WORLD WAR ll AND THE COLD WAR
World War II, the largest and deadliest conflict in human history,
involved more than 50 nations and was fought on land, sea and air in
nearly every part of the world. Also known as the Second World War,
it was caused in part by the economic crisis of the Great Depression
and by political tensions left unresolved following the end of World
War I.
The war began when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and
raged across the globe until 1945, when Japan surrendered to the
United States after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. By the end of World War II, an estimated 60 to 80 million
people had died, including up to 55 million civilians, and numerous
cities in Europe and Asia were reduced to rubble.
Among the people killed were 6 million Jews murdered in Nazi
concentration camps as part of Hitler’s diabolical “Final Solution,”
now known as the Holocaust. The legacy of the war included the
creation of the United Nations as a peacekeeping force and
geopolitical rivalries that resulted in the Cold War.
The devastation of the Great War (as World War I was known at
the time) had greatly destabilized Europe, and in many respects
World War II grew out of issues left unresolved by that earlier
conflict. In particular, political and economic instability in
Germany, and lingering resentment over the harsh terms
imposed by the Versailles Treaty, fueled the rise to power
of Adolf Hitler and National Socialist German Workers’ Party,
abbreviated as NSDAP in German and the Nazi Party in English..
After becoming Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Hitler swiftly
consolidated power, anointing himself Führer (supreme leader)
in 1934. Obsessed with the idea of the superiority of the “pure”
German race, which he called “Aryan,” Hitler believed that war
was the only way to gain the necessary “Lebensraum,” or living
space, for the German race to expand. In the mid-1930s, he
secretly began the rearmament of Germany, a violation of the
Versailles Treaty. After signing alliances with Italy and Japan
against the Soviet Union, Hitler sent troops to occupy Austria in
1938 and the following year annexed Czechoslovakia. Hitler’s
open aggression went unchecked, as the United States and
Soviet Union were concentrated on internal politics at the time,
and neither France nor Britain (the two other nations most
devastated by the Great War) were eager for confrontation.
Outbreak of World War II (1939)
In late August 1939, Hitler and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin signed
the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, which incited a frenzy of
worry in London and Paris. Hitler had long planned an invasion
of Poland, a nation to which Great Britain and France had
guaranteed military support if it were attacked by Germany. The
pact with Stalin meant that Hitler would not face a war on two
fronts once he invaded Poland, and would have Soviet
assistance in conquering and dividing the nation itself. On
September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland from the west; two
days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany,
beginning World War II.
On September 17, Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east.
Under attack from both sides, Poland fell quickly, and by early
1940 Germany and the Soviet Union had divided control over
the nation, according to a secret protocol appended to the
Nonaggression Pact. Stalin’s forces then moved to occupy the
Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and defeated a
resistant Finland in the Russo-Finnish War. During the six
months following the invasion of Poland, the lack of action on
the part of Germany and the Allies in the west led to talk in the
news media of a “phony war.” At sea, however, the British and
German navies faced off in heated battle, and lethal German U-
boat submarines struck at merchant shipping bound for Britain,
sinking more than 100 vessels in the first four months of World
War II.
World War II in the West (1940-41)
On April 9, 1940, Germany simultaneously invaded Norway and
occupied Denmark, and the war began in earnest. On May 10,
German forces swept through Belgium and the Netherlands in
what became known as “blitzkrieg,” or lightning war. Three days
later, Hitler’s troops crossed the Meuse River and struck French
forces at Sedan, located at the northern end of the Maginot Line,
an elaborate chain of fortifications constructed after World War I
and considered an impenetrable defensive barrier. In fact, the
Germans broke through the line with their tanks and planes and
continued to the rear, rendering it useless. The British
Expeditionary Force (BEF) was evacuated by sea from Dunkirk in
late May, while in the south French forces mounted a doomed
resistance. With France on the verge of collapse, Italy’s fascist
dictator Benito Mussolini formed an alliance with Hitler, the Pact
of Steel, and Italy declared war against France and Britain on
June 10.
On June 14, German forces entered Paris; a new government
formed by Marshal Philippe Petain (France’s hero of World War
I) requested an armistice two nights later. France was
subsequently divided into two zones, one under German
military occupation and the other under Petain’s government,
installed at Vichy France. Hitler now turned his attention to
Britain, which had the defensive advantage of being separated
from the Continent by the English Channel.
