II. The Great War: 1914 to 1918

III.The Russian Revolution

IV. Final Offensive : 1918

V. The League of Nations 
VI. The Aftermath of the Great War
VII. World War II
VIII. The Path of the World War II

IX. The Expansion of the War 
X. The War Begins in Europe
XI. The Soviet Invasion
XII. The War in the Pacific
XIII. Final Years of World War II
XIV. The Aftermath of World War II
XV. Devastations Across the World
XVI. Socio - Political Landscape after World War II
XVII. The United Nations 

The root of rivalries between European powers in the 1800 was the rise of nationalism. Nationalism is the shared belief of loyalty to the ethnicity and culture of a nation-state. National pride became the most important trait, such as among the Germans, the French, and the British who had been united under one flag for centuries.

 

Instead of promoting peaceful coexistence among European nation-states, nationalism forged rivalries due to increasing industrialization, naval supremacy, colonialism, and international trade. This imperialistic rivalry worsened the relationship of nation-states. The British and the Russians rallied for control over territories in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). France and Germany continued to scramble over Moroccan territories in North Africa. These colonial rivalries led to worsening negative sentiments against rival 

nation-states.

The brewing tension caused by growing nationalism worsened internal conflicts brought about by dissent between members of the same nation-state. Clamor for ideologies, such as the socialist labor movement, caused rampant violence due to unfair labor practices brought about by industrialization. The working class demanded from wealthy class better wages and the improvement of working conditions. Class warfare shook the balance of power held by conservative leadership class.

 

The worsening internal and external situations in Europe caused nations to strengthen large armies in preparation for war. Between 1870 and 1914, military spending increased, doubling the size of European armies.

 

Military spending in other European nations also ballooned. The Russian army around that tie employed 1.3 million men, the largest in Europe. The French also increased the size of its army in 1913, employing around 900,000 able-bodied soldiers. A popular method of drafting soldiers called conscription became the norm, enlarging most of the armies in the continent.

 

Because of conflicting interests and rivalries, a frenzy of nationalistic pride swept the continent, laying the foundation of a system of alliances. In 1800s, the major European powers organized themselves in case war breaks out.

 

In the interest of keeping French aggression at bay, Otto Von Bismarck, the chancellor of the German Empire, negotiated the establishment of the League of Three Emperors in 1863, an alliance between the emperors of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia over the Balkan territories, the league quickly broke apart. This created the Dual Alliance between the two remaining powers in 1879, whose main goal is to minimize Russian influence over the Balkans. In 1882, Italy was included in the alliance, officially creating the Triple Alliance.

 

The Triple Alliance, composed of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, and the Triple Entente, a coalition between France and Britain, shaped the dangerous balance of power in Europe in the onset of the 20^th century.

The alliances between European superpowers were further tested by looming 

Revolutions in the Balkan Peninsula, a region in Southeastern Europe, led by European minorities such as Greeks, the Rumanians, the Turks, and the Serbs. The decline and modernization of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20^th century created a power vacuum in its territories in the Balkans. Because of the ethnic conflicts that arose in the region; historians call the Balkans the “powder keg of Europe.”

 

The treaty of Berlin of 1878 provided Austria-Hungary a firm succession of power in the region with the right to administer Bosnia and Herzegovina. On October 6, 190i8, the Austro-Hungarian Empire officially annexed the nation, giving rise to the conflict known as the Bosnian Crisis. This move led to a massive Slavic uproar in the Kingdom of Serbia since thousands of ethnic Slavs lived in the annexed state, whom they had hoped to absorb in their nation after complete independence. However, the Russians proved to be a weak ally after its loss in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, thereby limiting its promise of complete support to the Serbian campaign.

 

After the establishment of the Balkan League, the nations of Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro attacked the Ottoman Empire on October 8, 1912.This was also known as the First Balkan War. This led to the creation of the independent nation of Albania and the expansion of Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro. However, due to unsettled talks of peace and growing dissent among the victors regarding the spoils of war in Macedonia, the Second Balkan War erupted the year after, on June 16, 1913. Bulgaria attacked Serbia and Greece but lost after 33 days dissolving the Balkan League.

