My Essay: A History of The Second World War

Introduction

The most destructive, costly conflict in World History, the Second World War, it seems to me, was an inevitability in human history. All progress toward a world influenced by cooperative societies had to, at some point, encounter a grand confrontation with human nature’s tendency toward evil. 

And the Second World War was in fact, that very grand confrontation.

The war is romanticized in film and in documentary by the victorious Allied Powers precisely because it contains all the elements of a Good vs Evil story that Western Civilization cherishes, including Good – democratic principals, freedom and self determination – defeating the tyranny and cruelty of evil.

It has also served as a case study in properly recognizing and confronting evil. Hopefully, the lessons of that case study will be with Western Society until the end of time.

In this writing I intend to recount – purely from my own memory, no outside research - and comment on the entire timeline of that Great Conflict, from its origins in the 19th Century to its present day ramifications. I’ve begun this writing understanding that, in a macro sense, I have a good handle of the timeline of events and their implications. Throughout this writing, I’m sure, a professional historian may be able to pinpoint micro discrepancies, but the larger telling of the story, I feel, does history justice. 

Understanding the World Prior to the 20th Century

It is difficult for my generation, Generation X, much less generations following, to comprehend a life without Interstate Highways, Mass Communication, Daily Non Stop Flights and The World Wide Web. 

I’ve long been of the opinion that the absence of this kind of cooperation and communication couldn’t help but breed nationalism in a destructive fashion. For example, when you consider the distance and communication obstacles in place during the mid 19th Century here in America, it is not a stretch to say that a person from Illinois would consider a person from Alabama “alien”. Although both live under the same national flag and the same constitution, the life experiences they share are few. In 1850, to the Illinoisan, the man from Alabama is a person with a bizarre dialect who owns cotton plantations. The man from Alabama has converse feelings in similarity regarding his compatriot in Illinois. How could two men from the same nation take up arms against one another in such a hostile fashion in 1861? It is easy to understand if you consider that neither man had likely even left their home state in an age lacking mass media and same day transportation. What you and I would consider compatriots in 2012, many Americans viewed as aliens in 1861.

This same manner of thinking was dominant in Europe as well. In the later days of the 19th Century and at the dawn of the 1900s, Europe was a continent awash in Mercantilism. Mercantilism, by practice, turns focus inwardly to the advancement of a nation’s standing in the world without regard to trade. There was very little meaningful interaction between the European Nations, save for a great deal of distrust. For the previous three to four hundred years, the spoils of the New World were a constant sense of tension among France, England, Spain and Portugal, just to name a few.

Understanding Key Points from the First World War I

Enter into the scene at the turn of the 20th Century deepening distrust between nations and what can be remembered as the most consequential of many “Balance of Power Systems”. England and France had forged, after years of distrust and conflict, an Alliance with Czarist Russia that came to be known as the “Triple Entente”. The growing cooperation between the Ottoman Empire, The Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Kaiser’s Germany – known conversely as the “Triple Alliance” had created a very pronounced bi-polar Europe.

In 1914, regicide was committed against the Austrian Crown by a Serbian National and the ugly wheels of war between the two poles of early 20 century Europe began grinding. What would follow was three years of grizzly trench warfare, punctuated with chemical weapons attacks and bloody standoffs that would entitle WWI as “The War to End All Wars”. Civilization wasn’t to be so lucky in retrospect.

As the conflict ground on, Germany found support from the crumbling Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires crumbling with their kingdoms. Germany was forced to sue for peace as the United States entered the war and the Kaiser and his government found themselves in an unwinnable situation. The Treaty of Versailles was an armistice that would end WWI in a much different fashion than the Second World War.  

The terms of the Treaty of Versailles, inked in the French city of the same name, would put nearly sole responsibility on the German nation for the war. Consequently, the victorious Allied nations put enormous financial reparation burdens on the Germans, as well as strict restrictions on the size and power of the nation’s military (it was believed by many in the world that German militarism was a principal culprit of the conflict… this belief could be the impetus for said restrictions). Russia plunged into social upheaval and civil war while the remaining European Nations retreated to lick their wounds from a long ordeal.

Half a world away, the United States military – and especially the returning GI’s, dubbed “Doughboys” – retreated to heal as well. GI’s would recount to those waiting at home of the horrors of the trenches and gas warfare they had just endured, and suddenly large swaths of the American Public, either experiencing or hearing of these horrors, embraced Thomas Jefferson’s dying council of isolation. Foreign entanglements became such a taboo stateside that entire political parties would throw their force for all public offices around “America First” principals. It would take 3000 dead almost 25 years later in the Pacific outpost of Pearl Harbor to banish this sentiment to obscurity. One cannot understate the memories of the First Great War to understand American reluctance to participate in the Second. Franklin Roosevelt’s second opponent for the Presidency, Republican Wendall Wilkie, nearly staked his entire campaign on keeping “American boys out of another European War.”

The “Roaring Twenties” wound down into the Great Depression of 1929 to 1941, and America’s economic turbulence was felt around the globe. As Germany began to experience economic hardship and the crushing burden of Versailles Reparations, they began printing money at such an alarming pace that hyperinflation, naturally, completely debased the German currency. Stories cropped up from late 20s/early 30s German citizens wheeling wheelbarrows full of German Marks to purchase loaves of bread. Bitterness, naturally, flowed from the hearts of average Germans. Many had felt, whether correctly or not, that the Versailles provisions unfairly blamed and punished the German people for the First World War. Bitterness, nationalism, and poverty created the ideal vacuum for Hagel’s “Uberman” – an Austrian-born Aryan fanatic named Adolf Hitler – to enter.

The Dawn of The Second World War

After a failed attempt at seizing power in Munich in the early 30s, Hitler’s nationalistic message – codified in his book Mein Kampf, German for “my struggle” – began to enter into the wave of German suffering and ongoing humiliation. The fiery orator would brilliantly tailor messages to each German crowd, helping to restore the national sense of pride. Ailing German hero, President Hindenburg, realizing that he could not control Hitler’s popularity, ceded somewhat cautiously the German post of Chancellor to him. Shortly after, Hindenburg’s death paved the way for the budding tyrant. By 1936, through strong arm tactics and straw men, Hitler had managed to seize control of the entire German government. At the dawn of the Second World War, German Servicemen would not take oaths to protect the German Constitution, German People or even the German way of life. In the late 1930s, so complete was Hitler’s control of the nation, its people and its government that German Servicemen took an oath to Hitler himself.

