Your Guide to the most consequential era in modern history
Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, each
driven by a sense of racial and cultural
superiority, begin attacking neighboring
countries, butchering and enslaving
millions of people.
A coalition of Western democracies, Chinese nationalists, and Soviet communists hold the line and eventually turn the tables on the Axis Powers.
The war results in more than 60 million dead worldwide, two-thirds of them civilians, and entire cities and countries left in ruin.