Germany made the worst decision ever by attacking Russia (it was called the Soviet Union at that time). No one could possibly conquer mighty Russia, and from this moment was the fall of Germany. Germany flew close into Russia territory and began to attack. Winter was coming and the freezing temperatures of Russia were too much for the Germans to handle. Russians were used to it of course.
At that time Japan was at war with China. The war was brutal as they attacked the small villages of China and Manchuria. The farther the land was from the capital of China the harder it was to control, so Japan was winning by attacking small villages one by one and succeeded.
War is super expensive and for Japan they needed more resources like iron for weapons and other stuff. Japan is a small country on many islands with volcanoes and other stuff. They don’t have many resources so they get their iron from the United State. Japan kept attacking China and the United States was on China’s side. And this lead to the United States cutting off the deal and stopped sending iron to Japan. A type of attitude like that is also known as an embargo.
Because of the embargo that the United States put on, Japan had no choice but to find resources. Japan came to conquer the South East Asia territories such as Indonesia, Philippines, Borneo (Kalimantan), Australia and other tropical countries. Conquering Asia was two birds with one stone because some of the territories belonged to Britain and France.
What really happened was that Japan wanted to conquer most of South East Asia. Some of that territory belonged to Great Britain. Others belonged to France and Netherlands and the United States. If Japan took the land that belonged to the United States, that would start a war between them. But because of the lack of resources Japan had, it was their only option to survive. Pearl Harbor is full of the United States Navy and fleet. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor to destroy their fleet so they couldn’t do anything when Japan took the South East Indies that belonged to the US.
This was also a bad idea because this brought the US into the war. The US helped British troops move to defeat Italian troops in Africa and moved forward to corner Germany. From the North-East side came the Russians and from the South-west came the Allies which contained United kingdom, the US and France troops. Canada also took part be siding the allies.