As things began to change in Nazi Germany, the world, to varying degrees, took notice. National Socialism – the long hand for the term “Nazi” – began to develop movements worldwide, including in the United States. It is easy to be outraged by this development in retrospect, but it is important to keep in mind that the actual atrocities committed by Hitler and his most fanatical followers remained a mystery until at least late in the war. There would be rumblings over the years about atrocities to Jews and other targeted groups, but the full width and breadth of the Nazi horrors wouldn’t come to light until many years later. To the average Westerner attentive to Nazism, it was little more than a comeback story for a Western World hungry for something victorious.

Throughout the late 1930s, Hitler oversaw a “German Miracle”. The cause of the success, domestic, military (in terms of buildup), and economic are open to debate, but needless to say the German people began to take notice and appreciate it. This provided adequate cover (journalists were sacked with regularity if the regime felt threatened by their work) for Hitler to begin constructing plans for his growth of “Lebensraum” or “Living Space” for the German people. 

Understanding that the European Nations – and in fact the entire world – were hesitant to fight another grueling conflict, Hitler would begin years of aggressive activity under the watchful eye of many Useful Idiots. His first move in the late 1930s was against the Rhineland, a former piece of Southern Germany surrendered under the terms of Versailles. What followed was as move on Czech territory, with the agreement of the later-Allied Powers, followed by an all-out move on Austria, a German speaking nation with close traditional ties to Germany. 

Hitler’s aggressive nature did not go unrecognized by the world. A back-bench member of British Parliament, Winston Churchill, was early on the scene pointing out the danger of appeasing tyrants like Hitler. Still, many like Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, insisted that “Heir Hitler” was a man with whom statesmen could reason. Chamberlain made several excursions to meet with Hitler during this wave of aggression. Each time, Hitler would assure Chamberlain, and, as a consequence, many in the war weary world. To Chamberlain, Hitler was nothing more than a German nationalist who simply wanted to, as Hitler implied, “right the ‘wrongs’ of Versailles” (paraphrase). Finally, after the last meeting, to much fanfare, Chamberlain returned to England with a signed agreement with Hitler. It was to be, as Chamberlain put it, “Peace, in our time.” The British Prime Minister was convinced that Hitler was as adverse to armed conflict as was the rest of the world. The price for this miscalculation would be one paid by the entire world. Historians for years would make the point that, had the victorious Allies of World War I shown any resolve in the face of Hitler’s aggression, the tyrant would have likely backed down. By Summer of 1939, all of that was a moot point. 

It is been said that thieves have difficulty trusting people, and Hitler’s malicious paranoia proved no exception. Since 1917, what was formerly known as Russia became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union or USSR). The Soviets, through tactics not entirely foreign to Hitler, had experienced a progression of “leaders”. In 1939, the General Secretary of The Communist Party of the Soviet Union – read here, unquestioned leader – was Josef Stalin, a Georgian born Communist, who used tactics to ascend to power that of which Hitler would have otherwise approved.  Hitler knew that aggressive activity would inspire in Stalin the same paranoia of which he was capable. He needed to find a means to comfort Stalin with regard to his aggressive intentions.

In one of his relatively few tactically smart moves, Hitler reached out to Stalin via the Soviet/Nazi Non Aggression Pact of 1939 (also known, maybe more commonly, as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). The substance of the pact set the stage for Stalin to look the other way regarding Hitler’s planned move into Poland. In return, Stalin and Hitler would split the spoils of Hitler’s conquest of Poland along geographical lines. All of this was, later, to the surprise of the Allies in West.

The stage was now set for the German Blitzkrieg, or “Lightening War”, to begin.

On September 1, 1939, the world was scarcely ready for what Hitler had planned. German infantry and artillery roared through Western Poland. Within days, the ill equipped Poles – many on horseback, supported by antiquated planes – despite valiant resistance, were completely overrun. Poland was now occupied by Nazi Germany. 

The world – and I would guess, especially, Neville Chamberlain – was stunned, and outraged. Britain and France had assured a nervous Poland that they would stand by the Eastern European nation in the “unlikely” event that Hitler did, in fact, invade. The world condemned Hitler’s move. England and France, though domestically fractured by internal hesitancy to embark on another war, issued an ultimatum to Germany to retreat from Poland or face war.

A few days later, Germany resisted the ultimatum. England and France declared war on Germany. The Second World War had begun.

Meanwhile, in a fashion reminiscent of the First World War, Germany had cemented a relationship – an alliance, if you will – with two other nations with dreams of empire.

The first was Italy. An Italian Journalist – a true irony – had risen to power not entirely unlike Hitler. Benito Mussolini and his Fascist Party had consolidated power in the Southern European nation and forged an Alliance with the Nazis in Germany. Mussolini was an Imperialistic busy body in his own right; having dreams of creating a “New Roman Empire”, his troops had already begun invading Ethiopia (then Abyssinia) and had sights set on neighboring Greece. Hitler forged an Alliance with Mussolini, but silently, had deep reservations about Mussolini’s competence as a military leader. Several times, throughout the alliance, Mussolini would make moves that annoyed Hitler. None-the-less, the alliance was forged.

The third nation to enter what would be later be referred to as the “Tokyo-Rome-Berlin Axis” (Axis Powers) was the Empire of Japan.

An entire essay can be written – at great length – about the mindset of the militarists that plunged the feudal nation of Japan into the world’s nastiest conflict. To fully understand the impetus of Japan’s aggression, one needs to understand the religion of Shinto and the Bushido, which is the code of the samurai warrior. Shinto is to Japan what Judaism and Christianity are to the West. Just as Judeo/Christian tradition dictates, in a de facto sense, if nothing else, life in the West, Shinto and the warrior code was, at least until the latter half of the 20th Century, the very real guidance of Imperial Japanese life.

What began in the early 1930s as a border dispute between Japan and China in the province of Manchuria spilled over into all out war between the two nations. Not long after, Japan conquered Manchuria and annexed it as the puppet state of “Manchukuo”.

