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Causes[edit]

This section is an excerpt from Causes of World War II.[edit]
During the Battle of Westerplatte, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein attacks Westerplatte at the start of the war, September 1, 1939
The destroyer USS Shaw explodes during the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

The causes of World War II have been given considerable attention by historians. The immediate precipitating event was the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939, and the subsequent declarations of war on Germany made by Britain and France, but many other prior events have been suggested as ultimate causes. Primary themes in historical analysis of the war's origins include the political takeover of Germany in 1933 by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party; Japanese militarism against China, which led to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Second Sino-Japanese War; Nationalist uprising in Spain, which led to the Spanish Civil War; or Italian aggression against Ethiopia, which led to the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.

During the interwar period, deep anger arose in the Weimar Republic over the conditions of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which punished Germany for its role in World War I with heavy financial reparations and severe limitations on its military that were intended to prevent it from becoming a military power again. The demilitarisation of the Rhineland, the prohibition of German unification with Austria, and the loss of its overseas colonies as well as some 12% of its pre-war land area and population all provoked strong currents of revanchism in German politics.

During the worldwide economic crisis of the Great Depression in the 1930s, many people lost faith in liberal democracy and countries across the world turned to authoritarian regimes.[1] In Germany, resentment over the terms of the Treaty of Versailles was intensified by the instability of the German political system, as many on both the Right and the Left rejected the Weimar Republic liberalism. The most extreme political aspirant to emerge from that situation was Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party. The Nazis took totalitarian power in Germany from 1933 and demanded the undoing of the Versailles provisions. Their ambitious and aggressive domestic and foreign policies reflected their ideologies of Antisemitism, unification of all Germans, the acquisition of "living space" (Lebensraum) for agrarian settlers, the elimination of Bolshevism and the hegemony of an "Aryan"/"Nordic" master race over "subhumans" (Untermenschen) such as Jews and Slavs. Other factors leading to the war included the aggression by Fascist Italy against Ethiopia and by Imperial Japan against China.

At first, the aggressive moves met with only feeble and ineffectual policies of appeasement from the other major world powers. The League of Nations proved helpless, especially regarding China and Ethiopia. A decisive proximate event was the 1938 Munich Conference, which formally approved Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Hitler promised it was his last territorial claim, nevertheless in early 1939, he became even more aggressive, and European governments finally realised that appeasement would not guarantee peace but by then it was too late.

Britain and France rejected diplomatic efforts to form a military alliance with the Soviet Union, and Hitler instead offered Stalin a better deal in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939. An alliance formed by Germany, Italy, and Japan led to the establishment of the Axis powers.

Pacific War[edit]

This section is an excerpt from Pacific War.[edit]

The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia–Pacific War or the Pacific Theater,[2] was the theater of World War II that was fought in eastern Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania. It was geographically the largest theater of the war, including the vast Pacific Ocean theater, the South West Pacific theater, the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the Soviet–Japanese War.

The Second Sino-Japanese War between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China had been in progress since 7 July 1937, with hostilities dating back to 1931 with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.[3] However, it is more widely accepted[a] that the Pacific War itself began on 7 December (8 December Japanese time) 1941, when the Japanese simultaneously attacked American military bases in Hawaii, Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines and invaded Thailand and the British colonies of Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong.[6][7][8]

The Pacific War saw the Allies pitted against Japan, the latter aided by Thailand and to a lesser extent by the Axis powers, Germany and Italy. The Japanese achieved great success in the initial phase of the campaign, but were gradually driven back using an island hopping strategy. The Allies adopted a Europe first stance, giving first priority to defeating Nazi Germany, but still managed to bring to bear the vast industrial might of the United States. The Japanese had great difficulty replacing their losses in ships and aircraft, while American factories and shipyards produced ever increasing numbers of both. Fighting included some of the largest naval battles in history and massive Allied air raids over Japan, as well as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Japan surrendered unconditionally on 15 August 1945 and was occupied by the Allies. Japan lost its former possessions in Asia and the Pacific and had its sovereignty limited to the four main home islands and other minor islands as determined by the Allies.[9]

Other[edit]

Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935)[edit]

This section is an excerpt from Second Italo-Ethiopian War.[edit]

The Second Italo-Ethiopian War, also referred to as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was a war of aggression waged by Italy against Ethiopia, which lasted from October 1935 to February 1937. In Ethiopia it is often referred to simply as the Italian Invasion (Amharic: ጣልያን ወረራ, romanized: Ṭalyan warära), and in Italy as the Ethiopian War (Italian: Guerra d'Etiopia). It is seen as an example of the expansionist policy that characterized the Axis powers and the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations and Italy's Military before the outbreak of the Second World War.

