Map of Iraq during WWII by Kirrages for Wikipedia “Anglo-Iraqi War” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

(13) ANGLO-IRAQI WAR

(1941)

Everyone forgets about the Middle Eastern theater in the Second World War. Granted, it wasn’t much of a theater in terms of actual fighting, but that was because Britain moved quickly behind the scenes to secure the Middle East under its control – behind the scenes that is, of Britain’s defeats fighting Germany elsewhere in the Mediterranean at the same time.

One part of that was the British taking over Syria from the Vichy French government in the successful Syrian campaign in June-July 1941. However, before that was the Anglo-Iraqi war in May 1941 which was the central part or ground zero of the Middle Eastern theater – not least because it then enabled (and led to) both the Syrian campaign as well as my next special mention entry.

Britain had taken over Iraq from the former Ottoman Empire, ostensibly as a mandate under the League of Nations, but effectively in real terms as a colony or protectorate. Iraq nominally became independent in 1932 but the British had been careful to lock in a pro-British government with the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930.

Iraqi nationalists as well as the Axis nations of Germany and Italy saw the opportunity of the war for a coup to oust the pro-British government in April 1941. As usual, German political diplomacy and material support counted for little beyond the effective projection of its military power, although it (and Italy) did supply material and even aircraft through Vichy French Syria (hence the subsequent Syrian campaign).

If it’s one thing Britain could still do well, even at this late stage of empire, it was to crush colonial revolts – which it did by quickly mobilizing forces from the neighboring parts of its empire, notably including Indian troops, and stamping out the Iraqi coup in four weeks from 2 May 1941 to 31 May 1941.

Thereafter, Iraq served Britain as its base of operations within the Middle Eastern Theater.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Greek Civil War CIA Map – deployment of the communist “Democratic Army of Greece” in 1948. CIA Map Branch (Harry S.Truman Library, President’s Secretary’s File, Box 255 – public domain image)

(12) GREEK CIVIL WAR

(1941-1949)

“In April 1941, the Axis powers conquered Greece and Yugoslavia and thereafter the real struggle for the control of those countries began”- only in the case of Greece, the struggle for control was where the Second World War became the Cold War.

Yes – I’m again quoting how H.P. Willmott summed it up in The Great Crusade, his history of the Second World War. When I quoted him for my top ten entry for Yugoslavia, I noted that Greece will earn a place in my special mentions. And here it is.

Indeed, you could argue that Greece and the civil war that originated from its rival resistance movements should outrank Yugoslavia because of the significance of the Greek Civil War not only for the Second World War but even more so for the Cold War.

The Greek resistance to Axis occupation followed similar lines to that in Yugoslavia and Albania. While the Greek resistance can’t quite claim the same as that in Yugoslavia and Albania to have liberated their nation on their own, it was able to control much of the countryside prior to the German withdrawal from mainland Greece in October 1944.

Of course, in large part the liberation of Greece was because of the German withdrawal from mainland Greece, although German garrisons remained in Greek islands and were among the German forces to hold out until the end of the war.

Like both Yugoslavia and Albania, Greece had a royal government-in-exile, with both military forces serving within British forces in the Mediterranean and resistance movements within Greece itself. However, as in Yugoslavia and Albania (as well as elsewhere), the communists emerged as predominant among the rival resistance movements.

The big difference with the communists coming out on top in Yugoslavia and Albania was that the British were having none of that in Greece – and what’s more, they were in a position to do something about it. Churchill had effectively secured Greece for Britain’s postwar sphere on influence in his “naughty document” or infamous “percentages agreement” with Stalin in October 1944 – an agreement that Stalin appears to have kept when it came to Greece. British forces landed in Greece in October 1944 on the heels of (or even in advance of) the withdrawing German forces, entering Athens on 13 October 1944 and aiding the returning Greek government in exile to suppress or disarm communist partisans. That saw British and Greek non-communist forces fighting against the Greek communist forces from December 1944, with the former very narrowly prevailing as the Fourth Indian Infantry Division were flown in as British reinforcements.

There followed a brief interlude in 1945 effectively by way of treaty between the Greek non-communist government and Greek communists, which broke down into the Greek Civil War proper from March 1946 onwards.

While the Yugoslavian and Albanian communist governments supported the Greek communists, Stalin’s Soviet Union remained ambivalent in a way often seen as sticking to its agreement with Churchill – and actively opposed to the Greek communists after the Soviet split with Yugoslavia.