Just as Hitler’s rise to power in Germany was the result of a perfect storm, a perfect storm of Japan’s own right was brewing on the island nation. Hideki Tojo had become Prime Minister of Japan and, with him, his government of Militarists had the Japanese Emperor’s ear. Hirohito, the Japanese emperor, was, in the eyes of the Japanese people, a half man/half god leader, whose dictates were unquestionable. For whatever reason, Hirohito would countenance and even lend support to the actions and counsel of Tojo and his Militarists. Therefore, it should come as little surprise that the people would encourage the endeavors of the Militarist to bring glory to Japan. After all, the god/leader of Japan, its emperor, approved. 

What followed was the construction of what Japan would later refer to as the “East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”. Once Japan joined the Axis, beleaguered and thinly stretched Britain and France, who had many colonies throughout the Pacific, could scarce defend their possessions.

For Japan, conquest was essential to their success as an empire. Japan, an island nation, had little in the way of natural resources – oil, tin, rubber… all the essentials needed to make and sustain war. As a consequence, expanding the empire south and to the west in Asia was essential to building power. To the militarists, the ends would justify the means. The Japanese people – subjects of the god/emperor – believed they were destined to be superior. From childhood to the later stages of adulthood, Japanese were taught their emperor was a god, that Westerners were weak and decadent. Ultimately, the reasoning went, they’d prevail. And the successes of the 1930s and early 1940s did little to dispel this notion. 

Back home in America, this did not go unnoticed. As with Churchill in England, statesmen throughout the United States (US) became concerned. In private, US President Franklin Roosevelt was well aware the United States, despite the reservations hanging around from WWI, would eventually be pulled into the coming global conflict. Assumptions by even realists stateside assumed it would be in the European Theater, not in the Pacific. 

Roosevelt, one of American History’s most masterful politicians, managed to slowly ease the American People into the inevitable. Early into the outbreak of hostilities in Europe, Roosevelt engineered the “Lend Lease Act”. “America,” he said, “must be the great arsenal of democracy.” Under Lend Lease, the US would supply support vehicles and supplies to a beleaguered England, fighting for its survival. None-the-less, despite Roosevelt’s assurances and despite the success of Lend Lease, Americans were still weary of the horrors of war. The US would remain on the sidelines.

Back across the Atlantic, Hitler’s Weirmacht, or “war machine”, was trampling the helpless nations of Europe. After Poland came the nations of Romania, Bulgaria, Denmark, Norway (a nation of vast resources), the Low Countries of Belgium and The Netherlands, and, eventually, France in the summer of 1940. With classic Hitler cruelty, he insisted that the French abdicate control of their nation in the same railcar in which the Treaty of Versailles was signed. It appeared to observers the world over that he was virtually unstoppable. The last obstacle to all of Europe being under Hitler’s control was the island nation of England.

Buoyed by the impassioned counsel of now-Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the English people endured relentless aerial attacks from the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe. Hitler’s “Operation Sea Lion” was to be an invasion of the English island, and the Lufwaffe was to soften the English population and military for the assault. 

The Royal Air Force (RAF) fought vigorously to repel the attacks, but fortune seemed to be on the side of the Germans. Then, the first of what would be several ego blunders on Hitler’s part occurred, to the good fortune of the Allies. 

British bombers found their way, maybe mistakenly, to the civilian populations of Berlin. Hitler, having firebombed major English cities, still focused on destroying the RAF. When Berlin was bombed by the RAF, Hitler went off the rails in revenge, targeting London. 

As terrifying as all of this was to the average Englishman, the reality is that this diversion took Hitler’s attention away from the English Countryside, where his bombing efforts were distracted from the real target. The RAF was in the English Countryside, rebuilding its power. By the time the smoke had cleared, Hitler’s opportunity to effectively execute Operation Sea Lion had passed.

Back in the Pacific, the Japanese continued unabated in their conquest of East Asia – French Indochina, Malaysia among others. Roosevelt, his advisors, and the Admiralty began to become deeply concerned. Several conferences between Japanese and American statesmen took place to address the tension, but they seldom produced any tangible results. The elephant in the room was the inevitable war between Japan, Germany and the US. However, almost all Americans were still opposed to any type of return to the life brought about by the First War.

Japan’s militarist government also began to contemplate the inevitable. Tojo et al knew the American Navy was the single greatest obstacle to growing the “East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” That threat had to be dealt with. But, how to do it?

The Japanese Leadership would look to Admiral Isuroku Yamamoto for the answer.

Educated in the US, Yamamoto as a consequence understood American Culture in general and Capitalism in particular, quite well. As Yamamoto outlined his plans for the aerial attack on the US Fleet in Pearl Harbor, he cautioned his superiors. “After the attack, I can hold them off for probably six months,” he said. “After that, I can guarantee nothing.” The counsel to the Militarists fell on deaf ears. Yamamoto was to plan the attack. The Admiral would comment while counseling on the attack, that the US industrial might was “awesome”, and that Japan, in attacking, would “awaken a sleeping giant”, whose “resolve would be terrible.”

Sunday, December 7th, 1941 was a beautiful Hawaiian day. It was just before 8 am, the sun coming up over the islands. Off Duty American Sailors onboard the ships and on the shore were slowly awakening and starting their leisurely day when the attack started. 

Days before, six Japanese Aircraft Carriers were departing from the Japanese Kurile Islands, under strict radio silence, careening toward the American Base. Yamamoto and the Militarists knew the idea of invading the US and marching to Washington DC and demanding surrender was virtually impossible; that was not their intent. Yamamoto’s attack was designed to severely cripple the American Pacific Fleet. While it was in disarray, the Japanese forces would continue to mop up East Asia, consolidating its strength. The Americans, they figured, would be in no position to resist and would sue for peace. After all, weren’t decadent Westerners like the Americans weak?

As reveille, or the morning salute to the American Flag, was taking place, the first bombing and torpedoing runs took place on the moored ships at Pearl Harbor. Primitive radar had picked up the incoming pack of Japanese warplanes, but the officer on duty taking the report assumed it was merely a pack of American Bombers flying in from the mainland. To make matters worse, brass at the top of the Pacific Chain of Command feared sabotage from Japanese agents living incognito on the islands. As a result, the fighter plans which could have been scrambled in defense were congested into an open field under a sentry’s watchful eye. That sentry, however, could do little to protect the packed planes as the attack unfolded. A wave of Japanese aircraft quickly annihilated the parked planes on the packed airfield. While a couple of American fighters were able to take off from a nearby field, for all intents and purposes, the Japanese pilots had almost free reign to attack the stationary, nearly helpless ships at anchor. Three hours later, the bulk of America’s Pacific Battleship fleet was a burning wreck in port. Three thousand American Servicemen were dead.

