Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part one War is a Terrible Thing!
- Part Two Guarding One’s Humanity During War: World War II
- Part Three Other Voices, Other Wars: From Indochina to Iraq
- Part Four Civil Wars and Genocides, Dictators and Domestic Oppressors
- Part Five My Story, Your Choice How to Use it
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Acknowledgments by the Senior Author
- Index
Part Two - Guarding One’s Humanity During War: World War II
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2014
- Frontmatter
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part one War is a Terrible Thing!
- Part Two Guarding One’s Humanity During War: World War II
- Part Three Other Voices, Other Wars: From Indochina to Iraq
- Part Four Civil Wars and Genocides, Dictators and Domestic Oppressors
- Part Five My Story, Your Choice How to Use it
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Acknowledgments by the Senior Author
- Index
Summary
Raging from 1939 to 1945, World War II was the deadliest, most widespread war in human history, involving more than 100 million military personnel from over thirty nations throughout the world. The war also resulted in the mass deaths of civilians, including deaths from the Holocaust and the first use of nuclear weapons. Estimates range from 50 to 75 million deaths, with countless injuries and untold human suffering.
Most agree WWII grew naturally from World War I and its punitive Versailles Peace Treaty. WWI killed an entire generation of young men and radically altered the political map, erasing the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires, indirectly putting the Bolsheviks in power in the USSR, and establishing many new, weak, small states throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Political instability was exacerbated by the Great Depression of the 1930s, which, along with the reparations from WWI, hit central Europe especially hard. Germany’s response turned militaristic with the coming to power of the Nazis (National Socialist Party) in 1933. The Nazis immediately instituted a series of racist and anti-Semitic laws and over the following years led Germany in campaigns of territorial expansion in Austria and Czechoslovakia. In August 1939, Germany and Russia signed a nonaggression pact, effectively dividing Poland. Now free to invade Poland without Russian interference, Germany did so on September 1, 1939. The violation of Poland’s sovereignty, which Great Britain had sworn to protect, led both Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany. On September 3, 1939 WorldWar II officially began.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Darkling PlainStories of Conflict and Humanity during War, pp. 37 - 38Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014