World War II: Foreign and Military Policy

Jeff Littlejohn

Introduction

World War II (1939-45)-the second global military conflict of the twentieth century-saw even more death and destruction than the horrific First World War (1914-18). Although repeated attempts were made during the 1920s and 1930s to strengthen the Versailles Peace Treaty that ended World War I, depression infected the global economy and militaristic nationalist regimes rose up in countries dissatisfied with the postwar settlement. Peace, therefore, became hard to preserve. The intermittent local conflicts of the 1930s finally gave way to world war in September 1939 as an expansionist Germany under Adolf Hitler invaded Poland, leading England and France to declare war on Germany. Soon, almost every country in Europe and Asia had chosen a side: the "Allies," led by England, France, and Russia faced the "Axis," led by Germany, Italy, and Japan.

America remained neutral at first, but after the fall of France in 1940 the country began actively supporting England with money, military supplies, and strategic intelligence. After the Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941, the United States joined the Allied war effort as a combatant. All the cultural, economic, and industrial resources of the country were harnessed to support the fifteen million service men called up for the war. In the end, six years of intense fighting brought the downfall of Hitler and the Nazis in Germany, the defeat of the Japanese in Asia, and America's emergence as one of only two postwar superpowers.

The Versailles Treaty and the Rise of Totalitarianism

The roots of World War II lay in German, Italian, and Japanese resentment of the Treaty of Versailles. As the principal loser of World War I, Germany was excluded from treaty negotiations and was forced to accept a $33 billion reparations debt, the eradication of its armed forces, and the guilt for the entire war. Italy-which had shifted from the German to the Allied side during the war-felt it had made great sacrifices during the conflict and was not satisfied with its small territorial gains. Japan, like Italy, felt that because it had fought heroically and received little, it deserved China and hegemony in East Asia.

In all three of these countries-Germany, Italy, and Japan-militaristic totalitarian regimes came to power during the interwar period. With his fascist mixture of nationalism and militarism, Benito Mussolini gained control of Italy between 1922 and 1925. In Germany, Adolf Hitler headed the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, which used Jews, Gypsies, and other groups as scapegoats for the postwar problems the Weimar Republic faced. Promising to overturn the Treaty of Versailles and return Germany to greatness, Hitler became German chancellor in 1933 and was soon running the country as a fascist dictator. Japan had a long history of militarism, and by 1936 an increasingly militant and racist government was directing the foreign policy of the nation.

Aggression and Appeasement, 1933-1939

The rise of Mussolini, Hitler, and the militarists in Japan led to fighting even before World War II. In Italy, Mussolini used his power to initiate a military campaign against Ethiopia in North Africa (1936). In Germany, Hitler began rearmament (1933), introduced compulsory military service for able-bodied men (1935), and reoccupied the demilitarized Rhineland (1936)-all in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler and Mussolini joined in a military alliance in 1936 called the Rome-Berlin Axis, and then gave support to General Francisco Franco, the leader of the fascist forces that had overthrown the legal government of Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). In the same years, the Sino-Japanese War (1937-39) was fought, as the Japanese invaded China and sought to take gains beyond Manchuria (renamed Manchuko in 1931) in East Asia. Then, in 1940, Japan entered the German-Italian alliance, creating the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.

These early developments did not lead England, France, or the United States to move for war against the Axis powers. In fact, disillusionment with World War I had led the U.S. Congress to pass a series of Neutrality Acts (1935, 1936, and 1937), which declared that Americans could neither travel in a war zone, nor sell, transport, or loan munitions or money to a belligerent. Even after Hitler occupied Austria in March 1938, claiming it as a province of greater Germany, there was no call for war. However, when he began demanding the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, the British initially stepped up to meet the German threat. At the Munich Conference (September 1938), Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain agreed to allow Hitler the Sudetenland, if he would cease further German expansion in Europe. When Hitler agreed, Chamberlain returned home, claiming to have secured "peace in our time." However, when Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, the weakness of appeasement became obvious: all the Western democracies had done was give Hitler more time to build his war machine.

