World War Two, How the World Changed Forever

by Vern, Steven

  Great Britain, the Soviet Union, or the United States were unwilling to call it quits. Far from it. When the word of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor reached Churchill (whose mother was American) in London, he was actually elated in a way. He knew that the unimaginably large resources and industries of the U.S. would turn the tide of war:

  “To have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. Now at this very moment, I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder.”

  “Powder” was pretty much right, but it would take a long time to do it.

  The United States had not been on a war footing before the Japanese attack, but it had ramped up its industrial output in both preparation and to help supply the British and the Soviets. In an age before intercontinental missiles, it took time to fully prepare, however. It would take 6 months or so before American industry began turning out weapons on a scale never seen in world history before or since.

  Until then, the U.S. needed to hold off any possible further Japanese moves in the Pacific, especially those that threatened Australia and/or its lifelines. The U.S. government also needed to show its people and the world that it was not going to simply lie down and react to what the Japanese did, it was going to take matters into its own hands.

  Firstly, in the aftermath and panic of the Pearl Harbor attack, President Roosevelt and the American Chiefs of Staff realized they needed a victory, even if it was just a moral one. In April 1942, Army Air Corps (there was no U.S. Air Force until 1947) B-25 bombers took off from the carrier, Hornet, and attacked Tokyo, which Japanese leaders told their people could never happen. The raid did not do much physical damage (and some crews were shot down, taken prisoner – all of them died or were killed), but it lifted morale in the United States and dealt a small psychological blow to Japan.

  While America celebrated the raid, American citizens of Japanese descent were losing their civil rights, their homes, businesses, and their freedom. In the panic after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which forcibly interned Japanese-Americans in camps in America's interior. Interestingly enough, the Japanese-Americans of Hawaii, who made up a substantial portion of the population and owned sizable and extremely efficient farms, were left relatively undisturbed. To this day, there has never been any evidence that any Japanese-American in the United States acted against their own country. On the contrary, many Japanese-Americans from both Hawaii and the mainland went into combat in the 442nd/100th Regimental Combat Team, which became the most highly decorated unit in American military history.

  On the oceans, the spring of 1942 saw a number of battles that slowly informed the Japanese that they had a fight on their hands, not a country that was going to negotiate a peace after being attacked.

  On their part, the Americans were about to learn that the Japanese were not the little men with glasses and buck teeth who couldn't fight that Hollywood propaganda made them out to be. In the air and on the sea, the Japanese were skillful opponents, and inflicted serious losses on American ships and planes.

  When the two nations began to fight again on the ground in August, both sides learned about each other. The Japanese learned that the Americans were not the soft, decadent men that their propaganda had made them out to be, and the Americans quickly learned that the Japanese were cunning opponents who would rather die than surrender.

  In April, the U.S. and Japanese fleets fought a stand-off at Coral Sea, but in June, the Japanese made a move against the U.S. Navy station at Midway, and the Americans (whose fleet and naval air force was outnumbered) knew they were coming. They had broken the Japanese naval code.

  At the loss of one American carrier and 150 planes, the Japanese lost 4 carriers, a heavy cruiser, nearly 250 planes, and 3,000 men. Importantly, many of their best and most experienced pilots were killed. From this point on, the Japanese would be on the defensive.

  In August, American soldiers and Marines landed on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands to fight and defeat the Japanese in a 5 month campaign. In the U.S., many were surprised by the fight put up by the Japanese on both land and sea (heavy sea battles, costly to both sides were fought near Guadalcanal). They were going to learn that it was going to get much, much bloodier.

  The war in the Pacific was fought in much the same way as the war on the Eastern Front in Europe. The Japanese fought under a warped and extreme version of their old samurai code, which caused extreme brutality to be inflicted on their enemies, whether POWs, civilians, and soldiers on the battlefield. Racial hatred also played a factor on both sides.

  For the Americans, vengeance for Pearl Harbor, its subsequent defeats in the Philippines and elsewhere, and the treatment of its POWs were prime factors, and this only increased as time went by. The battles fought on the islands of the Pacific were battles of annihilation.

  Over the course of the next 3 years, the industrial output of the United States far outstripped any nation on earth, especially that of Japan. From hoping they could bring the United States to the peace table after Pearl Harbor and dictate terms, the Japanese began to hope that they could make the battles in the Pacific so bloody, the U.S. would come to some sort of agreement. This was never seriously considered by the American government or people.

  The American strategy, which accounted for sizable British Imperial forces fighting the Japanese in Burma and New Guinea, called for a two pronged attack across the Pacific. The most southern thrust, through New Guinea, the islands nearby and into the Philippines, would be a (mostly) Navy/Army effort commanded by General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964). The central Pacific would see another U.S. advance made by the Navy and the Marines. In command of this effort was Admiral Chester Nimitz (1885-1966). Though the battles on the islands of the Central Pacific are remembered more readily, extremely heavy fighting (accompanied by large scale atrocities carried out by the Japanese) took place in New Guinea, the Philippines, and elsewhere.

