World War II: Difference between revisions

* [[Babies Ever After]]: Most countries experienced heightened birth rates after the war, America so much so that the generation born in the decade immdeiatelyimmediately following has been known as "Baby Boomers" throughout their lives.

** Quite notable were the defenders of Westerplatte, in the first days of the war. Despite being completely unprepared (due to the government's indecisiveness on whether to prepare for war or not...), they held their position against overwhelming German forces, who considered them [[Worthy Opponent]]s to the point of allowing the Poles a surrender with full military honors once they ran out of ammo and food; the outpost commander was even allowed to keep his sabre.

** Except that the Finnish army didn't get stomped. They valiantly protected their sovereignty in both the Winter War of 1939-40 and the Continuation War of 1941-1944 with far lessfewer losses than what the Soviet Union suffered.

*** The ones who stayed in German-occupied Poland and managed to avoid capture by the Nazis went underground and [[La Résistance|organisedorganized themselves into two separate movements]]: the Home Army (AK) and the People's Army (AL). There were also some smaller, far-right resistance groups who fought both the Nazis and the Soviets.

* [[Best Served Cold]] : Adolf Eichmann, the micro-manager of the Holocaust, was kidnapped by the [[Mossad]] fifteen years after the end of the war and hauled to Israel to be tried and hanged.

** ComplitelyCompletely justified, as they correctly assumed that if Soviets will capturecaptured them they wonwouldn't be dealt with by just killing them quiklyquickly.

* [[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-sizedoversized and unguided predecessors of modern bunker-busters. By the end, the U.S. had developed—and deployed -- [[Atomic Hate|the first nuclear weapons]].

** It is kind of rare among wars, though, that in the aftermath no one arguedargues the need to fight it. Even the losers seemed to agree they lost, fair and square.

* [[Brother-Sister Team]] : Hans and Sophie Scholl, two [[Wide-Eyed Idealist|idealistic]] students who circled letters of protest against the Nazi government and got [[Off with His Head|guillotined for it]].

** [[Winston Churchill]] encouraged these and appointed a number to high positionpositions, and arguably, he was the greatest [[Bunny Ears Lawyer]] of them all. As some of [[The Dam Busters|these]] [[The Man Who Never Was|projects]] turned out to be very useful, and might not have been encouraged if he was not in charge, he deserves some credit for that to balance recent criticism of his strategic eccentricities.

* [[Catch Phrase]]: The letter V standing for "victory" in English (and assorted similarly rousing messages in other languages) was the Allied call- sign. [[La Résistance]] would draw it in graffiti, [[Winston Churchill]] would be photographed showing the V sign with his fingers and so on.

** There is a photo of some Chinese people after the Japanese surrendered. It gets kind of humourous when you notice they're doing the V backwardsbackward, [[Don't Explain the Joke|which is an obscene gesture in Britain]].

* [[Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys]]: The [[Trope Maker]] in the American consciousness. The actual truth behind the trope is mixed. It is true that the French generals were quite badly outwitted by the Germans in 1940. It is also true that the French installed an appeaser as Prime Minister (Petain) as soon as Paris was occupied and then signed an armistice with the Germans. Signing an armistice took the powerful French Navy and France's empire out of the war. However, the French Army actually fought very hard and took a lot of casualties in 1940, they were just badly led and lacked of modern means of communication. The troops manning the perimeter at Dunkirk while the British Expeditionary Force withdrew so it could continue the war and protect its home nation were mostly French, , and the Free French Forces led by General Charles De Gaulle kept fighting throughout the whole war . The French Resistance's bravery and daring isare rightly the stuff of legend too.

** Polish Boy Scouts. They were [[Badass]] and [[Last Stand|the Warsaw revolt]] was their [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]]. The Hitler Youth were this on the other side.

** This is in stark contrast to the Cold War, in which almost bugger-all happened internally.

* [[Cool Horse]]: [[The Cavalry]] actually had something of a minor comeback in this era because you cancould 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.

** [[Finns With Fearsome Forests|Finland]] had laughably few men and motorisedmotorized vehicles compared to Soviet Russia, but with those men and ''[[wikipedia:Finnhorse|farm horses]]'' they did rather well in the Winter War. After the war, Russia didn't want to hear about their own captured horses but did accept Finnish horses for an indemnity payment.

* [[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. AtIn 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 proper finale beingis still in the future, as Japan and Russia have yet to finalize treaty terms due to continuing disputedisputes over what Japan calls the Hoppo Ryodo and Russia knows as the Southern Kurile Islands.

