The History Buff's Guide to World War II Read Online Free PDF

treaty. Many citizens viewed their governments as accomplices in a traitorous plot. In Germany, pockets of ultranationalists remained active, eventually collecting around a persuasive war veteran who preached revenge.
    In Asia, an old country emerged as a new power. For capturing a German fort in China and conducting brief naval patrols in the Mediterranean, Japan received from the League of Nations the Marshall, Mariana, Palau, and Caroline island groups (formerly German possessions). The Japanese economy enjoyed an unprecedented boom, thanks to overseas demand for wartime supplies. From 1913 to 1919, Japanese exports increased 300 percent. Having recently annexed Korea and defeated both Russia and China in regional wars, the empire abruptly became the political, military, and economic power of East Asia. Several militarists promoted the idea of expanding Japan’s influence even further. 37
Combat veterans of the First World War included Winston Churchill, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Harry S. Truman, and George VI of Windsor.
    2 . THE RISE OF ETHNIC NATIONALISM
    Tribal discord is almost as old as humankind. But in the early twentieth century, several factors enabled old ethnic tensions to become new political contests.
    Victories in the S INO -J APANESE and R USSO -J APANESE wars created an explosion of racial pride in Japan. World War I, which began after an ethnic uprising in Bosnia, gave birth to new states based largely on ethnicity—Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Yugoslavia, etc. Much of American and British foreign policy bordered on the premise that “white makes right.” Fables of ethnic superiority tested well in many political climates, particularly in Italy and Germany. 38
    Increasingly, race and state became virtually synonymous, to the point where international relations turned into cultural divides. In 1924, the United States, Canada, and Australia strictly limited immigration based on ethnicity, particularly against Asians. By 1930, Japan had more than seven hundred societies based on racial nationalism. In 1933, Nazi Germany imposed its first anti-Semitic laws, and in 1938, Germany annexed Austria and the Czech Sudetenland on grounds of ethnic conglomeration. 39
    Even in the League of Nations, that hopeful experiment in international cooperation, states were unwilling to even pay lip service to brotherly love. Despite several attempts to insert one, the covenant of the League of Nations never included an endorsement of racial equality. 40
Article 9 of the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war stipulated, “Belligerents shall as far as possible avoid bringing together in the same camp prisoners of different races or nationalities.”
    3 . THE REPARATIONS WAR
    The harshest punishments of the Treaty of Versailles fell upon Austria and Hungary. Both were ordered to relinquish 60 percent of their territory, effectively ending their reigns as European powers. In comparison, Germany gave up 13 percent of its territory but was allowed to keep a nucleus of one hundred thousand soldiers for defense. The crux of Prussia’s punishment was to come from reparations. 41
    As to the amount, no consensus could be found. Most of war-torn France wanted Germany to be “squeezed as a lemon is squeezed.” Others called reparations “a sad adventure,” fearing it would bankrupt Germany and create a power vacuum in dead-center Europe. U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, and of course the Germans, wanted no payments whatsoever. Supreme Allied commander Marshal Ferdinand Foch lamented, “This is not peace: it is an Armistice for twenty years.” 42
    Seemingly endless debate altered the amounts again and again. The Weimar government actually began paying—in coal, cattle, boats, and gold—without a final amount declared. Threats and reprisals sent the German mark into repeated free fall until it was valued at one-trillionth its prewar level. 43
    Emergency