The Early War, August 1939-November 1941

In August 1939 things took a turn for the worse for the Western democracies, as Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) signed a nonaggression treaty, known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact, pledging not to fight each other. With this insurance against Soviet retaliation, Hitler invaded Russia's neighbor, Poland, on September 1, 1939. Britain and France, honoring their commitments to defend Polish sovereignty, declared war on Germany on September 3, and World War II began.

Although the United States was neutral in theory, American always supported France and England as it became more and more obvious that Hitler was bent on world domination. Congress passed a revised Neutrality Act in 1939, declaring that the democracies of the West could buy goods from America-despite being at war-as long as they paid cash and carried the supplies on their own ships. However, this support was not enough to halt Hitler's war machine, which overran Denmark and Norway (April 1940), the Netherlands and Belgium (May 1940), and then France (June 1940).

In August 1940, Hitler initiated an air campaign over Britain to break the island's resistance to a cross-channel landing. In the resulting Battle of Britain, the new Prime Minister of England-Winston Churchill-and the British Royal Air Force proved tenacious in their defense of the British Isles. No German invasion would be possible. Air raids over Britain brought a quick response from the United States. At President Roosevelt's request, Congress appropriated $37 billion for military preparedness, created the first peace time draft, calling up 1.2 million troops and 800,000 reserves, and approved Lend-Lease aid to countries fighting Germany, by which other countries might "borrow" military and other essential supplies.

After failure over England, Hitler turned his attention to the Eastern Front. In June 1941, he invaded the USSR and the Balkans to get Russian oil and to remove all continental impediments to his rule. Britain offered Stalin an alliance, and the United States extended Lend-Lease aid to the USSR, giving the country over $11 billion during the war. The Russians were able to hold Moscow in November 1941 in part because German troops were not outfitted for the winter. The war on the Eastern Front went on, but developments in the Pacific overshadowed it in December, 1941.

American Joins the War

With Russian defeat seemingly near in November 1941, Japan sought to obtain its oil and other natural resources in Southeast Asia. The United States had prohibited the exportation of steel, scrap iron, and aviation fuel to Japan and had frozen its assets after Japan had seized both halves of Indochina (Northern, 1940; Southern, 1941). To capitalize on the Russian situation and to move further into Southeast Asia, Japan would be forced to confront the United States. Japan hoped that a surprise attack could disable the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. On December 7, 1941, Japanese carrier-based fighter pilots attacked the fleet, killing 2,400 American servicemen, wounding 1,178, and destroying eight battleships and thirteen other vessels. The next day, the United States declared war on Japan. Then, on December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

At the same time as the assault on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese launched attacks on Guam, Wake Island, the Philippines (American possessions), and British Hong Kong and Malaya. Quick victories gave Japan great strategic power in the South Pacific. However, the United States had broken the Japanese communication code even before Pearl Harbor, and when another surprise attack was aimed at Midway Island, the U.S. Pacific Fleet was ready and waiting. On June 4, 1941, four Japanese aircraft carriers-the most important naval vessels in the war-were sunk. Midway Island was held by the United States, and the Pacific fleet began its move toward the Japanese home islands.

War in Europe, 1942-1945

Although aggression in the Pacific drew America into the war, Roosevelt had agreed with Churchill in August 1941 to make the defeat of Hitler America's top priority. On January 1, 1942 this agreement was reaffirmed and the United States, Britain, the USSR, and twenty-three other nations signed the Declaration of the United Nations in which they pledged to fight against the Axis powers until they were all defeated. However, the burden of fighting Hitler rested on the USSR for most of 1942. As the Germans drove into the Caucasus, the Russians held in the North at Stalingrad, where, suffering enormous casualties, they turned the Germans back by January 1943. British and American forces initiated a move against Hitler in North Africa during the fall of 1942.

Roosevelt and Churchill met at the Casablanca Conference in French Morocco between January 14 and 24, 1943 to discuss the development of a second front in Europe against Hitler. American military leaders wanted to assemble an army in Britain and cross the English Channel, but British leaders including Churchill believed an Italian and Balkan invasion would be best. Roosevelt finally sided with Churchill. In addition, Roosevelt and Churchill declared that nothing but "unconditional surrender" would be acceptable from the Axis powers.

