Download 20 WWII

Chapter 20
World War II and the Early Cold War
I. Countdown to War
Popular history often dates the roots of World War II to the aggressive activities of Japan, Italy and
Germany in the 1930s, but in reality World War II was really just the conclusion – or, perhaps better said,
the continuation of World War I, especially when the Cold War is considered. Simply put: problems
created by the unjust peace of 1919 festered until they exploded into a second total war.
We noted in the last chapter that on her path to industrialization Japan had become infected with
imperialism and sought to control all of East Asia. In 1894 Japan had defeated China; in 1905 Japan
decisively defeated Russia and in 1910 she formally annexed Korea. Japan joined the allies in World War
I and gobbled up the German Pacific colonies; then in January of 1915, the Japanese presented the
Chinese government with Twenty-one “Secret” Demands, which would have made China a Japanese
protectorate. The Chinese wisely leaked the “secret demands” to the British and the United States; and
Japan’s ambitions were mostly thwarted. Hypocritically, Japan was “disappointed” with the Paris Peace
Treaties because, like Italy, she felt ignored and did not get all that she wanted (i.e. China). When the
emperor Taisho died in 1926, the elite, upper-classes reasserted an oligarchic control and Japan looked for
new areas of conquest. Moreover, the Great Depression which crippled Japanese international trade also
fired up the right wing Kita Ikki party whose imperialistic slogan “Asia for Asians” was code for the
expulsion of Euro-American colonizing powers and Japanese expansion of political influence throughout
all East Asia.
In 1931 the Japanese clandestinely (covertly) blew up railroad tracks owned by Japan's South Manchuria
Railway near Mukden in southern Manchuria. The Japanese blamed Chinese dissidents for this Mukden
Incident and used it as a pretext to invade Manchuria and rename the country Manchukuo. The following
year, the Japanese set up a puppet government under Henry Puyi, the “last emperor” who had been
deprived of his throne in 1912 and driven out of the Forbidden City in 1924. In spite of the fact that China
did not recognize Manchukuo and the League of Nations declared that Manchukuo was rightfully part of
China, nothing was done and Japan contemptuously (with scorn) resigned from the League of Nations.
Japan then colonized Manchukuo and used it as a staging area for its later invasion of China.
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After Hitler gained control of Germany in 1933, he withdrew from the League of Nations and by 1935
was openly rebuilding the German military which had been disarmed by the Versailles Treaty. France and
Great Britain met this defiance with only mild protests. They had been economically crippled by the Great
Depression and desperately feared another world war and blood bath. And so they did almost nothing to
stand up to Hitler as he continued to violate the Treaty and began to make territorial demands. Also in
1935 Mussolini, seeking the imagined glory of ancient Rome, invaded Ethiopia. The world was shocked
and outraged; the League of Nations condemned Mussolini and imposed sanctions, but the sanctions were
not enforced. This weakness by the Western Democracies convinced Hitler and Mussolini that France and
Great Britain would not fight and brought the two dictators closer together.
Stalin was scared of German rearmament and concluded an alliance with France. One of the alliances’
chief agreements was that both nations would protect Czechoslovakia and Poland from German
aggression. This policy came to be called Collective Security. It is interesting that as Stalin signed the
Collective Security treaty, he was conducting his Great Purge which murdered most of his senior
bureaucrats and military leadership. He would almost lose the war in 1941 because of the Great Purge.
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In 1936, Hitler again violated the Versailles Treaty and sent his army into the Rhineland, which was
adjacent to France and supposed to remain demilitarized. Again, France and Great Britain protested, but
took no action; and again Hitler remained convinced that Great Britain and France would not fight. Two
other ominous events took place in 1936: Mussolini completed the conquest of Ethiopia and the Spanish
Civil War broke out. The Spanish Civil War began with Francisco Franco’s military uprising against
the democratically elected, left-leaning (pro-communist) government. Mussolini and Hitler helped him and
Stalin helped the government or republican forces. Britain and France failed to help the republican forces
and that deeply embittered Stalin, so that he came to mistrust the Western democracies. More than
600,000 people would be killed before Franco won in 1939. Ironically, Franco never joined the Axis and
remained neutral in WWII. Franco would remain in power in Spain until his death in 1975.
In 1937 the Japanese military gained control of the government; then, having provoked a battle at the
Marco Polo Bridge in Beijing, Japan began a full-scale invasion of China proper, seizing much of the
coastline. Terrible atrocities were committed, including the Rape of Nanjing in which hundreds of
thousands of Chinese civilians were tortured, raped, used for bayonet practice or otherwise killed. The
danger was so great the Guomindang and the Communists called a truce and agreed to fight the Japanese.
Although they took heavy losses, they pinned down half of the Japanese army. Later in 1937, Germany,
Italy and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact pledging to oppose international communism. With this
treaty they become known as the Axis Powers. Hitler also began to make public his desire for
Lebensraum (“living space”) for Germany. Specifically, he wanted to create a larger Germany by annexing
neighboring territories with German minorities.
Then in March of 1938, Germany – in a rigged election – annexed the nation of Austria in the Anschluss
(union), justifying his action as an attempt to unite all Germans into a single homeland. Britain and France
again made the situation worse by doing nothing. Their inaction made Hitler more popular than ever in
Germany and again convinced Hitler that France and Britain would not fight, no matter what.