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, occurred on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo when they were mortally wounded by Gavrilo Princip. Princip was one of a group of six assassins (five Serbs and one Bosniak) coordinated by Danilo Ilić, a Bosnian Serb and a member of the Black Hand secret society. The political objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary's South Slav provinces so they could be combined into a Yugoslavia. The assassins' motives were consistent with the movement that later became known as Young Bosnia.

Declarations of War   

 

The Royal Serbian Government not having answered in a satisfactory manner the note of July 23, 1914, presented by the Austro-Hungarian Minister at Belgrade, the Imperial and Royal Government are themselves compelled to see to the safeguarding of their rights and interests, and, with this object, to have recourse to force of arms. Austria-Hungary consequently considers herself henceforward in state of war with Serbia. The Schlieffen Plan was the name given after World War I to the thinking behind the German invasion of France and Belgium on 4 August 1914. Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen, the Chief of the Imperial Army German General Staff from 1891 to 1906, devised in 1905 and 1906 a deployment plan for a war-winning offensive, in a one-front war against the French Third Republic. The aggression between the two sides- The Allied Powers composed of the Triple Entente, and The Central Powers, composed of the Triple Alliance.

The Western Front was the main theatre of war during the First World War. Following the outbreak of war in August 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne. Following the Race to the Sea, both sides dug in along a meandering line of fortified trenches, stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier with France, which changed little except during early 1917 and in 1918.

Between 1915 and 1917 there were several offensives along this front. The attacks employed massive artillery bombardments and massed infantry advances. Entrenchments, machine gun emplacements, barbed wire and artillery repeatedly inflicted severe casualties during attacks and counter-attacks and no significant advances were made. Among the most costly of these offensives were the Battle of Verdun, in 1916, with a combined 700,000 casualties (estimated), the Battle of the Somme, also in 1916, with more than a million casualties (estimated), and the Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres), in 1917, with 487,000 casualties (estimated). 

 The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of conflict between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland and other Allies, which encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltics), and Southeast Europe (Balkans) from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. It has been known as the Great Patriotic War (Russian: Великая Отечественная Война, Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna) in the former Soviet Union, while in Germany it was called the Eastern Front (German: die Ostfront), the Eastern Campaign (der Ostfeldzug), the Russian Campaign (der Rußlandfeldzug), or the German-Soviet War by outside parties. 

The battles on the Eastern Front constituted the largest military confrontation in history. They were characterized by unprecedented ferocity, wholesale destruction, mass deportations, and immense loss of life due to combat, starvation, exposure, disease, and massacres. The Eastern Front, as the site of nearly all extermination camps, death marches, ghettos, and the majority of pogroms, was central to the Holocaust. Of the estimated 70 million deaths attributed to World War II, over 30 million, many of them civilian, occurred on the Eastern Front. The Eastern Front 

was decisive in determining the outcome of the European portion of World War II, eventually serving as the main reason for the defeat of Nazi Germany

Russia industrialized much later than Western Europe and the United States. When it finally did, around the turn of the 20th century, it brought with it immense social and political changes. 

Between 1890 and 1910, for example, the population of major Russian cities such as St. Petersburg and Moscow nearly doubled, resulting in overcrowding and destitute living conditions for a new class of Russian industrial workers.

A population boom at the end of the nineteenth century, a harsh growing season due to Russia’s northern climate, and a series of costly wars—starting with the Crimean War (1854-1856)—meant frequent food shortages across the vast empire. 

Large protests by Russian workers against the monarchy led to the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1905. Hundreds of unarmed protesters were killed or wounded by the czar’s troops. 

The massacre sparked the Russian revolution of 1905, during which angry workers responded with a series of crippling strikes throughout the country. 

Romania joined the Allies in 1916. After the sinking of seven US merchant ships by German submarines, and the revelation that the Germans were trying to get Mexico to make war on the United States, the US declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917.

The Russian government collapsed in March 1917 with the February Revolution, and the October Revolution followed by a further military defeat brought the Russians to terms with the Central Powers via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which granted the Germans a significant victory. After the stunning German Spring Offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in the successful Hundred Days Offensive. On 4 November 1918, the Austro-Hungarian empire agreed to the Armistice of Villa Giusti, and Germany, which had its own trouble with revolutionaries, agreed to an armistice on 11 November 1918, ending the war in victory for the Allies.