Britain continued to support the non-communist Greek government re-equipping and training the Greek Army but by early 1947 had to appeal to the United States that it could no longer afford to do so. That saw the first instance of what became known as the Truman Doctrine and effectively the American role as combatant in the Cold War, with the United States taking over from Britain in supporting the non-communist Greek government.

The Western assistance to the non-communist Greek government, and isolation of the Greek communists from support elsewhere but particularly from the Soviet Union, ultimately saw the Greek communists demoralized and defeated in 1949 – something “Western anti-communist governments allied to Greece saw…as a victory in the Cold War”, indeed one of the first such victories and commitments of American aid to anti-communist regimes.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Map of Albania in WW2 by Nakko for Wikipedia “World War II in Albania” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

(11) ALBANIA – OCCUPATION & RESISTANCE

(1939 – 1944)

Everyone forgets about Albania in the Second World War – or that it was occupied by Italy in April 1939.

It’s easy to forget Italy’s occupation of Albania among the higher profile German occupations of Austria or Czechoslovakia, particularly the latter as Germany had effectively finished it off only the month before in March 1939, prompting Britain’s guarantee to Poland in April 1939.

It’s easy to forget even for Italy, overshadowed as it is by Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia or intervention in the Spanish Civil War.

That everyone forgets about Albania is striking because it had important knock-on effects for the course of the whole war as it provided the platform or springboard for Italy’s ill-considered and ill-fated invasion of Greece. Without Albania as a base right next to Greece, it is difficult to see that Italy would have had the motive, means or opportunity for its invasion of Greece.

However, apart from its role in the Italian invasion of Greece, Albania was a backwater of Italian occupation, effectively as its own separate corner of the war.

There was Albanian resistance to occupation, which everyone also forgets about because it essentially followed the same lines as Yugoslavia, just on a smaller scale. Again, that everyone forgets about Albania is striking because it is the only nation other than Yugoslavia that can claim to have liberated itself through its own resistance, except even more so than Yugoslavia. Also, the Albanian resistance achieved the rare feat of saving most of Albania’s Jews.

Like Yugoslavia, it had a royal government-in-exile but the communist partisans and their political leader Enver Hoxha emerged as predominant among the rival resistance movements. Also like Yugoslavia, the Albanian resistance got a boost from the Italian surrender and desertion to it of Italian soldiers, only more so due to Italy’s larger and exclusive occupation, as well as Germany’s more pressing priorities than maintaining the occupation of Albania after that. The Albanian resistance liberated Albania from German occupation by 29 November 1944.

After the war, Albania and its communist government went from being its own strange separate corner of the Second World War to being its own strange separate corner of the Cold War – firstly with a ‘split’ from Yugoslavia aligning itself with the Soviets, then splitting off from the Soviets to align itself with China, before the inevitable Sino-Albanian split and aligning itself with no one.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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The how it started and how it’s going meme for the Spanish Civil War – with the areas controlled by the Nationalists (in pink) and Republicans (in blue) in September 1936 (left) and in February 1939 (right) as mapped by NordNordWest for Wikipedia “Spanish Civil War” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

(10) SPANISH CIVIL WAR

(1936 – 1939)

The war most seen as a precursor to the Second World War yet ironically not part of it, with the Nationalist victory in Spain on 1 April 1939 and Spain remaining neutral in the world war that erupted in Europe five months later. It was and is also seen as a Nazi-Soviet proxy war.

Also – George Orwell fought in it, reflecting that the Spanish Civil War “became notable for the passion and political division it inspired worldwide”, perhaps the most of any of the conflicts or events leading up to the war in Europe short of the outbreak of the latter war itself.

Ironically, its contemporary fame as political cause célèbre seems almost inversely proportional to its lack of actual impact in the Second World War, as Spain became something of a backwater to that war – no equivalent to the Peninsular War in the Napoleonic Wars to see here.

It always strikes me how much of an outlier the American Civil War is for civil wars in modern history, with its two neatly defined sides of the Union and the Confederates. The Spanish Civil War is more typical of most modern civil wars as a messy battle royale. Yes – again as in most civil wars, there were broadly two sides, but each side was chaotic or amorphous, to the point of at least one side almost as a civil war all on its own.

The war itself was also messy, although it was straightforward enough in broad outline. It originated from a military coup or revolt in July 1936 against the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic (which had been proclaimed in 1931). The coup failed as such but evolved into the Nationalists fighting to overthrow the Republic.

