On 1 November 1902, five months after the Triple Alliance was renewed, Italy reached an understanding with France that each would remain neutral in the event of an attack on the other….Triple Alliance (1882)

Who Were the Allies: The main Allied powers were Great Britain, The United States, China, and the Soviet Union. The leaders of the Allies were Franklin Roosevelt (the United States), Winston Churchill (Great Britain), and Joseph Stalin (the Soviet Union).

Italy joined the allies because of the treaty of London and it wanted territory on the order of Austria-Hungary. On 1915 Italy Declares war on Austria- Hungary but not on Germany on May 23. Italy signed the treaty of London, Committing itself to enter WWI on the side of the allies on April 26, 1915.

Axis side

On December 11, 1941, Italy declared war on the United States in response to the latter’s declaration of war upon the Empire of Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor four days earlier. Germany also declared war on the U.S. the same day.

Mussolini chose generals who were from rich or powerful families not competent ones. And despite Mussolini’s claims a lot of equipment was outdated and there wasn’t enough material available in 1939. It was so bad Italy stayed out of the war until 1940 in hopes of producing and importing enough supplies.

Just before the start of the Second World War, the Germans and the Soviets signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, ensuring non-aggression between the two powers and enabling both to pursue military goals without each other’s interference. On 22 June 1941, Hitler broke the pact by invading the Soviet Union.

Racial policies of Nazi Germany. As early as 1925, Adolf Hitler vaguely declared in his political manifesto and autobiography Mein Kampf that he would invade the Soviet Union, asserting that the German people needed to secure Lebensraum (“living space”) to ensure the survival of Germany for generations to come.

Afghanistan, Andorra, Estonia, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain, San Marino, Sweden, Switzerland, Tibet, Vatican City, and Yemen were all neutral during the war. Apart from Yemen and Tibet they were all near the action.

In May 1945, the Red Army barreled into Berlin and captured the city, the final step in defeating the Third Reich and ending World War II in Europe. In one of the war’s most iconic images, Soviet soldiers raise their flag over the ruins of the Reichstag, Berlin, on May 2, 1945.

According to some estimates, Soviet barrier troops may have killed as many as 150,000 of their own men over the course of the war, including some 15,000 during the Battle of Stalingrad.

One of the most important reasons for this was poor strategic planning. The Germans had no satisfactory long-term plan for the invasion. They mistakenly assumed that the campaign would be a short one, and that the Soviets would give in after suffering the shock of massive initial defeats.

Unfairly or not, the current tensions obscure the scale of what’s being commemorated: Starting in 1941, the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the Nazi war machine and played perhaps the most important role in the Allies’ defeat of Hitler.

On 18 January 1942, the Germans were able to reconquer Feodosia. “They found that around 150 wounded German military personnel had been murdered….Massacre of Feodosia.

September 1, 1939 – Septe

Ordinary Germans knew by the end of 1943 that the war was lost. Terror began to replace commitment as a means of keeping people fighting on.

Soviet

Conflict in Asia began well before the official start of World War II. Seeking raw materials to fuel its growing industries, Japan invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931. By 1937 Japan controlled large sections of China, and accusations of war crimes against the Chinese became commonplace.

After the Allied invasion of France, Germany was conquered by the Soviet Union from the east and the other Allies from the west, and capitulated in May 1945. Hitler’s refusal to admit defeat led to massive destruction of German infrastructure and additional war-related deaths in the closing months of the war.

Nazi Germany (1933–1945)

Germany had suffered heavy losses during the war, both in lives and industrial power. 6.9 to 7.5 million Germans had been killed, roughly 8.26 to 8.86% of the population (see also World War II casualties). As a result, the population density grew in the “new” Germany that remained after the dismemberment.

After World War II, Germany was split into two, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and The German Democratic Republic – ‘GDR’ (East Germany) and both formed their own militaries: on 12 November 1955 the first recruits began their service in the West German Heer, while on 1 March 1956 the East German …