Chapter :-83 World War-I And II

Chapter:-83 World War-I & II

(A/N:-This chapter is a history lesson which I wouldn't recommend to skip but as you wish, a fair warning from my side…..lol. Also, the timeline begins from the next chapter.)

(A/N:-History is changed to fit my novel, In the Anime and Manga, China always had a conflict with Japan so I made a reason for that conflict.)

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1914, Japan, Tokyo….

Inside Mikaelson clan estate, inside the garden which was surrounded by different kinds of plants and rare ingredients used for witchcraft and for medicinal purposes Henrik sat inside a Decking specifically designed by his sister, Rebekah.

While sitting on a chair he held a few documents and a feather in his hands, golden framed glasses over his eyes as he seriously went through every line of the documents in his hands before letting out a tired sigh.

It has been over a century with 'that' episode with Kiyohime, Henrik has softened over the years as his family was nearly complete and his sisters were enjoying their lives within Tokyo. His relationship with Kiyohime remained more or less same, other than his caring more about her than he did in the past.

Rebekah took an interest in architecture and spent years mastering the art of designing masterpieces. In the previous world she didn't get a chance to acquire such skills thus she decided to learn a few arts so to keep herself busy and enjoy this new life.

She missed Marcel very much and was extremely emotional to know that Henrik had named an entire clan on his surname, to honour his memory as being a pseudo-Mikaelson along with Camilla and Hayley. She thanked her brother for doing something like this for her and promised to cook a few sweets for him like she used to do when they were alive as humans.

She also made a friend from the branch family, Garcia Gerard. Both of them had similar interests and personalities plus they got along very well. Garcia's company helped Rebekah to recover from the guilt she had been feeling all this time.

Henrik had already planned on teaching her about [Force] after he finished the tasks at hand.

Freya was helping him with his research on the [Cosmic storm] which hit the planet a century ago causing the vast majority of the people to lose their magic and lessened Yokai population by more than 70%, it had been almost impossible to find anymore Yokai within the country if you don't actively search for them.

The pure spirits have disappeared completely while only wraths, evil spirits, Shape-shifters, demons, werewolves, etc; creatures from the evil alignment camp could be found within the country and even they were scarce these days.

According to the information sent by Khan last month, another [Cosmic Storm] was likely to happen in about 80 or 90 years from now. Its effect was completely unknown to Khan and Henrik as they continued to collect more information on the strange occurrence.

Henrik had started to research on the mysterious meteoroid which Khan Gifted him before he returned to Japan.

The casting for shaping it was still under designing whereas Henrik had to replicate the exact design he saw in his memories, making the [Lightsaber] stable was a very challenging thing to do, especially if the material was something you had no idea about.

But the most problematic event that was happening was The First World War.

World War I began in 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and lasted until 1918. During the conflict, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (the Central Powers) fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the United States (the Allied Powers).

Thanks to new military technologies and the horrors of trench warfare, World War I saw unprecedented levels of carnage and destruction. By the time the war was over and the Allied Powers claimed victory, more than 16 million people—soldiers and civilians alike—were dead.

It started when tensions had been brewing throughout Europe—especially in the troubled Balkan region of southeast Europe—for years before World War I actually broke out.

A number of alliances involving European powers, the Ottoman Empire, Russia and other parties had existed for years, but political instability in the Balkans (particularly Bosnia, Serbia and Herzegovina) threatened to destroy these agreements.

The spark that ignited World War I was struck in Sarajevo, Bosnia, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand—heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire—was shot to death along with his wife, Sophie, by the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914. Princip and other nationalists were struggling to end Austro-Hungarian rule over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand set off a rapidly escalating chain of events: Austria-Hungary, like many countries around the world, blamed the Serbian government for the attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the question of Serbian nationalism once and for all.

Because mighty Russia supported Serbia, Austria-Hungary waited to declare war until its leaders received assurance from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany would support their cause. Austro-Hungarian leaders feared that a Russian intervention would involve Russia's ally, France, and possibly Great Britain as well.

