Conclusions and consequences

The world at war

At the end of 1943 the world was poised on the brink of the final act of the Second World War. In 1944 the Second World War was effectively decided beyond any doubt. The three Allied powers, Britain, the USA, and the Soviet Union, would now combine effectively for the first time, bringing their resources to bear against Nazi Germany. The final victory, as well as being a triumph for the alliance against Germany, also marked, dramatically, the end of European global hegemony. It was the USA and the Soviet Union that would be the dominant forces in the world hereafter.

Between 1939 and 1943 the Second World War had grown from a comparatively localized conflagration centered, as so many wars had previously been, on western Europe, to encompass virtually the whole globe. Only the continent of the Americas escaped the ravages of war, although the localized effects of the ‘Battle of the River Plate’ and Japanese ‘fire-balloons’ on the west coast of the USA served to remind Americans of what the wider world was experiencing.

The war that had begun in Europe had spread to the Far East (see The Second World War (1) The Pacific War in this series). Japanese aggression swiftly deposed the colonial regimes of the British (in Malaya, Singapore, and Burma), the French (Indo-China), and the Dutch (Dutch East Indies). However, Japanese aggression had also brought the USA into the war, and the entrance of the United States tipped the balance of the war decisively in favor of the Allies. The vast economic potential of the USA, once harnessed effectively, out-produced the Axis decisively, although numbers of weapons alone are not the most significant determinant.

By early 1943 the war economy of the USA was beginning to influence the fortunes of all the Allied forces. In January, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin Roosevelt met for a major summit at Casablanca, North Africa. Following their deliberations they issued a joint ultimatum to Germany, demanding that she surrender ‘unconditionally.’ This was a major development; it effectively ruled out a negotiated peace in the future. Adolf Hitler and many leading Nazis continued to believe that some form of rapprochement was still possible with the two western allies because of the inherent tensions present in their alliance with the Soviet Union. However, despite these German hopes of a separate peace, which prompted Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and Gestapo, to attempt negotiations with the British and Americans in the last weeks of the war, the unlikely alliance of East and West, capitalist democracies and communist dictatorship, held firm until the defeat of Germany.

The ‘unconditional surrender’ ultimatum nevertheless galvanized the German populace. Whatever they may have felt about the rights and wrongs of the war, and irrespective of the common cause that the average German might or might not have felt with the Nazi Party, after the Casablanca ultimatum it was obvious that there was no way out for Germany. Unconditional surrender obliged Germany to fight on until she was defeated, totally.

The Germans also fought on for the same reasons that had prompted the outbreak initially. Put simply, a state that had been built on ideas of racial superiority was unlikely to seek to negotiate a peace, even if one had been on offer. And, as the Allies frequently pointed out, such an option did not exist. The extent to which all Germans were avid believers in all aspects of Nazi ideology has always been an area of considerable debate. Certainly, however, even those who opposed the Nazi regime had little option but to either keep quiet or face arrest and death, so strong was the security apparatus of Nazi Germany.

The brutal fashion with which Nazi Germany had waged the war also ensured that her opponents’ determination to see the conflict through to a decisive conclusion was total. Nazi Germany’s commitment to the ideas of racial supremacy made their dogged resistance all the more determined, as did their increasingly firm belief in ultimate victory. Arthur Harris, the man in charge of Bomber Command, once said of Hitler’s Germany that ‘they have sown the wind and, now, they shall reap the whirlwind.’ In 1944 and 1945, Hitler’s Germany was to reap the whirlwind in no uncertain fashion.