On 3 October 1935, two hundred thousand soldiers of the Italian Army commanded by Marshal Emilio De Bono attacked from Eritrea (then an Italian colonial possession) without prior declaration of war.[10] At the same time a minor force under General Rodolfo Graziani attacked from Italian Somalia. On 6 October, Adwa was conquered, a symbolic place for the Italian army because of the defeat at the Battle of Adwa by the Ethiopian army during the First Italo-Ethiopian War. On 15 October, Italian troops seized Aksum, and an obelisk adorning the city was torn from its site and sent to Rome to be placed symbolically in front of the building of the Ministry of Colonies.

Exasperated by De Bono's slow and cautious progress, Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini replaced him with General Pietro Badoglio. Ethiopian forces attacked the newly arrived invading army and launched a counterattack in December 1935, but their poorly armed forces could not resist for long against the modern weapons of the Italians. Even the communications service of the Ethiopian forces depended on foot messengers, as they did not have radio. It was enough for the Italians to impose a narrow fence on Ethiopian detachments to leave them unaware of the movements of their own army. Nazi Germany sent arms and munitions to Ethiopia because it was frustrated over Italian objections to its attempts to integrate Austria.[11] This prolonged the war and sapped Italian resources. It would soon lead to Italy's greater economic dependence on Germany and less interventionist policy on Austria, clearing the path for Adolf Hitler's Anschluss.[12]

The Ethiopian counteroffensive managed to stop the Italian advance for a few weeks, but the superiority of the Italians' weapons (particularly heavy artillery and airstrikes with bombs and chemical weapons) prevented the Ethiopians from taking advantage of their initial successes. The Italians resumed the offensive in early March. On 29 March 1936, Graziani bombed the city of Harar and two days later the Italians won a decisive victory in the Battle of Maychew, which nullified any possible organized resistance of the Ethiopians. Emperor Haile Selassie was forced to escape into exile on 2 May, and Badoglio's forces arrived in the capital Addis Ababa on 5 May. Italy announced the annexation of the territory of Ethiopia on 7 May and Italian King Victor Emmanuel III was proclaimed emperor. The provinces of Eritrea, Italian Somaliland and Abyssinia (Ethiopia) were united to form the Italian province of East Africa. Fighting between Italian and Ethiopian troops persisted until 19 February 1937.[13] On the same day, an attempted assassination of Graziani led to the reprisal Yekatit 12 massacre in Addis Ababa, in which between 1,400 and 30,000 civilians were killed.[14][15][16] Italian forces continued to suppress rebel activity until 1939.[17]

Italian troops used mustard gas in aerial bombardments (in violation of the Geneva Protocol and Geneva Conventions) against combatants and civilians in an attempt to discourage the Ethiopian people from supporting the resistance.[18][19] Deliberate Italian attacks against ambulances and hospitals of the Red Cross were reported.[20] By all estimates, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian civilians died as a result of the Italian invasion, which have been described by some historians as constituting genocide.[21] Crimes by Ethiopian troops included the use of dumdum bullets (in violation of the Hague Conventions), the killing of civilian workmen (including during the Gondrand massacre) and the mutilation of captured Eritrean Ascari and Italians (often with castration), beginning in the first weeks of war.[22][23]

Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)[edit]

This section is an excerpt from Spanish Civil War.[edit]
Clockwise from top-left: Members of the XI International Brigade at the Battle of Belchite; Granollers after being bombed by the Aviazione Legionaria in 1938; Bombing of an airfield in Spanish Morocco; Republican soldiers at the siege of the Alcázar; Nationalist soldiers operating an anti-aircraft gun; The Lincoln Battalion

