The Second World War and a new world order

The first principle

The Second World War grew out of an unfinished peace. The settlement of 1919 punished Germany without permanently weakening it, the Great Depression destroyed faith in democracy, and the states that wanted to overturn the order met no united resistance until it was too late. The war then destroyed the old order itself: Europe lost its primacy, two superpowers took its place, and the victors built new institutions, the United Nations (UN) and the Bretton Woods system, meant to prevent another such collapse. From the Security Council veto to divided Korea, today's world still carries the shape of 1945.

The core

Why war came

• Versailles, 1919. Germany lost territory and all its colonies, was limited to an army of 100,000, had the Rhineland demilitarised and accepted war guilt and reparations. Germans saw it as a dictated peace, a ready grievance for nationalists.
• The Great Depression, 1929. Unemployment in Germany rose to about six million by 1932, and voters turned to extremes; Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933. In Japan the slump strengthened the army's case for an empire.
• Aggression by the revisionist powers. Japan seized Manchuria in 1931, Italy invaded Abyssinia in 1935 and Germany rearmed openly. The League of Nations condemned but could not act, because Britain and France would not risk war and the United States (US) was not a member.
• Appeasement. Britain and France let Hitler remilitarise the Rhineland (1936), annex Austria (1938) and take the Sudetenland at Munich (September 1938). They hoped to satisfy him and gain time to rearm, but when Germany took the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 the policy collapsed and Britain guaranteed Poland.
• The Nazi Soviet Pact, August 1939. Stalin, distrusting the West after Munich, signed a non aggression pact with a secret protocol dividing Poland and the Baltic region. It freed Hitler from the risk of a two front war.

The course in brief

• Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, and Britain and France declared war. In 1940 Germany overran Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries and France, but lost the Battle of Britain in the air.
• In June 1941 Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union. In December 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing the US into the war and making it truly global.
• The tide turned in 1942 to 1943 at Midway in the Pacific, El Alamein in North Africa and above all at Stalingrad, where a German army surrendered in February 1943.
• The Allies landed in Normandy on D Day, 6 June 1944, while the Red Army advanced from the East; Germany surrendered in May 1945. The US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima (6 August) and Nagasaki (9 August), and Japan surrendered in August 1945.

The Holocaust

Nazi Germany deliberately murdered about six million Jews, roughly two thirds of Europe's Jews, along with Roma, disabled people, Soviet prisoners of war and others. After the Wannsee Conference of January 1942, killing moved from mass shootings to industrial murder in death camps such as Auschwitz Birkenau and Treblinka; it was genocide planned by a modern state.

Dimensions

• Political. Fascism was discredited, and democracy was rebuilt in West Germany, Italy and Japan under Allied occupation. Communism gained prestige from the Soviet victory and spread to Eastern Europe and, in 1949, China.
• Redrawal of boundaries. Germany was divided into four occupation zones, which became West and East Germany in 1949. Poland was shifted west: the Soviet Union kept eastern Poland, and Poland received German land up to the Oder Neisse line, with millions of Germans expelled. Korea was divided at the 38th parallel between Soviet and US forces, and two rival states emerged in 1948.
• Economic. Europe was ruined and in debt, while the US produced roughly half the world's manufactured goods in 1945 and so designed the new economic order.
• International. Power passed from Europe to the US and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Their quarrel over Germany became the Cold War, and the exhausted colonial powers could no longer hold their empires.
• Moral and legal. The Nuremberg trials (1945 to 1946) established that leaders are personally liable for crimes against peace and humanity, followed by the Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

In practice

The new institutions

• United Nations. The Charter was signed at San Francisco in June 1945 and came into force on 24 October 1945 with 51 members, India among them. Unlike the League, it gave the five great powers permanent seats and a veto, to keep them inside the system.
• Bretton Woods, July 1944. The conference created the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to keep exchange rates stable and lend for balance of payments problems, and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the World Bank, to finance reconstruction and later development.
• General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 1947. It aimed to avoid the tariff wars of the 1930s through negotiated rounds; India was one of its 23 founding members, and it gave way to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995.

India in the war

• The Viceroy declared India at war in September 1939 without consulting Indian leaders, and the Congress ministries resigned in protest. After the failure of the Cripps Mission (March 1942), the Congress launched the Quit India movement on 8 August 1942, while Japan stood at India's eastern frontier.
• The British Indian Army grew to about 2.5 million, the largest volunteer army in history, and fought in North Africa, Italy and Burma.
• The Bengal famine of 1943 killed between 1.5 million, the estimate of the official Famine Inquiry Commission, and about 3 million people. Wartime inflation, the loss of Burmese rice, hoarding and a slow official response turned scarcity into catastrophe.
• Subhas Chandra Bose led the Indian National Army (INA) from Singapore in 1943, and it fought alongside Japan at Imphal and Kohima in 1944. The INA trials at the Red Fort in 1945 and the naval mutiny of 1946 showed that Britain could no longer rely on Indian soldiers.

Issues and way forward

• Hitler's war or everyone's failure? A J P Taylor (1961) saw Hitler as an opportunist exploiting others' weakness; Hugh Trevor Roper saw a long planned drive for living space in the East. Most now see a clear aim, made achievable by others' errors.
• Was appeasement wrong? Its defenders point to British public opinion and the need to rearm; its critics argue that firmness in 1936 or 1938 could have stopped Germany more cheaply.
• The atomic bombs. One view holds they ended the war quickly and saved lives; another holds Japan was close to surrender and the bombs were also a signal to the USSR.
• An order frozen in 1945. The veto and IMF voting shares still reflect the victors of 1945. India, with Brazil, Germany and Japan (the G4), seeks permanent Security Council seats, and developing countries seek quota reform of the Bretton Woods bodies.

Common confusions

• Treaty of Versailles 1919 and Munich Agreement 1938. Versailles was the peace that ended the First World War; Munich was the deal that handed the Sudetenland to Germany.
• Yalta and Potsdam. Yalta (February 1945) brought together Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin on zones and the UN; Potsdam (July 1945) settled Germany's occupation and Poland's western border, with Truman for the US and Attlee replacing Churchill midway through.
• IMF and World Bank. The IMF deals with currencies and short term balance of payments problems; the World Bank lends for long term projects.

For the exam

• Keyword bank: war guilt, reparations, appeasement, Munich, Nazi Soviet Pact, Barbarossa, Stalingrad, D Day, Holocaust, Oder Neisse line, 38th parallel, veto, Bretton Woods, GATT, Bengal famine, Indian National Army.
• Previous year questions: Practise the previous year questions on this topic →
• Use in an answer:
  • Introduction (data): The Second World War killed more than 70 million people, most of them civilians, and left Europe so weakened that within three decades nearly all its empires were gone.
  • Introduction (judgement, quote or report): The Preamble of the UN Charter opens with the resolve "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war", which sums up why the victors of 1945 built a new world order.
  • Conclusion: The war ended Europe's primacy and created a world of superpowers, new nations and new institutions, many of which still frame international politics.
  • Conclusion: Reforming the order of 1945, especially the Security Council, so that it reflects today's world is the unfinished business of the peace.