** Known for Soviets is the French Normandie-Niemen fighter squadron, that fought along with Soviet troops and in the end were permitted to keep planes they flew after their return to France.

** USSR: Guards regiments - promoted from normal stats for exceptional behaviourbehavior in combat, both in terms of effectiveness and moralmorale. Were better supplied, had more combat experience than usual, and thus fought much more effectively thatthe rest.

* [[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.

** 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."

** 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. Reportedly Halsey broke into tears at the message and its implications about him.

** 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, but 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 led to the deaths of almost all young aspiring pilots the Japanese had, pilots who would have been great replacements for the veterans they were loosinglosing daily.

*** The brutalization of their conscripts and the peer pressure of the honourhonor 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 companycompanies, polite or otherwise.

*** Also, Hitler's refusal to let his armies retreat... which leadled to disasters like Stalingrad and the entrapment of an entire Army Group of 200,000 troops in the Courland Pocket in the Baltics. Also, not evacuating civilians or allowing evacuations when the Soviet Army would kill/rape/deport them anyway in revenge.

* [[The Hunter Becomes the Hunted]]: Early in the war, the U-boats enjoyed an uncontested advantage against merchant shipping, a period referred to as "The Happy Days" by the Germans. The Allies reversed the situation with the introduction of the radar, long rage-range aerial surveillance, and improvements in the convoy and sonar systems that rendered most U-boats deadly obsolete. The Germans [[Can't Catch Up]].

* [[It's Raining Men]]: HappenedThis happened many times during the war, from the use of glider-borne troops to capture Fort Eben-Emael in Belgium in May 1940 to Operation Varsity, Montgomery's use of a parachute drop in crossing the Rhine in March 1945. Generally, paratroops were shown to be effective in small-scale, targeted operations (Eben-Emael as noted above, the seizure of Pegasus Bridge on D-Day). They were less effective in large-scale drops like the D-day drops and Operation Market Garden, (dramatized in the films ''[[The Longest Day]]'' and ''[[A Bridge Too Far]]''), when getting the troops on the ground in an organized manner and then expecting them to fend off attacks with armor proved difficult to impossible.

* [[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 a big partisan movement in USSR by soldiers that was surrounded, escaped, but didn't managedmanage to rejoin the army and civilians. Partisans, where able, were supported, with paradroppedpara dropped supplies and even soldiers and officers. Best known aspect is railroad war, when partisans mined and disabled tracks in different fashions, sending trains downhill and destroying bridges.

*** They played a huge role in operationOperation Bagration: Germans were led to believe that the attack would be through Ukraine. Immediately before the attack, all roads were disabled and troops in Belarus were left without help.

*** Many people like to forget (or don't even know in the first place) that the Home Army was also the largest, most successful organized resistance force in occupied Europe, creating an entire [[Underground State]], complete with its own universities, postal service, courts and, well, army. And if Stalin didn't want pretty much every smarter-than-average Pole that's was not under his direct control (the PKWN puppet government estabilishedestablished in the USSR), the uprising would succeed and the original, pre-Warwar government could return from exile. C'est la vie.

** Japanese treatment of Chinese POWs was mixed. Generally, they would be bayoneted upon capture or conscripted into the armies of Japanese puppet- warlords. Japanese soldiers were a law unto themselves as far as civilians were concerned, and the IJA holds the dubious honourhonor of being the force with the most sexual assaults to its name. Their treatment of Allied POWs varied a great deal. See the treatment of POWs in the "Bataan Death March" - some got nice comfy rides in vehicles and food and chances to freshen up, while others got stabbed to death, shat their pants, and were forced to walk while diseased and hungry in the hot sun with no food or water. Sometimes, the Japanese would be very nice and provide food and refreshments or talk to the US soldiers - some were in the same graduation ceremonies in universities in the case of officers - and sometimes the very same people would beat other POWs to death the next day.

** In March 1941, Hitler issued what has come to be known as the ‘Commissar Order,’ which clearly spelled out the future nature of the war in Russia. The coming conflict was to be "one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be waged with unprecedented, unmerciful, and unrelenting hardness." It also instructed Hitler’s subordinates to execute commissars and exonerated his soldiers of any future excess. "Any German soldier who breaks international law will be pardoned," the Führer stated. At a subsequent gathering to explain the application of this order to senior army officers, General Edwin Reinecke, the officer responsible for the treatment of POWs, told his audience, "The war between Germany and Russia is not a war between two states or two armies, but between two ideologies — namely, the National Socialist and the Bolshevist ideology. The Red Army soldier must be looked upon not as a soldier in the sense of the word applying to our Western opponents, but as an ideological enemy. He must be regarded as the archenemy of National Socialism and must be treated accordingly."

