Historical Context of World War II
World War I was known as “The Great War” up until 1939, when World War II began in Europe. Few people thought there would be a need to call it World War I, as they never imagined a World War II happening. However, we can now understand that the “unfinished business” from the “Great War” did in fact lead up to the Second World War.
World War I was known as “The Great War” up until 1939, when World War II began in Europe. Few people thought there would be a need to call it World War I, as they never imagined a World War II happening. However, we can now understand that the “unfinished business” from the “Great War” did in fact lead up to the Second World War.
The Great War brought about a shock to the foundations of Western civilization. The idea of progress towards peace, the good life, and technological advances begun with the Enlightenment was suddenly in doubt. If Western “progress” could cause such unimaginable death and destruction, then there must be something wrong with the ideas of civilizational progress. Many artists shared this thinking, including writer, T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land), soldier-poets, Wilfred Owen (“Dulce et Decorum Est”), novelist, Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front), and painter, Paul Nash (We are Making a New World). Their works reflected a powerful sense of cultural disappointment, spiritual emptiness, and moral questioning during and after the Great War of 1914-18. Some even believed that Western civilization had not moved forward, like the thinker, Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West).
At the end of the Great War, the mood in Europe was gloomy. An entire generation of young men had been wiped out, the working classes were involved in revolutionary movements, and international political tensions were high. The Treaty of Versailles Put disastrous conditions on Germany, creating a nationalist feeling and an increase in a revanchist (from the French for “revenge”) mentality among the defeated people. A reaction to this feeling allowed for economic recovery in Europe and the United States. The “Roaring Twenties” highlighted the youth-oriented culture with the sounds of jazz, wild dance styles, women’s freedom, living for pleasure, the rising stock market and the growing demand for consumer goods, such as cars and wireless radios.
This prosperous feeling among advanced industrial nations helped to temporarily do away with the negative emotions following the Great War. However, the stock market crash of 1929, followed by years of economic depression, led to two very different political ideals worldwide; on the far right were Fascism and on the far left Communism, each with its own solutions to the economic, social, and political unrest. Between 1936 and 1939 these two ideals fought in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, with the forces of Fascism under General Francisco Franco gaining control.
Even before this war, Europeans feared another great war was coming. In 1930, a British novel by Evelyn Waugh predicted a massive war in his novel Vile Bodies. “We shall walk into the jaws of destruction again,” says one of the characters and the novel ends on “the biggest battlefield in the history of the world.”
Today, we know that World War II was much worse than World War I in its outcomes: 60 million people died in World War II, compared to 16 million in World War I. In addition, the comparison of civilian deaths between World War I (40 percent) and World War II (55 percent) was due to the new technologies of killing, which included expanded aerial warfare. With this advance, “carpet bombing” wiped out everything in numerous cities such as Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo.
The decision to burn down entire cities was applied by both sides, the Fascists and Allied forces, including the decision to use atomic bombs on two Japanese cities. The killing of tens of thousands of citizens in an instant has left a dark stain on the history of Western civilization. This is the true meaning of “total war;” not only did war ignore geographical boundaries, but it also did not make distinctions between the traditional battlefield and the civilian world.
Theaters of War
Even though World War II was the closest to a truly global war in human history, it had its main areas of geographical foci or “theaters of war.” A major theater of war was the European continent. This is where the war started from a Western perspective. Throughout the 1930s, Germany had begun the process of militarization (gathering weapons), even though this was forbidden under the Versailles Treaty from the end of World War I. They also stopped making the reparation payments (payment for damages to other nations during World War I). Military expansion increased dramatically after the Nazi party came to power in 1933.
Even though World War II was the closest to a truly global war in human history, it had its main areas of geographical foci or “theaters of war.” A major theater of war was the European continent. This is where the war started from a Western perspective. Throughout the 1930s, Germany had begun the process of militarization (gathering weapons), even though this was forbidden under the Versailles Treaty from the end of World War I. They also stopped making the reparation payments (payment for damages to other nations during World War I). Military expansion increased dramatically after the Nazi party came to power in 1933.
