Hi, I’m John Green,
This is Crash Course World History
and today we’re going to talk
about World War II.
Finally, a war with some color film!
So, here at Crash Course we try
to make history reasonably entertaining,
and fortunately,
World War II was hilarious…
...said no one ever.
Mr. Green, Mr. Green!
Is this, like, gonna be one of
the unfunny ones where you build
to the big melodramatic
conclusion about how I have to
imagine the world more complexly?
Me from the Past,
as long as you have that
eighth rate soup-strainer,
I’m not even going to
acknowledge your existence.
[BEST]
[intro music]
[intro music]
[intro music]
[intro music]
[intro music]
[EVER]
Right,
so you’ve probably heard a lot about
World War II from movies and books,
[for better or Bay-- Pearl Harbor]
The History Channel,
before it decided that
Swamp People were History,
the incessant droning of your
grandparents, etc.
We’re not gonna try to give you
a detailed synopsis of the war today.
Instead,
we’re going to try to give
a bit of perspective on
how the most destructive war
in human history happened,
and why it still matters globally.
So one of the reasons history classes
tend to be really into wars
is that they’re easy to put on tests.
They start on one day
and they end on another day.
And they’re caused by social,
political, and economic conditions
that can be examined in
a multiple choice kind of manner.
Except, not really.
Like, when did World War II start?
In September 1939,
when the Nazis invaded Poland?
I’d say no—
it actually started when Japan
invaded Manchuria in 1931,
or at the very latest when the
Japanese invaded China in 1937,
because they didn’t stop
fighting until 1945.
Then again,
you could also argue 1933,
when Hitler took power,
or 1941,
when America started fighting.
It’s complicated.
But anyway,
in China the fighting was very brutal,
as exemplified by
the infamous rape of Nanking,
which featured the slaughter of
hundreds of thousands of Chinese people
and is still so controversial today that
1.
It affects relations between Japan & China
and 2.
Even though I have not described it in
detail, you can rest assured that
there will be angry comments about
my use of the word “slaughter.”
But the World War II we know the most about
from movies and TV is
primarily the war in the European theater,
the one that Adolf Hitler started.
Hitler is the rare individual
who really did make history—-
specifically he made it worse—-
and if he hadn’t existed,
[read: if Evil Baby Orphanage did exist]
it’s very unlikely that
World War II would’ve ever happened.
But he did exist,
and after coming to power in 1933,
with the standard revolutionary promises to
return the homeland to its former glory,
infused with quite a bit of
paranoia and anti-Semitism,
Germany saw rapid remilitarization and
eventually, inevitably, war.
In the beginning,
it was characterized by a
new style of combat made possible
by the mechanized technology of tanks,
airplanes, and especially, trucks.
This was the Blitzkrieg,
a devastating tactic combining
quick movement of troops, tanks,
and massive use of air power
to support infantry movements.
And in the very early years of the war,
it was extremely effective.
The Nazis were able to roll over
Poland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands,
and then all of France,
all within about 9 months between
the fall of 1939 and the summer of 1940.
So after knocking out
most of central Europe,
the Nazis set their sights
on Great Britain,
but they didn’t invaded the island,
choosing instead to attack it
with massive air strikes.
[Whovians will recall "The Empty Child"]
I mean, you look at this poster and think,
“Man, the queen wants me to
finish my term paper, so I can do it”
but when this poster
was first produced in 1939,
it was to quell terror
in the face of bombardment.
The Battle of Britain was a duel between
the Royal Air Force and the Luftwaffe,
and while the RAF denied the Nazis
total control of British airspace,
the Nazis were still able to bomb
Great Britain over and over again
in what’s known as the Blitz.
STAN, NO.
NO JOKES this time.
Yes, the Blitz.
Meanwhile, Europeans were also
fighting each other in North Africa.
The Desert campaigns started in 1940
and lasted through 1942—
this is where British general
“Monty” Montgomery outfoxed German general
Irwin “the Desert Fox” Rommel.
It’s also the place where Americans
first fought Nazis in large numbers.
But most importantly,
it’s where Indiana Jones discovered the
Ark of the Covenant. [and, there it is]
Okay, let’s go to the Thought Bubble.
1941 was a big year for World War II.
First, the Nazis invaded Russia,
breaking a non-aggression pact that
the two powers had signed in 1939.
This hugely escalated the war,
and also made allies of
the most powerful capitalist countries
and the most powerful communist one, an
alliance that would stand the test of time
and never end until like three
seconds after the defeat of the Nazis.
The Nazi invasion of Russia opened the
war up on the so-called Eastern Front,
although if you were Russian, it was the Western
Front,
[you're really blowing my mind, man]
and it led to millions of deaths,
mostly Russian.
