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[[File:world war two 170.jpg|frame|Humanity's best and worst were displayed for all the world to see.]]
{{quote|''"I ask you: Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?"''
|'''Joseph Goebbels''', 1943 <ref>The guy was a [[Complete Monster]], but his words ''here'' sum up the general feel of the war.</ref>}}
The roots of humanity's greatest conflict go back centuries, but the immediate causes of the war lay in the resolution of the [[World War I|First World War]] and the Great Depression.
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Around this time, Russia is busy somehow losing (by most people's definition) a war to Finland... despite having done quite well in a border clash with Japan just a year previously at a place called Khalkhin Gol, which has lead to an informal non-aggression pact with Japan in the Far East (to be formalised next year, expiring in 1946). Despite greatly outnumbering the Finns in almost every conceivable way, the Soviets perform ''horribly''. After six months, the Russians have taken only a few miles of land beyond the border. Part of this is due to Stalin's purges of the 1930s, which left the Red Army in no position to challenge the state, but in an even worse position to wage war. The Finns had neither the population nor the economy to prosecute the war, so they eventually surrendered and gave up some territory that was mostly worthless, but only after they had inflicted incredibly disproportionate losses on their much larger opponent. On a brighter note, the campaign finally gives a name to one of the war's most eponymous improvised weapons. When the Russians started dropping cluster and incendiary bombs on Finnish towns, Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov [[Blatant Lies|claimed they were actually dropping food - 'Bread Baskets' - for the starving Finnish proletariat.]]. The Finns subsequently dub their improvised petrol bombs, of the type used by desperate infantrymen trying to take out tanks in China and Spain, "Molotov cocktails". [[Don't Explain the Joke|'Cocktails', because they're a drink to go down with the 'bread'.]]
Mussolini feels left out of all this conquest, so the Italians promptly invade the Balkans and Greece—only to get in over their heads, losing battles, and [[Stop Helping Me!|forcing Germany to divert precious resources to bailing them out]]. The Wehrmacht then proves their success in France was no fluke by blitzing through Greece and capturing most of the Mediterranean. Only the plucky island of Malta manages to hold on despite near-starvation, an act that gets the entire island awarded the George Cross. Mussolini is humiliated, and Hitler is provided with a whole raft of snide remarks for future cocktail party conversations. (It's worth noting that Italy suffered nearly as much as France in [[World War
On February 14, 1941, the newly promoted Major General [[Erwin Rommel]] (formerly commander of the 7th Panzer Division, notable for its stunning maneuvers in the Battle of France, which earned it the nickname "The Ghost Division".) arrives in Tripoli to begin supervising the offloading of his new command. Leading what is dubbed the "Deutsches Afrikakorps", Rommel finds himself both undermanned and under-equipped. But does that stop him? Nope. He orders his troops to begin moving as quickly as possible, plowing through British positions in Egypt. Only a desperate counterattack drives Rommel back, showcasing how the war in Africa will be fought for the next year. Nevertheless, the African Front will come to be known as the most humane and romanticized combat zone of the war, where Rommel becomes a well-respected commander ([[Worthy Opponent|earning praise from Winston Churchill himself]]). However, the war in Africa is only seen as a sideshow for the true campaign, where the bulk of German troops and equipment will be used (depriving Rommel of much-needed reinforcement for his offensives).
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== The Aftermath ==
World War II is over. The Americans and Soviets try to get the Chinese Nationalists and Communists to form a government together; unsurprisingly they fail, and after a further three years of civil war the Communists proclaim the [[People's Republic of Tyranny|Peoples' Republic of China]] in 1949, while the Nationalists retreat to [[Taiwan]]. As the tide of the war turns against the Nationalists, Churchill makes his 'Iron Curtain' speech and the Americans begin to see Communism as a real threat. After years of dithering, America speedily moves to invest in rebuilding the economies and militaries of Germany and Japan, changing the earlier program of peaceful 'nation-building' to create strong Allies.
The horrors of the Holocaust lead to the creation of the State of [[Israel]] in 1948 as a homeland for the Jewish nation in what had been British Palestine (thereby leading to the [[Arab-Israeli Conflict]]). Despite talks of unifying Germany, Austria and Korea under neutral democratic governments, [[Cold War|both countries and Europe as a whole become increasingly divided between the Soviet-dominated, dictatorial Communist East and the American-backed, eventually fairly democratic West.]] It is only in 1989 that the Communist '2nd world' crumbles from within and the regimes of eastern Europe go down in a series of revolutions. Germany is officially reunited the next year, largely bringing a close one of the most visible legacies of World War II.
The war killed about 62 to 78 million people, 3-4% of the world's population at that time. The USSR 'won' the numbers of total and total military casualties at about 26.6 million people in all. Next was China, who won out in the numbers of civilian dead for a total at least in the mid-teens of millions. Poland lost a seventh of its population and the Soviet Republic of Belarus - which bore the brunt of both German and Soviet offensives ''and'' history's highest-intensity guerrilla warfare - lost '''''a full quarter''''' of its people, proportionally more than even the Jews. Yugoslavia lost some 1 million of its 15-million population. Hungary and Greece were similarly mauled, losing up to 6% and 10% of their populations respectively. The Commonwealth and France, however, actually had less military deaths than in [[World War
Anyone looking to relive the war in real-time can check the Twitter feed of [http://twitter.com/realtimewwii Alwyn Collinson] who has been tweeting the war from all angles since around [[wikipedia:Invasion of Poland|September 1st]](Where 2011=1939) and plans to continue for the duration of the war (an astounding [[Long Runners|six years of daily tweeting]]). He is taking volunteers for help translating to different languages and sharing the workload if you email him or contact him on Facebook.
