The Second World War started on the 1st of September 1939 and ended on the 2nd of September 1945. It was a global conflict that officially lasted six years and one day, even though tension between nations had been building for many preceding years. It involved a large number of the world’s nations, including all of the world’s super nations, that formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in all of human history, and more than 100 million people from over 30 countries were involved in the conflict. The vast majority of the world’s leading nations threw their combined economic, industrial, and scientific industries behind their effort. The end result of World War II was the estimated deaths of 50 million to 85 million people. This made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history. So amongst all the conflict that took place, all over the world, what was the turning point of World War II? Is it possible to pick one event—great or small—in this immense war and say, "This was the decisive moment"?
Although there were many significant events that culminated to produce the…show more content… Army Military History Institute and a former professor of history at West Point), the big turning point was Pearl Harbour. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour brought the United States into the war in such a way that it was fully mobilized and fully antagonized. Crane chose this as his turning point because it was the moment the war became truly global. Another distinguished American military historian, Professor Geoffrey Wawro of the University of North Texas, agreed with Crane—at least in the context of the Pacific war. And Akira Iriye, a scholar who was born in Japan and later became a professor at Harvard University, also thought that Pearl Harbor was the turning point of the war—in part because the attack on the American fleet turned out to be such a “monumental