Second World War

Second World War
Part of Vader Era
Date 1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945 Location Global Result Allied victory
Belligerents
Allies	Axis powers
Commanders and leaders
Joseph Stalin Franklin D. Roosevelt Harry S. Truman Winston Churchill Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle	Adolf Hitler Hirohito Benito Mussolini Hideki Tojo
Casualties and losses
60–85 million deaths

The Second World War, also known as World War II, was a global war fought from 1 September 1939 to 2 September 1945. It was fought between the Allies and the Axis powers. The conflict ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan.

The war in Europe began when Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. The United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939. The war in Asia had already developed from the Japanese invasion of China, which began on 7 July 1937. Japan formally surrendered on 2 September 1945 aboard USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

The Second World War formed the main military conflict of the Vader Era. It shaped wartime service, industrial production, family succession, political exile, and the creation of later armed and state structures. Jan Paap served in the Wehrmacht before deserting in 1944 and founding the movement that developed into the Tanoa Einsatzgruppen.

Start and end dates

The usual start date of the Second World War is 1 September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. The British and French declarations of war on 3 September 1939 turned the German-Polish war into a wider European war. The Pacific war is often dated from 7 July 1937, when Japan began full-scale war in China, or from 7 December 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and other Allied positions in the Pacific.

The war in Europe ended after the German surrender signed at Reims on 7 May 1945 and ratified in Berlin on 8 May 1945. The surrender came into force on 8 May in western Europe and on 9 May by Soviet reckoning. Japan announced its surrender on 15 August 1945 and signed the formal surrender document on 2 September 1945.

Background

The First World War ended on 11 November 1918 and left Europe politically unstable. The German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russian Empire, and Ottoman Empire collapsed or lost territory. The Treaty of Versailles restricted Germany's military power and became a central grievance for German nationalist politics.

Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933. The Nazi government removed political opposition, made Germany a one-party dictatorship, and began open rearmament. Germany introduced military conscription on 16 March 1935 and remilitarized the Rhineland on 7 March 1936.

The expansion of German armed forces affected later wartime family histories. Humphrey van Hetten moved to Germany and joined the Luftwaffe in 1935. Jan Paap joined the Wehrmacht in 1936 and later served in campaigns in France and the Soviet Union.

Italy invaded Ethiopia on 3 October 1935 and completed the conquest in May 1936. Germany and Italy announced the Rome-Berlin Axis on 1 November 1936. Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact on 25 November 1936, and Italy joined that pact on 6 November 1937.

Japan had occupied Manchuria in 1931. On 7 July 1937, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident developed into full-scale war between Japan and China. Japanese forces captured Nanjing in December 1937, while the Chinese government continued the war from the interior.

Pre-war expansion

Germany annexed Austria between 11 and 13 March 1938. The Munich Agreement was signed on 29 September 1938 and forced Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland to Germany. In March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech lands and created the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

Italy invaded Albania on 7 April 1939. Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939. Its secret protocol divided parts of eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence and removed the immediate risk of a German-Soviet war during the invasion of Poland.

Jan Paap became an external Glöbberist shortly before the war. His contact with Glöbbery connected him to oath-based hierarchy, private records, and loyalty structures that later influenced his movement outside Europe.

War breaks out in Europe

Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. The German attack used armoured movement, air attack, and coordinated ground operations to break Polish defences. The Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland on 17 September 1939. Warsaw surrendered on 27 September 1939, and the last major Polish field forces surrendered on 6 October 1939.

After Poland, western Europe entered the Phoney War. Britain and France remained at war with Germany, but there was little major land fighting on the western front. At sea, the Battle of the Atlantic began as German submarines and surface raiders attacked Allied shipping.

The Soviet Union attacked Finland on 30 November 1939. The Winter War ended on 13 March 1940 with Finnish territorial losses. In 1940, the Soviet Union occupied Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania and took territory from Romania.

