Screenshot of collage of images used as feature image for Wikipedia “World War II” – some public domain (top right, middle left, bottom left and right) and others (top left and middle right) licensed from German archive footage under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en
One of my favorite quips is that the Second World War is the American Iliad while the Cold War is the American Odyssey.
As usual, I’m joking and serious – but seriously, I’d go even further in that the Second World War is the modern Iliad, the modern historical epic of war.
And as such, I thought I’d compile my Top Second World Wars
Wait – what? Top 10 Second World…Wars? Plural?!
No – I’m not missing another noun there, such as Top 10 Second World War Battles, Top 10 Second World War Theaters, or Top 10 Second World War Campaigns. Those are subjects for their own top ten lists, indeed quite extensive ones, along with other Second World War subjects, albeit there is some overlap between theaters or campaigns and the present subject.
No – this isn’t some rhetorical sleight of hand, where I define some other previous conflicts as the first and second world war respectively. Again, the subject of conflicts that might be categorized as world wars – including but beyond the two world wars labelled as such – is surprisingly extensive, deserving of its own top ten.
So…what then? Wasn’t there only the one Second World War?
Well, yes – except perhaps when there wasn’t.
My tongue is (mostly) in my cheek – it’s one of my top ten lists where I look at a subject which has a fundamental continuity… but which also can be demarcated into distinct parts in their own right. If you prefer, you can think of it as my Second World War iceberg meme – in this case an iceberg of Second World War continuity. Hence, I won’t be doing my usual top ten countdown but just counting them out.
I can illustrate my point by posing a simple question – when did the Second World War start?
A simple question with what seems a straightforward answer – 1 September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland.
But is it so straightforward? Well, perhaps for the fundamental continuity of the war waged by and against Germany, but that is to focus on Europe rather than Asia. If one shifts to a historical focus on the latter, one might well substitute 7 July 1937, with Japan launching its full-scale war on China. Even then, one could look back to the earlier Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931 – or for that matter, even in Europe, to the background to the German invasion of Poland.
And that is my point. While wars may have a fundamental continuity that leads to them being described as a single whole in history with definitive starting or ending dates, they may also consist of – or evolve from or into – overlapping conflicts, particularly when they have a sufficient span or scale. Perhaps none more so than considering the largest war in history, at least in absolute terms, fought on a global scale for six years – the Second World War.
What is my baseline of the Second World War – or surface of the Second World War continuity iceberg? I define it according to the conventional historical frame and timeline of the Second World War – the war against Germany and its allies, subsequent to its invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, outlasting the surrender of Germany itself for a few months against Germany’s last ally standing, Japan, until the formal surrender of Japan on 2 September 1945.
So that said, these are my Top 10 Second World…Wars.
S-TIER (GOD TIER)
German advances during the opening phases of Operation Barbarossa from 22 June 1941 to 25 August 1941 – public domain image map by the History Department of the US Military Academy
(1) NAZI-SOVIET WAR / GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR
(22 JUNE 1941 – 8 MAY 1945)
Wait – what?
Wasn’t the Nazi-Soviet War – called the Great Patriotic War by the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia – essentially just the Second World War, as in the central or primary theater of military conflict of the war? The First Front, as Winston Churchill readily admitted in his history of the war?
Yes – and that’s my point. The Nazi-Soviet War might well be viewed as THE Second World War – with all the other conflicts in the Second World War overlapping or as preludes or aftermath to the war between Germany and the Soviet Union.
And it is a war that can effectively be considered or studied in isolation from other theaters or conflicts, as a subject all of itself. Or indeed, many subjects, including as subject or subjects of its own top ten lists – notably battles, but arguably even of a top ten wars list or continuity iceberg like this.
It was fought, on land and in air, between the armed forces of the Soviet Union and those of Germany with its European allies – the latter often overlooked, albeit Germany remains of primary importance – with little overlap, at least in terms of military forces, with the other conflicts or theaters elsewhere. Yes – there were also naval forces involved but they were peripheral to the scale of conflict on land and in air.
The primary overlap – in terms of military forces was of course the increasing drain of military commitments imposed by the Western allies on Germany or its European allies in other fronts – albeit for Germany’s European allies that included their increasingly desperate search to desert their alliance with Germany for exit strategies from the war.
However, those commitments remained secondary, even arguably a sideshow, to Germany’s primary conflict on its Eastern Front. Sometimes I quip that the Second World War was, for the Western allies, a timely Anglo-American intervention in a Nazi-Soviet War. Timely that is, for the fate of western Europe and Germany itself, that might otherwise have seen more extensive Soviet occupation and one or two irradiated cities – as at the time of the Normandy invasion, the Soviet Union was quite capable of defeating Germany on its own.
Note that I am speaking in terms of military forces. The Western allies did of course also provide extensive economic support to the Soviet armed forces but I’m speaking strictly in terms of armed forces in actual fighting – as per Stalin, “how many divisions has he got?”. However, it is a pet peeve of mine when people attribute the survival of the Soviet Union in 1941 or even 1942 to Allied economic support or Lend-Lease. Such things are difficult to quantify and Allied economic support certainly aided Soviet victories from 1943 onwards, probably decisively – but that role is far less clear for the successful Soviet defense of itself in 1941 or 1942 as the large majority of Lend-Lease was delivered from 1943 onwards.
There is also its sheer scale of combatants and casualties – still the largest invasion and land war in history.
In terms of scale of combat, the Soviet Union mobilized over 34 million men and women for its armed forces – almost twice as many as the next largest combatant, Germany (as well as more than twice as many than either the United States or China.
Indeed, the Soviet Union represented more than a quarter of men or women mobilized in the entire war (over 127 million). And when one considers that the large majority of men mobilized by Germany (about 18 million) were for its war with the Soviet Union, as it was for its European allies, then easily over a third of all men and women mobilized for armed forces in the Second World War were or in for the Nazi-Soviet War.
Not to mention the scale of casualties – the Soviet Union had almost 27 million people killed, at least a third of the highest estimates for 80 million people killed in the whole war. When you consider once again the large majority of those killed for Germany and its European allies were in the Nazi-Soviet War, then you’d be getting close to half all casualties in the entire war – particularly if one were to include casualties for Poland (and I think there’s a strong argument for that).
There’s also the sheer scale of impact – which can be simply stated that on any account of it, the Nazi-Soviet war was the decisive conflict within the Second World War. It’s instructive to recall the ideologies underlying this impact – and perhaps a bit humbling to reflect how much the victory of liberal democracy in the twentieth century depended on the contigency of the casualties communism could sustain fighting fascism (as well as the concentration of economic power in the United States).
And then there’s the narrative of the Nazi-Soviet war, reasonably well known in broad outline albeit somewhat distorted or obscured in historiography until recently.
The broad outline essentially follows each year of the war. The first year of war – from 22 June 1941 to June 1942 essentially follows the German invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa – and its defeat in its advance on Moscow.
