A recent survey conducted by the Forsa Institute, a German polling and market research firm, found that the majority perceived the Allies' victory as a liberation for Germany from the Nazi regime, with only 9 percent of Germans viewing World War II as a defeat — dramatically down from 34% in 2005.
Is World War II history being taught positively in Germany? Yes. Germany is one country that tries its best to teach history fairly and openly, so teachers can explain what happened during World War II and why.
Germany has not observed a Veterans' Day since fall of Hitler's Third Reich in 1945. It does have a public day of mourning on November 11, Volkstrauertag, which honors soldiers and civilians killed in war.
Living in Germany after World War II was a grim reality for citizens coming to terms with both conflict and atrocity. Almost everyone had to cope with loss, as an estimated 8.8 million German civilians and 5.5 million German military members lost their lives due to WWII.
War graves are central to this, with cemeteries in communities small and large hinting at the scale of the loss. The charity responsible for German war graves, the Volksbund, founded in 1919, still organises many of Germany's commemorations of the war dead including the national day of mourning.
The Japanese school curriculum largely glosses over the occupations of Taiwan, China, Korea and various Russian islands before the attack on Pearl Harbor; it essentially doesn't teach the detail of the war in the Pacific and South East Asia until Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Ami – German slang for an American soldier.
After the war, millions of German settlers were forcibly, even violently, expelled and sent back to Germany. Other ethnic Germans, whose families had lived in border regions like the Sudetenland for generations, also fled or were expelled. Allied opinion was divided about these expulsions.
At least initially, Germans regarded British and American soldiers (especially Americans) as somewhat amateurish, although their opinion of American, British, and Empire troops grew as the war progressed. German certainly saw shortcomings in the ways the Allied used infantry.
Six thousand survived, returning to Germany after the war. Of them, 35 are still alive today.
Reports from the Department of Veterans Affairs say about 240,300 World War II veterans are still alive in 2021. They're generally in their 90s, and about 245 die each day, according to the VA.
The Allied troops were supported by more than 5,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft. More than 9,000 troops were killed or wounded in the D-Day invasion. Far fewer than that are still alive now. The National D-Day Memorial website estimated that fewer than 3,000 veterans of D-Day were still living in 2021.
Berliners have been given an unprecedented public holiday, to mark the end of World War Two in Europe but also liberation from Nazi rule. Not since reunification has a German city acknowledged 8 May as a day of liberation in this way; some Berliners are unaware of its significance.
As the Nazi Party gained power, Hitler created strong ties with China. However, he changed course and started to view Japan as a more strategic partner in Asia. For its part, Japan wanted to continue expanding, and saw rebuilding its relationship with Germany as beneficial to this goal.
But they also ended the war devastated: Malta holds the record for the heaviest, sustained bombing attack: some 154 days and nights and 6,700 tons of bombs.
SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Otto Skorzeny was one of the most celebrated and feared commandos of World War II. Daring operations such as the rescue of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and missions behind enemy lines during the Battle of the Bulge made him known as “the most dangerous man in Europe.”
The inescapable truth is that Hitler's Wehrmacht was the outstanding fighting force of World War II, one of the greatest in history.
The German Air Force, or Luftwaffe, was also the best force of its kind in 1939. It was a ground-cooperation force designed to support the Army, but its planes were superior to nearly all Allied types. In the rearmament period from 1935 to 1939 the production of German combat aircraft steadily mounted.
Although the United States played the dominant role, all three major Allied countries were necessary to victory in Europe. The most important contribution made by Britain was to survive Hitler's onslaught in 1940.
During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, Germans and Volksdeutsche fled and were expelled from various Eastern and Central European countries, including Czechoslovakia and the former German provinces of Silesia, Pomerania, and East Prussia, which were annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union.
Almost all the ethnic Germans living in the territories acquired by Poland were expelled by the postwar communist regimes, to be replaced by Poles who had themselves been displaced from former Polish lands now annexed by the Soviet Union.
During the Allied military occupation of Japan (1945–52), these Japanese terms were prohibited in official documents, although their informal usage continued, and the war became officially known as the Pacific War (太平洋戦争, Taiheiyō Sensō).
Japan is currently one of the most pro-American nations in the world, with 67% of Japanese viewing the United States favorably, according to a 2018 Pew survey; and 75% saying they trust the United States as opposed to 7% for China.
In Japan, only 14% say the bombing was justified, versus 79% who say it was not. Not surprisingly, there is a large generation gap among Americans in attitudes toward the bombings of Hiroshima.