History WW2

World War 2 Key terms

Neville Chamberlain

The prime minister of Britain from 1937 to 1940, who advocated a policy of appeasement toward the territorial demands of Nazi Germany. This appeasement policy essentially turned a blind eye to Germany’s 1938 annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland.

Eduoard Daladier

As head of government, he expanded the French welfare state in 1939. Along with Neville Chamberlain, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, Daladier signed the Munich Agreement in 1938, which gave Nazi Germany control over the Sudetenland.

Winston Churchill

The prime minister of Britain during most of World War II. Churchill was among the most active leaders in resisting German aggression and played a major role in assembling the Allied Powers, including the United States and the USSR.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

A U.S. Army general who held the position of supreme Allied commander in Europe, among many others. Eisenhower was perhaps best known for his work in planning Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Europe. After the war, he was a very popular figure in the United States and was elected to two terms as U.S. president, taking office in 1953.

Tōjō Hideki

Prime Minister of Japan during World War II (1941–44), subsequently tried and executed for war crimes.

Hirohito

Emperor of Japan from 1926 until his death in 1989. Despite the power of Japan’s military leaders, many scholars believe that Hirohito took an active role in leading the country and shaping its combat strategy during World War II. After Japan’s defeat, he was allowed to continue to hold his position as emperor—largely as a figurehead—despite the fact that Japan was under U.S. occupation. Although many countries favored it, Hirohito was never tried for war crimes.

Adolf Hitler

Chancellor and self-proclaimed Führer, or “leader,” of Germany from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. After a rapid political ascent as the leader of the far-right Nazi Party in the 1920s, Hitler achieved absolute power and maintained it throughout his time as chancellor. During his rule, he took a very active role in the government of Germany, making military decisions and implementing edicts regarding the treatment of Jews and other minorities, such as the notorious “final solution” that condemned Jews to death at concentration camps in German-controlled parts of Europe. Just before Germany surrendered in 1945, Hitler committed suicide together with his wife, Eva Braun, in his bunker in Berlin.

Douglas MacArthur

U.S. general who commanded the Southwest Pacific Theatre in World War II, administered postwar Japan during the Allied occupation that followed.

Curtis LeMay

The commander of the U.S. Air Force’s 21st Bomber Command in the Pacific theater during World War II. LeMay is best known for developing the U.S. strategy of using massive incendiary bomb attacks on Japanese cities in order to break the Japanese will near the end of the war.

Yamamoto Isoroku

The Japanese navy admiral who planned the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941 and the attack on Midway in 1942.

Bernard Law Montgomery

During the Second World War, he led a decisive victory at El Alamein, Egypt; he was also commander of all land forces involved in Operation Overlord, the code name for the Battle of Normandy, under the overall command of US General Dwight Eisenhower. His role in helping achieve Allied victory cannot be understated.

Benito Mussolini

Fascist prime minister who came to power in 1922 and ruled Italy as an absolute dictator. In many ways, Mussolini served as an inspiration to Adolf Hitler, with whom he chose to ally himself during World War II. In 1943, Mussolini was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by some of his subordinates, and in 1945 he was executed by Italian partisans just prior to the end of the war in Europe.

Friedrich Paulus

A field marshal in command of the German Sixth Army at the Battle of Stalingrad. Paulus surrendered what was left of the German forces in February 1943, despite Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s express orders not to do so. While a prisoner of war in the USSR, Paulus publicly condemned Hitler’s regime.

Philippe Pétain

French general who was a national hero for his victory at the Battle of Verdun in World War I but was discredited as chief of state of the French government at Vichy in World War II. He died in 1951 under sentence in a prison fortress.

Erwin Rommel

A field marshal in the German army’s Afrika Korps who specialized in tank warfare. Rommel came to be known by both friends and enemies as the “Desert Fox” for his brilliant strategies and surprise attacks in Germany’s North Africa campaign.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The 32nd U.S. president, who led the country through the bulk of World War II until his death from a cerebral hemorrhage in April 1945, just a few months before the war ended. Together with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, Roosevelt played a decisive role in holding together the Allied coalition that ultimately defeated Nazi Germany.