The Nationalists were a diverse alliance of groups “chiefly defined by their anti-communism” – and to a lesser extent, support for the Catholicism targeted by the Republic. Reflecting its origin in a military coup, the segments of the army and its officers opposed to the Republic predominated the Nationalists, among whom General Francisco Franco emerged as leader.

The Republicans were equally as diverse in their loyalty or allegiance to the Republic but reflecting the role of the Soviet Union as the primary source of support for the Republic, increasingly fell under the control of the more Stalinist elements, to the point of civil war within the civil war by them against anarchists and other factions on the Republican side.

From a combination of factors, the Republicans more consistently proved to be militarily ineffective, and the Nationalists ultimately won under Franco in 1939.

Of course, one of those factors – certainly the most famous and much of the reason for the war as cause célèbre – was the more effective foreign support for the Nationalists, above all from Italy and Germany in troops or advisors, munitions and armaments, and air support.

German air support – particularly in the form of the Condor Legion fighting in Spain – was arguably critical for the Nationalists by flying their troops that were otherwise stranded in Spanish Morocco to Spain in the early stages of the war. The Condor Legion also infamously bombed cities held by the Republicans, of which the bombing of Guernica led to international outcry against them (and a painting by Picasso that became iconic of the war itself).

International outcry perhaps but not too much support – with Britain and France declaring an official policy of non-intervention that was largely followed by the international community However, France and other nations covertly supported the Republicans, while tens of thousands of volunteers from non-interventionist countries fought in the war, mostly in the pro-Republican International Brigades.

“Only two countries openly and fully supported the Republic” – not surprisingly, the primary source of support was the Soviet Union, but I always find it surprising the second was Mexico. While Soviet support no doubt prolonged the resistance of the Republic, one might infer it was just not as effective as German or Italian support contributing to Nationalist victory.

And in some ways, it was a millstone around the Republic’s neck – as Soviet support brought with it Stalinist hardline organization or terror within the Republic and political commissars within its armed forces. Not to mention costing the Republic’s gold reserves in payment up front, diminishing Soviet interest in Republican victory when no longer expedient – as opposed to German or Italian interest in the Nationalists repaying their credit.

Franco ultimately led the Nationalists to victory in the civil war on 1 April 1939, although sporadic irregular or guerilla warfare persisted until 1965, and Franco’s government persisted for a decade after that until his death in 1975.

For all the furor during the civil war from 1936 to 1939, Franco’s Spain played little part in the world war that followed, remaining neutral if supportive to his Axis sponsors after they won his civil war for him – such as raising a volunteer division, the Blue Division, to fight as part of the German army against the Soviet Union.

However, despite the help Mussolini had given him in his civil war, Franco had more insight than Mussolini in recognizing that Spain would only achieve its self-destruction by anything more than token support in actively fighting on the German side or allowing German forces in Spain. Of course, a large part of that wisdom was born of necessity from Spain’s economic and military weakness recovering from its civil war.

However, Mussolini should have shared Franco’s insight as Italy was not much better than Spain in either economic strength or military readiness – which played a large part in its poor military performance and for which Italy’s own foreign adventures before the war, particularly including its support for Franco in the Spanish Civil War, contributed a large part.

As it was, Franco played the few cards he had extraordinarily well in dealing with a Germany and Italy that now expected a return on their investment in his civil war by Spanish participation on their side. He so frustrated Hitler at their meeting in Hendaye on 23 October 1940, with such extravagant preconditions for Spanish participation in the war as a German ally, that Germany essentially gave up on plans on using Spain to attack the British base in Gibraltar.

It is interesting to speculate that Germany might have been better off if the Republicans had won the civil war, since the communist Republicans would have come under pressure to aid Germany because of the Nazi-Soviet Pact at the time. However, I remain skeptical whether Soviet pressure would have extended to requiring Spain to effectively fight on Germany’s side when the Soviets themselves refrained from doing so – or whether a victorious Spanish Republican government would have been willing or able to comply with such pressure.

It might be said that Germany did not get a return on their investment in the Spanish Civil War when it counted in 1940, but that overlooks that Germany otherwise did very well for their investment of resources – notably in combat experience for their air force servicemen but also in securing its new alliance with Italy and destabilizing the European status quo for their diplomatic victories prior to 1939.

