World War II: Difference between revisions

The monetary cost of the war is literally incalculable - Russia dodged its bill entirely, for instance, by becoming a whole new country - but the average cost to European human capital was about 6%, domestic assets about 11% and national wealth some 10-20%. Furthermore, the conclusion of the war and the creation of so many new, weak states along national lines resulted in a Europe that spent most of its time grappling with great political unrest instead of addressing the fundamental structural economic problems which underpinned much of said unrest. Almost overnight Europe went from a handful of currencies with fixed exchange rates to over a dozen currencies with variable exchange rates. Where there had been a handful of tariff barriers and taxation systems before, there were dozens. Germany, whose economic power would have together with France and Britain been required to 'save' Europe from itself, was deliberately weakened and saddled with near-crippling war-reparations debts. London had managed the world's pre-war banking; now, the situation was too complex and London too weak for it to exert any real control over it, and New York refused to step up to the plate and take charge of the situation. Furthermore, the four-year war disrupted the natural trade cycles of Europe and resulted in economies that had to be re-geared to peace-time conditions post-1918. Which resulted in mass unemployment and gave impetus to Socialist and Fascist movements through much of Europe. The danger seemed to have passed by about 1923, with things taking a shaky turn for the better... but then came the Great Depression, which saw world industrial production down by a fifth and trade by half. With this came unemployment rates of some 5-30% for many countries, these figures often concealing vast regional and temporal variations. The political implications of all this for social unrest were only intensified given the poor or non-existent state of social welfare throughout the industrial world.

The creation of the 'new' states and the redrawing of national borders left German minorities dotted all over central-eastern Europe. What was more, in some areas bordering Germany and Austria they were actually majorities, such as in now-Italian Trent (in the modern province of Alto-[[Adige/Süd Tirol|Süd Tirol]]) where the Italians had rigged the League of Nations census in their favour in order to obtain a natural border with the Alps. [[Plot Point|All this would be important later.]] In the meantime, Austria, Hungary, and Germany had their armed forces heavily regulated, were required to pay heavy reparations to the Allies and were forbidden from a political union with each other.

It is debated to what extent these reparations were exceptionally harsh and what their role was in the later economic collapse. The reparations, while initially high, were greatly reduced in the intervening decades, and much leeway was given to the Germans in how and when to pay them. This is in addition to the fact that, in practice, the reparation payments were for the most part all but ignored, with the Germans often simply refusing to pay.

One year earlier, a border clash had broken out between the disorganized and factious Republic of China and the Japanese Empire, after a Japanese soldier went missing during exercises near the 'Marco Polo Bridge' (near Beijing). Ironically, after nearly half a century of political and economic expansion at the expense of China, Japan was in the spring of 1937 minded to follow Britain's example in China and gradually disengage (politically and militarily) from the region, viewing the Soviet Union as a far greater threat for reasons both ideological and practical, with some overly-optimistic elements of the military hoping to expand into Siberia. (Urban) Chinese public opinion, on the other hand, would not stand for anything less than firm opposition to Japan, opposing any further political compromises and railing at real and perceived insults to Chinese national pride. So when the Marco Polo Bridge incident turned into yet another border skirmish, the conflict quickly escalated to a scale that the leadership of neither side wanted. Generalissimo Jiang and his entourage would have much preferred to avoid a full-scale war to focus on eliminating Communists, independent-minded Warlords and banditry; The Imperial Cabinet was happy with trading with China and preparing for the seemingly-inevitable war against the Soviets.

As it was Generalissimo Jiang quickly committed his best forces to destroying the Japanese concession in Shanghai, part of his strategy for defending the lower Yangtze delta - the economic heartland of the territory under the control of his Nationalist Party, which dominated the government of the Republic by virtue of the strength his armed forces. This led to a curious spectacle wherein the Japanese government continued to insist that this latest 'China Incident' was [[Suspiciously Specific Denial|not a war]], [[Blatant Lies|even as they committed half a million men, supported by tanks and aeroplanes and warships, to fight a highly-visible battle which dragged on for three-months.]] The street-to-street, house-to-house fighting at Shanghai is yet another of the many origin stories for what later became known as the 'Molotov cocktail'. Jiang's men resort to using them against armoured cars and tanks because they don't have enough anti-tank weapons, [[Right Hand Versus Left Hand|and the ones they do have usually aren't where they're needed.]] The Empire's usual spiel about pan-asian co-operation, with Japan as the leader of Asia, rang rather hollow as the battle resulted in some 300 000 military dead and the advancing Japanese army broke discipline for a spot of unpleasantness in the comparatively-lightly defended (now former-)National Capital at Nanjing. The few foreigners remaining in the city tell of events which newspapers in the Occident eye-catchingly call 'the Rape of Nanjing' or 'the Nanjing Massacre'.

