Many historians believe the Second World War began on Sept. 1, 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Others feel it was Sept. 18,1931 when Imperial Japan invaded Manchuria. And some think it was a continuation of the First World War, with a break in the middle. Myself, I’m going with 1939. I do feel there was some unfinished business from the WWI, and the Japanese committed some serious aggression against the Chinese. But Hitler went past the point of no return by invading Poland. What are your thoughts?
That depends on another factor as well: Would you consider the Pacific and Afro-European wars as the same conflict, or two separate ones?
The cases for both are pretty strong: On the opinion that they’re the same, of course they are, the main Allied nations (UK and US, to some extent the USSR) were at war with the same powers on both sides of the globe. With the two different conflicts opinion, the only reason that they’re considered the same is when the Japanese Emperor declared war on the UK and the US at the same time, and that their adversaries could not come to each other’s aid. Without that declaration, it could be argued that they were two conflicts.
Also, it took China long enough to declare war on Japan, eh? At war since the early thirties, yet they declared war in 1941…
I believe China declared war on July 7, 1937 (the famous “good fortune” of three sevens…). My understanding is this date is the main contender with September '39 for the start of WWII. I think most historians going with 1939 actually put the start of the war as September 3, not 1, to match the declaration of War by France and the UK.
Ah, well I was just being lazy, Wikipedia’s order of declarations of war during WWII lists it in 1941.
Declaration of war or 1936 when Hitler became Chancellor and set in motion fully events that were already happening. (Many of which had roots in the 1919 surrender accords)
Re-armament, moving into the Rhineland, calls for annexation of land by various nations (Hitler backing variously Italy, Hungary, Romania, Soviet Union etc etc with claims as it suited him), Anschluss with Austria.
Just, for the purposes of discussion, to flip this - there is an idea abroad at the moment that the war against the Nazis in Euro-Asia and the war against the Japanese in the Far East and in the Pacific were actually separate wars, tenuously linked by circumstance. Not sure I would entirely agree - but this line of thinking would make 1 September, 1939 the commencement date of the “western” war, with the commencement date of the “eastern” war a question of whether the de facto Japanese aggression against China counted above the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbour. In either case, I have less interest in when war was declared than on the point at which the lead began to fly. Worth noting that Hitler was, in fact, not a great believer in declarations of war; and that neither of the “branches” of WW2 was preceded by any such declaration. Best regards, JR.
Perhaps we are wading into the area of semantics. To many historians, I believe the importance of the war declarations is not the legal document, but that they (at least in the case of France and the UK) shifted a regional shooting match into one of much broader scope, involving major powers. In other words, the difference between the start of a war, and the start of a World War.
What is a legal document? Is it in the Smithsonian institute with the Bill of Rights or Declaration of Independence? Is the declaration based on American say so or Germany say so?.I wonder about this. Have you seen the legal document?
Looking further, you are correct. I’ve checked a few sites, and found no reference to an actual war declaration by China in 1937, just Chiang Kai-shek’s refusal to enter into negotiations or a truce, as he done after previous “incidents.” I did find reference to China’s declaration (on Japan, Germany and Italy) in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Apologies.
Yet the date 7/7/37, as the start of the Second Sino-Japanese war, is the preferred date for the “Eastern” start of WWII.
Um, herman, are you feeling alright? Your post makes zero sense.
If you are asking what a legal document actually is, I’m afraid I will not try to clarify such basic information here and now. If you have mangled the question of whether a declaration of war IS a legal document, yes, unless I’m completely off base, a declaration of war is a legal document.
Neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Bill of Rights is housed in the Smithsonian Institution. They are housed in the National Archives. They are also totally unconnected to this discussion.
The rest of your post descends into meaninglessness. If you’re referring to the Declaration of Independence or some other American or German document(s), the connection to the topic under discussion is obscure at best. My post did not involve anything “American.”
What we are talking about is: When did WWII begin? The point being made was that the Polish fighting did not become a World War until France and England entered the War on September 3 – before then, it was just a small little war in a corner of Europe. The entrance of the major powers of France and her colonies, Britain with the Commonwealth (admittedly not always an automatic thing, but as things turned out…) turned the initial small war in Poland into a global conflict, a “World War.” In contrast, if France and the UK had NOT declared War, if they had acquiesced to Germany and Slovakia (and then the USSR) dismantling Poland, that war would have remained a minor conflict. WWII would have started at some other time.
I believe what I just outlined is the thinking of most historians. It certainly was in the past. I hope I’ve clarified the meaning of my original post for you.