Also,
1941 saw a day that would "live in infamy"
when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor,
hoping that such an audacious attack would
frighten the United States
into staying neutral, which was a pretty stupid
gamble because
1.
The U.S. was already giving massive aid
to the Allies and was hardly neutral
and 2.
The United States is not exactly famed
for its pacifism or political neutrality.
1941 also saw Japan invading
much of Southeast Asia,
which made Australia and New Zealand
understandably nervous.
As part of the British commonwealth,
they were already involved in the war,
but now they could fight
the Japanese closer to home.
And shut up about how
I never talk about you Australians.
I just gave you 1.5 sentences.
[John's nothing if not a giver]
But by the time the Americans and
Australians started fighting the Japanese,
it was already a World War.
Sometimes this meant fighting
or starving or being bombed;
other times, it meant
production for the war—
you don’t think of Argentina as being a
World War II powerhouse, for instance,
but they were vital to the Allies,
supplying 40% of British meat
during World War II.
Thanks, Thought Bubble.
[seriously. that was pretty awesome]
So, not to sound
jingoistic [n. extreme patriotism in the form
of a belligerent foreign policy]
[you're welcome]
but the entry of the U.S. into
the war really did change everything,
although I doubt the Nazis
could’ve taken Russia regardless.
No one conquers Russia in the wintertime,
unless you are—
wait for it—
[you know they always are] --the Mongols.
[Oh Mongoltage! So beloved, your bellowing
brass, blaring a bray of baned brutality]
Okay, we’re going to skip most
of the big battles of 1942—
like the Battle of Midway,
which effectively ended
Japan’s chance of winning the war—
and focus on the Battle of Stalingrad.
The German attack on Stalingrad, now
known as Volgograd because Stalin sucks,
was one of the bloodiest battles
in the history of war,
with more than two million dead.
The Germans began by dropping more
than 1,000 tons of bombs on Stalingrad,
and then the Russians
responded by “hugging” the Germans,
staying as close to their front lines
as possible so that German air support
would kill Germans and Russians alike.
This kind of worked, although
the Germans still took most of the city.
But then,
a Soviet counterattack left the sixth army
of the Nazis completely cut off.
And after that, due partly to Hitler’s
overreaching megalomania
and partly to lots of people
being scared of him,
the sixth army slowly froze and starved
to death before finally surrendering.
Of the 91,000 Axis POWs from Stalingrad,
only about 6,000 ever returned home.
Stalingrad turned the war
in Europe and by 1944,
the American strategy of “island hopping”
in the Pacific was taking GIs
closer and closer to Japan.
Rome was liberated in June by Americans and
Canadians; and the successful British, Canadian,
and American D-Day invasion of Normandy was
the beginning of the end for the Nazis.
Oh, it’s time for the Open Letter?
[jovially jaunts w/o gyration to jumpoff]
An Open Letter to Canada.
[this should be interesting]
But first,
let’s see what’s in
the secret compartment today.
Oh, it’s Canadian mittens.
I wanna thank the Canadian Crash
Course fans, who sent us these mittens.
Canadians are just so nice, Stan.
Like, all we ever do on
this show is make fun of them,
and they’re just like,
“It’s so kind of you to mention us.
Here’s some mittens!”
Dear Canada,
We’re not always nice
to you here on Crash Course,
but you are awesome.
I’m pointing, but you can’t tell
because I’m wearing mittens.
45,000 Canadians died fighting
for the Allies in World War II,
which means that, per capita,
Canada lost more people
than the United States.
You fought with the Royal Air Force
to defend Great Britain
from the beginning of the war
and you were there on D-Day,
successfully invading Juno Beach.
And, as many of you have
pointed out in comments,
you defeated the United States
in the War of 1812,
which means, arguably, Canada,
you are the superior military power.
Plus, you have lumberjacks, excellent beer,
and hockey, and socialized medicine.
I’m [legit] jealous.
Best Wishes,
John Green.
So, by the end of 1944,
the Allies were advancing from the West
and the Russian Red Army was
advancing from the East
and then, the last-ditch German offensive
at the battle of the Bulge in
the winter of 1944-1945 failed.
Mussolini was executed in April of 1945.
Hitler committed suicide
at the end of that month.
And, on May 8, 1945
the Allies declared victory in Europe
after Germany surrendered unconditionally.
Three months later,
the United States dropped the only two
nuclear weapons ever deployed in war,
Japan surrendered,
and World War II was over.
The war had a definite cause:
unbridled military expansion by Germany,
Japan, and, to a small extent, Italy.