The second year of war – from June 1942 to June the following year – essentially follows the German campaign in Case Blue against Stalingrad and the Caucasus – and its defeat.
The first two years of the Nazi-Soviet War often seem to present something of a paradox, as observed by H.P. Willmott:
“From today’s perspective, it seems incredible that Germany could have conquered so much of the Soviet Union in 1941 and 1942 and that on two separate occasions could have brought her to within measurable distance of defeat. Hindsight provides the element of inevitability that suggests German defeat in his campaign was assured because the first time, Hitler raised the scale of conflict to levels that Germany could not sustain…and herein lies a paradox: before the campaign began there would seem to have been no means whereby Germany could prevail, yet once the campaign started it would seem impossible for her to lose”.
That paradox is resolved by a closer study of the war, but a large part of it is that the Soviet Union fought back from the outset, if not always well then certainly hard – imposing costs in casualties and time which Germany and its allies ultimately could not pay.
Something of this can be observed in the diminishing returns of Germany’s successive campaigns – that whereas the German campaign in 1941 was on all three parts of the front (north, central, and south – albeit shuffling between them as it went), the German campaign in 1942 was only on one part of the front, in the south.
Those returns diminished further with the German campaign that commenced the third year of the war – Operation Citadel against Kursk – where the German campaign was not only on one part of the front, the centre, but a smaller part even of that. And for the first time, the German campaign was defeated in the summer when it was launched.
Thereafter, the Germans were on the defensive or outright retreat from the relentless Soviet advances, albeit slowly in that third year. While it was the Soviet army that had originated (prior to the war) the true ‘blitzkrieg’ of the war – the concept of the ‘deep battle’ or ‘deep space battle’, a strategy aimed at destroying enemy command and control centers as well as lines of communication – it lacked the means to employ this strategy fully until the fourth year of war, when it had sufficient elite or experienced armored and mechanized formations as well as the logistics and mobility to support them.
And oh boy, it showed with the Soviet campaign that opened the fourth and final year of war – Operation Bagration, named for a Russian general in the Napoleonic Wars, on the anniversary of Operation Barbarossa on 22 June. The Red Army took one of Nazi Germany’s three army groups on the Eastern Front, Army Group Center in Belorussia and Poland, completely by surprise – effectively destroying it, while exposing Army Group North to siege in the Baltic states and Army Group South to attack in the Balkans.
Operation Bagration well deserves to be compared as equal to the success of Operation Barbarossa for Nazi Germany, but without the same sting of ultimate defeat as the latter – although at least one subsequent Soviet campaign was arguably even better.
Indeed, by 1945, it is possible to argue, as Willmott does, the complete transposition of the German and Soviet armies in terms of military proficiency. By 1945, “the operational and technical quality of the Soviet army was at least the equal of the Wehrmacht at its peak” (with the Soviet Vistula-Oder offensive in January 1945 “perhaps the peak of Soviet military achievement in the course of the European war”).
On the other hand, “the German army of 1944-45, for all its reputation, had the characteristics so meticulously catalogued when displayed by the Soviet army in 1941: erratic and inconsistent direction, a high command packed with place-men and stripped of operational talent, the dead hand of blind obedience imposed by political commissars upon an officer corps despised and distrusted by its political master, failure at every level of command and operations”.
Battle of Britain map – public domain image (Wikipedia – “Battle of Britain”)
(2) ANGLO-GERMAN WAR
(1 SEPTEMBER 1939 – 8 MAY 1945)
This is the big one – the war everyone thinks or talks about for the Second World War, mostly because of the predominance of Anglophone history and popular culture
The war that started with the German invasion of Poland and Britain’s declaration of war on Germany to honor its guarantee to Poland, with a familiar narrative after that – Dunkirk and the fall of France, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, the war in the Mediterranean and Battle of El Alamein, and ultimately landings in north Africa, Italy, and France.
And yes – the Anglo-German war between Britain and Germany became what would more accurately be described as an Anglo-American war with Germany.
Even for the latter, however, the term Anglo-German war is apt as the Anglo prefix is as applicable to the United States as to Britain, whether in Anglophonic or Anglospheric terms (or both). Indeed, Hitler saw Germany’s ultimate contest for world power against the United States and its economic predominance – which he sought to offset by a Europe united under Germany and particularly by a German empire over the resources of the Soviet Union, with Russia in a similar role to Germany as India in the British Empire (at least as argued by historians such as Adam Tooze).
For that matter, that Anglo prefix is as applicable to the Dominions that were major combatants within the British Commonwealth – Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and even South Africa.
However, one should not overlook that for a year of the Second World War, from June 1940 to June 1941, the Second World War was almost entirely an Anglo-German war, with Britain as the only major combatant opposed to Germany, albeit with its Dominions and the Commonwealth.
That was a war very different from what might be characterized as the Franco-German war in the First World War – where France held the line on the Western Front and consequently remained the primary or supreme Allied combatant on land. Of course, Britain and France had the same hope for the Second World War, but the Franco-German component of the war effectively ended with the fall of France, with the primary contest no longer between French and German armies as in the First World War.
Instead, Britain found itself engaged in a war in which it relied predominantly on sea power and airpower against a German army which had won predominance in continental Europe. Of course, Britain had traditionally relied on sea power, as it did in both world wars – adding airpower in the Second World War – and sought to rely on allies with larger forces on land to bring to bear against its opponents.
On the one hand, Germany lacked the sea power and airpower to be able to defeat Britain. It might be observed that all of its major opponents in the Second World War, Germany was only able to defeat France – Britain had too much sea power and airpower, the Soviet Union was too big, and the United States combined the worst of both those worlds along with oceanic distance.
On the other hand, Britain could not defeat or even challenge German predominance on land, even with those allies briefly conjured up on the continent, Greece and Yugoslavia.
As H.P. Willmott noted in The Great Crusade:
“At no point could she challenge Germany’s control of western Europe. Never in British history, not even at the height of British naval supremacy, had British sea power been able to challenge, let alone defeat, a great continental power, and by 1940 the superiority of overland communication meant that German military forces could be moved in greater numbers and more quickly that any British force that attempted to establish itself on the mainland. In addition, the reality of the situation was that British naval power in 1940 was barely able to ensure Britain against defeat by the strangulation of her trade”.
In a sense, this was the war that both Britain and Germany had anticipated in the contest between them, both politically before the war and in the war itself – in which Britain stood as the guardian of the world order and of its world empire or power, secured by victory in the First World War, which Germany sought to challenge.
In The Winds of War, American author Herman Wouk has his German military analyst von Roon evocatively label the war as the War of British Succession – Germany’s bid for world empire to succeed Britain’s falling one – although even von Roon ruefully notes that all it (and the Soviet war effort) achieved was to see one Anglo-Saxon world empire replaced by another.
In that, it was arguably already too late – with the contest between Britain and Germany just shadowboxing over an illusion of world power that had already been eclipsed by the two true world powers, and which would only endure until those two powers ended their isolationism (or had it ended for them) to step into the conflict.
