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On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany, and World War II officially began. By the time it was over in 1945, more than thirty million people were dead, once great empires lay in ruins, and weapons of unimaginable power had been unleashed on the world.

A Short History of World War II objectively examines the causes and consequences of the war. From the peace settlements of World War I to the postwar world of the 1940's, James L. Stokesbury gives instructors and students a comprehensive, accurate, and readable account of the defining event of the twentieth century.

James L. Stokesbury is the author of A Short History of World War I, A Short History of World War II, A Short History of the Korean War, and A Short History of the American Revolution. Before his death in 1995 he was a professor of history at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada.

"We have needed this kind of book for a long time." -- Theodore Ropp, Professor of History, Duke University, author of War in the Modern World