Now, it’s easy to claim
that Hitler was crazy or evil,
and, in fact, he was certainly both,
but that doesn’t explain the
Nazis decision to invade Russia,
and it sure doesn’t explain
Japan’s decision to bomb Pearl Harbor.
And there are many possible
explanations beyond mere evil;
but the most interesting one,
to me, involves food.
Hitler had a number of reasons for
wanting to expand Germany’s territory,
but he often talked about lebensraum
or living space for the German people.
German agriculture was really inefficiently
organized into lots of small farms,
and that meant that Germany
needed a lot of land in order
to be self-sufficient in food production.
The plan was to take Poland,
the Ukraine, and Eastern Russia,
and then resettle that land
with lots of Germans,
so that it could feed German people.
This was called the Hunger Plan because
the plan called for
20 million people to starve to death.
[monstrous and on-the-nose, that]
Many would be the Poles,
Ukrainians, and Russians
who’d previously lived on the land.
The rest would be Europe’s Jews,
who would be worked to death.
Six million Jews were killed by the Nazis,
many by starvation, but many through
a chillingly planned effort
of extermination in death camps
These death camps can be distinguished
from concentration camps or labor camps
in that their primary
purpose was extermination of
Jews, Roma people, communists,
homosexuals, disabled people,
and others that the Nazis deemed unfit.
Some historians believe that the Nazis opened
the death camps because the Jews weren’t
dying as fast as The Hunger Plan had intended.
This was a sickening plan, but it made a kind
of demented sense. Rather than becoming more
involved in global trade, as the British had,
the Germans would feed themselves by taking
land and killing the people who’d previously
lived there.
Similarly, Japan, at the beginning of the
war, was suffering from an acute fear of food
shortage because its agricultural sector was
having trouble keeping up with population
growth.
And the Japanese too, sought to expand their
agricultural holdings by, for instance, resettling
farmers in Korea.
So while it’s tempting to say that World
War II was about the Allies fighting for democratic
ideals against the totalitarian militaristic
imperialism of the fascist Axis powers, it
just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
For instance, a hugely important Allied power,
Stalin’s Soviet Union, was, like, the least
democratic place, ever.
Stan just said that was hyperbole, but it’s
not. Stalin’s Soviet Union is tied with
all of the other completely undemocratic countries
for last place on the democracy scale.
It’s a big community there, at last place,
but they’re definitely in there somewhere.
And, by far, the biggest imperialists of the
war were the British.
They couldn’t have
fed or clothed themselves—
or resisted the Nazis—
without their colonies and commonwealth.
So, why is World War II so important?
Well first, it proved the old Roman adage
homo homini lupus: Man is a wolf to man.
This is seen most clearly in the Holocaust,
but all the statistics are staggering.
More than a million
Indian British subjects died,
mainly due to famine
that could have been avoided
if the British had redistributed food.
And their failure to do so
helped convince Indians that
the so-called superior civilization
of the British was a sham.
More than a million Vietnamese died,
mainly due to famine.
418,000 Americans.
More than a million noncombatants
in both Germany and Japan.
And 20 million people in the Soviet Union,
most of them civilians.
These civilians were targeted
because they helped sustain the war,
mostly through industrial
and agricultural production.
In a total war, when a nation is at war,
not just its army,
there is no such thing
as a non-military target.
From the firebombing of Dresden
to Tokyo to Hiroshima,
the line between soldier
and civilian blurred.
And then, of course,
there is the Holocaust,
which horrifies us because the elements
of Western progress-record-keeping,
industrial production, technology—
were used to slaughter millions.
World War II saw modern industrial nations,
which represented the best of the Enlightenment
and
the Scientific Revolution,
descend into once unimaginable cruelty.
And what makes World War II such a
historical watershed is that in its wake,
all of us—in the West or otherwise—
were forced to question whether
Western dominance of this planet
could, or should, be considered progress.
Thanks for watching.
I’ll see you next week.
Crash Course is
produced and directed
by Stan Muller.
Our script supervisor is
Meredith Danko.
Our associate producer
is Danica Johnson.
The show is written by my high school
history teacher, Raoul Meyer,
and myself.
And our graphics team is Thought Bubble.
Last week’s phrase of the week was
“an end to history.”
If you want to guess at
this week’s phrase of the week
or suggest future ones,
you can do so in comments,
where you can also ask questions
about today’s video that will be
answered by our team of historians.
If you enjoy Crash Course,
make sure you’re subscribed.
Thanks for watching,
and as we say in my hometown,
don’t forget History Will Be Kind
To Me For I Intend To Write It.
[outro]