Britain’s strategic hope ultimately relied on the substitution of another power for France as ally with large forces on land to bring to bear against Germany. That hope was understandably focused on the United States but ultimately Britain saw not only one but two powers in that role, eclipsing Britain itself in the war and in the world – firstly the Soviet Union on the eastern front and secondly the United States on the western front.
However, even then it took some time for the United States to eclipse Britain in its army and air force in the European theater – the former in terms of American divisions engaged in combat shortly after the Normandy landings – although the British navy remained predominant in the Atlantic.
Speaking of scale, while even the Anglo-American war against Germany remained secondary to the Nazi-Soviet by a substantial margin, at least on land, it was still of an impressive magnitude – with the invasion of Normandy remaining as the largest seaborne invasion in history.
And speaking of the Normandy invasion, the Anglo-American landings throughout the war remain impressive, not least as that superiority of overland communications for Germany remained a factor to be overcome throughout the war. It is impressive that the Anglo-American alliance pulled off successful major landings not just once but three times – not counting the various minor landings on or about the same time – in north Africa in 1942, in Italy in 1943 (both Sicily and the mainland), and most of all in France in 1944, with the Normandy landings a military feat unequalled then or since.
Once again, while not so much a war in its own right as the previous entry – at least after 1941 given it overlapped with (and relied) on the Nazi-Soviet war to engage the majority of the German army – it is a war that can be a subject all of itself, or indeed many subjects, including that or those of its own top ten list or lists.
Map of the Pacific War 1943-1945 by user San Jose for Wikimedia Commons under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
(3) PACIFIC WAR
(7 DECEMBER 1941 – 2 SEPTEMBER 1945)
The Eagle against the Sun!
And yes – that’s the title of a book by historian Ronald Spector, one of the best single volume histories of that war.
Like a mirror image of the Nazi-Soviet War on the opposite side of the world and in the vast expanses of sea rather than those of land, the Pacific War was the other central conflict of the Second World War, the war between the United States and Japan as the largest naval war in history.
And yes – again that’s my point, that the Pacific War might well be considered as a war in its own right and indeed having its own title as such, with which the other conflicts in the Second World War (and other wars in Asia) can be seen as overlapping or as prelude or aftermath.
As such, it is a war that can be subject all of itself. Or indeed, many subjects, including as subject or subjects of its own top ten lists – notably battles, but arguably even of a top ten wars list or continuity iceberg like this
It is a war that can effectively be considered or studied in isolation from other theaters or forces other than those of Japan and the United States – as indeed it was fought, with little overlap except the so-called CBI theater (for China-Burma-India) with which it merged to some extent.
Certainly, it was almost entirely separate from the conflict in Europe, except to the extent that it was a secondary commitment to that conflict for the United States in the guise of its Germany First strategy. It’s interesting to consider the possibility that it might have remained entirely separate, but for the German declaration of war on the United States after Pearl Harbor. Of course, on the other hand it is difficult to envisage how the United States would have entered the war but for Pearl Harbor.
However, as H.P. Willmott observes, the American Germany First strategy was somewhat belied by the disposition of American forces in 1943, which more resembled a Pacific First strategy. It was certainly not the case for the American navy, for which the Pacific War remained its primary theater of operations throughout the war – and for the Marines, for which it was their exclusive theater of operation.
While similar in scale, the Pacific War lacked the decisive impact of its Nazi-Soviet counterpart, as Japan was that much weaker than Germany and that much outmatched by its American opponent in the long term that the ultimate outcome was effectively a foregone conclusion.
However, while some parts of the narrative of the war are well known, there often seems to me a curious hiatus in popular culture or imagination about that narrative as a whole.
And that curious hiatus is the Pacific War in popular culture or imagination seems to leap from the dramatic victories of Japan at the outset of the war in the six months from December 1941, at Pearl Harbor and onwards through South East Asia through to its equally dramatic defeat and reversal of fortune in the Battle of Midway in June 1942 – to the dramatic victories of the United States in Iwo Jima or Okinawa in 1945, effectively within the home island territories of Japan itself, or perhaps in the Philippines in 1944 at earliest. Of course, it helps that the staged photograph of the Marines raising the American flag in victory at Iwo Jima is one of the most iconic photographs of the war, if not the most iconic photograph.
In other words, it seems to skip the hard-fought campaigns from 1942 to 1944 or 1945 that brought the United States to those home island territories of Japan – including one of the best and most hard-fought American campaigns in the whole Pacific War, fought in the most arduous circumstances before the American quantitative and qualitative material advantages became truly overwhelming against its Japanese opponent, the campaign in and for Guadalcanal.
In fairness, those campaigns often seem like slogging matches over small islands, yet ironically without the decisive or big battles that capture popular attention or imagination. The latter was increasingly by design, particularly after the Marine casualties capturing the Tarawa atoll in November 1943, when the Americans improved their amphibious landing tactics – but even more so changed their strategy, substituting island-hopping or leapfrogging in which they bypassed Japanese strongholds such as Rabaul to “wither on the vine”.
As such, although they were often surprisingly resilient even when bypassed, many Japanese soldiers were simply left stranded without supplies, dying of starvation or disease without sighting an enemy soldier – or dying again without directly engaging any enemy combatant when their ships were sunk by American submarines.
In that, they reflected the situation of Japan itself, simply writ large for Japan as it was increasingly strangled by the American submarine campaign against its shipping. I often opine on the American submarines as the unsung victors of the war with their decisive contribution to American victory. With a smaller submarine fleet than Germany and initially defective torpedoes to boot (das boot? – heh), it managed to achieve what Germany did not – destroying the shipping of a maritime empire to bring that empire to its knees, albeit helped by Japan’s woeful neglect of anti-submarine warfare.
Japan’s problems were compounded in that it faced not one but two American campaigns in the Pacific – arising from the split between the American navy and army, which essentially saw two separate campaigns by them, the American navy campaign in the central Pacific, and the American army campaign in the south-west Pacific.
(Of course, Japan had its own issues with such a split, only much worse – which effectively saw a successful navy coup in 1944 against the army government under Tojo that had launched the war with the attack on Pearl Harbor).
It may have been better, as historian John Ellis opines, to have resolved the split and focus on the one campaign – the south-west Pacific with its shorter distances – but the fact remains that the Americans had the resources for both while Japan increasingly lacked them for either.
As H.P. Willmott observes, the Pacific War was the second such war fought by the United States as it mirrored an earlier war – the American Civil War:
“Between 1941 and 1945, Japan was to the United States what the Confederacy had been 80 years before, and the parallels between the two wars were very considerable. Both wars, each about four years in duration, saw the United States opposed by enemies that relied upon allegedly superior martial qualities to overcome demographic, industrial and positional inferiority, but in both wars the United States’ industrial superiority and ability to mount debilitating blockades proved decisive to the outcome. In both wars, the United States was able to use the advantages of a secure base and exterior lines of communication to bring overwhelming strength to enemies committed to defensive strategies, and which were plagued by divided counsels, while in the military aspects of both wars there were close similarities…
The Union drive down the Mississippi that resulted in the capture of Vicksburg in July 1863 and the separation of the Confederate heartland from Texas has its parallel in the drive across the south-west Pacific to the Philippines to separate Japan from its southern resources area. The battles in the two-way states that culminated in the march through Georgia were not dissimilar from the central Pacific offensive that took American forces to Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the shores of the Japanese home islands”.