* [[Let's Get Dangerous]]: Too many countries to name, but America, Britain, and the Soviets all had their standout moments.

** The swastika, for its part, was based offon a symbol of Buddhism, HiduismHinduism, and JanismJainism.

* [[The Load]]: Italy. Every significant military accomplishment of theirs came ''before'' the war, when they managed the '[[Sarcasm Mode|huge]]' feats of conquering Ethiopia and Albania. During actual hostilities, their record was horrible, with Germany having to bail them out after they got in over their head. Upon entering the war against France, 32 Italian divisions were held at bay by ''five'' French divisions. They almost immediately lost their colonies in Somalia and Ethiopia to the British, and the attempt to invade British Egypt from Libya almost led to the total loss of Libya, with only the arrival of Rommel's Afrika Corps prolonging the war there for another two years. Their invasion of Greece likewise stalled, and, again, the Germans had to be called in to finish the job. Then, after defeat in Africa and the conquest of Sicily by the Allies, [[Heel Face Turn|they switched sides]] (where they weren't much more effectual), requiring the Germans to occupy and defend Italy all by themselves.

** Italy wasn't ready for the war for a series of reasons, the most evident of which beingis that the Italian industry, while capable toof produceproducing 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 choosechose 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 aircraft (best known of which is the [[wikipedia:Savoia-Marchetti SM.79|Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 Sparviero]], Sparviero being Italian for [[Big Badass Bird of Prey|Sparrowhawk]]), had bombs too little to do the job (nicknamed cowshit drops by the Italian Navy for their ineffectiveness) was still equipped with very manouverablemaneuverable but too slow ''biplane fighters'', and the new monoplane fighters, while on par and sometimes superior to the ones of other powers, were too little and too late. The navy was powerful and arguably the best of the Italian armed forces, but lacked carriers and torpedo boats due [[Interservice Rivalry|rivalry with the air force]] and Mussolini thinking that the Italian peninsula was an unsinkable carrier by itself, was insufficiently supported by the air force (that usually arrived on the battlefield too late and had the unfortunate tendency to [[Friend or Foe|mistake the Italian ships for the British ones]]. That's also how the Italian navy learned of the ineffectiveness of the air force bombs), suffered from an extremely restrictive operative doctrine that included the fleet being directed from Rome until a few minutes before the battle (meaning the Royal Navy always knew where the Italians were by tracking the radio signals), and the fact they weren't fighting the French Navy (that the Italian Navy was tailored to counter and defeat with a combination of speed advantage in the lesser ships and four battleships that outgunned everything in the world save for the ''Yamato'' and the most massive American battleships) but the Royal Navy, that the Italian sailors admired and feared and whose ships and aggressive operative doctrine seemed tailored to take advantage of the Italian ships [[Fragile Speedster|sacrificing protection for speed]] and their restrictive operative doctrine. Finally, the army suffered of severe morale problems (a reflection of the Italian people's lack of enthusiasm for the war), a shortage of modern or efficient equipment, and most high officers and generals getting their ranks from politics rather than actual ability impairing the ability and, most important, the ''will'' to fight of most units in spite of the soldiers combat capability (Rommel, whose troops included both Germans and Italians, admitted that the Italian soldiers were superior to the German ones, but the officers were a disaster). As [[La Résistance|partisans]] the now motivated Italians fared much better, even taking control of enclaves and defending them against overwhelming force for short periods and, on April 25, 1945, launching a general insurrection that prevented the Germans from regrouping and hold off the Allies at the Po river.

* [[Macross Missile Massacre]]: The first occurred when the Soviets used the BM series, better known as Katyushas. One truck being able to launch as muchmany explosives in seconds as a big artillery battery in minutes, it had a huge psychological effect on both friend and foe.

** 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. FirstThe 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?":

*** Wot, no [bacon, sugar, bread, tea, or other rationed product]?

** In December 1941, Hitler was simultaneously facing the United Kingdom, its Commonwealth ''and'' the Soviet Union, which together comprised a rather significant portion of the Earth's surface and population. This wasn't enough for him, however, so he decided to antagonize the one major power left on Earth that was not (actively) trying to crush him beyond hope of recognition by declaring war on the United States. Which left the share of world population and GDP actively working against him and his allies at over two -thirds each, roughly, to his less than a fifth on both counts. Herr Derr indeed.