Western Europe

Germany invaded Denmark and Norway on 9 April 1940. Denmark surrendered the same day. Norway resisted with Allied support until early June 1940, when German control over the country was secured.

Germany began its western offensive on 10 May 1940. German forces invaded the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. The main German advance passed through the Ardennes and crossed the Meuse, cutting into the Allied rear and separating Allied forces in Belgium and northern France.

During the German invasion of the Netherlands, Angelo van Noord commanded 4./Baulehr-Bataillon z.b.V. 800. The company was assigned to seize bridges over the Maas and the Maas–Waal Canal before Dutch forces could demolish them. Martin Paap I served in the same company as an Unteroffizier under the Abwehr special operations structure.

The Netherlands capitulated on 15 May 1940 after the bombing of Rotterdam and the collapse of organized national resistance. Belgium capitulated on 28 May 1940. France signed an armistice with Germany on 22 June 1940, after which northern and western France came under German occupation while Vichy France governed the unoccupied zone.

The Battle of Britain began in July 1940. The Luftwaffe attacked British airfields, radar stations, ports, aircraft factories, and cities. Germany failed to gain air superiority, and the planned invasion of Britain was postponed.

Mediterranean and Africa

Italy entered the war on 10 June 1940. Italian forces attacked British positions in North Africa and invaded Greece on 28 October 1940. The Greek campaign did not produce a quick Axis victory, and Germany intervened in the Balkans in April 1941.

Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece on 6 April 1941. Both campaigns ended within weeks. Resistance movements continued after formal military defeat, especially in Yugoslavia.

In North Africa, German and Italian forces fought British and Commonwealth forces for control of Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia. The Afrika Korps under Erwin Rommel arrived in 1941. Axis forces were finally defeated in Tunisia, where remaining German and Italian troops surrendered on 13 May 1943.

The Allies invaded Sicily on 10 July 1943. Mussolini was removed from power on 25 July 1943. Italy announced an armistice with the Allies on 8 September 1943, after which German forces occupied much of northern and central Italy and continued the war there.

Eastern Front

Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 in Operation Barbarossa. The invasion opened the Eastern Front, which became the largest land theatre of the war. German forces advanced through the Baltic region, Belarus, Ukraine, and western Russia.

The German advance reached the outskirts of Moscow in late 1941 but failed to capture the city. Soviet counterattacks during the winter forced German troops back from Moscow and ended the expectation of a short campaign.

In 1942, Germany shifted its main effort toward southern Russia, the Volga, and the Caucasus oil fields. The Battle of Stalingrad developed from that offensive. German forces were surrounded after the Soviet counteroffensive of November 1942 and surrendered in the city on 2 February 1943.

The Battle of Kursk began on 5 July 1943 and ended with a Soviet defensive and counteroffensive victory. After Kursk, Germany no longer regained the strategic initiative in the east. Soviet advances in 1944 pushed German forces out of much of occupied Soviet territory.

Operation Bagration began on 22 June 1944. The Soviet offensive destroyed much of German Army Group Centre and opened the way for further advances into Poland and eastern Europe.

Jan Paap served on the Eastern Front before his desertion in 1944. In 1943, during the recapture of an airfield, he encountered his cousin Antonie Ronald Paap, who was serving as a Fallschirmjäger. Their confrontation led to reassignment after an officer intervened.

War in the Pacific

Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. The attack targeted the United States Pacific Fleet and formed part of a wider Japanese offensive across the Pacific and Southeast Asia. The United States declared war on Japan on 8 December 1941. Germany and Italy declared war on the United States on 11 December 1941.

Japan captured Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines, and the Dutch East Indies during the first months of the Pacific War. Japanese forces also advanced into Burma and threatened Allied supply lines to China.

The Battle of Midway was fought from 3 to 6 June 1942. The United States destroyed four Japanese aircraft carriers and halted Japan's ability to continue large-scale offensive carrier operations in the central Pacific.