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* [[Adventurer Archaeologist]]: Ralph Bagnold among others. Several of these bear a surprising resemblance to Indiana Jones.
** The Nazis had some of their own, too: The Ahnenerbe.
* [[All of Them]]: An [[Urban Legends|Urban Legend]] states that on D-Day dawn a German soldier looked out at the English Channel and phoned his superiors:
{{quote|'''Soldier:''' Allied ships in the Channel!
'''Command:''' How many?
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*** Another reason was that British intelligence believed (correctly) that the Nazi High Command was inclined to expect the attack at Calais, where the Channel is narrowest. As it is usually easiest to deceive the enemy with the appearance of what they expect, considerable efforts were made to create the illusion that the attack would occur at Calais. The deceit worked so well that Hitler and the Nazi High Command continued to believe that the Normandy landings were diversionary for long enough that they were irrevocably entrenched by the time forces began to be repositioned to try to stop them.
* [[America Wins the War]]: To this day, many Westerners do not appreciate the extent to which the war in Europe was mainly fought and mostly decided on the Eastern Front.<ref>Though this is balanced out by how notoriously unhelpful they were in the Pacific Front; they didn't even let the Allies use their Pacific ports to bomb Japan.</ref>
** The World War II monument in Washington DC states "[http://lh3.ggpht.com/_pVXrYi8s2rM/Sui2hpM0sEI/AAAAAAAACDY/0f-Pa3th1DM/DSCF2893%5B10%5D.jpg Americans came to liberate, not to conquer]"
* [[Anyone Can Die]]: And they do.
* [[Awakening the Sleeping Giant]]: Maybe bombing Pearl Harbor wasn't such a good idea.
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** The Polish Army didn't just fall apart, either. A good part of those who managed to flee the invasion soon joined other Allied armies. There were quite a lot of Poles fighting in the Battle of Britain, including the legendary No. 303 Squadron.
*** Those who fled east and got captured by the Soviets or otherwise ended up on their territory, joined the Polish Army which the Soviets started putting together after Hitler turned on them.
*** The ones who stayed in German-occupied Poland and managed to avoid capture by the Nazis went
* [[Badass Bookworm]]: Admiral Spruance of the US Navy, who may have been America's best Admiral.
** Archibald Wavell, an eccentric nerd-like general, under whose command the
*** True story about Wavell: He once asked his adjutant "Have you seen my Browning?" The poor man spent several hours looking for a pistol before he realized Wavell was actually looking for his copy of "The Collected Works..."
** Generalleutnant Hans Speidel, Rommel's Chief of Staff in Normandy. Dr. in History and Economy. Also one of the few known conspirators in the July 1944 plot to actually survive.
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* [[Big Bulky Bomb]]: By the middle of the war, the Allies were dropping Blockbuster Bombs on target cities, so named because they could destroy an entire city block. The British also deployed the "Tallboy" and "Grand Slam", single high-explosive bombs that weighed in at 12,000 and ''22,000'' pounds respectively... they were essentially the over-sized and unguided predecessors of modern bunker-busters. By the end, the U.S. had developed—and deployed -- [[Atomic Hate|the first nuclear weapons]].
* [[The Big Guy]]: On a grand scale, the Soviet Union was this for the Allies, fighting over 80% of the German army.
* [[Black and White Morality]]: One of the few historical wars to still routinely get this treatment in fiction. The Axis were bad, the Allies were good. The reality was a lot closer to [[Black and Grey Morality]]; most of the Axis forces were most certainly bad by any sane measure, but the Allies (
** It is kind of rare among wars, though, that in the aftermath no one argued the need to fight it. Even the losers seemed to agree they lost, fair and square.
* [[Blitz Evacuees]]
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* [[Cluster F-Bomb]]: A sonuvabitch named [[Four-Star Badass|General George Patton]].
* [[The Coconut Effect]]: For want of a better term, this is in effect all over the place. The Polish cavalry did not really [[Too Dumb to Live|charge the German tanks with lances]]; they operated as mounted infantry and did not fight on horseback in most cases, and were never actually recorded as having fought a panzer unit. Similarly, the Italian army is relentlessly mocked as being [[The Load|ineffective and filled with cowards]]. While they truthfully did suffer a series of disastrous defeats, in most cases it wasn't because of cowardice, but rather [[General Failure|strategic]] and logistical mistakes and/or a lack of sound training. The British actually noted that the Italians they fought in Ethiopia put up a harder fight than just about any other force they fought in the war. Also, most of the army Rommel commanded was actually made of Italians, though he wasn't exactly enthusiastic about their performance. This is mainly because he recognized they were severely under-supported and overtaxed, his main problem was with their superiors.
* [[Colonel Kilgore]]: Jack Churchill.
