What do Allies of World War II and Chiang Kai-shek have...

The League of Nations assembly, held in Geneva, Switzerland, 1930

World War II

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Global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945.

Adolf Hitler at a German Nazi political rally in Nuremberg, August 1933

Benito Mussolini inspecting troops during the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935

The bombing of Guernica in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, sparked fears abroad in Europe that the next war would be based on bombing of cities with very high civilian casualties.

Japanese Imperial Army soldiers during the Battle of Shanghai, 1937

Red Army artillery unit during the Battle of Lake Khasan, 1938

Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano pictured just before signing the Munich Agreement, 29 September 1938

German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (right) and the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, after signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, 23 August 1939

Soldiers of the German Wehrmacht tearing down the border crossing into Poland, 1 September 1939

Soldiers of the Polish Army during the defence of Poland, September 1939

Finnish machine gun nest aimed at Soviet Red Army positions during the Winter War, February 1940

German advance into Belgium and Northern France, 10 May-4 June 1940, swept past the Maginot Line (shown in dark red)

London seen from St. Paul's Cathedral after the German Blitz, 29 December 1940

Soldiers of the British Commonwealth forces from the Australian Army's 9th Division during the Siege of Tobruk; North African Campaign, September 1941

German Panzer III of the Afrika Korps advancing across the North African desert, April-May 1941

European theatre of World War II animation map, 1939–1945 – Red: Western Allies and the Soviet Union after 1941; Green: Soviet Union before 1941; Blue: Axis powers

German soldiers during the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Axis powers, 1941

Soviet civilians leaving destroyed houses after a German bombardment during the Battle of Leningrad, 10 December 1942

Japanese soldiers entering Hong Kong, 8 December 1941

The USS Arizona (BB-39) was a total loss in the Japanese surprise air attack on the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Sunday 7 December 1941.

US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British PM Winston Churchill seated at the Casablanca Conference, January 1943

Map of Japanese military advances through mid-1942

US Marines during the Guadalcanal Campaign, in the Pacific theatre, 1942

Red Army soldiers on the counterattack during the Battle of Stalingrad, February 1943

American 8th Air Force Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombing raid on the Focke-Wulf factory in Germany, 9 October 1943

U.S. Navy SBD-5 scout plane flying patrol over USS Washington (BB-56) and USS Lexington (CV-16) during the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign, 1943

Red Army troops in a counter-offensive on German positions at the Battle of Kursk, July 1943

Ruins of the Benedictine monastery, during the Battle of Monte Cassino, Italian Campaign, May 1944

American troops approaching Omaha Beach during the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944

German SS soldiers from the Dirlewanger Brigade, tasked with suppressing the Warsaw Uprising against Nazi occupation, August 1944

General Douglas MacArthur returns to the Philippines during the Battle of Leyte, 20 October 1944

Yalta Conference held in February 1945, with Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin

Ruins of the Reichstag in Berlin, 3 June 1945.

Atomic bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945.

Ruins of Warsaw in 1945, after the deliberate destruction of the city by the occupying German forces

Defendants at the Nuremberg trials, where the Allied forces prosecuted prominent members of the political, military, judicial and economic leadership of Nazi Germany for crimes against humanity

Post-war border changes in Central Europe and creation of the Communist Eastern Bloc

David Ben-Gurion proclaiming the Israeli Declaration of Independence at the Independence Hall, 14 May 1948

Bodies of Chinese civilians killed by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Nanking Massacre in December 1937

Schutzstaffel (SS) female camp guards removing prisoners' bodies from lorries and carrying them to a mass grave, inside the German Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 1945

Prisoner identity photograph taken by the German SS of a Polish Catholic girl who died in Auschwitz. Approximately 230,000 children were held prisoner and used in forced labour and Nazi medical experiments.

Polish civilians wearing blindfolds photographed just before their execution by German soldiers in Palmiry forest, 1940

Soviet partisans hanged by the German army. The Russian Academy of Sciences reported in 1995 civilian victims in the Soviet Union at German hands totalled 13.7 million dead, twenty percent of the 68 million persons in the occupied Soviet Union.

