Who was defeated in world war 2?
1 Answer
The Second World War resulted in the defeat of Germany and Japan in 1945, as well as an Italian surrender in 1943.
Explanation:
The Second World war was an extrordinary period of conflict that may have resulted in the deaths of an estimated 76.8 million people -- about 3.5 percent of the world's total population in 1940. The was also subsumed some other conflicts (like the Japanese invasion of China).
Although the Soviet Union had partnered with Nazi Germany in 1939, Hitler's invasion of the USSR in 1941 put them into the Allied bloc. After the Atlantic Charter of August 1941 was ratified and signed by several nations, in 1942, the Allies increasingly described themselves as the 'United Nations'. Germany, Japan and Italy described themselves as the Axis, and coerced/convinced several other nations to join them.
At the end of WW-1, the German General Staff had returned political power in Germany back to civilian leadership and subsequently claimed that Germany had been betrayed from within, rather than substantially beaten. When Roosevelt and Churchill drafted the Atlantic Charter, they agreed that the goal for the Allied nations was going to be make sure that this time there would be no cease-fires, no negotiated settlesments or anything else.
Germany and Japan particularly would have to surrender completely, and the fact of their defeat would have to be undeniable to their own people and to the entire world. While Italy and several minor Axis partners switched sides during the war, they also clearly understood just what the war had done to them.
For 73 years so far, the World has not seen a conflict as violent and destructive as WW-2. A war like that today could could kill 262,500,000 million people; so far, so good.