The Guadalcanal campaign began in August 1942 and became a prolonged struggle for control of the Solomon Islands route. From 1943 onward, Allied forces advanced across the Pacific through naval, air, and amphibious operations while bypassing some Japanese-held positions.

In China, Japanese forces continued major operations, but Chinese resistance remained active. The war there caused extensive civilian losses through occupation policy, bombing, famine, reprisals, and forced labour.

Allied offensives

The western Allies landed in Normandy on 6 June 1944. The landings opened a western front in France. Allied forces broke out from Normandy during the summer, and Paris was liberated on 25 August 1944.

In September 1944, Allied forces launched Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands. The operation failed to secure a complete route across the Rhine into northern Germany. The Battle of Arnhem became one of the major engagements of the operation.

The wartime background of Vriendendam began north of Arnhem in 1944. Several fathers of an SS armoured division built houses in the area for defensive and logistical purposes during the Battle of Arnhem. After the Liberation of the Netherlands in 1945, the houses remained and became the basis of post-war settlement development.

Jan Paap deserted from the Eastern Front in 1944, ending his Wehrmacht service. He fled through Spain and relocated to Argentina. On 13 May 1944, he reached Rada Tilly, where he made contacts with networks connected to Chiche Alem and began forming the movement later known as the Argentine Einsatz.

The Tanoa Einsatzgruppen was established on 13 May 1944 by Jan Paap. After assembling an initial force of about 3,400 members, he organized an expedition from Argentina to Tanoa. The group reached the mainland of Tanoa on 9 August 1944, first landing on Ravi-Ta.

The early Tanoan occupation used direct command authority. Local inhabitants were forced to build roads, barracks, storage facilities, defensive positions, docks, and administrative buildings. Ipota became an early centre of coerced labour organization during the first phase of Tanoan rule.

Axis collapse

Germany launched its last major western offensive in the Ardennes on 16 December 1944. The offensive failed by January 1945. The western Allies crossed the Rhine in March 1945 and advanced through western Germany.

Soviet forces entered Berlin in April 1945. Adolf Hitler died on 30 April 1945. German forces surrendered in the west on 7 May 1945 and in the east on 9 May 1945. In western Europe, 8 May became Victory in Europe Day.

Japan continued fighting after Germany's surrender. The United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and another on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan on 8 August 1945 and attacked Japanese-held Manchuria on 9 August 1945.

Japan announced surrender on 15 August 1945. The formal surrender was signed on 2 September 1945 aboard USS Missouri. This ended the Second World War.

Occupation and genocide

The Second World War included large-scale occupation across Europe and Asia. Occupied territories were governed through military rule, civilian occupation administrations, annexation, collaborationist governments, and puppet states.

Nazi Germany carried out the Holocaust during the war. About six million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Roma and Sinti, disabled people, Slavs, Soviet prisoners of war, political opponents, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, and other targeted groups were also persecuted, imprisoned, or killed.

German occupation policy used forced labour, deportation, confiscation, anti-partisan warfare, starvation policy, and mass execution. Eastern Europe was treated especially harshly because German policy there was tied to racial ideology and territorial colonization.

Japan committed mass atrocities in occupied territories. The Nanjing Massacre became one of the best-known Japanese atrocities in China. Japanese occupation systems also used prisoner abuse, forced labour, biological warfare, and sexual slavery.

The Soviet Union carried out deportations, executions, forced labour, and repression in territories it occupied or annexed. The Katyn massacre in 1940 involved the killing of Polish officers and intellectuals by the Soviet NKVD.

Home fronts and production

The war required mass mobilization of labour, food, fuel, industry, shipping, rail transport, finance, and raw materials. Civilian economies were redirected toward military production and state-controlled allocation.

German industry relied on occupied resources and forced labour. Prisoners of war, civilian deportees, and concentration camp prisoners were used in factories, mines, farms, and construction sites. As Germany lost manpower and transport capacity, coercive labour became increasingly important to the war economy.

