By the time the war ended in 1945, more than 55 million people had been killed and countless more made homeless.

On Sep 1, wreath-laying ceremonies are planned at Polish monuments in Berlin and Leipzig, honouring the nation's war dead. Similar events will take place in other European towns and cities.

In London, a World War II exhibition at the Imperial War Museum was inaugurated on Aug 20, exploring the build-up to Britain's declaration of war on Germany 70 years ago.

Among the items on display is then British prime minister Neville Chamberlain's pocket diary containing a simple entry for Sep 3, 1939: 'War declared.'

Also displayed is a letter he wrote to his sister Ida the first week of the war, with a passage reading. 'I have had some dreadful anxieties, especially during one sleepless night. Of course the difficulty is with Hitler himself.

'Until he disappears and his system collapses there can be no peace,' the prime minister wrote.

In the US, numerous films and books have been or are being released dealing with the start of the five-year conflict.

Gordon Zuckermann has just brought out a historical novel, 'The Sentinels: Fortunes of War'. In it, he claims that for Americans the war years represented a period of enormous personal glory and sacrifice in which they had 'unselfishly helped the world to liberate itself from the tyranny of fascism'.

In the third and final volume of his non-fiction trilogy on Nazi Germany, titled 'The Third Reich at War', historian Richard Evans depicts the rise and fall of German military might from the onset of the war to its conclusion.

Evans mixes narrative of the war with personal tales from generals, front-line soldiers, Hitler Youth and middle-class housewives in his book.

Numerous World War II-themed movies have also been released during the past 12 months, including the Tom Cruise thriller 'Valkyrie' in which he plays the role of Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg in an abortive 1944 anti-Hitler bomb plot.

Quentin Tarantino's 'Inglorious Basterds', about a group of Jewish American soldiers trained to track down and eliminate Nazis, has just opened for release in Germany.

Earlier this year, Kate Winslet won a Best Actress Oscar for her role in British director Stephen Daldry's war-related movie 'The Reader', based on the book by German writer-historian Bernhard Schlink.