World War II was the escalation of the Second Sino-Japanese War that began in 1937 and a European war begun in 1939 into a military conflict fought from 1941 to 1945 on a global scale between two alliances: the Axis powers and the Allies. In the West, the years 1939 and 1945 are usually kept as the beginning and end of the war.

The First World War ended in 1918 with a victory for the three great western democracies: the United Kingdom, the Third French Republic and the United States. However, they did not form a formal military alliance thereafter.

The UK and US disbanded most of their armed forces. This allowed the rise of aggressive authoritarian regimes: the communist Soviet Union in 1918, fascist Italy in 1922, a Japanese military dictatorship after 1926 and Nazi Germany in 1933. Eventually all countries became involved in an arms race accompanied by rising international tensions.

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