SECOND WORLD WAR

The term, Second World War, is a distraction to what really happened between 1939-45. It was really the second phase of a European civil war, the first phase being World War One. And its roots can be found in philosophy from the 18th century onwards.
There were two main streams of philosophy – empiricism and continental rationalism. Empiricism was individualistic and based on a material world. Principally English, it was taken up by America, and led to the social engineering that produced modern capitalism.
Continental rationalism, on the other hand, was principally holistic, in that it attempted grand designs for society – a secular God-force, if you like. It shunned individuality and placed everything in the power of the state. The outcome was fascism and communism, and an idealised view of man and where he fitted in society. It was the clash of these two ways of life that was the European Civil War.
Phase two – the Second World War – needed a leader to upset the applecart of societies throughout Europe. This was Adolf Hitler. Born in Austria in 1889, Hitler was to take advantage of the Depression that hit Germany in 1930. Blaming the government – the heavily Jewish Weimar Republic – for the disaster, his National Socialist German Worker’s Party, or Nazis, won a majority in the Reichstag, Hitler being made Chancellor in 1933.
Killing all opponents and opening concentration camps for ‘undesirables,’ he took the title, Fuhrer, and inaugurated the Third Reich. Re-occupying the de-militarised Rhineland, in 1937 he moved into Austria and the Sudetanland of Czechoslovakia. Appeased by Chamberlain in September 1938 with the Munich Pact, August 1939 also saw Hitler sign a non-aggression pact with Stalin. Finally, on 1 September 1939, he invaded Poland, beginning the Second World War.
With British troops sent to France, nothing much happened. The period called the ‘phoney war,’ but with Germany’s invasion of Denmark and Norway in April 1940 things hotted up. With Chamberlain standing down in favour of Winston Churchill, May 1940 saw the German Blitzkrieg on Belgium to outflank the French Majinot Line. With forces led by von Runstedt, the German assault was unstoppable, Belgium capitulating and leaving a British army to be evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk.
Britain was left to face the Germans alone, fighting the Battle of Britain in the skies from July to September 1940, thwarting a German invasion. Unable to beat the RAF, Germany turned to a war of attrition, bombing British cities, whilst U-boats attempted to starve Britain by blockading the Atlantic, attacking merchant Shipping. Meanwhile, Italy joined the war, attacking Egypt, and in June 1941 Hitler began Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.
An invasion involving hundreds of Divisions on both sides, by November Leningrad was encircled and Germans were in reach of Moscow. However, the operation stalled as the big freeze came. Meanwhile, German forces under Rommel had joined the Italians and drove British forces into Egypt following battle at Tobruk.
But the Germans had reached as far as they were going. Under Zhukov, Soviet forces turned the siege of Leningrad and in October 1942 Montgomery beat the Germans at El Alemain. By August 1944 Germans were expelled from Soviet soil and by May 1945 the Russians began the siege of Berlin. Similarly, forces under Eisenhower landed at Casablanca in November 1942, linked with the British in April 1943, invaded Sicily in July and liberated Rome by June 1944.
With America joining the war in December 1941, in western Europe the main war effort came with massive bombing raids and aiding the French Resistance, but on 6 June 1944, ‘D’ Day brought an allied landing on the Normandy beaches, with a million troops landed by July.
With British forces taking on resistance in Normandy itself, Americans under Patton swept south, turned, and raced on. By August, Paris was liberated with Montgomery advancing through Holland and Belgium. A German counter offensive through the Ardennes in December was stalled, and in January 1945 the Rhine was crossed at Ramagen and the Ruhr encircled. In May 1945, Germany surrendered.
The Second World War was also fought in the Far East. In the early 20th century Japan faced over-population, complicated further when America forbade Asian immigration in 1924. With Hirohito becoming emperor in 1926, the country turned militaristic and adopted fascism, invading Manchuria in 1931. By 1940 Japan had an ambitious expansionist policy, but were held back by US dominance of the Pacific.
Hence, on 7 December 1941 they launched a surprise attack by carrier-borne forces on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Temporarily crippling the US fleet, they occupied Hong Kong, the Philippines, Solomon Islands, Malaya, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, parts of New Guniea and headed into Burma, threatening both India and Australia.
Under Nimitz and MacArthur, the US combined air, sea and marine forces for a relentless drive against the Japanese, with victories at Coral Sea (1942), Midway Island (June) and Guadalcanal (August). Reconquest of the Philippines followed, a crushing defeat suffered by the Japanese at Leyte Gulf in October 1944, allowing island hopping operations taking the war to Japan itself.
Meanwhile, the British re-occupied Burma by May 1945. On 26 July, the Potsdam Proclamation was made, threatening Japan with total destruction as the Manhattan Project was successful in making an atom bomb. With no response, on 6 August 1945 an atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a second dropped 3 days later on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered, bringing the Second World War to an end.
The Second World War was a seminal moment for much of history. In the Holocaust, Hitler murdered six million Jews. A Zionist movement had already begun to create Israel as a national homeland. The Holocaust fuelled the cause, with all the problems of the Middle East arising from these actions.
Worldwide, the war crippled the British Empire, and with the Soviets triumphant, they took their revolution to many Third World states in the hope of replacing the European empires. Dozens of bush wars were the result of this weakening of Europe due to the war.
With Europe devastated, and Russia and America supreme, the ongoing philosophy clash led to the Cold War, with the two superpowers using Europe as the ideological battleground for their systems of individualism on one side, and communist collectivism on the other.
As for society, a new mood grew following the war that the establishment must never be trusted. Protest and youth movements began, changing the world and bringing new freedoms for women, gays and ethnic minorities. No longer was an offspring a miniature version of the parent, and the outcome was a total move against any form of authority.
As can be seen, the chaos of the present world is principally due to the meddling philosopher who attempted to reshape society without realising what was really involved. The supreme moment of the repercussions of his thoughts was the Second World War. And we are still reeling from it today.

© Anthony North, December 2006