Joseph Stalin

General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953. In some ways, Stalin was responsible for the USSR’s severe losses at the beginning of World War II, as he failed to head the warnings of his advisors and did not allow the Russian military to prepare a proper defense. At the same time, he did succeed in holding the country together and inspiring among his people an awesome resistance against Germany, which ultimately forced a German retreat. Stalin’s own regime in the USSR was just as brutal as the Nazi regime in many ways, and the alliance between Stalin and the Western Allies always remained rather tenuous because of mutual distrust.

Harry S Truman

The 33rd U.S. president, who succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt upon Roosevelt’s death in April 1945. Truman, who led the country through the last few months of World War II, is best known for making the controversial decision to use two atomic bombs against Japan in August 1945. After the war, Truman was crucial in the implementation of the Marshall Plan, which greatly accelerated Western Europe’s economic recovery.

Fascism

A system of government dominated by far-right-wing forces and generally commanded by a single dictator. Several Fascist governments were established in Europe in the early twentieth century, most notably those led by dictators Adolf Hitler of Germany, Benito Mussolini of Italy, and Francisco Franco of Spain.

Treaty of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles led to World War II because its terms punished Germany harshly. The economy collapsed, the government lost power, the military was weak, and the Germans were angry. Because of these factors, Germans became loyal to Hitler and there was the perfect storm in Germany which caused World war II

Great Depression

Economic instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.)

Failure of the League

The League failed to intervene in many conflicts leading up to World War II, including the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second Sino-Japanese War. The onset of the Second World War demonstrated that the League had failed in its primary purpose, the prevention of another world war.

German Foreign Policy

Germany's foreign policy during the war involved the creation of friendly governments under direct or indirect control from Berlin. A main goal was obtaining soldiers from the senior allies, such as Italy and Hungary, and millions of workers and ample food supplies from subservient allies such as Vichy France.

Anschluss

Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s doctrine of German political union with Austria, which effectively enabled Germany to annex that nation in March 1938.

Appeasement

The British and French policy of conceding to Adolf Hitler’s territorial demands prior to the outbreak of World War II. Associated primarily with British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, the appeasement policy enabled Hitler to systematically take over the territories of several neighboring countries.

Allied Powers

An alliance during World War II made up of the countries that opposed the aggression of Nazi Germany. Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union were the most prominent members, although many other countries also joined.

Axis Powers

The collective term for Germany, Italy, and Japan’s military alliance in opposition to the Allied Powers. Several smaller countries in Eastern Europe also became members of the Axis Powers temporarily.

Lebensraum

Literally “living space,” Adolf Hitler’s justification for Germany’s aggressive territorial conquests in the late 1930s. Based on the work of a previous German ethnographer, Hitler used the idea of lebensraum to claim that the German people’s “natural” territory extended beyond the current borders of Germany and that Germany therefore needed to acquire additional territory in Europe.

Pearl Harbour 1941

Surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii, by the Japanese that precipitated the entry of the United States into World War II. The attack climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan. Japan’s invasion of China in 1937, its subsequent alliance with the Axis powers (Germany and Italy) in 1940, and its occupation of French Indochina in July 1941 prompted the United States to respond that same month by freezing Japanese assets in the United States and declaring an embargo on petroleum shipments and other vital war materials to Japan. By late 1941 the United States had severed practically all commercial and financial relations with Japan. Though Japan continued to negotiate with the United States up to the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, the government of Prime Minister Tōjō Hideki decided on war.

Polish-German Non-Agression Act

Both countries pledged to resolve their problems by bilateral negotiations and to forgo armed conflict for a period of 10 years. The agreement effectively normalised relations between Poland and Germany, which had been strained by border disputes arising from the territorial settlement in the Treaty of Versailles.

