WW2
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146 free WW2 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free WW2 trivia questions with answers. WW2 trivia lives in two places on BrainPickle. This page is the shorter set; the main quiz is World War 2 trivia, with our deepest question pool on the topic and a source behind every answer.
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Q 01Germany's invasion of which country on 1 September 1939 began World War II in Europe?
Poland
Poland was attacked at dawn after the SS staged a fake Polish raid on a German radio station at Gleiwitz as a pretext; Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later.
Q 02What was the name of Nazi Germany's secret state police?
Gestapo
Gestapo is short for Geheime Staatspolizei, 'secret state police'; with only about 32,000 staff by late 1944, it relied heavily on ordinary Germans denouncing one another.
Q 03What was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941?
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was named after the medieval emperor Frederick Barbarossa; Hitler expected a quick victory, but the invasion by some three million German troops stalled outside Moscow as winter set in.
Q 04Who ran Nazi Germany's propaganda ministry from 1933 until his suicide in May 1945?
Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels controlled Germany's press, radio and film for twelve years; named chancellor in Hitler's will, he held the office for a single day before killing himself on 1 May 1945.
Q 05In what region of France did the D-Day landings primarily take place?
Normandy
Normandy was a surprise: the Germans expected the landing at Calais, the shortest crossing, and the Allies fed that belief with a phantom army, fake equipment and bogus radio traffic.
Q 06Which German general earned the nickname 'Desert Fox' while leading the Afrika Korps?
Erwin Rommel
Erwin Rommel was later linked to the July 1944 plot to kill Hitler; offered a choice between poison and a public trial, he took cyanide and was given a state funeral.
Q 07Which June 1942 naval clash is often called the turning point of the war in the Pacific?
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway, fought 4–7 June 1942, cost Japan four fleet carriers (Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu) and ended its offensive momentum in the Pacific.
Q 08Who was the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower was named to the post in December 1943; on the eve of D-Day he drafted a note for use if the landings failed, ending 'If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.'
Q 09Which February 1945 meeting of the 'Big Three' leaders discussed the post-war reorganization of Europe?
Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference agreed to divide defeated Germany into occupation zones and drew a secret promise that the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan within three months of Germany's surrender.
Q 10Germany's surprise December 1944 offensive in Belgium and Luxembourg is best known by what name?
Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge began under thick cloud that kept Allied aircraft grounded; when the skies cleared around Christmas, air attacks hit the German columns and their supply lines.
Q 11Who oversaw the Allied occupation of Japan after World War II?
Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur served as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers from August 1945, directing Japan's occupation and its 1947 constitution, until Truman relieved him in April 1951 and Matthew Ridgway took over.
Q 12Joe Rosenthal's flag-raising photo on Mount Suribachi was taken during which 1945 battle?
Battle of Iwo Jima
The Battle of Iwo Jima was four days old when Rosenthal caught six Marines raising a second, larger flag on 23 February 1945; the first had gone up that morning, and his picture won a Pulitzer Prize.
Q 13Under which March 1941 act did the United States ship arms to Britain months before entering the war?
Q 21Which summer 1943 Eastern Front battle is often called the largest tank engagement in history?
Battle of Kursk
The Battle of Kursk held few surprises for the defenders: warned by intelligence, the Soviets sowed the salient with around a million mines, and it proved Germany's last major offensive in the East.
Q 22Which British fighter with distinctive elliptical wings, designed by R. J. Mitchell, was built throughout the war?
Supermarine Spitfire
The Supermarine Spitfire was the only British fighter built continuously through the war, with more than 20,000 made, but its designer never saw it in service: Mitchell died of cancer in 1937.
Q 23Which German weapon began falling on England without warning in September 1944?
Lend-Lease Act
The Lend-Lease Act, filed as bill H.R. 1776, let the US lend arms instead of selling them because Britain was running out of money to pay; some $50 billion in aid went to more than 30 countries.