On July 5, Kaiser Wilhelm secretly pledged his support, giving Austria-Hungary a so-called carte blanche, or "blank check" assurance of Germany's backing in the case of war. The Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary then sent an ultimatum to Serbia, with such harsh terms as to make it almost impossible to accept.

World War finally begins...

Convinced that Austria-Hungary was readying for war, the Serbian government ordered the Serbian army to mobilize and appealed to Russia for assistance. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe's great powers quickly collapsed.

Within a week, Russia, Belgium, France, Great Britain and Serbia had lined up against Austria-Hungary and Germany, and World War I had begun.

Great Britain was in an alliance with Japan and India thus Japan had to assist them in the war even though Henrik was greatly annoyed by the prospect of war.

Japan was growing but it was still under-populated even though India had been relocating people in Japan to make up for this problem and if his country sent their armies to fight a war, their numbers would drop considerably.

Even though Japan had advanced technology and powerful Mikaelson family backing them, fight a World War was something he wanted to avoid.

Henrik couldn't participate in the war since his power had already crossed the threshold of Gods same was with India, if they did so then the Gods of other mythologies would also descend in the battle turning the World War into the battle of Gods, which was something that Henrik didn't want to happen.

He had been patiently building his country, maintaining peaceful relations with other countries, trading with other countries and other political stuff, a war would hinder the growth of Japan.

Thus other than sending the Warships and advanced weaponry along with a few personnel to aid Britain, there wasn't much Henrik could offer.

Khan provided the Japanese Warships with a safe path through the Indian Ocean towards Europe where the main fighting was taking place.

Khan refused to participate in this meaningless war as the condition in his country had just stabilized and he didn't want to expend his forces for stupid reasons.

He even advised Britain to only participate in the fronts where the security of their country was at risk rather than was wasting their resources in fighting Germany.

The Western Front

According to an aggressive military strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan (named for its mastermind, German Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen), Germany began fighting World War I on two fronts, invading France through neutral Belgium in the west and confronting Russia in the east.

On August 4, 1914, German troops crossed the border into Belgium. In the first battle of World War I, the Germans assaulted the heavily fortified city of Liege, using the most powerful weapons in their arsenal—enormous siege cannons—to capture the city by August 15.

The Germans left death and destruction in their wake as they advanced through Belgium toward France, shooting civilians and executing a Belgian priest they had accused of inciting civilian resistance.

First Battle of the Marne

In the First Battle of the Marne, fought from September 6-9, 1914, French and British forces confronted the invading Germany army, which had by then penetrated deep into northeastern France, within 30 miles of Paris.

The Allied troops checked the German advance and mounted a successful counterattack, driving the Germans back to the north of the Aisne River.

The defeat meant the end of German plans for a quick victory in France. Both sides dug into trenches, and the Western Front was the setting for a hellish war of attrition that would last more than three years.

Particularly long and costly battles in this campaign were fought at Verdun (February-December 1916) and the Battle of the Somme (July-November 1916). German and French troops suffered close to a million casualties in the Battle of Verdun alone.

Henrik remembered the history where it stated that the bloodshed on the battlefields of the Western Front, and the difficulties its soldiers had for years after the fighting had ended, inspired such works of art as "All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque and "In Flanders Fields" by Canadian doctor Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae.

In the latter poem, McCrae writes from the perspective of the fallen soldiers:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Published in 1915, the poem inspired the use of the poppy as a symbol of remembrance.

Visual artists like Otto Dix of Germany and British painters Wyndham Lewis, Paul Nash and David Bomberg used their firsthand experience as soldiers in World War I to create their art, capturing the anguish of trench warfare and exploring the themes of technology, violence and landscapes decimated by war.

The Eastern Front

On the Eastern Front of World War I, Russian forces invaded the German-held regions of East Prussia and Poland but were stopped short by German and Austrian forces at the Battle of Tannenberg in late August 1914.

