The Largest, Costliest, and Deadliest Conflict

1. The Largest, Costliest, and Deadliest Conflict The Second World War

2. World War II (September 1939 – September 1945) was and remains the largest, costliest, and deadliest armed conflict in human history • Beyond that, its long-term global impact continued to be felt in world politics, economics, and diplomacy for five decades • Before the war ended, sixty-one nations joined the fighting • They were divided into two coalitions, the Axis Powers and the Allied Powers • The Axis Powers – Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Japan • The Allied Powers were Great Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Soviet Union, and the United States

3. Every continent except Antarctica and South America saw fighting on the ground, and naval engagements ranged over every major body of water • Much more so than World War I, World War II was truly a global war • Concerning the grimmest statistic of all, it is estimated that somewhere between 55 million and 60 million people were killed during the war • Almost half of these causalities were noncombatants • World War II involved yet another ugly trend of the twentieth century, genocide

4. Twelve million victims – 6 million Jewish, 6 million non-Jewish – perished in the German campaign of racial extermination known as the Holocaust

5. In addition to its immediate effects, World War II also resulted in a complete shift in the balance of global strength • World War I had begun the process of toppling the powers of Europe from their position of dominance • World War II finished it • When the war was over, only two nations, the United States and the Soviet Union, which became known as the superpowers, had the military and economic might to affect the course of world events • The geopolitical struggle that ensued between these powers and known as the Cold War would affect the world for four and half decades

6. World War II also destroyed the imperial might of the European powers • From the 1940s through the 1970s, a massive wave of decolonization swept through the non-Western world, and dozens of nations in Africa and Asia became free

7. Unlike the First World War, whose origins were quite complex, World War II resulted from a straightforward pattern of aggression on the part of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and militaristic Japan • Especially in Europe, aggression met with a weak and passive response from the major democracies • Hamstrung by the Great Depression, anxious to avoid another global conflict, or simply hoping that each aggressive move would be the last, countries such as France, Britain, and the United States did little to stop the aggression

8. This policy of letting the aggressors have what they wanted, in the hope that they would demand no more, became known as appeasement • And the League of Nations proved almost useless when it came to dealing with foreign-policy crises

9. And by 1933, Hitler withdrew from the League of Nations • In 1935, Hitler openly rebuilt the German army and navy, violating the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles • In 1936, Hitler sent German troops into the Rhineland, which was supposed to remain a demilitarized zone • It was another violation of Versailles • In 1937, Hitler signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Italy and Japan • This pact pledged opposition to international communism and the formation of the Axis Powers • Hitler also made public his desire for Lebensraum or “living space” for Germany

10. In 1938, Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss (“union”) • Hitler also announced his plans to take over the Sudetenland which had formerly been German territory and had been given to Czechoslovakia after World war I • In 1939, Germany took the rest of Czechoslovakia, demonstrating the foolishness of France and Britain in believing Hitler’s promises to take only so much territory and then be satisfied • And on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland and World War II began

11. Meanwhile, by 1936, Italy had completed its conquest of Ethiopia • Spain experienced civil war (1936-1939) when Francisco Franco’s military uprising attacked the democratically elected, left-leaning government • More than 600,000 people were killed in the conflict and Franco’s rebellion eventually succeeded • Franco ruled Spain as a dictator until his death in 1975

12. In 1937, Japan invaded mainland China, taking much of the coastline • The Japanese army committed terrible atrocities in China, including the “Rape of Nanking,” in which it hundreds of thousands of civilians, including women and children, were slaughtered • And in 1939, Hitler and Stalin signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact, keeping the USSR neutral thus allowing the Germans to avoid a two-front war as long as the pact was strong

13. During the first half of the war, the Axis powers were triumphant • In Europe, the only major powers opposing Germany were France and Britain • The USSR had agreed to remain neutral, and the United States, sunk into isolation, stayed out of the fighting as well • In Asia, Japan expanded its war against China to include a greater war of conquest against British, Dutch, and French colonies in Southeast Asia

14. The nature of warfare had changed since World War I • Military technology had developed in such a way as to make warfare more rapid and more dynamic • The new offensive character of war was apparent right away • Germany’s innovative method of warfare, Blitzkrieg (“lightning war”), used tanks and airplanes to penetrate deeply and quickly into enemy territory • Within weeks, the war in Poland was over • But Britain and France waited for Germany to attack them, relying on an outdated World War I mentality that viewed war as primarily defensive

15. Historians refer to the winter of 1939 and 1940 as the Sliztkrieg, or “phony war” due to the British and French strategy of waiting • In April 1940, Hitler launched his assault on western Europe • The next several months were stunningly successful • Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands were all defeated in weeks, if not days • Most amazing of all was the fall of France • The Germans attacked France on May 10 • By June 22, the largest and most powerful democracy on the European continent had surrendered