After the Russians discontinued the war, the Germans could finally marshal all their resources to defeat the British and the French on the Western Front. But the window of time for success would close quickly. The Germans knew that they had to attack and win the war before the Americans mobilized their armies and brought forth their abundant industrial resources. Just as in the initial stages of the war, the Germans believed that a quick, shocking victory was crucial. 

Germany launched an all out offensive on the Western Front in March 1918. 

The Paris Peace Conference, also known as Versailles Peace Conference, was the meeting of the victorious Allied Powers following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers.

Involving diplomats from 32 countries and nationalities, the major or main decisions were the creation of the League of Nations, as well as the five peace treaties with the defeated states; the awarding of German and Ottoman overseas possessions as "mandates", chiefly to Britain and France; reparations imposed on Germany; and the drawing of new national boundaries (sometimes with plebiscites) to better reflect ethnic boundaries.

And the "Big Four" were the Prime Minister of France, Georges Clemenceau; the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Lloyd George; the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson; and the Prime Minister of Italy, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando. They met together informally 145 times and made all the major decisions, which in turn were ratified by the others.

The League of Nations (abbreviated as LN in English, La Société des Nations [la sɔsjete de nɑsjɔ̃] abbreviated as SDN or SdN in French) was an intergovernmental organisation founded on 10 January 1920 as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Other issues in this and related treaties included labour conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe. At its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members.

The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the victorious Great Powers of World War I (France, the UK, Italy and Japan were the permanent members of the executive Council) to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, or provide an army when needed. The Great Powers were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them. During the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, when the League accused Italian soldiers of targeting Red Cross medical tents, Benito Mussolini responded that "the League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out." 

The aftermath of World War I saw drastic political, cultural, economic, and social change across Eurasia (Europe and Asia), Africa, and even in areas outside those that were directly involved. Four empires collapsed due to the war, old countries were abolished, new ones were formed, boundaries were redrawn, international organizations were established, and many new and old ideologies took a firm hold in people's minds.

Aggression among states with rising political extremism shook most of the democratic world. Fragile peace treaties did not protect much of Europe and The Great Depression agitated much of the masses leading them to seek out new and stronger leadership.

The Arab Revolt began on 5 June 1916. Forces commanded by Sharif Hussein ibn Ali’s sons, the emirs Ali and Feisal, attacked the Ottoman garrison at Medina in an attempt to seize the holy city and its railway station. After three days the Arabs broke off their attacks, and the commander of the 12,000-strong Ottoman garrison, General Fakhri Pasha, sent Turkish troops out of the city to pursue the retreating rebels.

Meanwhile, Sharif Hussein ibn Ali publicly proclaimed the revolt on 10 June in Mecca. His forces were more successful there, seizing the city and forcing the small Ottoman garrison to seek refuge in the local fortress. Another of Hussein’s sons, Emir Abdullah, surrounded and besieged the town of Ta’if.

Asian nationalism was also brewing. Mohandas Gandhi led the reform movements in India against the British Crown with non-cooperation and civil disobedience as major platform leading to the Indian Independence Movement. In Japan, the growing of economic inequalities due to the corruption of the zaibastu under western models. In China, revolutions against the imperial government led by Sun Yat Sen’s Kuomintang Party, led to the establishment of the Chinese Republic.

Because of the impact caused by post-war economic and political turmoil, it became difficult for governments to remain intact and in power. Most democracies fell under the impact of the Great Depression, causing higher unemployment, worsening inflation, an unfair corporate practices against labor. With the rise of Lenin in the 1920s, communism spread across Russia under Marxist communism.

Totalitarianism is a form of government that uses absolute control over sociopolitical and even cultural aspects of a state. In Italy, dictatorship was inevitable. The extreme right-wing movement came the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini of the Italian Fascist Party. Fascism is a system of hypernationalistic government where the dictator absolutely controls the lives of its citizens. In 1922, King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy relegated power to Mussolini, known as II Duce as Prime Minister after the Fascist threat of marching to Rome. 

