THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Franklin Roosevelt once said “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” This
memorable line was said by him during his first inauguration when he swore in as
president, and he undoubtedly stuck to his words and promoted the optimism in
what was to be the deadliest and without question the bloodiest conflict in
human history. With 61 countries and 1.7 billion people involved, World War II
changed the political alignment and social structure of the globe.
So, how did such a destructive war even begin? Well, after World War I ended,
Germany was banned from having any armed forces, and for a large period of
time they indeed did not. However, in 1933, the German people voted for the
infamous Adolf Hitler as the leader of their country who led a political party called
the National Socialists or Nazis. He promised to make the country great again and
quickly began to arm Germany once more.
The Second World War had been triggered when Germany made an unprovoked
attack on Poland which led to Britain and France officially declaring war two days
later. This historical war had been split up into two different groups; the Allies and
the Axis. These two were opposing military alliances led by three principal
partners each. The Allies consisted of the Soviet Union, the USA, and Great Britain
whilst the Axis consisted of Germany, Italy, and Japan. The Allies were led by
Joseph Stalin from the Soviet Union, Franklin Roosevelt from the USA, and
Winston Churchill from Great Britain as the Axis were led by Adolf Hitler from
Germany, Benito Mussolini from Italy, and Hideki Tojo from Japan.
When people think of the Second World War, they immediately think of death,
destruction and massacres. However, despite this, the war did have some
advantages here and there. If we look at just America, we can see how World War
II established it as a power country and potentially one of the most powerful one
in the whole world. The war even began the slow process of the acceptance of
racial equality and gender equality. It would be false to say that these problems
were completely put to an end, but they were, to an extent, at least implemented
and so was the fact that women got to play a more active role in society by
getting jobs such as nursing while the men were off to fight the war.
So, does war have a positive or negative affect on the economy? Well, despite the
pros than have been previously emphasized, it is most definitely the latter. The
war was the reason that an unimaginable amount of civilians and soldiers were
killed, tortured and/or captured. Many prisoners never had a chance to return
back to their home country and were separated from their families. There was
whole lot of environmental and collateral damage along with the destruction of
infrastructure that the government and citizens of both sides of the war had to
deal with.
The war had a definite cause which was the unbridled military expansion by
Germany and Japan. Hitler had a number of reasons for wanting to invade other
territories but he often talked about Lebensraum or living space for the German
people. German agriculture was really inefficiently organized into lots of small
farms, and that meant that Germany needed a lot of land in order to be selfsufficient in food production. So, they had a plan to take land belonging to
Poland, Ukraine and Eastern Russia, and then resettle in that same land with lots
of Germans, so it could feed them.
This was called the Hunger Plan, mainly because it meant for 20 million to starve
to death. Most of these people who would be part of the Hunger Plan would be
the people who previously lived in these land and the others would be the
European Jews who would be worked to death.
So, in the end, why is World War II important? Well, it firstly proved the old
Roman saying of ‘homo homini lupus’ which translates into ‘man is a wolf to
man’. This can be most clearly seen in the Holocaust. World War II saw modern
industrialization, which represented the best of the Scientific Revolution, descend
into once unimaginable cruelty. On May 8th, 1945 the Allies accepted Germany's
surrender, about a week after Adolf Hitler had committed suicide and declared
victory in Europe. Three months later, the USA dropped the only two nuclear
weapons ever deployed in war, Japan surrendered, and WW2 was over.