Despite that victory, Russia's assault had forced Germany to move two corps from the Western Front to the Eastern, contributing to the German loss in the Battle of the Marne.

Combined with the fierce Allied resistance in France, the ability of Russia's huge war machine to mobilize relatively quickly in the east ensured a longer, more gruelling conflict instead of the quick victory Germany had hoped to win under the Schlieffen Plan.

Russian Revolution

From 1914 to 1916, Russia's army mounted several offensives on World War I's Eastern Front but was unable to break through German lines.

Defeat on the battlefield, combined with economic instability and the scarcity of food and other essentials, led to mounting discontent among the bulk of Russia's population, especially the poverty-stricken workers and peasants. This increased hostility was directed toward the imperial regime of Czar Nicholas II and his unpopular German-born wife, Alexandra.

Russia's simmering instability exploded in the Russian Revolution of 1917, spearheaded by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, which ended czarist rule and brought a halt to Russian participation in World War I.

Russia reached an armistice with the Central Powers in early December 1917, freeing German troops to face the remaining Allies on the Western Front.

America Enters World War I

At the outbreak of fighting in 1914, the United States remained on the sidelines of World War I, adopting the policy of neutrality favoured by President Woodrow Wilson while continuing to engage in commerce and shipping with European countries on both sides of the conflict.

Neutrality, however, was increasing difficult to maintain in the face of Germany's unchecked submarine aggression against neutral ships, including those carrying passengers. In 1915, Germany declared the waters surrounding the British Isles to be a war zone, and German U-boats sunk several commercial and passenger vessels, including some U.S. ships.

Widespread protest over the sinking by U-boat of the British ocean liner Lusitania—travelling from New York to Liverpool, England with hundreds of American passengers onboard—in May 1915 helped turn the tide of American public opinion against Germany. In February 1917, Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States ready for war.

Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships the following month, and on April 2 Woodrow Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany.

Gallipoli Campaign

With World War I having effectively settled into a stalemate in Europe, the Allies attempted to score a victory against the Ottoman Empire, which entered the conflict on the side of the Central Powers in late 1914.

After a failed attack on the Dardanelles (the strait linking the Sea of Marmara with the Aegean Sea), Allied forces led by Britain launched a large-scale land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in April 1915. The invasion also proved a dismal failure, and in January 1916 Allied forces staged a full retreat from the shores of the peninsula after suffering 250,000 casualties.

The young Winston Churchill, then first lord of the British Admiralty, resigned his command after the failed Gallipoli campaign in 1916, accepting a commission with an infantry battalion in France.

British-led forces also combated the Ottoman Turks in Egypt and Mesopotamia, while in northern Italy, Austrian and Italian troops faced off in a series of 12 battles along the Isonzo River, located at the border between the two nations.

Battle of the Isonzo

The First Battle of the Isonzo took place in the late spring of 1915, soon after Italy's entrance into the war on the Allied side. In the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, also known as the Battle of Caporetto (October 1917), German reinforcements helped Austria-Hungary win a decisive victory.

After Caporetto, Italy's allies jumped in to offer increased assistance. British and French—and later, American—troops arrived in the region, and the Allies began to take back the Italian Front.

World War I at Sea

In the years before World War I, the superiority of Britain's Royal Navy was unchallenged by any other nation's fleet, but the Imperial German Navy had made substantial strides in closing the gap between the two naval powers. Germany's strength on the high seas was also aided by its lethal fleet of U-boat submarines.

After the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915, in which the British mounted a surprise attack on German ships in the North Sea, the German navy chose not to confront Britain's mighty Royal Navy in a major battle for more than a year, preferring to rest the bulk of its naval strategy on its U-boats.

The biggest naval engagement of World War I, the Battle of Jutland (May 1916) left British naval superiority on the North Sea intact, and Germany would make no further attempts to break an Allied naval blockade for the remainder of the war.

