Map of the Holocaust in Europe during World War II, 1939-1945. This map shows all German Nazi extermination camps (or death camps), most major concentration camps, labor camps, prison camps, ghettos, major deportation routes and major massacre sites – map by Dennis Nilsson for Wikpedia Äuschwitz concentration camp” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

(4) HOLOCAUST (1933-1945)

Probably the best known and most disturbing “war” within the Second World War.

Of course, war might seem an entirely misplaced or sanitized term given how one-sided it was for Germany and her allies or collaborators – and how far it was removed from anything we normally accept as the field of battle, even including war crimes, hence the charge of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials.

It did, however, involve objectives, organization, personnel, logistics, and of course targets or intended casualties on the scale of a war – so much so that it might be argued to have cut across the war (or wars) Germany fought against actual enemy combatants, probably to the detriment of the latter, as cold-blooded or macabre as such historical analysis or study might seem.

The primary target was of course the Jewish population in Germany and the European countries controlled by or subordinate to it through its military victories – definitively so to the extent that the Holocaust is often defined in terms exclusive to that population, although that would be more accurate by its Hebrew name of Shoah.

However, it was much wider than that, including millions of non-Jewish Soviet civilians or prisoners of war (in addition to about 2 million Soviet Jews), close to 2 million non-Jewish Polish civilians (to add to about 3 million Polish Jews), and various other groups of people. Indeed, depending on how or whether you tally wider civilian casualties as part of the Holocaust, the Holocaust may extend upwards to the range of 11-17 million people, of which about half to a third were Jewish (in turn about one third of the world Jewish population or two thirds of the European Jewish population).

Nevertheless, Germany’s regime primarily identified it – and for that matter the world war itself – as, to borrow the title of the book by Lucy Dawidowicz, the war against the Jews. And as such, it was a war Germany largely won, given how one-sided it was.

It was, however, not entirely one-sided – there was some resistance, both passive and active, by some within the European Jewish population as well as by others coming to their aid. The primary passive resistance was of course hiding, fleeing or escaping from it – arguably the most effective form of any resistance in terms of numbers saved.

There was also active resistance by fighting against it, even with some uprisings in the camps themselves. The most famous revolt or uprising was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising from 19 April to 16 May 1943, “the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II” and the closest it ever came to a war fought between two sides, however unevenly matched. The Uprising was fought desperately and tenaciously from block to block, even into the sewers, by people who knew “victory was impossible and survival unlikely”, fighting so as “not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of our deaths”. I always remember reading somewhere that their resistance brought some grudging respect, if not mercy, in their opposing SS commanders that such “subhuman scum” could fight so well.

Sadly, such resistance when it occurred, passive or active, was tiny compared to the scale of forces and resources arrayed against it – and this war was largely fought through to its grim conclusion. That this grim conclusion left some surviving population is due in some small part to the resistance against it, overwhelmingly the passive resistance of hiding or flight from it, but more to Germany’s defeat in the wider war against enemy combatants – and also the extent to which it was at cross-purposes within itself or the wider war.

The largest cross-purpose perhaps reflected the extent to which the Holocaust cut across the wider war as an attempt to offset that extent – its use of industrial slave labor for war production. That also reflected the ambitions of Himmler to build the SS as effectively his own private empire within the German state and economy, something which was a strikingly recurring feature withing the inner circle of the regime – as indeed it was also for him and others raising what were effectively private armies within the Wehrmacht, of which SS combat units were one. As the tide of war turned against Germany, Himmler and others added a further cross-purpose to the use of industrial slave labor – the use of their prisoners as hostages for negotiations with or leniency from the Allies.

Some may query 1933 as the year of commencement but that reflects the history of its origins extending back at least to the rise of power of the Nazi regime in 1933, and arguably a prehistory well before that. Essentially, 1941 marks the commencement of it as a literal shooting war against Jewish and other civilian populations – with the invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, albeit predominantly behind the lines, particularly as the Germans regarded communist and Jewish as synonymous. The Germans effectively had a policy of summary execution for both – in the colorful words of the War Nerd, they had a “pretty flexible definition” for either “and when in doubt, they killed”.