Your favourite source illustrates that war may be ‘declared’ in various ways, frequently without any documentation, legal or otherwise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declarations_of_war_during_World_War_II
The major post-WWII armed conflicts involving Western powers did not involve any declaration of war, e.g. Korea, Vietnam (French and later America/South Korea/ Australia), Falklands, Gulf War, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Despite being involved in Korea, Falklands, Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan and various other armed conflicts at various levels of intensity from Northern Ireland to Cyprus to Malaya to Kenya to Yemen, Britain last declared war in 1942, on Siam (now Thailand), which illustrates that formal declarations of war, by ‘legal document’ or otherwise are irrelevant to whether or not a nation is engaged in a war or warlike operations.
Of course I am correct. Thank You for recognizing this. Apology accepted.
I am inclined to the view that there were several wars, each waged individually by the main Axis partners of Germany, Italy and Japan, which had the misfortune to encounter a combined reaction by the Allies due to the absence of an equally coordinated strategy and operations by the Axis. Here is a ‘stream of consciousness’ summary.
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Japan. It began its war in the early 1930s against China which, after Japan attacked America, would become an Ally. However, up to 1937 there was substantial German military, industrial and financial support for China, which declined rapidly after Hitler decided that Japan was the better horse to back in his coming wars. Encouraged by early German successes in the USSR in the second half of 1941 and American and British oil embargoes, Japan chose to go south at the end of 1941 instead of the alternative of striking into Siberia. This strategy was designed to pursue Japan’s aims of oil acquisition in the Netherlands East Indies and colonial expansion under the guise of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. A prospect of no critical strategic importance to Japan was to advance through India on land and to expel Britain from the Indian Ocean so Japan and Germany could link up in the Persian oilfields, but it would have been otherwise if there was a combined aim by Japan and Germany.
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Italy. Pursued its own ambitions in North Africa and Greece, and dragged Germany in to both campaigns to save it from failure, thus reducing German forces available for Hitler’s main strategy towards the USSR. Consistent with its failure to support Germany etc in WWI, it rolled over in 1943 when faced with some serious fighting on its own land. A handicap on Germany and irrelevant to Japan.
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Germany. Began expansion in 1936 with belligerent reoccupation of the Rhineland, and subsequent belligerent excursions into Austria and Czechoslovakia, and armed invasion of Poland, followed by further armed invasions to the west and east. Not co-ordinated with Italy or, later, Japan, despite Germany and Japan having a common interest is securing oil resources which were available in Persia.
Germany, Italy and Japan were not, like the Allies, a combined force pursuing a common aim against common enemies.
Those fighting Germany, Italy and Japan were not always identical with the major Allies, notably the Netherlands which was defeated and occupied in Europe but whose government in exile refused to surrender the Netherlands East Indies to Japan and which government still controlled substantial naval and merchant marine resources which would be critical in stopping and turning back Japan’s early advances. Then there were the Vichy French and in particular its navy, a potential dagger at the throat of the Allies.
Conversely, the Axis powers failed to co-operate by, for example, coordinating a drive by Japan through Ceylon, the Indian Ocean, and India and the Middle East to reinforce Germany striking towards the Persian oilfields and gaining control of the Suez Canal which, around April 1942, was well within Axis grasp given Britain denuding the Mediterranean of major ships to meet the expected threat in the Indian Ocean which, partly through luck by the opposing forces failing to encounter each other and partly through Japan’s victory disease encouraging it to press southwards and westwards towards Australia and Fiji etc to cut off America from a potential strategic base in Australia to counter-attack Japan, which was purely in the interests of Japan and counter-productive to a combined strike at Persia.
The absence of co-ordination by the Axis powers makes it impossible to view them as a united and cohesive force arrayed against the Allies, while the Allies were exactly the opposite in picking each of them off separately across pretty much the whole of the planet while the individual Axis powers were essentially engaged in large scale regional expansion.
There can be no greater evidence of the existence of separate wars against the major Axis powers than the separate peace each of them made with the Allies, Italy predictably the first in 1943 and then Germany and Japan a few months apart, for different reasons but essentially because they were defeated, in 1945.
Sorry to learn you’re not well, herman, and I hope you get better soon. In the meantime, you might want to recall what a third party said about Coco the Clown in another thread, and consider how it might apply to yourself. Tootles!
This is absolutely correct.
Britain and France had pandemic fear of Germany’s expansion and Hitler was breaking international law.
