Bulgaria

The history of Bulgaria during World War II encompasses an initial period of neutrality until 1 March 1941, a period of alliance with the Axis Powers until 8 September 1944, and a period of alignment with the Allies in the final year of the war. 

Bulgarian military forces occupied with German consent parts of the kingdoms of Greece and Yugoslavia which Bulgarian irredentism claimed on the basis of the 1878 Treaty of San Stefano. 

Bulgaria resisted Axis pressure to join the war against the Soviet Union, which began on 22 June 1941, but did declare war on Britain and the United States on 13 December 1941. 

The Red Army entered Bulgaria on 8 September 1944; Bulgaria declared war on Germany the next day.

As an ally of Nazi Germany, Bulgaria participated in the Holocaust, causing the deaths of 11,343 Jews, and though 48,000 Jews survived the war, they were subjected to forcible internal deportation, dispossession, and discrimination. 

Bulgaria functioned as an authoritarian state during most of World War II. 

Tsar Boris III (reigned 1918–1943) ruled through a parliament and a prime minister. Bulgaria’s wartime government was pro-German under Georgi Kyoseivanov, Bogdan Filov, Dobri Bozhilov, and Ivan Bagryanov. It joined the Allies under Konstantin Muraviev in early September 1944, then underwent a coup d’état a week later, and under Kimon Georgiev was pro-Soviet thereafter.

Germany

Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich until 1943 and Greater German Reich in 1943–45, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country which they transformed into a dictatorship. 

Under Hitler’s rule, Germany quickly became a totalitarian state where nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the government. 

The Third Reich, meaning “Third Realm” or “Third Empire”, alluded to the Nazis’ conceit that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). 

The Third Reich, which Hitler and the Nazis referred to as the Thousand Year Reich, ended in May 1945 after just 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany, ending World War II in Europe.

On 30 January 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, the head of government, by the President of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg, the head of State. 

The Nazi Party then began to eliminate all political opposition and consolidate its power. 

Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934 and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the offices and powers of the Chancellery and Presidency. 

A national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer (Leader) of Germany. 

All power was centralised in Hitler’s person and his word became the highest law. The government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitler’s favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending and a mixed economy. 

Using deficit spending, the regime undertook a massive secret rearmament program and the construction of extensive public works projects, including the construction of Autobahnen (motorways). 

The return to economic stability boosted the regime’s popularity.

Racism, Nazi eugenics, and especially antisemitism, were central ideological features of the regime. 

The Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the master race, the purest branch of the Aryan race. Discrimination and the persecution of Jews and Romani people began in earnest after the seizure of power. The first concentration camps were established in March 1933. 

Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, and liberals, socialists, and communists were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. 

Christian churches and citizens that opposed Hitler’s rule were oppressed and many leaders imprisoned. 

Education focused on racial biology, population policy, and fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed. 

Recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, and the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased Germany on the international stage. 

Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, and Hitler’s hypnotic oratory to influence public opinion. 

The government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others.

The Nazi regime dominated neighbours through military threats in the years leading up to war. Nazi Germany made increasingly aggressive territorial demands, threatening war if these were not met. 

It seized Austria and almost all of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Germany signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union and invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, launching World War II in Europe. 

By early 1941, Germany controlled much of Europe. Reichskommissariats took control of conquered areas and a German administration was established in the remainder of Poland. 

Germany exploited the raw materials and labour of both its occupied territories and its allies.

Genocide and mass murder became hallmarks of the regime. Starting in 1939, hundreds of thousands of German citizens with mental or physical disabilities were murdered in hospitals and asylums. 

Einsatzgruppen paramilitary death squads accompanied the German armed forces inside the occupied territories and conducted the mass killings of millions of Jews and other Holocaust victims. 

After 1941, millions of others were imprisoned, worked to death, or murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps. 

This genocide is known as the Holocaust.

While the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 was initially successful, the Soviet resurgence and entry of the United States into the war meant that the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) lost the initiative on the Eastern Front in 1943 and by late 1944 had been pushed back to the pre-1939 border. 

Large-scale aerial bombing of Germany escalated in 1944 and the Axis powers were driven back in Eastern and Southern Europe. 

After the Allied invasion of France, Germany was conquered by the Soviet Union from the east and the other Allies from the west, and capitulated in May 1945. 

Hitler’s refusal to admit defeat led to massive destruction of German infrastructure and additional war-related deaths in the closing months of the war. 

The victorious Allies initiated a policy of denazification and put many of the surviving Nazi leadership on trial for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials.

 

kingdom of romania

Following the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, the Kingdom of Romania under King Carol II officially adopted a position of neutrality. 

However, the rapidly changing situation in Europe during 1940, as well as domestic political upheaval, undermined this stance. 

Fascist political forces such as the Iron Guard rose in popularity and power, urging an alliance with Nazi Germany and its allies. 

