7.7G: Conducting WWII

World War II Was a Total War

World War II, like its predecessor WWI, was a total war. Nations fighting in the war used all available power and resources to mobilize their societies for war.

Features of WWII total war included:

recruiting large numbers of soldiers
increasing military production
propaganda campaigns to convince populations to support the war and limit anti-war messages
funding the war
diverting non-military resources to support the war effort
mass targeting of civilian populations

Strategies for fighting and winning World War II

To win this second global war, governments did the following:

substantially increase military spending
increase the size of the government
coordinate pro-war propaganda campaigns
innovate and build new military technologies

Increased military spending

Following WWI, Britain substantially decreased its military spending. However, after Hitler began to rearm Germany, Britain increased its defense spending again.

Between 1937 and 1943, British military expenditure grew from 7.4 to 55.3 percent of national spending.
Starting in 1939, the British Parliament began passing legislation to increase the size of the British military. The National Service (Armed Forces) Act of 1939 imposed military conscription on all males between 18 and 41. Parliament passed a second National Service Act in December 1941 that expanded military service to men up to 51.
Unmarried women and childless widows between the ages of 20 and 30 were also eligible for non-combat roles.
By 1939, the British army numbered 1.5 million men.

As soon as Hitler came to power, he increased German defense spending and rebuilt the German military in violation of the Versailles Treaty.

In 1935, Hitler restarted military conscription by increasing the size of the German army to 500,000 soldiers.
Hitler also expanded the army, navy, and air force.
Hitler also rebuilt Germany’s weapons and munitions production factories.
Between 1935 and 1939, Germany spent 2.4 billion dollars on combat munitions, while during that same period, the United Kingdom and the United States spent only a combined 800 million.
By 1944 Germany had increased its munitions expenditures to 17 billion.

When WWI ended, the United States decreased the size of its military budget. Between 1935-1939, the United States spent just 300 million on combat munitions production.

Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into WWII, military spending rapidly increased. The United States increased its spending on weapons to 42 billion by 1944.
In 1939, the United States only had 334,473 soldiers. By 1945 that number rose to over 12 million.
By 1945, defense spending was nearly 40% of Gross Domestic Product (the total value of a country’s goods and services produced in a year).

During the 1930s, the Soviet Union maintained high levels of military spending. Between 1935 and 1939, Soviet expenditures on combat munitions were 1.6 billion dollars. This amount was more than double the munitions expenditures of the United Kingdom and France combined.

By 1940 when Russia entered WWII after being attacked by Hitler, Russia spent nearly 20% of its national income on defense.
By the end of the war in 1940, the Soviet Union spent 16 billion on munitions and defense, the 3rd highest after the United States and Germany.
The Soviet Army numbered 1.3 million men, 10,000 tanks, and 5,000 front planes by 1935.

Increased size and role of government

Total war required governments to increase in size and expand their roles within their nations. This expansion continued a trend that began in WWI and continued as governments battled the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Great Britain

Winston Churchill was Britain’s wartime Prime Minister. However, the wartime government he set up was a coalition of his conservative party and his political opponents in the Labour Party. This coalition between Britain’s parties led to the government taking many decisions that vastly expanded its power.

Suffering across British society during the war resulted in a new political agenda that grew the British welfare state. Starting during and continuing after the war, the British government began providing a free nationalized healthcare service, improved secondary education, social security for the elderly and those unable to work, and housing.
The British government used a war planning board to guide industrial production. The government required factories that had previously produced consumer goods to switch output to goods needed for the war effort.
The government organized large programs and worked with organizations like “the Women’s Land Army” to bring urban women into rural areas to work in agriculture. The government also limited the amount of less efficient and expensive meat production and shifted those resources into more efficient and cheaper wheat production.
The Ministry of Food created a system of food rationing that limited how much of certain food items people could purchase. To buy most rationed items, families registered at chosen shops, which provided the family with a ration book containing coupons that were only good at that shop. Once you used all your coupons for a rationed good, you could not purchase any more of that good.

The Nazi government in Germany had a massive presence in German society. Nazi symbols and social engineering were everywhere in German society.