16. The French had been confident that their great chain of border fortifications, the Maginot Line, would protect them • But the German Blitzkrieg sidestepped the Maginot Line and sent tanks streaming into northern France • The defeat of France shocked the world • It also left Great Britain in the seemingly hopeless position of fighting Germany and Italy • But Hitler’s attempt to knock Britain out of the war failed • The Royal Navy protected the British isles from invasion • And the Royal Air Force defended England’s skies against Hitler’s bombers in the Battle of Britain

17. In the spring and summer of 1941, Hitler decided to shift his focus from Britain to eastern Europe • Hitler wanted to help Italy in its wars in Greece, Yugoslavia, and North Africa but also had in mind the invasion of the Soviet Union or Operation Barbarossa • Since France had been eliminated from the war, Hitler felt confident in his planned attack on the USSR • On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, starting the largest ground war in history • From this point onward, 60 to 75 percent of the German armed forces would be fighting on the eastern front

18. German forces surrounded Leningrad, the USSR’s second largest city, placing it under the worst siege in modern times • They drove deep into Ukraine and southern Russia • They also reached the outskirts of Moscow, the capital • A last-ditch defensive effort in December halted the German advance, but only barely

19. In the Pacific, fighting between China and Japan continued • When France fell in 1940, Japan threaten its colony in Indochina • Japan’s eventual goal was to establish its Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere over the entire Chinese coast, all of Southeast Asia, India, Indonesia, and perhaps Australia and New Zealand • The United States responded to Japanese aggression by imposing economic sanctions • Without steel, oil, and other resources from the U.S., the Japanese war effort would be damaged • The Japanese viewed this embargo as an act of war

20. On December 7, 1941, just as the Soviets were halting the Germans outside Moscow, Japan launched its surprise attack on the U.S. naval installation at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii • The effect of this attack was to bring the United States into the war • But the attack on Pearl Harbor, though devastating, was not a knockout blow • It managed to bring a powerful nation into the war

21. The second half of the war, 1942 through 1945, had a much different character than the first • A handful of battles during the summer and fall of 1942 completely changed the tide of the war • A the Battle of Midway (June 1942), the Battle of El Alamein (fall 1942) and the Battle of Stalingrad (August 1942-February 1943), the Allies experienced victories that changed the outcome of the war • In June 1944, in the famous D-Day invasion, British, Canadian, and American troops crossed the English Channel and landed on the coast of France

22. In 1945, the Axis surrendered • Despite the fact that it had no hope of winning, Japan continued its struggle against the Allies • America’s new president, Harry Truman, greatly feared that an invasion of the Japanese islands would cost millions of American and Japanese lives • On August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima • The initial blast killed at least 78,000 people • Tens of thousands more died later from radioactive fallout

23. When the Japanese government ignored Truman’s next request for surrender, the Americans dropped a second bomb on August 9, on the port of Nagasaki • The following week, the Japanese agreed to a cease-fire • They surrendered officially on September 2

24. The most grisly aspect of World War II involved the many war crimes committed during the 73 months of fighting • Of the 55 million to 60 million people who died during the war, approximately half were civilians • Indeed it was after World War II that the phrase “crimes against humanity” entered the world’s legal vocabularies • But even more extensive than the Japanese crimes against humanity were those committed by the Germans

25. Even before the war, the Nazis operated an extensive apparatus of terror, which included the formation of a secret police (the Gestapo) and the establishment of concentration camps (such as Dachau) • Dissidents had been imprisoned, even executed, since the early 1930s • But most infamous was the Nazi campaigns of genocide • The Nazis targeted a number of ethnic and cultural groups • Roman (Gypsies) and Slavs were among the peoples the Nazis considered to be “subhuman” or “undesirable”

26. Most of all, the Nazis hated the Jews • After Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, the Nazis passed a number of anti-Semitic policies that grew worse over time • The worst were the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which deprived all German Jews of their civil rights • And even before the war, violence against Jews occurred • The worst of these moments came in November 1938, on Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”), when Jewish shops, synagogues, and homes throughout Germany and Austria were attacked or burned in a single night

27. But it was during the war that Nazi anti-Semitic policy escalated to the point of genocide • There were 11 million Jews in Europe before the beginning of the war • In 1939 and 1940, as the Germans brought more and more of Europe under their control, Nazi authorities began to round Jews up and detain them, either in ghettos or preexisting concentration camps like Dachau • It was sometime in 1941 that the order for genocide came down from above • Although no written orders survive, it is certain, that ultimately, the command itself was issued by Hitler himself

28. In the end, the Final Solution resulted in 12 million deaths • Of Europe’s 11 million Jews, approximately 6 million were killed • In addition, 6 million non-Jewish victims perished

29. It was mainly to punish these crimes that the Americans, British, and Soviets staged an important set of court cases, the Nuremberg Trials (1946), to try remaining Nazi military and political leadership • It was during the Nuremberg Trials that term “crimes against humanity” was coined • In 1948, in a collective effort to avoid such atrocities in the future, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

30. The end of the Second World War brought fundamental shifts in thinking, politics, and power