As the military fortunes of Romania’s two main guarantors of territorial integrity—France and Britain—crumbled in the Fall of France, the government of Romania turned to Germany in hopes of a similar guarantee, unaware that the then dominant European power had already granted its consent to Soviet territorial claims in a secret protocol of 1939’s Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

In summer 1940 a series of territorial disputes were diplomatically resolved unfavorably to Romania, resulting in the loss of most of the territory gained in the wake of World War I. This caused the popularity of Romania’s government to plummet, further reinforcing the fascist and military factions, who eventually staged a coup that turned the country into a dictatorship under Mareșal Ion Antonescu. 

The new regime firmly set the country on a course towards the Axis camp, officially joining the Axis powers on 23 November 1940. 

As a member of the Axis, Romania joined the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, providing equipment and oil to Nazi Germany as well as committing more troops to the Eastern Front than all the other allies of Germany combined. Romanian forces played a large role during fighting in Ukraine, Bessarabia, Stalingrad and elsewhere. Romanian troops were responsible for the persecution and massacre of up to 260,000 Jews in Romanian-controlled territories, though most Jews living within Romania survived the harsh conditions. 

According to historian and author Mark Axworthy, the second Axis army in Europe, arguably, belonged to Romania, though, this is disputed since many would agree that this position goes to the Italian army.

After the tide of war turned against the Axis, Romania was bombed by the Allies from 1943 onwards and invaded by advancing Soviet armies in 1944. 

With popular support for Romania’s participation in the war faltering and German-Romanian fronts collapsing under the Soviet onslaught, King Michael of Romania led a coup d’état that deposed the Antonescu regime and put Romania on the side of the Allies for the remainder of the war; Antonescu was executed in June 1946. 

Despite this late association with the winning side, Greater Romania was largely dismantled, losing territory to Bulgaria and the Soviet Union, but regaining Northern Transylvania from Hungary.


Kingdom of Italy

The participation of Italy in the Second World War was characterized by a complex framework of ideology, politics, and diplomacy, while its military actions were often heavily influenced by external factors.

Italy joined the war as one of the Axis Powers in 1940, as the French Third Republic surrendered, with a plan to concentrate Italian forces on a major offensive against the British Empire in Africa and the Middle East, known as the “parallel war”, while expecting the collapse of British forces in the European theatre.

The Italians bombed Mandatory Palestine, invaded Egypt and occupied British Somaliland with initial success. However, German and Japanese actions in 1941 led to the entry of the Soviet Union and United States, respectively, into the war, thus ruining the Italian plan of forcing Britain to agree to a negotiated peace settlement.

The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was aware that Italy (whose resources were reduced by successful pre-WWII military interventions in Spain, Ethiopia and Albania) was not ready for a long conflict.

He opted to remain in the war as the imperial ambitions of the Fascist regime, which aspired to restore the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean (the Mare Nostrum), were partially met by late 1942.

By this point, Italian influence extended throughout the Mediterranean.

Libya had been pacified under the fascists and was undergoing Italian settlement. A friendly military nationalist regime had been installed in Spain, and a puppet regime installed in Croatia following the German-Italian Invasion of Yugoslavia. Albania, Ljubljana, coastal Dalmatia, and Montenegro had been directly annexed by the Italian state.

Most of Greece had been occupied by Italy following the Greco-Italian War and Battle of Greece, as had the French territories of Corsica and Tunisia following Vichy France’s collapse and occupation by German forces. Italo-German forces had also achieved victories against insurgents in Yugoslavia, and had occupied parts of British-held Egypt on their push to El-Alamein after their victory at Gazala.

However, Italy’s conquests were always heavily contested, both by various insurgencies (most prominently the Greek resistance and Yugoslav partisans) and Allied military forces, which waged the Battle of the Mediterranean throughout and beyond Italy’s participation.

Ultimately the Italian empire collapsed after disastrous defeats in the Eastern European and North African campaigns.

In July 1943, following the Allied invasion of Sicily, Mussolini was arrested by order of King Victor Emmanuel III, provoking a civil war.

Italy’s military outside of the Italian peninsula collapsed, its occupied and annexed territories falling under German control.

Italy capitulated to the Allies on 3 September 1943.

The northern half of the country was occupied by the Germans with the cooperation of Italian fascists, and became a collaborationist puppet state (with more than 500,000 soldiers recruited for the Axis), while the south was officially controlled by monarchist forces, which fought for the Allied cause as the Italian Co-Belligerent Army (at its height numbering more than 50,000 men), as well as around 350,000 Italian resistance movement partisans (mostly former Royal Italian Army soldiers) of disparate political ideologies that operated all over Italy.

On 28 April 1945, Benito Mussolini was executed by Italian partisans, two days before Adolf Hitler’s suicide.


Japan

By the time World War II was in full swing, Japan had the most interest in using biological warfare. Japan’s Air Force dropped massive amounts of ceramic bombs filled with bubonic plague-infested fleas in Ningbo, China. These attacks would eventually lead to thousands of deaths years after the war would end.

In Japan’s relentless and indiscriminate research methods on biological warfare, they poisoned more than 1,000 Chinese village wells to study cholera and typhus outbreaks. These diseases are caused by bacteria that with today’s technology could potentially be weaponised.