So in September of the same year, Hitler announced his plan to take over the Sudetenland. This territory,
formerly Germany’s, had been given to Czechoslovakia after World War I. More than three million
Germans lived there. After a serious war scare, Mussolini and Hitler met with Neville Chamberlain
(Britain) and Edouard Daladier (France) in Munich. The Czechs and Russians were not invited. Driven by
Pacifism (opposition to war brought on by the horrors of World War I), Britain and France agreed to let
Germany have the Sudetenland in exchange for Hitler’s promise to expand no further. Chamberlain called
this Peace in Our Time; more realistic western leaders called it appeasement. But whatever it was
called, Peace in our time, destroyed Collective Security, angered Stalin, betrayed the Czechs and
continued to make Hitler believe that the West was afraid to fight. This was appeasement at its worst.
Winston Churchill quipped an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
In early 1939, Germany suddenly absorbed the rest of Czechoslovakia and appeasement was unmasked as
a way to ensure aggression and destroy any chance for peace. Hitler’s promises were shown to be
worthless and he soon took western Lithuania while Mussolini invaded Albania. Then in mid 1939, Hitler
began to make claims on Polish territory that had formerly belonged to Germany. Realizing that this is
where Hitler would next move, France and Britain promised to guarantee Poland’s safety. In August,
wishing to avoid a two-front war, Hitler stunned the world by signing a non-aggression pact with Stalin
and the Soviet Union. The Nazi-Soviet Pact kept the USSR neutral and gave Stalin Eastern Poland and
the Baltic countries as a Russian Sphere of Influence. More importantly, it opened the way for Hitler to
invade Poland. On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland; France and Great Britain finally found their
nerve, but World War II had begun.
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II. The War
The war opened with Germany using Blitzkrieg or Lightening War tactics to overwhelm Poland in less
than a month. Blitzkrieg coordinated air power with fast moving tanks (panzers) and mobile infantry to
strike hard at an enemy and rely on speed and surprise to prevent the enemy from implementing any
coherent (coordinated) defense. Meanwhile Russia invaded and occupied eastern Poland.
Then came a six month period of time known as the Phony War, in which both sides rested and prepared
for the next campaign. The battle for control of the seas, however, did intensify during this period.
German U-boats (submarines) began the Battle of the Atlantic. From September 1st the Germans and the
British engaged in Unrestricted Submarine Warfare as both sides were determined to starve their
opponent. The British Royal Navy again blockaded Germany.
In April 1940 the Phony War ended as Germany used Blitzkrieg again. First they struck at Norway and
conquered it. Then in May they followed von Schlieffen’s plan with added Blitzkrieg; what had failed in
1914, succeeded beyond all expectation. The Netherlands and Belgium collapsed. The Germans raced
around the allies and by late May had the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) trapped between their Panzers
and the sea. In the Miracle of Dunkirk the British rescued a third of a million men from the beaches of
Dunkirk. Had they failed, the war might have ended in 1940. Undeterred by the British escape, Germany
continued its sweep behind Paris and France was quickly overwhelmed. France signed an armistice with
Germany on 22 June 1940, leading to the establishment of the Vichy France puppet government in the
unoccupied part of France. Then, in June 1940, as France was signing the instrument of surrender in the
same railroad car in which the Germans had surrendered in 1918, Italy joined the war and the Soviet
Union quietly and brutally occupied Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.
Great Britain was determined to fight on alone as Germany turned its attention to the subjugation of Great
Britain in a great plan called Operation Sea Lion. The first step necessary was for the Luftwaffe or
German Air Force to secure control of the air over Britain by defeating the Royal Air Force. The war
between the two air forces became known as the Battle of Britain. The Luftwaffe initially targeted
military targets but in September, after a British air raid on Berlin, Hitler (in a ferocious temper tantrum)
switched from military targets to civilian centers and the Luftwaffe turned to terror bombing London and
other cities. This tactic was called the Blitz. Hitler’s tactical mistake gave the hard pressed Royal Air
Force time to regroup so that Germans failed to defeat it or gain control over the skies of Great Britain;
and so Operation Sea Lion was postponed and eventually cancelled. However, the civilian price paid was
enormous as German air raids on British cities killed 40,000 civilians.
Just before the Battle of Britain began, Winston Churchill was appointed Prime Minister. He was sixty
five years old and had already had an exciting life. As a young lieutenant, he was at Omdurman in the
Sudan in 1898. In World War I he was the First Sea Lord but lost his job after the Dardanelles fiasco
which he had helped to plan. During the interwar years most observers felt that his career was over, even
though he was elected and re-elected to Parliament. From Hitler’s taking power onward, he warned about
the dangers of pacificism and appeasement. When the war began, he was again made First Sea Lord.
When made Prime Minister, his first speech was made famous with these immortal words "I have nothing
to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat". He followed this speech with two equally famous ones, given
just before the Battle of Britain. One included these immortal words, "We shall defend our island,
whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall
fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." The other,
"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its
Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.”
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In September 1940, the North African Campaign began when Italian forces in Libya attacked British
forces in Egypt. The aim was to make Egypt an Italian possession, especially the vital Suez Canal east of
Egypt. The British stopped the Italians, but German forces (known later as the Afrika Korps under General
Erwin Rommel) landed in Libya and renewed the assault on Egypt. Italy invaded Greece on October 28,
1940 from bases in Albania. Greek forces successfully repelled the Italian attacks and launched a fullscale counter-attack deep into Albania. By mid-December the Greeks had occupied one-fourth of Albania.