In the key event of that war, that remains surprisingly not well known, despite ultimately looming larger in casualties than any battle in the wider war – the Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942, named for the Berlin suburb in which it was held – Germany extended that war throughout occupied Europe, literally under the official title of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.

Of course, I say extended because it was a war that was not formally declared as such, indeed kept shrouded in euphemism or secret as much as possible, albeit that possibility was limited by Allied intelligence as well as its sheer scale and the number of people involved in it. Ultimately however it was to be the war that defined Nazi Germany the most.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (DEVIL-TIER)

The infamous photograph of British PM Neville Chamberlain showing the Anglo-German Declaration from the Munich Agreement – public domain image used in Wikipedia “Peace for our time”

(3) AXIS COLD WAR (1931-1941)

“Up to now, we’ve succeeded in leaving the enemy in the dark concerning Germany’s real goals…No, they let us through the danger zone. That’s exactly how it was in foreign policy too…They left us alone and let us slip through the risky zone and we were able to sail around all dangerous reefs. And when we were done, and better armed than they, then they started the war.”

That statement by Joseph Goebbels – transcribed by a participant in a secret briefing to selected German journalists and quoted in Paul Johnson’s A History of the Modern World – “is, on the whole, an accurate summary of what happened in the 1930s”.

My previous special mention entry for the Cold War within the Second World War (or vice versa) overlooks that there was, in effect, another cold war that was far more entangled with the Second World War – the three-sided cold war in which Nazi Germany and other fascist states, the western democracies, and the Soviet Union all maneuvered with or against each other.

Indeed, the conventional depiction of the Second World War from 1 September 1939 to 2 September 1945 overlooks that this was simply the ‘hot war’ as the culmination of the longer cold war before that, from 1933 to 1939 for Germany and from 1931 to 1941 for Japan.

And, as the statement by Goebbels indicates, it was a cold war that Germany largely won, outmaneuvering and wrong-footing Britain and France to a remarkable extent.

Yes, it’s arguable – as some historians have argued – that it was the Soviet Union that won it, with the subsequent outbreak of war fought on Stalin’s terms and to his intentions. While there’s some substance to this, I think it overlooks his catastrophic miscalculation that war between Germany and the western democracies would be more protracted and exhausting for the combatants to the advantage of the Soviet Union.

Back to Germany, it reflects my own belief that Germany has only succeeded in foreign policy or war when it has, knowingly or otherwise, followed Bismarckian strategy – with Germany’s diplomatic or political successes in the thirties essentially replicating Bismarck’s strategy unifying Germany under Prussia, down to Germany’s successes in annexing Austria and Czechoslovakia mirroring Bismarck’s victories in the Austrian-Prussian and Franco-Prussian Wars, except through diplomatic rather than military force.

Of course, Nazi Germany failed the fundamental part of Bismarck’s strategy – avoiding general war as opposed to a carefully limited one – which ultimately undid all their Bismarckian successes. Even then, Germany managed to succeed coasting on the fumes of Bismarckian strategy – friendly relations with Russia and limiting the scope of the war to successive individual campaigns that resembled Bismarck’s small wars – until 1941.

It has been observed that had Hitler concluded his ambitions with Munich, he might well have been hailed as one of Germany’s greatest statesmen. That certainly accords with my view that the occupation of Prague and what remained of Czechoslovakia was perhaps his fatal mistake, prompting as it did Britain’s guarantee to Poland and dashing any prospect of reclaiming Danzig and other German territory from Poland without war.

Of course, as it turned out, Hitler’s ambitions were not limited to reclaiming former German territory, and given the Germany he led resembled a Ponzi or pyramid scheme that relied on ongoing conquest, it is not at all clear to me whether he could have stopped even if he wanted to do so. I have read that Germany’s need for gold and foreign reserves, as well as the Czech armaments industry, drove Germany’s occupation of Czechoslovakia as much as Hitler’s sense of buyer’s remorse that – extraordinarily – Britain and France had cheated him of complete victory at Munich.

