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WORLD WAR II / 1939-1945 — Broadsheet Edition

Causes · Course · Consequences

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Causes · Course · Consequences Key sections include: World War II 1939 — 1945; The Powder Keg Twenty Years Of Unfinished Business; Germany Invades Poland Britain & France Honour Their Pledge; France Falls; Britain Stands Alone The Battle Of Britain Decides The Skies; Barbarossa & Pearl Harbor In Six Months, A European War Becomes A World War; Tide Turns At Midway Four Japanese Carriers Lost In Five Minutes; Stalingrad: The Hinge The Largest, Deadliest Theater Of The War; Arsenal Of Democracy American Production Decides The War; The Holocaust Industrialised Murder At The Heart Of Europe; D-Day — The Longest Day 156,000 Allied Troops Land On Five Beaches.

Key sections

  • 01World War II 1939 — 1945
  • 02The Powder Keg Twenty Years Of Unfinished Business
  • 03Germany Invades Poland Britain & France Honour Their Pledge
  • 04France Falls; Britain Stands Alone The Battle Of Britain Decides The Skies
  • 05Barbarossa & Pearl Harbor In Six Months, A European War Becomes A World War
  • 06Tide Turns At Midway Four Japanese Carriers Lost In Five Minutes
  • 07Stalingrad: The Hinge The Largest, Deadliest Theater Of The War
  • 08Arsenal Of Democracy American Production Decides The War
  • 09The Holocaust Industrialised Murder At The Heart Of Europe
  • 10D-Day — The Longest Day 156,000 Allied Troops Land On Five Beaches
  • 11Victory In Europe — And In The Pacific Berlin Falls; The Atomic Age Opens
  • 12A New World Order Out Of Ruin: The UN, The Cold War, Decolonization
  • 13— 30 — Sources, Further Reading, And Newsreel Footage
Slide outline
  1. 01World War II 1939 — 1945
  2. 02The Powder Keg Twenty Years Of Unfinished Business
  3. 03Germany Invades Poland Britain & France Honour Their Pledge
  4. 04France Falls; Britain Stands Alone The Battle Of Britain Decides The Skies
  5. 05Barbarossa & Pearl Harbor In Six Months, A European War Becomes A World War
  6. 06Tide Turns At Midway Four Japanese Carriers Lost In Five Minutes
  7. 07Stalingrad: The Hinge The Largest, Deadliest Theater Of The War
  8. 08Arsenal Of Democracy American Production Decides The War
  9. 09The Holocaust Industrialised Murder At The Heart Of Europe
  10. 10D-Day — The Longest Day 156,000 Allied Troops Land On Five Beaches
  11. 11Victory In Europe — And In The Pacific Berlin Falls; The Atomic Age Opens
  12. 12A New World Order Out Of Ruin: The UN, The Cold War, Decolonization
  13. 13— 30 — Sources, Further Reading, And Newsreel Footage
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Updated
2026-05-17
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Slide 01

World War II 1939 — 1945

  • Vol. VI — No. 1939
  • The Allied Chronicle
  • Price: One Penny
  • WORLD DESK / 1939–1945
  • Commemorative Broadsheet Edition
  • Causes · Course · Consequences
  • “The conflict that remade the modern world —
  • fought across six continents, decided in factories and on beaches.”
  • A 13-Page Special Report — Filed By Wire
  • CENSORED
  • PASSED BY CENSOR
Slide 02