Not so much for Italy as we’ve seen – as they expended somewhat more resources than Germany, particularly in soldiers deployed to the Spanish Civil War, which with the resources spent in other foreign misadventures strained or exhausted Italy’s military readiness for wider war. In 1939, Mussolini advised Hitler that Italy was not ready for war before 1943 – interestingly the same advice down to the year that Hitler’s naval commanders gave him for their navy – and subsequent events showed that advice to be right (for both Italy and the German navy).

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Situation at the end of the Second World War – Japanese occupation (red) of eastern China and Communist bases (striped) in public domain map by US Army (West Point history department)

(9) CHINESE CIVIL WAR

(1911-1949)

Or how the Japanese won the Chinese Civil War for the communists.

The Second World War, or least the Second Sino-Japanese War part of it, cut right across the Chinese Civil War. The two largest warring parties in the civil war, the Communists and the Nationalists saw themselves as the true successors of the revolution led by Sun Yat-sen (or Sun Yuxian) and his Kuomintang or KMT party that overthrew the Qing dynasty as China’s last imperial dynasty in 1911-1912.

As was often the case with the collapse of central state authority in China, that revolution devolved into the usual competing warlords or warring states from 1916 to 1927.

The warlord period is generally considered to have transitioned to the first phase of the Chinese Civil War proper from 1927, as Chiang Kai-shek led two thirds of the KMT’s military forces under the mantle soon to be known as the Nationalists against Wang Jingwei’s socialist or communist third.

The Soviets assisted the main warring party, the Nationalists seeking to reunify China under their Republic, as the Soviets saw them as the necessary prelude to socialism.

Intriguingly, Sun Yat-sen had sent Chiang Kai-shek to train in Moscow – and Chiang then became head of the military academy training military leaders in China, with Soviet assistance in “teaching material, organization, and munitions”.

Even more intriguingly, the Germans also assisted the Nationalists – and more intriguingly, that assistance continued from the warlord period to the first genuine phase of the Chinese Civil War, by both the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. It is intriguing to ponder how world history might have turned out if Nazi Germany had continued to support Nationalist China, but they swapped to the foreign power that ominously loomed over China to exploit its weakness and ultimately was the one to intervene most decisively of all – Japan.

In the meantime, Wang Jingwei was eclipsed by the new Chinese communist leader who became virtually synonymous with the Chinese Civil War and for whom Chinese communist ideology was named – Mao.

However, the Chinese communists did not do too well in this first phase of the civil war, with effective control of less than a twentieth of the population (compared to the third controlled by Chiang’s Nationalists) and poised on the brink of complete extinction. “Their doom was, historians agree, imminent and inevitable” – until they were effectively saved by the Japanese in the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937.

The Japanese had already indirectly given the Chinese communists some much needed reprieve with their invasion of Manchuria in 1931. In an episode which also showed that some of the warlord period chaos lived on in the Nationalists, the Xian Incident, two of Chiang’s generals kidnapped him to force him to form a united front with the communists against the Japanese.

Chiang subsequently reneged on the united front with renewed hostilities against the communists but the Sino-Japanese War from 1937 forced his hand again to put those hostilities on hold for a second united front against Japan, even if both he and the communists increasingly paid lip service to it. That lip service meant the Nationalists and Communists avoiding open battle with Japan as much as possible, looking for salvation from outside forces pending in the Pacific War while also looking ahead to renewed civil war with each other.

Despite the united front, Chiang’s Nationalists bore the brunt of Japan’s war in China, which arguably dealt them their mortal wound in China’s civil war.

Perhaps most of all in the one surprise Japan still had left for China, even while 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 most as well as 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 also severely weakened Chiang’s forces (as well as an economy increasingly ravaged by hyper-inflation), the last of a series of Japanese blows that ultimately proved fatal for the Chinese Nationalist government in the subsequent renewed 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.

The civil war resumed soon enough – “as soon as it became apparent that Japanese defeat was imminent” (at the hands of the Americans) “with the communists gaining the upper hand in the second phase of the war from 1945 to 1949, generally referred to as the Chinese Communist Revolution”.

This again saw foreign intervention along predictable Cold War lines – the Soviets on the side of the Communists and the Americans on the side of the Nationalists, although each were cautious in their intervention, with that from the Americans notoriously resulting in accusations of “losing” China and communist infiltration of the American government.

However, the Soviets were equally cautious in their own intervention, perhaps from Stalin’s intuition that a united communist China would be their rival in the long term. Hence the Soviets consistently urged restraint on Mao to accept the north-south partition that was all the vogue in Cold War Asia – between a Communist north and a Nationalist south.

