World War II

A Global History

Michael J. Lyons, David J. Ulbrich

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780429619779
• Edition: 6
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War II
• Index: History

Fully revised and restructured, the sixth edition of World War II: A Global History offers students a concise and yet thorough textbook that examines history's bloodiest conflict. The chapters alternate between chronological chapters on Europe and Asia-Pacific and thematic chapters on innovations, home fronts, brutal regimes, and logistics. This textbook includes the following features:

• A lively narrative of facts, events, people, and ideas that incorporates thoughtful analysis
• New material and restructured content on global factors that affected the causes, conduct, and consequences of World War II
• Balanced pace that does not bog readers down in too many details yet gives them sufficient depth and breadth for context
• Chapters, sections, and sidebars arranged in ways that can complement lectures and assignments
• Fifty new photographs that illustrate the human condition and weaponry during World War II.

Global in focus, by blending both geographic and thematic chapters to ensure readers gain a comprehensive understanding of impact of the war worldwide, this is the perfect volume for all students of the biggest global conflict of the twentieth century.

1 The Great War and the Treaty of Versailles, 1914–1920

Many complex and confusing factors created the atmosphere in 1914 that led to World War I. These factors appeared to make hostilities inevitable in retrospect. Inevitable is likely too dogmatic a word. Nevertheless, those factors created a powder keg primed for an explosion, given the right spark. Several long-term causes primed the powder in the decades leading up to 1914 when short-term causes sparked the explosion. Four years of the bloodiest conflict in history failed to resolve those problems that started the conflict. Instead of providing peace and stabilities, the postwar treaties created political, economic, and social environments that erupted once again into another global war in the 1930s.

The Long-Term Causes of World War I

First came the growth of nationalism throughout the nineteenth century that affected not only the Great Powers—Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia—but many smaller countries as well. Early twentieth-century nationalism tended to be myopic, selfish, and strident. An us-versus-them dynamic appeared among nationalists who believed their nations to be superior and looked at other countries with contempt and hostility. Racism and ethnocentrism often exacerbated these notions of the self and the other. Politics also played roles in dividing or uniting segments of populations. People gave political allegiance to leaders, parties, or ideologies that offered them the means to achieve, protect, or expand their influence. Such groups could gather around religious denominations, labor organizations, financial statuses, demagogic personalities, or gender, racial, or ethnic backgrounds, among others.

Collectively, however, many citizens in Europe developed great pride in their nations over time. To be sure, not all people were not so extreme in their outlook, but nationalism could ignite their passions and spread like wildfire across political, social, economic, or religious divisions. Meanwhile, Europe’s governments willingly approached the brink of war to maintain their power, safeguard their national interests, or avenge supposed insults to their national honor.

This burgeoning nationalism coincided with large-scale industrialization in much of Western and Central Europe and, to a lesser extent, in eastern portions of the continent. The nineteenth century also saw populations gradually shift from rural and agrarian ways of life to urban and industrial ones. The concentrations of people in cities, development of efficient communications, and expansion of the popular press helped disseminate information, including nationalistic propaganda and other symbols. To some, nationalism became a sort of secular substitute for religion.

In some European nations, representative political institutions emerged alongside nationalism and industrialization in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At times, clashes between those trying to conserve their power and those seeking power erupted in violence. The extension of voting rights in parliamentary systems gave increasing voice and strength to the poorer and more numerous classes of society. The development of mass public education, at least at the primary level, played an essential role in this democratizing trend. Nevertheless, economic and political power still concentrated in a small percentage of the population. The land-owning aristocracy, having dominated Europe for centuries, retained some influence but tended to merge with wealthy capitalists. Together they controlled industrial production and directed financial institutions.

Modern society held the promise of a better life. Yet for the poorer classes, expectations often went unfulfilled. Although the standard of living rose, millions in Europe remained victims of poverty. Britain and France had become democracies in 1900, for example, the political systems of Germany and Austria-Hungary only exhibited vestiges of democracy but lacked substance; for their elected parliaments that possessed only limited power, while the heads of state and their ministers controlled the formation and implementation of policy. Russia was still ruled by monarchs called tsars.

