World War II: Difference between revisions

[[File:world war two 170.jpg|frame|Humanity's best and worst were displayed for all the world to see.]]

 

 

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.

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'.]]

 

 

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).

 

== The Aftermath ==

 

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.

 

 

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.

* [[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.

{{quote|'''Soldier:''' Allied ships in the Channel!

'''Command:''' How many?

*** 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>

* [[Anyone Can Die]]: And they do.

* [[Awakening the Sleeping Giant]]: Maybe bombing Pearl Harbor wasn't such a good idea.

* [[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.

** 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]]

* [[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.

* [[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.

* [[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.

* [[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.)

* [[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.

* [[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.

* [[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.

* [[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 Marlene" has been called the theme song of the entire war.

* [[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.

* [[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!]]

* [[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".

* [[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 Philippines to avoid capture by the Japanese.

* [[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?":

** Given what they were fighting with, the Poles gave a pretty good account of themselves.

** The United States had [[Badass Native|a few]] themselves.

* [[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.

* [[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.

* [[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.

** 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.

 

=== Comic Books ===

* 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.

 

=== Film ===

 

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?''.

* ''[[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

* ''[[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

* ''[[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.

* ''[[South Pacific]]''

* ''[[The Pacific]]'' - follows a group of US Marines through the Pacific island-hopping campaign

* ''[[Patton]]'' - follows [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|General Patton]]

* ''[[The Desert Fox]]''

* ''[[Ice Cold in Alex]]''

* ''The Desert Rats''

* ''Sahara''

* ''[[The English Patient]]''

* ''[[The Rat Patrol]]''

 

==== Southern Europe ====

* ''633 Squadron''

* ''[[Catch-22]]''

* Both versions of ''Memphis Belle''

* ''Reach for the Sky''

* ''[[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.

 

* [[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.

* ''[[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.

* ''[[Bomb Girls]]''

* ''Changi'': an Australian miniseries set in the titular Singaporean POW camp.

* ''[[Dad's Army|Dads Army]]''

** 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]]''

=== Video Games ===

* ''[[Battlefield (series)|Battlefield 1942 and 1943]]''

* ''[[Wolfenstein 3D]]''

* ''[[Medal of Honor]]'' - except for the 2010 reboot.

* ''[[Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe]]''

* ''B-17 Flying Fortress''

* 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.

=== 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.

* ''[[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.

* Like ''Justice League'', ''[[Gargoyles]]'' had a WWII time travel episode. Goliath fights in the Battle of Britain.

 

[[Category:The Forties]]

[[Category:World War II]]