World War I was the first major conflict to harness the power of planes. Though not as impactful as the British Royal Navy or Germany's U-Boats, the use of planes in World War I presaged their later, pivotal role in military conflicts around the globe.

At the dawn of World War I, aviation was a relatively new field; the Wright brothers took their first sustained flight just eleven years before, in 1903. Aircraft were initially used primarily for reconnaissance missions. During the First Battle of the Marne, information passed from pilots allowed the allies to exploit weak spots in the German lines, helping the Allies to push Germany out of France.

The first machine guns were successfully mounted on planes in June of 1912 in the United States, but were imperfect; if timed incorrectly, a bullet could easily fell the propeller of the plane it came from. The Morane-Saulnier L, a French plane, provided a solution: The propeller was armoured with deflector wedges that prevented bullets from hitting it. The Morane-Saulnier Type L was used by the French, the British Royal Flying Corps (part of the Army), the British Royal Navy Air Service and the Imperial Russian Air Service. The British Bristol Type 22 was another popular model used for both reconnaissance work and as a fighter plane.

Dutch inventor Anthony Fokker improved upon the French deflector system in 1915. His "interrupter" synchronized the firing of the guns with the plane's propeller to avoid collisions. Though his most popular plane during WWI was the single-seat Fokker Eindecker, Fokker created over 40 kinds of aeroplanes for the Germans.

The Allies debuted the Handley-Page HP O/400, the first two-engine bomber, in 1915. As aerial technology progressed, long-range heavy bombers like Germany's Gotha G.V. (first introduced in 1917) were used to strike cities like London. Their speed and manoeuvrability proved to be far deadlier than Germany's earlier Zeppelin raids.

By war's end, the Allies were producing five times more aircraft than the Germans. On April 1, 1918, the British created the Royal Air Force, or RAF, the first air force to be a separate military branch independent from the navy or army.

Second Battle of the Marne

With Germany able to build up its strength on the Western Front after the armistice with Russia, Allied troops struggled to hold off another German offensive until promised reinforcements from the United States were able to arrive.

On July 15, 1918, German troops launched what would become the last German offensive of the war, attacking French forces (joined by 85,000 American troops as well as some of the British Expeditionary Force) in the Second Battle of the Marne. The Allies successfully pushed back the German offensive and launched their own counteroffensive just three days later.

After suffering massive casualties, Germany was forced to call off a planned offensive further north, in the Flanders region stretching between France and Belgium, which was envisioned as Germany's best hope of victory.

The Second Battle of the Marne turned the tide of war decisively towards the Allies, who were able to regain much of France and Belgium in the months that followed.

By the fall of 1918, the Central Powers were unravelling on all fronts.

Despite the Turkish victory at Gallipoli, later defeats by invading forces and an Arab revolt had combined to destroy the Ottoman economy and devastate its land, and the Turks signed a treaty with the Allies in late October 1918.

Austria-Hungary, dissolving from within due to growing nationalist movements among its diverse population, reached an armistice on November 4. Facing dwindling resources on the battlefield, discontent on the homefront and the surrender of its allies, Germany was finally forced to seek an armistice on November 11, 1918, ending World War I.

Treaty of Versailles

At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Allied leaders stated their desire to build a post-war world that would safeguard itself against future conflicts of such a devastating scale.

Some hopeful participants had even begun calling World War I "the War to End All Wars." But the Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919, would not achieve that lofty goal.

Saddled with war guilt, heavy reparations and denied entrance into the League of Nations, Germany felt tricked into signing the treaty, having believed any peace would be a "peace without victory," as put forward by Wilson in his famous Fourteen Points speech of January 1918.

As the years passed, hatred of the Versailles treaty and its authors settled into a smouldering resentment in Germany that would, two decades later, be counted among the causes of World War II.

World War I Casualties

World War I took the lives of more than 9 million soldiers; 21 million more were wounded. Civilian casualties caused indirectly by the war numbered close to 10 million. The two nations most affected were Germany and France, each of which sent some 80 per cent of their male populations between the ages of 15 and 49 into battle.