Q 14Which camp complex, the largest the Nazis built, was liberated by Soviet troops in January 1945?
Auschwitz
Auschwitz was liberated on 27 January 1945, a date the United Nations now marks as International Holocaust Remembrance Day; about 1.1 million people were murdered there, around a million of them Jews.
Q 15Which British Prime Minister led the country for most of World War II?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill took office on 10 May 1940 and led Britain through the war against Germany, only for voters to turn him out in July 1945, two months after Germany's surrender and before Japan's.
Q 16The 1944 Warsaw Uprising against German occupation was led by which resistance organisation?
Home Army
The Home Army rose on 1 August 1944, hoping to free Warsaw before the approaching Red Army could take control; Soviet forces stopped on the far bank of the Vistula, and after 63 days the Germans destroyed most of the city.
Q 17What was the code name for the Allied campaign in north-west Europe that opened with the D-Day landings?
Operation Overlord
Operation Overlord put more than 150,000 troops across the Channel on its first day; the assault phase had its own code name, Neptune, and bad weather forced a 24-hour delay from 5 June.
Q 18The 1943 Operation Mincemeat, a corpse planted with fake documents, disguised the invasion of which island?
Sicily
Operation Mincemeat's planted letters pointed to Greece and Sardinia to mask the real target, Sicily; the corpse of Glyndwr Michael was passed off as Royal Marines Major William Martin.
Q 19Which physicist directed the Los Alamos laboratory that designed the first atomic bombs?
J. Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer led Los Alamos through the war, then argued against building the far more powerful hydrogen bomb; in 1954, during the Red Scare, a security hearing stripped him of his clearance.
Q 20What was the name of the German air force during World War II?
Luftwaffe
The Luftwaffe was built in secret, because the Treaty of Versailles had banned Germany from having an air force; Hitler formally established it in February 1935.
V-2 rocket
The V-2 rocket flew faster than sound, so it struck before anyone heard it coming; its designer, Wernher von Braun, later built the Saturn V that carried Apollo astronauts to the Moon.
Q 24What did the Allies call the Westwall, the fortified belt along Germany's western border?
Siegfried Line
Siegfried Line was the English name for the Westwall. A British song of 1939 promised to hang out the washing on it, yet the Allies did not attack it in force until September 1944 and were still fighting through it in early 1945.
Q 25Who was President when the United States entered World War II?
Franklin Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt called the attack 'a date which will live in infamy', and within the hour Congress declared war on Japan with a single dissenting vote, cast by Montana's Jeannette Rankin.
Q 26The 1940 Soviet massacre of thousands of captured Polish officers and officials is named after which forest?
Katyn
Katyn Forest's mass graves were announced by the Germans in 1943; Moscow blamed the Nazis for nearly fifty years and admitted only in 1990 that the Soviet secret police had carried out the shootings.
Q 27On which date did Japanese carrier aircraft attack the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, bringing America into World War II?
December 7, 1941
December 7, 1941 was a Sunday morning in Hawaii; all eight US battleships in port were sunk or damaged, but the Pacific Fleet's aircraft carriers were away at sea and escaped untouched.
Q 28Which 1942-43 Eastern Front battle is considered a turning point of WWII, marking the start of the German retreat?
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad ended with the German Sixth Army surrounded; Hitler promoted its commander, Friedrich Paulus, to field marshal because no German field marshal had ever surrendered, and Paulus gave himself up the next day.
Q 29In what city did Anne Frank and her family hide during World War II?
Amsterdam
Amsterdam was a refuge first: the Franks had fled there from Frankfurt after the Nazis took power in 1933. They hid for two years in rooms concealed behind a bookcase until their arrest on 4 August 1944.
Q 30Who was the Emperor of Japan during World War II?
Hirohito
Hirohito's voice had never been broadcast to his people until 15 August 1945, when a recording of him announcing the surrender went out by radio; on 1 January 1946 he publicly denied that the emperor was divine.