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.