In Russia, a power struggle began in the politburo, the decision-making committee of the Communist Party after the death of Lenin in 1924. The rivalry between politburo leaders, such as Leon Trotsky, gave rise to another powerful dictator, Joseph Stalin. Stalin imposed his Five-Year Plan of transforming Russia into an economic powerhouse. This led to harsh conditions and famine. Labor camps were created to house resistant individuals.

Probably, the strongest among dictators is Adolf Hitler of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party or the Nazi Party of Germany. A soldier himself during World War I, Hitler entered the German political scene campaigning against communism and democracy, much like the Fascist movement. In his autobiographical work Mein Kampf, he outlined his ideals of a government led by extreme German nationalists based on social Darwinism- a theory that emphasizes that superior nations and races have the right to expand against and conquer inferior, “less civilized” nations. Hitler moved through legal means declaring a state of emergency, suspending the Weimar constitution for four years through the Enabling Act of 1933. His force in full motion, any opposition were sent to concentration camps or specialized prisons. Most of the people sent to these camps were Jews and other undesired individuals due to heightened Anti-Semitism.

The New Order or the New Order of Europe , was the political order which Nazi Germany wanted to impose on the conquered areas under its dominion. The establishment of the New Order had already begun long before the start of World War II, but was publicly proclaimed by Adolf Hitler in 1941.

By November of 1936, having the same interest of limiting communist expansion and military expansionist programs, Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact. Italy joined Japan and Germany in 1937. With the Tripartite Pat of 1940, a new powerful alliance was formed between Germany, Italy, and Japan, the Axis Power.

September 29-30, 1938: Leaders of Britain, France, Nazi Germany, and Italy meet at the Munich Convention. In a profound act of capitulation, the delegates deliver the Sudetenland into Adolf Hitler's hands. Neither Russia nor Czechoslovakia are invited to Munich. Bristish Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returns to England following his role in the disastrous Munich Agreement claiming to have achieved "peace in our time."

October 1, 1938: Nazi German troops march into the Sudetenland. Without the support of their alleged allies, France and Britain, the Czechoslovakians are powerless against Adolf Hitler's army.

In August of 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression treaty. One week later, Germany invaded Poland and World War II began. The first attack of the war took place on September 1, 1939, as German aircraft bombarded the Polish town of Wielun, killing nearly 1,200. Five minutes later, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on a transit depot at Westerplatte in the Free City of Danzig. Within days, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany and began mobilizing their armies and preparing their civilians. On September 17, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. Polish forces surrendered in early October after losing some 65,000 troops and many thousands of civilians

 

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announces on BBC Radio that the deadline of the final British ultimatum for the withdrawal of German troops from Poland expired at 11:00am and that "consequently this nation is at war with Germany"

Britain now stood alone against the power of Germany’s military forces, which had conquered most of Western Europe in less than two months. But Prime Minister Winston Churchill rallied his stubborn people and outmaneuvered those politicians who wanted to negotiate with Adolf Hitler. But Britain’s success in continuing the war would very much depend on the RAF Fighter Command’s ability to thwart the Luftwaffe’s efforts to gain air superiority. In fact, Britain’s situation was more favorable than most of the world recognized at the time.

For a time the advantage seemed to swing slightly in favor of the Germans, but a combination of bad intelligence and British attacks on Berlin led the Luftwaffe to change its operational approach to massive attacks on London.

As a result, Hitler permanently postponed a landing on the British Isles and suspended the Battle of Britain.

A memorandum dated July 31, 1941, from Hitler’s top commander Hermann Goering to Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SD (the security service of the SS), referred to the need for an Endlösung (final solution) to “the Jewish question.” Beginning in September 1941, every person designated as a Jew in German-held territory was marked with a yellow star. experiments with mass killing methods had been ongoing at the concentration camp of Auschwitz, near Krakow.

Though the Nazis tried to keep operation of camps secret, the scale of the killing made this virtually impossible. Eyewitnesses brought reports of Nazi atrocities in Poland to the Allied governments, who were harshly criticized after the war for their failure to respond, or to publicize news of the mass slaughter.