Hitler then came to Mussolini’s aid and his Blitzkrieg overwhelmed Yugoslavia and smashed Greek
resistance; even capturing the island of Crete.
Then, on June 22, 1941, in Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in history, Hitler betrayed his
“ally” Stalin and three German army groups of over three million men, advanced rapidly into the Soviet
Union, destroying almost the entire western Soviet army in huge battles of encirclement. Churchill (quite
aware of Stalin’s treachery) nevertheless made common cause and began to send supplies to help Russia.
The Soviets prepared for a long war. As in 1812, they practiced a scorched earth policy destroying grain
and livestock ahead of Hitler’s armies; and they dismantled as much industry as possible which they
moved beyond the Ural Mountains for reassembly. But like Napoleon, Hitler was unable to conquer
Moscow or Leningrad by winter (which was the worst in twenty years). The Germans were so sure of
victory they did not supply for winter, but the Russians were prepared. So the war bogged down.
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Then in December 1941, the Japanese attacked the American Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and America
entered the war. Japanese aggression against China in 1937 angered Americans, but when Japan occupied
French Indo China (after France fell) America froze Japanese assets in the United States and imposed a
complete embargo on oil which crippled Japanese industry. This convinced the Japanese militarist
government dominated by Hideki Tojo that war was the only solution and so Japan struck on December
7th. Although the damage at Pearl Harbor was severe and many ships were sunk and aircraft destroyed, the
Japanese missed catching the American aircraft carriers in the raid and did not destroy Pearl Harbor’s
repair and maintenance facilities, thus making it easy for the Americans to recover in a very short time.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the charismatic American president who had won an unprecedented third
term as president in 1940 who (with many Americans) clearly saw the danger of Axis military expansion. In
March 1941, Roosevelt, masterminded the Lend Lease Program, which sold arms and supplies to Great
Britain. In August, Churchill and Roosevelt met in the North Atlantic and issued the Atlantic Charter
established a vision for a post-World War II world, despite the fact the United States had not yet entered
the war. Then, after Pearl Harbor, in late December in Washington, Roosevelt and Churchill (who along
with Stalin were called the Big Three) agreed that Hitler was a bigger threat than Japan and that most of their
efforts should be against Hitler. It is important to note that they were so afraid of Hitler (as well they should
have been!) that they were willing to make common cause with a tyrant and butcher like Josef Stalin.
Moreover, America became, in Roosevelt’s words, the Arsenal for Democracy and huge numbers of
weapons and supplies poured into Great Britain and Russia. Thus like World War I, it would be the
industrial and military might of the United States that would turn the tide of the war in favor of the allies.
1942 would prove to be the pivotal year of the war or the year the tide turned. First, the Allies survived
and began to dominate the Battle of the Atlantic as they got more and more ships through to Great Britain
and Russia. During 1940 and 1941 the German U-boats had sunk millions of tons of shipping the situation
was reaching a point where Great Britain was close to being starved out. But in the desperate and brutal
Battle of the Atlantic in 1942 American industrial might turned out an enormous number of Liberty Ships
(simply made but effective transports) which were built faster than the Germans could destroy them – and
allied naval vessels were sinking increasing numbers of U-boats. The Battle of the Atlantic wasn’t yet
won, but the tide was turning.
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Second, in June 1942, the Japanese were defeated at the Battle of Midway and put on the defensive. After
Pearl Harbor Japan invaded and overwhelmed the Philippines and the British colonies of Hong Kong,
Malaya, Borneo, and Burma intending to seize the rich oilfields of the Dutch East Indies. The British
island fortress of Singapore was captured in what Churchill considered one of the most humiliating
British defeats of all time. However in early May, American aircraft carriers frustrated a Japanese invasion
of New Guinea in The Battle of the Coral Sea which was the first successful American opposition to the
Japanese since Pearl Harbor and the first naval battle in history to be fought entirely by aircraft launched
by aircraft carriers – and the first naval battle in history in which opposing ships never sighted each other.
A month later on June 4th, American carrier-based dive-bombers sank four of Japan's best aircraft carriers
in the Battle of Midway. The Americans also had a secret weapon, a code breaking operation known as
Magic which allowed them to read Japanese naval codes and know the Japanese plan of attack.
Third, by the end of the year the Germans suffered a massive defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad. When
Germany launched its spring offensive in Russia in 1942, Hitler’s generals wanted to break through and
take Moscow but Hitler chose to attack in the south towards the Caucasus to secure its rich oil fields. By
August the Germans had reached the city of Stalingrad and in a horrific battle took 90% of the city by
November. Then winter set in. The German generals wanted to pull back and regroup. In an enormous
blunder, Hitler refused to retreat. The Russians then besieged the Germans and in February 1943 over a
million German soldiers surrendered. Although the Germans were far from defeated, the tide had turned.
Fourth, the allies began attacks in the South Pacific and North Africa. Even though the destruction of
Hitler’s Germany was given top priority, the first counter attack against the Axis by the Americans took
place on August 7th when American Marines landed on the island of Guadalcanal. For the rest of 1942
the fighting was brutal and American naval losses were appalling, but by February 1943 the Japanese had
abandoned the island. Although quite small in comparison to other battles of the war, Guadalcanal was
important because it stopped the Japanese push towards the Dutch East Indies and, with Midway, put the
Japanese on the defensive.