*** Especially noting, that Hitler said that fighting inon two fronts willwould ruin Germany.

* [[Not-So-Harmless Villain]]: Japan and ''China''. Some contemporary racialist classification theories explain at length the docile and effeminate nature of Asians and Orientals, which accounts for their innate obedience to authority and willingness to co-operatecooperate rather than compete and advance technologically. By all accounts, they ought to have been fairly harmless, really...

* [[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 emphasis on international workers' solidarity and the promised land of a past-scarcity, post-capitalist world.

** 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.

** The High Command and the Emperor believed that they would make a difference (largely, it was just the Emperor, who asked what the Navy was doing to help defend Okinawa. Called out and feeling pressured, they decided to make a gesture. That gesture was ''Ten-Go''). One sailor noted, "What country demonstrated to the world what aircraft can do to battleships?" [[War and Peace|Tolstoy]] was also apparently in vogue on the ''Yamato'''s last days. Oddly enough, the ''Yamato'' and ''Musashi'', the two most powerful battleships of the war, were the only two sunk in open water by carrier-launched planes.

* [[Patriotic Fervor]]: Imperial Japan and [[Nazi Germany]] are famous asfor perversions of this into Jingoistic Ultra-Nationalism. All other countries encouraged it as sort of a collective "fight or flight mechanism". [[Winston Churchill]] was notable among the Allies for his ability to stir up this kind of thing, especially with a [[Rousing Speech]] or two.

* [[Pragmatic Villainy]]: Generalissimo [[Francisco Franco]], who didn't enter the war because he was satisfied with his power (except for raising a division of volunteers for the Russian front, a token force he later withdrew as soon as he could find a political excuse for doing so). He also was relatively low on the atrocity scale compared to Hitler and Stalin and didn't persecute Jews, because there was no particular reason to and he had Jewish relations. Franco avoided overly extravagant evil because he was practical and [[Genre Savvy]], not because he was virtuous. There is a reason why he outlived fellow Fascist dictators Hitler and Mussolini by 30 years.

*** And the most legendary fighters in the war, so effective that German soldiers feared meeting them in battle more than any other foe on the Western frontFront: the [[Canucks With Chinooks|Canadians]]. [[Beware the Nice Ones|Seriously]].

* [[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 cataloguingcataloging 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.

** 'Kill All, Burn All, Seize All' - General Okamura's eloquently- put policy on the pacification of north-central China. Rape wasn't officially on the agenda, but it managed to accumulate a certain priority of its own in practice. Mass rape wasn't part of the programme for the pacification of the lower Yangtze deltaDelta, for instance, but something that happened off the books albeit on a large and somewhat organisedorganized scale.

** 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]]'.

** 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 offencesoffenses 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.

** We can also assume [[Token Evil Teammate|Stalin]] was not the "most allied leaders", but during the war, he was said to receivehave a much more reasonable attitude.

** The Prussian and Bavarian officer corps were pretty damn reasonable. Unfortunately for them, [[My Master, Right or Wrong|they swore an oath of loyalty to Hitler and were bound by that]], though it broke in places - like ordering retreats even when Hitler ordered otherwise and a few assassination attempts. But in general, that oath of loyalty locked them into the path of destuctiondestruction.

** General Homma of the Japanese military was pretty reasonable. In fact, he was so reasonable, that he was recalled for being too reasonable to POWs in the Philippines and was dishonored by the general staff. He was also so reasonable, that the Allies tried him for war crimes and executed him, mostly for the "crime" of humiliating Douglas MacArthur.

* [[The Remnant]]: Surprisingly rare. The Axis armies were completely broken after the war, and only a handful of die-hards continued a very limited level of insurgency. Some Axis troops in Yugoslavia did continue fighting for a couple of weeks after Germany surrendered, though.

** American policy on German and Japanese reconstruction was a mess, but the gist of it was that their economies should be left to flounder at the best, and deliberately de-industrialisedindustrialized at the worst. When the Cold War got going, though, the reconstruction money started pouring in soon enough.

** Also Germany's attitude. Germany's treatment after World War One was the whole reason Hitler came to power, and something he constantly cited.

** AtOn 3 July, during an official appeal to the people, Stalin gave an impressive speech and said a phrase, that became the slogan for the entire war: "Our way is right, enemy will be defeated, victory will be ours".

*** Levitan was a radio announcer who gave plenty of them, and Nazis hated him for that; Hitler even declared him a personal enemy. Germans tried hard to kill him, and there were even reports of GermanGermans shooting active loudspeakers to silence him.

