MEPX
Chapter 6 of 10All chapters
  1. 1The age of revolutions
  2. 2Industrial society
  3. 3Empire and nationalism
  4. 4The First World War
  5. 5Between the wars
  6. 6The Second World War
  7. 7Building a new order
  8. 8The Cold War
  9. 9Decolonisation and civil rights
  10. 10Since 1991

Chapter 6 of 10

The Second World War

1939 to 1945.

Global conflict

Fighting spanned Europe, North Africa, the Atlantic and the Pacific, with civilian deaths exceeding military ones for the first time on this scale.

  • Estimates of total deaths run between seventy and eighty five million.
  • The Soviet Union bore by far the heaviest losses in Europe.

The Holocaust

Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered six million Jews in an organised programme of extermination, alongside Roma, disabled people, Soviet prisoners and political opponents. It is documented in extraordinary detail by the perpetrators themselves.