B-29 Superfortress strategic bombers on the Boeing assembly line in Wichita, Kansas, 1944

A V-2 rocket launched from a fixed site in Peenemünde, 21 June 1943

Nuclear Gadget being raised to the top of the detonation "shot tower", at Alamogordo Bombing Range; Trinity nuclear test, New Mexico, July 1945

It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers.

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek deployed his best army to defend Shanghai, but after three months of fighting, Shanghai fell.

Commonly recognised as the official designation of China from 1912 to 1949, when it was a country in East Asia based in Mainland China, prior to the relocation of its central government to Taiwan as a result of the Chinese Civil War.

Land controlled by the Republic of China (1946) shown in dark green; land claimed but uncontrolled shown in light green.

Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of the Republic of China.

Yuan Shikai (left) and Sun Yat-sen (right) with flags representing the early republic

Major Chinese warlord coalitions during the "Nanjing Decade".

China had been at war with Japan since 1931.

Chinese Nationalist Army soldiers during the 1938 Yellow River flood

The Nationalists' retreat to Taipei: after the Nationalists lost Nanjing (Nanking) they next moved to Guangzhou (Canton), then to Chongqing (Chungking), Chengdu (Chengtu) and Xichang (Sichang) before arriving in Taipei.

Nationalist government of Nanking – nominally ruling over entire China during 1930s

Boat traffic and development along Suzhou Creek, Shanghai, 1920

General Chiang Kai-shek, who became the Chairman of the Kuomintang after Sun's death and subsequent power struggle in 1925, began the Northern Expedition in 1926 to overthrow the Beiyang government.

In 1945, at the end of World War II, the Empire of Japan surrendered control of Taiwan and its island groups to the Allies; and Taiwan was placed under the Republic of China's administrative control.

(clockwise from top left)Imperial Japanese Navy landing force in military gas masks in the Battle of Shanghai

Japanese Type 92 heavy machine gunners during Operation Ichi-Go

Victims of the Nanjing Massacre on the shore of the Qinhuai River

Chinese machine gun nest in the Battle of Wuhan

Japanese aircraft during the bombing of Chongqing

Chinese Expeditionary Force marching in India

Second Sino-Japanese War

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Military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan.

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Allied Commander-in-Chief in the China theatre from 1942 to 1945

Japanese troops entering Shenyang during the Mukden Incident

A baby sits in the remains of a Shanghai train station on 'Bloody Saturday', 1937

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek announced the Kuomintang policy of resistance against Japan at Lushan on 10 July 1937, three days after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.

Japanese landing near Shanghai, November 1937

Japanese troops in the ruins of Shanghai

Soviet embassy in Nanjing is being burned down by arson on 1 January 1938.

A Chinese POW about to be beheaded by a Japanese officer with a shin gunto

National Revolutionary Army soldiers during the 1938 Yellow River flood

Map showing the extent of Japanese occupation in 1941 (in red)

Theaters (military operational regions) of the Chinese National Revolutionary Army from late 1938 to early 1940

Wang Jingwei and officers of the Collaborationist Chinese Army

Chinese soldiers in house-to-house fighting in the Battle of Taierzhuang, March–April 1938

National Revolutionary Army soldiers march to the front in 1939.

Eighth Route Army Commander Zhu De with a KMT "Blue Sky, White Sun" emblem cap

115th Division of the Eighth Route Army Lieutenant General (NRA rank) Lin Biao in NRA uniform

War declaration against Japan by the Chongqing Nationalist Government on 9 December 1941

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Madame Chiang with Lieutenant General Joseph Stilwell in 1942, Burma

A United States poster from the United China Relief organization advocating aid to China.

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill met at the Cairo Conference in 1943 during World War II.

I-16 with Chinese insignia. The I-16 was the main fighter plane used by the Chinese Air Force and Soviet volunteers.

Flying Tigers Commander Claire Lee Chennault

A "blood chit" issued to American Volunteer Group pilots requesting all Chinese to offer rescue and protection

Free Thai, American and Chinese military officers in China during the war

The India–China airlift delivered approximately 650,000 tons of materiel to China at a cost of 1,659 men and 594 aircraft.