The Spanish Civil War (Spanish: Guerra Civil Española)[note 1] was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic, and consisted of various socialist, communist, separatist, anarchist, and republican parties, some of which had opposed the government in the pre-war period.[24] The opposing Nationalists were an alliance of Falangists, monarchists, conservatives, and traditionalists led by a military junta among whom General Francisco Franco quickly achieved a preponderant role. Due to the international political climate at the time, the war had many facets and was variously viewed as class struggle, a religious struggle, a struggle between dictatorship and republican democracy, between revolution and counterrevolution, and between fascism and communism.[25] According to Claude Bowers, U.S. ambassador to Spain during the war, it was the "dress rehearsal" for World War II.[26] The Nationalists won the war, which ended in early 1939, and ruled Spain until Franco's death in November 1975.

The war began after the partial failure of the coup d'état of July 1936 against the Republican government by a group of generals of the Spanish Republican Armed Forces, with General Emilio Mola as the primary planner and leader and General José Sanjurjo as a figurehead. The government at the time was a coalition of Republicans, supported in the Cortes by communist and socialist parties, under the leadership of centre-left President Manuel Azaña.[27][28] The Nationalist faction was supported by several conservative groups, including CEDA, monarchists, including both the opposing Alfonsists and the religious conservative Carlists, and the Falange Española de las JONS, a fascist political party.[29] After the deaths of Sanjurjo, Emilio Mola, and Manuel Goded Llopis, Franco emerged as the remaining leader of the Nationalist side.

The coup was supported by military units in Morocco, Pamplona, Burgos, Zaragoza, Valladolid, Cádiz, Córdoba, and Seville. However, rebelling units in almost all important cities—such as Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao, and Málaga—did not gain control. Those cities remained under the control of the government, leaving Spain militarily and politically divided. The Nationalists and the Republican government fought for control of the country. The Nationalist forces received munitions, soldiers, and air support from Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Portugal, while the Republican side received support from the Soviet Union and Mexico. Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, and the United States, continued to recognise the Republican government but followed an official policy of non-intervention. Despite this policy, tens of thousands of citizens from non-interventionist countries directly participated in the conflict. They fought mostly in the pro-Republican International Brigades, which also included several thousand exiles from pro-Nationalist regimes.

The Nationalists advanced from their strongholds in the south and west, capturing most of Spain's northern coastline in 1937. They also besieged Madrid and the area to its south and west for much of the war. After much of Catalonia was captured in 1938 and 1939, and Madrid cut off from Barcelona, the Republican military position became hopeless. Following the fall without resistance of Barcelona in January 1939, the Francoist regime was recognised by France and the United Kingdom in February 1939. On 5 March 1939, in response to an alleged increasing communist dominance of the republican government and the deteriorating military situation, Colonel Segismundo Casado led a military coup against the Republican government, intending to seek peace with the Nationalists. These peace overtures, however, were rejected by Franco. Following internal conflict between Republican factions in Madrid in the same month, Franco entered the capital and declared victory on 1 April 1939. Hundreds of thousands of Spaniards fled to refugee camps in southern France.[30] Those associated with the losing Republicans who stayed were persecuted by the victorious Nationalists. Franco established a dictatorship in which all right-wing parties were fused into the structure of the Franco regime.[29]

The war became notable for the passion and political division it inspired worldwide and for the many atrocities that occurred. Organised purges occurred in territory captured by Franco's forces so they could consolidate their future regime.[31] Mass executions on a lesser scale also took place in areas controlled by the Republicans,[32] with the participation of local authorities varying from location to location.[33][34]

Genocide, concentration camps, and slave labour[edit]

This section is an excerpt from The Holocaust.[edit]
Jews arriving at Auschwitz II in German-occupied Poland, May 1944. Most were selected to go to the gas chambers.

The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chełmno in occupied Poland.

The Nazis developed their ideology based on racism and pursuit of "living space", and seized power in early 1933. Meant to force all German Jews regardless of means to attempt to emigrate, the regime passed anti-Jewish laws, encouraged harassment, and orchestrated a nationwide pogrom in November 1938. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, occupation authorities began to establish ghettos to segregate Jews. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot by German forces and local collaborators.

