Causes and Consequences of World War II: A Global Conflict of Unchecked Aggression and Total War

In contrast to the disorganized beginning of World War I, World War II was provoked by deliberate aggressions of Germany, Japan and Italy. The failures of the Western policy of appeasement encouraged the Axis Powers’ militaristic expansions. The most deadly conflict in history, World War II, resulted in the rise of the United States and the Soviet Union to world preeminence and competition. Western European hegemony came to an end as independence movements in Africa and Asia succeeded in the decades after the war.
Old and New Causes of a Second World War. Grievances from World War I’s aftermath and economic havoc resulted in militarist responses from Japan, Germany and Italy. Japan attacked Manchuria in 1931 and politicians in the West responded with a collective shrug. In contrast to Japan’s gradual shift towards the military, Germany’s was abrupt. Adolf Hitler promised to restore Germany’s once-impressive economic and military place in Europe and to eliminate the communist threat within its borders. In alliance with Italy, Germany assisted the fascist take over of Spain.

Unchecked Aggression and the Coming of War in Europe and the Pacific. By the late 1930s a number of patterns were clearly established in the interaction between the new totalitarian states of Germany, Italy and Japan and Western democracies. The lesson eventually learned by the West was that unchecked aggression led to yet more aggression. This lesson was taught most clearly at Munich. As China and Japan bitterly struggled throughout the 1930s for control of east Asia, the West to a great extent watched from the sidelines.

In Depth: Total War. The 20th century saw the introduction of a new kind of war in which vast resources of belligerent nations were used to support all-out military effort. It resulted from industrialization and efforts by governments to organize their people. The latter had its genesis in the nationalist responses to the French Revolution. Industrial technology was first applied on a large scale in the U.S. Civil War but World War I fully revealed its impact. Governmental use of the media to provoke patriotic responses was used in World War I as well. All these features returned even more developed in World War II. Total war had varied social results, including the inclusion of women in the workplace and the introduction of new household technologies. Still, total war was especially notable for its unprecedented devastation.

The Conduct of a Second Global War. The German-devised tactic of blitzkrieg blind-sided both western and eastern Europe, and North Africa. In Asia, the war spanned the entire Pacific region.

Nazi Blitzkrieg, Stalemate and the Long Retreat. By mid-1940 the Germans controlled most of the continent of Europe and much of the Mediterranean. After western Europe fell to Germany, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. Battles between Nazi and Soviet troops were among the largest ever and led to the weakening of the German war effort. North Africa was also the site of many battles, as was Italy. With tremendously effective help from the United States, the Allies slowly pushed the Germans back within their borders after six years of fighting.

From Persecution to Genocide: Hitler’s War Against the Jews. Jews, Polish intellectuals and communists were rounded up and killed during German offensives into eastern Europe. The destruction of the Jewish people became the official policy of the Nazi reich. Concentration camps set up in the 1930s became the death camps of perhaps as many as 12 million people in the 1940s, 6 million of those of the Jewish faith.

Anglo-American Offensives, Encirclement, and

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