** Fun fact: In 1939, the British Army's UK-based regular units were completely motorized. Some units policing the the Empire overseas went into action on horseback asin late 1940. The Scots Greys kept their horses until 1941. Even the technologically advanced Wehrmacht used horses for rear-echelon transportation for the entire war.

* [[Sex Slave]]: "Comfort women", who were allegedly enslaved by the thousands by the Japanese. The authenticity of these claims is muddied by the first source of these claims being [[North Korea]] and Korean historians' inability to find period evidence.

* [[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 (subway), which then changed to its second purpose: the world's biggest bomb shelter. Churchill had the Cabinet War Rooms, while Hitler had nearly a ''dozen'' at his disposal. The most prominent ''Führerhauptquartiere'' included the Berghof (Hitler's private Bavarian residence), the Wolf's Lair (his Eastern Front headquarters, where the July 20 plot happened) and his ''Führerbunker'' in Berlin (where he killed himself). As for Mussolini...[http://www.cracked.com/article_18931_6-supervillains-from-history-that-make-joker-look-subtle.html just take a look at this seriously-not-Photoshopped picture under #5].

** Many pilots would turn their damaged planes into makeshift manned bombs when they realized they could not eject or escape their doom, hoping to take down just one more enemy before their demise. This gave rise to the Kamikaze specialSpecial attackAttack squadronSquadron. Take a wild guess what they specialized in.

* [[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 werewas 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 whichthat was only fighting to retake theirits 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.

** Also, people in various occupied countries who helped to hide Jews from the Nazis, or in some cases, such as the Danish Resistance, helpinghelped thousands escape to neutral countries such as Sweden.

* [[Unobtanium]] : Oil, rubber, and metals of all kinds. In fact, there were way too many types of materials that counted as [[Unobtanium]] at this time.

* [[Violence Is the Only Option]]: The Dutch pinned their hopes ofon staying neutral again like [[World War I|last time]], when they had a bit of an economic depression, but at least didn't get the land turned into [[Mordor]] like their neighboursneighbors, the Belgians. It didn't work out this time, and without Allied backup [[Curb Stomp Battle|they lasted 4 days]]. Then again, the Belgians lasted 10, so it might not have mattered much.

** First, the Netherlands only surrendered because Germany threatened to bomb Rotterdam, since the German army couldn't break the Grebbeline. And yes, the bombing did continue, but that was because the airplanes were already in the air. Second, the Dutch army managed to destroy a lot of the German Luftwaffe (specifically the landing material), much of which they never recovered.

* [[The War to End All Wars]]: Kind of. There hasn't been a conflict even remotely on its scale since, but there's been plenty of smaller -scale wars.

* [[We Have Reserves]]: Was used widely in the Soviet Union in the early years of war and the Japanese used it as well (with lesser success).

** Altogether the Nationalist Party, various Communist Parties and local and regional Warlords of China mobilisedmobilized 14 million men over the course of the China Incident. At the end of 1945, there were 5 million troops in China, half of them Warlord troops. Granted, there was a lot of shoddy book-keepingbookkeeping and desertion, but the nationalists alone lost some 1.5 million troops.

*** Doohan landed on Juno Beach on D-Day as a member of the Royal Canadian Artillery. Soon after, while walking across a mine fieldminefield, he and his unit were attacked by enemy fire, as the Germans shot at them with machine guns. He was hit by four bullets to the leg, histhe middle finger of his right hand was shot off, and a bullet struck his chest. His life was saved when it hit a silver cigarette case whichthat had been given to him by his brother.

** The article is somewhat [[Did Not Do the Research]], as Nazi=white supremacist is a long sought -after and misleading understanding. Lots of high -ranking Nazis express interest and respect for the Orient, their racism ranges specifically for Jewish, Roma, Slav and all the rest that you already know. In general, East Asians got better off than the rest in Germany, whowhich was supporting the Nationalist China with weaponweapons and advisers, and only drew their support after the [[Second Sino-Japanese War]] broke out, [[Chiang Kai Shek]] 's second son was in German military as an exchange student and actually took part in the invasion of Poland, and only came back after the Nazi-Japanese Alliance was made.

* ''[[Grave of the Fireflies]]'' - the death of a Japanese boy and his younger sister from starvation towards the end of the war. (No, that doesn't need a spoiler tag: [[Foregone Conclusion|you are told at the start of the movie]].)

* [[Silent Ship, Silent Sea]]: A coming -of -age story aboard a damaged destroyer at Guadelcanal.

* ''[[World War II Online]]'' - a massively multiplayer first person shooter setduringset during the Battle of France. Notable for featuring the [[Gauls With Grenades|French Armed Forces]].