The liberation of mainland France beginning with D-Day on 6 June 1944 and operation Overlord, and then with operation Dragoon on 15 August 1944, leading to the Liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944 by the Free French 2e Division Blindée and the installation of the Provisional Government of the French Republic in the newly liberated capital. Document 500: Communiqué Issued at the End of the Conference". Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Malta and Yalta 1945. U.S. Department of State. 12 February 1945. Archived from the original on 6 August 2023.

Southern Rhodesia was a self-governing colony, having received responsible government in 1923. It was not a sovereign dominion. It governed itself internally and controlled its own armed forces, but had no diplomatic autonomy, and, therefore, was officially at war as soon as Britain was at war. The Southern Rhodesian colonial government issued a symbolic declaration of war nevertheless on 3 September 1939, which made no difference diplomatically but preceded the declarations of war made by all other British dominions and colonies. [36] American colonies and dependencies In the Pacific it held multiple island dependencies such as American Samoa, Guam, Hawaii, Midway Islands, Wake Island and others. These dependencies were directly involved in the Pacific campaign of the war.

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Main, Steven J. "The Soviet Occupation of Germany. Hunger, Mass Violence and the Struggle for Peace, 1945–1947." Europe-Asia Studies (2014) 66#8 pp: 1380–1382. doi: 10.1080/09668136.2014.941704 At the outbreak of World War II, the British Indian Army numbered 205,000 men. Later during World War II, the Indian Army became the largest all-volunteer force in history, rising to over 2.5million men in size. [104] These forces included tank, artillery and airborne forces.

Knowles, Christopher. Winning the Peace: The British in Occupied Germany, 1945-1948, (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)British occupation policy was similar to that of the United States, but with a greater focus on economic problems. The British Occupation Zone included the Ruhr industrial region, which had experienced the heaviest bombing and therefore faced the greatest shortages of housing and food. Initial British occupation directives were concerned primarily with economic considerations and food supply. [20] Mr. Churchill’s broadcast declaration that the war had ended and that we might allow ourselves “a brief period of rejoicing” set the seal on celebrations which were already under way. The victory holiday will continue to-day before, as the King said in his broadcast to the nation last night, “we turn, fortified by success, to deal with our last remaining foe.”

From 1941, a strong resistance movement appeared, chiefly in the mountainous interior, where it established a "Free Greece" by mid-1943. Following the Italian capitulation in September 1943, the Italian zone was taken over by the Germans. Axis forces left mainland Greece in October 1944, although some Aegean islands, notably Crete, remained under German occupation until the end of the war. The US played a central role in liaising among the Allies and especially among the Big Four. [55] At the Arcadia Conference in December 1941, shortly after the US entered the war, the US and Britain established a Combined Chiefs of Staff, based in Washington, which deliberated the military decisions of both the US and Britain. Further information: Polish contribution to World War II, Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish Armed Forces in the West, and Polish Armed Forces in the East Pilots of the No. 303 "Kościuszko" Polish Fighter Squadron during the Battle of Britain The Allies, formally referred to as the United Nations from 1942, were an international military coalition formed during World War II (1939–1945) to oppose the Axis powers, led by Nazi Germany, the Empire of Japan, and the Kingdom of Italy. Its principal members by the end of 1941 were the " Big Four" - United Kingdom, United States, Soviet Union, and China. Agreement concerning the participation of a Danish contingent in the occupation of Germany. Signed at Copenhagen, April 22, 1947". Archived from the original on 18 January 2023 . Retrieved 18 January 2023.

The Potsdam conference, where the victorious Allies drew up plans for the future of Germany, noted in article XIII of the Potsdam Agreement on 1 August 1945 that "the transfer to Germany of German populations...in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary will have to be undertaken"; "wild expulsion" was already going on. The headquarters of the American military government was the former IG Farben Building in Frankfurt am Main. Andrews, Ernest A.; Hurt, David B. (2022). A Machine Gunner's War: From Normandy to Victory with the 1st Infantry Division in World War II. Philadelphia & Oxford: Casemate. ISBN 978-1636241043.

Main article: Nationalist Government Soldiers of the National Revolutionary Army associated with Nationalist China, during the Second Sino-Japanese War Following the complete closure of all Nazi German media, the launch and operation of completely new newspaper titles began by licensing carefully selected Germans as publishers. Licenses were granted to Germans not involved in Nazi propaganda to establish those newspapers, including Frankfurter Rundschau (August 1945), Der Tagesspiegel (Berlin; September 1945), and Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich; October 1945). Radio stations were run by the military government. Later, Radio Frankfurt, Radio München (Munich) and Radio Stuttgart gave way for the Hessischer Rundfunk, Bayerischer Rundfunk, and Süddeutscher Rundfunk, respectively. The RIAS in West-Berlin remained a radio station under U.S. control. The Cyprus Regiment was formed by the British Government during the Second World War and made part of the British Army structure. It was mostly Greek Cypriot volunteers and Turkish Cypriot inhabitants of Cyprus but also included other Commonwealth nationalities. On a brief visit to Cyprus in 1943, Winston Churchill praised the "soldiers of the Cyprus Regiment who have served honourably on many fields from Libya to Dunkirk". About 30,000 Cypriots served in the Cyprus Regiment. The regiment was involved in action from the very start and served at Dunkirk, in the Greek Campaign (about 600 soldiers were captured in Kalamata in 1941), North Africa ( Operation Compass), France, the Middle East and Italy. Many soldiers were taken prisoner especially at the beginning of the war and were interned in various PoW camps ( Stalag) including Lamsdorf ( Stalag VIII-B), Stalag IVC at Wistritz bei Teplitz and Stalag 4b near Most in the Czech Republic. The soldiers captured in Kalamata were transported by train to prisoner of war camps. Knowles, Christopher. "The British Occupation of Germany, 1945–49: A Case Study in Post-Conflict Reconstruction." The RUSI Journal (2013) 158#6 pp: 84–91. In 1944, Liberia and France signed. The French situation was very confused. Free French forces were recognized only by Britain, while the United States considered Vichy France to be the legal government of the country until Operation Overlord, while also preparing U.S. occupation francs. Winston Churchill urged Roosevelt to restore France to its status of a major power after the liberation of Paris in August 1944; the Prime Minister feared that after the war, Britain could remain the sole great power in Europe facing the Communist threat, as it was in 1940 and 1941 against Nazism.

This difference of an hour can, of course, be explained by the difference between Central European time and British time, but it does not alter the curious fact that “officially” the war ended for Germany at 11 pm on Tuesday, May 8, and for us at one minute after midnight on the morning of Wednesday, May 9. If this were all, the matter would be simple enough. It has, however, been further complicated by the Russian insistence on a second ceremony in Berlin. The reason for this is plain. There was nothing wrong with the surrender at Rheims, but the Russians felt that it would impress their defeat more strongly on the German people if the ceremony took place in Berlin, their capital, and if the document were signed by Field Marshal Keitel himself, the Chief of the German High Command and the best known of the Nazi generals. There was also the fact that, surrender or not, the Germans were still resisting the Red Army in Czechoslovakia. In the west, the occupation continued until 5 May 1955, when the General Treaty (German: Deutschlandvertrag) entered into force. However, upon the creation of the Federal Republic in May 1949, the military governors were replaced by civilian high commissioners, whose powers lay somewhere between those of a governor and those of an ambassador. When the Deutschlandvertrag became law, the occupation ended, the western occupation zones ceased to exist, and the high commissioners were replaced by normal ambassadors. West Germany was also allowed to build a military, and the Bundeswehr, or Federal Defense Force, was established on 12 November 1955.