The Powder KegTwenty Years Of Unfinished Business

  • VERSAILLES / 1919–1939
  • Origins Desk
  • From a punitive peace to a global catastrophe
  • Historians trace the war's roots to the very treaty that closed the last one. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles imposed crushing reparations on Germany, redrew borders, and left whole populations resentful. The interwar order, designed for stability, proved brittle.
  • The Great Depression of 1929 wiped out savings, collapsed trade, and shattered faith in liberal democracy. Mass unemployment opened the door to radical movements. In Italy, Mussolini consolidated fascist rule by 1925; in Germany, Hitler and the Nazi Party seized power in 1933 on a platform of grievance, racial nationalism, and rearmament.
  • The League of Nations, lacking American membership and military teeth, watched Japan invade Manchuria (1931), Italy seize Ethiopia (1935), and Germany remilitarize the Rhineland (1936). Appeasement at Munich (1938) yielded the Sudetenland; six months later Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia.
  • By August 1939 the Nazi-Soviet Pact had carved Eastern Europe into spheres. The fuse was lit.
  • Versailles 1919 — reparations, war-guilt clause, lost territory.
  • Depression 1929 — world trade collapses; democracies falter.
  • Fascism rises — Italy 1922, Germany 1933, Japan militarizes.
  • League fails — Manchuria, Ethiopia, Rhineland, Spain.
  • Appeasement — Munich 1938 buys time, not peace.
  • Pact of Steel & Nazi-Soviet Pact — alliances of convenience seal the continent's fate.
  • "Peace for our time" — Chamberlain, Sept. 30, 1938. Wrong by eleven months.
  • URGENT
Slide 03

Germany Invades PolandBritain & France Honour Their Pledge

  • BERLIN · WARSAW · LONDON / SEPT 1939
  • War Declared
  • Blitzkrieg opens a war that will not end for six years
  • At 4:45 a.m. on September 1, 1939, German forces crossed the Polish border under cover of staged provocations. Stuka dive-bombers struck airfields; panzer divisions broke through cavalry and infantry lines in days. The world's first true demonstration of Blitzkrieg — lightning war — left Warsaw under siege within weeks.
  • Two days later, on September 3, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany. Australia, New Zealand, and the Dominions followed within hours. On September 17, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east, fulfilling the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Poland was partitioned by month's end.
  • The war in the West then entered the so-called "Phoney War" — eight months of static frontiers while Hitler prepared his next strike.
  • Sept 1 — Germany invades Poland.
  • Sept 3 — UK, France, Aus, NZ declare war.
  • Sept 17 — USSR invades from east.
  • Sept 27 — Warsaw surrenders.
  • Oct 6 — last Polish field forces capitulate.
  • 1939–40 — "Phoney War" in the west.
  • Casus belli: Britain's guarantee to Poland, March 1939. The first promise the Allies would keep.
  • EXTRA
Slide 04

France Falls; Britain Stands AloneThe Battle Of Britain Decides The Skies

  • PARIS · LONDON / MAY–OCT 1940
  • The Long Summer
  • "We shall fight on the beaches" — and in the air
  • In May 1940 the German offensive bypassed the Maginot Line through the Ardennes, splitting Allied armies. Within six weeks France — the continent's premier military power — collapsed. From May 26 to June 4, the "miracle of Dunkirk" evacuated 338,000 British and Allied troops across the Channel in a flotilla of warships, ferries, and fishing boats. France signed an armistice on June 22.
  • Winston Churchill, Prime Minister since May 10, refused negotiated peace. From July through October, the Royal Air Force fought the Luftwaffe over southern England in what became known as the Battle of Britain. Radar, dispersed airfields, and the Spitfire and Hurricane held the line. Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion indefinitely.
  • The Blitz — the bombing of London and other cities — followed from September 1940 into May 1941. Civilians, not soldiers, became the front line. The myth of Nazi invincibility cracked.
  • Britain held. The war would be long.
  • FOR KING & COUNTRY
Slide 05

