus on 13 March 1940, the last day of the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union.
London's St Paul's Cathedral after the German Blitz on 29 December 1940
Defendants at the Nuremberg trials, where the Allied forces prosecuted prominent members of the political, military, judicial, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany for crimes against humanity

This article is a child-friendly adaptation of the Wikipedia article on World War II, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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