With a few exceptions, the Japanese officers aboard the attacking carriers were elated. Those in exception were the ones that understand the changing nature of Naval Warfare. Up through the First World War, the battleship was the king of the seas. Many on both sides of the conflict still had this affinity toward the battleship – the real progressive warriors, however, understood that the aircraft carrier, not the battleship, was the new titan of the warfare seas. Many in the Japanese command were of the progressive stripe and knew that, while a moral victory, Pearl Harbor was ultimately not a success, as all American carriers were at sea on exercises. 

At any rate, there was no turning back. All inclinations toward passivism and isolation in America were swept aside with the explosion of Japanese bombs and torpedoes at Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto’s concern would become reality. The giant had been awaken and its resolve would be terrible.

Major Points of World War II

It’s a rarity in American History – at least since the dawn of the 20th Century – when the Congress of the United States of America issues a formal declaration of war. When Congress did that on December 8th, 1941, Roosevelt’s words are etched forever in American lore. “Yesterday, December 7th, 1941,” the President said, “the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the Empire of Japan.” He went on to say that it would be “a date that will live in infamy.”

Within days of the American Declaration of War, Germany declared war on the United States. In classic Hitler delusion, he reasoned at the urging of his closest advisors that “great nations declare war and do not have war declared upon them.” Shortly before Hitler declared war on the United States, he exhibited one of his most maniacal racial egotisms of his rule: he declared the Japanese “honorary Aryans for a day” for their audacious raid on Pearl Harbor.

The last piece of the global war was now in place.

As a slight departure from the timeline, we’ll go back to the German Eastern Front. I’ve heard it said that Hitler’s demise began with his Declaration of War on the United States. 

I have a completely different take on the beginning of the Third Reich’s End. Declarations of War between Germany and the United States were inevitable. What was not inevitable, in my estimation, - or at the very least, not imminent - was armed conflict between the USSR and Nazi Germany. 

Think back to Molotov-Ribbentrop; the Soviets and Germans had an alliance in place – maybe not an alliance, but an agreement – that Hitler could have let alone and continued to dominate Europe. The purpose of the 1939 agreement was to prevent, in Hitler’s mind, a two front conflict. He could continue to do business with the Soviets for raw materials needed to feed his war machine (namely, oil). His forces could concentrate on the soon-to-be advancing American forces in concert with the English. Simply standing his ground and leaving his Eastern Front relatively peaceful, he could eventually sue for peace with his enemies in the war-skiddish West.

This, however, was the next of what would continue to be many tactical blunders on Hitler’s part. Hitler could continue to engage in commerce with the Soviets for the oil needed… or he could own it for himself. If one has even a cursory understanding of the dictator’s maniacal tendencies, it should come as no shock that his hubris would win the day. “Operation Barbarosa”, the invasion of the Western Front of the Soviet Union, would commence in the Spring of 1941. Hitler’s gamble was that the Blitzkrieg would storm the Soviet Western Front and he would have control of many key oil fields and cities by the time inclement weather would hit late in the year.

Not surprisingly, in retrospect, the plan did not unfold as smoothly as the Fuehrer had hoped. As the warmer months gave way to cooler ones, the German Army found its supply lines stretched thin, and ground to a halt. The initial quick advance of the German Army suddenly found itself bogged down in the Russian countryside, and the harsh winter conditions – home court advantage for the Soviets – made the situation untenable. 

Another factor Hitler failed to account for was Josef Stalin. He had just double-crossed a tyrant arguably more evil and cruel than himself. And Stalin unleashed his forces on the advancing German Army with a vengeance rarely seen in warfare between “civilized” nations. 

Operation Barbarosa, in my estimation, for the reasons outlined above, started the rapid downhill descent of Hitler’s Reich. Now fighting angry Soviets in harsh conditions on the Eastern Front, and facing determined, resourceful adversaries on his Western Flank, he found his relatively small army facing forces that could, in time, wear him down.

Back in the Pacific Ocean, the Americans were still reeling from the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor. Within days of the fiasco, the Japanese forces, true to plan, began a quick mop up of many strategic points controlled by the Allies. General Douglas MacArthur, against his wishes but in compliance with a Presidential order, slipped away from his outpost at the Philippines, just as the islands were being overrun by the advancing Japanese. Wake Island and Guam, outposts with strategic importance to warring Pacific forces on both sides, fell into the hands of the Empire. The one, lone success of the first six months of the war against Japan came at the hands of Colonel James “Jimmy” Doolittle. A daring raid within weeks of the Pearl Harbor attack was launched on Tokyo by Doolittle’s “Raiders”. The bombs the Colonel’s plans dropped did marginal damage, but to a people desperate for good news in the war following Pearl Harbor, Doolittle’s raid was a shot in the arm for the angry Americans.

And angry Americans they were. It is safe to say that any meaningful residual of isolationist thought was swept aside. American men took to recruiting stations in droves. Women, in the absence of men, volunteered to work in factories, giving birth to the term “Rosie the Riveter”. All hands willfully accepted lifestyle changes to support “our boys overseas”. Yamamoto’s prediction continued to unfold.

Americans had gained little in the first half of 1942. Japan’s Empire had grown to heights unimaginable years earlier. However, Yamamoto’s second prediction would come true in the Summer of 1942 – nearly six months to the day of Pearl Harbor, the tide would begin to turn.

American code breakers had been working feverishly on breaking Japanese codes. There was discussion of a principal target in the Pacific, code named “AF” by the Japanese transmissions. Code breakers and Navy Brass suspected AF was Midway Island, a tiny, seemingly insignificant island in the Pacific, mid-way (hence the name) between the US Mainland and the Japanese home island. For Midway to be a prize for the Japanese made sense to American Commanders. It would serve as a launching point to attack Hawaii and eventually the American Mainland. But, American Commanders had to be sure that AF, was, in fact, Midway.

American Radiomen set a trap. They broadcast fake transmissions that Midway Island was having “fresh water shortages”. The Japanese radio operators, in their code, rebroadcast the fake news that, sure enough, AF was having fresh water shortages.  AF was Midway, and the American’s knew they were coming.