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
The extent of Japanese occupation of China in 1940 – public domain image Wikipedia “Second Sino-Japanese War”
(4) SINO-JAPANESE WAR
(18 SEPTEMBER 1931 – 27 FEBRUARY 1932 / 7 JULY 1937 – 2 SEPTEMBER 1945)
This is the other big one but in reverse to the Anglo-German war – the war no one thinks or talks about for the Second World War, despite its scale, not least reflected in Chinese casualties second only to the Soviets
That omission or oversight in popular culture or consciousness is reflected in the usual historiography of the Second World War commencing with the German invasion of Poland, rather than the Japanese war with China that commenced two years earlier – or arguably six years before that with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
Well, for Europeans or Eurocentric history at least – it obviously gets more attention in Asian history. More accurately, it was the Second Sino-Japanese War, after the First Sino-Japanese war fought between Qing China and Japan in 1894-1895.
In fairness, it was largely isolated to the combatant nations of China and Japan. The actual combat was isolated to China itself, given that the Chinese forces involved could barely defend themselves or their territory. By barely I mean with extensive losses and limited longer term prospects of continuing to do so without outside aid or intervention, let alone any prospects of ejecting Japanese forces or taking the war to Japan. And of course, isolated is a relative term, given the scale of war with China as the world’s most populous nation and one of its largest in size.
I say largely isolated because there were various degrees of foreign involvement in support to China or on the edges of the war itself. The former surprisingly included aid from Germany at the outset, until Germany aligned itself with Japan and started its own war in Europe – prompting much of the foreign involvement on the edges of the war with Japan seeking to cut off routes of supply to China or resources for its own war effort in south-east Asia, ultimately leading to the larger Pacific War.
Also in fairness, the war received reasonably widespread attention at the outset, both for the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and for the Japanese war with China from 1937, the latter most infamously for the R*pe of Nanking or Nanjing, the Chinese southern capital that the Chinese Nationalist government could not defend and had to abandon.
I am only familiar with the basic highlights of the war until the European war in 1939 – the loss of Nanjing of course and the loss of Shanghai that preceded it, the Chinese Nationalist regime under Chiang Kai-shek deciding to blow up the dams of the Yellow River to flood the North China plain to slow the Japanese advance in 1938, and the Chinese government having to retreat first to Wuhan and second to Chungking as its capital.
Looking it up, the battle of Wuhan in 1938 was the largest battle of the war – Wuhan was lost but China managed to hold the city of Changsha through two battles in 1939 and 1941, as well as win victory at Taierzhuang in 1938. In fairness to myself, the major combat operations in this period of the war from 1938 to 1941 are usually not common knowledge.
And in fairness to world attention at the time, the Sino-Japanese war was not only overshadowed by the war in Europe, but also largely settled into stalemate – where Japan had mostly defeated Chinese forces in battle but lacked the forces to extend its occupation further beyond coastal cities or railways in a country that remained overwhelmingly hostile to it. At the same, Chinese forces lacked the ability for anything other than a defensive strategy – that is, avoiding open battle as much as possible while looking for salvation from outside forces, with the Nationalists and Communists also looking ahead to renewed civil war with each other.
However, Japan still had one surprise left for China, even while it was virtually collapsing in the Pacific War against the United States, and one that is almost entirely forgotten or overlooked in most Second World War histories – the Ichigo offensive in 1944. The largest Japanese army offensive of the whole war, it was also the last successful Japanese offensive – astonishingly so and on a scale unequalled for anything else by Japan or Germany at that late stage of the war.
It was the last of a series of Japanese blows that ultimately proved fatal for the Chinese Nationalist government in the subsequent civil war with the Communists – Japan arguably doing the most of anyone, including the Chinese Communists themselves, to win victory for the Communists in the civil war.
Occupation of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939 by Lonio17 for Wikipedia “Occupation of Poland (1939-1945)” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
(5) FOURTH PARTITION OF POLAND / POLISH WAR
(1 SEPTEMBER 1939 – 8 MAY 1945)
The invasion and partition of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union – in accordance with the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, which as popular historian Paul Johnson pointed out was something of a misnomer for what was more accurately a Nazi-Soviet aggression pact against Poland.
Speaking of Paul Johnson, he records an interesting vignette of how easy it was to forget Poland as casus belli of the European war. One guest swept his arm around at a London society wedding on 10 January 1946 to exclaim “After all, this is what we have been fighting for”, only for a female guest to retort “What, are they all Poles?”
And indeed, the invasion of Poland by Germany on 1 September 1939 was the commencement of the Second World War in Europe. The Soviet invasion followed on 17 September 1939, effectively to claim the Polish territory assigned to it under the Pact which in turn reclaimed the territory lost to Poland in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921. But for the Pact, Germany could readily have occupied all of pre-war Poland. As it was, Poland ceased to exist as a state – and alone among the states occupied by Germany, did not have its own collaborationist government but instead the German-administered General Government.
The title of Fourth Partition of Poland is used by some historians in reference to the Three Polish Partitions – the three partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1772 to 1795 by Russia, Prussia and Austria that progressively reduced the Commonwealth until it was eliminated as a state altogether by the third partition and completely divided up among the three partitioning parties.
However, other historians have pointed out that it might well be reckoned an even higher numbered partition – depending on how one reckons the subsequent restoration of Poland under Napoleon in 1807 and its partitions in 1815 (Congress of Vienna), 1832, 1846, 1848, and 1918 (Treaty of Brest-Litovsk).
I have classed the Fourth Partition of Poland as one of my top ten Second World Wars – indeed in top tier – as the German (and Soviet) war against Poland continued throughout the Second World War, albeit behind other active fronts, particularly in Poland itself behind the Eastern Front.
Active military fronts that is – Poland itself was the front line (or ground zero) of the war Germany fought against the populations of the nations it occupied, above all the Holocaust with it mostly occurring in camps in Poland and Polish Jews representing about half the tally for the Jewish population of Europe killed.
Of course, the most active part of the German war against Poland was its original campaign in September 1939 – which one book title christened as The War Hitler Won, and as H.P. Willmott observed in The Great Crusade, was a war Germany won before a single shot was fired due to its material and positional superiority over Polish forces.
The German victory still surprised observers at the time as being a matter of weeks rather than months. Poland might have had better prospects if weather – General Mud – had been more on its side, if its defense had been better planned or timed, and above all if Britain and France had properly planned or coordinated an offensive against Germany on the Western Front. The failure of the last has been considered as part of the larger Western Betrayal argued by Poles and Czechs from Munich to Yalta.
