World War II

The years following World War I were characterized by a great desire to avoid war. Britain was financially and militarily broken, the United States adopted an isolationist agenda that pulled them out of European affairs, the Soviet Union was concerned with securing Communist rule, and France was trying to recover from the experience of having the front lines of the world’s worse conflict in its backyard. World War I was supposed to have been the “war to end all wars” and many hoped it was just that. Conferences were held and organizations established to help make this hope a reality. The League of Nations was supposed to provide a diplomat arena in which differences could be settled without the sword. The major naval powers, including Britain, the US, Japan, and France met at the Washington Conference to take measures towards arms limitation. France, Germany, and Belgium signed the Locarno Pact agreeing to accept their post-WWI borders. Warfare as a tool of foreign policy was denounced by more than sixty nations who signed the Kellog-Briand Pact. Indeed, it seemed that no one had an appetite for war after 1919. This would change with the rise of fascist governments in Italy and particularly Germany.

The Treaty of Versailles weakened but did not kill Germany and France was more or less alone in monitoring German actions. As stated, Britain was economically and militarily unable to keep tabs on Germany, plus the British felt some guilt for abusing the Germans at the end of the war. The Soviet Union was untrustworthy and concerned with its own internal problems. The US was going through a period of isolationism and was dealing with its Great Depression. This left France and east European states like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Yugoslavia to watch Germany.

Once Hitler had secured his hold on power he almost immediately set about destroying the Treaty of Versailles. The Nazis utilized large doses of propaganda to convince the west that a strong Nazi Germany could be an invaluable defender against Communist Russia. The anti-Communist propaganda, combined with fear of going to war, British guilt over the harsh Treaty of Versailles, and Britain and France’s poor state of preparedness for another war to lead the Allies to a policy of appeasement. A blind eye was turned on every move Hitler made in violation of Versailles in the hopes that he would be appeased. He began rebuilding Germany’s military, the Allies looked away. In March 1936, German troops were sent into the Rhineland, the demilitarized zone created between France and Germany, and the Allies remained idle. Two years later Austria was annexed to Hitler’s Germany. Nazi eyes then fell on Czechoslovakia, which had been given a portion of German territory known as the Sudetenland at the end of the First World War. A conference was held in Munich between Hitler, Mussolini, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and French Premier Deladier. Notice that Czechoslovakia was not represented. The British and French bought Hitler’s pledge that the Sudetenland was his final territorial demand and agreed to allow him to annex it to Germany while they assumed responsibility for Czechoslovakia’s defense. In March 1939 all of Czechoslovakia was taken by Germany and Chamberlain’s claims to have secured “peace in our time” proved to be unfounded.

Poland, who also received German territory at the end of WWI, fell in German sites next. Britain and France announced that they would defend Poland. In August Germany and Russia signed a non-aggression pact, removing the major impediment to a German invasion: fear of Russian retaliation. With the Russian non-aggression pledge, Hitler was free to take Poland and on September 1, 1939 German troops entered Polish territory. Soon afterwards Britain and France declared war and World War II began.

The German military turned its attention to the west with the fall of Poland. Hitler’s intentions were to defeat France and Britain and then turn on the Soviets. Dissatisfaction with Chamberlain’s appeasement policy after the fall of Norway became so great as to drive him from office. He would be replaced by Winston Churchill who proved himself to be one of the greatest leaders of men in history. In May 1940 an offensive was launched against the Dutch countries and France. On June 22 the French surrender was singed in the same railway car that the Treaty of Versailles was signed in. The fall of France left only Britain to stand against Hitler and in August 1940 the German Luftwaffe was unleashed on Britain. Despite continual bombardment and heavy losses, the British refused to surrender and the Royal Air Force punished the Luftwaffe with every raid into British air space.

Hitler grew impatient with dealing with the British and elected to open a second front, invading Russia, rather than wait for British capitulation to do so. Operation Barbarossa was delayed over a month which was significant in that it brought the Russian winter one month closer. On June 22, 1941 German troops began the invasion of the Soviet Union. Early on things went as well as they could for the Germans. They drove deep into Soviet territory; killed, wounded, or captured over 2.5 million Soviet soldiers; and destroyed 14,000 tanks, all in just over three months. Then the weather began to change, and with it the tide of battle.

When autumn came it brought massive rains that turned Russian roads into muddy quagmires in which German equipment sank and became stuck. Autumn gave way to winter and the situation grew more dire for German troops. They had stretched their supply lines, were ill-equipped for cold weather fighting, were no used to the Russian winter, and were exhausted from the blitzkrieg assault.