Commanding the Japanese attack was veteran Japanese Admiral Nogumo. Nogumo was one of many in the High Command of the Imperial Japanese Navy that understood the incomplete nature of the victory at Pearl Harbor. Japan was now fighting a modern war dominated by the aircraft, and, as a consequence, the aircraft carrier. And none of the ships in the smoldering wreck of December 7th were American carriers.

Nogumo’s hope was that he could attack Midway and draw the American carriers out into a fight and send them to the bottom of the ocean. He would then be able to mop up Midway Island, and the Japanese forces could plan the next phase in the war against the US.

However, Fleet Commander Chester Nimitz and company were aware of the Japanese plans and would set a trap. The American Carriers would wait off the Northeast coast of Midway and wait for the carriers to launch their planes on the island. As a result, they’d be sitting ducks for an American aerial assault. Helping the American cause was a successful string of American scout planes that pinpointed for their attacking forces the Japanese carriers.

In the scouting war that day, the Japanese were not so lucky. None of the Japanese scouts could locate the American carriers, and this had Nogumo et al very nervous. None-the-less, the first wave of bombing planes was launched against a scantly defended Midway Island. The Japanese aircraft returned to their carriers and began to reload their planes with bombs for a finishing run at the land targets on Midway. 

Then, in the worst timing possible, word got back to Nogumo about the location of the American Carriers, and they were close. A final Japanese scout plane had been experiencing radio problems… and in a Divine twist of fate in the Americans’ favor, that was the very scout plane that would have been able to warn Nogumo about the advancing American carriers. 

When the word returned to the Japanese Flagship, Nogumo now had a difficult decision to make. Time was of the essence, and virtually every one of the Japanese attack planes were sitting on deck loaded with bombs for attacking a stationary target. Did Nogumo reload the planes with torpedoes to attack the advancing carriers? Did he have time with the Americans most likely coming his way in an attack of their own? Or did he attack the American carriers with bombs? Or follow through on his attack with Midway? Equally troubling was the fact that there were more carriers than intelligence had indicated the Americans had available. In earlier engagements, the USS Yorktown was badly damaged and the Japanese High Command considered her out of action. In a miracle of shipyard work, Halsey et al had managed to get Yorktown ready for return to action in 72 hours, not months or weeks. 

Nogumo gambled that he had enough time to strike his planes below deck and refit them with torpedoes to attack the American carriers. Had Nogumo had earlier warning of the location of the American carriers, it wouldn’t be as much of a gamble. But now, time was the Japanese Admiral’s enemy.

Through another divine twist of fate, some of the best American dive bombers caught the Japanese “with their pants down”. American dive bombers caught the Japanese carriers with bombs and torpedoes strewn throughout their decks, in mid change over. What followed was pure carnage – they scored direct hits on the Japanese, the munitions laying on the decks would ignite like gas cans, sending several of the Japanese carriers to the bottom. 

Nogumo managed to get his planes airborne in several instances, counter attacking the Americans with nearly equal ferocity, but from that point on he was playing a game of catch up. When the day ended, the remaining Japanese carriers limped away from Midway. Several of the carriers that participated in the Pearl Harbor attack were either now at the bottom of the Pacific or burning, unusable wrecks. 

Just as Operation Barbarosa spelled the beginning of the end for Hitler, Midway was truly the turning point in the Pacific, tipping the scales against the Emperor. From Summer 1942 on, there would be several minor setback for the American forces, but the overall war effort would, in a macro sense, continue to fall in their favor. The Japanese Empire would continue to be rolled back, one island at a time from the Battle of Midway forward. Their limited resources, limited manpower and limited hardware would never fully recover from the blow taken at Midway.

As the months wore on into years in the European Theater, Hitler and his Nazi regime began to feel the intense pressure of trying to maintain the impossible. On the Eastern Front, German forces were stretched near the breaking point. Cruel Russian winters turned Stalingrad and other Western Russian cities into meat grinders. With the regime trying to maintain limited supplies and men into two grueling fronts and North Africa in the South, it became harder for the Nazis to maintain popular support for the effort. 

Hitler’s aim throughout the first few years of the conflict was to avoid the average German Citizen feeling the pain of a two front, global war effort. His intent was to keep the “good times rolling” for the average German citizen, so any type of rationing efforts were limited, if existent at all. The net impact of this put a strain on goods and materiel for the strenuous war effort. The reality began to set in to the German High Command that the good times couldn’t keep rolling forever. Germans started experience shortages and life in the Fatherland began to become uncomfortable.

Early in the war, on the high seas, German Navy’s prowess in submarine warfare was legendary. By the Mid 1940s, with the US entry into the conflict, technological advances and improved convoy techniques made supplying the war effort from the Western Hemisphere much easier and more successful. In the late thirties/early forties, duty in a German Unterseeboot, or U-boat, was prestigious and remarkably productive. Now, in the late days of 1943 and early 1944, U-boats became coffins, hunted down by advanced Allied Destroyers. Goods were making it to Europe to support the Allied War Effort, but German and Japanese supply lines continue to be strained.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Allied Commander of the European Theater, knew the Allies would have to go on the offense in large number to begin to push back Nazi Occupation. The Allies began preparing for what would be dubbed “Operation Overlord”, the amphibious invasion of Occupied Europe on a large scale. 

The price, it was estimated, would be enormous. German forces had spent years fortifying the beaches in anticipation of the coming assault. Reports leading up to the invasion have a nervous Eisenhower pacing restlessly, anticipating more than 50% casualties. One can only imagine the pressure felt by Eisenhower; on the one hand you know that the war effort will be at an indefinite logjam if the German lines in France aren’t broken and rolled back. But the thought of a full frontal assault on years of fixed German emplacements – on the high ground of the battlefield, no less – will be like sending tens of thousands of Allied Servicemen, not just from the US, but Canada, Australia, Britain and other Allied nations, into a buzz saw. Casualties were even experienced prior to the invasion, during a training exercise in England, no less.

What would later be known as D-Day arrived. On June 6, 1944, in the early hours of the morning, the American 101st Airborne dropped behind enemy lines in the heart of occupied France and began a flanking move toward the beach. Shortly after, Naval Forces from the Allied Nations began shelling German placements on the beach at Normandy, on the Northern Coast of France. Operation Overlord was underway.

