World War II

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Rise of Fascism

One of the victors' stated aims in World War I had been “to make the world safe for democracy”, and post-war Germany adopted a democratic constitution, as did most of the other states restored or created after the war. In the 1920s, however, the wave of the future appeared to be a form of nationalistic, militaristic totalitarianism known by its Italian name, fascism. It promised to minister to people's wants more effectively than democracy and presented itself as the one sure defence against Communism. Benito Mussolini established the first Fascist dictatorship in Italy in 1922.

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Formation of the Axis Coalition

Adolf Hitler, the Führer (leader) of the German National Socialist (Nazi) party, preached a brand of fascism predicated on anti-Semitism and racism. Hitler promised to overturn the Versailles Treaty and secure additional Lebensraum (living space) for the German people who, he contended, deserved more as members of a superior race. In the early 1930s the Great Depression hit Germany. The moderate parties could not agree on what to do about it, and large numbers of voters turned to the Nazis and Communists. In 1933 Hitler became the German chancellor, and in a series of subsequent moves established himself as dictator.

Japan did not formally adopt fascism, but the armed forces' powerful position in the government enabled them to impose a similar type of totalitarianism on the civilian leadership. As a dismantler of the world status quo, the Japanese military was well ahead of Hitler. It used a minor clash with Chinese troops near Mukden in 1931 as a pretext for taking over all of Dongbei, where it proclaimed the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1932. In 1937-1938 it occupied the main Chinese ports.

Having denounced the disarmament clauses of the Versailles Treaty, created a new air force, and reintroduced conscription, in March 1936 Hitler dispatched German troops into the Rhineland. Under the Versailles and Locarno treaties, the Rhineland had been permanently demilitarized, but Hitler's breach of the treaties was greeted with only feeble protests from London and Paris. Hitler had committed his first major breach of the treaty settlement of 1919 and the Anglo-French entente failed to resist him, a pattern followed with monotonous regularity until September 1939.

Hitler tried out his new weapons on the side of right-wing military rebels in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The venture brought him into collaboration with Mussolini, who was also supporting the Spanish revolt after having seized Ethiopia in the Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935-1936. Treaties between Germany, Italy, and Japan in 1936-1937 brought into being the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis. The Axis Powers thereafter became the collective term for those countries and their allies.

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German Aggression in Europe

Hitler launched his own expansionist drive with the annexation of Austria in March 1938, the Anschluss. The way was clear: Mussolini supported him; and the British and French, overawed by German rearmament, accepted Hitler's claim that the status of Austria was an internal German affair. The United States had severely impaired its ability to act against aggression by passing a neutrality law that prohibited material assistance to all parties in foreign conflicts.

In September 1938 Hitler threatened war to annex the western border area of Czechoslovakia, the Sudeten region, and its 3.5 million ethnic Germans. The British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, initiated talks that culminated at the end of the month in the Munich Pact, by which the Czechs, on British and French urging, relinquished the Sudeten areas in return for Hitler's promise not to take any more Czech territory. Chamberlain believed he had achieved “peace in our time”, but the word “Munich” soon implied abject and futile appeasement.

Less than six months later, in March 1939, Hitler seized the remainder of Czechoslovakia. Alarmed by this new aggression and by Hitler's threats against Poland, the British government pledged to aid that country if Germany threatened its independence. France already had a mutual defence treaty with Poland.

The turn away from appeasement brought the USSR to the fore. Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, had offered military help to Czechoslovakia during the 1938 crisis, but had been ignored by all the parties to the Munich Agreement. Now that war threatened, he was courted by both sides, but Hitler made the more attractive offer. Allied with Britain and France, the USSR might well have had to fight, but all Germany asked for was its neutrality. In Moscow, on the night of August 23, 1939, the Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed. In the part published the next day, Germany and the Soviet Union agreed not to go to war against each other. A secret protocol gave Stalin a free hand in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, eastern Poland, and eastern Romania.

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Military Operations

In the early morning hours of September 1, 1939, the German armies marched into Poland. On September 3, the British and French surprised Hitler by declaring war on Germany, but they had no plans for rendering active assistance to the Poles. Anglo-French military plans were based on France remaining on the defensive behind the heavily fortified Maginot Line while Britain built up its military potential for a long war. The French were not prepared to take the risk of attacking even the lightly defended German Siegfried Line while the German army was engaged in crushing Poland. Military and economic historians are divided about Hitler's intentions in 1939. Some economic historians argue that Germany had rearmed only in width; that is, concentrating only on producing those weapons, such as tanks and aircraft, suitable for a series of lightning battles, which eventually took place in Poland, Norway, Belgium, Holland, and France. They suggest that Germany possessed neither the resources nor the desire drastically to reduce existing civilian consumption levels to fight a long war of attrition. Others argue that Hitler all along intended to prepare for a long war against his adversaries, which was to begin in about 1942. To this end he had inaugurated the Four-Year Plan in 1936, under the control of Hermann Göring, which was intended to establish a Germany self-sufficient in raw materials and foodstuffs (for which purpose, of course, Germany needed to control the resources of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and the other Balkan states, a task accomplished by 1939), and thereby possessing the industrial capacity necessary for war. In the event, Hitler's impatience in 1939 led him to miscalculate on the possibility of Anglo-French intervention when he invaded Poland in September, so that Germany was forced into a major war before it had fully built up its military strength. Whichever is the case, Hitler's gamble paid off until 1941-1942, when the unexpected and resolute resistance of the Soviet people and armies forced him into the long war of attrition he had sought to avoid and for which Germany was not adequately equipped.

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The First Phase: Dominance of the Axis

Man for man, the German and Polish forces were an even match. Hitler committed about 1.5 million troops, and the Polish commander, Marshal Edward Smigły-Rydz, expected to muster 1.8 million. That was not the whole picture, however. The Germans had six panzer (armoured) and four motorized divisions; the Poles had one armoured and one motorized brigade and a few tank battalions. The Germans' 1,600 aircraft were mostly of the latest types. Half of the Poles' 935 planes were obsolete.