Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [0]
James L. Stokesbury
SOON AFTER PEARL HARBOR, my father enlisted in the army, where he served until 1945 as a sergeant in the 338th Infantry, 85th Division, in the Italian campaign. My mother went to work in a defense plant in Connecticut. I would like to think that this book is a small thank-you for what they did during those years of war.
Acknowledgments
IT IS A PLEASURE for me to acknowledge the assistance, direct and indirect, of many friends who have helped in the preparation of this work. The staffs of the Acadia University Library, the Dalhousie University Library, and the Cambridge Military Library, Halifax, have been uniformly helpful. All my colleagues in the Department of History, Acadia University, have been unfailingly supportive; special thanks must go to Dr. A. H. MacLean, Head of the Department, and to Dr. Martin Blumenson and Dr. Thaddeus V. Tuleja, both holders of the Visiting Professorship of Military and Strategic Studies, for their encyclopedic knowledge of World War II. Miss Debbie Bradley typed the entire manuscript with a most encouraging enthusiasm. A more general word of thanks is due to my students in my course on World War II for their interest and inquisitiveness over the years, which did much to prompt this study. I must add the cautionary note that any errors of fact or interpretation are mine, and not to be attributed to anyone else. My final, and most heartfelt, thanks go to my wife, who has been my kindest and most patient critic.
JAMES L. STOKESBURY
Contents
Acknowledgments
Part I: Prologue
1. Peace and Rearmament
2. The European Democracies
3. The Revisionist States
4. The Unknown Quantities
5. The Prewar Series of Crises
Part II: The Expanding War
6. Blitzkrieg in Poland
7. Northern Adventures
8. The Fall of France
9. The Battle of Britain
10. The United States and the War
11. The Battle of the Atlantic
12. War in the Mediterranean
13. The Invasion of Russia
14. Japan and the Road to Pearl Harbor
Part III: “The Hour When Earth’s Foundations Fled…”
15. Allied Conferences and Plans
16. Occupied Europe
17. The Japanese Offensives in the Pacific
18. The Battles for North Africa
19. Crisis in Russia
20. Allied Strategic Problems: Upgrading the Pacific
21. The European Resistance Movements
22. The Strategic Bombing Campaign
Part IV: Toward The Elusive Victory
23. The Collapse and Invasion of Italy
24. The Normandy Invasion and the Campaign of France
25. Winning in the Pacific
26. The Collapse of Germany
27. The Collapse of Japan
28. Winning and Losing
Bibliographical Note
Searchable Terms
About the Author
Other Books by James L. Stokesbury
Copyright
About the Publisher
PART I: PROLOGUE
1. Peace and Rearmament
WORLD WAR II BEGAN in Europe at dawn on September 1, 1939, as units of the German Wehrmacht crossed the Polish border. Britain and France, honoring their pledge to Poland made earlier in the year, declared war on Germany on September 3. The war lasted nearly six years, and by the time it was over, much of the civilized world lay in ruins, something more than thirty million people had been killed, great empires had been destroyed, and weapons of new and hitherto unimagined potential had been unleashed upon the world.
Such a result could not have stemmed from a border dispute between Germany and Poland. The powder train that led to the outbreak of war went back far beyond the immediate causes of it. Without stretching historical continuity too far, the causes of World War II can be taken back at least into the nineteenth century. For practical purposes, however, World Wars I and II can be considered part of one large struggle—the struggle of united Germany to claim its place as the dominant power on the European continent—and the causes of World War II can be traced from the immediate aftermath of World War I.
In 1919, a series of treaties was made between the victorious Allies and the various