History and Democracy of the Modern Middle East - HIST 235 Resource Guide

This program covers World War II from the invasion of Poland, soon after dawn on September 1, 1939, to the Nuremberg war trials and the hanging of the convicted Nazi war criminals.

Chronology of events .

World War II was the largest conflict in human history and devastated Europe, Asia, North Africa, and large portions of the Pacific. It began as two separate wars: one involving Japan against China in the 1930s; the other involving Germany against Poland, France, and Great Britain in 1939. With the entry of the United States into both wars in December 1941, the two conflicts merged into a single global struggle during which a coalition of Allied powers (the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, China, Free France, and a host of smaller nations) defeated a coalition of Axis states (Germany, Italy, Japan, and smaller satellites). This article uses a largely narrative approach, interspersed with a separate section on economic, psychological, and demographic aspects of the conflict, to describe the origins, course, and consequences of the war.

In 1922 Great Britain officially recognized Egypt's independence. This granting of independence, however, was not total; Britain attached four reservations to Egyptian independence that year. Britain reserved for itself the rights of security of imperial communications, protection of religious minorities and foreigners, a continued role in Sudan, and, perhaps most significantly, defense of Egypt from outside attack. The 1936 Anglo-Egyptian treaty reduced some British rights in Egypt (e.g., it abolished the office of high commissioner, set a date for abolishing the capitulations and consular courts, and gave the Egyptian government jurisdiction over non-Egyptians), but the agreement did not address the issue of Sudan and it reaffirmed British rights to defend the Suez Canal and to station troops in Egypt in the event of war.

The instability created in Europe by the First World War (1914-18) set the stage for another international conflict–World War II–which broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating. Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi Party) rearmed the nation and signed strategic treaties with Italy and Japan to further his ambitions of world domination.

Avalon Project from Yale Law School.