Barbarossa & Pearl HarborIn Six Months, A European War Becomes A World War

  • MOSCOW · PEARL HARBOR / 1941
  • The War Goes Global
  • Two surprise attacks redraw the map of the conflict
  • On June 22, 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa — the largest land invasion in history. Three million Axis troops crossed a 1,800-mile front into the Soviet Union. Initial gains were staggering; entire Soviet armies were encircled. By December the Wehrmacht was within sight of Moscow's spires.
  • Then winter, exhausted supply lines, and Soviet reserves from Siberia stopped the advance. The Red Army counterattacked on December 5. The war Hitler had counted on winning in months would now be measured in years.
  • Two days later, on December 7, Japanese carrier aircraft struck the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii — "a date which will live in infamy." More than 2,400 Americans were killed; eight battleships were hit. Japan simultaneously attacked Malaya, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Wake.
  • On December 8 the United States declared war on Japan. On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. The world's three largest economies were now at war on the same side.
  • Dec 7, 1941 — "A date which will live in infamy." — FDR
  • WAR DECLARED
Slide 06

Tide Turns At MidwayFour Japanese Carriers Lost In Five Minutes

  • MIDWAY ATOLL / JUNE 1942
  • Pacific Theater
  • From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima — an ocean's worth of fighting
  • For six months after Pearl Harbor, Japan ran riot — the Philippines, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, Burma, the western Pacific. Then, on June 4–7, 1942, U.S. carriers ambushed the Japanese strike fleet near Midway Atoll, sinking four fleet carriers and killing the cream of Japan's naval aviators.
  • Dec 1941–May 1942 — Japan conquers SE Asia & the western Pacific.
  • Coral Sea, May 1942 — first carrier-vs-carrier battle; strategic Allied draw.
  • Midway, June 1942 — turning point; Japan loses four carriers.
  • Guadalcanal, Aug 1942–Feb 1943 — Allied land offensive begins.
  • Island-hopping — bypass strongpoints, seize airfields, choke supply lines.
  • 1944–45 — Saipan, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, Okinawa — the road to Japan.
  • Code-breakers at Station HYPO read Japan's plans. Intelligence won Midway as much as the dive-bombers.
  • CONFIDENTIAL
Slide 07

Stalingrad: The HingeThe Largest, Deadliest Theater Of The War

  • STALINGRAD / AUG 1942 — FEB 1943
  • Eastern Front
  • Two million casualties decide the European war
  • Hitler ordered the German Sixth Army to seize Stalingrad in summer 1942 for its industries, its symbolic name, and its position on the Volga. House-to-house fighting reduced the city to rubble; rifle squads contested staircases for weeks. The Soviet defenders held a sliver of the western bank and bled the attackers dry.
  • On November 19, Operation Uranus encircled the Sixth Army with two pincer thrusts. Hitler forbade breakout. By February 2, 1943, Field Marshal Paulus surrendered with the remnants — some 91,000 men, of whom only a few thousand would see Germany again.
  • The Eastern Front absorbed roughly three-quarters of German casualties. From Kursk (1943, the largest tank battle in history) onward, the Red Army drove west — through Ukraine, Belarus, Poland — toward Berlin.
  • ~2MStalingrad Casualties
  • 27MSoviet Dead, Whole War
  • 75%Of German Losses Eastern
  • 91KGerman PoWs Taken
  • Aug 1942 — Sixth Army reaches the Volga.
  • Nov 1942 — Operation Uranus encircles the city.
  • Feb 1943 — Paulus surrenders.
  • Jul 1943 — Kursk; Wehrmacht loses initiative.
  • 1944 — Operation Bagration shatters Army Group Centre.
  • "Not one step back." — Order No. 227, July 1942.
  • EASTERN FRONT
Slide 08