The political disruption surrounding World War I also contributed to the fall of four venerable imperial dynasties: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Turkey.

Legacy of World War I

World War I brought about massive social upheaval, as millions of women entered the workforce to support men who went to war and to replace those who never came back. The first global war also helped to spread one of the world's deadliest global pandemics, the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people.

World War I has also been referred to as "the first modern war." Many of the technologies we now associate with military conflict—machine guns, tanks, aerial combat and radio communications—were introduced on a massive scale during World War I.

The severe effects that chemical weapons such as mustard gas and phosgene had on soldiers and civilians during World War I galvanized public and military attitudes against their continued use. The Geneva Convention agreements, signed in 1925, restricted the use of chemical and biological agents in warfare and remains in effect today.

During all this time, other than providing support to Great Britain which was fighting actively in the war, Japan and India didn't participate in the war.

In Japan, military power was in the hands of four clans, Minamoto clan, Mikaelson clan, Koga clan and finally Oda clan; Henrik was the sole commander of the navy, Minamoto Gugitsi controlled the foot-soldiers along with heavy weaponry, Koga Mitsuni commanded the special operations forces whereas Oda clan was responsible for controlling Air-force.

Gerard family was responsible for controlling the security and army within the country, anti-terrorist forces, Intelligence operatives, Research organizations, etc.

Henrik had made his stance very clear to the other four leaders about his attitude towards World War-I and had opted to remain neutral. The other leader could only nod at his decision as Henrik was responsible for the foreign affairs and development of the country and if he said that it would be determinal to join the war and sustain causalities then that was it, there was nothing they could say to change his mind.

During all this time, he had been focusing on improving the technology within the country and improve their combat capabilities, Japan was the most advanced country when it came to weapons thus Henrik felt no need to unnecessarily participate in a meaningless war.

He was preparing for the World War-II which would happen after two decades, he had to make sure that the territory of Japan was well protected and safe while also drop a nuke on China.

During World War-I, China had been constantly trying to invade their country through Korea, only to be bitch-slapped by the Japanese forces led by Minamoto family and Nubi Gerard. Annoyed by their constant provocations, Henrik had already started to manufacture the first nuke, and could hardly wait to test its capabilities on China.

The instability created in Europe by the First World War (1914-18) set the stage for another international conflict–World War II–which broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating.

Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi Party) rearmed the nation and signed strategic treaties with Italy and Japan to further his ambitions of world domination.

Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939 drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, and World War II had begun. Over the next six years, the conflict would take more lives and destroy more land and property around the globe than any previous war.

Among the estimated, 45-60 million people killed were 6 million Jews murdered in Nazi concentration camps as part of Hitler's diabolical "Final Solution," now known as the Holocaust.

Leading up to World War II

The devastation of the Great War (as World War I was known at the time) had greatly destabilized Europe, and in many respects, World War II grew out of issues left unresolved by that earlier conflict. In particular, political and economic instability in Germany, and lingering resentment over the harsh terms imposed by the Versailles Treaty, fueled the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi) Party.

As early as 1923, in his memoir and propaganda tract "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle), Adolf Hitler had predicted a general European war that would result in "the extermination of the Jewish race in Germany."

After becoming Reich Chancellor in 1933, Hitler swiftly consolidated power, anointing himself Führer (supreme leader) in 1934. Obsessed with the idea of the superiority of the "pure" German race, which he called "Aryan," Hitler believed that war was the only way to gain the necessary "Lebensraum," or living space, for that race to expand. In the mid-1930s, he began the rearmament of Germany, secretly and in violation of the Versailles Treaty.

After signing alliances with Italy and Japan against the Soviet Union, Hitler sent troops to occupy Austria in 1938 and the following year annexed Czechoslovakia. Hitler's open aggression went unchecked, as the United States and the Soviet Union were concentrated on internal politics at the time, and neither France nor Britain (the two other nations most devastated by the Great War) was eager for confrontation.

