World War II

The Second World War began on 1.9.1939 with the invasion of Poland by German troops and ended in Europe on 8.5.1945 with the unconditional surrender of the German Armed Forces. In its course, German troops first conquered and occupied the western part of Poland in 1939, then Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and most of France in the spring of 1940. In June 1941, the German Armed Forces invaded the Soviet Union and by the summer of 1942 had conquered the rest of Poland, the Baltic countries, Belarus, and parts of Ukraine and Russia. The campaign against the Soviet Union was waged by the Germans as a war of extermination. The conquered territories were ruthlessly exploited, the civilian population terrorized and partly deported to forced labor, jews, sinti and romani as well as suspected communist functionaries systematically murdered. Since 1942, the German Reich faced a solid coalition of Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the USA, whose Allied troops recaptured territories piece by piece starting in 1943. In 1945, they invaded Germany and occupied the entire country by early May, ending World War II in Europe. Throughout the war, it is estimated that some 65 million people were killed, the majority of them civilians. 27 million deaths came from the Soviet Union alone.