SECOND WORLD WAR (IMPORTANT CSS, PMS)

The Second World War (1939-1945) also called World War II, was in ways a continuation of the First World War, which had ended in 1918. But whereas the First War had been centered in Europe ( although involving some other parts of the world ). This Second World War (World War II) was fought in nearly every area of the globe.

SECOND WORLD WAR COUNTRIES

During Second World War, there were two groups, who were fighting against each other. One group's name was The Axis Powers. Countries involved in Axis Power were, Germany, Italy, and Japan. The second group of the Second World War name was the Allies. Countries involved in allies were Britain and her colonies (including India), France, the United States of America, the Soviet Union, and also China (although its role was smaller).

SECOND WORLD WAR DEATHS

Not only was the Second World War the largest fought in history but it was the bloodies. During Second World War 40 to 50 million people death occurred.. As the First World War had an important influence on history, so did the Second World War. Second World War transferred world power from western Europe to the United States of America and the Soviet Union was able to take control of large areas of Eastern Europe, and the Communists to grasp power in China.  

OLF HITLER & NAZI PARTY

• After the First World War ended in 1918 Germany made a remarkable recovery.
• In 1920 Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), an Austrian who had risen to power in Germany, become the leader of the National Socialistic Party- better known as the Nazi party.
• Germany began to prosper during the late 1920s and Nazi party had only a small following. In 1929, however, the New York Stock Exchange crashed, causing problems for world trade and sending many areas of the world into economic decline, Germany among them.
• As a result, in the 1930s Germany had very high inflation and serious economic problems.

THE SECOND WORLD WAR STARTED IN

• Today Hitler is regarded in many areas of the world as one of the great ‘monsters’  of history but to Germans, in the 1930s he seemed to offer their country a way out of its difficulties.
• In 1933 he became German Chancellor.
• Hitler was a dictator and assumed the title Der Fubrer (which means ‘ the Leader’ in German) in 1934.
• Hitler ordered that Germany begin a large program of arms production.
• In 1932, for example, Germany had only 36 military aircraft.
• By 1939, it had about 8,500.
• On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland.
• Britain and France, which had become increasingly worried about the threat Hitler posed to Europe, declared war on Germany on September 3.
• The world’s largest war had begun and was to be a long and complex affair

ADOLF HITLER’S DEADLY IDEAS:

‘Living space’ for the Master Race

• Adolf Hitler believed that World War I had ended in humiliation for Germany.
• Adolf Hitler wanted not only to get back what Germany had lost but also to go on to create a larger ‘Great Germany’ where Germans could have ‘lebensraum’ or ‘living space.’
• Adolf Hitler wanted Germany to expand to the East and take control of the fertile ‘breadbasket’ lands of the Ukraine where wheat was an important crop.
• This would, he hoped, enable Germany to become an Economic and Military power which might one day dominate the world.
• The lands to the east were occupied by Slavic peoples.
• Adolf Hitler had strong ideas about Race and believed that Slavs were Untermenschen (subhuman).
• Germans and other white northern Europeans (Aryans) were, Adolf Hitler believed, the best race on earth and Aryan Germans were the ‘Master Race’.
• Other races, including Africans and Asians, were inferior.
• The fact that the eastern lands in Europe were in possession of ‘subhuman’ Slavs, Hitler stated, gave the Master Race the right to take control of them.
• However, there was a drawback for Adolf Hitler.
• The Slav-occupied lands were within the large and powerful Soviet Union.
• The Soviet Union was at this time ruled by a Communist dictator called Joseph Stalin (1879-1953), who had succeeded Lenin.
• Adolf Hitler believed that the Communists who ruled the Soviet Union were under the control of Jews who wished to take over the world.
• To Adolf Hitler Jews were even more inferior than Slavs – in fact they were for him the lowest race on earth.
• But if Adolf Hitler could gain the lebensraum lands to the East he would at one and the same time defeat both Slavs and Jews.

ADOLF HITLER ATTITUDE TOWARD JEWS

• In the 1930s there were about eight million Jews living in Europe, where many people disliked them.
• Many Jews were successful in business and had become rich.
• Adolf Hitler blamed them for Germany’s defeat in the First World War and for the country’s economic problems afterward.
• The persecution of Jews began in the 1930s.
• Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party stirred up hatred against them, and its soldiers beat them in the street.
• Soon Jews in Germany-controlled lands were forced to wear yellow stars on their sleeves to show their race.
• Their homes, businesses, and synagogues (places of worship) were destroyed and many were arrested and sent to ‘concentration’ or internment camps where they were often forced to work.
• In 1935 Hitler passed new laws under which no Jew could be a German citizen or marry citizens of German blood.’
• Some Jews escaped the Nazis and fled to other parts of the world.

CONCENTRATION CAMPS FOR JEWS

• In addition to Slavs and Jews Hitler hated other groups of people ,including some religious groups (such as ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’), gypsies and mentally ill people were rounded up and sent to remote areas of eastern Europe.
• There they were put into ‘ concentration’ and work camps such as those at Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Belsen.
• Their many people died from disease, starvation, or overwork, while others were gassed in special rooms or shot.
• Bodies were buried in mass graves or burnt in special cremation ovens

A German army general writes about the visit of Heinrich Himmler to a mass grave in 1941. Himmler was the NAZI officer in overall charge of the concentration camps.

