How did America get involved in World War II?
When World War II began in September 1939, the Allied forces of France, Britain and a few other European nations squared off against Germany and Italy. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler launched campaigns in Eastern and Western Europe and Northern Africa, eventually betraying the Soviet Union, with whom he had a nonaggression pact, by invading Russia. During this time, however, the United States refrained from formally entering the war, despite their willingness to appropriate an initial $7 billion in weapons and various types of aid to French and British soldiers.
That all changed on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese launched a surprise air attack on Pearl Harbor, a naval base in Hawaii that hosted the majority of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Japan (which along with Germany and Italy comprised the Axis) saw the United States as a threat to their plans to dominate Southeast Asia. While the attack sunk or damaged 21 battleships and killed over 2,400 people, none of the vital aircraft carriers was lost. The United States declared war against Japan the following day, and Germany quickly declared war against the U.S.
In 1944, the United States and its Allies landed in France to fight the Nazis. Squeezed between the advancing Allies to the West and South, and the Soviet Red Army to the East, Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945. The United States, after fighting its way across the islands of Southeast Asia, dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945; three days later, an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, bringing World War II to an end