Then in November, British General Bernard Montgomery won the Battle of El Alamein in Egypt and
pushed the Africa Korps back to Libya. American Army forces attacked North Africa. Although receiving
less French help than was anticipated, the Americans, after an initial defeat at Kasserine Pass, pushed the
Afrika Korps back into Tunisia and the advancing British Army. On May 13th, 1943, the Afrika Korps
with almost a quarter of million men surrendered.
In 1943 the war turned in favor of the allies. Russia had taken enormous casualties but with American
war materials arriving in increasing quantities, began to push back the Axis army. After their victory at
Stalingrad, the Red Army surprised the Germans and launched eight offensives during the winter, which
resulted in initial gains until German forces were able to take advantage of the weakened condition of the
Red Army and regain the territory it lost. In July, the Germans launched a much-delayed offensive in the
Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle of the war, which ended in a massive Soviet counter-offensive that
threw the exhausted German forces back. After Kursk the Germans were on the defensive for the rest of
the war. By November the Russians had retaken Kiev and by Christmas Eve were at the Polish border.
After the defeat of Rommel in North Africa, the allies conquered Sicily which led to the collapse of the
fascist regime. On 25 July Mussolini was fired from office by the King of Italy and arrested. Then, on
September 3, the allies invaded Italy and the Italian government surrendered. The Germans, however,
were easily able to take over the struggle and fought the allied advances up the Italian Peninsula. Hitler
rescued his friend Mussolini and helped him set up a fascist puppet state in Northern Italy.
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In 1943 the Battle of the Atlantic also turned in favor the allies. American destroyers and escort carriers
helped allied conveys make the North Atlantic run safely and sank increasing numbers of U-boats. Now
the Germans were loosing submarines faster than they could build them.
In the Pacific, the United States took the offensive with “Island Hopping” as their principal strategy. The
object was to isolate Japanese outposts and move to striking distance of the Philippines and Japan.
The first of these operations took place on the island of Tarawa on November 20th. In four days of intense
fighting almost 5.000 Japanese and 1,000 Americans died before the Americans won the tiny island.
Island Hopping might have been effective strategically and might have sounded like an easy strategy but
the cost in human lives was appalling.
1944 signaled the beginning of the end for Japan and Germany. The Russians relieved the siege of
Leningrad and all along the Eastern Front the Russians pushed the Germans back toward Germany.
On June 4th, Rome fell and the allies began the invasion of Northern Italy. On June 6th, the British and
Americans, under the command of future president Dwight D. Eisenhower, opened their main (D-day)
attack in Normandy on the French coast, then overcame stubborn German resistance and swept across
France toward Germany in a steady, bloody but victorious push. On August 15th, the Americans invaded
Southern France. Paris was liberated on August 25th. The Russians mounted huge summer offensives and
the Germans were quickly being caught in a pincer trap. By December 1944, Germany was being invaded
from east and west.
Just before Christmas 1944, the Germans launched a desperate offensive (their first winter offensive since
the days of Frederick the Great) in the West called the Battle of the Bulge hoping to drive a wedge between
allied forces and gain a favorable peace. General George Patton’s Third Army rallied the American
forces and aided by allied air power the American army pushed the Germans back across the Rhine and all
but finished the German army by mid January, 1945.
1944 saw a string of Island Hopping actions in the Pacific along with enormous naval victories over the
vanishing Japanese navy. Allied submarines and aircraft attacked Japanese merchant shipping, depriving
Japan's industry of the raw materials it had gone to war to obtain. In 1944 submarines sank three million
tons of shipping while the Japanese built less than 1 million tons. In June/July the island of Saipan fell
and in the First Battle of the Philippine Sea the Americans aircraft carriers destroyed the Japanese naval
air arm. So overwhelming was American air power that the battle was compared to a massacre known as
the Marianas Turkey Shoot.
Then three months later the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which accompanied the American invasion of the
Philippines, was fought between October 23rd and 26th and was arguably the largest naval battle in history
and ended in a tremendous American victory – in effect destroying the remainder of the Japanese navy.
Leyte Gulf saw the first Kamikaze (Japanese suicide planes) strikes.
1945 was the end for the Axis. In January, the Russians launched an enormous offensive aimed at Berlin.
The Americans and British regrouped and crossed the Rhine in March and sliced across a prostrate
Germany. The Western allies stopped at the Elbe River and allowed the Russians to take Berlin. Hitler
committed suicide on April 30th, and Germany surrendered on May 6, 1945, also known as V E Day.
In 1945 the United States captured the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and used them as bases to bomb
Japanese cities doing unbelievable damage, especially in fire bombing raids. The Americans realized that
Japanese cities were mainly of wood construction so incendiary or fire bombing was much more effective
than conventional high explosives bombing. The firebombing of Tokyo in March of 1945 alone destroyed
one-fourth of the city, killed one-hundred thousand people and made more than a million homeless.
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By mid-1945, Japan was beaten and knew it, but its military leaders still refused to surrender. Then, as the
American were planning an invasion of Japan itself, there appeared a new and terrible weapon, the Atomic
Bomb or A-bomb. When President Roosevelt died in April of 1945, the new president, Harry Truman,
was told about this secret new weapon. He decided to use to save lives, American and ironically Japanese.
