World War II

World War II, or abbreviated as WWII, was an international human conflict that occurred on Earth between 1939 and 1945.

History
World War II was the second military conflict in human history to be given the "World War" title, though it, and its precurser, World War I, were by no means the first global war in Earth's history at that time. It was fought between the Axis powers and the Allies.

The war started in 1939 (this date is somewhat disputed - the Japanese had been fighting the Chinese sporadically since 1931, and an all-out war began in 1937) when Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany, invaded Poland. Britain and France had allying pacts with Poland, and so both nations declared war on Nazi Germany. However, in 1940, during a disastrous retreat of the French 9th army from the Ardennes forest region, Army Group A broke into France, and the resulting blitzkrieg offensive quickly overtook the rest of the defenders. The Allies immediately headed Northward to surround Allied forces. The BEF (British expeditionary force) as well as the French army, retreated to a small pocket around Calais and Dunkirk. The slowly shrinking pocket was evacuated by a Royal Navy force of 'Little ships', and around 338,000 men were evacuated.

In 1941, three German army Groups (South, Centre and North) numbering 3,900,000 men and 3,600 tanks, rolled over Soviet controlled territory and began an offensive toward Moscow. The Red Army, lacking skill in face of an outnumbering and well-trained advesary, was forced back into Russia, losing hundreds of thousands in encirclements, and by the winter of 1941 the Germans had reached the suburbs of Moscow, until being driven back by the increasingly confident resistance. The East Front campaign was more massive and brutal than any other, except for China, with millions of troops emgaged on both sides at all times. Wermaht finally had their backs broken when, outnumbering the Soviets 10:1, they failed to capture Stalingrad in late 1942. Instead they got encircled. The next major Wermacht offense, the battle of Kursk in summer of 1943, when almost 1500 tanks were engaged in a single attack on the village of Prohorovka, completely backfired. The Soviets became skilled and unstoppable, capable of producing ridiculously massive amount of military equipment and putting it to effective use.

Meanwhile, in December 1941, a Japanese carrier task force began a huge aerial assault on the US naval base of Pearl Harbor. They sunk or seriously damaged 21 ships, including 8 battleships, and brought the USA onto the Allied side of the war. The Japanese at the same time began attacking British, French, and Dutch colonies, American territories, and Australia.

1942 saw the Americans land in northern Africa, and with the British 8th Army, they pushed the German Afrika Corps out of North Africa and into Italy. Italy was invaded in 1943, with two British armies, and three American. Fighting in Italy would not subside until 1945. In 1944, 153,000 American, Canadian, Free French, Polish and British Empire troops landed on 5 separate beaches (west to east: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, Sword) and dropped into three separate landing zones in Normandy. German resistance in some areas was strong, with American losses on Omaha beach reaching 3,000 dead, wounded or missing. However the Germans were forced back, and hundreds of thousands of German equipment and troops, were surrounded near Falaise. The surrounded troops, were picked off by superior allied aircraft, where they were bombarded with bullets, bombs, and rockets. By early 1945, the Allies had invaded Germany from the east and west.

In the Pacific, where American forces were 'island hopping' their way to Japan, they had successfully captured the Philippines, as well as New Guinea, Rabaul, the Solomon Islands, the Marianas, and were moving to attack Iwo Jima. The British had also began a large offensive in Burma, and were pushing the Japanese back into China.

In April 1945, after beating back the German forces through occupied Soviet territory and Eastern Europe, the Red Army surrounded the German capital of Berlin. Hitler committed suicide, and Karl Donitz was appointed to be the new Fuhrer as per his instruction. They refused to surrender, and so the Soviets bombarded the city and sent wave after wave of troops into the city to capture it. It didn't finally capitulate until May 8, when General Alfred Jodl signed the unconditional surrender for all German forces to the Allies.

In the Pacific, the Americans had managed to take control of Iwo Jima, at a heavy cost. It was one of the few instances where American casualties exceeded the Japanese, 22,000 men were killed or wounded. The Americans would then attack Okinawa, the last island needed for an invasion of Japan. The Japanese Navy, now reduced to a tiny force, were launching kamikaze suicide aircraft at the US invasion fleet.

US generals knew that an invasion of Japan would have be a costly enterprise. The defenders would attack with such fanaticism that US casualties were expected to exceed 1,000,000 men and Japanese casualties were expected to be in the tens of millions, with the nation's infrastructure almost totally destroyed. The planned invasion would have land millions of Allied onto the Japanese islands, which would have made it the largest ever attempted naval invasion, dwarfing Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy. As a result, Soviet support was arranged in the face of battle-hardened units from the East Front attacking Japan three months after the fall of Germany. But it was not to be, two B-29 Superfortresses took off from their bases in the Marianas. They dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima on August 6th and three days later on Nagasaki. The Soviets steamrolled through the Japaneese-occupied North-East China. Several days later, the Japanese formally surrendered aboard the battleship, USS Missouri.

The war formally ended on September 2nd, 1945, six years and one day after war was declared. By the end, 73,000,000 people had died, most of them civilians.

The United Nations
As a result of the Allied victory (the United States of America, Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and others) over the Axis Nations (Nazi Germany, Italy, Japan and others), the United Nations Charter was signed on June 26, 1945, marking the replacement of the defunct League of Nations and the creation of the United Nations. The United Nations Organization was formed with a goal of international peacekeeping by means of collective security.

Types of ammunition still in use in the Human-Covenant War

 * .30 caliber (confetti maker)
 * 12.7x99mm (M41 LAAG)
 * 14.5x114mm (SRS99 series)
 * 90mm gun (M808B Scorpion)

Miscellaneous

 * The paratroopers dropped behind enemy lines on D-Day and during Operation Market Garden inspired the UNSC's ODSTs, although the concept had to be rethought for Zero-G.
 * It may be possible that the concept for the Brute Spike Grenade was inspired by a German hand grenade known as the "the Potato Masher" or more specifically the "Stielhandgranate".
 * It's also possible that the UNSC flametrower is based on the german flametrower in this war.
 * The term "frag" when used to describe a Human fragmentation grenade originated in this frame of time.

References in Halo

 * Colonel Herzog apparently researched World War II extensively.
 * The war has been analyzed in comparison to the Human-Covenant War.
 * The Maginot Sphere mentioned by the Forerunner in the Terminals is inspired by the Maginot Line, the French defensive fortifications along the Franco-German border stretching from the Ardennes to the Franco-Swiss border before the war.
 * John Forge's family has had a military tradition dating back to this time.

Related Pages

 * United Nations
 * UN Charter