Mao ignored this and the Communists gained control of mainland China anyway, proclaiming the People’s Republic of China. However, the Communists ultimately had to accept a residual partition of a different kind with the Nationalists retreating to the island of Taiwan to proclaim their Republic of China there, as the Communists had no means to pursue them – particularly after the US gave their naval support to Taiwan. That partition of course continued even until today, remaining as a source of tension with no armistice or treaty signed between them.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Allied occupation zones in post-war Germany by WikiNight 2 in Wikipedia “Allied Occupied Germany” under license https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:GNU_Free_Documentation_License,_version_1.2

(8) ALLIED OCCUPATION

(1943-1990)

This was the pointy end of the war for the Axis powers – their occupation by the Allies upon their defeat and surrender. Indeed, the regimes in Germany and Japan used the looming specter of Allied occupation to prolong military resistance well beyond any point of logic or reason, which otherwise should have prompted their surrender from their defeats well before when they did.

In part, that was because those regimes conjured up the specter of occupation as even more dire from the Allied policy of unconditional surrender for their Axis opponents. Whether that policy – first proclaimed by President Roosevelt (unilaterally on his part echoing the American Civil War) at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 (after the successful Allied landings in north Africa) – was a strategic error has been debated by historians, but its impact can certainly be ranked up there with many battles.

For the record, I think that the declaration of a policy of unconditional surrender was correct, particularly when it came to Germany – as Germany could hardly have expected much less given how they had turned what was effectively their conditional surrender (and lack of Allied occupation) in the First World War to their advantage, with insult added to injury by their incessant complaints about it. As it was, the Allies were flexible in adapting that policy for Axis nations such as Italy, Finland, and arguably even Japan.

Of course, the occupation of the Axis powers by the Allies simply was the boot on the other foot, given that the Germany or Italy had occupied other nations in Europe by the threats or use of force from 1938 and military conquest from 1939, while Italy had occupied Abyssinia from 1935, and Japan had occupied the territory of other nations in Asia even earlier from 1931. The Axis occupation of other nations is essentially featured in other entries, most notably that for the underground war of partisans, resistance and governments-in-exile.

As H.P. Willmott caustically points out, for most of their ‘defensive’ war, Germany and Japan were not defending their home territory but the territory they had conquered or occupied from other nations. Indeed, their resistance became distinctly less sustained once the fighting moved to their own home territory, albeit still tinged with fanaticism. Even so, only Germany fought throughout its own home territory, while sustained resistance by Japan was limited to its more remote islands, as Japan surrendered before any Allied invasion of its four major home islands.

The first Axis nation to see the point of logic and reason in surrendering from their defeat was Italy, perhaps not surprisingly given its exhaustion from war and that it was the weakest of the three major Axis nations – hence the starting year of 1943 for this entry reflecting Italy’s surrender to the western Allies and its declaration of war against Germany. The actual occupation of Italy by the Allies was thus relatively benevolent on the Allied side, but unfortunately it was limited as Germany succeeded in reinforcing and retaining their occupation of most of Italy. Italy became yet another battlefield between Germany and the western Allies, indeed arguably the hardest fought one due to Italy’s geography as well as the particularly sustained and skillful German defense.

It also became a battlefield for the Italian Civil War, which might be described as yet another civil war within national resistance to German occupation – but primarily as a three-sided contest between communist partisans, the Italian Co-Belligerent Army constituted by the government and forces that had surrendered to the western Allies and now fighting alongside them against Germany, and the German puppet government under Mussolini and his remnant fascist regime of the Italian Social Republic.

Thereafter, Germany’s remaining allies in Europe sought to pull the Italian solution switching sides to declare war against Germany, but were unlucky to be facing Soviet occupation instead – and being unable to avoid it or the pro-Soviet communist regimes it imposed upon them, even Bulgaria which had been prudent enough not to declare war against or participate in the invasion of the Soviet Union. The only exception to the rule of Soviet occupation was Finland, which through a number of factors was able to substitute neutrality instead of occupation. Hungary was an exception in another direction – with Germany occupying it before it could switch sides from alliance with Germany – although it still ended up under Soviet occupation with a pro-Soviet communist regime after the Soviets defeated German forces in Hungary.

It remained only for Germany and Japan to be occupied after their respective surrenders.