I feel it was in !936 when Hitler can the majority of power in Germany. I know the Japanese had invaded several countries before that but I feel that it doesn’t really make it a World War until several countries in different continents are fighting.
It is recognised that the World War II began on Sept. 1, 1939,at this day Nazi Germany attacked Poland,ie at the moment of the Nazi aggression in Europe.
But we know it began a little earlier - in 1938 when Germany took Czechoslovakia,or even earlier, in 1936 in Spain.And here a difficult question appears: how to determine the date of the World War ?
You can link the start date to the date of the first aggression. As we remember, not only Germany took part in WW2 but also it’s allies Italy,Japan and some satellites, and France, Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States and China at the side of anti-Htler coalition. The war between China and Japan started in 1937 and ended in 1945. Why we do not believe that the World War II started in 1937 ?
You can take as a starting date the time when more than two world powers came to war. But this happened at 3-4 th September 1939, when Britain and France have declired war on Germany, only from this point the local German-Polish conflict turned into a global war.
So we see that the date of the beginning of the war is blured, the dating is quite unclear. The 1st of September,1939 is a common date only because they want to make some countries victims of aggression (like Poland) and Germany the only instigator of the war.
Because if the World War 2 started at 3-4 th of September 1939, it was Britain and France who turned a local conflict into the world war. And if we start from the date of an encouraging the aggressor - that is from the time when Britain and France allowed Hitler’s annexation of Bohemia and Moravia - here it turns out that Poland is not a victim but one of those who is responsible for the outbreak of the Second World War, because Poland took part in the partition of Czechoslovakia along with Germany and Hungary. France and Britain in fact approved the partition of Czechoslovakia , and hence the preparations for further aggression.
Of course, this does not remove the blame from Germany, because Germany was the most active instigator of the war, and because it acted as aggressor, constantly attacking neighboring countries.
So Germany is the absolute aggressor wich is guilty of the begining of the war - but not the only one.Just this fact they try to put out of sight with the help of tendencious selection of the date of the WW2 start.
In my opinion the war started when the first clash of the units of the main fighting powers happened - at 29th of October,1936 in Spain near Madrid when Soviet tank batalion attacked Italian unit.Soviets fought against Germany and Italy in Spane since 1936 and against Japanese in China since 1937.
WW2 began as a political, social, military and moral entity when Otto von Bismark “tricked” Republican France into declaring war, then defeated her in one of the swiftest and most decicive major campaigns in history.
The French did not forget so easily.
they diplomatically siolated the young Germany, played on Kaiser bill’s fears, sought alliances with old freinds of Germany, and manged to convince Russian politicians that their Tsar needed to declare war “for Serbia” when Russian borders and their foreign interests were not at stake.
From the moment the “patch-up” Treaty of versialles was signed, (a document that none of the signing powers agreed on, and that Germany and austria=Hungary were excluded from the negotiations), from that moment forward, another round of Great War was on the cards.
No-one, not even the German peole themselves, realised that their propaganda moves for re-armament would bear such bitter fruit. Germany had been attempting to build a “new society”, at least, thats what they were telling the rest of europe. But, it was, in reality, more of a return to an autocratic past and a militant society that Bismark had wanted very much to leave behind.
If it wasn’t Adolf hitler, some other poltician in the “new” Germany might well have called for Versailles to be repudaited. The Generals and industrialists that backed National socialism did so with re-armament at the top of their wish list. Adolf was seen as someone they could use and discard at their will.
Hitler had other ideas, and saw the old General Staff as much an obstacle to the new German military as anything. He backed new ideas and methods, more for their propaganda value than anything, and spread fearful lies as to Germanie’s actual combat potential. the Luftwaffe was to be the tool that would, in the Douhetian sence, force surrender of major powers without the need for long campaigns of attrition. The “Short War” was a concept backed by hitler for financial reasons, and for lack of long term supply of raw materials. there would be no more “materialschlact” like Verdun.
The French and Polish camapigns seemed to bear this idea out.
The Battle of Britian revealed what a narrow field of service the Luftwaffe was actually equipped and trained for.
But, their morale was sky high after beating France seemingly so easily.
Propaganda took over. Adolf had seen the soviets and Communism as the main enemy for as long as he had been speaking publically.
For Germany, it was now or never to knock the Russian bear for six. They had done it in Frnace and Poland. The Soviets were, obviously, more intent on internal purging, and Finland demonstrated that their system was rotten to the core.
Fuhrer Directive No.21 said it best…“We have only to kick in the door, and the whole rotten structure will come tumbling down.”