1935 Saar Plebiscite

A referendum on territorial status was held in the Territory of the Saar Basin (on the border between Germany and France) on 13 January 1935. Over 90% of voters opted for reunification with Germany, with 9% voting for the status quo as a League of Nations mandate territory and less than 0.5% opting for unification with France.

1935 German Conscription

Hitler's defiance of Versailles Treaty defied this restriction through the Military Service Law of 1935, which introduced universal military service. Under this law, every boy at age 18 joined a labour service corps for six months, and he entered a two-year term in the military at age 19.

1936 Remilitarization of the Rhineland

The remilitarisation of the Rhineland (German: Rheinlandbesetzung) began on 7 March 1936, when military forces of the German Reich entered the Rhineland, which directly contravened the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties. Neither France nor Britain was prepared for a military response, so they did not act.

1937 Anti-Comintern Pact

The Anti-Comintern Pact was an agreement between Germany, Italy and Japan, that they would work together to stop the spread of Communism around the globe. This was aimed squarely at the USSR. Germany and Italy had worked well during the Spanish Civil War and had brought about a fascist victory over communism

1938 Sudetenland Crisis - Munich Agreement

A September 30, 1938, agreement among Germany, Britain, Italy, and France that allowed Germany to annex the region of western Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland. The Munich Agreement was the most famous example of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement prior to World War II.

1939 Takeover of Czechoslovakia

The German invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 brought an end to Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy. Chamberlain offered to help Poland if it was attacked by Germany, and the British public now faced full scale preparations for war.

1939 Pact of Steel

a military alliance concluded between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy on May 22, 1939, committing each to assist the other in the event of war with another power and pledging that neither would seek a separate peace or armistice.

1939 Nazi Soviet Pact

This agreement is commonly referred to as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. It is also known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact or the Hitler-Stalin Pact. The arrangement included a 10-year non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union. It also called for economic cooperation and territorial expansion.

1939 1st Sept Invasion of Poland

After heavy shelling and bombing, Warsaw officially surrendered to the Germans on September 28, 1939. In accordance with the secret protocol to their non-aggression pact, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned Poland on September 29, 1939.

Total War/Limited War

The defining feature of a limited war, or limited warfare, is that only enemy combatants and military units are targeted. In a total war, civilians and infrastructure are targeted. Most wars fought throughout history have been limited wars. These wars have specific objectives for territory or for defense. A limited war has boundaries and restrictions on actions, while a total war has no limits or boundaries on actions and aims for maximum destruction. WW2 was a total war

Maginot Line

Elaborate defensive barrier in northeast France constructed in the 1930s and named after its principal creator, André Maginot, who was France’s minister of war in 1929–31. Unfortunately, the line covered the French–German frontier, but not the French–Belgian. Thus the Germans in May 1940 outflanked the line. They invaded Belgium on May 10, continued their march through Belgium, crossed the Somme River, and on May 12 struck at Sedan at the northern end of the Maginot Line. Having made a breakthrough with their tanks and planes, they continued around to the rear of the line, making it useless.

War of Land

Ground combat in World War II featured physical and psychological elements common to war since the ancient world, such as physical exertion, stress, confusion, discomfort, fatigue, hunger, boredom, homesickness, loneliness, group bonding, courage, and fear.

War at Sea

High-frequency radar extended detection capabilities and gave U.S. ships "eyes" at night. Radio communication extended greater distances. The large anti-aircraft guns and gyroscopic sights found on all major naval vessels by the end of the war were nonexistent prior to 1940.

War in Air

Germany invades Poland, leading Great Britain and France to declare war against Germany. In the first large scale “bombing war,” Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) bombs the Ruhr area of Germany, specifically civilian industrial targets that are known to aid the German war effort.

Battle of the Atlantic

Battle fought throughout World War II between German U-boats (submarines) and Allied ships supplying Britain. Allied convoys fought U-boat “wolf packs”, which achieved their greatest successes in 1942. Radar-equipped convoy escorts and air cover provided by Liberator aircraft operating from Iceland allowed the Allies to win the battle’s decisive action early in 1943, after which U-boats were no longer a major threat.

