Post date: Sep 02, 2010 9:56:8 AM
World War II continues to capture the imagination like no
other conflict in history. A large part of this may well be
because it is the most recent traditional war - as popularly
imagined. While any number of large-scale conflicts have
arisen since then, none have been "traditional" as World War
II has been. Most wars are between generally unequal powers.
After all, no one bothers fighting unless they think they
can win - or are forced to.
However, in World War II, though it started out as the usual
big-power-attacks-small-power conflict, big powers - the
United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union - soon
joined in and the conflict expanded worldwide almost
overnight. Thus World War II was the kind of war we all know
and even "love" - a "set-piece" conflict with a real good
versus evil theme.
For most wars are over trifling matters; a hill here, a
river there. World War II was literally a cultural war,
where not only territory was at stake but the very nature of
civilization itself, the form it would take for the next
several decades or, even, as envisioned by Adolf Hitler,
centuries. WWII's case involved the most amount of nations
which had 2 military operating alliances, the Allies and the
Axis, which began at the beginning of September 1939 with an
unseen invasion by Poland.
This was the most widespread battle throughout history, with
over 100 million personnel mobilized. It was the only war
which contributed global saturation by use of deadly nuclear
weapons that have also changed the face of this earth. Not to
mention the brutal actions against civilians known as the
Holocaust. It has the highest number of fatalities of over
50-75 million casualties. This battle was mostly for power
rather than the unconditional relief of another. The United
Nations was then instructed and practically developed for
the sake of international cooperation to prevent another
war. But as the superpowers emerged as rivals, cooperation
soon transformed into "The Cold War", which was later
resumed by U.S.A. and the USSR for the next 46 years.
It was a war to determine the way of life that should exist
in Europe, and by extension as the world's center of
geopolitical gravity at the time, the whole planet. Another
factor accounting for the enduring appeal of World War II is
the personalities of its leading antagonists. Although
Japan(Hirohito) and China(Chiang Kai-Shek) were already at
war since the beginning of 1937, the support which lost the
naval battle against the US, Franklin D. Roosevelt,
reluctantly made the invasion on Home Islands imminent and
had also lost their chance to expand towards East Asia.
Adolf lost as well just about the same time the Japanese
naval battle was lost, except Berlin was to encounter the
final attack by Joseph Stalin and the Soviets. The Soviets
then took over Berlin which consequently sent an
unconditional surrender letter by the SS Germans in May
1945, which was also the conclusion of the life-long battle
of World War II. As soon as this was settled, the
aforementioned superpowers were at their own war with
weapons ready to fire at one another. The European colonies
recovered economically as well as the decolonization of Asia
and Africa. The battles were bloody and fatal, the weapons
showed no mercy, but the outcome was the greatest feeling to
have ever attained by the allies, victory lead towards a new
beginning.
There was Winston Churchill, an imperialist leading the
charge against Hitler in the name of "freedom;" there was
Roosevelt, a blue-blood with especially democratic beliefs
allied with the imperialist Churchill and a totalitarian
dictator no better than Hitler, Josef Stalin of the Soviet
Union, whose own anti-Semitic views and actions were simply
overlooked. Then there was the gangster-king Chiang
Kai-Shek in China and his equally brutal nemesis Mao Tse
Tung, battling for control of one-fifth of humanity againstthe also-brutal cabal of military nationalists in Japan.About the Author:By Paul Wise who often researches on World War II andrecommends http://www.articlesassets.com/ for valuableinformation.