Second World War

Second World War. Germany made the Second World War: a necessary condition was a nationalist German government ready, even eager, to use force. Hitler did not create the social and economic conditions that gave him power, but he brilliantly exploited them to develop a state usable for his own purposes, which went further than most Germans would consciously have ventured. The Nazis, who preached violence to forge unity between social classes, included those whose first aim, to increase German power in the world, required the co-operation of the military, the civil service, and industrialists, and also Nazis whose first, egalitarian, aim was to destroy the influence of those privileged groups. Hitler reflected and helped to win the dominance among Nazis of those who wanted international power. His coming to power was with the help of German conservatives who combined with the Nazis to resist socialists, in preference to working with socialists to block the Nazis.

Hitler's strength lay in the support of voters; many voted Nazi through despair at the depression of 1930–2. Arguably, it was the consequence of the treaty of Versailles after the First World War and its insistence on reparations payments by Germany which forced the maintenance of deflationary policies to keep up the exchange value of the mark, as well as recent memories of the catastrophic inflation of 1923, itself even more plausibly the result of the enforcement of reparations. Hitler, and the expansionist German nationalists he stood for, seemed a result of Versailles. Most British opinion concluded that those, especially the French, who had tried to enforce Versailles were to blame and that to soften the nationalism of Hitler's Third Reich the remaining grievances of Versailles should be remedied. Hence, British ‘appeasement’. Towards Germany, even towards Hitler, conciliation seemed better than confrontation. France should be restrained and the anti-fascism proclaimed by the Soviet Union checked. Without the United Kingdom (and the British empire), restraint on the militarily reviving Germany could not be effected and though French governments attempted to work with Italy and the Soviet Union, Italy was weak in resources and the Soviet Union struggling to exploit its own. As Hitler understood, British policy determined how far he could move towards a ‘purified’ German nation, self-sufficient and militarily invulnerable, without engaging in war. Until 1939, with British acquiescence, Hitler won success after peaceful success: restoring compulsory military service, creating an air force, remilitarizing the Rhineland, absorbing Austria, annexing the German-inhabited areas of Czechoslovakia, and then, in March 1939, destroying Czechoslovakia altogether. Hitler's growing support in Germany, as foreign success went with full employment, steadily increased his freedom of action.

In Britain, however, appeasement became unpopular. Neville Chamberlain, its leader, felt obliged to threaten force to compel German restraint and insisted that change to German benefit should take place only by way of negotiation. On 31 March 1939 he pledged Britain to defend Poland, and tried, at last, to build a ‘peace front’. Chamberlain's policy was to persuade, or coerce, Hitler into acceptance of moderate change which would leave intact Britain's capacity to defend her independence. The British aim was to preserve the European balance of power, Hitler's to destroy it. In 1939 the British obstructed him. But the alliance attempted between Britain, France, and the USSR failed. Probably Stalin observed Chamberlain's reluctance to make a Soviet alliance because it would be too provocative to Germany and wreck chances of renewed Anglo-German concord. Stalin thought it safer to make his own bargain with Hitler, took up appeasement, and agreed to help Hitler to destroy Poland.

After an attempt to persuade Britain not to interfere, Germany attacked Poland, in theory to solve German grievances about Polish mistreatment of ethnic Germans, in fact to increase German resources, ‘living space’. At dawn on 1 September 1939 began what became the Second World War. On 3 September Britain and France declared war on Germany. The unusually vicious nature of the German government already made morally desirable the defence of European balance.

As expected, Poland did not last long against German attack and was partitioned with the USSR. Anglo-French strategy was defensive, waiting to build up their armed strength. In May and June 1940 it went badly wrong. France, defeated by a German attack in May 1940, whose main weight was further south than anticipated, surrendered in June. Italy joined Germany, tempted by the prospect of participation in a prospective peace conference. Hitler could now organize Europe to support the German war effort. Everything seemed possible: the British would surely give in. Carefully calculating, while offering inspiring calls to arms, Churchill led the cabinet to resist, assuming, correctly, that the navy and air force could prevent German troop landings in sufficient force to occupy England in 1940 and that US economic help would enable protracted defence. The victory of the RAF in the Battle of Britain in 1940 blocked invasion, but in 1941 German submarines nearly defeated Britain; British code-breaking came to the rescue in June.

