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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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*** 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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* [[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.
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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]]
* [[Media Research Failure]]: 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 [[Media Research Failure]] 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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* [[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 Marlene" has been called the theme song of the entire war.
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* [[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!]]
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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 Philippines to avoid capture by the Japanese.
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* [[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.
▲* [[Media Research Failure]]: 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 [[Media Research Failure]] all around.
* [[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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** 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.
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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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* ''[[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/Recap/S26/E03 The Curse of Fenric|The Curse of Fenric]]", "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S27/E09 The Empty Child|The Empty Child]]"/"[[Doctor Who/Recap/S27/E10 The Doctor Dances|The Doctor Dances]]", "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S31/E03 Victory of the Daleks|Victory of the Daleks]]" and "[[Doctor Who/Recap/2011 CS the Doctor the Widow and the Wardrobe|The Doctor The Widow and the Wardrobe]]."
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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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[[Category:Useful Notes/Britain]]
[[Category:Pages with working Wikipedia tabs]]
[[Category:Useful Notes/History]]
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