World War II

World War II games are set in World War II, a globe-spanning conflict that occurred from September 1, 1939 to September 2, 1945 (as defined by most historians, though alternate starting dates are sometimes used).

World War II has consistently been one of the most popular settings for war games. Computer Bismarck, the first commercially published computer war game, is a simulation of the Nazi battleship Bismarck's final battle in the Atlantic Ocean during the war and helped popularize the idea of games based on real-world conflicts. Muse Software's Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein popularized the stealth genre, and their successor in Wolfenstein 3D pioneered the first-person shooter genre. World War II continued to be a prominent setting for first-person shooter games years after the genre's inception, with the early Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, and Battlefield games all using the war as a backdrop for gameplay.

World War II games experienced a decline in popularity in the late 2000s, with the success of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare shifting the focus of war games from historical conflicts to modern and even futuristic hypothetical wars. However, beginning in the mid-2010s, World War II would once again become a popular setting for war games, with MachineGames' Wolfenstein games and Sledgehammer Games' Call of Duty: WWII and Call of Duty: Vanguard being set in the war.