Many people in the working class turned to labor unions and socialism as ways out of their dilemmas. These movements opposed nationalism and appealed instead to international solidarity of the workers. They also preached the need to preserve peace and opposed expenditures on armaments. Some extreme socialists subscribed to a Marxian doctrine of revolution to overthrow the existing political and economic systems. Yet in practice, most socialists remained moderate and willing to pursue peaceful reforms. Radical parties appealed to some people in the lower middle class, especially small businessmen and independent craftsmen who felt threatened by the power concentrated in large corporations. Others found solace in the emotional stimulus of nationalism, which cut across these class bases.

Second, industrialization accelerated economic and commercial competition among the European nations who vied for markets and raw materials. The great power fraternity included the traditional powers of Britain, France, Spain, Russia, and the recently unified Italian and German nations. The United States and Japan joined the ranks following their respective victories in the Spanish–American War in 1898 and the Russo-Japanese War in 1904–1905. All these nations jockeyed for better positions with their peers as they tried to expand their wealth, power, and territories.

Third, as patterns of trade appeared in Europe and between the continent and other parts of the world, economic rivalries motivated a new wave of European imperialism in the nineteenth century. They scrambled to acquire colonies in Africa, Asia, and other parts of the less-developed world. The empires affected the individual European nations and relations among them, not only in terms of wealth extracted from colonial possessions, but also in terms of perceived prestige derived from the size of those possessions. The governments believed they owned their colonies. They extracted raw materials to feed industries in their home countries and created markets for those products by selling them back to the colonial peoples.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Britain maintained the largest set of colonies in territory and population by a large margin. An adage stated that “the sun never set on the British Empire.” This statement proved accurate because the British Empire included Canada, the Indian subcontinent, Australia, Malaya, Hong Kong, and much of southern and eastern Africa. France ranked second with colonial territories with western Africa and southeastern Asia. Although starting imperialism more recently than others, the Italians and Germans picked up colonies in Africa and the Pacific Ocean. The Russians and Austro-Hungarians contended with too many internal problems to look much beyond their borders for colonial trophies. Spain, once a powerful empire, lost most of its remaining colonies in the Caribbean and the Philippines to the United States in 1898. The upstart Japan—the only non-Caucasian or non-European power—began asserting its claim of hegemony on the Asian mainland when it annexed Korea in the years after defeating Russia in 1905. The fierce imperial competition among the great powers added to their rivalries in other areas.

Fourth, all the great powers started programs to build larger, faster, and more powerful navies. Their competition accelerated after 1906 when the British Royal Navy launched Dreadnought. Its revolutionary design and its combination of larger guns, more armor, and greater speed made all existing vessels obsolete. Although the term “dreadnought” was gradually replaced by “battleship” in subsequent decades, vessels created in this style became commonplace. The other European nations, as well as the United States and Japan, followed suit and started constructing dreadnought-style vessels of their own. Soon a naval arms race tested each great power’s economic and industrial capacity. Building ever larger warships bequeathed more prestige and influence on those nations. The Royal Navy maintained its place as the most powerful naval force in the world. However, Germany, France, the United States, and even Japan tried to close that gap.

The arms races did not merely measure the great powers in numbers of warships but also gave rise to competition in ground forces. The nations of Europe, in particular, enlarged their standing armies, created elaborate mobilization plans, and stockpiled new weapons and ammunition, so they could be ready for war. Several localized conflicts should have given the European nations some inkling of what modern warfare would look like. The armies fighting in the Franco-Prussian and Russo-Japanese Wars, for example, utilized powerful new weapons that extended the range, rate, and accuracy of gunfire to levels few believed possible a century earlier. Yet, the political and military leaders of the great powers ignored the destructive potential of rifled artillery pieces, machine guns, poisonous gases, and submarines in the years leading to the start of World War I.

While European powers committed their resources to increasing their military and naval strength, they also devised detailed strategic plans that they intended to set them in motion in case of war. New technology facilitated the creation of weapons of increasing sophistication and destructiveness, and industrialization enabled their mass production. As in the case of their alliances, the powers contended that these military and naval forces were necessary to defend them from aggression. Even so, their staff officers drafted strategic plans that were offensive in character. In the event of war, they intended to activate them as quickly as possible. They considered speed to be essential to victory.

The most famous was Germany’s Schlieffen Plan. Named for its creator the chief of the German general staff from 1891 to 1906, the plan directed the German Army to invade Belgium and then France with the objectives of defeating French forces and capturing Paris. Like the Franco-Prussia War in 1870–1871, the Germans expected to overwhelm France in a matter of weeks. Then, using interior lines of transportation, the German forces would swing 180 degrees around to the east to meet and defeat Russian forces before they could fully mobilize. All of the other European power in both alliances developed similar plans for mobilization and prosecution of hostilities.