The outbreak of World War II (1939)

In late August 1939, Hitler and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, which incited a frenzy of worry in London and Paris. Hitler had long planned an invasion of Poland, a nation to which Great Britain and France had guaranteed military support if it was attacked by Germany.

The pact with Stalin meant that Hitler would not face a war on two fronts once he invaded Poland, and would have Soviet assistance in conquering and dividing the nation itself. On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland from the west; two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany, beginning World War II.

On September 17, Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east. Under attack from both sides, Poland fell quickly, and by early 1940 Germany and the Soviet Union had divided control over the nation, according to a secret protocol appended to the Nonaggression Pact.

Stalin's forces then moved to occupy the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and defeated a resistant Finland in the Russo-Finish War. During the six months following the invasion of Poland, the lack of action on the part of Germany and the Allies in the west led to talk in the news media of a "phoney war."

At sea, however, the British and German navies faced off in heated battle, and lethal German U-boat submarines struck at merchant shipping bound for Britain, sinking more than 100 vessels in the first four months of World War II.

World War II in the West (1940-41)

On April 9, 1940, Germany simultaneously invaded Norway and occupied Denmark, and the war began in earnest. On May 10, German forces swept through Belgium and the Netherlands in what became known as "blitzkrieg," or lightning war.

Three days later, Hitler's troops crossed the Meuse River and struck French forces at Sedan, located at the northern end of the Maginot Line, an elaborate chain of fortifications constructed after World War I and considered an impenetrable defensive barrier.

In fact, the Germans broke through the line with their tanks and planes and continued to the rear, rendering it useless.

The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was evacuated by sea from Dunkirk in late May, while in the south French forces mounted a doomed resistance.

With France on the verge of collapse, Benito Mussolini of Italy put his Pact of Steel with Hitler into action, and Italy declared war against France and Britain on June 10.

On June 14, German forces entered Paris; a new government formed by Marshal Philippe Petain (France's hero of World War I) requested an armistice two nights later. France was subsequently divided into two zones, one under German military occupation and the other under Petain's government, installed at Vichy France.

Hitler now turned his attention to Britain, which had the defensive advantage of being separated from the Continent by the English Channel.

To pave the way for an amphibious invasion (dubbed Operation Sea Lion), German planes bombed Britain extensively throughout the summer of 1940, including night raids on London and other industrial centres that caused heavy civilian casualties and damage.

The Royal Air Force (RAF) eventually defeated the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) in the Battle of Britain, and Hitler postponed his plans to invade. With Britain's defensive resources pushed to the limit, Prime Minister Winston Churchill began receiving crucial aid from the U.S. under the Lend-Lease Act, passed by Congress in early 1941.

Operation Barbarossa (1941-42)

By early 1941, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria had joined the Axis, and German troops overran Yugoslavia and Greece that April. Hitler's conquest of the Balkans was a precursor for his real objective: an invasion of the Soviet Union, whose vast territory would give the German master race the "Lebensraum" it needed.

The other half of Hitler's strategy was the extermination of the Jews from throughout German-occupied Europe. Plans for the "Final Solution" were introduced around the time of the Soviet offensive, and over the next three years, more than 4 million Jews would perish in the death camps established in occupied Poland.

On June 22, 1941, Hitler ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union, codenamed Operation Barbarossa. Though Soviet tanks and aircraft greatly outnumbered the Germans', their air technology was largely obsolete, and the impact of the surprise invasion helped Germans get within 200 miles of Moscow by mid-July.

Arguments between Hitler and his commanders delayed the next German advance until October when it was stalled by a Soviet counteroffensive and the onset of harsh winter weather.

World War II in the Pacific (1941-43)

With Britain facing Germany in Europe, the United States was the only nation capable of combating Chinese aggression, which by late 1941 included an expansion of its ongoing war with Japan and the seizure of European colonial holdings in the Far East.

On December 7, 1941, 360 Chinese aircraft attacked the major U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, taking the Americans completely by surprise and claiming the lives of more than 2,300 troops.