Six months after Operation Barbarossa began, events on the other side of the globe helped swing the war in favor of the Allies. In response to the freezing of their assets by the US, the imperialistic Japanese attacked the US naval fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The US had essentially cut off Japan’s oil supplies when Japan refused to withdraw from China and signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. The Japanese goal in the attack was to hamper the US fleet long enough to allow them to consolidate their positions. The attack did hamper US ability to fight temporarily but drug the US into the war when the major preference of the US public was to stay out of it.

At the Battle of Midway Island the US fleet swung the tide of battle in the Pacific. Japan lost four aircraft carriers (all of which had been involved in the Pearl Harbor attack) and 322 planes. Such major losses ended Japan’s ability to fight an offensive campaign and forced them into a defensive war. With Japanese expansion checked in the Pacific, the US turned its attention to helping the allies defeat Germany.

Stalin had urged Churchill and Roosevelt to open a second front to ease pressure on his armies in Russia. Churchill preferred to hit the Germans in the periphery to soften them up rather than risk a full frontal assault on Europe. A British and US offensive was opened in North Africa where Italian and German troops had established themselves. By May 1943 the German armies had been driven out of North Africa and the way lay open to an invasion of the “soft underbelly of the Axis” as Churchill referred to it: Italy. Allied troops landed in Italy and began an offensive that became bogged down around halfway up the boot. Mussolini was driven from power during the Allied invasion and at the end of April 1945 he was captured and executed by Italians, his body put on display.

On June 6, 1944 a massive landing force of Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy. D-Day, the invasion of the European continent had begun. Nearly 3 million soldiers had been accumulated in Britain in preparation for the invasion. The Germans knew it was coming but believed it would come at Calais (the shortest difference between Britain and the European continent) rather than Normandy. Allied soldiers successfully established a beachhead at Normandy with the support of French freedom fighters and allied paratroopers who had been dropped behind German lines under cover of darkness. The beginning of the end had come and Allied troops continued to press closer to Germany from both the east and the west.

On April 30, 1945, Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, committed suicide after killing their dog in a bunker under the streets of Berlin. Germany submitted to unconditional surrender on Mary 7^th. Hitler and Mussolini were dead, Germany and Italy had been defeated but Japan was still kicking.

Following the victory at Midway Island the US embarked on an “island hopping” campaign to drive the Japanese back to their home islands, island by island. The closer US forces got to the home islands, the harder the Japanese fought. At Iwo Jima the US fought the bloodiest battle in US naval history, culminating in the photograph and eventual statue of six marines raising the flag over the island. Plans were made for an invasion of the home islands and projections made of the death toll such an invasion would take. All of these calculations proved pointless in early August when the world’s first atomic bomb used in combat was dropped on Hiroshima.

The US and Britain learned as early as 1939 that the Germans were working on harnessing the power of the atom for destructive purposes. In 1941 the US began its own atomic bomb research program, code named: Manhattan Project. Scientists and engineers around the nation worked on separate projects that, when brought together, created an atomic bomb. Most had no idea of what they were building and after a couple of years and $2 billion the project was a success. In July 1945 the first atomic bomb was successfully tested over the desert at Alamagordo, New Mexico. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the lead physicist for the Manhattan Project, turned to those witnessing the detonation with him and quoted the Hindu God Vishnu: “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds”.

Only three bombs were constructed and the test left two for use. President Harry Truman issued an ultimatum to the Japanese to surrender or face total annihilation. On August 6^th when no reply came a B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, was dispatched to the skies over Hiroshima carrying a large bomb with the words “Little Boy” painted on its side. The bomb detonated in the skies over the city of 200,000 so as to maximize the effectiveness of the blast. Virtually the entire city was destroyed and death tolls range from 80,000 to 100,000. Again the US waited for the Japanese to capitulate to unconditional surrender and when no word was forthcoming on August 9^th, a second bomb, this one named “Fat Man” was dropped on the city of Nagasaki killing another 80,000-100,000 bringing Japan to its knees. The war was over but left a haunting legacy in its wake.

World War I had been the war to end all wars but that lofty goal was not met. World War II left many questions and pointed out many disturbing facets of human civilization. Millions had been killed in the war and billions of dollars in property was lost, stolen, and destroyed. The war opened the doors of the atomic age and Cold War that kept mankind living in fear of a nuclear holocaust for four decades. The events of the Nazi holocaust forced humankind to open its eyes to the fine line between civilization and barbarism. Disbelieving people were forced to acknowledge mankind’s amazing capacity for ugliness, cruelty, hatred, and destruction and the ideas of human goodness and continual progress of civilization were destroyed forever.