Even so, Polish forces defended Poland impressively – notably inflicting a similar proportion of casualties (for German personnel killed in action) as the French did in far better defensive circumstances the following year. That was despite the Soviet invasion on 17 September transforming the Polish situation from hopeless to completely hopeless – although as H.P. Willmott points out, it did little to change the military situation in reality other than to remove the Polish option of holding out in the so-called Romanian Bridgehead. As it was, some Polish forces held out even after the fall of Warsaw on 28 September, enduring until the last of them surrendered on 6 October, while others fled or escaped.
However, the war did not end there, either for Polish armed forces or in Poland itself.
With respect to the former, those Polish armed forces that managed to escape or flee continued fighting in Allied forces elsewhere (or in resistance within Poland), particularly as the Polish Armed Forces in the West, led by the Polish government-in-exile based first in France and then in Britain. Indeed, “Polish armed forces were the fourth largest Allied forces in Europe after the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain”, albeit reliant on arms and supplies from other allies.
Among the western allies, Poles served with distinction – perhaps the most famous examples being Polish airmen in the Battle of Britain and the Poles as the Allied “shock troops” in the Battle of Monte Cassino. The Polish navy and merchant marine also fought in the Polish Armed Forces in the West.
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Soviets either released Polish personnel to serve in the Polish Armed Forces in the West or had them raise the Polish Armed Forces in the East, the latter more to Soviet ideological taste.
Arguably even more impactful was the Polish contribution to Allied intelligence. Apparently almost half “of all reports received by the British secret services from continental Europe in between 1939 and 1945 came from Polish sources” – and the Polish intelligence network described as “the only allied intelligence assets on the Continent” (after the French surrender).
Most impactful of all was the vital Polish intelligence contribution towards the decryption of the German Enigma codes, delivered to the western allies only five weeks before the war, and which underlay the British decryption known as ULTRA. Polish intelligence didn’t end there but also provided the Allies with key intelligence about the German camps, V-1 and V-2 rockets, and submarines, as well as an intelligence network for north Africa.
The Polish intelligence contribution to Allied victory has been described as “disproportionately large” and much more effective “than subversive or guerilla activities”.
Speaking of subversive or guerilla activities, finally there was the war in Poland itself – or rather the war on Poland itself. The German campaign may have ended but if anything that only represented an escalation in the German war on Poland – with far more Polish casualties from occupation than the military campaign in 1939. Poland has one of the highest casualties in absolute terms for those killed in the war – approximately 6 million, almost all civilians and over half of which were Polish Jews – and the highest as a proportion of its population, approximately 17%.
Of course, that wasn’t all the German occupation – a small proportion was from the Soviet occupation, most infamously the captured Polish soldiers killed by the Soviets at Katyn.
That prompted Polish resistance movements and the Polish Underground State, with an overall strength that was the largest or one of the largest resistance movements in Europe – in which the largest Polish resistance organization was the Home Army (Army Krajowa or AK), although there was a plethora of other organizations.
The Polish resistance fought two famous uprisings in Warsaw – firstly, the Warsaw Ghetto Rising by the Jews against deportation to the camps in April 1943, and secondly (even more famously and on a larger scale), the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944 as Soviet forces advanced on the city. Equally as famously, those Soviet forces sat it out while the Germans crushed the Uprising, destroying Warsaw far more thoroughly than the German campaign in 1939 did. The Soviet forces were at the limits of their supply and logistic chains, but they were also not inclined to do too much to address that (or otherwise assist the western Allied air forces to drop aid to the Poles), given the convenience of Germany destroying the non-communist Polish resistance.
H.P. Willmott observed the irony that Germany treated Poland atrociously and France leniently, while the reverse might have better suited Germany’s purpose. I have observed that I do not understand why Germany crushed the Warsaw Uprising, when it might have suited Germany better to withdraw to another defensive line, leaving it intact as a potential thorn in the side for the Soviets.
I’ve left the end date of this entry as the surrender of Germany but in effect part of the Polish resistance or underground war and indeed of the partition of Poland continued afterwards with respect to the Soviets – with the latter continuing to this day and onwards, as Poland never retained the loss of its territory from the Soviet part of the Pact.
The German advance to the English Channel between 16 May and 21 May of 1940, History Department of the US Military Academy, public domain image
(6) FRANCO-GERMAN WAR / THIRD FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR
(1 SEPTEMBER 1939 – 25 JUNE 1940)
This was the big one – until it suddenly and surprisingly wasn’t.
The war that was the focus of everyone’s attention at the outset – the war at the start and the heart of the Second World War in Europe, set to replay the Western Front of the First World War and synonymous with the Battle of France…until France fell and signed an armistice with Germany on 25 June 1940.
After then, it was replaced in western Europe, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean by the Anglo-German war, which ultimately became the Anglo-American war with Germany.
Of course, the Anglo-German war commenced at the same time as the Franco-German war – with the German invasion of Poland – and both were fought side by side, literally with Britain and France as allies in western Europe against Germany. However, the Franco-German war predominated over the Anglo-German war, as France did the heavy lifting in terms of both being the Allied front line in western Europe and fielding the overwhelming majority of the Allied armies against Germany. While Britain did field an expeditionary force to France, its main strength was its navy, as had always historically been the case, as well as the newer addition of its air force.
The Franco-German war effectively ended with German victory and French defeat in the Battle of France, such that the primary contest was no longer between French and German armies but the Anglo-German war until 1941. Britain’s strategic hope relied on the substitution of another power for France as ally that could contribute similar large forces on land against Germany. That hope was understandably focused on the United States, which ultimately did replace France as larger army allied with Britain on the Western Front, but the Soviet Union played the role of France for both Britain and the United States as primary or supreme allied combatant on land, except substituting that role on the Eastern Front for France on the Western Front.
While some French forces fought on against Germany mostly from France’s colonies as the Free French, they effectively did so as a subordinate part of the Anglo-German war or Anglo-American war against Germany – as did the revived French forces after the Anglo-American liberation of France, the core of which were Free French forces in any event. As such, the Franco-German war very much ended with French defeat in the Battle of France.
The Franco-German war was more than just the Battle of France, albeit not much more as indicated by the title of Phoney War, or Sitzkrieg in German as an amusing contrast to blitzkrieg, from about September 1939 to May 1940. This title is a slight misnomer. Britain and France may not have conducted major military operations on the Western Front but they did implement economic warfare and waged naval warfare, including their naval blockade of Germany and targeting German surface raiders. They also planned operations, although the only one that saw any action was in Norway – when they came up against the German plans to invade and occupy that country and Denmark from April 1940.
The biggest lost opportunity by France was at the outset of the Franco-German war with the failure to launch a more robust and potentially decisive offensive against Germany while the latter only had weak forces in the west during its campaign in Poland – that is, other than the abortive Saar Offensive. Had France pursued or expanded that offensive more vigorously, it may well have won the Franco-German war and ended the Second World War right there.