Germany was famously unluckier to end up divided in occupation, ultimately between West Germany from the three western allied occupation zones (British, American and French) and East Germany with its pro-Soviet communist regime from the Soviet occupation zone, albeit with the weird island of West Berlin within it (from Berlin being divided into similar occupation zones as Germany). That division persisted as two armed camps in a potential (and terrifying) Cold War battlefield until the end of the Cold War – indeed, the reunification of Germany is usually taken as one of the markers of that end (and hence the end date of 1990 for this entry)

Interestingly, Austria and Vienna had been divided into similar occupation zones as Germany and Berlin, but Austria was fortunate enough to be reunited without occupying forces in 1955 on promise of neutrality in perpetuity.

The occupation of Japan was effectively an all-American affair, albeit with some participation by British or Commonwealth forces – and with the exception of the Soviet occupation of the remote northern Kuril Islands and Sakhalin Island Japan had taken from Russia in the Russo-Japanese War.

Through a combination of factors, the western Allied occupation of Germany and Japan turned out to be largely benevolent, particularly as textbook examples of reconstruction or ‘nation-building’ on the lines of democratic models and economic miracles. Or rather, what might be characterized as textbook examples but for their lack of replication that borders on unique, if not actually unique.

In part that might be from the lack of any sustained insurgency after surrender, although not from lack of planning on part of their former regimes for insanely self-destructive levels of resistance to invasion or occupation. Notoriously, there was the Nero Decree by Hitler, ordering the destruction of German economic infrastructure on a scorched earth scale, but which was subverted by disobedience on the part of those ordered to carry it out, notably Albert Speer. Also notoriously, there were the Japanese plans to resist Allied invasion of the home islands, essentially as kamikaze attacks and banzai charges on a national scale, by both civilian and military forces, which were averted by the Japanese surrender. Once both nations had surrendered, they seemed to default to national stereotypes or traditions of political obedience.

The occupation of Japan is particularly noteworthy for the good judgement of General Douglas MacArthur as de facto shogun of the American occupation government – arguably ranking higher than any of his achievements on the battlefield, in either the Second World War or Korean War.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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One of the most famous and iconic photographs from the war (and in public domain) – the surrender of Singapore, as Lieutenant-General Percival and his party carry the Union flag on their way to surrender to the Japanese

(7) DECOLONIZATION

(1941-1997)

Running through the Second World War, and even more so emerging from it as one of its primary effects, was decolonization – involving as it did, a combination of imperial cession or surrender without major conflict, and more dramatically, numerous wars of decolonization or independence.

Of course, the decolonization we’re speaking about here was primarily that for the modern European imperialism over non-European states or populations which reached its height in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

There had already been a major wave of that decolonization with the wars of independence in the Americas – firstly with the American War of Independence for the British colonies that became the United States, secondly (skipping that of Haiti) with the Spanish American Wars of Independence for almost all the Spanish colonies in Latin America, and thirdly with the independence of Brazil from Portugal.

That essentially saw the former European empires in the Americas, primarily those of the British, Spanish and Portuguese empires, as independent nations – although there remained some colonies or imperial possessions of those and other European empires in the Americas, particularly in the Caribbean.

Spain never really bounced back, even more so after losing the most significant of its imperial possessions to the United States in the Spanish-American War, and to some extent that is also true of Portugal after the independence of Brazil. However, Portugal and other European imperial nations reached their height of imperial power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with expanded empires in Asia and Africa.

It was that height of imperial power that saw the most famous wave of decolonization during and after the Second World War, albeit it had its origins rising through the cracks in the European imperial edifice that had opened up with the First World War.

Those cracks opened even further with the defeat and occupation of European imperial powers – France, Belgium, and the Netherlands – by Germany, as well as the preoccupation of the foremost European imperial power, Britain, with fighting Germany.

And the wave took shape as its postwar tsunami that swept aside the European empires, including that of a victorious but exhausted Britain, firstly in Asia and then in Africa. The most decisive event for that wave taking shape was the fall to (and occupation by) Japan of their Asian imperial possessions in 1941-1942. Although Britain was to regain its Asian empire from Japan – and those of allies such as France in Indochina – like Humpty Dumpty after his fall, Britain and other European imperial powers couldn’t put their empires back together again.

To some extent, the Second World War itself was a war of decolonization, albeit with some ironies or paradoxes – fought to free or liberate nations under Axis occupation, both the old-fashioned colonial style empires of Italy in Africa or Japan in Korea (as well as Taiwan and other territory taken in the First Sino-Japanese War), but also the new colonial empires Germany sought to forge as its lebensraum in Europe and Japan as its Co-Prosperity Sphere in Asia.

