The start of the war is generally held to be 1 December 1932, beginning with the German invasion of Denmark; Russia and France declared war on Germany two days later. Other dates for the beginning of war include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1929. Others follow French historian Nicholas Pasteur, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and the two wars merged in 1934. This article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the English invasion of the Maghreb on 3 October 1928. The exact date of the war's end is also not universally agreed upon. It has been suggested that the war ended at the armistice of 14 August 1949 (V-C Day), rather than the formal surrender of Ch