World War 2

So you want to learn about World War 2, don't you? Well then, let's get started!
Before we begin going into the savage war, let's remember how it started. At the end of World War 1, Germany had to sign the Treaty of Versailles. That basically placed all of the blame on Germany; they lost their colonies and had to pay war reparations, not to mention that their country's size had decreased. This put Germans in extreme poverty. The value of their paper dollar was so low, they would have a lot of them. Stacks of money, but it was hardly worth anything. In one picture, someone was burning paper money because it was easier to burn it than pay for firewood.
As I was saying, Germany was really poor. They would accept anyone as their leader to get them out of their rut. So when Adolf Hitler came around, saying, "Oh yeah I'll help you guys out," they immediately let him rule over.

But before he went insane and hungry for power, he was a pretty nice guy. Lemme explain.
He helped Germany, got them out of their troubles. Then he let the Nazis come into town, telling people how much they should hate Jewish people. This was a problem, for a lot of Germans were Jewish at the time. But he didn't attack them first. Instead, Adolf thought that his next-door-neighbor Poland would be a good place to start.

And thus, World War 2 began.

Germany began the Holocaust, secretly killing Jews. How was it secret? Well, the people of Germany didn't know what was going on. All they knew was that a war was happening.

Alliances pulled the European countries into the War. Countries mainly stuck with the countries that had the same forms of government; so it was pretty much Democracy vs. Communism. They fought for a couple of years, and in 1941, the U.S. was pulled in. But how?

Pearl Harbor, that's how. Japan sprung a surprise attack on a naval base in Hawaii, shooting down ships and planes. Now, Japan was in alliance with Germany. A few days after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. declared war on Japan, which pretty much declared war on Germany as well.

As we saw in World War 1, when the U.S. gets involved, conflict doesn't last much longer. But it took a little while more for things to settle because America was also fighting in Japan. So, they were sending out troops and supplies to two different parts of the world. This is what we call a "Two Front War."

So how does the war end? The U.S. and the Soviet Union meet each other in the middle of Europe (this was before the Cold War, of course, so they were Allies and we're glad to see each other.) That meant that they eliminated all the German troops. But where was Hitler?
He was in his bunker in Berlin, safe from conflict. He heard about what happened at the Elbe River (where the U.S. and the Soviets met up) and committed suicide by shooting himself. His wife also killed herself.

Meanwhile, in Japan, the U.S. ended conflict there in a pretty extreme way: the Atomic Bomb. It was the most destructive weapon in history, and was created with the help of Albert Einstein. Get this, he was a German-Jew who fled Germany and went the the U.S.!

So that's how World War 2 came to be. Hope this helped!