Of course, that war of decolonization was formally directed only against the Axis powers, but was least implicit to other empires in declarations by the western allies from the Atlantic Charter onwards – foremost by the United States, consistent with its rhetoric of declaring itself for decolonization such as its own war of independence, but also by Britain, with implications for itself as the world’s largest empire.

The United States was not the only principal combatant in the Second World War to declare rhetoric of decolonization or anti-imperialism, including for its own imperial possession of the Philippines. The Soviet Union also declared such rhetoric, even as it reclaimed or expanded beyond former Russian imperial territory effectively as its own new empire.

On the Axis side, Japan famously declared its own rhetoric of decolonization or anti-imperialism but only against European (or American) imperialism of course, not its own – “Asia for the Asians” with itself as the Asians. However, Japan did indeed turn out to be the most effective agent for decolonization by its defeat of European empires in the war, albeit a role it had played to varying extent from the outset of its rise as a great power and its defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War.

Even Germany, engaged as it was in what it declared to be colonial imperialism in Europe – indeed with stated explicit models such as British colonialism, except with Russia as Germany’s India – found common cause as well as allies from decolonization movements elsewhere, particularly against its British antagonist, ironically enough including those from India. .

The process of decolonization, whether by war or otherwise, continued for decades after the Second World War – I’ve drawn the line for my end date for this entry with Britain returning Hong Kong to China, given that it was Britain’s last Asian colony that had been occupied by Japan.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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German language areas in Poland, Czechia, Kaliningrad Oblast (Russia – formerly East Prussia), and Lithuania before expulsion of Germans (with green as completely German and yellow as ethnically mixed areas) – public domain image

(6) DEMOGRAPHIC WAR –

DEPORTATION, DISPLACEMENT & EXPULSIONS

(1939-1948)

“The Second World War caused the movement of the largest number of people in the shortest period of time in history.”

Of course, much of this movement was what might be described as ‘conventional’ refugees, caused by or fleeing from hostilities, from the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 onwards.

However, much of it was what might be described as demographic war – “mass evacuation, forced displacement, expulsion, and deportation of millions of people…enforced by the former Axis and the Allied powers…Belligerents on both sides engaged in forms of expulsion of people perceived as being associated with the enemy”.

Or just simply the enemy, targeted in a form of demographic warfare or in modern parlance, ethnic cleansing. We’ve already looked at the best known example of this in my special mention for the Holocaust – a primary component of which was the deportation of the Jewish population within Europe, as the preliminary step to something more…final.

That also illustrates the major location for demographic warfare was central and eastern Europe. The movement of people in more targeted expulsions than as refugees commenced with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 – on both sides of the line of Nazi and Soviet occupation. Both the Germans and Soviets expelled Poles in similar numbers – with the Germans expelling more 1.6 to 2 million Poles, not including “millions of slave laborers deported from Poland to the Reich”, while the Soviets expelled over 1.5 million Poles.

The Soviets were then the leaders in expulsions, either to secure the territory secured under the Nazi-Soviet Pact – Finns, Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians – or as ‘defensive’ measures against ethnic populations potentially aligned with the Germans. The latter involved the Soviets deporting ethnic populations from European Russia to Siberia, Central Asia or more remote areas of the Soviet Union – perhaps most famously the Volga Germans and Crimean Tartars, but also “Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays and Meskehtian Turks”. Many of these were in 1943-1944, arguably  well after the time of any ‘defensive’ emergency had passed.

The United States infamously had its own version of internal deportation with the internment of Japanese-Americans.

Elsewhere the Balkans was the scene of ongoing demographic warfare or outright ethnic cleansing, most well known of which was that of the Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia.

However, one of the largest but still least well known expulsions came at the end and in the aftermath of the Second World War in Europe – the flight and expulsion of Germans from central and eastern Europe, either of Germany minority populations from other countries, now seen as the vanguard or at least casus belli of German aggression against those countries, or Germans from former German territory now ceded to other states, notably East Prussia to the Soviet Union and other eastern German territory to Poland.

“Between 13.5 and 16.5 million German-speakers fled, were evacuated or later expelled from Central and Eastern Europe”. The primary parties responsible for the post-war expulsions were of the new governments of the central or eastern European states formerly occupied by or allied to Germany – and behind them of course Stalin’s Soviet Union – but the western Allies had agreed in principle to such expulsions provided they were carried out in a way that was “orderly and humane”.