To pave the way for an amphibious invasion (dubbed Operation
Sea Lion), German planes bombed Britain extensively beginning
in September 1940 until May 1941, known as the Blitz, including
night raids on London and other industrial centers that caused
heavy civilian casualties and damage. The Royal Air Force (RAF)
eventually defeated the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) in
the Battle of Britain, and Hitler postponed his plans to invade.
With Britain’s defensive resources pushed to the limit, Prime
Minister Winston Churchill began receiving crucial aid from the
U.S. under the Lend-Lease Act, passed by Congress in early
1941.
Hitler vs. Stalin: Operation Barbarossa (1941-42)
By early 1941, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria had joined the
Axis, and German troops overran Yugoslavia and Greece that
April. Hitler’s conquest of the Balkans was a precursor for his
real objective: an invasion of the Soviet Union, whose vast
territory would give the German master race the “Lebensraum”
it needed. The other half of Hitler’s strategy was the
extermination of the Jews from throughout German-occupied
Europe. Plans for the “Final Solution” were introduced around
the time of the Soviet offensive, and over the next three years
more than 4 million Jews would perish in the death camps
established in occupied Poland.
On June 22, 1941, Hitler ordered the invasion of the Soviet
Union, codenamed Operation Barbarossa. Though Soviet tanks
and aircraft greatly outnumbered the Germans’, Russian
aviation technology was largely obsolete, and the impact of the
surprise invasion helped Germans get within 200 miles of
Moscow by mid-July. Arguments between Hitler and his
commanders delayed the next German advance until October,
when it was stalled by a Soviet counteroffensive and the onset
of harsh winter weather.
World War II in the Pacific (1941-43)
With Britain facing Germany in Europe, the United States was
the only nation capable of combating Japanese aggression,
which by late 1941 included an expansion of its ongoing war
with China and the seizure of European colonial holdings in the
Far East. On December 7, 1941, 360 Japanese aircraft attacked
the major U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, taking the
Americans completely by surprise and claiming the lives of more
than 2,300 troops. The attack on Pearl Harbor served to unify
American public opinion in favor of entering World War II, and
on December 8 Congress declared war on Japan with only one
dissenting vote. Germany and the other Axis Powers promptly
declared war on the United States.
After a long string of Japanese victories, the U.S. Pacific Fleet
won the Battle of Midway in June 1942, which proved to be a
turning point in the war. On Guadalcanal, one of the southern
Solomon Islands, the Allies also had success against Japanese
forces in a series of battles from August 1942 to February 1943,
helping turn the tide further in the Pacific. In mid-1943, Allied
naval forces began an aggressive counterattack against Japan,
involving a series of amphibious assaults on key Japanese-held
islands in the Pacific. This “island-hopping” strategy proved
successful, and Allied forces moved closer to their ultimate goal
of invading the mainland Japan.
Toward Allied Victory in World War II (1943-45)
In North Africa, British and American forces had defeated the
Italians and Germans by 1943. An Allied invasion of Sicily and
Italy followed, and Mussolini’s government fell in July 1943,
though Allied fighting against the Germans in Italy would
continue until 1945.
On the Eastern Front, a Soviet counteroffensive launched in
November 1942 ended the bloody Battle of Stalingrad, which
had seen some of the fiercest combat of World War II. The
approach of winter, along with dwindling food and medical
supplies, spelled the end for German troops there, and the last
of them surrendered on January 31, 1943.
On June 6, 1944–celebrated as “D-Day”–the Allies began a
massive invasion of Europe, landing 156,000 British, Canadian
and American soldiers on the beaches of Normandy, France. In
response, Hitler poured all the remaining strength of his army
into Western Europe, ensuring Germany’s defeat in the east.
Soviet troops soon advanced into Poland, Czechoslovakia,
Hungary and Romania, while Hitler gathered his forces to drive
the Americans and British back from Germany in the Battle of
the Bulge (December 1944-January 1945), the last major German
offensive of the war.