* [[Cool Car]]: The Willys Jeep and the Volkswagen Kübelwagen.
* [[Cool Horse]]: [[The Cavalry]] actually had something of a minor comeback in this era because you can buy or steal fodder from peasants, whereas fuel for tanks and other vehicles depended on supply routes. Furthermore, horses can sometimes go where tanks can't. However, they were used as scouts and mounted infantry and were not likely to make a [[Zerg Rush|charge]] unless they caught someone off guard. And even the most [[Good Old Ways|chauvinistic]] of horsemen didn't really think a saber or lance could penetrate a tank's armor.
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* [[Cool Versus Awesome]]: Two [[Badass Army|Badass Navies]], the United States Navy versus the Imperial Japanese Navy in what seems to an [[Armchair Military|Armchair Admiral]] the most awesome technological [[Warrior Heaven|Valhalla]] the ocean has ever seen. The IJN was just as brave as the Japanese Army but far more sophisticated. It was a rigorous adherent to [[The Spartan Way]], and even though it was infected by extremist nationalism too, [[Not So Different|they seem to have had more in common with their enemies]] than the respective armies did. The USN had a tradition almost as strong as the Royal Navy and was [[Determinator|stubborn]] at the beginning when material was short and experience and training were lacking. At the end it was a vast armada with many a [[Cool Ship]] and [[Cool Plane]]. The USN even fielded its own [[Semper Fi|counterpart]] to the [[Badass Army|Imperial Special Naval Landing Forces.]]
** The US Navy actually had two traditions where they trumped all others, including the Royal Navy: Fire Control and Damage Control.
* [[Cute as a Bouncing Betty]]
* [[Cowboy Bebop at His Computer]]: Aryan was originally a linguistic category, now called Indo-European due to the [[Unfortunate Implications]] of Aryan. Hitler never assumed all Aryans were blue-eyed blonds; in fact, Persia was renamed Iran, from ''Aryan'', in 1935. The Japanese were (of course) considered Aryans as well, and Tibet was the homeland of the Aryan race. So there's [[Cowboy Bebop at His Computer]] all around.▼
** The trope namer (Bouncing Betty) was a nickname for a landmine.
** Katyusha is a type of rocket launcher that saw service during the war. The soldiers that operated it didn't know what it was officially called. But there was a K (which was the first letter of the factory where they were made), so they nicknamed it Katyusha after a song popular during the war. (Katyusha is a nickname for the girl name Ekaterina).
* [[Cycle of Revenge]]: Partisan warfare in Belarus, Ukraine and Poland, especially in what is now Western Ukraine, which was a part of Poland, annexed by the USSR and had [[We ARE Struggling Together!|the Polish Home Army, Ukrainian Nationalists and Soviet Partisans fighting each other AND the Wehrmacht]].
* [[Death From Above]]: The war saw the first widespread and effective use of [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Close-Air-Support]] in the German invasion of France, and the other powers were quick to catch on. Also quite important to the War in the Pacific, where the actions of ship-based aircraft decided the length of the war. Also the first war to see the widespread use of Strategic Bombing, or 'Terror Bombing' to the Germans. Given the inaccuracy of targeting systems, razing entire urban areas was really the only way to be sure of destroying small strategic targets. Often involved shaking things up a bit with regular bombing and then finishing often with incendiary bombs to create fire-storms, which is where this overlaps with [[Kill It with Fire]]. Also applied to the Netherlands (Rotterdam), the UK (London, Coventry, Liverpool &c), China (Chongqing, the world's most heavily bombed city) and Japan (Tokyo, Osaka & co.)
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* [[Elites Are More Glamorous]]: In general, this war is recognized as the first one in which major nations fielded unconventional units on a large scale. Let's break it down by country:
** Germany: Rudimentary commando tactics were utilized to [[Storming the Castle|take down a massive fortress on the Polish border]], they would later field the [[Master of Disguise|Brandenburgers]], and the SS generally served as their [[Elite Mooks]].
** Britain: Both the Special Air Service and Royal Marine Commandos originated in this war, and were the first "special forces" units as we understand them. They'd later field the Special Boat Service for purposes of beach recon, riverine infiltration, and generally being badass. It's definitely worth noting that they pulled off some absolutely ''insane'' shit, just read a few
** America: Their first commando unit was a new and improved Army Rangers regiment, who proceeded to kick ass and take names in Italy. Regular grunts could volunteer to be trained by the British and earn a Green Beret. Marine Raiders and Navy UDTs aren't around anymore, but their tactics and training laid the groundwork for Force Recon and the SEALs.
** USSR: Guards regiments - promoted from normal stats for
* [[Enemy Mine]]: A lot of this. The alliance between the Soviets and the Western Allies wasn't very natural.
** Finland and Nazi Germany as well. Both of them hated the Soviets, so they teamed up against them. Finland was the only democratic, non-racist and non-fascist Axis country.
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* [[Face Heel Turn]]: Vichy France.
* [[False-Flag Operation]]: SS members dressing up in Polish army uniforms and staging an attack on their own radio station at Gleiwitz, on Aug. 31, 1939. They murdered a prisoner and left his corpse behind dressed in a Polish uniform to make it extra-convincing. This sad episode was the German pretext for invading Poland the next day, and starting the whole war.