The Anglo-American invasion of Italy began on July 10, 1943. As Allied forces moved up the peninsula, Italian leaders stripped Mussolini of his powers (July 25), and quickly signed a separate armistice between the Allies and Italy on September 3, 1943. By the time Roosevelt and Churchill met their Eastern ally Joseph Stalin at the Teheran Conference (November 28-December 1, 1943), they had decided to launch Operation Overlord, a cross-channel invasion of the Continent. Anglo-American forces would attack Germany from the west, while the Soviets would move in from the east. In return, Stalin promised to enter the war against Japan in the Pacific. After the war, all three agreed, a new international organization-the United Nations-would be needed to promote peace and international justice.

On June 6, 1944, the Anglo-American D-day invasion was set in motion. Allied forces concentrated in southern England invaded a sixty-mile line along the coast of Normandy. General Dwight Eisenhower oversaw the entire invasion, which utilized 176,000 troops, 4,000 smaller craft, 600 warships, and 11,000 planes in the largest amphibious assault in world history. By July 2, more than 1 million troops had been landed at Normandy, and on September 11, France was liberated from German control. As American and British forces pushed on Germany from the west, the USSR launched its offensive in late June. During the fall and winter of 1944-45, the Germans launched counter-offensives in both the east and west. However, Allied forces held at the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.

By February 1945, victory over Germany was imminent. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met at Yalta, in the Crimea, to discuss the end of the war in Europe and the fight in the Pacific. Stalin agreed to enter the war against Japan within three months after the close of the European war. In return, Roosevelt and Churchill made territorial concessions to Stalin in East Asia. The war ended in Europe on May 8, 1945, and Germany was divided into four occupational zones on June 5, 1945.

The Pacific Front and the Three Shocks that Ended the War

War in the Pacific dragged on until mid-August 1945. After the Battle of Midway (June 1942), the United States adopted a Pacific strategy called Island Hopping, by which the most heavily fortified enemy islands were bypassed as forces captured smaller islands, set up air bases, and then sought to destroy the enemy through air campaigns against the neighboring fortified islands. The Marianas were the first major prize of the U.S. strategy in July and August 1944. From this island chain, the US B-29 superfortress carried out constant bombing of the Japanese home islands. The capture of Iwo Jima and fire raids on Tokyo in March 1945 brought the end of war near.

With the war's end near, Franklin Roosevelt-elected President in 1944 for an unprecedented fourth time-died on April 12, 1945. Roosevelt's successor, Harry Truman, was faced with bringing the war to an end. He met with Stalin and British leaders at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, where the Allies issued an unwavering ultimatum to the people of Japan: surrender or be destroyed. Truman had not known of plans for America's new weapon, the atomic bomb, before he became president. It was successfully tested on July 16, 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico, and when the weapon became available, Truman decided to use it. On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan killing 180,000 people. On August 8, Stalin joined the American effort against Japan as he had promised at Yalta. Then, on August 9, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki; 80,000 people died. The next day, Japan sued for peace, asking that Emperor Hirohito be allowed to retain his ancestral throne. On August 14, the Allies accepted this condition, and the war ended.

The greatest shock that Americans faced at the war's end was not Roosevelt's death, nor even the atomic bomb. It was the ghastly death and work camps of the Nazi Holocaust, in which more than six million Jews, tens of thousands of Romani, and hundreds of thousands of others had been systematically exterminated by ordinary Germans. The Holocaust introduced an even deeper questioning of human nature than did the war. What now was possible? The atomic bomb and human evil together could and might destroy the world.

Conclusion

In the end, World War II brought the defeat of Germany and Japan, and America's emergence as one of only two postwar superpowers with the USSR. Fifteen million American men and women had been mobilized for war, more than six million women had entered jobs outside the home, and the U.S. government had spent over $340 billion to win the war. The armed forces lost 292,131 men and women to battle deaths and 115,187 to other related causes. This was minimal compared to the civilian and military casualties of other countries: twenty million Russian, thirteen million Chinese, seven million German, and two million Japanese.

The most dramatic consequence of World War II was the division of Europe and Asia between the two postwar superpowers, the United States and the USSR. The territories that Anglo-American forces had moved through to defeat Germany and Japan were liberated at the close of the war. However, the land on which the Russian army sat came under the power of Joseph Stalin and the communists in Russia. This set the stage for the Cold War between the United States and the USSR from 1945 to 1989.