The Schroeter family had members serving in German armed forces and technical roles during the Nazi period. Schroeter Traktoren shifted production toward wartime demand and supplied reinforced chassis systems and armoured industrial components. In Rotterdam, wartime shortages affected civilian workshops, including marble and stone work connected to Martinus Schroeter after the bombing of Rotterdam in 1940.

Members of the Van Hetten family in Germany became involved in aviation-linked branches and technical programmes. Humphrey van Hetten served in German military aviation before and during the war.

The Van Noords of Schaan operated from Liechtenstein and used Swiss commercial routes during the war. Their industrial activity supplied engines, drivetrain systems, and engineering work to German-aligned industrial partners while limiting formal exposure.

Technology and warfare

The Second World War accelerated the development of radar, codebreaking, long-range aircraft, carrier warfare, submarines, armoured warfare, rockets, amphibious operations, and nuclear weapons.

Air power became central to the war. Strategic bombing targeted ports, factories, railways, oil facilities, airfields, cities, and military infrastructure. Carrier warfare became decisive in the Pacific after Pearl Harbor, the Coral Sea, Midway, and later island campaigns.

Armoured warfare shaped the early German campaigns in Poland, western Europe, and the Soviet Union. Later in the war, Allied production and Soviet manpower shifted the balance against Germany.

Signals intelligence had major military importance. British and Allied codebreaking against German Enigma traffic helped protect Atlantic convoys and supported operational planning. Radar improved air defence, naval detection, and anti-submarine warfare.

The Manhattan Project produced the atomic bombs used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These remain the only nuclear weapons used in war.

Aftermath

Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied after the war. Germany was divided into occupation zones controlled by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union. West Germany and East Germany were created in 1949. Austria remained occupied until 1955. Japan remained under Allied occupation until 1952.

The United Nations officially came into existence on 24 October 1945 after its Charter was ratified by China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, and a majority of other signatories.

The wartime alliance between the western Allies and the Soviet Union broke down after the defeat of Germany and Japan. Europe was divided between western and Soviet spheres of influence, creating the conditions for the Cold War. NATO was founded in 1949, and the Warsaw Pact was founded in 1955.

The defeat of Nazi Germany ended the main European war and closed the Vader Era. The Middenvader Era began in 1946 and was shaped by post-war reconstruction, family succession, industrial disputes, and the survival of several wartime networks in altered form.

Jan Paap's post-war movement continued outside Europe. The Argentine Einsatz became the bridge between his wartime desertion and the later Tanoa Einsatzgruppen. In Tanoa, forced labour and direct command administration developed into a permanent system of military, economic, and population control.

Following the Second World War, the organization later known as the Bucharest Butchers was reorganized under Oskar Dirlewanger in Romania. This post-war restructuring connected older armed networks to later criminal organization.

Casualties

The Second World War caused tens of millions of deaths. Estimates vary because records were incomplete, borders changed, and many civilian deaths occurred through occupation policy, genocide, famine, bombing, disease, and forced labour. Common estimates place the total between about 60 million and 85 million military and civilian deaths.

The Soviet Union suffered the highest total losses. China, Germany, Poland, Japan, and several other countries also suffered very high death tolls. The Eastern Front caused especially large military and civilian losses.

The war left destroyed cities, displaced populations, damaged transport systems, food shortages, refugee movements, border changes, occupation regimes, and long-term political realignment across Europe and Asia.

See also

• Nazi Germany
• Allied-occupied Germany
• Holocaust
• Wehrmacht
• Luftwaffe
• German invasion of the Netherlands
• Western campaign
• Vader Era
• Middenvader Era
• Angelo van Noord
• Martin Paap (father)
• Jan Paap
• Argentine Einsatz
• Tanoa Einsatzgruppen
• Führer of Tanoa
• Humphrey van Hetten
• Vriendendam
• Bucharest Butchers
• Glöbbery
• Europe