Azar Gat has also observed that conflict between the western democracies and the fascist nations was one of cold war. Indeed, he observes it to be part of the standard trajectory of liberal democracies facing hostile non-democratic states – “a pattern progressing on an upward scale from isolationism to appeasement, to containment and cold war, to limited war, and, only reluctantly, to fully fledged war”.

The diplomatic and political confrontation of Britain and France with Germany in the 1930s essentially corresponded to evolving from appeasement to containment and cold war within that standard trajectory, except that they didn’t pull the latter off as well as the Americans in the Cold War because they lacked a credible deterrent, particularly that of strategic airpower and the nuclear deterrent the Americans had.

Their deterrent was essentially that of the threat of war, ultimately enacted in the guarantee to Poland. In fairness to Britain and France, that should have been a credible deterrent, as they saw what Hitler did not, that war would ultimately be self-destructive for all of them, reinforcing their decline to the Soviet Union and the United States as the two superpowers.

That standard trajectory flows from the tendency of liberal democracies to eschew preventive war – something the Romans or other pre-modern states would happily do without qualms. “Historically, they have chosen not to initiate war even when they are under threat, hold the military advantage, and are in danger of losing it”.

In effect, the observation of Gat dovetails with the statement of Goebbels in that it is harder to imagine a more clear-cut example of this than against Germany in the 1930s. “The remarkable thing is that the western liberal democracies did not intervene by force during the 1930s to prevent Hitler’s Germany from rearming, even though this meant that the complete military superiority that they held over Germany would be lost, making it possible for Hitler to embark on his radical expansionist policy.”

It remains that Britain or at least certainly France and even Poland – both of which should have been strongly motivated to keep Germany from rearming to attack them – could easily have intervened against Germany without any serious repercussions from 1933 to 1935 when Germany broke the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles restricting its military forces, such as when it introduced conscription or its air force.

That window of opportunity for intervention without serious repercussions probably remained open to France (and Britain) until 1936, when it could – and should – have intervened against Germany remilitarizing the Rhineland, which would have decisively defeated Hitler’s regime and may well have seen its collapse. That’s even more striking given that France (and Belgium) had no issue intervening to occupy the Ruhr industrial area when a weakened Weimar Germany sought to resist reparations in 1923. The same action probably would have won the war without fighting in 1936.

Much the same observations might be made of the Soviet Union, particularly in its choice of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact without which Germany could not have started the war – as opposed to any other choice, such as collective security with Britain and France or even just neutrality, that would have deterred Germany from war.

Thereafter however, Britain and France faced the prospect of war when it came to opposing Germany, once Germany had rearmed and fortified its western borders sufficiently to move to the next phase of occupying its two neighbors, Austria and Czechoslovakia. The latter – with the Munich Agreement that accompanied it – has become synonymous with appeasement, particularly as a pejorative term. That seems somewhat unfair, particularly for Britain and Neville Chamberlain. It might well have been better for Britain and France to declare war on Germany over Czechoslovakia, but the competing arguments seem finely balanced to me and it is easy to imagine the potential outcome might have been even worse than what happened with Poland a year later.

It just illustrates the various ironies or paradoxes that can be argued with respect to appeasement. One is that Britain and France enforced the wrong provisions of the Treaty of Versailles (reparations as opposed to military restrictions), or appeased the wrong Germany (Nazi Germany as opposed to Weimar Germany). Another is that they practised appeasement from a position of military superiority or strength when it made no sense, only to abandon it from a position of weakness when they could not effectively deter Germany, let alone effectively defend Czechoslovakia or Poland, at least without Soviet participation.

Yet another irony or paradox is that they appeased the wrong nation, alienating Japan and Italy, allies against Germany in the first world war, to the extent that those nations allied with Germany against them instead.

The alienation of Japan as an ally commenced as early as the 1920s, with perhaps one of the worst foreign policy mistakes by Britain – failing to renew the Anglo-Japanese alliance. Japan is of course the reason this entry commences prior to the Nazi regime in 1933, with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and continues after the start of the European war in 1939, as the various nations opposed to Germany – increasingly and primarily the United States – also faced off Japan until 1941.