But, their racial policy and a sense that they were fighting people who were not worthy of being called human being, robbed any chance of anti-stalin elements and eastern european minorities from being of any use or substance to German ambitions.
Lack of mass production, lack of oil and other raw materials, lack of directtion for the campaign after Barbarossa failed, all combined to bring down the Nazi house of cards.
all touched off by Bismarkian machiavellianism.
If we’re going to look at those influences, we must also look at Germany’s and Italy’s late establishment as nations and thus late entrants in the quest for colonies and their profitable resources, way behind France and Britain which had in various ways begun to nibble away at the Ottoman Empire and exploit older conquests and territories around the planet long before Germany and Italy became nations.
This, along with various logistical and geo-political limitations (e.g. lack of control of the Suez Canal and oil resources in the Middle East) necessarily confined Hitler’s lebensraum ambitions to Europe and, combined with racial supremacy ideas, focused very much on exploiting the untermensch in Eastern Europe.
The result was that what became WWII was originally just another major European war, with a major invasion of Russia and an excursion into North Africa, much as Napoleon had done much earlier when France was a nation long before Germany and Italy emerged as nations.
Silhouettes of 15 tanks, 15 ultramodern machines were barely seen in the pre-dawn twilight. Behind there was a night march, and ahead… ahead there was a line of defense of the fascists. What was there for a Soviet tank company? A 26 kilometers forced march wasn’t too much trouble for them, but what about the infantry forces, what if the people are exhausted? What if they will stay behind the tanks? Was the intelligence information accurate enough? Did the fascists manage to equip the firing points on the captured line? A few hours later everything will be clear.
It’s time. Motors roared. Captain Armand tanks started forward.
Paul Matissovich Arman was not French. He was born in Latvia, but during the teenage years lived in France for several years, and his first identification document got there, hence the unusual name. Before the war he was the commander of a tank battalion in Bobruisk.
The fascists had no anti-tank weapons. “Machine gun is the worst enemy for infantry” - it is written in the instruction, so the tankers combed seen firing points with fire and track layers. The infantry did stay behind. The linger is impossible, aircraft or artillery will find and bring down fire. Retreat? Captain Armand was swift in decisions - and tanks rushed forward. Here are the outskirts of the town. Nobody expected the Soviet tanks raid, and there are no fascists in the town according to intelligence. Tanks rushing with open hatches with Arman in the lead vehicle.
Suddenly an Italian officer runs from the corner, waving and shouting something. “Took us for friends” - Arman realized. Tank hatches shut. Fascist’s mechanized infantry battalions had no luck that day. Rolling wheels on the pavement, flying truck debris, survived soldiers hiding behind stone walls. But the fascists came around quickly, and the flying bottles with gasoline appeared, the survived guns are pulled to the rooftops. Commander knows well that armor is not meant for fighting within the city, otherwise it will be burned immediately. The new solution - go ahead. Tanks fly through the town; on the outskirts they sweep two artillery batteries.
And here are the Italian tanks. Brief duel - and three Italians are burning, the remaining five retreated. Our tanks were not hurt. It is risky to continue to act in the enemy rear, and ammunition is running out. Troops permeate the front line again, only this time it is the opposite direction
Infantry has not breached the defenses of the fascists that day. After the tanks left, the survived guns came alive and the enemy planes swooped … Fight failed. And even though Armand can be proud of himself … what will he report to the commander? But the brigade commander Krivoshein is not upset. Things are not so bad. Tanks are intact, losses are small, and most importantly - fascist attack stopped. And Colonel Voronov reported of a success on the secondary direction. Two busy railway junction were taken.
Bright stars lit in the black sky . Seriously wounded turret gunner just died - got out to cut the telephone wires. The iron clangs, shadows from portable lamps rush here and there - techs mess about with tanks.
The day of October 29, 1936 comes to the end.
Yes, yes. This is not a typo. Time - October 1936, place - Sesena town, south-west of Madrid.
I know about the fate of the Hero of the Soviet Union Ernest H. Schacht only this :“died in 1941”.
The Hero of the Soviet Union Paul Matissovich Arman died in 1943 at the Volkhov Front.
But do you remember who was the commander of Arman in his first fight in Spain? The brigade commander Krivoshein?
At may,3,1945 in “Pravda” were printed two photo.One was a famous photo of the red banner over Reichstag,at the other photo were General Krivoshein’s tankmen near Reichstag.
So ask him,who fought against fascism since the first till the last day of the war,ask him when did the Second World War really begin.