French colonial troops retreating to the Chinese border after the Japanese coup d'état in March 1945

WWII victory parade at Chongqing on 3 September 1945

Japanese troops surrendering to the Chinese

The Chinese return to Liuzhou in July 1945.

China War of Resistance Against Japan Memorial Museum on the site where the Marco Polo Bridge Incident took place

The Taiwan Strait and the island of Taiwan

Casualties of a mass panic during a June 1941 Japanese bombing of Chongqing. More than 5,000 civilians died during the first two days of air raids in 1939.

Japanese war crime against a Chinese POW

Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces with gas masks and rubber gloves during a chemical attack near Chapei in the Battle of Shanghai

Chinese suicide bomber putting on an explosive vest made out of Model 24 hand grenades to use in an attack on Japanese tanks at the Battle of Taierzhuang

Later in the same year, Zhang decided to declare his allegiance to the Nationalist government in Nanjing under Chiang Kai-shek, and consequently, China was nominally reunified under one government.

The Foochow (Fujian Province) was scouted as a potential staging area and springboard for the future military landing of the Allies of World War II in Japan.

Empire of Japan

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Historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent formation of modern Japan.

The Empire of Japan at its peak in 1942:
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The Naval Battle of Hakodate, May 1869; in the foreground, and of the Imperial Japanese Navy

Prominent members of the Iwakura mission. Left to right: Kido Takayoshi, Yamaguchi Masuka, Iwakura Tomomi, Itō Hirobumi, Ōkubo Toshimichi

Emperor Meiji, the 122nd emperor of Japan

Interior of the Japanese Parliament, showing the Prime Minister speaking addressing the House of Peers, 1915

Prince Aritomo Yamagata, who was twice Prime Minister of Japan. He was one of the main architects of the military and political foundations of early modern Japan.

Baron Masuda Tarokaja, a member of the House of Peers (Kazoku). His father, Baron Masuda Takashi, was responsible for transforming Mitsui into a zaibatsu.

The Tokyo Industrial Exhibition, 1907 (Mitsubishi pavilion and Exhibition halls)

Marunouchi District in 1920, looking towards the Imperial Palace

Thomas Blake Glover was a Scottish merchant in Bakumatsu and received Japan's second highest order from Emperor Meiji in recognition of his contributions to Japan's industrialization.

Prince Katsura Tarō, thrice Prime Minister and the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal of Japan. Katsura commanded the IJA 3rd Division under his mentor, Field Marshal Yamagata Aritomo, during the First Sino-Japanese War.

Map of the Japanese Empire in 1895. This map was issued shortly after the Japanese invasion of Taiwan and is consequently one of the first Japanese maps to include Taiwan as a possession of Imperial Japan.

Marquess Komura Jutaro, 1911. Komura became Minister for Foreign Affairs under the first Katsura administration, and signed the Boxer Protocol on behalf of Japan.

French illustration of a Japanese assault on entrenched Russian troops during the Russo-Japanese War

Japanese riflemen during the Russo-Japanese War

Count Tadasu Hayashi was the resident minister to the United Kingdom. While serving in London from 1900, he worked to successfully conclude the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and signed on behalf of the government of Japan on January 30, 1902.

Port Arthur viewed from the Top of Gold Hill, after its capitulation in 1905. From left are the wrecks of Russian pre-dreadnought battleships Peresvet, Poltava, Retvizan, Pobeda and the protected cruisers Pallada

Emperor Taishō, the 123rd emperor of Japan

Topographic map of the Empire of Japan in November, 1918

Native Micronesian constables of Truk Island, circa 1930. Truk became a possession of the Empire of Japan under a mandate from the League of Nations following Germany's defeat in World War I.

Commanding Officers and Chiefs of Staff of the Allied Military Mission to Siberia, Vladivostok during the Allied Intervention

Groundbreaking ceremony of Ginza Line, the oldest subway line in Asia, 1925. Front row, right to left: Rudolf Briske, Noritsugu Hayakawa, Furuichi Kōi, Ryutaro Nomura.

Count Itagaki Taisuke is credited as being the first Japanese party leader and an important force for liberalism in Meiji Japan.