* [[Fighting for Survival]]/[[Dying Like Animals]]: Whichever one a given person or group chooses and whether or not they have much choice about it in the first place.
* [[Final Solution]]: [[Trope Maker]], [[Trope Namer]], [[Trope Codifier]]. Germans referred to ''die Endlösung der Judenfrage'', "the [[Final Solution]] to the Jewish Question."
* [[For Want of a Nail]]: There were several tank divisions in Normandy that could have stopped the D-Day landings, but the only person with the authority to send them out was Hitler, and the night before D-Day, he announced that he did not wish for his rest to be disturbed for any reason and then slept in. By the time he woke up, the Allies had their beachhead.
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* [[Friendly Enemy]]: The British Eighth Army and the Afrika Korps in North Africa which [[Worthy Opponent|respected each other]] and [[The Medic|treated each others wounded]] impartially. This did not stop them from enthusiastically killing one another.
* [[Friend or Foe]]: Type D, and usually attributed to the Americans. There was a joke that if German/Italian planes went over, the British ducked; if British planes went over, the Germans/Italians ducked; and if American planes went over, everyone ducked.
* [[Gallows Humor]]: It's a war so of course there was gallows humor
** How do you tell an Optimist German from a Pessimist German? The Optimist studies English, while the Pessimist studies Russian.
** If you see a white or silver plane, it's American. If you see a black or green plane it's British. If you see no planes at all it's the mighty Luftwaffe!
* [[Gambit Pileup]]: While it is remembered in a straightforward way by many people, the dozens of factions trying to survive qualify it for this.
* [[Glamorous Wartime Singer]]: Marlene Dietrich stands out. Her "Lili
** It was not "her" song in the first place, it was Lale Andersen's, who sang it on the German radio set in Belgrade. The song proved to be extremely popular among both Germans and Western Allies.
** [[Vera Lynn]] was extremely popular among the British forces, she was called "The Forces' Sweetheart."
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** Admiral Kimmel's office had a picture window with a lovely view of Pearl Harbor. As he stood and watched his fleet being annihilated, a spent Japanese machine-gun round punched through the window, bounced off his chest, and fell to the ground, leaving a black smudge on his uniform. He was heard to say to no one in particular, "It would have been more merciful if it had killed me."
*** The first thing Kimmel did at the attack's conclusion was to remove two stars from his four-star uniform. In the American military system, only ranks up to two star general/admiral officer are considered permanent; three- and four-star ranks are awarded by assignment and are removed when that officer's tour is complete. The act of removing his stars was symbolic of Kimmel's realization that there was no possible way he would retain his command in the investigation to follow.
** During the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Halsey's Task Force 34 was drawn north by a diversionary Japanese fleet, leaving the invasion force without most of its defenses. Nimitz, from Pearl Harbor, was seeing messages of the battle at Leyte Gulf and seeing no sign of Halsey sent the following message: "Where is Task Force 34? The world wonders." The second part was not part of the original message, but was padding that was supposed to be discarded after decoding (and itself was from ''The Charge of the Light Brigade''), though some think the decoder deliberately left it in.
* [[Heroic Neutral]]: For a given value of both 'heroic' and 'neutral', until the Japanese Cabinet [[Awakening the Sleeping Giant|ordered an attack]] [[What an Idiot!|on the US Fleet.]]
** Sums up the attitude of most US citizens, at any rate. The US government was just itching for a war with the Axis. The Japanese saw that and the Germans did as well - especially given the undeclared naval war between US naval forces in the Atlantic and the U-boats, not to mention Lend-Lease.
* [[Impossibly Cool Weapon]]s : Many a [[Cool Ship]], [[Cool Plane]], [[Cool Tank]], and [[Cool Gun]]. World War II buffs constantly argue over which was the coolest and consider this to be [[Serious Business]].▼
* [[Home Guard]]: Seen on all sides during the war, from the British [[Trope Namer|Home Guard]] to the American Civil Air Patrol to the German Volkssturm and the Japanese 'Volunteer' Defence Corps.
* [[Honor Before Reason]]: [[Winston Churchill|...We Shall Never Surrender!]]
** The Japanese variety was perhaps closer to Honor ''Without'' Reason. This contributed to their loss of air superiority. Not only did many pilots refuse to bail out of their fighters or to retreat, the Navy saw recovering downed pilots as their least important problem. Meanwhile, the Americans put considerable effort into saving theirs. The result was that the Japanese lost more and more experienced pilots and found their method of replacing them was wildly inadequate, while the number of experienced American pilots grew and they could send some of their best home to train new pilots.
*** This was compounded by the fact that the Kamikaze system forced many would-be pilots to die far before their time. Dying in a Kamikaze divebomb was considered to be an honor, but it
*** The brutalization of their conscripts and the peer pressure of the honour system contributed to the mistreatment of POWs and civilians. By [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement|mistreatment]], we mean all sorts of unpleasant things that one does not mention in most company, polite or otherwise.