In 1941 Hitler decided to attack the USSR before the defeat of Britain. In 1940 President Roosevelt, hesitantly, had decided to try to keep Britain fighting. In 1941, therefore, Hitler feared that the war in the west might escalate into war with the USA and decided, after tentative attempts to make a new bargain with Stalin, to defeat the USSR first. His advisers expected success in 1941. It went wrong. Roosevelt, concerned to maintain a world balance of power, gave help to the USSR. The ‘Lend-Lease’ Act permitted him to supply countries at war without payment. Like Churchill he strove to keep the Red Army fighting. The Red Army wore down the German army while the Americans made tanks, aircraft, and ships; hence Hitler's defeat.

In the 20th cent. Japan maintained expanding population by trade, either by co-operating in the international structures or by forceful seizure of raw materials, especially fuel. In 1930–45 the Japanese authorities used force to counter trade barriers erected by foreign countries, threatening British and Dutch rubber, tin, and oil. The US government, working to maintain a world balance of power in 1940 and 1941, tried to check Japan by denying raw materials. The Japanese, with the threat from the USSR met by the Germans, decided to seize essential resources. In December 1941 encouraged by Germany, Japan attacked the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor and invaded Malaya, Burma, and the Dutch East Indies. Hitler, conscious that the USA was already an opponent, and still hopeful of victory over the USSR, clarified the conflict by declaring war on the USA. The Second World War involved Germany, Italy, and Japan against the USA, USSR, and the British empire, with France overrun by Germany, and China, divided between nationalists and communists, uncertainly united in resistance to Japanese attempts to control Chinese resources and trade.

The British empire and the USA fought a world war. Both gave priority to defeating Hitler. The main effort against Japan came from the USA. The failure of the Chinese to defend territories from which Japan could be attacked reduced the British role in Burma from the expansion of the line of communications to China to the defence of India and the eventual reassertion of British power in Malaya and Singapore.

In Europe the American army hoped to concentrate all Anglo-American resources in the United Kingdom to invade Europe at the earliest date possible. Churchill and the British thought Germany must first be weakened by campaigns in north Africa and Italy. Roosevelt agreed with Churchill in order to avoid delay in bringing some US forces into action in the European theatre; partly he wanted to maintain US public interest in the war against Hitler, partly to demonstrate US eagerness to take some burden off Soviet forces. Thus, their main operations were delayed and British and US ground forces became fully engaged against the German army only after the landings in Normandy in June 1944. By September 1944 the allies had defeated Germany; Anglo-American forces closed to the Rhine, the Red Army had taken Romania, territorial losses and bombing ended German ability to sustain war for much longer. However, SS coercion and fear of the allies, especially the Soviets, enabled Hitler to delay the end until May 1945.

In the Pacific, Japan, too, continued the war long after defeat brought about by attacks by US submarines on transport ships and US bombing attacks on Japanese industry. Japanese authorities, led by the emperor, accepted defeat only after the use of two atomic bombs, developed in time in the USA.

In Europe the war created a partition, which lasted for more than 40 years, between communist states, influenced or controlled by the USSR, and societies dominated by more or less tempered liberal capitalism. The partition came surprisingly peacefully, though with particular problems in Poland, accepted in the end as belonging to the communist sphere, and with increasing tension for a time in Germany, where an administrative partition agreed during the war lasted for several decades. In the East partition brought devastating and protracted conflict in China, where communists triumphed in civil war; in Korea, split in two, after a fierce war; and in Indo-China, where conflict lasted for decades. Here, as in Europe, capitalism is recovering among ‘communist’ states, but in Asia liberalism is less evident.

Germany, Italy, and Japan, the defeated countries, are today more agreeable to live in and far more prosperous than were the countries that precipitated the bloodshed of the Second World War. All, so far, are more tolerant societies. The Nazis demonstrated to rational human beings the dangers of the menacing idiocy of racial prejudice by carrying it through to its chilling conclusion in the mass murder of Jews, as enemies of ‘Germanic and Aryan purity’.

In 1940 the United Kingdom, inspired by Churchill, continued to fight. The British preferred American domination to Hitler's. In 1945 the USA became the greatest power in the world, and, with the collapse of the Soviet empire in the 1990s, perhaps the only super-power.

R. A. C. Parker

Bibliography

Bell, P. M. H. , The Origins of the Second World War in Europe (1986);
Calvocoressi, P., Wint, G., and and Pritchard, J. , Total War: The Causes and Courses of the Second World War (1989);
Iriye, A. , The Origins of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific (1987);
Parker, R. A. C. , Struggle for Survival: The History of the Second World War (Oxford, 1989);
Weinberg, G. , A World at Arms (Cambridge, 1994).