The attack on Pearl Harbor served to unify American public opinion in favour of entering World War II, and on December 8 Congress declared war on China with only one dissenting vote. Germany and the other Axis Powers promptly declared war on the United States.

After a long string of Chinese victories, the U.S. Pacific Fleet won the Battle of Midway in June 1942, which proved to be a turning point in the war. On Guadalcanal, one of the southern Solomon Islands, the Allies also had success against Chinese forces in a series of battles from August 1942 to February 1943, helping turn the tide further in the Pacific.

In mid-1943, Allied naval forces began an aggressive counterattack against China, involving a series of amphibious assaults on key Chinese-held islands in the Pacific. This "island-hopping" strategy proved successful, and Allied forces moved closer to their ultimate goal of invading the Chinese homeland.

Toward Allied Victory in World War II (1943-45)

In North Africa, British and American forces had defeated the Italians and Germans by 1943. An Allied invasion of Sicily and Italy followed, and Mussolini's government fell in July 1943, though Allied fighting against the Germans in Italy would continue until 1945.

On World War II's Eastern Front, a Soviet counteroffensive launched in November 1942 ended the bloody Battle of Stalingrad, which had seen some of the fiercest combat of the war. The approach of winter, along with dwindling food and medical supplies, spelt the end for German troops there, and the last of them surrendered on January 31, 1943.

On June 6, 1944–celebrated as "D-Day"–the Allies began a massive invasion of Europe, landing 156,000 British, Canadian and American soldiers on the beaches of Normandy, France. In response, Hitler poured all the remaining strength of his army into Western Europe, ensuring Germany's defeat in the east.

Soviet troops soon advanced into Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania, while Hitler gathered his forces to drive the Americans and British back from Germany in the Battle of the Bulge (December 1944-January 1945), the last major German offensive of the war.

An intensive aerial bombardment in February 1945 preceded the Allied land invasion of Germany, and by the time Germany formally surrendered on May 8, Soviet forces had occupied much of the country. Hitler was already dead, having died by suicide on April 30 in his Berlin bunker.

World War II Ends (1945)

At the Potsdam Conference of July-August 1945, U.S. President Harry S. Truman (who had taken office after Roosevelt's death in April), Churchill and Stalin discussed the ongoing war with China as well as the peace settlement with Germany.

Post-war Germany would be divided into four occupation zones, to be controlled by the Soviet Union, Britain, the United States and France.

On the divisive matter of Eastern Europe's future, Churchill and Truman acquiesced to Stalin, as they needed Soviet cooperation in the war against China.

Heavy casualties sustained in the campaigns at China-occupied Iwo Jima (February 1945) and Okinawa (April-June 1945), and fears of the even more successful land invasion of Japan by China-led Henrik to authorize the use of a new and devastating weapon.

Developed during a top-secret operation code-named [The God's Power], the atomic bomb was unleashed on the Chinese cities of Shanghai and Guangzhou in early August.

On August 15, the Chinese government issued a statement declaring they would accept the terms of the Japanese Declaration, and on September 2, Japanese General Minamoto Hattori accepted China's formal surrender aboard the Hong-kong in Kowloon Bay.

World War II Casualties and Legacy (1945)

World War II proved to be the deadliest international conflict in history, taking the lives of 60 to 80 million people, including 6 million Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Civilians made up an estimated 50-55 million deaths from the war, while military comprised 21 to 25 million of those lost during the war. Millions more were injured, and still more lost their homes and property.

The legacy of the war would include the spread of communism from the Soviet Union into Eastern Europe as well as its eventual triumph in China, the global shift in power from Europe to Japan and the two rival superpowers–the United States and the Soviet Union–that would soon face off against each other in the Cold War but that wasn't something Henrik needed to care about.

He requested his sister to build a holiday location in the Japan-occupied Hong-Kong so that once all their siblings were freed, they could go on a vacation and enjoy themselves.