World War Two

To understand why World War Two happened, you have to start with how World War One ended. On June 28, 1919, German delegates were summoned to the Palace of Versailles, outside Paris, to sign a peace treaty. They were brought to the Hall of Mirrors — the same room where, in 1871, Germany had proclaimed its empire after defeating France. The French chose that room deliberately. The Treaty of Versailles assigned Germany sole guilt for World War One, stripped the country of 13 percent of its territory, cut its army to 100,000 men, and imposed reparations of 132 billion gold marks — roughly $33 billion at the time. The German economy spent the next decade lurching between debt, hyperinflation, and depression. By 1932, 30 percent of Germans were unemployed. A man named Adolf Hitler, whose National Socialist German Workers' Party had won only 2.6 percent of the vote in 1928, was now leading the largest party in the German parliament. On January 30, 1933, German President Paul von Hindenburg appointed him Chancellor. The road to the war had been building for 14 years.

World War Two was not inevitable. It was the product of specific decisions made by specific people at specific moments — most of them the wrong decisions. The failure to enforce the Versailles treaty. The failure to stop Hitler in the Rhineland in 1936. The decision to appease him at Munich in 1938. The decision not to build an anti-Hitler alliance with the Soviet Union before 1939. At almost every turning point, a different choice could have changed the outcome. Understanding this is the most important thing the war teaches: catastrophes of this scale are not natural disasters. They are built, one decision at a time.

The world you live in was largely built after 1945, in direct response to the war:

The United Nations was created in 1945 specifically to prevent another world war. Its Security Council still operates with the same five permanent members — US, UK, France, Russia (as successor to the Soviet Union), and China — each with veto power, a structure designed for the world of 1945 that critics argue no longer reflects today's realities.

NATO was founded in 1949 because Western Europe feared Soviet expansion after the Berlin Blockade. It now has 32 members. Its Article 5 collective defense commitment — an attack on one is an attack on all — was invoked for the first time after September 11, 2001. The war in Ukraine beginning in 2022 has given the alliance renewed urgency.

Nuclear deterrence — the doctrine that nuclear-armed states will not attack each other because both sides would be destroyed — traces directly to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nine states now hold nuclear weapons. The logic that has prevented their use since 1945 is the same logic that made their use in 1945 conceivable.

International law — the idea that individuals, including heads of state, can be held criminally responsible for crimes against humanity — began at Nuremberg in 1945. Every international criminal tribunal since, including those for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, rests on the precedents established there.

The borders of Europe were redrawn after 1945 and, in most cases, those borders still exist. The division of Germany, reunified only in 1990. Poland's western border, shifted dramatically westward. The Soviet sphere of Eastern Europe, which shaped the Cold War for 45 years.

1. **1. The Soviet Union bore a burden no other country came close to.**
2. The US lost approximately 416,000 people in World War Two. The Soviet Union lost approximately 27 million — roughly one in seven of its citizens. That figure includes an estimated 8–11 million military dead and 16–18 million civilians. Despite these losses, Soviet industrial production exceeded Germany's in tanks, aircraft, and artillery in every year after 1942. The Eastern Front — which most Western accounts treat as a secondary story — was where the majority of German forces fought and died throughout the war.
3. **2. Britain came very close to seeking a negotiated peace in May 1940.**
4. As German forces surrounded the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk, Churchill's own War Cabinet debated whether to ask Italy's Mussolini to broker peace talks with Hitler. Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax pushed the idea. Churchill spent three days arguing against it in Cabinet meetings before the idea was dropped. If Halifax had prevailed, the war in Europe might have ended on German terms in the summer of 1940.
5. **3. Japan's military leaders planned to fight on even after the atomic bombs.**
6. After Hiroshima (August 6) and before Nagasaki (August 9), the Japanese Supreme War Council remained deadlocked on surrender. After Nagasaki and the Soviet declaration of war (August 8), Emperor Hirohito personally intervened — an almost unprecedented step — to break the deadlock and order surrender. A faction within the military attempted a coup on the night of August 14–15 to seize the recording of Hirohito's surrender broadcast before it could air. They failed. If the coup had succeeded, the war might have continued.