Count Katō Komei, the 14th Prime Minister of Japan from June 11, 1924, until his death on January 28, 1926

Emperor Shōwa during an Army inspection on January 8, 1938

Tokyo Kaikan was requisitioned as the meeting place for members of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association (Taisei Yokusankai) in the early days.

Rebel troops assembling at police headquarters during the February 26 Incident

A bank run during the Shōwa financial crisis, March 1927

Political map of the Asia-Pacific region, 1939

Japanese troops entering Shenyang, Northeast China during the Mukden Incident, 1931

The Japanese occupation of Peiping (Beijing) in China, on August 13, 1937. Japanese troops are shown passing from Peiping into the Tartar City through Zhengyangmen, the main gate leading onward to the palaces in the Forbidden City.

IJN Special Naval Landing Forces armed with the Type 11 Light Machine Gun during the Battle of Shanghai, 1937

Signing ceremony for the Axis Powers Tripartite Pact

Founding ceremony of the Hakkō ichiu (All the world under one roof) monument in 1940

A map of the Japanese advance from 1937 to 1942

Victorious Japanese troops march through the city center of Singapore following the city's capture in February 1942 (Photo from the Imperial War Museum)

Imperial Japanese Army paratroopers are landing during the Battle of Palembang, February 13, 1942.

A model representing the attack by dive bombers from USS Yorktown (CV-5) and USS Enterprise (CV-6) on the Japanese aircraft carriers, and in the morning of June 4, 1942, during the Battle of Midway

Group of Type 2 Ka-Mi tanks on board of 2nd class transporter of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1944–1945

The rebuilt battlecruiser sank at her moorings in the naval base of Kure on July 24 during a series of bombings.

The Japanese archipelago and the Korean Peninsula in 1945 (National Geographic)

A drawing depicting a speech in the Imperial Japanese Diet on November 1, 1945, the end of the Second World War. In the foreground there are several Allied soldiers watching the proceedings from the back of the balcony.

From left to right: Marshal Admiral Heihachirō Tōgō (1848–1934), Field Marshal Oku Yasukata (1847–1930), Marshal Admiral Yoshika Inoue (1845–1929), Field Marshal Kageaki Kawamura (1850–1926), at the unveiling ceremony of bronze statue of Field Marshal Iwao Ōyama

Population density map of the Empire of Japan (1920).

Population density map of the Empire of Japan (1940).

Japan invaded China proper in 1937, beginning a war against a united front of Mao Zedong's communists and Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists.

The United States entered the European Theatre and Pacific Theater in full force, thereby bringing the United States to World War II on the side of the Allies.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

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American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945.

Eleanor and Franklin with their first two children, 1908

Roosevelt supported Governor Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 presidential election.

Theodore Roosevelt was Franklin Roosevelt's distant cousin and an important influence on his career.

Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1913

Rare photograph of Roosevelt in a wheelchair, with Fala and Ruthie Bie, the daughter of caretakers at his Hyde Park estate. Photo taken by his cousin Margaret Suckley (February 1941).

Gov. Roosevelt with his predecessor Al Smith, 1930

Results of the 1930 gubernatorial election in New York

Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act into law, August 14, 1935

1936 re-election handbill for Roosevelt promoting his economic policy

Roosevelt with Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas and other dignitaries in Brazil, 1936

The Roosevelts with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, sailing from Washington, D.C., to Mount Vernon, Virginia, on the USS Potomac during the first U.S. visit of a reigning British monarch (June 9, 1939)

Foreign trips of Roosevelt during his presidency

Roosevelt and Winston Churchill aboard HMS Prince of Wales for 1941 Atlantic Charter meeting

Territory controlled by the Allies (blue and red) and the Axis Powers (black) in June 1942

The Allies (blue and red) and the Axis Powers (black) in December 1944

Official portrait of President Roosevelt by Frank O. Salisbury, c. 1947

In response, the US formally joined the Allies and entered the European theater of war.

Assisted by his top aide Harry Hopkins and with very strong national support, he worked closely with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin, and Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in leading the Allied Powers against the Axis Powers.

Pacific War

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The theater of World War II that was fought in Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania.