The response to Japanese expansionist policy deserves as much attention as that for Germany – and each could well be the subject of its own top ten list. The failure to respond effectively to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 – which was at least possible by Britain and the United States in combination – was arguably as much a mistake as the failure to renew the Anglo-Japanese alliance and certainly compounded it.

Thereafter, a large part of Britain and France being out-maneuvered by Germany in Europe arose from their need to deal with Japan in Asia at the same time, particularly after Japan expanded its aggression to China in 1937. That continued to confront the allies with tough strategic choices after the commencement of war in Europe, obviously even more so once the allies also had to divide their resources between that war and the war with Japan. At very least, the war with Japan added a year to the war in Europe.

Britain and France repeated much the same errors with Italy in the 1930s, continuing to 1940 when Italy joined Germany to declare war on them allied – again to ultimate effect that the war with Italy or war in the Mediterranean arguably added a year or so to the war with Germany. Italy’s support also arguably made Germany’s war possible in the first place, by opening up Austria and Czechoslovakia to German occupation. Fortunately, that was offset to some degree by Italy’s weakness as strategic liability to Germany. Amusingly, the British War Cabinet considered whether they were better off with Italy as neutral or with Italy as actively allied to Germany, before concluding (probably correctly if only just) that it would be better if Italy remained neutral.

The errors alienating Italy to ally itself with Germany are even more striking as Mussolini’s Italy was strongly aligned towards the allies against Germany well into the thirties – and arguably remained so at the level of its populace and institutions, a large part of why its performance as German ally was so mediocre. Indeed, Italy was initially a stronger opponent to Germany’s expansionism than Britain or France, successfully blocking Germany from taking over Austria in 1934.

The turning point was the response of Britain and France to Italy’s conquest of Abyssinia, which saw them get the worst of both worlds – initially opposing Italy, antagonizing Italy without showing any real teeth (such as by the use of naval forces or use of sanctions on oil, to which Italy was particularly vulnerable), which they then compromised by the secret but abortive Hoare-Laval Pact to appease Italy by partitioning Abyssinia.

Thereafter, while Italy still aligned itself with Britain and France against the German remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936, it increasingly and inevitably began to align itself with Germany.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

The Iron Curtain – map showing the political division of Europe after World War II ended up until the end of the Cold War by Semhur for Wikipedia “Iron Curtain” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

(2) COLD WAR – LONG WAR 1914-1991

Well this one’s also obvious, isn’t it?

Perhaps not as obvious as the First World War but close to it as the Cold War seamlessly evolved from, and in the immediate aftermath of, the Second World War – indeed perhaps inevitably, as in the colorful phrase (and essay title) of historian Joseph Lieberman comparing the Cold War combatants to “the scorpion and the tarantula in the bottle”.

I’m not sure whom Lieberman intended to be the scorpion or the tarantula – but the bottle was the Second World War and its aftermath in the opposing occupations of Europe by the United States and the Soviet Union. Sometimes you drink the bottle and sometimes the bottle drinks you…

Other commentators, commencing with Philip Bobbitt in The Shield of Achilles, have even combined the world wars and cold war into a single continuity, the so-called Long War of the twentieth century or 1914-1991.

On the other hand, the Second World War also cut across the continuity of the Cold War – a temporary interbellum or suspension of hostilities between the Western powers and the Soviet Union, as an alliance against Germany and the other Axis powers, albeit one that resembled a marriage of convenience.

Or rather, a shotgun marriage, one that was thrust upon them. Neither Cold War antagonist chose its involvement in the Second World War – or at least the manner or timing of that involvement, as both were attacked first (and in the case of the United States, had war declared on it by Germany).

Of course, the hostilities began to bubble back to the surface as Allied and Soviet defeat of Germany loomed ever larger, becoming more overt when there was no longer the common enemy of Germany or Japan to unite them.

However, the continuity with the Second World War is inescapable. While the Cold War may have originated from opposition to the Soviet Union from 1917 onwards, it took its particular shape from the Second World War, such that it is difficult to imagine otherwise.

The Cold War antagonists of the United States and the Soviet Union were effectively the two last men standing, with the other great powers defeated or exhausted from the war – although that had essentially been the reality of power in the world from 1917 onwards, albeit masked by their isolationism, self-imposed or otherwise.