Battle of Britain

An extended campaign from July 1940 to the spring of 1941 in which British air forces fought off wave after wave of German bombers and denied Germany in its quest to attain air superiority over Britain. Although major cities in England sustained heavy damage, the British resistance forced Germany to abandon its plans to invade across the English Channel.

Battle of the Bulge

Also called the Battle of the Ardennes. The last major German offensive on the Western Front during World War II; an unsuccessful attempt to push the Allies back from German home territory.

Battle of El-Alamein

An October and November 1942 battle that was the climax of the North African campaign. A resounding victory by the British over the Germans, the battle paved the way for the Allied takeover of North Africa and the retreat of German forces back across the Mediterranean.

Battle of Iwo Jima

A battle in February and March 1945 in which U.S. forces took Iwo Jima, a small but strategically important island off the Japanese coast. During the battle, an Associated Press photographer took a world-famous photograph of U.S. Marines raising the American flag on the summit of Mt. Suribachi.

Battle of Midway

A battle from June 3–6, 1942, in which U.S. naval forces severely disabled the Japanese fleet at Midway Island in the Pacific. Coming close on the heels of the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway forced Japan into defensive mode and turned the tide of the war in the Pacific theater.

Battle of Okinawa

The last large-scale battle in the Pacific theater, in which U.S. forces invaded the Japanese home island of Okinawa. The battle was very bloody, killing at least 100,000 Japanese soldiers and 80,000 to 100,000 Japanese civilians.

Battle of Stalingrad

A brutal, five-month battle between German and Soviet forces for the important industrial city of Stalingrad that resulted in the deaths of almost 2 million people. The battle involved very destructive air raids by the German Luftwaffe and bloody urban street fighting. In February 1943, despite direct orders from Hitler forbidding it, Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered the German forces to the Red Army.

Siege of Leningrad

Lasting 900 days between September 1941 and January 1944, the siege of Leningrad claimed the lives of 800,000 of the city's inhabitants, mainly through cold and hunger. The population of the city was subjected, moreover, to enemy fire and to ruthlessly strict control by the Soviet authorities.

Blitz

Beginning in September 1940, the Blitz was an aerial bombing campaign conducted by the Luftwaffe against British cities. Over a period of nine months, over 43,500 civilians were killed in the raids, which focused on major cities and industrial centres.

Blitzkrieg

Literally “lightning war,” the term for Hitler’s invasion strategy of attacking a nation suddenly and with overwhelming force. Hitler applied the blitzkrieg strategy, with varying degrees of success, to the German invasions of Poland, France, and the Soviet Union.

Dunkirk

(May 1940) in World War II, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and other Allied troops from the French seaport of Dunkirk to England. Naval vessels and hundreds of civilian boats were used in the evacuation, which began on May 26. When it ended on June 4, about 198,000 British and 140,000 French and Belgian troops had been saved.

Gestapo

The brutal Nazi secret police force, headed by the infamous Hermann Göring. The Gestapo was responsible for the relocation of many European Jews to Nazi concentration camps during the war.

Luftwaffe

The German air force, which was used heavily in campaigns such as the Battle of Britain in 1940.

Manhattan Project

The code name for the U.S. government’s secret program to develop an atomic bomb. Begun in 1942, the Manhattan Project utilized the expertise of world-famous physicists, including Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, to develop the weapon. It finally succeeded in conducting the first successful atomic bomb test in July 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico. After a difficult decision by President Harry S Truman, U.S. forces dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, prompting Japan’s surrender.

Operation Barbarossa

The code name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, which Hitler predicted would take only six months but ended up miring the German armies for more than two years.

Operation Overlord

The code name for the Allied invasion of France in 1944, which commenced on the beaches of Normandy and ultimately was successful in liberating France and pushing German forces back east to their own territory.

