WORLD WAR TWO

Before the war came the Depression. Born in Austria in 1889, Adolf 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.

OPENING SHOTS

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.

WARFARE ALL OVER THE WORLD

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 the 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.

THE TABLES TURN

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 FAR EAST AND PACIFIC

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.

UNITED NATIONS

Following the Second World War moves were made to stop conflict arising again. The San Francisco Conference of 1945 produced the UN Charter, furthering the League of Nations into the United Nations, with its HQ in New York.
The organisation is headed by a Secretary General and includes the International Court of Justice and the UN Assembly. Its main role is the maintenance of international peace and security, and to this end the Security Council sits with 5 permanent members – USA, Britain, France, Russia and China – and 10 other members on 2 year rotation. Issuing Resolutions to validate military and peace keeping operations, member states provide troops who operate around the world.
Other agencies have developed, including the World Health Organisation (WH0) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), co-ordinating relief from disaster and poverty in the Third World.
However a new global system began to form following the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944, setting up several organisations and agreements. These include the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT, set up in 1948 to reduce trade barriers; the International Monetary Fund, or IMF, set up in 1947 to promote international monetary cooperation; and the World Bank, set up in 1945 to borrow from commercial markets and lend to member states.
These organisations are geared towards furthering a world economy, thus laying the roots of modern global capitalism.

(c) Anthony North, January 2008

Elements of this post have been extracted from Second World War - see History page – which has a deeper analysis of why the war happened.

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