WORLD WAR II AXIS VS ALLIED POWERS E W N S Not to Scale UNITED STATES UNITED STATES CANADA BRAZIL CHINA JAPAN AUSTRALIA SOUTHERN OCEAN ARCTIC OCEAN ANTARCTIC OCEAN NORWAY NETHERLANDS BELGIUM FRANCE SAN FRANCISCO HAWAI ISLAND ITALY BULGARIA GREECE ROMANIA HUNGARY GERMANY DENMARK POLAND MOSCOW ENGLAND SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN SOUTH PACIFIC OCEAN NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN Axis Power Countries Allied Power Countries INDIAN OCEAN NEW ZEALAND U S S R (SOVIET RUSSIA) World War II submarines, battleships, aircraft carriers, fighter planes and bomber planes. This involved a very large resource base, since all this equipment needed to be manufactured. There had to be raw materials, manufacturing capacity and technical inputs to improve the military hardware. This was an expensive and prolonged war of attrition.
Outbreak of War Britain and France declared war on Germany in September . In June , Italy joined Germany, and in September , Japan also joined the Axis powers. There was little action immediately after the declaration of war. Britain had already begun to build up its military capabilities, and all young men were conscripted for military duty.
The first years of the War were a time of spectacular successes for the Germany army which occupied Denmark and Norway and later France. By , all of mainland Europe till the Russian frontier was under the Axis powers. The German army followed a tactic of ‘lightning strike’ (Blitzkrieg) to storm into various countries and overrun them. The British Royal Navy continued to be the most powerful among the European naval forces and ensured that a sea-borne invasion of Britain was not possible.
However, Britain depended on large scale imports of food, raw materials and industrial goods by sea from its Empire and the US. To attack this, Germany developed a fleet of submarines which caused havoc, especially in the Atlantic Ocean area, by sinking a large number of civilian ships carrying supplies to Britain. Important Events Dunkirk – In May more than , British and French soldiers were Blitzkrieg British Royal Navy