For that matter, the Saar Offensive was simply the last in a long line of French inaction where even the most minimal action against Germany mght have won the war before it started, most notably with Germany’s remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936.
However, it remains that the Franco-German war is defined by the Battle of France from 10 May 1940 to 25 June 1940 – and the French defeat in it. The reasons for the latter, as well as those for German victory, are perhaps best considered in a closer look at the Battle of France, but at least part of those reasons is from the same pusillanimity as shown by the French leadership in their Saar Offensive or any of their other failures to take more effective action against Germany when they held the advantage.
Although I feel obliged to point out that critique of pusillanimity and psychological defeatism should not extend to French military performance as a whole, unfairly the subject of caricature as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”.
The Franco-German war was the third such war in seventy years, such that it should be considered the Third Franco-Prussian War, after the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-1871 and the First World War in 1914-1918, albeit the latter involved a Germany that been unified under Prussia and its monarchy after the former. The Prussian monarchy may have been forced to abdicate after the First World War, but Germany and even more so the German military or Wehrmacht effectively remained unified under a Prussian state. The Allies in the Second World War certainly thought so as they abolished the Prussian state after the war, identifying it with the German militarism of both world wars.
Although perhaps the Franco-German war of the Second World War should be considered the Second Franco-Prussian War – as the Germans managed to replay the same quick victory they had won in the Franco-Prussian War, achieving in only six weeks what they could not against France on the Western Front throughout the entire First World War.
That of itself, as well as the repetition of three Franco-German wars in effectively as many generations, is worthy of the Franco-German war being considered as its own separate war within the Second World War.
Approximate map of southern Europe and northern Africa prior to the western Desert Campaign by Jackaranga for Wikipedia “Western Desert Campaign” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
(7) GUERRA PARALLELA –
FRANCO-ITALIAN, ANGLO-ITALIAN & GRECO-ITALIAN WAR
(10 JUNE 1940 – 6 APRIL 1941)
It might seem odd to see Italy’s initial role in the Second World War as waging its own ‘guerra parallela’ or parallel war to that fought by Germany, but that was indeed how Mussolini saw it – and what’s more, that is what it effectively was until Italian defeats necessitated German involvement in Italy’s war, at which point Italy became a subordinate in Germany’s war.
It was also of fundamental importance to the Second World War, transforming the Mediterranean from a literal backwater, neutral albeit Axis-friendly, to an active theater of the war – certainly disastrous to Italy itself, ultimately a battlefield in that theater, but arguably to the detriment of everyone involved, hence my favorite epithet for the Mediterranean in the Second World War as the sea of folly.
Apparently prior to Italy entering the war, the British War Cabinet considered whether it was more advantageous for Italy to remain neutral or be a millstone for Germany as ally (or for Germany to be “shackled to a corpse”, using the phrasing for Germany allied to Austria-Hungary in the First World War). They concluded that it would be better for Italy to remain neutral, correctly in my opinion, but by a narrow margin. Italy as active ally to Germany was not the war-breaker for Germany of which Hitler subsequently complained on the eve of final defeat, but it did contribute to German defeat. On the other hand, the Mediterranean was a drain on resources for all involved, arguably delaying Allied victory by at least a year or so, although they could more readily afford that drain on their resources more than a Germany which increasingly could not.
Mussolini initially sought to sit out the war that commenced with Germany’s invasion of Poland – firstly for the sensible practical reason that, as he had confided to Hitler, Italy was not ready for war until 1943 (similarly to German naval commanders who advised Hitler of the same year with respect to the German navy), and secondly for ideological opposition to the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
It is unfortunate for Italy and Mussolini personally that he did not maintain this sensible neutrality – as indeed it was that he did not maintain his original opposition to Hitler and Germany, being the only effective such opposition in the period of appeasement by Britain and France, notably by blocking Germany taking over Austria in 1934. It’s why I perceive Mussolini with some sympathy as a tragic figure despite his many flaws, not the least of which was fascism – that he might have redeemed himself in history but for the fatal flaw that he was twice corrupted from his correct initial instincts, firstly of opposition to Germany and secondly of neutrality in the war.
Mussolini abandoned his initial neutrality because he could not resist the temptation of the opportunity from the French defeat by Germany for Italy’s own expansion or empire in the Mediterranean. Although the opportunity came from the French defeat by Germany, Mussolini perceived that Italy could not do so simply by begging crumbs from Germany at the table of victory as a power friendly to it, but would have to assume an active role in the war when it was still meaningful – and what’s more, by its own war effort separate from Germany, hence the ”guerra parallela” or parallel war.
That saw Italy declare war on a dying France and a defeated Britain, although Italy was to find that the latter may have been defeated by Germany in western Europe but was to prove far more robust elsewhere.
Unfortunately for Mussolini and his guerra parallela, Italy’s separate war effort did not shape up to his hopes for it. It was probably inevitable that Italy’s war against Britain in the Mediterranean and Africa would merge with the wider Anglo-German war at some point, but Mussolini might have pulled off his parallel war if Italy had been more successful militarily. Instead, Italy was unsuccessful, infamously and spectacularly so.
Like I did for France in the Franco-German war, I feel obliged to resist the common caricature of Italy’s military performance as execrable, often pumped up as such by contemporary British propaganda – much to the anger of the British personnel who had to do the actual fighting when the Italian military did perform effectively. Italy’s military was not universally bad as so often caricatured but it was inconsistent. The reasons for that inconsistency are manifold, including that Italians did not share Mussolini’s enthusiasm for his guerra parallela on the German side but also the same reason Mussolini himself shared to Hitler – that Italy simply was not ready for war before 1943. Italian military performance often reflected that Italy went to war with a totally inadequate industrial base and wretched equipment to match, particularly outside its most prized military asset – its navy. When Italian forces were buttressed by better equipment and leadership, such as in Rommel’s Afrika Korps, they could fight very effectively indeed.
Mussolini’s parallel war got off to a bad start with the Franco-Italian war, fought in the last fortnight or so (10-25 June 1940) of dying French resistance in the Franco-German war that had commenced fighting in earnest a month before. Albeit Italy did not have the same mechanized or armored strength as Germany – and faced more difficult terrain that would have been a check to it even if it did – for the invasion of south France or the Battle of the Alps as it is called, but the resistance by the few divisions of the French Army of the Alps under General Rene Olry was the one shining light of effective French defense during the Battle of France. I’ve read at least one history that opined the French defensive success effectively preserved south France for the autonomous Vichy regime. I’m not so sure about that, as Vichy’s autonomy seemed more due to the larger bargaining chips of continuing the war through the French navy and colonial possessions, but it probably helped. It certainly limited Italian territorial claims to the minimal territory they had obtained prior to armistice.