The stories from beaches have been recreated in several documentary films and even high profile Hollywood movies. Just as expected, the German Machine Guns and Artillery unloaded on the forces, especially at Utah Beach, the main American landing beach. Due to inclement weather, many landing crafts misread their proximity to the beach, dropping Marines off in deep water in full gear – consequently, many drowned before getting ashore. Once ashore, surviving Marines experienced hell on earth, with artillery and gun fire challenging their every move. In the latter part of the 1990s, the surviving Marines from the beaches would walk out of the movie Saving Private Ryan, a Hollywood portrayal of the landing, sobbing. Many had stated the movie brought back the hell experienced at Utah.

Eventually, the 101st and the Marines were able to silence the guns on the beach and begin the move in, rolling back, city by city, nation by nation, the German Occupation of Europe. But there was almost another full year of fighting in Europe before they would see final success, at a high cost.

The Final Days of World War II

Back in the Pacific, as within Europe, island by island, nation by nation, The American Forces, in concert with Australian and available British Forces, began to push back the East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The closer the Allies would advance to the Japanese Islands, the more fierce the fighting and higher the casualties. The Allies began to become slowly and painfully aware that the Bushido-inspired Japanese people were not going to give up easily. General Douglas MacArthur, true to his word, returned to the Philippines to oversee the liberation of the island nation from Japanese conquest. Many of those taken prisoner in late 1941, when MacArthur left, were found in Japanese Concentration Camps, emaciated but glad to see their old Commander had returned to free them, including surrendering General Wainwright. From their capture in December 1941 to their liberation years later, the serving American and Philippine captors experienced a gruesome hell. Their hell had finally ended.

However, more costly battles were still in store for the Allies – the closer the proximity to the Japanese Home Islands, the more ferocious the fight. The Islands of Tarawa and Okinawa stood as painful proof to the Allies that, if they were to do what seemed inevitable and invade the Home Islands of Japan, the estimates of casualties would be in the millions on both sides of the conflict. 

It is debatable, based on your worldview and nationality, whether the introduction of nuclear weapons into warfare was a fortunate turn of events in 1944-45. For the Americans, who stood to bear the brunt of a grisly battle for the conquest of Japan, it could be reasoned that it was a blessing, to use a phrase in an odd fashion. At a previous summit among the Allies in Potsdam had forged the consensus that only unconditional surrender, not armistice as in the First War, would be acceptable from the Axis. Only total capitulation by the enemy would bring about the end of the war.

Hitler had many tastes of poetic justice throughout the war, arguably the greatest came about due to his intolerance of minorities and Jews; driving many of Germany’s greatest scientific minds into the hands of the Americans. Many of Hitler’s military technology ambitions could have been empowered by the sharp Jewish minds he alienated. One such mind was the soon-to-be-legendary physicist Albert Einstein. Back stateside, Einstein and American Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer began Top Secret talks with the American government about the possibility of creating energy with the splitting of the atom. There were many scientists in Hitler’s sphere of influence who had designs on the same technology, but due to Hitler’s alienation, none of the minds capable of harnessing the technology and its unthinkable power were available to him. 

Oppenheimer teamed with American General Leslie Groves to begin what would be known as “The Manhattan Project” – the experimental use of nuclear energy to create a destructive, unthinkable weapon. The bomb, in its final form, would release enough energy to equate to thousands of tons of TNT. It was believed a nuclear bomb of this nature, fueled by natural uranium or synthetic plutonium, could devastate nearly an entire city. For more than a year, the project employed thousands of engineers and scientists in the New Mexico desert. 

Back in Europe, the Allied forces from the North in Low Countries to the South in Italy (now free, to the Italian citizen’s large relief, of Mussolini), the Allied forces continued beating on the exhausted German war machine. The Soviets, having spent years wearing down the German army on its Western Front, began to push their adversaries back West toward the Fatherland. Hitler’s lines were shrinking to the point that he was beginning to feel boxed in on all sides.

As the Allies in the Pacific drew closer and closer to the Japanese home islands, the same sense of desperation prompted the warrior culture to revert to suicide tactics. American Warships began experiencing suicide attacks from Japanese warplanes. The Kamikaze, or “Divine Wind”, was the ultimate expression of devotion to the Emperor by Japanese Aviator. Running low on ammunition and other vital supplies used to sustain war, Japanese aviators would guide their wounded planes like missiles at American vessels, with the hopes of inflicting lethal damage in the suicide mission. American Sailors struggled with this phenomenon. Good tactics and persistent fighting could send an attacking plane crashing into the sea, but if the pilot was suicidal all the sound fighting and tactics in the world couldn’t prevent the burning craft from killing its attacker. Such tactics continue to weigh on war planners’ decision making. Suicidal enemies that would stop at nothing – including taking their own lives – to defend that which the Emperor deemed needing defended made victory seem all the more costly. More and more, the invasion of the Japanese Homeland seemed like suicide in its own right.

Meanwhile, the box around Hitler’s Germany began to close faster and faster. As the Allies made their way closer and closer to the German capital, the first of many horrific discoveries of Nazi atrocities surfaced.  Dubbed his “Final Solution” to the “Jewish Problem”, Hitler, in his effort to create a “Master Race”, sought to exterminate Europe of all Jewry and other “undesirables”. Both American and Soviet forces advancing into occupied Europe and even the German Countryside itself discovered abandoned Jewish Death Camps – the inmates were men, women and children of all ages, all occupations, dead and alive, emaciated and filthy. Their only crime was their identity as Jews. Even the most battle hardened of the Allied Soldiers could scarcely stomach the site. The outside world had long heard of Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, but never had any imagined it would be to such the extent that was discovered in the camps.

Finally, by May of 1945, despite several hearty attempts at countering the advance of the Allies, Soviet troops were on the verge taking the capital in Berlin. Hitler had finally come to the realization that his Thousand Year Reich would never see the light of day. From his bunker in Berlin, with the revenge hungry Soviets virtually knocking on the door, Hitler and his mistress, Eva Braun, killed themselves. What several concerned German officers had attempted in vein to do to Hitler, he did to himself. Shortly after, the surviving German High Command read the writing on the wall and surrendered to the American and British Forces. Victory in Europe was complete.

However, there was unfinished business in the Pacific.

History would go on to show good fortune to the Allies vis a vis the Atomic Bomb Project. In the New Mexico desert, the Manhattan Project continued full steam. Finally, the world’s first nuclear explosion, the test code named “Trinity”, took place. It was a stunning success. The blast and the subsequent mushroom cloud could be seen for miles. The United States had won the race to attain nuclear weaponry.