** Germany and Italy also suffer from this, having decided to declare war on America alongside Japan.
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* [[Idiot Ball]]: Franklin Roosevelt did all he could to support the British and later the Soviets against Hitler, going so far as to issue shoot-to-kill orders against German U-boats stalking Atlantic convoys, [[Heroic Neutral|but there simply wasn't very much support in America for an active intervention in the war]]. [[Awakening the Sleeping Giant|Even after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor]] and FDR got a declaration of war the next day, there was little pressure for a formal declaration against Germany and Roosevelt didn't even ask for one. Then, three days later, [[Stupid Evil|Hitler declared war on the United States.]] Whoops.
* [[I'm a Humanitarian]]: Towards the end of the war, a few groups of Japanese soldiers sometimes roasted and cannibalized their captives. Other Asians were referred to as "black pigs" and American soldiers were "white pigs".
▲* [[Impossibly Cool Weapon]]s : Many a [[Cool Ship]], [[Cool Plane]], [[Cool Tank]], and [[Cool Gun]]. World War II buffs constantly argue over which was the coolest and consider this to be [[Serious Business]].
** Also during the Battle of Stalingrad due to supply shortages.▼
** During the worst of the Siege of Leningrad, as food shortages led to widespread death by starvation, this happened quite a bit.▼
* [[Ironic Echo]]: Enforced. Hitler signed the peace with France in the same rail carriage where the Germans had signed the 1918 armistice.
* [[I Shall Return]]: [[Trope Maker]], from Gen. MacArthur after he left the
* [[It Got Worse]]: People called WWI "The war to end all wars". They were ''very'' wrong.
* [[It's Personal]]: The reason both the United States and the Soviet Union entered the war: being attacked by the Axis directly. Until that point, they attempted to remain neutral.
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* [[Knight Templar]]: Several, on both sides. Hitler was probably the craziest one.
* [[La Résistance]]: The [[Trope Namer]] was active during this war in France, of course, but every occupied country had a resistance movement to one degree or another. Some countries actually had more than one movement - e.g. a communist one plus a monarchist one ([[We ARE Struggling Together!|it wasn't unusual for them to end up fighting each other as well]]). China had so many turncoats-turned-resistance fighters-turned-bandits that the historical community generally wrings its hands and splits it up into local and regional warlords, nationalist guerrillas, communist guerrillas and Chinese Communist Party guerrillas, with some room for overlap.
** There was big
*** They played huge role in operation Bagration: Germans were led to
** Poland's is very famous for its [[The Dog Bites Back|attempted uprising.]]
*** Make that two uprisings: one in 1943 by the Jews in the Ghetto, the other by the Home Army in 1944.
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** Hence [[Axis Powers Hetalia|Hetalia.]]
** Some say that Hitler having to bail them out of Greece caused a crucial delay in his invasion of the Soviet Union. We all know the might of General Winter. Invading Yugoslavia also delayed him, something that was likely not needed as the Yugoslav government post-coup would still follow through with their treaty obligations. The major reason why the Germans invaded that country was because Hitler felt the Yugoslavs had [[It's All About Me|personally insulted him]] with the coup-d'état. They even called the bombing of Belgrade "Operation Punishment".
** Italy wasn't ready for the war for a series of reasons, the most evident of which being that the Italian industry, while capable to produce some fine equipment and in full expansion, was just too small to adequately support its armed forces in such a vast war (in fact, Mussolini knew this, and had Italy enter the war when France was all but conquered and Britain seemed about to sue for peace. Then Britain choose to fight, and Mussolini started to realize he was holding the [[Idiot Ball]]). Then there were the problems of the armed forces. The air force, while equipped with capable attack
* [[Local Angle]]: Every nation's newspapers tended to focus on their own war efforts, though some did this more than others. The biggest campaigns and battles usually made the headlines everywhere, though.
* [[Macross Missile Massacre]]:
** Soon followed by Germans' Nebelwefers and US Calliopes.
* [[Mad Scientist]]: Josef Mengele and the scientists of the Japanese Unit 731.
* [[Magnetic Hero]]: Churchill, indirectly. Not the most charismatic man in person - he once ran through several secretaries in the space of a month when he was being particularly insufferable - but his effect on the people of the British Empire was electrifying. Contrast Hitler, a very charismatic man of more down-to-earth roots.
▲* [[
* [[Memetic Mutation]]: Tons of books, movies, TV shows and odd references.
** From the time period itself was [[wikipedia:Kilroy was here|Kilroy was here]], a graffito that ''may'' have originated among American servicemen - like many Memes, it's hard to pin down a source. First appearances were in 1936-1938. The "Kilroy" had several phrases (sort of like some of the memes on the Internet today) which were used with the graffito "Kilroy was here", and "Wot, no X?":
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* [[Nuke'Em]]: [[Trope Maker]] and thankfully, the only [[Real Life]] examples so far.
* [[Oh Crap]]: The Normandy Invasion used [[wikipedia:DD tank|DD Tanks]], a very early amphibious model which had a skirt that extended up higher than the turret, providing buoyancy. Most actually sank before reaching shore, but the first one of the ones to actually reach Juno beach looked out and later shared their view:
{{quote|I was the first tank coming ashore and the Germans started opening up with machine guns. But when we came to a halt on the beach, it was only then that they realized we were a tank when we pulled down our canvas skirt, the
* [[Order Versus Chaos]]: Nazi ideology is based upon a fabricated myth about Aryans, with strong emotional attachments to the state with the aid of romantic and religious symbolism and imagery. The Stalinist-Soviets claimed an ideology based upon 'rationalism' and a society based upon people-centric utilitarianism with
** Japanese ideology of the time is based upon the religion-ideology of State Shinto, though it had no need to fabricate a myth; they just held up the old myths about the creation of the world, the Japanese people and the part-kami lineage of the Emperor as true. Japan was far more effective than any other state at implementing a totalitarian government; the only thing that held it back was the Emperor's unwillingness to step forward and command his people directly. The one time he did so, they obeyed with stunning quiescence.