For the campaign against the Soviet Union, the Germans allotted almost 150 divisions containing a total of about 3,000,000 men. Among these were 19 panzer divisions, and in total the “Barbarossa” force had about 3,000 tanks, 7,000 artillery pieces, and 2,500 aircraft. It was in effect the largest and most powerful invasion force in human history.

On June 22, 1941, the German offensive was launched by three army groups under the same commanders as in the invasion of France in 1940. 

Hitler declined the offer and by February 1943, the last of the German troops were defeated by the Soviets.

Japanese expansion in East Asia began in 1931 with the invasion of Manchuria and continued in 1937 with a brutal attack on China. On September 27, 1940, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, thus entering the military alliance known as the "Axis." Seeking to curb Japanese aggression and force a withdrawal of Japanese forces from Manchuria and China, the United States imposed economic sanctions on Japan. Faced with severe shortages of oil and other natural resources and driven by the ambition to displace the United States as the dominant Pacific power, Japan decided to attack the United States and British forces in Asia and seize the resources of Southeast Asia. 

Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. The attack severely damaged the American fleet and prevented, at least for the short term, serious American interference with Japanese military operations. In response, the United States declared war on Japan. Following Germany's declaration of war on the United States, the United States also declared war on Germany. 

President Franklin Roosevelt worked hard to prepare Americans for a conflict that he regarded as inevitable. In November 1939, he persuaded Congress to repeal the arms embargo provisions of the neutrality law so that arms could be sold to France and Britain.]

With the inclusion of the United States, a new alliance was created together with Britain and the Soviet Union- The Grand Alliance.

Among the war's major turning points for the United States were the Battle of Midway (1942), the invasion of Italy (1943). Douglas MacArthur subsequently ordered a retreat to Bataan. Manila was declared an open city and on December 25 MacArthur moved his headquarters to the island fortress of Corregidor in Manila Bay.A series of air raids by the Japanese destroyed all the exposed structures on the island and USAFFE headquarters was moved into the Malinta Tunnel. Later most of the headquarters moved to Bataan, leaving only the nucleus with MacArthur. The troops on Bataan knew that they had been written off but continued to fight. Some blamed Roosevelt and MacArthur for their predicament. A ballad sung to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" called him "Dugout Doug." However, most clung to the belief that somehow MacArthur "would reach down and pull something out of his hat." On October 1944, General MacArthur finally fulfilled his promise to return to the Philippines.

 

In 1943, with a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasion of Sicily and the Allied invasion of Italy which brought about Italian surrender, and Allied victories in the Pacific, the Axis lost the initiative and undertook strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands.

The war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the subsequent German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945.

On August 6, 1945, the United States Air Force dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Tens of thousands of people died in the initial explosion, and many more died later from radiation exposure. Three days later, the United States dropped a bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Approximately 120,000 civilians died as a result of the two blasts. On August 8, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria. 

After Japan agreed to surrender on August 14, 1945, American forces began to occupy Japan. Japan formally surrendered to the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union on September 2, 1945. 

 Germany's former ally, Italy, avoided being broken up and becoming a pawn to the same degree in the Soviet-American capitalism versus communism power struggle that soon dictated world politics. After defeat in WWII, and the subsequent Allied occupation, Italy became closely affiliated with the United States and other Western powers - a 'front-state' of the Cold War merely due to its proximity to the Eastern Bloc countries and the Soviet Union. 

The year after the end of WWII, Italy voted via popular referendum to abolish their monarchy, a body which had existed since Italy's 19th-century inception. In 1947, the Italians adopted a new constitution, which established Italy as a republic with a 2-chambered Parliament. Italian politics in this new democracy was dominated by the Christian Democratic Party, a centrist party that closely allied itself with the United States. 

The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $13 billion (nearly $110 billion in 2016 US dollars) in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. The plan was in operation for four years beginning on April 3, 1948. The goals of the United States were to rebuild war-torn regions, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, improve European prosperity, and prevent the spread of Communism.

The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization tasked to promote international cooperation and to create and maintain international order. A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, the organization was established on 24 October 1945 after World War II with the aim of preventing another such conflict. At its founding, the UN had 51 member states; there are now 193.

The UN has six principal organs: the General Assembly, Security Council ,the Economic and Social Council, the Secretariat, the International Court of Justice, and the UN Trusteeship Council