In any case, the rapid advance into coastal and riverine China is ground to a halt after just a few months - the Imperial Army's supply chains are stretched to their limits, and they quickly find that to spread themselves any thinner is to invite another series of counter-attacks. This kind of rapid advance is what the Japanese army has been trained and equipped for, and they have executed it brilliantly. This leaves Japan in control of all the most economically and strategically important regions of China... [[Didn't Think This Through|fighting a war of huge expense against the world's most populous nation for no good reason]], [[Forever War|with no end to the conflict in sight.]] Well, not for several years, at the least. [[It Got Worse|Furthermore, the Soviets are looking more threatening than ever.]] What happened was the Imperial Cabinet was persuaded that the Nationalists would either be crushed or brought to the negotiating table in just another year or two of rapid advances, and the Republic's leadership realised that public hostility to Japan left no room for them negotiate anything short of a white peace with the Empire. What followed was years of the messiest partisan fighting ever. This was on top of the standard fare of open warfare which raged on and off between the IJA and Jiang's loyal Nationalist Revolutionary Army forces.

However, this was followed by claims on the Sudetenland and the border areas of Czecho-Slovakia, which both held German majorities. This was a bit more difficult, as Czechoslovakia was overwhelmingly Czech and Slovak, and they were unwilling to simply give up their border areas (which not-coincidentally held all its fortifications and military bases.) War was narrowly avoided with the signing of the Munich Agreement, signed by Germany, Italy, France, and Britain. (Czechoslovakia notably being absent from negotiations.) Czechoslovakia would be forced to give up the Sudetenland. Less well known, Czechoslovakia was also forced to give a slice of territory to Hungary and a scrap to Poland. But Europe and her dependencies breathed a sigh of relief - war had been avoided. British Prime Minister [[Neville Chamberlain]] (in)famously announced, [[Never Live It Down|"I believe it is peace for our time."]] Hitler promised this was his last territorial demand.

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'.]]

After failing to bring Britain down, Hitler looks east to his old enemy -- the [[Soviet Union]]. Until then, the Soviets weren't ''officially'' Hitler's enemy. In 1939, [[Strange Bedfellows|the Germans and Soviets had entered into the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact]], in which they agreed not to fight each other, secretly agreed to divide up Poland between them, and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|Germany licensed the Soviets to build their copy of a BMW motorcycle.]] This alliance of convenience was useful to both sides, but neither expected it to last, and Hitler's life dream had always been to destroy the "Jewish Communists" in the Soviet Union. [[Josef Stalin]] agreed to the pact to buy time to rebuild his army, which was totally disorganized after the political purges of the 1930's and the disaster of an attempted invasion of Finland. Finally on June 22, 1941, exactly one year after the fall of France, Hitler launches Operation Barbarossa. It is the greatest offensive in the history of warfare ever, in which nearly four million men storm across the border into Russia: three German Army Groups of about a million men each, supplemented with Italians, Croats, Romanians and Hungarians and other fascist allies. The battle line stretched from the Arctic Ocean down to the Black Sea.

But even an army of four million isn't enough to conquer Russia, [[Near Villain Victory|although it seems for a while that it might be]]. The Germans, [[General Failure|inadvertently assisted by Soviet command]], who hadn't any real practice in commanding and filtered reports, so only good ones came, initially plunge deep into the USSR, advancing up to fifty kilometers a day. The Soviets reel back in panic and confusion, suffering thousands of casualties. However, Soviet forces continue to fight fiercely, even after they've been bypassed and cut off. The Germans suffer serious difficulties with supplies as they advanced farther and farther east, and the lengthening of the front as the Soviets withdraw into the interior serves to dissipate their forces. [[La Résistance|Large units of Soviet partisans rise up behind German lines and wage a guerrilla war, and communist partisans also mobilize in Yugoslavia and Greece]], forcing the Germans to relocate some units to the Balkans. Stalin is also able to transfer fresh troops from the Soviet Far East after determining that the Japanese in Manchuria have no intention of attacking him in the rear. The Russians move entire manufacturing plants the other way, putting them deep behind the Ural mountains and in western Siberia, where they'll be out of reach of the German bombers.

After the fall of France, Japan takes the opportunity to effectively seize the French colony of Indochina -- including modern-day Vietnam -- ostensibly at the "invitation" of the collaborationist Vichy government. President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] has been looking for an excuse to act against them for a while now, so the United States restricts steel and oil exports to Japan in a full embargo in an attempt to bring them to the negotiating table. Since the US is Japan's #1 supplier of both essential commodities, the Japanese government is forced between a rock and a hard place; they cannot be seen as backing down to the USA, but they don't have the strength to take them on and win. With Holland fallen to the Germans and England preoccupied elsewhere the Imperial Navy again proposes, for the umpteenth time, their plan to strike south to seize the oil supplies and rich natural resources of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and British Malaya. This time, however, the Cabinet is willing to listen; the fleet's oil supplies will be depleted within a matter of months and it's not like the Navy and its attached ground forces - the Special Naval Landing Forces - have been making a huge contribution to the China theatre anyway. Taking on the Dutch means taking on Britain, which almost invariably means war with the United States. Given the awkward strategic position of the Philippines, they will have to be taken too if the plan is to [[Didn't Think This Through|'succeed'.]]