Arsenal Of DemocracyAmerican Production Decides The War

  • DETROIT · PITTSBURGH / 1942–1945
  • Industry & Economy
  • Factories, not just generals, won this fight
  • 300KAircraft Built (US)
  • 88KTanks Produced (US)
  • 2,700+Liberty Ships
  • ~50%Of Allied War Output
  • By 1944 the United States produced more military equipment than all the Axis powers combined. Auto plants retooled to roll out B-24 bombers at the rate of one per hour at Willow Run. Henry Kaiser's shipyards launched a Liberty cargo vessel in days, sometimes hours.
  • Six million women entered the wartime workforce — "Rosie the Riveter" became national shorthand. African Americans migrated north for defense jobs in the Second Great Migration. Rationing of meat, sugar, gasoline, and rubber knit the home front into the war effort.
  • Lend-Lease shipped roughly $50 billion in materiel to the UK, USSR, and other Allies — trucks, food, aircraft, locomotives. Soviet logistics ran on American Studebakers; British radar relied on shared technology.
  • Germany and Japan, despite skilled engineering, never matched Allied output. Strategic bombing crippled Axis production in the war's final years. Industry was strategy by another name.
  • The war also accelerated science: radar, jet engines, penicillin, computing, and ultimately the atomic bomb — all forged under wartime urgency.
  • The peace that followed inherited the productive capacity built for the war — reshaping the postwar economy for decades.
  • CLEARED FOR PRINT
Slide 09

The HolocaustIndustrialised Murder At The Heart Of Europe

  • AUSCHWITZ · TREBLINKA / 1941–1945
  • Crimes Against Humanity
  • A crime without precedent — never to be forgotten
  • The Nazi regime carried out the systematic, state-organized persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews — roughly two of every three Jews in Europe. The genocide began with discrimination, expropriation, and ghettoization in the 1930s; escalated to mass shootings by Einsatzgruppen in occupied Soviet territory after 1941; and culminated in the death camps — Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Majdanek, Chelmno — where industrial gas chambers operated on a continental scale.
  • Roma and Sinti, Soviet POWs, Poles, the disabled (murdered under "Aktion T4"), political dissidents, gay men, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others were targeted as well. The total Nazi-era civilian death toll runs to roughly eleven million.
  • Allied forces liberating camps in 1944–45 documented what they found in photographs and film. The Nuremberg trials (1945–46) prosecuted leading perpetrators and helped establish the modern category of "crimes against humanity." Survivors built memory institutions — Yad Vashem, the USHMM, archives across Europe — to ensure the historical record could not be denied.
  • ~6MJews Murdered
  • ~250KRoma & Sinti
  • ~300KDisabled (T4)
  • ~3.3MSoviet POWs
  • Never again is a promise that requires evidence, education, and vigilance.
  • Memorials · Yad Vashem
  • US Holocaust Memorial Museum
  • Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial
  • Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris
  • CRIMES UNCENSORED
Slide 10

D-Day — The Longest Day156,000 Allied Troops Land On Five Beaches

  • NORMANDY / JUNE 6, 1944
  • Operation Overlord
  • The second front opens; liberation begins
  • For more than two years the Western Allies built up forces in southern England under General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Deception — Operation Bodyguard, dummy armies, false radio traffic — convinced German command to expect the blow at Calais.
  • Just after midnight on June 6, 1944, paratroopers of the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne and the British 6th Airborne Division dropped behind the lines. At dawn, infantry of five nations stormed five Normandy beaches: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. Omaha, against the cliffs, cost the most.
  • By nightfall the beachhead held. Within ten weeks Allied armies broke out at Saint-Lô, raced across France, and entered a liberated Paris on August 25. Brussels fell on September 3. The road east led, slowly, to the Rhine.
  • 156,000 Allied troops landed on D-Day.
  • 5 beaches — Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, Sword.
  • ~4,400 Allied dead on day one.
  • Aug 25 1944 — Paris liberated.
  • Dec 1944 — Battle of the Bulge: Germany's last gamble fails.
  • Mar 1945 — Allies cross the Rhine at Remagen.
  • "You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade." — Eisenhower's order of the day.
  • OVERLORD
Slide 11