Italy’s military performance may have been lackluster in the Franco-Italian war, but that was positively rosy compared to the defeats it suffered in the Anglo-Italian war. Those defeats were, as noted previously, most infamous and spectacular in north Africa where Italy was not only defeated by Britain in its invasion of Egypt but looked in real danger of losing its own territory of Italian Libya to the victorious British forces. However, Britain’s victories against Italian forces in north Africa often overshadow its victories against the Italian forces in east Africa (Ethiopia and Somalia) as well as its naval victories in the Mediterranean, most notably the British air attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto in the first carrier strike of history on 11 November 1940. The attack on Taranto was even more notable as a model the Japanese used for their subsequent attack on Pearl Harbor (along with their own attack on Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War) – and that Britain was notoriously deficient when it came to developing carrier aviation, particularly in comparison to Japan or the United States, with the air attack on Taranto being by the biplanes Britain used in naval aviation at that time.
However, the archetypal example of Italy’s parallel war was the Greco-Italian War it launched from 28 October 1940, attacking Greece from Albania. At least Germany was aware of Italian intentions in the Franco-Italian and Anglo-Italian wars, but Mussolini had deliberately not informed Germany of his intentions for the Greco-Italian War, resentful of what he perceived as German encroachment in the Balkans (by Germany negotiating between Hungary and Romania in conflict over Transylvania) as an Italian sphere of influence.
Once again, Italian forces faced difficult terrain, but also in the worst possible season for it, and were defeated by opposing Greek forces, only somewhat less spectacularly than in north Africa. A large part of the reason for the defeat of Italian forces in both Greece and North Africa was Mussolini splitting the Italian war effort between the two, something the British were to repeat in their victories by sending forces from north Africa to aid Greece.
As noted previously, Italy’s parallel war – the Anglo-Italian and Greco-Italian wars – effectively ended with German involvement to aid Italy at the latter’s request, reversing British or Greek victories with defeats by Germany, as well as subordinating Italy and its parallel war to Germany in the wider Anglo-German war. German involvement had commenced earlier in north Africa but commenced in Greece with the German invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece from 6 April 1941.
The latter has often been attributed as the fatal mistake that lost Germany the whole war, by delaying Operation Barbarossa until 22 June 1941, including by Hitler himself after the fact (and blaming everyone but himself). That has generally been revised by assessments that an unusually wet spring thaw would have delayed Barbarossa in any event, although it certainly didn’t help that the German units involved in their Balkans campaign were delayed in participating in Barbarossa – and the German airborne invasion of Crete deterred Germany from doing so to better effect elsewhere, most notably against Malta.
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
Map showing the Soviet Union’s 1945 Invasion of Manchuria, also known as Operation August Storm – based on David Glantz’s maps in Levenworth Paper No 7 – Feb 1983 used in Wikipedia “Soviet invasion of Manchuria” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
(8) SOVIET-JAPANESE WAR
(11 MAY – 16 SEPTEMBER 1939 / 8 AUGUST – 2 SEPTEMBER 1945)
It has always struck me as somewhat anomalous that two of the major combatants of the Second World War, the Soviet Union and Imperial Japan, scrupulously avoided fighting each other for almost all the conflict, despite being on opposing sides and despite it obviously being to the detriment of Japan’s ally Germany.
Not that, on the latter point (and according to my reading), Germany particularly sought out Japanese involvement in its war against the Soviet Union – at least not until Germany’s initial victories began to wane to the point that Germany considered it might need Japanese involvement after all, by which point it was too little too late.
Hence Japan signed the Japanese-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact on 13 April 1941, a little over two months before Germany invaded the Soviet Union – reflecting how little Germany had coordinated with or even informed Japan with respect to its intentions. Hence also the term scrupulously I used for the Soviet Union and Japan avoiding fighting each other – scrupulously that is, in terms of abiding by the Non-Aggression Pact.
And as I stated before, despite that scrupulousness on Japan’s part obviously being to the detriment of Japan’s ally Germany – reflected in, among other things, about half of American Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union in the war against Germany being shipped through the Pacific, as long as the ships had Russian flags (which I anticipate would simply have been a matter of lending them those ships or assigning ships Russian flags).
It’s even more anomalous when one considers the long-standing Japanese hostility to the Soviet Union – and indeed the Russian empire before that, Japan’s first European military adversary. Japan had both the largest and longest military intervention in the Russian Civil War, which persisted until Japan finally withdrew from Siberia and the Russian Pacific Far East in 1922.
The initial target of the rise of Japanese militarism in the 1930s was also the Soviet Union – outside of course the Japanese annexation of Manchuria, from which Japanese militarists began looking towards the Soviet Union – before that particular party of militarists was suppressed by other militarists looking towards China and elsewhere, although that didn’t stop repeated minor clashes with the Soviet Union on the Manchurian border or in Mongolia.
One can see why the Soviet Union stuck scrupulously to the Japanese-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact in its existential struggle against Germany, but less so for Japan. One factor was of course that both the navy and Japan’s need for resources, particularly oil, advocated the “Southern Strategy” against European Asian colonies (and the United States) as opposed to the “Northern Strategy” (against the Soviet Union) that was the contending strategy proposed, typically by the army, in war councils.
The other factor was the healthy respect that Japan had for the Soviet forces opposing them – something I share in terms of my uncertainly whether any Japanese involvement against the Soviet Union in 1941, when it was most optimal for Japan (and Germany), would have actually made any different to the outcome.
That respect arose from the first of the Soviet-Japanese wars that did occur during the Second World War, interestingly enough with those two wars bookending the main conflict at start and finish.
Indeed, the first Soviet-Japanese war commenced six months before the commencement of the war in Europe with the German invasion of Poland and indeed continued for a fortnight or so into the European war. However, it was kept mostly secret by both combatants – the Soviet Union presumably to avoid undermining its position against Germany and Japan because its army was soundly defeated by that of the Soviet Union, notably at Khalkhin Gol.
The Japanese defeat in this war, particularly at Khalkhin Gol, has taken on some notoriety in history since the Second World War – rightly so in my opinion, as having an importance on the outcome of events in the Second World War that were somewhat obscured by its secrecy at the time. In some ways, it is a pity that it wasn’t publicized more widely – as it, and Japanese intelligence on the strength of Soviet forces, might otherwise had some impact on German decisions, at least if the latter had been in the minds of more rational actors.
The other Soviet-Japanese war bookend came at the end of the Second World War, after Germany had surrendered – and in the form of the Soviet Union honoring its promise to the United States to commit to war against Japan. Ironically – and somewhat incredibly – Japan at this time harbored delusions that, consistent with the Japanese-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, the Soviets could help Japan negotiate a more lenient peace.
Instead, the Soviets scrapped the Pact and absolutely smashed Japan’s Kwangtung Army in Manchuria – indeed proceeding into Korea and Japan’s northernmost island possessions.
While the Japanese army had previously romped through China in the absence of the latter’s industrial capacity and hence armored forces, now it faced the Soviet army – pretty much defined by its armored forces or tanks – honed to perfection fighting and winning against Germany.
As the War Nerd (Gary Brecher) colorfully observed in a column on this war – “This was a campaign between two great empires—both gone now, it occurs to me—but one, the Soviet, was at the absolute top of its game, and the other, Imperial Japan, was dying and insane.”