A map of the Canterbury in New Zealand prepared by the Japanese Military following the attack on Pearl Harbour
South-East Asia
Main articles: South-East Asian theatre of World War II and South West Pacific theatre of World War II
The South-East Asian campaign was preceded by years of propaganda and espionage activities carried out in the region by the Japanese Empire. 

The Japanese espoused their vision of a Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, and an Asia for Asians to the people of Southeast Asia, who had lived under European rule for generations. As a result, many inhabitants in some of the colonies (particularly Indonesia) actually sided with the Japanese invaders for anti-colonial reasons. 

However, the ethnic Chinese, who had witnessed the effects of Japanese occupation in their homeland, did not side with the Japanese.

Japanese troops march through the streets of Labuan, Borneo on January 14, 1942.
Hong Kong surrendered to the Japanese on December 25.

In Malaya the Japanese overwhelmed an Allied army composed of British, Indian, Australian and Malay forces. The Japanese were quickly able to advance down the Malayan Peninsula, forcing the Allied forces to retreat towards Singapore. The Allies lacked air cover and tanks; the Japanese had air supremacy. 

The sinking of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse on December 10, 1941, led to the east coast of Malaya being exposed to Japanese landings and the elimination of British naval power in the area. By the end of January 1942, the last Allied forces crossed the strait of Johore and into Singapore. In the Philippines, the Japanese pushed the combined Filipino-American force towards the Bataan Peninsula and later the island of Corregidor. By January 1942, General Douglas MacArthur and President Manuel L. 

Quezon were forced to flee in the face of Japanese advance. This marked one of the worst defeats suffered by the Americans, leaving over 70,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war in the custody of the Japanese.

Battle of Singapore, February 1942.

On February 15, 1942, Singapore, due to the overwhelming superiority of Japanese forces and encirclement tactics, fell to the Japanese, causing the largest surrender of British-led military personnel in history. An estimated 80,000 Indian, Australian and British troops were taken as prisoners of war, joining 50,000 taken in the Japanese invasion of Malaya (modern day Malaysia). Many were later used as forced labour constructing the Burma Railway, the site of the infamous Bridge on the River Kwai. 

Immediately following their invasion of British Malaya, the Japanese military carried out a purge of the Chinese population in Malaya and Singapore.

The Japanese then seized the key oil production zones of Borneo, Central Java, Malang, Cepu, Sumatra, and Dutch New Guinea of the late Dutch East Indies, defeating the Dutch forces. 

However, Allied sabotage had made it difficult for the Japanese to restore oil production to its pre-war peak. 

The Japanese then consolidated their lines of supply through capturing key islands of the Pacific, including Guadalcanal.

Tide turns (1942–45)

Battle of Midway. 

The attack by dive bombers from USS Yorktown and USS Enterprise on the Japanese aircraft carriers Soryu, Akagi and Kaga in the morning of 4 June 1942.
Japanese military strategists were keenly aware of the unfavorable discrepancy between the industrial potential of the Japanese Empire and that of the United States. 

Because of this they reasoned that Japanese success hinged on their ability to extend the strategic advantage gained at Pearl Harbor with additional rapid strategic victories. 

The Japanese Command reasoned that only decisive destruction of the United States’ Pacific Fleet and conquest of its remote outposts would ensure that the Japanese Empire would not be overwhelmed by America’s industrial might. 

In April 1942, Japan was bombed for the first time in the Doolittle Raid. In May 1942, failure to decisively defeat the Allies at the Battle of the Coral Sea, in spite of Japanese numerical superiority, equated to a strategic defeat for Imperial Japan.

This setback was followed in June 1942 by the catastrophic loss of four fleet carriers at the Battle of Midway, the first decisive defeat for the Imperial Japanese Navy.

It proved to be the turning point of the war as the Navy lost its offensive strategic capability and never managed to reconstruct the “‘critical mass’ of both large numbers of carriers and well-trained air groups”.

Australian land forces defeated Japanese Marines in New Guinea at the Battle of Milne Bay in September 1942, which was the first land defeat suffered by the Japanese in the Pacific.

Further victories by the Allies at Guadalcanal in September 1942, and New Guinea in 1943 put the Empire of Japan on the defensive for the remainder of the war, with Guadalcanal in particular sapping their already-limited oil supplies.

During 1943 and 1944, Allied forces, backed by the industrial might and vast raw material resources of the United States, advanced steadily towards Japan.

The Sixth United States Army, led by General MacArthur, landed on Leyte on October 20, 1944. In the subsequent months, during the Philippines Campaign (1944–45), the combined United States forces, together with the native guerrilla units, liberated the Philippines. By 1944,

the Allies had seized or bypassed and neutralized many of Japan’s strategic bases through amphibious landings and bombardment.

This, coupled with the losses inflicted by Allied submarines on Japanese shipping routes began to strangle Japan’s economy and undermine its ability to supply its army.

By early 1945, the U.S. Marines had wrested control of the Ogasawara Islands in several hard-fought battles such as the Battle of Iwo Jima, marking the beginning of the fall of the islands of Japan