Like other warring nations, Germany instituted state-led industrial planning to provide materials for the war effort. This centralized industrial planning began years before the outbreak of war as Hitler sought to rebuild Germany’s military.
The government immediately introduced rationing after the outbreak of war in 1939. Rationed goods included butter, tobacco, sugar, and meat. As the war intensified, government planners cut rations. After Germany invaded Poland in June 1941, the meat ration for each person dropped from 18 ounces to 14 ounces per week.
Nazi social organizations were widespread throughout German society. There were multiple Nazi groups for men, women, and children. Two of the largest groups included the Hitler Youth and the Women’s League of the Nazi Party. The German Labour Front was a Nazi trade union, while The German Cycling Association was an athletics branch of the Nazi government.

The American government led by Franklin Roosevelt continued the expansion of government power that be had begun with his New Deal social programs in the 1930s during the Great Depression.

The government expanded as federal spending increased, and the government became the employer of nearly 5 million people.
The government increased taxes to 94% on the highest earners and increased the number of people required to pay taxes to finance the war. The number of tax returns submitted to the government increased from 15 million in 1940 to 50 million in 1945.
A system of price controls prevented essential war materials from becoming too expensive.
Rationing of goods in the United States decreased consumer consumption. It diverted food and non-food resources to the war effort.
The government seized over 60 industrial facilities during the war to prevent disruptions to essential manufacturing. Labor strikes were strongly discouraged during the war.
The War Production Board (WPB) supervised scarce resources and prohibited nonessential production.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, anti-Japanese hysteria swept through the United States. Racism led many Americans to believe that Japanese Americans could not be loyal to the country. In one of the most shameful events in American history, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which directed the War Department to identify areas in the country to exclude certain persons from entering. The federal government created the War Relocation Authority and used it to remove Japanese Americans from Hawaii and the West Coast. The Board sent nearly 120,000 thousand Japanese Americans, most born in the United States, to ten internment camps spread across the Western United States.

Soviet society was a totalitarian one-party communist state. Under Joseph Stalin’s leadership, Russia maintained its military preparedness and increased defense spending through the late 1920s and 1930s.

Stalin introduced a strong centralized government under his dictatorial leadership.
Russia had a command economy planned out by the State Planning Committee using a series of five-year plans.
The Planning Committee focused Russian industrial production on military goods and technologies to strengthen the state, not consumer goods.
Stalin had absolute power over his Russian society and did not tolerate opposition to his rule. Those that resisted were killed without trial or sent to prison camps called gulags in Siberia, where most died from abuse and overwork.

The expansion of prowar propaganda

World War II required society-wide sacrifice. Convincing populations to fight, go without expected comforts, and ration their use of consumer goods meant that governments needed to effectively use propaganda to encourage sacrifice in the name of patriotism and nationalism.

Posters

Newspapers and magazines

Radio

Films

Due to the constant threat of the NAZI invasion and the continual aerial bombings of Britain, British propaganda primarily focused on building determination and resistance. Other common themes were the value of work, preventing waste, and British military successes.

The Information Ministry was responsible for coordinating wartime propaganda.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill created the British Political Warfare Executive (P.W.E.) to produce propaganda that would damage enemy morale. The P.W.E. developed German-language radio stations and transmitted anti-Nazi messages into German territory using powerful radio transmitters. The office also made and dropped anti-Nazi leaflets from planes within Germany.
Hollywood produced the film Mrs. Miniver (1942), which showed the struggles of the British on the home front and glorified their resolve for victory. While this movie was not British produced, it became popular in wartime Britain.

German propaganda depicted western Allied armies as cowards and butchers or as being controlled by Jewish people, with Russians depicted as dehumanized beasts.

