World War II: Continuation of the Trend toward Total or Pure War

1
World War II Continuation of the Trend toward
Total or Pure War

• Background
• US enters the war to end all wars and to make the
  world safe for democracies Revolutionary aims
  vs. European imperial system for global order and
  legitimacy
• Versailles Treaty to end the war with Germany
  establishes the Wilsonian principle of collective
  security end the balance of power

2
Flaws of the Versailles Treaty and the Principle
of Collective Security

• The U.S. returns to a traditional isolationist
  position in European security and politics
• President Wilsons ideas of collective security,
  end of empires and self-determination, and
  democratic rule are rejected
• United States refuses to join the League of
  Nations
• Germany is not re-integrated into the community
  of states as Napoleonic France was in 1815
• Germany is accused of starting the war and must
  pay burdensome reparations
• Germanys military forces are limited and under
  the control of the liberal democratic states --
  but without the US

3
Failures of the League of Nations and Collective
Security

• Japanese invasion of Manchuria (1931) and war
  with China (1937-45)
• Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935
• German reoccupation of the Rheinland in 1935
• Russian invasion of Finland in 1939-40
• German attack on Poland in September 1939
• World War II begins

4
German Empire, 1941-42
5
United States Enters the War

• Japanese Pearl Harbor attack, December 7, 1941
• Japanese War Aims Protect Japanese Empire
  against U.S.
• Eliminate the threat to Japan from U.S. naval
  forces
• Seek a sphere of influence understanding with the
  United States
• Similar to German-Soviet agreement in August,
  1939
• US sphere of influence extends to Hawaii Japans
  sphere in the western Pacific, China and
  Southeast Asia Dutch Indonesia and French
  Indo-China and British Hong Kong and Singapore

6
United States War Aims Total Political and
Military Victory

• Return to Wilsonian revolutionary aims of a new
  global order
• Victory of Liberal democratic coalition
• Destruction of the German and Japanese empires
  and political regimes
• End of Europes empires and the global
  institutional principle of self-determination
• Creation of a postwar liberal, global trading
  system
• The democratic rule of a system of nation-states
  under United Nations auspices dedicated to a
  peaceful world order

7
American and Allied Strategic Military Aims

• Destruction of the military forces of German and
  Japan and their allies
• Complete political submission of the German and
  Japanese states, regimes, and peoples to allied
  rule

8
Japanese Empire 1942
9
Total Warfare in Europe and Pacific

• Germany defeated in May 1945
• Japanese surrenders in August, 1945 in the wake
  of atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

10
Atomic Bomb over Hiroshima, 1945
11
Destruction of Hiroshima, 1945
12
World War II as Total War Hobbes and Clausewitz
Return

• 72 million civilian and military deaths
• Civilian 47 million
• Military 25 million

13
Total Casualties in Percentages of Allied and
Axis Deaths
14
Flaws of the Allied Coalition and the Cold War
1945-1991

• Liberal Democracies vs. Soviet Union
• United States vs. European Empires
• France
• United Kingdom
• Netherlands
• Portugal
• Belgium