World War II (1941—45)

War on Two Fronts

World War II was the product of the serious economic and political dislocation in the aftermath of World War I and the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, the settlement that ended that war and was construed by many to have exacted not merely severe but vengeful measures against Germany. Within the next two decades, Nazi Germany's insistence on recovering territory lost to Poland in the Versailles settlement was the spark that ignited the tinder of the collapsing world order. On September 1, 1939, Adolf Hitler's German Army invaded Poland, setting in motion a sequence of events that led to World War II.

Germany's armored doctrine and superior military leadership were responsible for some stunning victories in the war's early years, but overconfidence prompted Hitler to order the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, which heretofore had been content to remain a neutral trading partner of Germany and Italy. Six months later, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the conflict as well. The entire complexion of the war changed with these two attacks, for now the combined resources of the Allies (consisting mainly of Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States) dwarfed those of the Axis powers (principally Germany, Italy, and Japan) in most important categories. The war became a test of the Allies' ability to actualize and best employ their theoretical advantages in numbers to offset the Axis coalition's greater experience and generally superior weaponry. The Allies also faced certain territorial advantages aiding Germany's defense, that is, the classic military edge conferred by fighting on the defensive along a perimeter where it was easier for the defender than the attacker to shift forces among critical locations.

It was the large-scale confrontation on the Russian Front that gradually eviscerated the German war machine. [Page 950]The Red Army ground the Wehrmacht to dust in a series of massive operations. Meanwhile, the British and Americans swept North Africa clear of Axis forces in early 1943, invaded Sicily and Italy that summer, and then mounted the largest amphibious operation in history with the Normandy invasion in June 1944. The pressures from east and west led to the collapse of German resistance in the spring of 1945.

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