The Reich Ministry of Public Engagement and Propaganda created and distributed propaganda in Germany.
Nazi leaders used propaganda to shape public opinion on significant legislation or government action that might be extreme. Before the invasion of the Soviet Union, when Hitler broke his non-aggression pact with Stalin, propaganda linked Soviet communism and European Jewry. In the years leading up to the holocaust, propaganda created supported increasingly strict restrictions on Jewish populations in Germany. Before Germany invaded Eastern Europe territories, propaganda highlighted the oneness of German-speaking people living in these territories with Germans.
Like in Hollywood, German propaganda successfully used Germany’s emerging film industry. Hitler had his favorite filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, produce a film highlighting the successful 1936 berlin summer Olympics. The documentary, Olympia, won first prize at the 1938 Venice Film Festival.

American propaganda depicted the Japanese as childlike and foolish with cartoonish facial features and the Germans as bloodthirsty murderers. The Office of War Information (O.W.I) was responsible for the American propaganda effort. The job of this office was to document the war and provide information about the war effort both domestically and overseas. The O.W.I worked closely with Hollywood. Most studios allowed the O.W.I to examine their scripts before a movie’s production.

Following Stalin’s signing of a non-aggression pact with Hitler, Soviet propaganda was pro-German. When Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland, propaganda took on an anti-Polish hue. Following Hitler’s invasion of Russia, Soviet propaganda switched to anti-German. It depicted the Germans as bloodsuckers and murderers. Tales of German wartime atrocities against populations were a common theme. While Soviet Communism traditionally downplayed Russian nationalism, Soviet propaganda depicted the war as a struggle to save the Russian motherland during the war. Communist imagery, especially the international communist color of red and the sickle and hammer, were often incorporated into propaganda.

Innovations in technology and war strategy

World War II continued the innovation in new industrial weapons and fighting strategies that had begun in World War I. All participants in the war targeted civilians and urban centers, with civilian deaths exceeding battlefield deaths.

Military battle deaths	Civilian deaths
15,000,000	45,000,000

Air raids: Air raids during World War II involved sustained aerial attacks on railways, harbors, cities, civilian housing, and industrial districts in enemy territory. Bombers specifically targeted civilian areas with no military value to terrorize civilian populations and disrupt their usual activities. Aviation technology rapidly advanced during the war, allowing for larger cargoes and more powerful bombs to be dropped as the war progressed.

B29: the B-29 bomber was the most effective long-range heavy bomber of WWII. Boeing produced the first B-29 in 1940. During WWII, Boeing manufactured thousands of bombers. The United States military primarily used the bomber in the Pacific theatre against the Japanese. More than a thousand planes at a time bombed Tokyo during the many American bombing raids against the city.

Firebombing: Firebombing is a bombing technique designed to damage a target, generally an urban area, through the fire caused by incendiary devices (intended to cause fires) rather than the blast effect of large bombs. Firebombing allowed for higher levels of destruction as fires could spread and damage nearby buildings that blasts would have left unaffected. Air raiders used firebombs and traditional explosive bombs to increase the destructive impacts of air raids.

Locations of major air raids and firebombing with civilian deaths

The Allied Powers

Soviet Union (500,000 civilians killed)

China (260,000 to 351,000 civilians killed)
France (67,000 civilians killed)
Britain (60,000 civilians killed)
- London
Poland (tens of thousands of civilians killed)

The Axis Powers

Germany (353,000 to 635,000 civilians killed)
- Berlin
- Dresden
- Hamburg
Japan (330,000 to 900,000 civilians killed)
- Tokyo
Italy (60,000 to 100,000 civilians killed)
Hungary (20,000 to 30,000 civilians killed)

Radar: The British built the first radars in the late 1930s. Radars work by sending out electromagnetic energy that bounces back to a receiver when it hits some resistance or object that slows it down or stops its forward movement. Radar helped the Allied forces detect enemy ships and planes. By the start of WWII, the British had a network of radars along their southern coast. As radar advanced throughout the war, it helped Allied forces detect enemy ships and planes.

The atomic bomb: The United States developed the atomic bomb during World War II. The bomb works by harnessing the energy of splitting atomic nuclei into a massive blast. The United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, mostly civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict. The atomic bomb is considered the first weapon of mass destruction with the capability to kill tens of thousands within seconds.

7.7G: Conducting WWII

Learning Objective 7G

Historical Development 1

Historical Development 2

Historical Development 3

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