World War II Didn’t End in 1945

In fact, the guns didn’t fall silent by September 1945. Even with the Axis powers defeated, fighting continued nearly everywhere the war had occurred, from the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe to the Pacific.

As explained in The Greater Second World War: Global Perspectives (Cornell University Press, April 2025), edited by Ruth Lawlor and Andrew Buchanan. 

The Greater Second World War Edited by Andrew N. Buchanan and Ruth Lawlor | Hardcover | Cornell University Press

The book proposes a much more capacious framework for the war that lengthens the conflict’s timeline and broadens its geography.

Lawlor and Buchanan suggest a different chronology, one in which the war begins years earlier as Japan, Italy and Germany scrambled for more territory in Manchuria, Ethiopia and Austria. 

They nudge forward the war’s end date too, pointing to the violence that took place in the months and years after 1945. 

This included civil wars in Greece and China, ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe, and the Western Allies’ attempt to expand their colonial acreage across Southeast Asia.

Bloomberg 19 September 2025

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-19/world-war-ii-s-aftermath-how-the-fighting-continued-after-1945