Date Written: 5/16/2022
Question: In what sense did World War II become more “global” during its first two or two-and-a-half years?
World War 2 was the largest war in history. Within the first 2 years of the 6 years WW2 lasted basically every major county was involved in one way or another.
It all started when Germany and Soviet Russia invaded Poland and quickly defeated the Poles. Next Soviet Russia tried to invade Finland in what is called the Winter War. The Fins did a good job of holding of the much more powerful Russians and they only lost a relatively small portion of land. The Germans now got Western Europe involved. They conquered Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxemburg, and France. Italy took advantage of France’s weakness and took a large portion of southern France. The British were barely able to hold onto their freedom. They almost lost a large portion of their army that was helping France and they fought a brutal air war with Germany. Spain was able to stay out of the war, even though Hitler tried to convince Spain’s ruler Franco to form an alliance with Germany. In the east Japan had been at war with China since before Germany invaded Poland.
The Last Major Power not Involved in WW2
Finally, the last major power not currently fighting in WW2 was the United States. The United States was at the time under the leadership of Franklin Delano Roosevelt . He made sure that the U.S. was a very “unneutral” neutral because he secretly detested the Germans. So, he undermined the public’s wishes and behind the scenes did everything is his power to bring the U.S. into the war.
FDR basically encouraged Japan to attack the United States. He lowered the number of troops stationed in the Philippines to only 20,000. He also dangled the Pacific fleet in front of the Japanese by stationing the whole thing at Pearl Harbor. So, the Japanese who desperately wanted an empire in the Pacific took advantage of the opportunity FDR gave them and attacked the United States. What followed was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After this attack the United States entered the war. Now making WW2 the largest global war in history.
Nathan,
Very informative and a good reminder to me of what happened.