Later in 1941 or early 1942, the highest levels of the German government decided to murder all Jews in Europe. Victims were deported by rail to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were killed with poison gas. Other Jews continued to be employed in forced labor camps where many died from starvation, abuse, exhaustion, or being used as test subjects in deadly medical experiments. Although many Jews tried to escape, surviving in hiding was difficult due to factors such as the lack of money to pay helpers and the risk of denunciation. The property, homes, and jobs belonging to murdered Jews were redistributed to the German occupiers and other non-Jews. Although the majority of Holocaust victims died in 1942, the killing continued at a lower rate until the end of the war in May 1945. Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and POWs; the term Holocaust is sometimes used to also refer to the persecution of these other groups.

Many Jewish survivors emigrated outside of Europe after the war. A few Holocaust perpetrators faced criminal trials. Billions of dollars in reparations have been paid, although falling short of the Jews' losses. The Holocaust has also been commemorated in museums, memorials, and culture. It has become central to Western historical consciousness as a symbol of the ultimate human evil.

  1. ^ Dahl, Robert (1989). Democracy and Its Critics. Yale UP. pp. 239–40. ISBN 0300153554.
  2. ^ Murray & Millett 2001, p. 143.
  3. ^ MacLeod 1999, p. 1.
  4. ^ Ch'i 1992, p. 157.
  5. ^ Sun 1996, p. 11.
  6. ^ Drea 1998, p. 26.
  7. ^ Costello 1982, p. 129–148.
  8. ^ Japan Economic Foundation, Journal of Japanese Trade & Industry, Volume 16, 1997
  9. ^ Takemae 2003, p. 516.
  10. ^ Leckie 1987, p. 645.
  11. ^ Leckie 1987, p. 64.
  12. ^ Nehru, Jawaharlal (1934). Glimpses Of World History.
  13. ^ Mockler 2003, pp. 172–73.
  14. ^ Campbell, Ian (2017). The Addis Ababa Massacre: Italy's National Shame. London. ISBN 978-1-84904-692-3. OCLC 999629248.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  15. ^ Barker 1968, pp. 292–293.
  16. ^ Martel, Gordon (1999). The origins of the Second World War reconsidered: A. J. P. Taylor and the Historians (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. p. 188. ISBN 0-203-01024-8. OCLC 252806536.
  17. ^ Barker 1968, pp. 281, 300.
  18. ^ Belladonna, Simone (20 April 2015). Gas in Etiopia: I crimini rimossi dell'Italia coloniale (in Italian). Neri Pozza Editore. ISBN 978-8-85-451073-9.
  19. ^ Mack Smith 1983, pp. 231, 417.
  20. ^ Rainer Baudendistel, Between bombs and good intentions: the Red Cross and the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–1936. Berghahn Books. 2006 pp. 239, 131–132
  21. ^ Labanca 2004, pp. 300–313.
  22. ^ Sbacchi 1978, p. 43.
  23. ^ Antonicelli 1975, p. 79.
  24. ^ Graham, Helen; Preston, Paul (1987). "The Spanish Popular Front and the Civil War". The Popular Front in Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 106–130. ISBN 978-1349106189.
  25. ^ Juliá, Santos (1999). Un siglo de España. Política y sociedad. Madrid: Marcial Pons. ISBN 8495379031. Fue desde luego lucha de clases por las armas, en la que alguien podía morir por cubrirse la cabeza con un sombrero o calzarse con alpargatas los pies, pero no fue en menor medida guerra de religión, de nacionalismos enfrentados, guerra entre dictadura militar y democracia republicana, entre revolución y contrarrevolución, entre fascismo y comunismo.
  26. ^ Bowers 1954, p. 272.
  27. ^ Beevor 2006, p. 43.
  28. ^ Preston 2006, p. 84.
  29. ^ a b Payne 1973, pp. 200–203.
  30. ^ "Refugees and the Spanish Civil War". History Today.
  31. ^ Beevor 2006, p. 88.
  32. ^ Beevor 2006, pp. 86–87.
  33. ^ Beevor 2006, pp. 260–271.
  34. ^ Julius Ruiz. El Terror Rojo (2011). pp. 200–211.


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