Franklin Roosevelt, who had seen the beginning of the Manhattan Project, would not live to see the fruit of its success. Shortly after winning an unheard of fourth term in 1944, the President died. World War I veteran and Missouri Congressman, Harry S. Truman had entered 1945 the Vice President of the United States, and would succeed the late Roosevelt as Commander in Chief.

When news of the success in the New Mexico desert reached Truman, he soon realized the historic position the tests success had put him in. All of the American High Command knew the options on the table. They could face millions dead in brutal fashion on both sides with an invasion of the Japanese Homeland, or they could use the new weapon to – hopefully - accelerate the Japanese desire for an end to hostilities. Truman et al decided to move forward with the Atomic Bombing of Japan.

The final Allied conference was to take place between Churchill, Truman and Stalin at Potsdam. Seated next to Stalin at the conference, Truman whispered the news to Stalin that the bomb had been completed and would soon be deployed to force Japan to its knees. Due to Stalin’s lack of surprise at this revelation, many historians believe Stalin had spies on the inside of the Manhattan Project and knew all along.

In July of 1945, the cruiser USS Indianapolis set sail for the Island of Tinian to deliver the bomb’s components to those who would assemble and use it. The cruiser arrived with little incident and began its return to base. In another of histories twists of fate, something that Hollywood would most likely produce, the Indianapolis, having just relieved itself of some of history’s most valuable cargo, was suddenly torpedoed in shark infested waters. The gruesome ordeal saw many lives lost. 

Back on Tinian plans were made to use the first bomb – a uranium device code named “Little Boy” – on one of several major Japanese Industrial cities. After much deliberation and consideration about demographics, weather, and other factors, the Port City of Hiroshima was elected to be the target.

For the mission, experienced aviator Colonel Ray Tibbets and his crew were selected. Tibbets piloted a B-29 Superfortress, the most advanced bomber in the American airwing, which he had affectionately named “Enola Gay”, after his mother. The crew would assemble to device carefully while in flight, and the rest would be left to the bombardier aboard the aircraft.

At this point in the war, Japanese air defenses were virtually non existent. Japan’s ability to engage incoming bomber aircraft operating at high altitudes was weakened to the point of complete inability. As a consequence, Japanese spotting American bombers over head was of very little concern in everyday life. Prior to the bombing, Americans had dropped thousands of leaflets pleading for Hiroshima citizens to evacuate the city. Even an ultimatum was given to the Tojo government to “surrender or face total annihilation.” The government, not surprisingly, ignored the threat.

Early in the morning on August 9th, 1945, the Enola Gay took off for the target Hiroshima. The skies were clear, the conditions near perfect for the operation. Once the bomb was constructed in flight, the controls of the plan were given to Enola Gay’s bombardier. A small bridge in the heart of Hiroshima was to be the target.

As soon as the bomb left the bomb bay doors, Tibbets threw his aircraft into a viciously hard turn, away from the city. The bright flash that flew up from the ground a moment later was proof that the mission had succeeded. In an instant, thousands of Japanese, military and civilian alike, were vaporized. Those nearby the bomb’s blast area suffered burns and horrific radiation poisoning. Water supplies were hopelessly contaminated and clothing melted to skin. Even in the years to come, exposed parents would give birth to children with birth defects. The consequences didn’t end on August 9th.

In the aftermath of the operation, American High Command was confident the Japanese would lose the will to continue the war. Shockingly, further requests for surrender would go unheeded. A second operation targeting the city of Nagasaki was planned using a Plutonium bomb code named “Fat Man”. The B-29 named Bocks Car took off headed in cloud cover for its target. This time, the blast was not nearly as effective, as inclement weather forced the bomb to a less than desirable target. No matter, now the Japanese government was now paying close attention.

Fat Man had no immediately available sequel, but the Japanese did not know this. Now Tojo’s cabinet was divided sharply, with each bending the Emperor’s ear about Japan’s future. Tojo and several in his cabinet urged that the war effort continue, despite the cost. Hirohito, on the other hand, began to listen more closely to those who urged capitulation to save the Japanese people.

The first olive branch reached the American Commanders, requesting that, provided the Japanese surrender, the Emperor be allowed to retain total control over the Island. The Allies rejected this, only total surrender would be acceptable.

The debate raged on in the cabinet. The militarists wanted to continue to the end. Finally, Hirohito ended the debate. Japan was defeated, he said, and it was time to face the inevitable in order to prevent total annihilation.

This was the same message that Hirohito took to the Japanese people. Japan was defeated, he said in a radio address. Surrender was to be given to the Allies, whom agreed that Hirohito could remain Emperor, purely a symbolic figure with no governance over the people. 

It was the first time the Japanese people heard the broadcast of the Emperor’s voice. And it was to announce their nation’s first military defeat in history. Several militarists in the Tojo cabinet took the turn of events so harshly that they committed suicide along the lines of Bushido – committing the gruesome act of Seppuku, or self disemboweling.

Aboard the USS Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay, the Japanese Foreign Minister, by General MacArthur’s own devising, was forced to sign the instrument of surrender in the presence of General Wainwright, who capitulated to the Japanese in The Philippines years earlier. In a final show of force, thousands of Allied aircraft flew over head in demonstration. MacArthur urged the world to accept peace and forge a new order. 

The Second World War was finally at an end.

The Aftermath

The world we live in today is widely the result of the Great Conflict of the 1940s.  Balance of Power Systems and Empires would slowly give way to the growth of trade, the information age, and self determination.

But the long journey to the modern world would start in East Asia and Europe, in the smoldering ruins of Germany and the contrition of the Japanese people.

In Asia, victorious General Douglas MacArthur would be appointed Supreme Commander of Allied Powers, or “SCAP”, as the title is more widely known. In this role, MacArthur was critical in reworking the governing structure of the defeated nation of Japan. Women were to be given the franchise, the Zaibatsu, or the fascist government controls on the economy would be dissolved. A new constitution would establish a parliamentary system of governance, putting control of the nation’s course in the hands of the people, rather than the Emperor, whose role would remain symbolic. Most consequential to the new constitution would be Japan’s renouncing of war, forever. The new government would be entitled in the years to come to little more than a self defense force. Even many in the Japanese nation, rising to power in the new system, would understand the nation’s warrior tendencies and the need to provide future militarists with no temptation toward conflict. 

