World War II Background
Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi Party) reassured the nation and signed strategic treaties with Italy and Japan to further his hopes of world domination. Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939 drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, and World War II had begun. Over the next six years, the conflict would take more lives and destroy more land and property around the globe than any previous war. Among the estimated 45-60 million people killed were 6 million Jews murdered in Nazi concentration camps as part of Hitler's diabolical "Final Solution," now known as the Holocaust. Germany had some axis allies, including Italy and Japan. The axis powers had two common interests: 1) territorial expansion and foundation of empires based on military conquest and the overthrow of the post-World War I international order; and 2) the destruction or neutralization of Soviet Communism. Later in the war, Germany began to pressure southeast European states to join the axis. Nazi Germany offered economic help to Slovakia and military protection and Soviet territory to Romania, while warning Hungary that recent German support for Hungarian annexations of Czechoslovak and Romanian territory might change to the benefit of Slovakia and Romania.The reason that America didn't want to join World War II is because the U.S. wanted to stay out of the war as much as they could to repair internal issues stemming from the Great Depression. Our economic structure was just getting back on its feet and our military had been down-sized due to funding for war after the horrors of WWI. The only reason that America had joined was because of the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan. The attack on Pearl Harbor sparked a whole war within World War II called the Pacific War. Japan sought out to conquer East Asia, which would have hurt the US economy as you will see later. They almost succeeded until a certain battle. That battle, the Battle of Midway, was a turning point in the Pacific War.