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Allied Commander-in-Chief in the China theater from 1942 to 1945

A mass grave of Chinese prisoners killed by the Imperial Japanese Army in the 1937 Nanjing Massacre

Chinese casualties of a mass panic during a June 1941 Japanese aerial bombing of Chongqing

USS Arizona (BB-39) burned for two days after being hit by a Japanese bomb in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Japanese aerial photo of battleship HMS Prince of Wales (top) and battlecruiser HMS Repulse under attack.

British forces surrender Singapore to the Japanese, February 1942

The Bombing of Darwin, Australia, 19 February 1942

Surrender of US forces at Corregidor, Philippines, May 1942

Dutch and Australian PoWs at Tarsau, in Thailand in 1943. 22,000 Australians were captured by the Japanese; 8,000 died as prisoners of war.

US General Douglas MacArthur, Commander of Allied forces in the South-West Pacific Area, with Australian Prime Minister John Curtin

A B-25 bomber takes off from USS Hornet (CV-8) as part of the Doolittle Raid.

The aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CV-2) explodes on 8 May 1942, several hours after being damaged by a Japanese carrier air attack.

under attack by B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers

US Marines rest in the field during the Guadalcanal campaign in November 1942.

Chinese troops during the Battle of Changde in November 1943

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and General Joseph Stilwell, Allied Commander-in-Chief in the China theatre from 1942 to 1945

Allied attack routes against the Empire of Japan

American forces landing at Rendova Island, June, 1943

The Allied leaders of the Asian and Pacific Theaters: Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill meeting at the Cairo Conference in 1943

The torpedoed, as seen through the periscope of an American submarine, USS Nautilus (SS-168), in June 1942

The, the largest non-nuclear submarines ever constructed

Chinese forces on M3A3 Stuart tanks on the Ledo Road

British Indian troops during the Battle of Imphal

Marines fire captured mountain gun during the attack on Garapan, Saipan, 21 June 1944.

US Marines during mopping up operations on Peleliu, September 1944

The Japanese aircraft carrier Zuikaku and two destroyers under attack in the Battle of the Philippine Sea

The four engagements in the Battle of Leyte Gulf

General Douglas MacArthur wading ashore at Leyte

US troops approaching Japanese positions near Baguio, Luzon, 23 March 1945

British soldiers patrolling the ruins of a Burmese town during the advance on Mandalay, January 1945

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, an iconic photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal on February 23, 1945, depicts six United States Marines raising a US flag atop Mount Suribachi.

USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) burns after being hit by two kamikazes. At Okinawa, the kamikazes caused 4,900 American deaths.

US Marines pass a dead Japanese soldier in a destroyed village on Okinawa, April 1945

US LVTs land Australian soldiers at Balikpapan on 7 July 1945.

American B-29 Superfortresses drop incendiary bombs over the port city of Kobe, June 1945

The mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 60,000 feet (18 km) into the air on the morning of 9 August 1945

Pacific Fleet marines of the Soviet Navy hoist the Soviet naval ensign in Port Arthur, on 1 October 1945.

Douglas MacArthur signs the formal Japanese Instrument of Surrender on USS Missouri (BB-63), 2 September 1945.

American corpses sprawled on the beach of Tarawa, November 1943

Indian prisoners of war shot and bayoneted by Japanese soldiers

IJA soldiers after a suicide charge on US Marine positions in Guadalcanal

Charred remains of civilians killed in the 10 March firebombing of Tokyo, codenamed Operation Meetinghouse, which killed an estimated 100,000 people, March 1945

Australian POW Sergeant Leonard G. Siffleet of M Special Unit being beheaded by a Japanese officer, Yasuno Chikao, on 24 October 1943. AWM photo.

A Filipino woman and child killed by Japanese forces in the Manila massacre

A young Chinese girl from a Japanese 'comfort battalion' being interviewed by a British officer. Rangoon, Burma, 1945

American stretcher party carrying a wounded soldier through a devastated Manila street, 23 February 1945

The damaged by American carrier aircraft in the Sibuyan Sea.

The Pacific War saw the Allies pitted against Japan, the latter aided by Thailand and to a lesser extent by the Axis allies, Germany and Italy.

However, its policies of brutality toward the Chinese population, of not yielding any real power to these regimes, and of supporting several rival governments failed to make any of them a viable alternative to the Nationalist government led by Chiang Kai-shek.

