Editing History of Europe (section)

===World War II===
{{main|Causes of World War II|World War II|Diplomatic history of World War II|Home front during World War II|The Holocaust}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv N 1576 Bild-003, Warschau, Bettelnde Kinder.jpg|right|thumb|Starving Jewish children in [[Warsaw Ghetto]] (1940–1943)]]
[[File:AmericanAndSovietAtElbe.jpg|right|thumb|American and Soviet troops [[Elbe Day|meet in April 1945]], east of the [[Elbe River]]]]

In 1938 [[Adolf Hitler]] annexed the [[Sudetenland]]. In the [[Munich Agreement]], Britain and France adopted a policy of [[appeasement]], but [[Occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–1945)|Germany subsequently took over the rest of Czechoslovakia]]. After allying with Japan in the [[Anti-Comintern Pact]] and then also with [[Benito Mussolini]]'s Italy in the "[[Pact of Steel]]", and finally signing a [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact|non-aggression treaty]] with the Soviet Union in August 1939, Hitler launched the [[Second World War]] on 1 September 1939 by [[Invasion of Poland|attacking Poland]]. Britain and France declared war on Germany, but there was little fighting during the "[[Phoney War]]" period. War began in earnest in spring 1940 with the successful Blitzkrieg conquests of Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, and France. Britain defeated Germany's air attacks in the [[Battle of Britain]]. Hitler's goal was to control Eastern Europe but the [[Operation Barbarossa|attack on the Soviet Union]] was delayed until June 1941 and the [[Wehrmacht]] was stopped close to Moscow in December 1941.<ref>I.C.B. Dear and M.R.D. Foot, eds., ''The Oxford Companion to World War II'' (1995) covers every country and major campaign.</ref>

Over the next year the Germans started to suffer a series of defeats. War raged between the [[Axis powers|Axis Powers]] (Germany, Italy, and Japan) and the [[Allies of World War II|Allied Forces]] (British Empire, Soviet Union, and the United States). The Allied Forces won in North Africa, [[Allied invasion of Italy|invaded Italy]] in 1943, and [[Liberation of France|recaptured France]] in 1944. In 1945 Germany itself was [[East Prussian offensive|invaded from the east by the Soviet Union]] and [[Western Allied invasion of Germany|from the west by the other Allies]]. As the Red Army conquered the [[Reichstag building|Reichstag]] in the [[Battle of Berlin]], [[Death of Adolf Hitler|Hitler committed suicide]] and Germany surrendered.<ref>Norman Davies, ''No Simple Victory: World War II in Europe, 1939–1945'' (2008)</ref> World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, causing [[World War II casualties|between 50 and 80 million deaths]], the majority of whom were civilians (approximately 38 to 55 million).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm|title=Second''Second Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for the Twentieth Century Hemoclysm''|publisher=Users.erols.com|access-date=2 May 2012|archive-date=7 March 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110307141223/http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm|url-status=live}}</ref>

This period was also marked by systematic genocide. In 1942–45, separately from the war-related deaths, the [[Nazism|Nazis]] killed over 11 million civilians [[IBM and the Holocaust|identified through IBM-enabled censuses]], including the [[The Holocaust|majority of the Jews]] and [[Porajmos|Gypsies]] of Europe, millions of [[Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles|Polish]] and [[Generalplan Ost|Soviet]] Slavs, homosexuals, [[Jehovah's Witnesses]], disabled people, and political enemies. Meanwhile, in the 1930s the Soviet system of [[Gulag|forced labour]], [[Population transfer in the Soviet Union|expulsions]] and [[Holodomor|allegedly engineered famine]] had a similar death toll. Millions of civilians were affected by forced population transfers.<ref>[[Dinah Shelton]], ed., ''Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity'' (3 vol. 2004)</ref>