The opportunistic Soviets, not surprisingly, wanted in on the occupation, pressing SCAP for control of the northern-most territory, the island of Hokkaido. MacArthur, to his credit, sensed the endgame of the USSR and was having none of it. Soviet expansion would not encroach onto the Japanese Islands.

Europe, not just Germany, lied largely in ruins to the West. Years of war and Allied bombing of German occupation ravaged the continent’s infrastructure. However, the victorious Allies would not make the same mistakes of the earlier conflict.

George C. Marshall, future Secretary of State, would be the brains and namesake behind a massive aid package to Europe. Millions of American wealth, the product of years of frugality during the war, would be pumped into the rebuilding of the continent. The Marshall Plan would play a large role in preventing a bitter power vacuum on par with that of the early 1930s.

The Allies also split the conquered German nation into four separate zones of occupation, dividing among the American, French, British and Soviets. In the years to follow, the American, French, and British occupiers would unite the western and southeastern portions under their control into one separate nation, the Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany (FRG). The Soviets, seeking the opportunity for Marxist revolution in the ruins of war, held onto the control of its Northeast Zone of Germany. East Germany, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) would remain under the thumb of the Soviet Union, for the next 40+ years. The prize capital, Berlin, deep in the heart of the GDR, would be divided and reunited in similar fashion to the German Nation. The once mighty nation of Germany would spend the next four decades as a potential flashpoint for the coming Cold War.

But the Soviets did not stop with East Germany.

All across Eastern Europe, devastated nations such as Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and Hungary, recently freed from Nazi rule would be engulfed in Soviet expansionism. Churchill, in his most memorable Post War Speech, told an audience assembled stateside the “an Iron Curtain” was “descending across Eastern Europe.” Stalin, knowing the vacuum and weakness his forces were stepping into, took full advantage of the situation. Communist Puppet Governments were installed throughout the beleaguered nations of Eastern Europe. Was it an act of aggression or the act of a war weary head of state, looking to create a buffer zone from those he perceived as enemies? Stalin’s nature, much akin to Hitler’s, should answer that question, but its one that academia to this day debates.

The Cold War was underway.

In 1944, the world began to understand the direction the war was heading, and those who assumed eventual victory began paving the way for the Post War Financial World. In Bretton Woods, New Hampshire that year, economist from throughout the world assembled to establish a new world order with regard to money and finance. The famous Bretton Woods Conference established the United States Dollar as the basis for world currency. Knowing the financial devastation being done to the nations of the world, the groundwork for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was laid. Assistance would be given to devastated and developed nations to assist in world wide obligations due to the work of the IMF in the years to come.

Its not hard to draw the conclusion that the principal benefactor of this new world after the war would be the United States. Protected by friendly nations to the north and the south, and oceans to the east and the west, the US had a cocoon of protection from the world’s conflict that made it difficult for those living stateside to understand the horrors. This cocoon not surprisingly also enabled US manufacturing and agriculture to continue unabated during the war years, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In the wake of the conflict, the world’s need was great, but its global means limited. Enter the industrial might of the US, the funding of the Marshall Plan, and the unleashed financial resources of the American People. During the war years, rationing, hoarding and saving was the order of the day. Now American Men were coming home, the controls would be loosened, and a starving world craved the incessant production of the United States. Women would return home to tend to the growing families, as men would churn out the fruits of innovation in factories across the nation. The recovering world would gobble up those fruits. American was about to enter a golden age.

Western Europe would begin a Golden Age of its own. West Germany, Britain, France and the Low Countries would take the first of many steps toward a commonality that would be the precursor to the European Union. The “European Coal and Steel Community” or ECSC, established a partnership of trade between the former adversaries that would begin to dismantle the Mercantilist tendencies of the Old World. Trade would blossom in Western Europe.

Sadly, however, the Sovietized nations of the Eastern portion of the continent would not be so lucky. Police states were established in Prague, Warsaw, Budapest and Berlin, to name a few. Puppet governments under the thumb of Stalin’s KGB would continue to be a thorn in the side of the free world. Within the borders of the Eastern Bloc, in typical Communist fashion, the new bourgeois, the members of the Communist Party, would live like royalty at the expense of those the governed. Free Speech would be squashed, descent criminalized, walls built to trap those under its rule in their nations.

Picking up on Churchill’s lead, the victors of the West established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and took up Ambassador George Kennan’s theory of Containment. Containment was NATO’s means of stopping further Soviet movement west be flanking the Empire with a ring of bases in member nations. The Soviets would continue movement westward at their own peril. The terms of NATO would establish that an act of aggression toward one member would constitute an attack on all. 

Soviet response to this move would be to establish the Warsaw Pact, an alliance of force if not of will, that sought to counterbalance NATO’s charter by the imprisoned nations of Eastern Europe. 

At first glance, it would appear that the old balance of power systems of the Old World had simply taken on new form. However, with the introduction of Nuclear Weaponry, and to a lesser extent, the beginnings of growing global commerce, made the stakes much higher than in the past. Despite numerous scares in the years to come, The Cold War would remain cold for the next forty plus years.

Lessons For Our World Today

Its been said that history’s primary study purpose is to prevent recurrence. For the last 60 years, the lessons have been the subject of great debate. My summary is as follows:

• Tyrants, unchecked by a diligent media and attentive population, with no internal controls over power, will cause havoc not only for their own people but for the world.
• Tyrants test the free world, looking for opportunity that stems from fear, weakness and lack of resolve.
• Few things prevent war better than societies with constitutional (ie limited) government, free speech, and a free and unfettered press. This results in a focused population with zero tolerance toward abuses of power by their leaders.
• Nations that engage in Free Trade build mutual trust and dependence that lead to peace and prosperity for all.

It is my sincere hope that the generations that follow mine never forget these lessons. By preserving the history and consequence of the Second World War, I’m confident, we can prevent a sequel.**

** the great Norman Podheritz wrote a fantastic essay in the mid 2000s entitled “World War IV” which cataloged the Cold War as the third world war, and the current battle of free nations against Terrorism as the fourth. While I wholly agree with Podheritz’s thesis, my suggestion that we can “prevent a sequel” is only to suggest that we can prevent another global, hot war with major, conventional forces to follow up WWII.