Sadly, they were not – with estimates of the number of those who died during or from them ranging from half a million to two or even three million.

While the western Allies played no active part in the post-war expulsion of Germans, except of course to receive them as refugees in their occupation zones in West Germany or Austria, they did notoriously play an active role in the postwar repatriation of Russian Cossacks taken as prisoners of war to a grim fate in the Soviet Union.

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

A map showing railroad traffic disruptions in the area of German Army Group Center in the Soviet Union, August 1943 – public domain image of the Historical Division, United States European Military Command (EUCOM), US Army Center of Military History

(5) UNDERGROUND WAR –

PARTISANS, RESISTANCE & GOVERNMENTS-IN-EXILE

(1931-1945)

Special mention has to go to what might be called the underground war – the war of partisans, resistance movements, and governments-in-exile against the Axis powers occupying their nations, primarily Germany but also Italy and Japan (as well as their lesser Axis partners).

Indeed, it is again Japan that is the reason this entry commences in 1931, with the first aggression by any Axis nation (prior to any of the pacts or treaties comprising the Axis from 1936 onwards) with Japan’s invasion and conquest of Manchuria. That saw numerous Chinese insurgents or resistance movements against Japan, as well as resistance movements within Japan itself – although one might identify dissent or resistance against the Japanese imperial government or military well before that in Japan and Korea.

Likewise, German anti-Nazi resistance movements started with the rise of the regime to power in 1933 (and again arguably before that), as did Italian anti-fascist dissent or resistance with the rise of Mussolini to power from 1922 onwards. Of course, the latter became much more substantial as partisans or armed resistance against the Germans (and the German puppet remnants of Mussolini’s government, including Mussolin himself), from 1943 after Italy surrendered to the Allies and the Germans occupied it.

However, the war of partisans, resistance movements, and governments-in-exile against the European Axis powers by the nations they occupied took definitive shape from the Italian conquest of Abyssinia or Ethiopia in 1935 onwards. The primary dichotomy of these combatants was between the communist-led ones, usually preferred by the Soviets, and the various nationalist ones – often resulting in civil war between them.

Most of the entries in my top ten have significant or substantial partisan warfare or armed resistance movements – most notably the Nazi-Soviet war with the partisans on the Soviet side, the partisans or resistance movements within Poland, and the Yugoslavian civil war and war of national liberation, particularly with Tito’s Partisans.

For the most part, partisans and resistance movements lacked significant or substantial military effect or impact, with the primary exceptions being those with the numbers or even more so the terrain for guerilla warfare – most notably in the Soviet Union and the Balkans, but also in Poland, Italy, and the Maquis in France.

That is not to say that partisans or resistance movements lacked any effect or impact where they did not have any such military effect or impact – one could well compile a top ten of forms of resistance, most notably contributions to Allied intelligence.

Even for those partisans or resistance movements that did have a significant or substantial military effect or impact, only those of two nations were able to liberate their nations largely with their own forces – Yugoslavia and Albania, albeit there were also uprisings and partial or temporary liberations achieved by partisans or resistance movements in Poland, France, Greece and Italy. Of course, Yugoslavia and Albania did have outside help, in the form of Soviet operations in the Balkans as well as Allied air support or supplies. They also had the benefit of a combination of terrain and the relative benevolence of Italian occupation, from which they also gained with the withdrawal or even desertion to them of Italian forces after the Italian surrender in 1943. Even with those advantages, they probably still could not have done so without Germany’s defeat by and need to commit forces elsewhere against the Soviets or western allies.

It is also impressive how many occupied nations maintained governments-in-exile, both in the war in Europe and the war against Japan, on both sides but predominantly on the Allied side and in exile in Britain or with British forces. Some of those, such as the governments-in-exile of Abyssinia and Czechoslovakia, predated the German invasion of Poland in 1939.

And it is also impressive just how many of the Allied governments-in-exile made significant or substantial contributions to the Allied war effort despite, you know, losing their nations to occupation.

The Polish government-in-exile, as we’ve seen, commanded Polish armed forces or underground armies that were the fourth largest Allied armed forces in Europe. While the Norwegian government-in-exile commanded more modest armed forces, the Allies gained the services of its merchant navy, the fourth largest in the world and of substantial importance for the Battle of the Atlantic. The Dutch government-in-exile brought with it the forces it had in the Dutch East Indies or Indonesia. The Belgian government-in-exile brought with it the Belgian Congo – and the uranium from there used for the first atomic bombs.

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

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)