* [[One-Way Trip]]: Operation ''Ten-Go'' by the Japanese. The participants had absolutely no illusions about the fate that awaited them. but they believed they were [[Last Stand|going to die in a heroic stand and thus possibly help to save Japan]], rather than be annihilated in a [[Curb Stomp Battle]] without accomplishing anything."
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** Given what they were fighting with, the Poles gave a pretty good account of themselves.
** The United States had [[Badass Native|a few]] themselves.
* [[No Party Like a Donner Party]]:
▲** During the worst of the Siege of Leningrad, as food shortages led to widespread death by starvation, this happened quite a bit.
* [[The Quisling]]: [[Trope Namer]] [[wikipedia:Vidkun Quisling|Vidkun Quisling]], who betrayed his country to the Nazis and got stood up in front of a firing squad after the war. Other Quislings of World War II include President Wang Jingwei, Marshal Petain from France and Andrei Vlasov from the Soviet Union.
** A third of what was on paper the Army of the Republic of China remained loyal to what was in theory the government, i.e. half the Guomindang Divisions remained loyal to Jiang Jieshi. Most of the others weren't killed, though there was a high turnover rate. China had so many turncoats-turned-resistance fighters-turned-bandits that the historical community generally despairs of cataloguing them all, wringing its hands and splitting them up into local and regional warlords, nationalist guerrillas, communist guerrillas and Chinese Communist Party guerrillas, with some room for overlap. Ironically, the Nationalist Party's willingness to deal with Quisling Warlords after the war ended did a lot to alienate Chinese nationalists, though few people had problems with turncoat soldiers. A job was a job, after all.
** The United States had [[wikipedia:Martin James Monti|a few]], but it was mostly subverted. On the "played straight" side, a few of the business class sided with fascism, as did the German-American Bund (with shades of [[The Mole]]). On the subverted side...
*** Japanese-Americans did ''not'' betray the United States, though white Americans assumed they would. (It seems most of
*** Goebbels, trying to create an entire ''race'' of Quislings, declared the Sioux to be Aryan. [[Nice Job Fixing It, Villain|It backfired horribly]]; National Socialist activity was quickly outlawed on many reservations and they declared war on Germany before the United States declared war on Japan. (The Iroquois had never retracted their last declaration of war.)
** An example with a particularly nasty end was [[wikipedia:Andrey Vlasov|General Andrey Vlasov]]. A very promising General in the Red Army, he was captured by the Germans during the 1941-1942 Winter Counter-Offensives. He promptly volunteered to help raise and command an anti-Soviet Army out of Russian prisoners of war. At the end of the war he was (re)captured by the Soviets, who were ''extremely'' public about [[Cold-Blooded Torture|his fate.]]
* [[Rape, Pillage and Burn]]:
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** The aptly named "Nanjing Massacre" began with a simple order from Prince Asaka: "Kill all captives". His forces ended up branching into wanton destruction, looting and sexual assault. Thus the moniker 'the ''Rape'' of [[Why Mao Changed His Name|Nanking]]'.
** The German army did this quite often during their invasion. Russian families would be busted out of their own homes, doomed to a slow death. Many monuments were also destroyed, including Tolstoy's house, and of course, the "rape" part of the trope was not figurative.
** When the men of the Red Army finally entered Germany in 1945, after four years of death and destruction in the Soviet Union at the hands of the Germans, they were very angry. Despite direct orders from Stalin
** There are many instances of rape being dealt with quietly and confidentially and being covered up, even on the Allied side. The potential for political damage inherent in such crimes could be immense, as the reaction to such offences in subsequent - less well-censored - conflicts has shown. Nothing causes people to openly question a War of Liberation so much as a good spot of Rape, Pillage and Burn.
* [[Reasonable Authority Figure]]: Most Allied leaders. The Axis leaders, however...
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** Let's be honest. [[wikipedia:Sportpalast speech|"Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg?"]]
** At 3 July, during official appeal to people, Stalin gave impressive speech and said phrase, that became slogan for entire war: "Our way is right, enemy will be defeated, victory will be ours".
*** Levitan was a radio announcer
** Charles De Gaulle's Appeal of 18 June 1940.
{{quote|"This war is a worldwide war. All the mistakes, all the delays, all the suffering, do not alter the fact that there are, in the world, all the means necessary to crush our enemies one day. Vanquished today by mechanical force, in the future we will be able to overcome by a superior mechanical force. The fate of the world depends on it."}}
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** The US Army had cavalry units in the Pacific War.
* [[Secret Weapon]]: The nuclear bomb. Even many of the people involved in the project weren't clear on what they were doing.