Victory In Europe — And In The PacificBerlin Falls; The Atomic Age Opens

  • BERLIN · HIROSHIMA · TOKYO BAY / 1945
  • War's End
  • Six years of war reach their final, terrible chapters
  • By April 1945 the Red Army had reached Berlin from the east; American and British forces were across the Rhine in the west. On April 30, with Soviet shells falling on the Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler took his own life in the Führerbunker. On May 7 General Jodl signed the unconditional surrender at Reims; on May 8 — V-E Day — cities across Europe filled with crowds.
  • The Pacific war continued. After bloody campaigns at Iwo Jima and Okinawa — foreshadowing the cost of any invasion of Japan — the United States used atomic weapons developed under the Manhattan Project. Hiroshima was struck on August 6, Nagasaki on August 9. Tens of thousands died instantly; many more from injuries and radiation in the months and years that followed.
  • The Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria on August 8–9. On August 15 Emperor Hirohito announced surrender. The instrument was signed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945 — V-J Day. The war was over.
  • Apr 12 — FDR dies; Truman becomes president.
  • Apr 25 — US & Soviet troops meet at the Elbe.
  • Apr 30 — Hitler dies in the bunker.
  • May 8 — V-E Day.
  • Aug 6 / Aug 9 — Hiroshima & Nagasaki.
  • Sep 2 — Japan surrenders aboard USS Missouri.
  • VICTORY
  • PEACE AT LAST
Slide 12

A New World OrderOut Of Ruin: The UN, The Cold War, Decolonization

  • SAN FRANCISCO · NUREMBERG / 1945—
  • Aftermath & Legacy
  • Roughly 70 million dead — the most destructive conflict in history
  • ~70MTotal Dead
  • ~50MCivilians
  • $4T+Cost (1945 USD)
  • 50UN Founding Members
  • The war's death toll — military and civilian, combat and famine, bombing and genocide — reached perhaps 70 million people. The Soviet Union lost 27 million, China around 15 million, Germany seven million, Japan three million, Poland nearly one in five citizens. Whole cities were rubble.
  • In June 1945 fifty nations signed the United Nations Charter in San Francisco, replacing the failed League. The Bretton Woods institutions — the IMF and the World Bank — restructured the global economy. The Marshall Plan rebuilt Western Europe; Japan, under U.S. occupation, drafted a new constitution.
  • The wartime alliance dissolved within years. By 1947–48 the Cold War was underway: the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Airlift, NATO (1949), the Warsaw Pact (1955). Two superpowers, both nuclear-armed, divided the globe.
  • European empires, exhausted and discredited, could no longer hold their colonies. India and Pakistan became independent in 1947; Indonesia in 1949; a wave swept Africa from the late 1950s through the 1960s. The age of empire ended in the wreckage of the war that had been fought, in part, to defend it.
  • Human rights entered international law: the 1948 Universal Declaration, the Genocide Convention, the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals introduced the principle that even heads of state could be prosecuted.
  • The war's shadow stretched far. Israel was founded in 1948. Computing, jet aviation, antibiotics, and nuclear power emerged from wartime science. The memory of fascism shaped politics on both sides of the Atlantic for generations — and shapes it still.
  • FILED FOR THE RECORD
Slide 13

— 30 —Sources, Further Reading, And Newsreel Footage

  • EDITORIAL DESK / FILED 2026
  • Sources & Further Reading
  • For the curious reader
  • Books
  • Beevor, Antony — The Second World War (2012).
  • Keegan, John — The Second World War (1989).
  • Snyder, Timothy — Bloodlands (2010).
  • Overy, Richard — Why The Allies Won (1995).
  • Hastings, Max — Inferno (2011); Retribution (2007).
  • Toland, John — The Rising Sun (1970).
  • Browning, Christopher — Ordinary Men (1992).
  • Levi, Primo — If This Is A Man (1947).
  • Archives & Memorials
  • Imperial War Museums (UK)
  • National WWII Museum, New Orleans
  • USHMM · Yad Vashem · Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial
  • Bundesarchiv · National Archives (US)
  • Newsreel & Video
  • WWII Overview — YouTube
  • youtube.com/results?search_query=world+war+2+overview
  • D-Day / Normandy — YouTube
  • youtube.com/results?search_query=d-day+normandy
  • "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." — Santayana, 1905.
  • — The Allied Chronicle —
  • All wires received. Press to bed.
  • FINAL EDITION
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