Offensives of the four Soviet armies in the Winter War from 30 November to 22 December 1939 – public domain image in Wikipedia “Winter War”
(9) SOVIET-FINNISH WAR – WINTER & CONTINUATION WARS
(30 NOVEMBER 1939 – 13 MARCH 1940 / 25 JUNE 1941 – 19 SEPTEMBER 1944)
The Soviet-Finnish wars have an odd place in the continuity of the Second World War – almost like Schrodinger’s wars, at the same time both within and outside the main continuity, with the latter effectively saving Finland from the same fate of occupation and unconditional surrender as Germany.
The Winter War has quite the notoriety within Second World War history, primarily for the obvious Soviet expectations of a walkover only to be undone by the Finnish underdog against the odds.
The ultimate Soviet goals in that war are contested, although most seem to agree that it was the complete occupation of Finland – consistent with restoring other former Imperial Russian territory to the Soviet Union, as with Poland and the Baltic states.
Whatever they were, they had to evolve as a result of the skilful and stubborn Finnish resistance that is the stuff of legend, while the Soviets seem to double down on one disaster after another.
But evolve they did, to a more realistic strategy not based on Finland conveniently collapsing from the first push – and which had seen Soviet overconfidence in attacking at the worst time of year for it in terms of seasonal weather. Ultimately, Finland had to negotiate while they still had the means to avoid worse defeat.
The Soviet-Finnish wars weren’t done, however, as the Soviets reaped the harvest they had sown in the Winter War with what the Finns called the Continuation War – the Finnish participation in the German invasion of the Soviet Union. That title reflected the common perception or intention that the war was to reverse the losses of the Winter War and no more, though some Finns argued for more ambitious war aims of a Greater Finland.
Whatever the Finnish goals in the Continuation War, Finland held itself aloof from Germany as much as possible, even to the extent of identifying as co-belligerent rather than ally and not signing the Tripartite Pact – which resulted in the United States never formally declared war on Finland.
Finland also refused to advance beyond certain points and had to demobilize part of its army from economic necessity in 1942. Finland was also the first to see the logic of German defeat if Germany could not secure a quick victory, attempting to start peace negotiations with the Soviet Union as early as autumn 1941.
And once again Finland managed to save itself with the Soviets accepting a more limited outcome than the occupation or unconditional surrender of Finland. That outcome did however require the Finns to declare war on Germany and eject German troops from Finland.
That saw the third and final war fought by Finland, this time against Germany in the Lapland war – which mostly came to an effective end in until November 1944 although some German troops held out until 27 April 1945, shortly before the surrender of Germany itself.
Territories under partisan control in September 1944, public domain map in Wikipedia “World War II in Yugoslavia”
(10) YUGOSLAVIAN CIVIL WAR & WAR OF NATIONAL LIBERATION
(6 APRIL 1941 – 25 MAY 1945)
“In April 1941, the Axis powers conquered Greece and Yugoslavia and thereafter the real struggle for the control of those countries began.”
That’s how H.P. Willmott summed it up in The Great Crusade, his history of the Second World War. While Greece will earn a place in my special mentions, the partisan warfare in Yugoslavia deserves its place in my Top 10 Second World Wars.
That’s because of two reasons – its scale and the effectiveness of the partisans under Tito.
The former is reflected in its casualties, with Yugoslavia having one of the highest death tolls by population, usually estimated as at least one million (or approximately 7% of the population), of which over half were civilian.
The partisans were no slouches in number of combatants either – originally a guerilla force aided by their country’s mountainous terrain, they switched to a conventional force apparently numbering 650,000 in 1944 (and increasing to 800,000 in 1945) in four field armies in 52 divisions, with a navy and air force.
Their effectiveness is usually considered in terms of being Europe’s most effective anti-Axis resistance movement in the war – unique or almost unique among such movements or partisans to liberate their country with their own forces during the war.
(In its article on the Yugoslav Partisans, Wikipedia nominates Yugoslavia as “one of only two European countries that were largely liberated by its own forces during World War II” – I recall the other is Albania, although I also recall Greek partisans had liberated substantial parts of Greece).
Of course, they didn’t and probably couldn’t do without outside help. They were aided by joint operations with the Soviet operation against Belgrade, the national (and Serbian) capital. They were also aided throughout by logistics and air support from the western allies.
More substantially, they were aided by Germany’s priority to commit forces elsewhere against the Soviets or western allies, as well as by the desertion of Germany’s allies, both those allies surrendering to switch sides and of forces fielded in Yugoslavia itself, often literally deserting to join the partisans.
Even so, Germany and its allies came very close to destroying the partisans in spring and summer 1943 – that is, before the reversal of fortunes from the surrender of Germany’s most significant ally in Europe, particularly in terms of forces occupying Yugoslavia, Italy.
This illustrates that the Yugoslavian war of liberation was no simply two-sided affair, but rather a bitter battle royale on all sides – summed up by a quip from John Irving’s Setting Free the Bears to the effect that it was a hard war if you didn’t change sides at least once.
On what might be described as the Axis side, there was of course Germany, which had primarily defeated Yugoslavia in April 1941 but had then largely left the occupation of Yugoslavia to its allies – Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and their various client regimes, most notoriously the Ustashe of Croatia. That is, until the surrender of Italy and the threat of Allied landings in the Mediterranean extending to the Balkans forced Germany to commit more substantial forces.
On what might be described as the Yugoslav side, there was actually a multi-side civil war, albeit primarily between Tito’s communist partisans and the royalist Chetniks, although there were also the collaborationist forces of Axis client regimes as well as, bizarrely, the White Russian émigré “Russian Protective Corps”. The Chetniks increasingly collaborated with the Axis forces, with the Allies ultimately abandoning them to support Tito’s partisans.
Tito and his partisans emerged victorious as Yugoslavia’s postwar communist or socialist government, naming the war they had won as the National Liberation War and Socialist Revolution. However, because they had won it largely with their own forces, they were able to remain outside the Soviet bloc – unlike the other eastern European communist states which had been essentially imposed by Soviet forces – effectively defecting from it in what was famously the first major split within the communist world, the Tito-Stalin split.
TOP 10 SECOND WORLD WARS (TIER LIST)
S-TIER (GOD TIER)
(1) NAZI-SOVIET WAR
(2) ANGLO-GERMAN WAR
(3) PACIFIC WAR
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
(4) SINO-JAPANESE WAR
(5) FOURTH POLISH PARTITION / POLISH WAR
(6) FRANCO-GERMAN WAR / THIRD FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR
(7) GUERRA PARALLELA – FRANCO-ITALIAN, ANGLO-ITALIAN & GRECO-ITALIAN WAR
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
(8) SOVIET-JAPANESE WAR
(9) SOVIET-FINNISH WAR – WINTER & CONTINUATION WARS
(10) YUGOSLAVIAN CIVIL WAR & WAR OF NATIONAL LIBERATION