An intensive aerial bombardment in February 1945 preceded
the Allied land invasion of Germany, and by the time Germany
formally surrendered on May 8, Soviet forces had occupied
much of the country. Hitler was already dead, having died by
suicide on April 30 in his Berlin bunker.
World War II Ends (1945)
At the Potsdam Conference of July-August 1945, U.S.
President Harry S. Truman (who had taken office after
Roosevelt’s death in April), Churchill and Stalin discussed the
ongoing war with Japan as well as the peace settlement with
Germany. Post-war Germany would be divided into four
occupation zones, to be controlled by the Soviet Union, Britain,
the United States and France. On the divisive matter of Eastern
Europe’s future, Churchill and Truman acquiesced to Stalin, as
they needed Soviet cooperation in the war against Japan.
Heavy casualties sustained in the campaigns at Iwo
Jima (February 1945) and Okinawa (April-June 1945), and fears of
the even costlier land invasion of Japan led Truman to authorize
the use of a new and devastating weapon. Developed during a
top secret operation code-named The Manhattan Project,
the atomic bomb was unleashed on the Japanese cities of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. On August 15, the
Japanese government issued a statement declaring they would
accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, and on September
2, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur accepted Japan’s formal
surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
African American Servicemen Fight Two Wars
World War II exposed a glaring paradox within the United States
Armed Forces. Although more than 1 million African Americans
served in the war to defeat Nazism and fascism, they did so in
segregated units. The same discriminatory Jim Crow policies that
were rampant in American society were reinforced by the U.S.
military. Black servicemen rarely saw combat and were largely
relegated to labor and supply units that were commanded by
white officers.
There were several African American units that proved essential
in helping to win World War II, with the Tuskegee Airmen being
among the most celebrated. But the Red Ball Express, the truck
convoy of mostly Black drivers were responsible for delivering
essential goods to General George S. Patton’s troops on the
front lines in France. The all-Black 761st Tank Battalion fought in
the Battle of the Bulge, and the 92 Infantry Division, fought in
fierce ground battles in Italy. Yet, despite their role in defeating
fascism, the fight for equality continued for African American
soldiers after the World War II ended. They remained in
segregated units and lower-ranking positions, well into
the Korean War, a few years after President Truman signed
an executive order to desegregate the U.S. military in 1948.
World War II Casualties and Legacy
World War II proved to be the deadliest international conflict in
history, taking the lives of 60 to 80 million people, including 6
million Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis during the
Holocaust. Civilians made up an estimated 50-55 million deaths
from the war, while military comprised 21 to 25 million of those
lost during the war. Millions more were injured, and still more
lost their homes and property.
The legacy of the war would include the spread of communism
from the Soviet Union into eastern Europe as well as its eventual
triumph in China, and the global shift in power from Europe to
two rival superpowers–the United States and the Soviet Union–
that would soon face off against each other in the Cold War.
THE COLD WAR
Cold War, the open yet restricted rivalry that developed after World War II between
the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. The Cold War was
waged on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and had only limited recourse
to weapons. The term was first used by the English writer George Orwell in an article
published in 1945 to refer to what he predicted would be a nuclear stalemate between
“two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by which millions
of people can be wiped out in a few seconds.” It was first used in the United States by
the American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch in a speech at the
State House in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1947.
Origins of the Cold War
Following the surrender of Nazi Germany in May 1945 near the
close of World War II, the uneasy wartime alliance between the
United States and Great Britain on the one hand and the Soviet
Union on the other began to unravel. By 1948 the Soviets had
installed left-wing governments in the countries of eastern Europe
that had been liberated by the Red Army. The Americans and the
British feared the permanent Soviet domination of eastern Europe
and the threat of Soviet-influenced communist parties coming to
power in the democracies of western Europe. The Soviets, on the
other hand, were determined to maintain control of eastern Europe
in order to safeguard against any possible renewed threat from
Germany, and they were intent on
spreading communism worldwide, largely for ideological reasons.
The Cold War had solidified by 1947–48, when U.S. aid provided
under the Marshall Plan to western Europe had brought those
countries under American influence and the Soviets had installed
openly communist regimes in eastern Europe.