* [[Sex Slave]]: "Comfort women", who were allegedly enslaved by the
** And while sex with 'sub-humans' was frowned upon in the racialist climates of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, most of the abuses that went on in the concentration camps have gone unspoken and undocumented. This gives us hilariously horrifying testimonies to the effect of 'They were only human when we raped them'.
* [[Shark Pool]]: The fate of the USS ''[[wikipedia:USS Indianapolis (CA-35)|Indianapolis]]''.
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* [[Stupid Jetpack Hitler]]
* [[The Spartan Way]]: The German and Japanese military forces in general. Any commando school worth its salt. And so on.
* [[Supervillain Lair]]: While not all can be considered supervillains, a few of the major leaders had some pretty cool lairs from where they conducted the war. Roosevelt, of course, had the White House and the Japanese were in the process of finishing their massive underground Matsushiro Imperial Headquarters when they surrendered. Stalin simply went into the Metro
* [[Taking You with Me]]: Japanese High Command's contingency plans for when the Home Islands were finally invaded. [[wikipedia:Operation Downfall|Thankfully for everyone involved, this never happened.]]
** Also Hitler's plans to take the German nation with him. The surviving forces surrendered a few days after his suicide.
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* [[Those Wacky Nazis]]: [[Trope Codifier]].
* [[Token Evil Teammate]]: This being [[War Is Hell|a war]], [[Black and Gray Morality|nobody]] was really morally ideal, but the Allies were decidedly less evil than the Axis... well, except for the Soviet Union, a mass-murdering totalitarian dictatorship who were only in because Hitler [[Stupid Evil|tried to conquer them]].
* [[Token Good Teammate]]: Finland was this to the Axis. A democratic, non-fascist, non-racist country which was only fighting to retake their territory from the Soviets. Of course, the fact that they did this alongside Hitler was a bit of a moral gray spot; they were merely caught between two monsters.
** Just to specify how strange Finland was among the other Axis powers: The Finns had many Jews in their army who fought alongside Nazi volunteers. The only thing that united them, really, was the goal of defending Finland from invasion.
*** When Himmler asked if they need help in solving
** Don't forget the
*** Jewish Finnish soldiers often did not accept German decorations.
* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: [[Awakening the Sleeping Giant|The attack on Pearl Harbor]]. Unfortunately, the nature of politics in Japan made this inevitable once the Army had failed to deliver in their attack on China and the Cabinet refused to negotiate a peace settlement with the Guomindang. Then, Hitler and his decision to declare war on the United States immediately thereafter. Less
* [[Trope Codifier]]: How many pop culture icons of [[The Forties]], [[The Fifties]], and [[The Sixties]] have their genesis here?
* [[Truce Zone]]: Any given neutral country. If strategically important, these tended to become a [[City of Spies]].
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* [[Worthy Opponent]]: Many Allied generals and leaders considered German Field Marshal [[wikipedia:Erwin Rommel|Erwin Rommel]], leader of the ''Afrikakorps'' (and co-trope namer of [[Magnificent Bastard]]), this. He outright refused many of Hitler's more evil orders several times, kept conditions for POWs humane (in fact, under his command, the Afrikakorps never committed any war crimes), was a pretty damned good general and was actually [[What a Senseless Waste of Human Life|forced to commit suicide]] during what was alleged to be a [[Heel Face Turn]] (the attempt to kill Hitler in the 20 July 1944 plot). He's the only German officer to have a museum in his name and has a display at the National Holocaust Museum in his honor.
** For it to have been a [[Heel Face Turn]], Rommel would first have had to have been a Heel.
* [[Young Future Famous People]]: Even more true than of [[World War
** What do [[J. D. Salinger]], [[The Muppet Movie|Charles Durning]], [[John Ford]], [[James Doohan]], and [[Star Wars|Sir Alec Guinness]] have in common? They were all storming the beaches or transporting troops there during the D-Day Invasion of Normandy.
*** It took Durning 50 years to open up about his experiences of that day to his family.
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=== Comic Books ===
* [[Captain America (comics)|Captain America]] punched Hitler in his very first issue. Most [[The Golden Age of Comic Books|Golden Age]] superheroes, since they were published during the war, fought Nazis at some point.
* This was [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] in ''[[Watchmen (comics)|Watchmen]]''. In an [[Easter Egg]] during the course of the novel we learn that The Comedian saw action in his masked identity against the Japanese in the South Pacific in 1942.
* ''[[The Desert Peach]]'' is a well-researched comic you've probably never heard of based in Africa, about the Desert Fox's fictional gay younger brother.
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=== Film ===
A complete list can be found [https://web.archive.org/web/20110817010629/http://www.wwii-movies.com/index.php?content=list&sortby=movieyear&sortorder=asc here]. A number of the works below cover multiple categories and are grouped according to their main setting. Quite a few of these film titles were shoehorned into the above paragraphs.
In an era where the only major forms of mass entertainment were radio, theatre and cinema (British television went off for the duration), it is not surprising that a very large number of movies were made during the war. Most of them were patriotic flag-wavers of some form or another, but some of these films (including said flag-wavers) have stood the test of time, such as ''[[Casablanca]]'', ''In Which We Serve'' and ''Went The Day Well?''.