“Himmler had never seen dead people before and he stood right on the edge of this mass grave. Whilst he was looking in, he had the bad luck to get a splash of brains on his coat, and he went very green and pale: he wasn’t actually sick, but he was heaving and turned round and swayed and then I had to jump forward and hold him steady”.

PROGRESS OF SECOND WORLD WAR

• 1939 September: Britain and France declare war on Germany after the German invasion of Poland. The second World War started properly.
• 1940 May: Germany invades  France with great speed.
• The 300,000 British forces in France were taken by surprise and the British retreated by sea from Dunkirk on the north coast of France across the English Channel.
• Now Adolf Hitler is the master of Europe.
• Summer: an air war, the ‘Battle of Britain,’ is fought as Germans bomb British ports, airfields, factories, and military installations.
• September: Germany bombed London and other cities in a two-month operation called the ‘Blitz’ Nightly air raids kill about 43,000 British people.
• 1941: Because Britain depends heavily on goods imported by the sea the Germans send ‘U-boat’ submarines to sink supply ships sailing east from the USA, in what is called the ‘Battle of the Atlantic’.
• Many Indian, African, and Chinese crew members are killed.
• December: Japan attacks the American naval base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean.
• Results of Attack: The United States of America declares war on Japan; Germany and Italy declare war on the United States of America.
• 1942 February: the Japanese capture Singapore.
• May: the Allies won a victory in North Africa at the Battle of El Alamein.
• November: The Soviet Union attacks Germany.
• 1943 February: The Soviet Union forces a German army to surrender at Stalingrad.
• 1944 June: the Allies invade Germany.
• May: Germany surrenders and Hitler commits suicide in his bunker in Berlin.
• August: United States plans to drop two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
• As a result, Japan surrendered.

BRITAIN UNDER THREAT OF GERMANS

For the first two years of the war Britain felt under threat of a German invasion – but although German planes bombed Britain an invasion never came. After the fall of France in 1940, Britain’s position looked hopeless. Her only possible allies, the US and the Soviet Union, seemed determined to keep out of the war. Many people thought Britain would be forced to negotiate peace with Germany- and accept German domination of Europe.

The British colonies in Asia-Hong Kong, Malaya (now Malaysia), Burma ( now Myanmar), and India – were under threat from Japan. Britain had no spare military forces to send East because she needed to defend herself and support her allies in Europe. The British leader Winston Churchill was enormously relieved when the Soviet Union and then the United States entered the war on the side of the Allies. From that time on the Allies had the upper hand.

INDIA'S INVOLVEMENT IN SECOND WORLD WAR

• Ports on the Bay of Bengal were attacked by Japanese ships and aircraft early in the war.
• The second World War came to India’s doorstep as the Japanese massed on the Burmese border in 1944.
• India became a vital base to the Allies in their battle against the Japanese
• By 1945 the Indian Army was two and a half million strong.
• Many Indians joined the Royal Indian Air Force, and the Royal Indian Navy was 30,000 strong.
• Some Indian soldiers served overseas in IRAN, IRAQ, SINGAPORE, EAST and NORTH AFRICA, and EUROPE.
• During the war, 36,092 Indian soldiers were killed.
• Indian women worked as nurses in the Middle East, as members of the Women’s Royal Indian Naval Service (WRINS), and the Women’s Auxiliary Corps.
• As the First World War, Britain’s need for supplies led to inflation and shortages of goods
• As in Britain, food rationing was introduced in the subcontinent.
• Because in 1938 Britain had signed an agreement to pay the cost if the Indian army was used outside India, by the end of the war Britain owned India GBP1, 300 million
• The war brought long-term economic benefits to India. For example, the industry grew rapidly; the Tata complex at Jamshedpur in Bihar State became the British Empire’s largest steel producer.
• Shipyards and factories developed in Bombay, Bengal, and Orissa.
• The production of cars, bicycles, and trains began.

SECOND WORLD WAR & INDIAN VICEROY.

• On September 3, 1939 the Viceroy, Lord Linlightgow (1936-1943), without consulting Indians, announced that India was at war with Germany.
• Many felt angry and betrayed because, as Nehru put it later, ‘ One man, the Viceroy, and he a foreigner, could plunge four hundred million of human beings into a war without the slightest reference to them.’
• Britain, however, saw no alternative; she knew she had little chance of winning the war without Indian troops.
• Congress leaders declared that India would not support the British until given independence, and Congress governments in every province resigned in protest.
• This protest, however, helped the Muslim League; Jinnah proclaimed December 22,1939 as a ‘Day of Deliverance’, from Congress rule.
• In August 1940 Lord Linlightgow offered India full dominion status after the war if all Indians supported Britain in the War.
• Congress refused to agree
• But by now, whatever Indians believed, the British refusal to give up India was simply a matter of greed, stubbornness, or bullying.
• Larger issues were at stake. New power and threats had arisen.
• The technological advances of the 19th and 20th centuries meant that war was now a global issue.
• As in the First World War Britain needed India’s support in its war effort, but now there was another factor -India needed Britain to protect it from external threats from Japan and other countries.
• Many people, even those who opposed British rule in India, did not believe that the British could or should leave suddenly and completely.