World War II: A Comprehensive Historical Analysis

International Panorama

• Block division of the world (Capitalist West and Communist East)
• Second World War
• Decolonization, Asia and Africa independence (new countries arising poor and backward - called the Third World)

Causes of World War II

• International instability (desire for revenge from Germany)
• 1929 economic crisis
• Aggressive foreign policy of the totalitarian states
• United Nations not acting in time to stop totalitarian policies
• Occupation of Japan in Manchuria, Italy invaded Albania, and Germany, Austria, and in 1938 invaded Poland
• Declaration of war from France and the UK to Germany

Opposing Blocs

1. Germany, Italy, and Japan (dictatorial regimes, formed the central axis)
2. France, UK, and USA (parliamentary politics)

Features of World War II

• Large territorial expansion, affecting some 60 countries
• Affected about 800 million people
• Unprecedented cruelty: deportations, assassinations, torture, genocide
• Use of weapons of great destructive power
• Economy organized around the war

Stages

1. Germany: Lightning war, mass based on the line of attack by surprise, allowed to occupy most of Western Europe (United Kingdom resisted the so-called war of England). In 1941 the Nazis conquered North Africa, the Balkans, and USSR. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and America entered the war.
2. Containment of the Allies to the Axis powers, the U.S. stopped Japan in the Pacific, Germany by the British in North Africa and by the Russians in Stalingrad and Italy. 1944 major offensives of the Allies, the Normandy landings, and the liberation of Western Europe, entered Germany. In May 1945, the Soviet Red Army entered Berlin, causing the suicide of Hitler (two days before, Mussolini was captured and executed). The U.S. bombed Japan.

Peace Conferences

• Atlantic Conference (1941): Base of the UN, Churchill and Roosevelt.
• Yalta Conference (1945): Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, maximum collaboration, the decision of the organization of peace.
• San Francisco Conference (1945): Creation of the UN.
• Potsdam Conference (1945): Truman, Stalin, Attlee
  • Began to detect differences among allies.
  • Division of Germany into four zones and elimination of fascism.

1946: Meetings were held to readjust the borders of Europe and especially to establish peace.

1948: Publication of human rights within the UN.

Consequences of WWII

• Economic:
• Political: Division of the world into two blocs, destruction of Nazism and fascism, the victory of parliamentary democracy.
• Territorial: Russia annexed eastern Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and part of Finland and Romania. Poland received territories of Germany. Division of Germany and Berlin among allies.
• Moral: Cruelty in Europe, human rights violated, 50 to 55 million dead, many Russians and civilians, creation of concentration and extermination camps.

Concentration Camps

The first was created in 1933. To start the war, the secret police or Gestapo built more than 40 in Germany and beyond (Auschwitz, Treblinka, Dachau, Mauthausen). They were classified as prison camps, concentration camps, and extermination camps. All had a similar structure: an outdoor enclosure surrounded by electric fences and guard towers and an interior that contained barracks and war material factories. The prisoners wore uniforms and carried tattoos indicating the sentence. For example, Jews wore a yellow star.

Extermination Camps

They were created to facilitate the call by the Nazis for the "Final Solution" or Jewish genocide. The most fearsome was Auschwitz, where more than a million people died. They used Zyklon B, which was an insecticide that, with air, becomes a gas and causes death in just minutes. Prisoners were usually classified according to their strength. The weakest, women, children, and the elderly, were gassed and taken to the crematoria. The strongest were used as slave labor until they died.