And the battle lines or fronts were effectively drawn by the territory each occupied or controlled after the war.

The western front of the Cold War – Europe – was effectively drawn by the Soviet occupation of eastern Europe – such that it was the immediate source of conflict in the Cold War, infamously as the Iron Curtain. Even the exceptions to the rule of Soviet occupation, Austria and Finland – exceptional in that they avoided regimes imposed on them by the Soviets – had neutrality imposed upon them instead. (Yugoslavia was arguably another exception, but primarily because it had largely liberated itself outside of Soviet occupation and did not directly border the Soviet Union itself).

Similarly to the Western Front of the First World War, it was largely a static front of siege or stalemate – static not by millions killed in trench warfare but by the prospect of millions dead in nuclear war (or renewal of war on the scale of the Second World War), as well as the resources spent on opposing armed camps.

The eastern front of the Cold War – Asia – was far more volatile, having been effectively drawn by the Soviet occupation of Manchuria and Korea – firstly with the communist victory in the Chinese civil war (which made the eastern front even more volatile) and secondly with subsequent wars with communist governments in Asia, particularly in Korea and Vietnam.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Map of the participants in World War One by Thomashwang for Wikipedia “World War” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

(1) FIRST WORLD WAR – GREAT WAR 1914-1945

I mean, this one’s obvious, isn’t it?

It’s impossible to consider the Second World War except as a continuation of the First World War, or at least originating in the latter’s aftermath. After all, it’s effectively implied in the names.

Indeed, their continuity has become a matter of serious historical study, possibly more so as time passes from the twentieth century, for the two world wars to be looked at as one.

Some have argued for the two world wars as the Second Thirty Years War. Others have argued for the two world wars as the war of 1914-1945, two periods of fighting with a twenty years armistice between them – indeed, as Marshal Foch, the French supreme commander of Allied forces on the Western Front, was said to have proclaimed upon the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

Note that Marshal Foch’s proclamation was not, as fashionable historiography tends to these days, because those terms were too harsh, but because they were too lenient – a viewpoint that I am increasingly inclined towards, or at least that the Versailles Treaty was not that bad.

Note also that Marshal Foch’s proclamation is apocryphal, attributed to him variously by the subsequent French prime minister (during the Second World War) Paul Renaud or by Churchill.

The Great War 1914-1945 was indeed the title of a book compiled from different historians writing on the continuity or parallels between the two world wars, most strikingly (heh) in the first volume, subtitled Lightning Strikes Twice.

Some of those parallels or that continuity are or is obvious, particularly the role of Germany that, unreconciled to its defeat in the First World War, took another swing at re-fighting the same war again in the Second. I am a fan of the Fischer Thesis – the argument by German historian Franz Fischer that Germany essentially pursued the same aims in both world wars, that is an imperial policy (or weltpolitik) for Germany to transform itself into a world power by a continental empire in eastern Europe and Russia (or Mitteleuropa).

The other obvious parallel or continuity is the defeat of Germany in both – lending itself to the thesis by my favorite Second World War historian H.P. Willmott of the myth of German military excellence. As he paraphrases Oscar Wilde (from the Importance of Being Earnest) – to lose one world war might be counted as misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness. As I like to quip, all German leadership achieved in both world wars was their encirclement and attrition by enemies with superior resources.

And indeed, I am persuaded by Willmott’s thesis that, as demonstrated by both world wars, German military genius lay in fighting not war. That is, that in both world wars Germany demonstrated a profound misunderstanding of war, particularly the limits of military and national power – something Willmott observes Bismarck understood, but his successors who led Germany did not.

Even here, though, there are key points of distinction – perhaps foremost among them that Germany appeared to do substantially better in the Second World War than in the First. Ironically, that is because Germany followed a more Bismarckian political diplomacy prior to and at the outset of the Second World War, although that began to unravel once Germany committed itself to war, aptly enough as something Bismarck himself strove to avoid in his foreign policy once Germany was united.