The Roaring Lion, a portrait by Yousuf Karsh at the Canadian Parliament, December 1941

Winston Churchill

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British statesman, soldier and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955.

Jennie Spencer Churchill with her two sons, Jack (left) and Winston (right) in 1889.

Churchill in the military dress uniform of the 4th Queen's Own Hussars at Aldershot in 1895.

Churchill in 1900 around the time of his first election to Parliament.

Churchill in 1904 when he "crossed the floor".

Churchill and German Kaiser Wilhelm II during a military manoeuvre near Breslau, Silesia, in 1906.

Churchill and his fiancée Clementine Hozier shortly before their marriage in 1908.

Churchill (second left) photographed at the Siege of Sidney Street.

As First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill's London residency was Admiralty House (music room pictured).

Churchill commanding the 6th Battalion, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, 1916. His second-in-command, Archibald Sinclair, is seated on the left.

Churchill meets female workers at Georgetown's filling works near Glasgow in October 1918.

Churchill as Secretary of State for the Colonies during his visit to Mandatory Palestine, Tel Aviv, 1921.

Churchill with children Randolph and Diana in 1923.

Churchill on Budget Day with his wife Clementine and children Sarah and Randolph, 15 April 1929.

Churchill meeting with film star Charlie Chaplin in Los Angeles in 1929.

Churchill and Neville Chamberlain, the chief proponent of appeasement.

Churchill takes aim with a Sten sub-machine gun in June 1941. The man in the pin-striped suit and fedora to the right is his bodyguard, Walter H. Thompson.

Churchill walks through the ruins of Coventry Cathedral with J A Moseley, M H Haigh, A R Grindlay and others, 1941.

Churchill and Roosevelt seated on the quarterdeck of for a Sunday service during the Atlantic Conference, 10 August 1941

Huge portraits of Churchill and Stalin, Brisbane, Australia, 31 October 1941

Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at the Tehran Conference in 1943.

Churchill in the Roman amphitheatre of ancient Carthage to address 3,000 British and American troops, June 1943

Churchill is greeted by a crowd in Québec City, Canada, 1943

Churchill's crossing of the Rhine river in Germany, during Operation Plunder on 25 March 1945.

Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at the Yalta Conference, February 1945.

The destruction of Dresden, February 1945.

Churchill waving the Victory sign to the crowd in Whitehall on the day he broadcast to the nation that the war with Germany had been won, 8 May 1945. Ernest Bevin stands to his right.

Churchill at the Potsdam Conference, July 1945.

Churchill with Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles and Princess Anne, 10 February 1953.

Churchill with Anthony Eden, Dean Acheson and Harry Truman, 5 January 1952.

Churchill's grave at St Martin's Church, Bladon.

Allies (1995) by Lawrence Holofcener, a sculptural group depicting Franklin D. Roosevelt and Churchill in New Bond Street, London.

The statue of Churchill (1973) by Ivor Roberts-Jones in Parliament Square, London

The British Empire at its territorial peak in 1921.

Churchill formed a national government and oversaw British involvement in the Allied war effort against the Axis powers, resulting in victory in 1945.

In November, Churchill and Roosevelt met Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek at the Cairo Conference (codename Sextant).

Nationalist government

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The Nationalist government, officially the National Government of the Republic of China, also known as the Second Republic of China but most commonly known simply as the Republic of China, refers to the government of the Republic of China from 1 July 1925 to 20 May 1948, led by the Kuomintang (literally the "Nationals' Party").

Land controlled by the Republic of China (1945) shown in dark green; land claimed but uncontrolled shown in light green.

Organisational chart of the KMT regime (1934).

Headquarters of the National Government in Nanjing

KMT troops rounding up Communist prisoners for execution

They were nominally reunified in 1928 by the Nanjing-based government led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, which after the Northern Expedition governed the country as a one-party state under the Kuomintang, and was subsequently given international recognition as the legitimate representative of China.

At the end of World War II in 1945, the Empire of Japan surrendered control of Taiwan and its island groups to the Allies, and Taiwan was placed under the Republic of China's administrative control.

Allied troops in Vladivostok, August 1918, during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War

Cold War

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Period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, which began following World War II.