Phoney War

a name for the early months of World War II, marked by no major hostilities. The term was coined by journalists to derisively describe the six-month period (October 1939–March 1940) during which no land operations were undertaken by the Allies or the Germans after the German conquest of Poland in September 1939.

Schutzstaffel

the elite German paramilitary unit. Originally formed as a unit to serve as Hitler’s personal bodyguards, the S.S. grew and took on the duties of an elite military formation. During World War II, the Nazi regime used the S.S. to handle the extermination of Jews and other racial minorities, among other duties. The S.S. had its own army, independent of the regular German army (the Wehrmacht), to carry out its operations behind enemy lines.

Wehrmacht

The term used for regular German army.

Vichy France

The Franco-German Armistice of June 22, 1940, divided France into two zones: one to be under German military occupation and one to be left to the French in full sovereignty, at least nominally. The unoccupied zone comprised the southeastern two-fifths of the country. Vichy France was under the regime of Marshal Philippe Pétain from the Nazi German defeat of France to the Allied liberation.

Franco-German Armistice of June 22 1940

Following the decisive German victory in the Battle of France (10 May – 25 June 1940) during World War II, this armistice established a German occupation zone in Northern and Western France that encompassed about three-fifths of France's European territory, including all English Channel and Atlantic Ocean ports.

Wannsee Conference 1942

A January 1942 conference during which Nazi officials decided to implement the “final solution” to the “Jewish question”—a euphemism for the extermination of European Jews and other minorities at concentration camps in eastern Europe.

“Final Solution”

The Nazi’s euphemistic term for their plan to exterminate the Jews of Germany and other German-controlled territories during World War II. The term was used at the Wannsee Conference of January 1942, in which Nazi leaders planned the Holocaust but made no specific mention of the extermination camps that ultimately killed millions.

Concentration Camps

The term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or confined, usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of arrest and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy. 

Auschwitz

Auschwitz concentration camp was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust

Rationing

Rationing involved setting limits on purchasing certain high-demand items. The government issued a number of “points” to each person, even babies, which had to be turned in along with money to purchase goods made with restricted items.

Conscription

Conscription, or compulsory military service, divided the nation in the Second World War and threatened the survival of political leaders.

Evacuation

On the 3 September 1939, Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany. Two days' earlier, on 1 September, the government had initiated Operation Pied Piper, which would see the evacuation of over 1.5 million people from urban 'target' areas, of whom 800,000 were children.

Women at work

During World War II, millions of women went to work outside the home for the first time. Millions more continued to work--as they had been doing for years. They labored in factories, building ships, tanks, and bombs for the war effort. They toiled in schools, hospitals, and offices

War Bonds

Investing in War Bonds offers benefits such as capital preservation, patriotism, and social impact. However, they also carry risks, including limited liquidity and inflation risk. Fixed-rate War Bonds, in particular, may lose value in real terms if inflation outpaces the bond's interest rate.

Blackouts

'Blackout' regulations came into force as the war began. These meant that families had to cover up all windows at night to ensure that no light escaped that could aid enemy bombers to find their targets. Street lamps were also switched off and car headlights covered except for a narrow slit.

Strategic Bombing

strategic bombing, approach to aerial bombardment designed to destroy a country's ability to wage war by demoralizing civilians and targeting features of an enemy's infrastructure—such as factories, railways, and refineries—that are essential for the production and supply of war materials.

Fire bombing Tokyo

In the raid, sixteen B-25 Mitchells were launched from the USS Hornet at Yokohama and Tokyo, and then flew to airfields in China. The raid was retaliation against the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Although the precise death toll is unknown, conservative estimates suggest that the firestorm caused by incendiary bombs killed at least 80,000 people, and likely more than 100,000, in a single night; some one million people were left homeless. The Japanese later called this the “Night of the Black Snow.”