So on August 6th, an American B 29 Bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Three Days later another Atomic Bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The emperor Hirohito quickly
intervened and forced the military to surrender on the August 15th, also known as V J Day.
III. Life during Wartime
Like World War One technology gave an entirely new horror to civilian populations. The heavy and
sustained bombing of London and other English cities in 1940 was only a taste of the bombing horrors to
come during the war for both sides. From the beginning of the war the British bombed German cities,
usually at night and with the intent to demoralize if not kill the population. When American joined the war
they began sustained and heavy daylight bombing of German military cities. Although the Americans
were more discriminate in avoiding civilian centers, many German civilians were killed. Many American
generals also believed that the war could be won by strategic bombing. Reprisal bombing however was a
characteristic of the war. The British reprisal firebombing of Dresden in February 1945 literally
destroyed the entire center of the city and incinerated about 135,000 civilians. Although not strictly
reprisal in nature, the Americans used fire bombing on Japanese cities (Tokyo in March 1945) to break the
Japanese will to fight as much as to cripple their war machine. It is interesting to note that for British,
German and Japanese civilians, sustained aerial bombing did not usually destroy morale.
Later in the war the Germans developed their wonder weapons or the V1 and V2 flying bombs. The
former was a like a primitive cruise missile of today that flew with a single jet engine which was
programmed to stop flying over Dutch and British populated centers. The British knew it was falling when
they heard its jet engine stop. The British nicknamed them Buzz Bombs. The V2 was a true sub-orbital
missile that flew high into the stratosphere and then crashed back to earth at supersonic speeds. The V2
not only delivered much more explosive force, they also were unable to be shot down like the slow
moving V1. Both of these weapons were vengeance weapons to try to destroy the morale of the British
people. Of course, the most deadly weapon developed in World War II was the Atomic Bomb which not
only ended the war, but helped to shape the nature of the Cold War and still shapes our world today.
In addition to the dangers of the war for the civilian populations, there were also problems that stemmed
from conquest in Axis occupied nations. Following the example of Machukuo the Japanese set up puppet
governments in Burma, the Philippines and parts of China. The Kingdom of Thailand allied itself with
Japan was rewarded with neighboring territory. Others areas like Borneo, New Guinea, Hong Kong,
Singapore, Indo China and Malaya came under direct military rule.
In Europe Hitler’s racist attitudes dominated the way in which occupied areas were treated. Denmark,
Holland and Norway were allowed to keep their governmental apparatus with Nazi supervision because
they were Germanic stock. Although Northern France was occupied by military rule, much of France was
governed by the puppet Vichy government which openly cooperated with the Germans. In non Gallic and
Germanic countries the Germans adopted more intolerant attitudes, especially in Slavic countries whose
occupants Hitler considered sub human.
But whatever kind of administration in whatever country the Germans and the Japanese exploited their
conquered lands for their own benefit. They pillaged all forms of economic wealth to fuel their war
machines. The worst was the widespread use of slave labor drawn from prisoners of war and members of
the local populations, especially Jews, Gypsies and Slavs in Europe and Chinese and Koreans in Asia.
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Most of these slave laborers worked under terrible and inhumane conditions not unlike the more vile days
of the African slave trade plantations. Although the majority of people in occupied lands were relatively
unaffected in their daily lives and despised their conquerors, many like the Thai government and Vichy
France, openly allied themselves with the Axis leaders and became collaborators.
The reasons for collaboration were varied, but the most important was power. Local bureaucrats and
police often collaborated because they profited handsomely. Still others collaborated to gain the power to
get revenge on their enemies. Many Belgians, Dutch, Norwegians, French and Danes who hated
Communism collaborated by joining certain Waffen SS or German elite military units in order to fight the
Bolsheviks. In China several Guomindang generals, merchants and landowners profited handsomely from
collaboration.
But there were also many who resisted their conquerors and resistance took many forms, the most
common being sabotage, armed insurrection or ambush and assassination. Other resisters gathered
intelligence data for the allied powers. Still others hid and protected refugees or Jews or escaped allied
prisoners of war. Others ran underground newspapers. The simplest acts could send the powerful message
of defiance such as walking out of restaurants when the enemy entered or writing anti-German graffiti on
walls. The Dutch, remembering their heritage of the House of Orange, saluted when signal lights turned
from green to orange.
In Japan itself there was little resistance to the policies of the state, but in Germany there was a resistance
movement. German resistance leaders had to be careful and their efforts were sporadic and scattered. Yet
there were clergy who dared to defy the Nazis including German Catholic bishop August von Galen who
publically preached against euthanasia, Gestapo terror, forced sterilization, and concentration camps; and
the Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer who opposed euthanasia and the Final Solution. Bishop Galen
was so popular that Hitler did not dare arrest him but Bonhoeffer was put into a concentration camp and
executed less than a month before the war ended.
The German Officer Corps contained many who despised the “Austrian Corporal” without whose blunders
Germany might have won the war. On July 20th, 1944 a group of officers with some civilians tried to kill
Hitler. The bomb in his bunker went off, but did not seriously injure Hitler. The reprisals were far
reaching and horrible with many of the conspirators dying while suspended from meat hooks or strangled
with piano wire.