The "Big Three" at the Yalta Conference: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, 1945

Post-war Allied occupation zones in Germany

Clement Attlee, Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam Conference, 1945

Post-war territorial changes in Europe and the formation of the Eastern Bloc, the so-called "Iron Curtain"

Remains of the "Iron Curtain" in the Czech Republic

C-47s unloading at Tempelhof Airport in Berlin during the Berlin Blockade

President Truman signs the North Atlantic Treaty with guests in the Oval Office.

Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin in Moscow, December 1949

General Douglas MacArthur, UN Command CiC (seated), observes the naval shelling of Incheon, Korea from USS Mt. McKinley, 15 September 1950

US Marines engaged in street fighting during the liberation of Seoul, September 1950

NATO and Warsaw Pact troop strengths in Europe in 1959

From left to right: Soviet head of state Kliment Voroshilov, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and Finnish president Urho Kekkonen at Moscow in 1960.

The maximum territorial extent of Soviet influence, after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and before the official Sino-Soviet split of 1961

Western colonial empires in Asia and Africa all collapsed in the years after 1945.

1961 Soviet stamp commemorating Patrice Lumumba, assassinated prime minister of the Republic of the Congo

The United States reached the Moon in 1969.

Che Guevara (left) and Fidel Castro (right) in 1961

Soviet and American tanks face each other at Checkpoint Charlie during the Berlin Crisis of 1961.

Aerial photograph of a Soviet missile site in Cuba, taken by a US spy aircraft, 1 November 1962

NATO and Warsaw Pact troop strengths in Europe in 1973

US combat operations during the Battle of Ia Drang, South Vietnam, November 1965

A manifestation of the Finlandization period: in April 1970, a Finnish stamp was issued in honor of the 100th anniversary of Vladimir Lenin's birth and the Lenin Symposium held in Tampere. The stamp was the first Finnish stamp issued about a foreign person.

The invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union in 1968 was one of the biggest military operations on European soil since World War II.

Suharto of Indonesia attending funeral of five generals slain in 30 September Movement, 2 October 1965

Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat with Henry Kissinger in 1975

Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet shaking hands with Henry Kissinger in 1976

Cuban tank in the streets of Luanda, Angola, 1976

During the Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot, 1.5 to 2 million people died due to the policies of his four-year premiership.

Mao Zedong and US President Richard Nixon, during his visit in China

Leonid Brezhnev and Jimmy Carter sign the SALT II treaty, 18 June 1979, in Vienna

Iranian people protesting against the Pahlavi dynasty, during the Iranian Revolution

Protest in Amsterdam against the deployment of Pershing II missiles in Europe, 1981

The Soviet invasion during Operation Storm-333 on 26 December 1979

President Reagan publicizes his support by meeting with Afghan mujahideen leaders in the White House, 1983.

President Reagan with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during a working luncheon at Camp David, December 1984

The world map of military alliances in 1980

US and USSR/Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles, 1945–2006

Delta 183 launch vehicle lifts off, carrying the Strategic Defense Initiative sensor experiment "Delta Star".

After ten-year-old American Samantha Smith wrote a letter to Yuri Andropov expressing her fear of nuclear war, Andropov invited Smith to the Soviet Union.

Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan sign the INF Treaty at the White House, 1987.

The beginning of the 1990s brought a thaw in relations between the superpowers.

"Tear down this wall!" speech: Reagan speaking in front of the Brandenburg Gate, 12 June 1987

Otto von Habsburg, who played a leading role in opening the Iron Curtain.

Erich Honecker lost control in August 1989.

The human chain in Lithuania during the Baltic Way, 23 August 1989

Changes in national boundaries after the end of the Cold War

Since the end of the Cold War, the EU has expanded eastwards into the former Warsaw Pact and parts of the former Soviet Union.

A map showing the relations of Marxist–Leninist states after the Sino-Soviet split as of 1980:
The USSR and pro-Soviet socialist states
China and pro-Chinese socialist states
Neutral Socialist nations (North Korea and Yugoslavia)
Non-socialist states

The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany in 1945.

In 1949, Mao Zedong's People's Liberation Army defeated Chiang Kai-shek's United States-backed Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist Government in China.