The World Wars
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50 free The World Wars trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The two world wars were fought barely a generation apart, and they are tangled together more tightly than most people remember. Men who served as junior officers in the first conflict were running countries by the second, and decisions made at the peace table in 1919 were still being argued over when the shooting started again. This quiz covers both wars side by side: the assassination that set Europe alight in 1914, the trenches and the war at sea, the dictators and democratic leaders of the 1930s and 1940s, the great invasions and evacuations, the codebreakers, the home fronts and the war in the Pacific. Along the way are the strange true stories that textbooks skip, from animal messengers to wartime propaganda that people still believe. It is written for anyone who enjoys history, whether you are revising for class, setting a pub quiz or settling an argument about which leader did what. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will learn something even from the ones you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In what setting did Germany sign the 1918 armistice, which Hitler reused to take France's surrender in 1940?
A railway carriage
A railway carriage, a dining car parked in the Forest of Compiègne, hosted both signings. Hitler had it hauled out of its museum to the exact spot and sat in the chair the French commander had used in 1918.
Q 02What relation was Britain's King George V to both the Russian tsar and the German kaiser of World War I?
First cousin
First cousin to both, George V saw the war topple the other two thrones. In 1917 he swapped his German family name, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, for Windsor.
Q 03Which soft drink was created in Nazi Germany when a wartime embargo cut off supplies of Coca-Cola syrup?
Fanta
Fanta was first mixed from leftovers such as whey and apple pomace by Max Keith, head of Coca-Cola's German branch. The name came from a salesman's reply when Keith told his team to use their Fantasie, or imagination.
Q 04Cher Ami, a US Army messenger who lost a leg carrying a dispatch in France in 1918, was what animal?
A pigeon
A pigeon, Cher Ami reached the loft with the message hanging from a shattered leg. Legend credits the bird with saving the trapped 'Lost Battalion', and its body is kept at the Smithsonian.
Q 05The B-29 bomber Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb in August 1945, was named after whom?
The pilot's mother
The pilot's mother, Enola Gay Tibbets, had herself been named after the heroine of a novel. Colonel Paul Tibbets gave the plane her name on 5 August 1945, the day before the mission.
Q 06British wartime propaganda credited which vegetable with RAF pilots' night vision, when radar was the real reason?
Carrots
Carrots took the credit while the real reason, newly adopted radar, stayed secret. The public believed it, and extra planting left Britain with a 100,000-ton surplus by 1942.
Q 07During the Christmas truce of 1914, British and German soldiers are said to have played which sport in no man's land?
Soccer
Soccer kick-abouts, sometimes with a bully-beef tin for a ball, turn up in many soldiers' letters. Historians doubt any organised match took place, but one German lieutenant recorded 'a lively game'.
Q 08Which politician ran Britain's navy as First Lord of the Admiralty when both World War I and World War II began?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill had held the post since 1911, and he was handed the same desk again on 3 September 1939, the day Britain declared war. Eight months later he was prime minister.
Q 09Which World War I weapon got its name from a British cover story about 'water carriers for Mesopotamia'?
The tank
The tank was hidden behind the claim that its hull was a water carrier, and the committee in charge shortened the label to keep the secret. The first prototype went by another nickname, Little Willie.
Q 10The future Queen Elizabeth II trained for which job after joining Britain's Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1945?
Vehicle mechanic
Vehicle mechanic and driver was the 18-year-old princess's training from February 1945. Within five months she held the honorary rank of junior commander, the women's equivalent of captain.
Q 11In which city did a wrong turn by Archduke Franz Ferdinand's driver stall the car beside an assassin in June 1914?
Sarajevo
Sarajevo's police never told the drivers that the route had changed, so the car swung into a side street and stalled as it tried to reverse. Gavrilo Princip happened to be standing a few steps away.
Q 12Germany's invasion of which country on 1 September 1939 led Britain and France to declare war two days later?
Poland
Poland was attacked after Germany staged fake border incidents so that it could pose as the victim. Britain and France declared war on 3 September but sent very little practical help.
Q 13A surprise Japanese air raid on which US naval base on 7 December 1941 brought America into World War II?
Pearl Harbor
Q 21Which German emperor abdicated as World War I ended and spent years of Dutch exile chopping down trees?
Wilhelm II
Wilhelm II felled thousands of trees at Huis Doorn, the country house he bought in the Netherlands. He was still living there when German troops occupied the country in 1940, and he died the following year.
Q 22Which exiled revolutionary did Germany let cross its territory by train in April 1917 to stir up trouble in Russia?