Obviously occupation forces did not hesitate to retaliate. In 1942 when Czech resistance assassinated
Reinhard Heydrich, a major leader in the SS, the Nazis destroyed the entire village of Lidice. All 179
men and older boys in the village were shot; the women were taken to concentration camps where they
died and the children were dispersed throughout Germany to be raised as Nazis. Eight hundred Chinese
laborers working in Japan escaped from a small Japanese town of Hanaoka. The townspeople eagerly
joined the police and military in hunting them down. At least fifty were tortured to death, beaten by
civilians and soldiers as they hung by their thumbs from the ceiling of the town hall.
The Holocaust was the systematic state-sponsored persecution and genocide of Jews, Gypsies (or Roma),
Slavs, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and other “undesirables”. The Jews were the principal target as
historically they had often been blamed throughout Europe for bad times or just for being different. Hitler
blamed the Jews (along with the Communists) for the defeat of Germany in World War I. And so, starting
in 1933, the Nazis set up concentration camps within Germany, run by local authorities, to hold political
prisoners and "undesirables". After the war began, the concentration camps became places where these
enemies of the Nazis, especially the Jews, were either killed or forced to act as slave laborers, and kept
undernourished and tortured. In major cities outside Germany, the Nazis created ghettos in which Jews
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were confined, until they were eventually shipped to death camps to be exterminated. The Warsaw
Ghetto was the largest, holding some 380,000 people. Before the Death Camps were set and began the
systemic murders, the Germans formed Einsatzgruppen or special military units whose sole purpose was
to kill undesirables; it is estimated they killed a million and a half Jews in open air shootings along with
thousands of communists and Poles.
In December 1941, the Nazis opened the first extermination camps, dedicated entirely to mass
extermination on an industrial scale, as opposed to the labor or concentration camps. Over three million
Jews would die in these extermination camps. The method of killing at these camps was by poison gas
usually in "gas chambers" disguised as showers. The bodies of those killed being destroyed in crematoria,
after which their ashes were buried or scattered.
By late 1941 the Nazi leaders had decided on their Final Solution or the eradication (systematic murder)
of every Jew living in Europe. At the Wannsee Conference in January of 1942, fifteen Nazi leaders
gathered to form plans to implement the Final Solution. The goal was to round up Jews and deport them to
forced labor and ultimate extermination camps in Eastern Poland. Upon arrival in these camps, prisoners
were divided into two groups: those too weak for work were immediately executed in gas chambers
(which were sometimes disguised as showers) and their bodies burned, while others were first used for
slave labor in factories or industrial enterprises located in the camp or nearby. The Nazis also forced some
prisoners to work in the collection and disposal of corpses. Gold teeth and silver fillings were extracted
from the corpses. Live men’s and women's hair, along with shoes, stockings, and anything else of value
was taken from prisoners and recycled for use in products to support the war effort. The largest of these
camps was at Auschwitz where over one million people were exterminated.
The Jews sometimes fought back. Thousands of Jews joined partisan guerilla forces. The most famous
uprising was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of 1943. Sixty thousand Jews rose up against
their German masters. It took the Germans three weeks of fighting to crush the uprising. In all, almost six
million Jews were killed by the Nazis in World War II.
After the war German and Japanese atrocities did not go unnoticed or unpunished. All during the war, the
allies knew that the Nazis were guilty of atrocities, but when Germany was occupied the full horror of
extermination and genocide was uncovered. On November 20, 1945, the Nuremburg Trials began the
prosecution of twenty top Nazi leaders were tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity and lasted
for ten months. This and subsequent trials not only exposed the inhuman evil of Nazi aggression and
genocide – and brought many murderers to justice, but also demonstrated that such activities had now
become areas for international remediation and prosecution.
The Japanese human rights record was no less dismal. Beginning with the Rape of Nanjing, the war saw
Japanese inhumane indifference directed at both civilians and military prisoners. Perhaps the most
infamous of these atrocities was the Bataan Death March after American forces surrendered in the
Philippines. The Japanese also with systematic horror forcibly recruited 300,000 Asian women (from 14
to 20) to serve as Comfort Women for Japanese soldiers. They were a combination of servants and
enslaved prostitutes. Eighty percent came from Korea, but Chinese, Manchurian and Philippine women
were also conscripted. They were forced to service up to twenty men a night and assigned menial chores
by day. At the end of the war the Japanese massacred large numbers of these unfortunate women to cover
up their crimes. Even worse Comfort women who survived were often shunned by their families because
of the old “Double Standard.”
In May 1946 Japanese War Crimes’ Trials began. Both German and Japanese leaders had been guilty of
waging aggressive war and war crimes and atrocities, but the Japanese were particularly brutal in their
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treatment of prisoners of war. The Japanese believed that surrender was cowardly so they were
particularly harsh and cruel to Prisoners of War. It is sobering realize that only 4% of the 235, 000 British
and American POWs died in German captivity, but 27% of the 132,000 American and British POWs in
Japanese captivity died.