Fifth, the two alliance systems divided Europe into two opposing armed camps in 1914. The first of these, the Triple Alliance, resulted from the diplomatic efforts of Otto von Bismarck. He served as minister president of Prussia from 1862 to 1890 and then as chancellor of the Second German Reich (Empire) from 1871 to 1890, after he unified several dozen Germanic states into a unified Germany. His so-called “Blut unt Eisen” (Blood and Iron) speech in 1862 exemplified the Prussian brand of nationalism:

Prussia has to coalesce and concentrate its power for the opportune moment, which has already been missed several times; Prussia’s borders according to the Vienna Treaties [of 1814–15] are not favorable for a healthy, vital state; it is not by speeches and majority resolutions that the great questions of the time are decided – that was the big mistake of 1848 and 1849 – but by iron and blood.

The newly unified Germany emerged as the leading military and industrial power on the continent. The Germans likewise wanted to challenge the position of Britain as the most powerful nation in the world. Bismarck made enemies, however, during the unification process, most notably France. His home state of Prussia won the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. This conflict eliminated French resistance to German unification and forced France to give up two eastern provinces, Alsace and part of Lorraine, to Germany.

To provide Germany with security against any French attempt to gain revenge, Bismarck worked to acquire allies. This quest led in 1882 to the formation of the Triple Alliance, a defensive treaty that linked Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. In the event of an attack on one of these aligned nations, the treaty obligated the other two nations to go to war in mutual defense. Bismarck also attempted to maintain a diplomatic relationship with Russia by negotiating a separate treaty with the tsar’s government. But after Bismarck was forced into retirement by the newly crowned German emperor Wilhelm II in 1890, his successors allowed the agreement with Russia to lapse, fearing that it conflicted with Germany’s other commitments.

The Triple Alliance, in turn, provided France with an impetus to pursue friendlier relations with the Russians. French efforts culminated in 1894 in a defensive alliance that helped satisfy Russia’s need for French capital to finance its industrialization program. Britain eventually made separate treaties with France in 1904 and Russia in 1907. Each of these agreements merely settled colonial disagreement, but in subsequent years, Britain drew closer to both countries. This three-cornered relationship became known as the Triple Entente and served as a counterweight to the Triple Alliance.

The British gradually strengthened ties with France because of their shared fear of the ascendant German power. The decision of Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II and Admiral Alfred Tirpitz to increase the size of the German Navy in 1898 contributed significantly to the British worries. As an island nation dependent on massive imports of food and raw materials, it viewed any threat to its naval supremacy as a danger to its existence. From their perspectives, Wilhelm and Tirpitz considered a large fleet necessary for Germany to maintain his Great Power status, and therefore questioned Britain’s self-appropriated right to dictate naval strength.

The five long-term causes created a system with lots of dangers and no safety measures. If a crisis arose in Europe, demands for swift mobilization could create intolerable pressure on civilian officials to resort to war, rather than to wait for the other side to strike first. Most ominously, no means existed to stopping the processes once they started. No calm, disciplined diplomat like Otto von Bismarck came to the fore to provide a moderating influence during the crisis. Instead, arrogant and incompetent leaders, such as Tsar Nicholas and Kaiser Wilhelm, could not conceive of backing down from the fight. They and the other nations’ government leaders also maintained supreme faith in the supposed superiority of their respective militaries and navies. Thus, the march of events toward war and tragedy quickly reached the point of no return.

Short-Term Causes for World War I

During the decade leading up to 1914, the European powers paid special attention to the Balkans in southeastern Europe. The Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires had long competed for political and economic influence in the Balkans. The emergence of nationalism among the various Balkan peoples complicated this rivalry. Neighboring national groups had also lived under the rule of the Ottoman Turks for centuries. But during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Ottoman Empire declined to such an extent that it earned the unenviable reputation as the “sick man of Europe.” Several Balkan nationalities took advantage of this weakness and gradually won independence. By 1913, the Turks lost all of their Balkan holdings.

Among the emerging states in the Balkans was Serbia. Its existence posed a unique problem to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A glaring exception in an age of unified nation-states in Europe, the Austrian and Hungarians jointly ruled an artificially contrived “empire” that consisted of many minority groups, each with its ethnicity, language, culture, historical development, and religion. The two dominant nationalities—the Austrians, who were ethnically German,...