Outbreak of World War II and its Impact in Colonies - Study Notes

Lesson summary

The order built after the First World War on collective security collapsed in September 1939. Japan's part made the war of 1939-45 much more of a world war than that of 1914-18, and its losses were far greater. After the war a wave of unrest swept the colonies, and decolonisation began in Asia and Africa.

Causes of the Second World War

• Unjust peace treaty: Germany lost its colonies and much of its army, ceded Alsace and Lorraine to France and parts of Silesia to Poland, and had to pay 6600 million pounds. Italy was aggrieved over Dalmatia; Austria could not unite with Germany.
• Failure of the League of Nations: Locarno (1925) and the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) could not be enforced. Germany left the Geneva Disarmament Conference and the League in 1933; Hitler's conscription of March 1935 was the first breach of Versailles. Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935 and Haile Selassie got no help.
• Depression of the 1930s: high tariffs and expansion; Japan seized Manchuria in 1931.
• German big business and patriots: Germany, the most powerful industrial country in continental Europe, had no colonies.
• Mussolini and Japan: Italy's grab of Ethiopia led to the Rome-Berlin Axis; Japan, ruled by the military after 1936, eyed the colonies of Southeast Asia.

Hitler's steps to war

Course of the war

• Poland fell in two weeks; Norway in April 1940; blitzkrieg on the Low Countries and France from 10 May 1940.
• Dunkirk evacuation (May-June 1940) of about 198,000 British and 140,000 Allied troops; de Gaulle's Free French army.
• The Blitz on London and the Battle of Britain (July-October 1940): radar, Spitfires and Hurricanes gave Hitler his first defeat.
• Invasion of the Soviet Union from 22 June 1941; about six million Jews killed in the Holocaust.
• Pearl Harbour, 7 December 1941, brought the USA into the war; Lend-Lease aid; MacArthur in the Pacific from August 1942.
• Midway (4-7 June 1942) turned the tide; Guadalcanal (7 August 1942-9 February 1943).
• Stalingrad: Hitler refused to withdraw; the Soviet counter-offensive of 1942 turned the tide.
• El Alamein: first German reverses; Rommel's army surrendered in May 1943. Badoglio's Italy surrendered on 3 September 1943.
• Casablanca and Teheran conferences (1943); Eisenhower supreme commander; Paris liberated 25 August 1944; Dresden bombed 13-15 February 1945.
• Hitler's suicide; Berlin fell on 2 May 1945. Atomic bombs on Hiroshima (6 August) and Nagasaki (9 August) ended the war.

Peace making and results

• Atlantic Charter (Roosevelt and Churchill): no territorial change without consent, choice of government, equal access to trade, freedom of the seas, disarmament of aggressors.
• Potsdam: council of foreign ministers of five Powers; East Prussia divided, Danzig to Poland, Germany split into four occupation zones.
• Paris Peace Conference, 1946: 1500 delegates from 21 nations at the Luxemburg Palace. Trieste divided into Zones A and B in 1954.
• Cairo (November 1943) and Yalta (February 1945): fate of Japan's empire; UNO and the Bretton Woods system.
• Results: about 60 million dead; the USA and the USSR as dominant powers; monarchies abolished in Rumania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Italy; welfare state in Britain; votes for women in France and Italy; the French left Indo-China in 1954 and the Suez venture of 1956 failed.

Chinese Revolution, 1949

• Corrupt Manchu rule since 1650; mandarins; poor peasants.
• Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) led by Hung Hsiu-chuan; quelled by an army under Major Gordon.
• Opium Wars: Treaty of Nanking (1842) ceded Hong Kong; the Arrow incident and the Beijing Agreement of 1860.
• Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901) by the Yihequan; Boxer Protocol of 7 September 1901.
• Wuchang mutiny, October 1911; Sun Yat-sen provisional President; Edict of Abdication, 12 February 1912; Yuan Shih-kai's dictatorial rule.
• Sun Yat-sen: party founded in Tokyo in 1905 that became the Kuomintang; three principles of Nationalism, Democracy and Socialism.
• Society for the Study of Marxism at Peking University (1918); Borodin reorganised the Kuomintang; Whampoa Military Academy under Chiang Kai-shek.
• Chiang purged the Communists and took Peking in 1928. Mao's Long March (1934-35): 20,000 of 100,000 reached Shensi.
• After 1945, George Marshall's ceasefires failed; Chiang fled to Taiwan and the People's Republic of China was set up in 1949.

Indonesia

• Dutch rule over Java and Sumatra from about 1640; plantations and oil (1900).
• Boedi Oetomo (1908); Sarekat Islam (self-government resolution 1916); Indonesian Communist Party (1919); Volksraad (1918).
• Sukarno's Indonesian Nationalist Party; raid of 1931. Japanese occupation from March 1942.
• Dutch-Indonesian Agreement; Hague round table; independence in December 1949.

The Philippines

• Spanish rule from Legazpi's expedition (1565); Cavite uprising (20 January 1872); three priests executed.
• Spanish-American War over Cuba (1898); Treaty of Paris (10 December 1898); Aguinaldo first president until his capture in 1901.
• American rule (1902): English education, civil service, elected legislature. Quezon's Nationalist Party; PKP (1930).
• Tydings-McDuffie Act (1934): ten-year transfer; Quezon President 1935-1941; Japanese conquest; Huk rebellion.
• Independence on 4 July 1946; joined SEATO in 1954.