In the Western Democracies, World War II, like World War I, increased the status of women and gave
them more freedom from male supervision. World War II was in every sense a people’s war for women
too - from female partisan units in Russia to American and British WAVES (Women appointed for
Voluntary Emergency Service). American and British women joined the armed forces in large numbers,
although they could not serve in combat units. And like World War I women had to fill in on farms, drove
trucks and buses, worked as postal workers, police officers and even munitions workers. Women built
airplanes, trucks, tanks and railroad locomotives. Perhaps the most famous image of these new roles and
opportunities for women is found in the character Rosie the Riveter whose image of women riveting
airplanes together became cultural icon of the rising status of women.
IV. The Origins of the Cold War
The end of World War II brought about a fundamental shift of power. Western Europe no longer held the
balance of world power; the decline begun by World War I was complete. The world was now dominated
by two super powers: The United States and the Soviet Union. They were stronger and wealthier than any
great powers had ever been and they remained in bipolar equilibrium from 1945 to 1991. This era was
called the Cold War (a term coined by one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s advisors and popularized by American
journalists). For almost five decades the world was polarized between the American Capitalists and the
Soviet Socialists. In addition to the decline of individual European powers (only Britain and to a lesser
degree France retained any semblance of pre World War II power), Europe was forced to abandon 99% of its
colonial empires, a process called decolonization.
The emergence of new nations from these former colonies also played a role in the Cold War as they took
sides or no sides with the two super powers. The Cold War never saw a World Conflict, but rather saw
dozens of small and medium sized conflicts or Hot Spots, which killed an estimated 50 million people,
until the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Even during World War II the alliance between the Soviet Union and the Western nations had been a
tenuous marriage of convenience. Capitalist nations helped invigorate the Soviet War machine not
because they approved of Stalin, but because they were more afraid of Hitler’s war machine and its
potential for creating even more terrible wonder weapons – perhaps and atom bomb carried to London or
even New York on a V2 rocket.
Thus the Cold War had its origins in the tensions that had arisen between Roosevelt and Churchill on one
hand and Stalin on the other. During the war, Hitler had some hope of victory because he believed that his
enemies were so different in their political philosophies that their alliance would fall apart. American was
thoroughly democratic; Great Britain was imperialistic and Stalin was a left wing dictator. Even after the
staunchly anti-communist Harry Truman (1882-1974) replaced Roosevelt, the Grand Alliance held – at least
on the surface. Hitler underestimated the strength of the allied alliance. Churchill summed it up best when
he said during Hitler’s invasion of Russia, If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favorable
reference to the Devil in the House of Commons. Nevertheless as Hitler’s fate was sealed in the closing
days of the war, it was clear that things would only get worse after the war.
The issues that concerned the allies were dealt with at three major conferences: The Teheran Conference
held at the Soviet Embassy in Teheran, Iran, in November, 1943; the Yalta Conference held in the Tsar’s
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old Livadia Palace near Yalta on the Black Sea in February, 1945 and the Potsdam Conference held at
the home of the German heir Crown Prince Wilhelm (son of the Kaiser Wilhelm II) in Berlin in July of 1945.
The questions dealt with were as follows:
1. The Second Front: The Soviets were desperate for the British and Americans to open up a second
front against Hitler to take some of the pressure off them. The issue was settled at the Tehran
Conference when it was decided to invade Europe proper in 1944 and led to the planning and
execution of the D day invasion of France on June 6th, 1944.
2. Japan: Fearing the potential loss of life in an invasion of Japan and not sure if the Atomic bomb
would actually work; Roosevelt pushed Stalin to reciprocate for the Second Front in the Pacific
Theater by attacking Japan. Stalin dragged his feet, but at Yalta agreed to declare war on Japan once
the Germans were defeated, but only if he got territorial concessions, specifically the return of
Sakhalin Island and the Kurile Islands – and (very important) a division of Korea into Communist and
–non-Communist zones. (He tried to make the same demand for Japan but was rebuffed by Roosevelt
and Churchill.)
3. Division and denazification of German and Austria: What to do with a defeated Germany
also tested allied unity. At Yalta, it was decided to divide Germany and Berlin itself into four sectors:
British, American, French and Russian and likewise for Austria. The Soviets agreed to allow land
support for the French, American and British sectors of Berlin. Both Germany and Austria were to be
denazified, that is, all Nazis were to be removed from public office and positions of authority.
Germany was to repay 20 billion in reparations. This division would last until the end of the cold war
in Germany even though in 1955, the French, British and American sectors became West Germany
and Austria became a single nation. German would finally be reunited in 1991.
4. The United Nations: Just as Woodrow Wilson had created the League of Nations after World War
I, Franklin Roosevelt hoped to establish a new international body, stronger and more effective than the
League had been. This body was to be called the United Nations. At Yalta, Roosevelt convinced
Churchill and Stalin to accept the idea in principle. The details would be worked out later.
5. The Fate of Eastern Europe: By far, this was the most sensitive issue raised at the wartime
conferences. In the process of defeating Germany, Soviet troops occupied all of Eastern and much of
Central Europe. Roosevelt and Churchill distrusted Stalin’s intentions, but Stalin had 11 million troops
in region and to press him too hard on the question was to risk having him drop out of the war before
Germany was defeated. At Yalta, Roosevelt and Churchill came up with an awkward compromise.
They agreed that the USSR would have a certain amount of informal influence in certain East
European nations. Stalin agreed, and then later broke his promises. This caused great anger between
Truman and Stalin at Potsdam in July.
