World War II, or the Second World War, was a global military conflict. It began as the joining of what had initially been two separate conflicts, with the first beginning in Asia in 1937 (the Second Sino-Japanese War) and the other beginning in Europe in 1939 (the German and Soviet invasion of Poland).
The war split the majority of the world's nations into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. It involved the mobilization of over 100 million military personnel, making it the most widespread war in history, and placed the participants in a state of "total war", which erased the distinction between civil and military resources and resulted in the complete activation of a nation's economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities for the purposes of the war effort. Over 70 million people, the majority of them civilians, were killed, making it the deadliest conflict in human history.
The Allies won the war, and as a result, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as the world's leading superpowers. This set the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 45 years. The United Nations was formed in the hope of preventing another such conflict. The self-determination spawned by the war accelerated decolonization movements in Asia and Africa, while Europe itself began moving toward integration.
Mauthausen concentration camp (known from the summer of 1940 as
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp) grew to become a large group of
Nazi concentration camps that were built around the villages of
Mauthausen and
Gusen in
Upper Austria, roughly 20 km east of the city of
Linz.Initially a single camp at Mauthausen, it expanded over time to become one of the largest
labour camp complexes in German-controlled Europe.Apart from the four main sub-camps at Mauthausen and nearby Gusen, more than 50 sub-camps, located throughout Austria and southern Germany, used the inmates as
slave labour. Several
subordinate camps of the KZ Mauthausen complex included quarries,
munitions factories, mines, arms factories and
Me 262 fighter-plane assembly plants.In January 1945, the camps, directed from the central office in Mauthausen, contained roughly 85,000 inmates.The
death toll remains unknown, although most sources place it between 122,766 and 320,000 for the entire complex. The camps formed one of the first massive concentration camp complexes in
Nazi Germany, and were the last ones to be liberated by
the Western Allies or the Soviet Union. The two main camps, Mauthausen and Gusen I, were also the only two camps in the whole of Europe to be labelled as "Grade III" camps, which meant that they were intended to be the toughest camps for the "Incorrigible Political Enemies of the
Reich".
The
Montana-class battleships of the
United States Navy were planned as successors to the
Iowa class, being slower but larger, better armored, and having superior firepower. Five were approved for construction during
World War II, but changes in wartime building priorities resulted in their cancellation in favor of the
Essex-class aircraft carriers before any
Montana-class
keels were laid. With an intended armament of twelve 16-inch (410 mm) guns and a greater anti-aircraft capability than the preceding
Iowa class, the
Montanas would have been the largest and the most heavily-armed battleships put to sea by the United States. They would have been the only US Navy battleship class to have come close to rivaling the
Empire of Japan's
Yamato-class battleships in terms of
armor, weaponry, and
displacement. Preliminary design work for the
Montanas began before the US entry into World War II. The first two vessels were approved by
Congress in 1939 following the passage of the
Second Vinson Act. The Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor delayed construction of the
Montana class.
The
Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, October 26, 1942, sometimes referred to as the
Battle of Santa Cruz or in Japanese sources as the
Battle of the South Pacific (南太平洋海戦), was the fourth
carrier battle of the
Pacific campaign of
World War II and the fourth major naval engagement fought between the
United States Navy and the
Imperial Japanese Navy during the lengthy and strategically important
Guadalcanal campaign. In similar fashion to the battles of
Coral Sea,
Midway, and the
Eastern Solomons, the ships of the two adversaries were rarely in direct
visual range of each other. Instead, almost all attacks by both sides were mounted by carrier or land-based
aircraft.In an attempt to drive
Allied forces from
Guadalcanal and nearby islands and end the stalemate which had existed since September 1942, the
Imperial Japanese Army planned a major ground offensive on Guadalcanal for October 20–October 25, 1942.
_under_attack_by_dive_bombers_during_the_Battle_of_Santa_Cruz_Islands_on_26_October_1942_(80-G-20989).jpg)