Siegfried Line

System of pillboxes and strongpoints built along the German western frontier in the 1930s and greatly expanded in 1944. In 1944, during World War II, German troops retreating from France found it an effective barrier for a respite against the pursuing Americans. This respite helped the Germans mount their counteroffensive in the Ardennes forest, and the Allies did not break through the entire line until early 1945.

D-Day June 6 1944

The D-Day operation of June 6, 1944, brought together the land, air, and sea forces of the allied armies in what became known as the largest amphibious invasion in military history. The operation, given the codename OVERLORD, delivered five naval assault divisions to the beaches of Normandy, France.

Atomic Power

The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, killing 210,000 people—children, women, and men. President Truman authorized the use of the atom bombs in an effort to bring about Japan's surrender in the Second World War.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

One reason was Japan's unwillingness to surrender unconditionally. Japan wanted to keep their emperor and conduct their own war trials and did not want to be occupied by U.S. forces. However, the United States wanted unconditional surrender, which thus meant the continuation of the war.

Holocaust

The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived inferiority. Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals. There were a further five million victims from these groups.

V-E Day May 8 1945

May 8, 1945, the day on which the Allied forces declared victory in Europe.

V-J Day Aug 15 1945

August 15, 1945, the day on which the Allied forces declared victory over Japan.

Cold War - Superpowers Emerge

The United States and Soviet Union emerge from World War II as the world's two superpowers. The United States and its Western allies worked with the Soviet Union to divide Europe into spheres of influence.

Marshall Aid

For the United States, the Marshall Plan provided markets for American goods, created reliable trading partners, and supported the development of stable democratic governments in Western Europe. Congress's approval of the Marshall Plan signaled an extension of the bipartisanship of World War II into the postwar years.

Refugees

The committee estimated a figure of around 12.5 million refugees, but this number did not take into account of the movement of Soviet citizens heading east during the war, which the Russian demographer Eugene Kulischer estimated at ten million, giving a total of around 22.5 million refugees for Europe alone.

UN

The United Nations was established after World War II in an attempt to maintain international peace and security and to achieve cooperation among nations on economic, social, and humanitarian problems. Its forerunner was the League of Nations, an organization conceived under similar circumstances following World War I

Human Cost

Between 40 - 50 million worldwide and as many as 2/3 were civilians - Poland lost 1/5 of population and in Europe only Germany and Britain suffered greater military loss than civilian. America’s losses were entirely military. China lost 12 million and Japan lost 2 million.

Food Production in Europe

The advent of processed, pre-packaged food coincided nicely with suburban living. Supermarkets boasted expansive aisles of neatly packaged, easy to prepare, high-calorie foods. Where families once locally sourced their food, production became centralized at large factories.

Great Britain bankrupt

By the end of World War II Britain had amassed an immense debt of £21 billion. Much of this was held in foreign hands, with around £3.4 billion being owed overseas (mainly to creditors in the United States), a sum which represented around one third of annual GDP.

Western Russia

Russia rebuilt quickly after World War II and rose to be one of the world's two superpowers through its moves in Eastern Europe, postwar modernization of industry and the seizure of German factories and engineers as booty.

Yalta

The key points of the meeting were as follows:

• Agreement to the priority of the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. ...

• Stalin agreed that France would have a fourth occupation zone in Germany if it was formed from the American and the British zones.

• Germany would undergo demilitarization and denazification.

Treaty of San Francisco

The San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed in September 1951, stipulated that Japan should recognize the independence of Korea, and that Japan should renounce all rights, titles and claims to “Korea, including the islands of Quelpart, Port Hamilton and Dagelet.”

War Tribunals

International War Crimes Tribunals are courts of law established to try those accused of committing atrocities and crimes against humanity during war time.

International Tribunal in Tokyo

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), informally known as the Tokyo War Crimes trial, lasted two and a half years, from April 29, 1946 to November 12, 1948.

Nuremberg Trials

The Nuremberg Trial lasted from November 1945 to October 1946. The tribunal found nineteen individual defendants guilty and sentenced them to punishments that ranged from death by hanging to fifteen years' imprisonment.