World War II: Strategies and Mobilization

World War II, like World War I, was a total war, requiring the mobilization of entire populations, both military and civilian.
Civilians were considered legitimate targets.
World War II was larger and more devastating than World War I.

The immediate cause of World War II was Hitler's invasion of Poland.
Hitler aimed to gain Lebensraum (living space) for the German people.
Britain and France initially followed a policy of appeasement but declared war after the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939.

Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, and Japan.
Allied Powers: Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States.
The Soviet Union initially had a non-aggression pact with Germany.
Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union led them to join the Allied Powers.
The United States initially maintained an isolationist stance, providing aid to Britain.
The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in late 1941 brought the United States into the war on the side of the Allies.

Governments mobilized populations and colonial troops using various tactics, similar to World War I.
The scale and deadly nature of the war increased.

Fascist states were organized to serve the interests of the state, not the people.
Fascism combines extreme nationalism and the glorification of military conflict.
Fascist states efficiently mobilized economies and populations for war.
Hitler exploited conquered populations in labor camps across the German Reich, forcing Jews, Slavs, and other groups deemed subhuman into coerced labor.

Joseph Stalin had already organized the Soviet economy to serve his interests through rapid industrialization via Five-Year Plans.
Mobilization for World War II involved increased demands on munitions factories and farmers.
Stalin used brutal and unflinching demands to increase output in service of the war.

Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of Great Britain and adopted an aggressive stance against Hitler.
Unlike totalitarian states, Churchill relied on persuasion and cooperation to mobilize for war because Great Britain was not a totalitarian state.
Propaganda campaigns portrayed the war as a people's war.
The government expanded the welfare state in exchange for wartime sacrifices.

Basic freedoms were repressed to varying degrees in fascist, communist, and democratic nations.
In the United States, Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
In Germany, Jews and other undesirables were forced into ghettos and concentration camps.

Pioneered by Germany, \textit{blitzkrieg} is a shock and awe strategy aimed at rapid enemy elimination.
It combined aerial bombardment from planes with rapid infantry movement using tanks and armored vehicles.
Blitzkrieg made trench warfare obsolete.

Firebombs were small clusters of explosive devices designed to start fires in urban areas.
Allied forces firebombed cities like Dresden and Tokyo.
The firestorms caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and created their own weather systems.

The atomic bomb was developed by the United States.
By destabilizing particles at the atomic level, a single blast could destroy an entire city.
The United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.