World War II: A Historical Account

Posted on Dec 11, 2024 in History

1.3. The Front of Western Europe (1939-1941)

After splitting Poland between Germany and the USSR, the latter invaded Finland in November, along with Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In April 1940, Hitler entered Denmark and Norway unopposed. From there, he invaded Holland and Belgium, surprising the French army at the Battle of the Bulge. In early June, French and British forces retreated from the Channel coast, with the British hastily evacuating Dunkirk, leaving behind heavy weaponry. On June 14th, the Germans occupied Paris. On June 22nd, a defeated France signed an armistice, dividing the country into two zones: the Atlantic coast under German occupation, and the south and east, theoretically free, with Vichy as the seat of government. Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, hero of Verdun in World War I, headed the Vichy government. General Charles de Gaulle fled to England, where he broadcast a call for French resistance against Nazism. This marked the birth of the Resistance, an underground movement of socialists, communists, and Christian Democrats, whose actions would prove essential after 1943. These individuals were also known as partisans and resistance fighters. In just nine months, Germany had occupied half of Europe.

Hitler aimed to contain the war to Great Britain and solidify the redistribution of world power. However, the new British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, rejected Germany’s revised European borders. Between July and October, they clashed over the Channel in the Battle of Britain. Though Germany never landed, their air force inflicted significant damage on British industries and cities like London and Coventry. In September 1940, Japan joined the Axis powers (Berlin-Rome-Tokyo). This new alliance emboldened Mussolini to continue his Mediterranean expansion, struggling against Serbia in the Balkans and receiving German aid in Tripoli. In April 1941, Germany occupied Greece and Yugoslavia, while Bulgaria allied with the Axis. Nazi control extended from the Vistula River to France’s Atlantic coast, and from the North Cape to the Mediterranean. Hitler imposed Nazi order within this vast area, intending to create a new Europe dependent on Berlin and to launch a crusade against Bolshevik communism. This territory became economically subservient to Germany, providing raw materials, food, manufactured goods, and labor.

1.4. The Front of North Africa (1941-1943)

Hitler desperately needed oil. However, General Bernard L. Montgomery’s British counter-offensive in March 1941 forced Germany to deploy the Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel to North Africa, supporting French colonial possessions with the Vichy government’s consent. The British offensive at El Alamein in Egyptian territory forced Axis forces to retreat to Libya, bringing Middle Eastern oil wells under Allied control. To strengthen the Axis presence in the Mediterranean, German and Italian troops occupied Free France in November. The Vichy government lost its remaining autonomy, becoming entirely dependent on Axis forces.

1.5. The Front of the Soviet Union (1941-1943)

On June 22, 1941, Hitler invaded the USSR, launching Operation Barbarossa with millions of soldiers. This new front eased pressure on the Atlantic, leading Great Britain to intensify its efforts to persuade the anti-British American Democratic Party to abandon neutrality. In August 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill signed the Atlantic Charter, establishing the foundation for post-war global coexistence and serving as a model for the future United Nations Declaration.

The invasion of the USSR was a major military confrontation. Stalin, aligned with the Allies, ordered the relocation of industrial equipment beyond the Urals, hindering German supply lines. The Germans advanced rapidly initially but faced setbacks in Moscow and Leningrad. Like Napoleon’s troops, Hitler’s soldiers encountered the harsh Russian winter and faced scorched earth tactics thousands of kilometers from Germany. Lacking provisions, they resorted to exterminating combatants and prisoners of war, particularly Jews. In January 1942, Germany implemented the “final solution” in concentration camps, targeting Jews, Poles, communists, and gypsies. In the summer of 1942, Hitler aimed to conquer Stalingrad (Volgograd) and the Caucasus oil fields. By then, a new front had opened in Southeast Asia and the Pacific between the U.S. and Japan. The Battle of Stalingrad, the war’s longest and bloodiest (300,000 Germans, 450,000 Italians and Romanians killed, and 108,000 taken prisoner), was equally brutal for the Soviets. Stalin repeatedly urged the Allies to open a second front in Europe to relieve pressure on the USSR, a decision they intentionally delayed. In January 1943, the previously invincible German army was defeated and surrendered.

1.8. The Beginning of the Axis Defeat: The Casablanca Conference (1943)

The Sixth Army’s surrender at Stalingrad in early 1943 signaled the beginning of the Axis defeat. Roosevelt and Churchill met in Casablanca that January to strategize the war’s conclusion. Two key aspects emerged:

• The demand for Germany’s unconditional surrender.
• The search for a new economic approach to counter the influence of communist doctrine on Europeans and Americans, reinforced by the Resistance and the victorious Soviet Union.

In February 1943, the U.S. ended its occupation of Guadalcanal in the Pacific and aided Ho Chi Minh’s communist independence movement against the Japanese in Indochina. In May 1943, the Allies advanced from North Africa to Sicily. In Algiers, General de Gaulle became president of the French Committee of National Liberation, preparing to proclaim the Fourth French Republic based on social democracy principles. Western Europe distanced itself from the USSR, offering citizens a welfare state. In July, the Soviets won history’s largest tank battle on the Kursk plains, defeating a division of 3,000 German tanks. Eastern European countries were subsequently liberated, with Stalin strategically positioning Red Army troops in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. Meanwhile, U.S. paratroopers occupied Sicily. The Balkans became a persistent war zone, supported by General Tito’s Yugoslav resistance movement.