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin rode with about thirty other exiles on what both sides called a 'sealed train', although passengers were in fact allowed off to spend a night in Frankfurt. He reached Petrograd that same month.
Q 23Which US president drew up the Fourteen Points and championed the League of Nations, only for America never to join?
Pearl Harbor had eight US battleships in port that morning, and every one was damaged or sunk. President Roosevelt called it 'a date which will live in infamy', and America declared war the next day.
Q 14Operation Overlord put Allied troops ashore on D-Day, 6 June 1944, along the coast of which French region?
Normandy
Normandy was chosen partly because the Germans expected the blow at the Pas-de-Calais, the closest point to Britain. A deception plan built around a fictitious American army group kept them looking there.
Q 15Which flower became a symbol of remembrance for fallen soldiers thanks to John McCrae's poem 'In Flanders Fields'?
Poppy
Poppy flowers grew over the graves McCrae described after burying a friend in May 1915. The Canadian army doctor is said to have thrown the poem away, only for fellow soldiers to rescue it.
Q 16Which Jewish teenager kept a diary she called 'Kitty' while hiding behind a bookcase in Amsterdam from 1942 to 1944?
Anne Frank
Anne Frank died at Bergen-Belsen in early 1945, but her father Otto, the family's only survivor, was handed the notebooks his secretaries had saved. The diary has since been translated into over 70 languages.
Q 17Which Japanese city was hit by the second atomic bomb after the crew could not see their first target, Kokura?
Nagasaki
Nagasaki was only the backup: the bomber made three runs over Kokura before flying on with its fuel running low. Kyoto had been taken off the list earlier, when War Secretary Henry Stimson argued for its cultural value.
Q 18From which French port were more than 338,000 Allied soldiers rescued by naval ships and 'little ships' in 1940?
Dunkirk
Dunkirk's rescue fleet of over 800 vessels included fishing boats, yachts and lifeboats that ferried men out from the beaches. Only 7,669 soldiers got away on the first day.
Q 19Which Cunard liner was torpedoed by a German U-boat off Ireland in May 1915, killing 128 Americans on board?
Lusitania
Lusitania went down in about 18 minutes with the loss of nearly 1,200 lives. The sinking turned American opinion against Germany, though the United States stayed out of the war until 1917.
Q 20Which German cipher machine did Alan Turing and the codebreakers of Bletchley Park work to crack during World War II?
Enigma
Enigma scrambled each letter through a set of turning rotors, so every keypress used a different cipher. Many commentators say that reading its messages shortened the war substantially.
Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson turned down a Republican compromise that would have let the Senate ratify the peace treaty and take America into the League. He was still awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize for founding it.
Q 24Which Soviet wartime leader, born Ioseb Jughashvili, ruled under an alias taken from the Russian word for steel?
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin had used the alias, often translated as 'Man of Steel', since 1912. As a young revolutionary he went by 'Koba', after the bandit hero of a novel he admired.
Q 25Which dictator, known as Il Duce, was dismissed by Italy's king in July 1943 and later freed by German forces?
Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini was sprung from custody in the Gran Sasso raid that September, then set up by Hitler as the figurehead of a puppet state in northern Italy. He had founded fascism in 1919.
Q 26Which US president, a World War I artillery captain, learned of the atomic bomb only after taking office in April 1945?
Harry Truman
Harry Truman had been vice president for only 82 days when Franklin Roosevelt died, and he had been told nothing about the secret weapon. Within four months he approved its use against Japan.
Q 27Which general led the D-Day invasion as Supreme Allied Commander, having drafted a note taking the blame if it failed?
Dwight Eisenhower
Dwight Eisenhower wrote 'If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone', and never had to release it. Eight years later he was elected the 34th US president.
Q 28Which French general fled to London in June 1940 and urged his countrymen by BBC radio to keep fighting?
Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle reached few listeners with that first appeal on 18 June, and a French court martial soon condemned him to death in his absence. He went on to become the undisputed leader of Free France.
Q 29Which Japanese emperor announced surrender by radio on 15 August 1945, in a classical style unfamiliar to listeners?
Hirohito
Hirohito recorded the speech on a phonograph disc, and it is thought to be the first time ordinary Japanese had heard any emperor's voice. Army hardliners attempted a coup the night before to stop it.
Q 30Which British prime minister came home from Munich in 1938 declaring 'peace for our time', a year before war broke out?
Chamberlain
Chamberlain was echoing Disraeli, who had come home from Berlin in 1878 claiming 'peace with honour'. He resigned in May 1940, eight months into the war.