The peoples of the world's last big empires (whether wartime winners or losers) still produce the most books on everything - unfortunately including those on WWII.
They all insist that the war began on the evening of September 2nd 1939, when the British parliament indicated strongly to the wavering British cabinet that the British and French empires should declare war on the German empire unless it retreated completely from its Polish invasion.
But the peoples of smaller nations (and perhaps some of their bolder historians) insist equally strongly that the war actually started eight years earlier.
That war began on September 19th 1931 when the Japanese empire invaded smaller Manchuria unopposed.
Japan and other empires then proceeded to gobble other small nations, unopposed militarily, until September 3rd 1939 when British and French bombers began to hit Germany.
All this matters because it forces us to 'fess up as to what WWII was actually about when it began : not really about big empires attacking small nations (1931 et al) but about big empires attacking other big empires (1939 et al).
So now we know the intentionality of WWII , but we should not correct one error merely to espouse another : that the end results of WWII for any party were anything like what was intended at the beginning by that party.
Most all histories of WWII are literally 'one damn thing after another' with no attempt to contrast what each party in the conflict proposed should happen, week by week and year by year, against what actually did happen.
And by party, I mean to cast my net as widely as possible to include any individual or organization with opinions on the course of the war.
If we see WWII as some sort of multi-party SIX YEAR PLAN and judge its results accordingly, we find that everyone's (utopian cum scientific) plans for the war never ever touched reality even fleetingly throughout its long course....
They all insist that the war began on the evening of September 2nd 1939, when the British parliament indicated strongly to the wavering British cabinet that the British and French empires should declare war on the German empire unless it retreated completely from its Polish invasion.
But the peoples of smaller nations (and perhaps some of their bolder historians) insist equally strongly that the war actually started eight years earlier.
That war began on September 19th 1931 when the Japanese empire invaded smaller Manchuria unopposed.
Japan and other empires then proceeded to gobble other small nations, unopposed militarily, until September 3rd 1939 when British and French bombers began to hit Germany.
All this matters because it forces us to 'fess up as to what WWII was actually about when it began : not really about big empires attacking small nations (1931 et al) but about big empires attacking other big empires (1939 et al).
So now we know the intentionality of WWII , but we should not correct one error merely to espouse another : that the end results of WWII for any party were anything like what was intended at the beginning by that party.
Most all histories of WWII are literally 'one damn thing after another' with no attempt to contrast what each party in the conflict proposed should happen, week by week and year by year, against what actually did happen.
And by party, I mean to cast my net as widely as possible to include any individual or organization with opinions on the course of the war.
If we see WWII as some sort of multi-party SIX YEAR PLAN and judge its results accordingly, we find that everyone's (utopian cum scientific) plans for the war never ever touched reality even fleetingly throughout its long course....
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