Continental Europe in the context of "Napoleonic Wars"

World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many nations mobilising all resources in pursuit of total war. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the first and only nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II is the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 70 to 85 million people, more than half of whom were civilians. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were put on trial for war crimes.

The causes of World War II included unresolved tensions in the aftermath of World War I, the rise of fascism in Europe and militarism in Japan. Key events preceding the war included Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Spanish Civil War, the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, and Germany's annexations of Austria and the Sudetenland. World War II is generally considered to have begun on 1 September 1939, when Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, invaded Poland, after which the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany. Poland was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In 1940, the Soviet Union annexed the Baltic states and parts of Finland and Romania. After the fall of France in June 1940, the war continued mainly between Germany, now assisted by Fascist Italy, and the British Empire, with fighting in the Balkans, Mediterranean, and Middle East, the aerial Battle of Britain and the Blitz, and the naval Battle of the Atlantic. Through campaigns and treaties, Germany gained control of much of continental Europe and formed the Axis alliance with Italy, Japan, and other countries. In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, opening the Eastern Front and initially making large territorial gains.

Musala (Bulgarian: Мусала [mosɐˈɫa]); from Arabic through Ottoman Turkish: from Musalla, "near God" or "place for prayer" is the highest peak in the Rila Mountains, as well as in Bulgaria and the entire Balkan Peninsula, standing at 2,925.42 metres (9,597.8 ft).

With a topographic prominence of 2,473 metres (8,114 ft), Musala is also the 6th highest peak by topographic prominence in mainland Europe. It is also the 3rd most topographically isolated major peak in Continental Europe.

Sicily (Italian and Sicilian: Sicilia), officially the Sicilian Region (Italian: Regione Siciliana; Sicilian: Riggiuni Siciliana), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea and one of the twenty regions of Italy, situated south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe. With 4.7 million inhabitants, including 1.2 million in and around the capital city of Palermo, it is both the largest and most populous island in the Mediterranean Sea.

Sicily is named after the Sicels, who inhabited the eastern part of the island during the Iron Age. Sicily has a rich and unique culture in arts, music, literature, cuisine, and architecture. Its most prominent landmark is Mount Etna, the tallest active volcano in Europe, and one of the most active in the world, currently 3,403 m (11,165 ft) high. The island has a typical Mediterranean climate. It is separated from Calabria by the Strait of Messina. It is one of the five Italian autonomous regions and is considered part of Southern Italy.

The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succeeding the Second Agricultural Revolution. Beginning in Great Britain around 1760, the Industrial Revolution had spread to continental Europe and the United States by about 1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines; new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes; the increasing use of water power and steam power; the development of machine tools; and rise of the mechanised factory system. Output greatly increased, and the result was an unprecedented rise in population and population growth. The textile industry was the first to use modern production methods, and textiles became the dominant industry in terms of employment, value of output, and capital invested.

Many technological and architectural innovations were British. By the mid-18th century, Britain was the leading commercial nation, controlled a global trading empire with colonies in North America and the Caribbean, and had military and political hegemony on the Indian subcontinent. The development of trade and rise of business were among the major causes of the Industrial Revolution. Developments in law facilitated the revolution, such as courts ruling in favour of property rights. An entrepreneurial spirit and consumer revolution helped drive industrialisation.

Spain, officially the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Europe and the fourth-most populous European Union (EU) member state. Spanning the majority of the Iberian Peninsula, its territory also includes the Canary Islands, in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean; the Balearic Islands, in the Western Mediterranean Sea; and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, in mainland Africa. Peninsular Spain is bordered to the north by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; to the east and south by the Mediterranean Sea and Gibraltar; and to the west by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean. Spain's capital and largest city is Madrid; other major urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza, Málaga, Murcia, and Palma de Mallorca.

In early antiquity, the Iberian Peninsula was inhabited by Celts, Iberians, and other pre-Roman peoples. The Roman conquest of the Iberian peninsula created the province of Hispania, which became deeply Romanised and later Christianised. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the peninsula was conquered by tribes from Central Europe, among them the Visigoths, who established the Visigothic Kingdom centred on Toledo. In the early 8th century, most of the peninsula was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate, with Al-Andalus centred on Córdoba. The northern Christian kingdoms of Iberia launched the so-called Reconquista, gradually repelling and ultimately expelling Islamic rule from the peninsula, culminating with the fall of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada. The dynastic union of the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon in 1479 under the Catholic Monarchs is often seen as the de facto unification of Spain as a nation state.

Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. It is an unitary semi-presidential republic composed by continental Portugal and two autonomous regions, with Lisbon as both its capital and largest city. The continental portion borders Spain to the north and east, with Madeira and the Azores in the Atlantic Ocean. It features the westernmost point in continental Europe.

The western Iberian Peninsula has been continuously inhabited since prehistoric times, with the earliest signs of settlement dating to 5500 BC. Celtic and Iberian peoples arrived in the first millennium BC. The region came under Roman control in the second century BC. A succession of Germanic peoples and the Alans ruled from the fifth to eighth centuries AD. Muslims invaded mainland Portugal in the eighth century, but were gradually expelled by the Christian Reconquista, culminating with the capture of the Algarve between 1238 and 1249. Modern Portugal began taking shape during this period, initially as a county of the Christian Kingdom of León in 868, and formally as a sovereign kingdom with the Manifestis Probatum in 1179.

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. England shares a land border with Scotland to the north and another land border with Wales to the west, and is otherwise surrounded by the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south, the Celtic Sea to the south-west, and the Irish Sea to the west. Continental Europe lies to the south-east, and Ireland to the west. At the 2021 census, the population was 56,490,048. London is both the largest city and the capital.

The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic. It takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century and has had extensive cultural and legal impact on the wider world since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century. The Kingdom of England, which included Wales after 1535, ceased to be a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union brought into effect a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland that created the Kingdom of Great Britain.

The Franks (Latin: Franci or gens Francorum; German: Franken; French: Francs) were originally a group of Germanic peoples who lived near the Rhine-river military border of Germania Inferior, which was the most northerly province of the Roman Empire in continental Europe. These Frankish tribes lived for centuries under varying degrees of Roman hegemony and influence, but after the collapse of Roman institutions in western Europe, they took control of a large empire including areas that had been ruled by Rome, and what it meant to be a Frank began to evolve. Once they were deeply established in Gaul, the Franks became a multilingual, Catholic Christian people, who subsequently came to rule over several other post-Roman kingdoms both inside and outside the old empire. In a broader sense, much of the population of western Europe could eventually be described as Franks in some contexts.

The term "Frank" itself first appeared in the 3rd century AD, during the crisis of the 3rd century – a period when Rome lost control of regions near the lower Rhine. In the 4th century, Roman authors also began to use another new collective term for enemy tribes in the lower Rhine, "Saxons". Although the Saxons and Franks were later more clearly distinguished, there are signs that the terms Frank and Saxon were not always mutually exclusive at first. Over centuries, the Romans recruited large numbers of Frankish soldiers, some of whom achieved high imperial rank. Already in the 4th century, Franks were living semi-independently in parts of Germania Inferior. The Roman administration of Britain and northern Gaul once again began to break down, and in about 406 it was the Franks who attempted to defend the Roman border when it was crossed by Alans and Vandals from eastern Europe. Frankish kings subsequently divided up Germania Inferior between them, and at least one, Chlodio, also began to rule more Romanized populations to the south, in what is now northern France. In 451, Frankish groups participated on both sides in the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, where Attila and his allies were defeated by a Roman-led alliance of various peoples established in Gaul.

The British Isles are an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles (Orkney and Shetland), and over six thousand smaller islands. They have a total area of 315,159 km (121,684 sq mi) and a combined population of almost 75 million, and include two sovereign states, the Republic of Ireland (which covers roughly five-sixths of Ireland) and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Channel Islands, off the north coast of France, are normally taken to be part of the British Isles, even though geographically they do not form part of the archipelago. Under the UK Interpretation Act 1978, the Channel Islands are clarified as forming part of the British Islands, not to be confused with the British Isles.

The oldest rocks are 2.7 billion years old and are found in Ireland, Wales and the north-west of Scotland. During the Silurian period, the north-western regions collided with the south-east, which had been part of a separate continental landmass. The topography of the islands is modest in scale by global standards. Ben Nevis, the highest mountain, rises to only 1,345 metres (4,413 ft), and Lough Neagh, which is notably larger than other lakes in the island group, covers 390 square kilometres (151 sq mi). The climate is temperate marine, with cool winters and warm summers. The North Atlantic drift brings significant moisture and raises temperatures 11 °C (20 °F) above the global average for the latitude. This led to a landscape that was long dominated by temperate rainforest, although human activity has since cleared the vast majority of forest cover. The region was re-inhabited after the last glacial period of Quaternary glaciation, by 12,000 BC, when Great Britain was still part of a peninsula of the European continent. Ireland was connected to Great Britain by the British-Irish Ice Sheet before 14,000 BC, and was not inhabited until after 8000 BC. Great Britain became an island by 7000 BC with the flooding of Doggerland.