The Second World War: Causes, Course and Consequences

The deadliest conflict in history

The Second World War (1939–1945) killed an estimated 70 to 85 million people, most of them civilians. It included the Holocaust, in which about six million Jews were murdered, the firebombing of cities, the use of atomic bombs and famines such as the Bengal famine of 1943. It ended the European age of world dominance, produced two superpowers, the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions, and opened the door to decolonisation, including India's independence. UPSC Mains has asked about the causes of the war, its impact on colonies and the post-war order.

Causes

1. The Treaty of Versailles – German resentment at war guilt, reparations and territorial losses.
2. The Great Depression – mass unemployment helped extremists, especially the Nazis, win support.
3. Rise of fascist and militarist regimes – Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany and militarist Japan pursued expansion as policy. Hitler's idea of Lebensraum ("living space") aimed at conquest in eastern Europe.
4. Failure of the League of Nations – it could not stop aggression in Manchuria (1931), Ethiopia (1935–36) or Spain.
5. Appeasement – Britain and France, fearing another war and communism, gave in to Hitler over the Rhineland (1936), Austria (1938) and the Sudetenland (Munich, September 1938). Hitler then occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939.
6. The Nazi–Soviet Pact (23 August 1939) – the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of non-aggression, with a secret protocol dividing Poland and the Baltic, freed Hitler to attack Poland without fear of a two-front war.

Immediate cause: Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. Britain and France declared war on 3 September 1939.

Course of the war

1939–41: Axis triumphs.

• Blitzkrieg ("lightning war") – fast tank and air attacks overran Poland, then Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France (June 1940). British troops escaped from Dunkirk.
• Battle of Britain (1940) – the Royal Air Force defeated the German air force, preventing invasion. Winston Churchill led Britain.
• Italy joined Germany (June 1940); the Tripartite Pact (September 1940) formed the Axis of Germany, Italy and Japan.
• Operation Barbarossa (22 June 1941) – Germany invaded the USSR, reaching the outskirts of Moscow.
• Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941) – Japan attacked the US naval base in Hawaii; the USA entered the war. Japan conquered Malaya, Singapore (February 1942), Burma, the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies, reaching India's eastern frontier.

1942–43: Turning points.

• Midway (June 1942) – the US Navy defeated Japan in the Pacific.
• El Alamein (October–November 1942) – Britain defeated Germany and Italy in North Africa.
• Stalingrad (August 1942–February 1943) – the German Sixth Army surrendered; the bloodiest battle of the war and the decisive turning point in Europe.
• Allied landings in Italy (1943) led to Mussolini's fall.

1944–45: Allied victory.

• D-Day (6 June 1944) – Allied landings in Normandy opened a western front.
• Imphal and Kohima (March–July 1944) – British and Indian forces stopped the Japanese and the Indian National Army at India's north-eastern border.
• The Soviet army advanced from the east and took Berlin; Hitler committed suicide; Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945 (V-E Day).
• The USA dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and Nagasaki (9 August 1945); the USSR declared war on Japan; Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945 (formally 2 September).

India and the Second World War

• The Viceroy Lord Linlithgow declared India at war in September 1939 without consulting Indian leaders; Congress ministries resigned in protest.
• The August Offer (1940), Individual Satyagraha (1940–41), the Cripps Mission (1942) and the Quit India Movement (August 1942) followed.
• Subhas Chandra Bose escaped in 1941, sought help from Germany and Japan, and led the Azad Hind Fauj (INA) from Singapore (1943).
• About 2.5 million Indians served in the British Indian Army, the largest volunteer army in history, in North Africa, Italy, Burma and elsewhere.
• Wartime inflation, the loss of Burma rice and official policy contributed to the Bengal famine (1943).
• The war weakened Britain financially; the INA trials (1945–46) and the Royal Indian Navy mutiny (1946) showed that the British could no longer rely on Indian forces.

Consequences

Human and moral. The Holocaust and other atrocities led to the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, the idea of crimes against humanity, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Genocide Convention (1948).

Political. Europe was divided; Germany was split into four occupation zones and later into West and East Germany (1949). The USA and USSR emerged as superpowers, and their rivalry became the Cold War. Britain and France declined.

International institutions. Wartime conferences – the Atlantic Charter (1941), Tehran (1943), Yalta (February 1945) and Potsdam (July–August 1945) – shaped the post-war order. The United Nations was founded at San Francisco (Charter signed June 1945; in force 24 October 1945), with a Security Council of five permanent members holding the veto. The Bretton Woods Conference (1944) created the IMF and World Bank, and the GATT (1947) followed.

Decolonisation. The war shattered European prestige, especially Japan's conquest of colonies in Asia, and gave nationalist movements new strength. India (1947), Burma and Ceylon (1948) and Indonesia (1949) gained freedom soon after.

Nuclear age. Hiroshima and Nagasaki began the age of nuclear weapons and deterrence, and the long effort at arms control and non-proliferation.

Why the Allies won

Historians stress several factors: the industrial power of the USA, which produced more weapons than all Axis states combined; the vast manpower and sacrifice of the Soviet Union, which suffered over 25 million deaths and destroyed most of the German army; British resistance in 1940–41 and control of the seas; Axis strategic errors, such as invading the USSR and declaring war on the USA; and Allied codebreaking (Enigma at Bletchley Park). The contribution of colonial soldiers, including Indians, is now increasingly recognised.

The Holocaust and total war on civilians

The Second World War blurred the line between soldiers and civilians as never before. The Nazi regime built a system of concentration and extermination camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka and Sobibor, and after the Wannsee Conference (January 1942) pursued the "Final Solution", the planned murder of all European Jews. Roma, disabled people, Soviet prisoners of war, Poles and political opponents were also killed in large numbers. In Asia, the Japanese army committed mass atrocities such as the Nanjing massacre (1937) and forced labour on the Burma–Siam "Death Railway". Allied strategic bombing destroyed cities such as Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo. These horrors led directly to the development of international humanitarian and human rights law: the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the concept of genocide coined by Raphael Lemkin, and later the International Criminal Court (1998/2002). In ethics and GS4 answers too, the Holocaust is a reminder of how bureaucracy and obedience can serve evil, a theme explored by Hannah Arendt in her idea of the "banality of evil".

Mains practice question

How did the Second World War accelerate the end of British rule in India? (250 words)

Answer framework

• Intro: declaration of war without consultation in 1939.
• Political: resignation of ministries, Cripps, Quit India, INA.
• Economic: British debt (sterling balances), weakened empire.
• Military: loyalty of armed forces shaken – INA trials, RIN mutiny.
• International: US and Soviet pressure, Atlantic Charter, Labour government.
• Conclusion: war turned a slow transfer into a rapid exit.