World War II: Causes, Phases, and Aftermath

Posted on Jan 19, 2025 in History

World War II (1939-1945)

The Background to the Conflict

Historians who have analyzed the global conflict that started in 1939 agree on the liability of the aggressive policies developed by the Axis powers. As we have seen, the basic traits of fascism are violence, anti-democracy, and expansion at the expense of people considered inferior, which presaged a violent end collision.

Democratic nations tried to use the League of Nations to curb fascist expansionism, but in the Munich Conference of 1938, it seemed they had reached an agreement on the claims raised by Hitler, who avoided war. The Soviet Union was negotiating a secret pact with Germany that involved dividing Poland between them. Hitler’s desire to join Germany and Eastern Russia, not accepted by the allies, led France and Britain to declare war on Germany after it invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.

A Global Conflict

The conflict unfolded in two phases:

  • First phase (until 1942): Succeeding German victories and its allies reached their greatest territorial extension.
  • Second phase (from 1942): Allied forces began to dominate after the entry of the Soviet Union and the United States into the war.

World War II introduced, from the beginning, features of total war but with important new elements:

  • The German strategy was based on the so-called blitzkrieg, massively using tanks and warplanes to swiftly destroy the defenses of their enemies.
  • The occupied countries were controlled by the army or friendly fascist governments, leading to the emergence of resistance and guerrilla warfare.
  • The territorial extension covered almost all European nations, northern Africa, most of Asia, and the seas and oceans.
  • New, more destructive weapons were tested.
  • The civilian population became a military target.

The Consequences of World War II

Social

  • An estimated 60 million people died in the conflict. The worst part was awarded to the Russian side.
  • After the war, more than 30 million Europeans had left their homes.

Economic

  • Most of Europe had been shattered. The European economy would take nearly twenty years to overcome the damage caused.
  • With such serious losses, European countries had to depend on U.S. economic aid (Marshall Plan). The U.S. was confirmed as a world power.

Political

  • The Yalta and Potsdam conferences designed a division of the world into areas of influence between the two victorious great powers: the Soviet Union and the United States. This is called the bipolar world, facing two models of society, communist and capitalist, which reflected the division of Germany into two states.
  • The old European colonial empires faded under the weight of debts and the increasing push of nationalism.
  • The victorious powers agreed to a new European map, changing the borders of Central and Eastern Europe and expanding the Soviet Union.
  • An international organization for maintaining peace between states (UN) was created, supervised by the five great powers.

Ideological

  • The ideological struggle between fascism and anti-fascism was replaced by a confrontation between capitalism and communism.
  • The atrocities of the war called for a review of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which incorporated new principles.
  • Enhanced peace movements gained momentum.