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* ''[[The Thin Red Line]]'' - about a squad of Marines island-hopping, although the title refers originally to a small Scottish force in the Crimean War
* ''[[The Bridge on the River Kwai]]'' - focuses on British POWs put to work in Burma
* ''[[The Caine Mutiny]]'': A crazy captain is deposed and the officers stand court-martial for it. Basically the author got bored and entertained himself [[Up to Eleven|by reading naval regs]]. He comes across an interesting technicality, and out sprang the plot.
* ''[[Grave of the Fireflies]]'' - a slice of [[It Got Worse|Japanese civilian life]] in 1945
* ''[[Flags of our Fathers]]'' - the lives of the flag-raisers in the famous photo of raising the flag upon Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima
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* ''[[Kokoda]]'' - Australian soldiers in New Guinea
* ''[[Windtalkers]]'' - focuses on a group of Amerindians trained as signalmen because their language is entirely unknown outside the U.S.
* ''Run Silent, Run Deep'': As the title indicates, a notable [[Sub Story]] [[The Film of the Book|adapted from]] a work written by a real submariner.
* ''[[South Pacific]]''
* ''[[The Pacific]]'' - follows a group of US Marines through the Pacific island-hopping campaign
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* ''[[Patton]]'' - follows [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|General Patton]]
* ''[[The Desert Fox]]''
* ''The Rats of Tobruk'' - focus on [[
* ''[[Ice Cold in Alex]]''
* ''The Desert Rats''
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* ''Sahara''
* ''[[The English Patient]]''
* ''[[
* ''[[The Rat Patrol]]''
* ''[[A Walk in the Sun]]''
==== Southern Europe ====
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* ''633 Squadron''
* ''[[Catch-22]]''
* ''[[Twelve O'Clock High]]''
* Both versions of ''Memphis Belle''
* ''Reach for the Sky''
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* ''[[A League of Their Own]]''
* ''[[The Best Years of Our Lives]]'' concerns the efforts of three ex-servicemen to readjust to life in the States immediately ''after'' the war.
* ''[[
* ''[[1941]]'', though this one is a comedy.
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* [[Memoirs of a Geisha]] mainly took place during the Great Depression, though it was the start of the war that changed many things for the main character Sayuri.
* ''[[A Thread of Grace]]'' takes place in the year and a half between Italy's surrender and V-E day.
* [[Silent Ship, Silent Sea]]: A coming of age story aboard a damaged destroyer at Guadelcanal.
* ''[[Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall]]'' is [[Spike Milligan]]'s account of serving in the Royal Artillery in North Africa during the war.
* ''[[Shanghai Girls]]'' starts out in China in 1937, around the time Japanese soldiers invade.
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* ''[[Bomb Girls]]''
* ''Changi'': an Australian miniseries set in the titular Singaporean POW camp.
* ''[[Combat! (TV series)|Combat!]]''
* ''[[Dad's Army|Dads Army]]''
* Four ''[[Doctor Who]]'' stories - "[[Doctor Who
** On the [[Doctor Who Expanded Universe]] front, the novels ''Timewyrm: Exodus'', ''Just War'', ''Autumn Mist'', ''The Turing Test'', ''Illegal Alien'' and ''The Shadow in the Glass''.
* ''[[Foyle's War]]''
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=== Video Games ===
* ''[[Battlefield (series)|Battlefield 1942 and 1943]]''
* ''[[
* ''[[Wolfenstein 3D]]''
* ''[[Medal of Honor]]'' - except for the 2010 reboot.
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* ''[[Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe]]''
* ''B-17 Flying Fortress''
* The ''[[1942]]'' series of [[Shoot
* The Pacific campaign of ''[[Empire Earth]]: Art of Conquest''.
* ''[[Clock Tower|Clock Tower 3]]'' features the protagonist evading a serial killer during the London bombings.
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=== Western Animation ===
* ''[[Exo Squad]]'' is World War II [[Recycled in Space]]. Of course, it's not a complete rip-off but the entire premise just screams [[WW 2]]. And according to [[That Other Wiki]], the [[Word of God]] admits it.
* [[Wartime Cartoon|Many theatrical cartoons made in the early half of the 1940s]] had popular characters like [[Donald Duck]], [[Looney Tunes|Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck]], and [[Popeye (comic strip)|Popeye]] doing their part in the war effort.
* ''[[Histeria!]]'' had an episode about World War II featuring [[Franklin Roosevelt]], Winston Churchill, and [[Joseph Stalin]] as a group of superheroes fighting off an evil group led by a Satanic Adolf Hitler.
* In one episode of ''[[Justice League (animation)|Justice League]]'', the League has to go back in time and help out in the Normandy invasion to prevent Vandal Savage's plan of taking Hitler's place and using his knowledge of the future to win the war.
* Like ''Justice League'', ''[[Gargoyles]]'' had a WWII time travel episode. Goliath fights in the Battle of Britain.
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[[Category:The Forties]]
[[Category:World War II]]
[[Category:Useful Notes/Japan]]
[[Category:Useful Notes/Germany]]
[[Category:Useful Notes/Russia]]
[[Category:Useful Notes/Italy]]
[[Category:Useful Notes/Britain]]
[[Category:Pages with working Wikipedia tabs]]
[[Category:Useful Notes/History]]
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