World War II Reading Comprehension Lesson

Reading Passage

World War II

World War II (1939–1945) was the largest and deadliest conflict in human history. It involved more than 30 countries and resulted in an estimated 70 to 85 million deaths — the majority of them civilians. The war grew out of the unresolved tensions of World War I and the rise of totalitarian regimes in Europe and Asia. In Germany, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, promoting extreme nationalism and antisemitism. Hitler began expanding Germany’s borders, and on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later, beginning the war in Europe.

The war was fought between two main alliances. The Allies — principally Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, and China — opposed the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Germany quickly conquered much of Western Europe in 1940, including France. Britain stood largely alone against Germany for over a year, enduring the Blitz — a sustained German air bombing campaign. In June 1941, Hitler made a fateful decision to invade the Soviet Union, opening the largest land front in history. In December 1941, Japan attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, bringing the United States into the war.

Among the most horrific events of the war was the Holocaust — the systematic murder of six million Jews and millions of others, including Roma, people with disabilities, and political prisoners, by the Nazi regime. The Nazis used concentration camps, forced labor, mass shootings, and gas chambers to carry out genocide on an industrial scale. The Holocaust stands as one of history’s greatest crimes against humanity. Its full scope was not known to the wider world until Allied forces liberated the camps in 1944 and 1945.

The tide of the war began to turn in 1942 and 1943. The Soviet Union defeated Germany at the Battle of Stalingrad (1942–43) in a massive and costly battle that marked the beginning of Germany’s long retreat eastward. In the Pacific, the United States stopped Japan’s naval advance at the Battle of Midway (1942). In Europe, the decisive moment came on June 6, 1944 — D-Day — when Allied forces launched the largest amphibious invasion in history on the beaches of Normandy, France. American, British, Canadian, and other Allied troops broke through German defenses and began liberating Western Europe.

Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945 — V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day) — after Hitler’s suicide in his bunker in Berlin. The war in the Pacific continued until August 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9), killing over 100,000 people. Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945. The aftermath of World War II reshaped the world: the United Nations was founded to promote peace, Europe was divided between Western democracies and Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe, and the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union would dominate global politics for the next four decades.

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