Ultimately, Germany’s initial success was because it had its Brest-Litovsk moment from the First World War at the outset of the Second – the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, securing economic resources from the east and a free hand in the west.

That is, as opposed to achieving it too little and too late as it did with the original Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the newly formed Soviet Union in the First World War’s penultimate year of 1917 – after it had been effectively exhausted fighting on two fronts, and which ultimately led to decisive defeat on the Western Front.

On that point, the Soviet Union proved far more resilient and robust in the Second World War than its imperial Russian predecessor – and even its former self in 1917-1918 – in the First. Hence the ironic reversal that where Germany won on the Eastern Front and lost on the Western Front in the First World War, it won on the Western Front and lost on the Eastern Front in the Second.

Similarly, the United States had become stronger with a consequently larger role in the Second World War than it had in the First. One might quip that the Second World War was German romping about continental Europe crushing its smaller and weaker adversaries, until it drew the two true world powers in to crush it.

On the other hand, France proved far less resilient and robust in the Second World War, albeit something that was very much connected with the costs of fighting the First. That saw Germany achieve in a few weeks in 1940 what it failed to achieve in 1914 or indeed the four years of fighting that followed.

Another key distinction was in the roles of Italy and Japan that, formerly on the side of Allies in First World War, allied themselves with Germany in the Second – arguably a failure of Allied political diplomacy more profound than the appeasement of Germany itself, leading as it did to Italy and Japan each effectively adding a year to the war against Germany.

Once allied to Germany, Italy played a similar role to the former Austria-Hungary as Germany’s major European ally (and ironically Italy’s traditional adversary in the First World War and before) – down to the Germany description of each alliance as being “shackled to a corpse” – as well as to the Ottoman Empire against Britain in the Middle East, albeit from the opposite direction (west rather than east against Egypt).

Japan however played an entirely new role in Asia and the Pacific from anything comparable in the First World War – hence the Second World War assumed a truly global character well beyond that of the First World War, the latter sometimes being dubbed as a European Civil War.

I can’t resist including the somewhat cryptic quip by H.P. Wilmott that, paradoxically, WW2 might be regarded as the last war of the 19th century and WW1 was the first war of the 20th century. I understand that to mean WW2 was closer to 19th century wars, in part because the technology and technique of offensive mobility won out over defensive firepower and attrition – albeit briefly and with waning effect through the war’s duration – while its predecessor was more characteristic of the static 20th century wars of attrition that followed it.

Or alternatively, my own observation that WW2 was closer to the model of the Franco-Prussian War, at least in its European opening, or the Napoleonic Wars in its continuation within Europe. On the other hand, WW1 was closer to the American Civil War as the true precursor of twentieth century warfare, with the western front of the latter resembling the eastern theater of the latter, only with even more lethal firepower. Ironically, however, WW1 finished by armistice in a manner closer to the Franco-Prussian War except with France and Germany reversed, while the WW2 was fought to unconditional surrender like the American Civil War.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Map of participants in World War Two by Svenskbygderna – Wikipedia “World War” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

But wait – there’s more!!

I’ve compiled my Top 10 Second World Wars – 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.

My usual rule is twenty special mentions for each top ten list, where the subject permits – and here it did, not surprisingly given the sheer scale of the Second World War.

Indeed, I could have had more entries. For example, I could have included an entry, perhaps even in my top ten, for the Franco-German war as I did for the Anglo-German war (or more precisely, the Anglo-American war against Germany). That would reflect it was the third such war in 70 years, after the 1871 Franco-Prussian War and of course WW1). However, while its formal duration might be considered to be from the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 to the French surrender on 25 June 1940, the actual fighting was over quickly – in a few weeks similar to the Franco-Prussian War – and thereafter the ongoing war (on its western front) was the Anglo-German war.

Other potential entries included the Lapland War, the war by Finland on Germany required as a condition of peace between the Finns and the Soviets, or the brief Franco-Thai war fought between the Vichy French colonial administration in Indochina and Thailand in 1940-1941. However, I noted the former in my top ten entry for the Soviet-Finnish war, and the latter just didn’t seem special enough for special mention.

Anyway, these are the special mentions for my Top 10 Second World Wars.