Before the war ended Churchill and Roosevelt – building of the principles laid out in the Atlantic Charter
– organized the Bretton Woods Conference (in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire), which was attended by
forty-four nations whose goals were economic development, monetary stability and free trade. In July
1944, the conference established the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the
World Bank) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to rebuild Europe as well as to aid the
struggles of Latin America and other underdeveloped countries. Stalin refused to attend for ideological
reasons and, by doing so, isolated the Soviet Union economically from the rest of the allied powers.
V. The Cold War Begins
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The end of the war caused tremendous confusion and chaos in Europe. Sixty million people died in the
war (Russia, twenty million, two thirds, civilian; China fifteen million, mostly civilian; Germany, four
million; Japan, two million; Poland, six million; Great Britain, 400,000; United States, 300,000). The
Holocaust killed six million Jews.
Eight million Germans fled across the Elbe River and the Soviet zone to escape Soviet persecution. (The
conduct of Soviet troops who raped and pillaged at will only added to the horror of the situation.) Twelve
million Soviet and German prisoners of War migrated in opposite directions. Survivors of concentration
camps made their way home. Three million refugees from the Balkans immigrated to Central Europe. By
1946, the Cold War had become a recognized reality and in that same year, Winston Churchill first used
the term Iron Curtain to describe the enslaved countries of Eastern Europe. Korea was divided in a
similar manner as Germany, but the United States alone administered Japan.
The biggest threat to the fruits of victory was the Soviet absorption of Eastern Europe. Stalin methodically
broke all his promises and installed communist puppet governments in East Germany, Poland, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. Yugoslavia also became communist under Marshall Tito but
steered a semi-independent course. In 1946, Winston Churchill gave a famous speech, From Stettin in the
Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "iron curtain" has descended across the Continent. Behind that line
lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague,
Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around
them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to
Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.
Moreover Stalin had abandoned his Socialism in One Country approach and began, like his old
enemy Leon Trotsky, to export Communism. He was threatening democratic governments in Iran,
Turkey and Greece – and this brought him perilously close to the oil fields of the Middle East. Communist
groups were also active in many war torn West European nations, especially France and Italy. Stalin’s
goal was gain as much as he could and to push the United States, short of going to war.
The Truman Doctrine
In March of 1947, in reaction to the growing Communist threat, President Truman committed the United
States to an interventionist policy of Containment, which came to be known as the Truman Doctrine.
The idea was to “contain” communism where it was and prevent its spread into other nations. The United
States spent huge sums of money in Greece and Turkey to counteract Soviet influence. Truman explained
it this way: At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative
ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the
majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, and
guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.
The second way of life is based upon the will of the minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It
relies on terror and repression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of
personal freedom. I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who
are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.
The Marshall plan
The Marshall Plan was the economic arm of the Truman Doctrine by which the United States developed a
plan to reconstruct the destroyed infrastructures (i.e., roads, bridges, tunnels, water supply, sewers, electrical
grids and telecommunications) of Western Europe. First call the The European Recovery Plan but later
called the Marshall Plan after U. S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall (1880-1959) who first proposed
to rebuild European economies through cooperation and capitalism, financed by the United States, in
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order to forestall communist or Soviet influence in Western Europe. Proposed in 1947 and funded in 1948,
the Marshall plan provided more than 13 billion to reconstruct Western Europe.
N.A.T.O. and the Warsaw Pact
In 1949 the United States established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a regional
military alliance to counter Soviet aggression. The original members included Belgium, Canada,
Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and the
United States. In 1955 West Germany was admitted and allowed to rearm. The Soviet Union responded by
forming the Warsaw Pact or military alliance of the seven communist European nations.
Joseph Stalin's desire to enforce Soviet domination of the small states of Central Europe and to mollify
some states that had expressed interest in the Marshall Plan were the primary factors in the 1949 formation
of COMECON or the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance in order to increase trade within the
Soviet Union and eastern Europe as an alternative to the Marshall Plan. Member nations were Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. Later in 1949 Albania joined. In 1950
East Germany joined; in 1960 Mongolia; and in the 1970s Cuba and Vietnam.
The United Nations
Despite rivalries and different political vision, the superpowers were among the nations that agreed to the
creation of the United Nations (UN), a supranational organization dedicated to keeping world peace. The
commitment to establish the UN came from the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in Washington D C in
1944 and the final version of the UN charter was hammered out by the United Nations Conference in San
Francisco in 1945. But the UN was composed of many nations, most of whom were allied to one of the
two superpowers, and these nations mixed with the emerging nations of Africa and Asia and the smaller
republics of the Americas were not able to ensure international peace, security and even cooperation.
1949: Europe Divided
Although the origins and development of the Cold War began long before the surrender of the Axis
powers, the years from 1946 to 1949 mark the formal globalization of the Cold War. Stalin had broken all
his promises. He threatened to destabilize and export Communism to Western Europe and the Middle
East. Europe and Korea were divided by Iron Curtains. The United States had responded with the Truman
Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. NATO and COMECON were both established. In 1949, the Soviets
exploded their first atomic bomb, thus starting the nuclear arms race; and in China, Mao Zedong and the
Chinese Communists defeated Jiang Jieshi and the Nationalists who were forced to flee to Taiwan. Just as
after World War I, the world did not feel safe, the same was true after World War II – and this time the
two largest and most powerful nations of World History were locked in the Cold War.
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