  Over the course of the next 2 ½ years, the Americans drove closer and closer to the Japanese home islands. Islands in the Pacific that Americans had never heard of before were the site of tough and brutal battles: Tarawa, Saipan, Peleliu, Kwajalein, Iwo Jima, Okinawa...and many others. As the Americans pushed closer and closer to Japan, the fighting became more extreme and the casualties on both sides grew.

  By the summer of 1945, the American navy had defeated every Japanese attempt to defeat it and ruled the Pacific. American submarines sank virtually everything Japanese that moved on the oceans' surface. In Japan, starvation was about to set in, and yet, the government and people of Japan had no intention of giving up.

  In the summer of 1939, renowned scientist and German-Jewish exile, Albert Einstein, wrote a letter to President Roosevelt, informing him of the possibility of an “atomic” bomb and the Nazis preliminary work on one. He urged Roosevelt to get the bomb for the United States first. Leading scientists in the United States and Britain believed an atomic bomb to be possible and urged Roosevelt to authorize a top-secret program code-named “Manhattan”. The Manhattan Project was (up to that time) the most expensive and secret program ever carried out. In conjunction with British and Canadian scientists and engineers, over the course of 5 years, the United States worked on developing nuclear weapons. The first atomic bomb was exploded near Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16th, 1945.

  By August 1945, the United States had two more bombs in its possession. The question was: “Should they be used?” Many believed an example explosion to which Japanese diplomats were witness would convince the Japanese to surrender. Many said that they would never be believed and might be thought traitors.

  Another idea was to starve the Japanese islands into submission, but a number of factors weighed in on this. First, it was likely that the war and the cost of war would go on for years. The American people, who had lost hundreds of thousan
ds of their boys, were tired of the war, and wanted to see Japan defeated once and for all, and decisively.

  Thirdly, it was thought that perhaps the Soviet Union might invade Japan itself, for the war in Europe had ended in May. The idea of a communist controlled Japan was not something America could stomach.

  The last alternative was the invasion of Japan itself, which was being planned to the last detail. Given the tremendous casualty rate of the fighting in the Pacific up to that point, U.S. estimates were 1 million U.S. casualties, and perhaps five or ten times that many Japanese. President Truman believed he had an easy choice – and what if the American people, suffering through the losses of a costly American invasion of Japan, found out that the military had a means to end the war virtually overnight?

  In the end, President Truman sent an ultimatum to the Japanese, ending with a warning:

  "We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."

  The Japanese government did not reply.

  The United States dropped the first atomic weapon on the Japanese port city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Over 100,000 people were killed, many of them instantaneously. Over the years, many thousands more perished from radiation sickness.

  There was no reaction from Tokyo. Truman went on the radio and appeared on newsreels all over the country and warnings were sent to the Japanese that should they not surrender, the could “expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.” On August 9, another bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Nearly another 100,000 perished.

  Still no word from the Japanese government. It was not until the 12th that the Emperor informed the imperial family of his decision to surrender. Despite an abortive coup by hardcore members of the army who sought to continue the war at all costs, a recording of the Emperor's surrender speech was broadcast over the radio on August 15 (the first time the Emperor was heard on the radio by the Japanese people) indicating the unconditional surrender of Japan's military forces.

  WWII was at an end. Some 60 to 80 million people had been killed.

  CONCLUSION AND CONSEQUENCES

  At the end of WWII, the first nuclear weapons had been used. Shortly after the explosion at Hiroshima, President Truman announced that a weapon that harnessed the “basic power of the universe” had been unleashed against Japan, and it was the United States that had it.

  People soon realized that the development of nuclear weapons put civilization itself at risk of annihilation. To this date, the nuclear powers of the world have avoided going to war with each other directly, as all are aware that the consequences of such a war could mean the end of humankind.

  At the end of WWII, two “superpowers” emerged and one world power began a slow decline on the world stage. The United States and the Soviet Union dominated the globe. For the next 45 years, the “Cold War” that followed the end of WWII kept the world both on the brink of catastrophe and prevented it through the novel idea of “mutual assured destruction”, or “MAD”.

  The world was an entirely different place in 1945 than it had been in 1941. In 1941, the American army trained with broomsticks and cardboard tanks because of lack of funding. In 1945, it had the power to wipe out entire cities in the blink of an eye.

  It is hard to truly grasp the facts I am about to put before you, but try, because they're true. When the war ended, the USA was the only major power that had not been invaded or largely destroyed. Almost the world's largest economy when the war began, America emerged from WWII the richest and most powerful nation the world had ever seen. The wealth and production of the USA at the end of the war and into the 1950's was greater than every other nation in history – combined. And it had the Bomb.

