Military History of World War II
- Dec 15, 2022
- 6 min read
Music Inspires
Music was an integral aspect of maintaining morale during the Second World War. Soldiers having a final dance with their lovers before leaving for basic training danced slowly to the big bands of the era, Soviet and German music reinforced government propaganda, and Japanese radios played music as a way to sometimes send secret messages to the front.
In the United States, music often spoke to the experiences of white soldiers on the front lines, women working in factories, and African-Americans struggling to find a place in society. British music often highlighted anxieties over the fear of defeat in war and the loss of soldiers' lives. In occupied Poland, music sang to the resistance fighters to maintain national pride in an occupied nation.
Several swinging singers ever doubled as double agents, receiving information from soldiers they befriended in night clubs and relaying the information to enemy intelligence operatives. Beyond the front, musicians worked with other entertainers to attract home front support for war efforts by raising money that would be used for war.
A New Roman Empire
Few would have predicted that the most destructive war in human history would have begun in the relatively minor conflicts in Spain, Ethiopia, and Manchuria. A bloody Civil War in Spain attracted Italian and German militaries eager to test out new equipment and support a fellow Fascist rising to power. In Ethiopia, few nations around the world showed any support for the last nation in Africa yet unconquered by colonizing powers when Italian soldiers overran the country in just over a year.
In Manchuria, the great naval powers of the Pacific cared more about Japan's growing influence in the islands than for their genocidal campaign in China. It would be these three conflicts that would lay the foundations for the global conflict that would come to be known as the Second World War. Most importantly however, a series of small border skirmishes between Japan and the Soviet Union may have been what sewed the seeds for the end of World War Two.
Japanese forces testing the boundaries of Soviet Mongolia met disastrous results against Soviet border guards, and the Japanese Empire would remain terrified of the prospect of a full-scale war against the Russians. After two nuclear bombs exploded in their country, the Japanese needed little motivation to surrender once the Soviet Union declared war. The smallest preliminary conflict of the decade of war may have been the deciding factor in its conclusion.
Diary of a Young Girl
Countless women proved vital during the Second World War from Soviet snipers to British spies. Celebrities of the era helped raise funds for the war effort- including future actress Audrey Hepburn. But far from the brutal battlefields of the war was the even darker brutality of the Holocaust. With six million Jewish victims dying during the era, and another four million Communists, intellectuals, Romani, and LGBTQ+ (among other groups); nobody was prepared to process the inhumanity of the Holocaust once stories began reaching the ears and eyes of soldiers and their families back home.
While the physical remains of concentration camps littered the landscape of Central Europe, the in-depth details of the horrors of the Holocaust were lost on the soldiers liberating the camps; until the diaries of those who secretly told their stories went public. Even today, it is truly impossible to fathom just how horrendous it must have been to be a victim of one of these camps; stripped of humanity and subjected to the worst abuse in modern history. Countless historians have documented the lives of soldiers during the Second World War, but the most important books about the conflict will always be the accounts of Holocaust victims- including a young girl whose diary under the distress of a failed attempt to escape occupied Europe still painfully carves the hearts of readers today.
Intelligent Propaganda
Throughout the American war effort in the Pacific, GI's frequently listened to Japanese radio to pass the time; and they often gave the nickname "Tokyo Rose" to women voicing radio stations out of Japan. Rumors spread however that "Tokyo Rose" may have been an American. After the end of the war, US officials arrested Iva Toguri when she returned home from the war to investigate whether she had leaked information about the US military to the Japanese while working for a Japanese radio station during the war.
Public outcry in the United States forced the FBI to take the rumors to court and definitely make the case for Toguri's accusations of treason. The case quickly became chaos as private investigations revealed corrupt police were pressuring US military veterans to give false testimony against Toguri- alleging that she had intentionally aired music to American GI's to demoralize the American war effort and hinder their campaigns in the Pacific.
In 1977, US President Gerald Ford officially pardoned Iva Toguri of all charges, and the infamous "Tokyo Rose" even received in 2006 an award from the US-based World War Two Veterans Committee for her courage, spirit, and patriotism. Toguri would note it as the most memorable day of her life and died only a few months later.
Saving "Saving Private Ryan"
Few World War Two films come as close to recognition as the greatest World War Two film of all as Saving Private Ryan which tells the story of fictional soldiers going on a dangerous mission during a real military campaign to rescue the life of another fictional soldier due to a real military doctrine.
Does the film still hold up however, or do we collectively remember this film as being greater than the sum of all its parts? The film first premiered in theaters during a time when punching Nazis was not yet controversial that helped show young audiences why their grandparents didn't talk about the war and depicted the lives of soldiers risking life and limb on the battlefields of World War Two and the armchair generals sending them off to die.
The film depicts some of the most brutal battle scenes of all time opening with the massacre that was D-Day honoring both troops and tropes- and leading the cast is America's dad: Tom Hanks who is as knowledgeable with weapons as he is ashamed of his liberal arts degree. In the end however, the film powerfully depicts the destructive power of war, the selfless sacrifices of everyday soldiers, and honors a generation faced with impossible missions.
I Call the Youth of the World
Following minor skirmishes in Manchuria, Civil War in Spain, and the Italian Invasion of Ethiopia; the International Olympic Committee opted to give a green light to the 1936 Olympics under hosts Germany in its capital Berlin. Throughout the lead-up to the Games, the world debated over whether a boycott should take place due to rumors of oppression against Communists and Jews under Nazi rule (the severity of which the world was still deeply ignorant to). Throughout the Games, tensions were high as Adolf Hitler personally used the Games as Nazi propaganda to display to the world his party's image of a "perfect race."
The Games were however one of the most important in the history of the Olympics- not for being a wake-up call to the world to never again allow authoritarian regimes to host major sporting events, but for setting a precedence for it. The economy of German's authoritarian Third Reich paved the way for a massive financial investment into the games from facility management to documentation and theatrics. The 1936 Olympic Opening Ceremony alone would set the stage for all future Olympic Opening Ceremonies. Several countries- including the United States- refused to allow Jewish athletes to represent them out of a desire to not offend the Nazi hosts.
Major sporting event organizers today including both the International Olympic Committee and FIFA continue to award major sporting events to authoritarian regimes because of their historiography of the 1936 Berlin Games- widely considered among IOC membership as one of the most successful Olympics in history. After those "successful" Games however, German violence against Jewish citizens became far worse; and the "politics have no place in sport" philosophy championed by the at-the-time US Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage continues to echo among supporters for major sporting events held in authoritarian countries today.
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