The Second World War in Perspective
Aug 2005, Vol. 150, No. 4
By Michael Howard
Like most great wars, the so-called Second World War was a whole cluster of interconnected conflicts that erupted once the precarious security system established in 1919 broke down, and revisionists all over the world seized their chance to achieve the objectives they had been denied by the peace settlement. The ‘world war’ proper was preceded by two regional conflicts. None of these conflicts amounted to a ‘World War’. That began in 1941, in two stages. First, in June of that year, Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in an explicit war of conquest. Six months later, in December, Japan attacked the US Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor as a preliminary to seizing the possessions of the European powers in South-East Asia. The war-aims of these two aggressors were very similar. Both sought to carve out an economically self-sufficient empire whose industrialized centre would be complemented by agrarian colonies and would be self-sufficient in raw materials. Such an empire, they hoped, would be immune in peacetime to the kind of global economic depression that had devastated the world in the 1930s and in wartime to the economic blockade which had played so large a part in Germany’s defeat in 1914-18, and which the United States had been imposing on Japan between 1938 and 1941. Both programmes were fuelled by a militarist ideology that rejected the bourgeois liberalism of the capitalist West and glorified war as the inevitable and necessary destiny of mankind.
Add your comments
By Michael Howard
Like most great wars, the so-called Second World War was a whole cluster of interconnected conflicts that erupted once the precarious security system established in 1919 broke down, and revisionists all over the world seized their chance to achieve the objectives they had been denied by the peace settlement. The ‘world war’ proper was preceded by two regional conflicts. None of these conflicts amounted to a ‘World War’. That began in 1941, in two stages. First, in June of that year, Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in an explicit war of conquest. Six months later, in December, Japan attacked the US Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor as a preliminary to seizing the possessions of the European powers in South-East Asia. The war-aims of these two aggressors were very similar. Both sought to carve out an economically self-sufficient empire whose industrialized centre would be complemented by agrarian colonies and would be self-sufficient in raw materials. Such an empire, they hoped, would be immune in peacetime to the kind of global economic depression that had devastated the world in the 1930s and in wartime to the economic blockade which had played so large a part in Germany’s defeat in 1914-18, and which the United States had been imposing on Japan between 1938 and 1941. Both programmes were fuelled by a militarist ideology that rejected the bourgeois liberalism of the capitalist West and glorified war as the inevitable and necessary destiny of mankind.
You need 4 credits to access this item
If you are a member or registered user, please login
Not already a member and have not yet registered?
Add your comments
Copyright © 2009 RUSI