  Despite this power, however, the U.S. was war weary and not prepared to contest every inch of the globe, especially right after the war ended, and as the decades went by, America was to learn that even the most powerful nation in history had its limits.

  The Soviet Union ended the war a devastated nation. As you have read, some 20 million of its people had been killed, and untold millions wounded. Many believe that the tremendous economic damage caused by the war was only overcome in the mid-1990s or later. Tens of thousands of villages were destroyed, thousands of cities, infrastructure (where it existed), schools, farms...the list was endless.

  On the top of the Soviet list was making sure it never was invaded by Germany or any other nation in the West again. Therefore, despite promises about a free Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union soon dominated half the continent, with an army of millions that the United States was a) not willing to challenge on the ground without resorting to nuclear weapons, and b) soon faced with a Soviet Union that developed its own nuclear arsenal.

  The Soviets were also not going to let Germany or the Germans go unpunished. In the days of the leading up to the Battle of Berlin and into it, many Soviet soldiers embarked on a trail of destruction only rivaled by its former enemies. Thousands of Germans were killed or sent to Siberia, and tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of German women were raped.

  The Soviets also virtually denuded eastern Germany of anything that could still be of any use whatsoever: train cars by the thousands, entire factories, natural resources by the tens of millions of tons, and much more. Hunger was rampant in eastern Germany for some time after the war ended.

  Germany was divided into two nations, East and West. Much of the world was divided as well: those controlled or influenced by the United States, and those controlled or influenced by the Soviet Union.

  The British Empire, though not completely disappearing after the war, shrunk tremendously in size, and out of it rose many new nations in Africa and Asia. And in these new nations, there were often bloody struggles for power – between ethnic groups, economic groups, and primarily between communists (backed by the Soviets) and anti-communists (backed by the United States). Many of these struggles, for instance, that of the Israeli and Arab nations around it, were born as a result of the events of WWII, and as we know, these conflicts continue to this day.

  TIMELINE

  September 18, 1931 - Japan invades Manchuria.

  October 2, 1935–May 1936 - Fascist Italy invades and annexes Ethiopia.

  October 25–November 1, 1936 - Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy sign a treaty of cooperation on October 25.

  November 25, 1936 - Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact.

  July 7, 1937 - Japan invades China.

  March 11–13, 1938 - Germany incorporates Austria in the Anschluss.

  September 29, 1938 - Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and France sign the Munich agreement.

  March 14–15, 1939 - The Slovaks declare their independence and form a Slovak Republic. The Germans occupy the rump Czech lands in violation of the Munich agreement.

  April 7–15, 1939 - Fascist Italy invades and annexes Albania.

  August 23, 1939 - Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign a nonaggression agreement.

  September 1, 1939 - Germany invades Poland.

  September 3, 1939 - Great Britain and France declare war on Germany.

  September 17, 1939 - The Soviet Union invades Poland from the east.

  September 27–29, 1939 - Poland surrenders.

  November 30, 1939–March 12, 1940 - The Soviet Union invades Finland.

  April 9, 1940–June 9, 1940 - Germany invades Denmark and Norway.

  May 10, 1940 - Germany occupies Luxembourg.

  May 14, 1940 - The Netherlands surrenders.

  May 28, 1940 - Belgium surrenders.

  June 22, 1940 - France signs an armistice agreement; the Germans occupy the northern half of the country and the entire Atlantic coastline. The collaborationist Vichy regime is established in the Southern half.

  June 10, 1940 - Italy enters the war.


  June 21, 1940 - Italy invades southern France.

  June 28, 1940 - Romania cedes the eastern province of Bessarabia and the northern half of Bukovina to the Soviet Ukraine.

  June 14, 1940–August 6, 1940 - The Soviet Union occupies, then annexes the Baltic States.

  July 10, 1940–October 31, 1940 - The Battle of Britain ends.

  September 13, 1940 - The Italians invade British-controlled Egypt.

  September 27, 1940 - Germany, Italy, and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact.

  October 1940 - Italy invades Greece.

  November 1940 - Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania join the Axis.

  February 1941 - The Germans send the Afrika Korps to North Africa to help the Italians.

  March 1, 1941 - Bulgaria joins the Axis.

  April 17, 1940 - Yugoslavia surrenders.

  Early June, 1941 - Greece’s resistance ends.

  June 22, 1941–November 1941 - Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany and its Axis partners (except Bulgaria) invade the Soviet Union.

  December 6, 1941 - Chaotic German retreat from the Moscow.

  December 7, 1941 - Japan bombs Pearl Harbor.

  December 8, 1941 - The United States declares war on Japan, entering World War II. Japanese troops invade French Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia), British Singapore and the Philippines.

  December 11–13, 1941 - Nazi Germany and its Axis partners declare war on the United States.

  May 30, 1942 - Start of German cities bombing by the allies.

  June 1942 - Midway navy battle.

  June 28, 1942–September 1942 - German offensive in the Soviet Union.

  August–November 1942 - Battle at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.