1.9. The Opening of the Third Front: The Bretton Woods Conference (1944)

The Normandy landings occurred in June 1944, with the French Resistance playing a crucial role in the victory and assisting attacks against Germans in central and southern France. In August, another Allied landing took place in Provence, and Paris was liberated on the 25th after four years of Nazi occupation. General de Gaulle received a hero’s welcome. In December, the Germans were defeated in the Ardennes. As Nazi order crumbled in Western Europe, the Allies sought to avoid the economic problems that followed World War I, implementing the ideas from the Casablanca Conference. Influenced by John Maynard Keynes, they recognized that the traditional gold-based system couldn’t meet the financial demands of the Second Industrial Revolution. The Bretton Woods Conference (New Hampshire, USA) established a new financial and monetary system and outlined post-war supranational economic institutions. Key outcomes included:

• Establishment of the International Monetary System (IMS), with the dollar as the key currency for international trade, pegged to gold (the U.S. held two-thirds of global gold reserves).
• Creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to ensure currency stability and the World Bank to provide reconstruction and development credits.
• Rejection of protectionism and promotion of free trade, creating integrated economic areas, initiating the second wave of globalization.

1.10 The End of the War in Europe: The Yalta Conference (1945)

From January to April 1945, the Allies relentlessly bombed German territory, reducing cities like Berlin and Dresden to rubble. At the Yalta Conference, key decisions were made:

• Division of Germany and Austria into four occupation zones controlled by Britain, France, the U.S., and the USSR.
• Alteration of Poland’s borders.
• Stalin’s pledge to declare war on Japan.

In April, Mussolini was executed by partisans, and Hitler committed suicide in Allied-occupied Berlin. Germany surrendered unconditionally on May 7, 1945, revealing the horrors of concentration camps across German-occupied Europe. The Potsdam Conference convened two months later.

1.11 The Potsdam Conference

Relations between the victors deteriorated between May and July 1945. The Potsdam Conference in July saw Stalin as the only returning leader, with Truman replacing Roosevelt and Attlee replacing Churchill. They reaffirmed the Yalta agreements, emphasizing the destruction of German militarism and Nazism. Nazi leaders faced war crimes trials (Nuremberg trials), establishing the concept of human rights. To avoid repeating the mistakes of Versailles, Germany, though disarmed, was forced to pay reparations and remained under Allied control along with Austria. The new European map saw the USSR annexing territories, Poland receiving German lands east of the Oder, Bulgaria annexing Southern Romania, Greece receiving islands from Italy, and Yugoslavia gaining the Dalmatian coast while Albania gained independence.

1.12 The End of the War in the Pacific

With Japan refusing unconditional surrender, Truman authorized the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, solidifying U.S. naval dominance. The USSR declared war on Japan on August 8, and Nagasaki was bombed on August 9. Japan surrendered on September 2, ending the war, which left over 55 million dead, mostly Soviets, Chinese, Poles, and Germans. Totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy, and Japan were eliminated, and Europe was devastated. Europeans lost their supremacy, and nationalist movements intensified in their colonies. The post-war world was shaped by the U.S. and USSR, who had defined their spheres of influence at Yalta and Potsdam, setting the stage for the Cold War.

1.13 The San Francisco Conference: The United Nations Organization

On June 25, 1945, over 50 states gathered in San Francisco to draft the UN Charter, based on the Atlantic Charter’s principles. The UN, headquartered in New York, aimed to:

• Preserve nations from war.
• Reaffirm faith in human rights and equality.
• Promote social progress and better living standards.
• Maintain peace and security.

2. Post-War Europe and the Rise of Social Democracy

As in 1918, democracy was re-established in 1945, now with women’s suffrage and expanded social, economic, and cultural rights. Mass parties (Socialist, Christian Democrat, and Labor) became viable alternatives to 19th-century liberal elites. Democratic institutions were rebuilt with new constitutions. The old German Social Democratic Party modernized in 1959, adopting Eduard Bernstein’s ideas. The 1950s saw the rise of social democracy, with state intervention in the economy ensuring a welfare state. This model was adopted by Greece, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Western European liberal states. Post-war democracy initially flourished in states with advanced socio-economic levels, established state structures, and minimal ethnic divisions. These states aligned with the U.S., fostering political, economic, and cultural development and abandoning interstate rivalries. In the U.S., the new hegemonic power alongside the Soviet Union, Democrats sought to contain communism, leading to McCarthyism until 1954 when Republicans took power.

3. Post-War Bipolarity and the Cold War

Churchill declared that an “iron curtain” had descended across Europe, dividing it into two blocs: the Soviet Union and the United States. Despite their alliance against Hitler, their differences became apparent at Yalta and Potsdam. By 1946, hostility grew, fueled by ideological differences. The rift deepened with the creation of Cominform, a Soviet information office coordinating activities within the Soviet bloc and countering the U.S. Marshall Plan in Western Europe. In 1947, Truman’s address to Congress marked the end of U.S. isolationism, promising support for free nations against totalitarian regimes (Truman Doctrine). Journalist Walter Lippmann coined the term “Cold War” to describe the antagonistic relationship between the Soviet and American blocs. The Cold War’s total isolation and tight control by superpowers shaped social, cultural, and economic regimes, creating a bipolar world:

• The West, following Britain’s Labor Party, implemented welfare states, strengthening human rights and fostering consumer societies.
• The Soviet bloc continued Stalin’s Five-Year Plans, extending them to Eastern European countries.