THE struggle between the superpowers
The Cold War reached its peak in 1948–53. In this period the Soviets
unsuccessfully blockaded the Western-held sectors of West Berlin (1948–49);
the United States and its European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), a unified military command to resist the Soviet presence
in Europe (1949); the Soviets exploded their first atomic warhead (1949), thus
ending the American monopoly on the atomic bomb; the Chinese communists
came to power in mainland China (1949); and the Soviet-supported communist
government of North Korea invaded U.S.-supported South Korea in 1950,
setting off an indecisive Korean War that lasted until 1953
DEATH OF SOVIET DICTATOR IN 1953
From 1953 to 1957 Cold War tensions relaxed somewhat, largely owing to
the death of the longtime Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1953;
nevertheless, the standoff remained. A unified military organization among
the Soviet-bloc countries, the Warsaw Pact, was formed in 1955; and West
Germany was admitted into NATO that same year. Another intense stage of
the Cold War was in 1958–62. The United States and the Soviet Union
began developing intercontinental ballistic missiles, and in 1962 the Soviets
began secretly installing missiles in Cuba that could be used to launch
nuclear attacks on U.S. cities. This sparked the Cuban missile crisis (1962),
a confrontation that brought the two superpowers to the brink of war
before an agreement was reached to withdraw the missiles.
THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
The Cuban missile crisis showed that neither the United States nor the
Soviet Union were ready to use nuclear weapons for fear of the other’s
retaliation (and thus of mutual atomic annihilation). The two superpowers
soon signed the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty of 1963, which banned
aboveground nuclear weapons testing. But the crisis also hardened the
Soviets’ determination never again to be humiliated by their military
inferiority, and they began a buildup of both conventional and strategic
forces that the United States was forced to match for the next 25 years.
Throughout the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union avoided
direct military confrontation in Europe and engaged in actual combat
operations only to keep allies from defecting to the other side or to
overthrow them after they had done so. Thus, the Soviet Union sent troops
to preserve communist rule in East Germany (1953), Hungary
(1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Afghanistan (1979). For its part, the
United States helped overthrow a left-wing government in Guatemala
(1954), supported an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba (1961), invaded the
Dominican Republic (1965) and Grenada (1983), and undertook a long
(1954–75) and unsuccessful effort to prevent communist
North Vietnam from bringing South Vietnam under its rule (see Vietnam
War).
TOWARD A NEW WORLD ORDER
In the course of the 1960s and ’70s, however, the bipolar struggle between
the Soviet and American blocs gave way to a more-complicated pattern of
international relationships in which the world was no longer split into two
clearly opposed blocs. A major split had occurred between the Soviet
Union and China in 1960 and widened over the years, shattering the unity
of the communist bloc. In the meantime, western Europe
and Japan achieved dynamic economic growth in the 1950s and ’60s,
reducing their relative inferiority to the United States. Less-powerful
countries had more room to assert their independence and often showed
themselves resistant to superpower coercion or cajoling.
STATEGIC ARMS LIMITATION TALKS
The 1970s saw an easing of Cold War tensions as evinced in the Strategic
Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) that led to the SALT I and II agreements of
1972 and 1979, respectively, in which the two superpowers set limits on
their antiballistic missiles and on their strategic missiles capable of carrying
nuclear weapons. That was followed by a period of renewed Cold War
tensions in the early 1980s as the two superpowers continued their massive
arms buildup and competed for influence in the Third World. But the Cold
War began to break down in the late 1980s during the administration of
Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. He dismantled the totalitarian aspects
of the Soviet system and began efforts to democratize the Soviet political
system. When communist regimes in the Soviet-bloc countries of eastern
Europe collapsed in 1989–90, Gorbachev acquiesced in their fall. The rise
to power of democratic governments in East Germany, Poland, Hungary,
and Czechoslovakia was quickly followed by the unification of West and
East Germany under NATO auspices, again with Soviet approval.
CONCLUSION
Gorbachev’s internal reforms had meanwhile weakened his own
Communist Party and allowed power to shift to Russia and the
other constituent republics of the Soviet Union. In late 1991 the Soviet
Union collapsed and 15 newly independent nations were born from its
corpse, including a Russia with a democratically elected, anticommunist
leader. The Cold War had come to an end.
