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From New World Encyclopedia
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World Map with the participants in World War II
The Allied Powers were a group of countries (also known as the Allies of World War II) that consisted of those nations opposed to the Axis Powers during the Second World War. Initially, as war broke out in Europe, Adolf Hitler's Germany, with its expansionist ideology, was opposed by Great Britain, her dominions and colonies, and by France. When France fell, Britain and her overseas possessions and former colonies were more or less alone in opposition to Hitler until the Soviet Union and the United States entered the war. The Second World War's opposing alliances pitted strong democracies against totalitarian regimes. The conflict and the two sets of alliances can be seen as representing a struggle between freedom and tyranny, although there was some movement between the two alliances. For example, Italy, Hungary, and Romania were among those nations that switched from Axis to the Allied Powers towards the end of the war. This was less because they wanted to side with the victors than because they had been initially coerced into joining the Axis Powers. Members of the Provisional Government for Free India joined the Axis, fighting with Japanese forces more to express its opposition to Britain's colonial rule than because it saw Japan as a natural ally.