What happened next is well known: Hitler kept asking for more rights from the nations that Germany had given territory to after World War I. First, he reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936 and stopped paying reparations. Next, he added Austria to Germany’s territory in 1938. In September of 1938, the “Sudetenland,” a piece of Czechoslovakia mostly populated by ethnic Germans was added. In 1939, Hitler broke his promise to stop adding territory by taking over Poland’s port city of Danzig. The official starting date of World War II in Europe is considered to be September 1, 1939, when the Nazis attacked Poland in a vast land and air campaign.
One of the agreements that brought together the two ideologically different political systems of Fascism and Communism was the Hitler-Stalin pact of the summer 1939 (also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact). The German and the Soviet governments set aside their differences, agreed not to attack each other, nor to assist other nations. Through this agreement, Germany thought it could avoid the alliance agreements that started World War I. Even more disturbing was the secret addendum to the pact, where both sides had agreed to divide Poland between them. Hitler ended up violating the pact in June 1941 when he attacked the Soviet Union.
Soon it became clear that the war would not be limited to Europe. When Japan entered the war in 1941 on the side of the Axis powers, the next theater of war saw Japan controlling the Philippines, Guam, Malaysia, and Burma in the Asian South East (Indochina). The attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 brought the United States officially into the war.
Women and War
The major work, the prose pieces, and one of the poems selected for this Resource Guide were written by females. This will give you a different perspective on the experience of total war during the years 1939-45. In addition, the new technologies of airborne warfare had almost completely blurred the lines between the traditional battlefield and the civilian space. Bomber airplanes and German V-2 guided missiles could bring the war literally home at any time, exposing women, children, invalids, and the old to the same violence that men were exposed to on the battlefront. We will be able to test our beliefs about how women handled war in Virginia Woolf’s essay when we read her account of the London Blitz.
The major work, the prose pieces, and one of the poems selected for this Resource Guide were written by females. This will give you a different perspective on the experience of total war during the years 1939-45. In addition, the new technologies of airborne warfare had almost completely blurred the lines between the traditional battlefield and the civilian space. Bomber airplanes and German V-2 guided missiles could bring the war literally home at any time, exposing women, children, invalids, and the old to the same violence that men were exposed to on the battlefront. We will be able to test our beliefs about how women handled war in Virginia Woolf’s essay when we read her account of the London Blitz.
Since we often think of war writing containing descriptions of battles, we tend to give less value to discussions of the war from the non-soldier – especially female – perspective. Petra Rau has argued, civilian accounts of war provide “a clearer recognition of the psychological toll that waiting and lack of information take on those left on the ‘home front,’ on women and parents, and of the utter bleakness of wartime life and the austerity years that followed it. It is the cost of war, its traumatic nature rather than its ideological significance or its victories, that is highlighted in these books.” Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, while a work of fiction, is based on real events experienced by women in Denmark during the war, and belongs to this category of book. It opens a window for us onto the experience of both the resistance fighters and the Jewish people they fought so desperately to save during World War II.
Focusing on women’s writing supports the reality that more than half of the death toll in World War II were civilian casualties. The perspective of war literature needs to shift from only the soldier’s experience to include the impact that the war had on civilians. We will balance this perspective by also considering the male perspective through the poetry choices.
World War II and Literature
With the exception of the novel, all of the selections chosen for this Resource Guide were written during the war while the fighting was still going on and the outcome of the war was uncertain. The novel is set during the war and even its ending leaves us uncertain of the future of the protagonist’s friend. Two of the prose pieces and two of the poetry pieces were written by participants in the Holocaust. They were chosen for their connection to the themes in the novel, their ability to provide the Jewish perspective, and the fact that they were written by young witnesses of the war. Finally, the selections as a whole represent the efforts to understand the meaning of “total” war that had no precedent. Readers have a more direct understanding of the war in this way, giving a raw, immediate and more authentic representation of the war as a whole.
With the exception of the novel, all of the selections chosen for this Resource Guide were written during the war while the fighting was still going on and the outcome of the war was uncertain. The novel is set during the war and even its ending leaves us uncertain of the future of the protagonist’s friend. Two of the prose pieces and two of the poetry pieces were written by participants in the Holocaust. They were chosen for their connection to the themes in the novel, their ability to provide the Jewish perspective, and the fact that they were written by young witnesses of the war. Finally, the selections as a whole represent the efforts to understand the meaning of “total” war that had no precedent. Readers have a more direct understanding of the war in this way, giving a raw, immediate and more authentic representation of the war as a whole.