Rational officers like Admiral Yamamato, who understand the US's real strength - c.30% of World GDP to Japan's c.3%, and nearly 51% of the entire world's industrial capacity, albeit much of it still idled by the Great Depression - object to this [[Honor Before Reason]] line of suicidal thinking, but are [[My Country, Right or Wrong|duty-bound]] to follow the government's orders. Yamamato decides that, if this course must be taken, Japan's best chance of victory lies in making a preemptive strike at the US Pacific Fleet, then based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; hopefully, the USA will simply drop its sanctions and negotiate a peace treaty instead of going to the enormous expense and inconvenience of replacing much of its fleet and taking the offensive to Japan.

The Imperial Army's advances into Burma cut off the 'Burma Road', China's sole remaining transport link to the Allied world, which forces the Americans to fly everything from bazookas to bandages over 'the Hump' of the Himalayas. As Nationalist-aligned warlord troops and the Sepoys of the British Indian Army bring the offensive to a halt in the Himalayan foothills, Gandhi and the Indian National Congress declare the Quit India movement [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|which advocates Britain's immediate withdrawal from India.]] Gandhi and the Congress are imprisoned for the duration of the war, and acts of open rebellion and sabotage are quite brutally suppressed. However, Jinna and the Indian Muslim League declare their loyalty to the British Raj - their proposal of an independent or autonomous Indian Muslim state being taken more seriously as a consequence. US forces hop from strategically-important island to island, avoiding fighting non-essential battles and winning each one. But this comes at what the Americans consider frightful costs in the face of garrisons of China-veteran marines who fight almost literally to the last man rather than surrender. The War in the East as a whole is a particularly vicious one, the mutual (racial) hatred and animosity on all sides meaning that [[Leave No Survivors|quarter is rarely asked or given]].

In 1943, the German forces on the Eastern Front are relentlessly pushed back. The last German offensive at Kursk leads to the biggest tank battle in history and a crushing defeat for Hitler (strategically; the Soviet casualties were... extreme, to say the least, [[We Have Reserves|but with more and more and more men and machines coming to the front, Stalin had no reason to worry that much about things like losing three hundred thousand men and six thousand tanks]]). Stalin sees the success of the operation as a vindication of his growing trust in his Generals and their Staffs, stepping back to let them organise military operations themselves. Hitler [[Surrounded by Idiots|sees the outcome as proof of his own Generals' incompetence]] - [[Never My Fault|though the offensive was his idea]] - and [[What an Idiot!|moves to micromanage the entire German war effort in ever-greater detail]]. With morale skyrocketing because they just defeated the Germans in the summer, the Soviets spend the rest of the year inexorably pushing the Germans further and further back, bleeding them dry and wearing down their ability to resist.

While the war turns against him in Europe, Hitler and his cronies begin planning a thorough program of genocide, one that we know today as '[[Final Solution|The Holocaust]]'. This is an organised response to the problems created by Germany's dominion over various new subject peoples come Operation Barbarossa. Ghettos and Work-camps were only part of the solution; while many Red Army prisoners and able-bodied undesirables could be worked to death in the mines, minefields and factories, there was really no reason to suffer the existence of (male) homosexuals - female homosexuals might yet be cured by corrective sexual activity, it was hoped - gypsies and jews, who by their very natures could never be anything but a blight upon any superior people. To this end a steady stream of un-usable un-desirables was stealthily moved out of the ghettos and concentration camps and sent to dedicated death-camps to be... well, processed for their belongings and used for what materials could be extracted from their corpses. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, over a million Jews from all over Europe are gassed. At Treblinka, dedicated to the extermination of Polish Jews, over eight hundred thousand are gassed. Estimates vary, but around six million Jews or people of Jewish descent (Nazi race laws meant even people with a single Jewish grandparent ''could'' be counted as Jewish, though whether one was brought up on this depended on your connections) are gassed, shot, starved or worked to death before the Reich surrenders. This figure is about half of the prewar Jewish population in Germany and the areas conquered by Hitler. Over 90% of the Jews of Poland are murdered.

It is not known precisely how many Roma (Gypsies) were killed in the Holocaust. While exact figures or percentages cannot be ascertained, historians estimate that the Germans and their allies killed around 25 percent of all European Roma. Of slightly less than one million Roma believed to have been living in Europe before the war, the Germans and their Axis partners killed up to 220,000.

Between 1933 and 1945 the police arrested an estimated 100,000 men as homosexuals. Most of the 50,000 men sentenced by the courts spent time in regular prisons, and between 5,000 and 15,000 were interned in concentration camps.

The Nazis interned some homosexuals in concentration camps immediately after the seizure of power in January 1933. Those interned came from all areas of German society, and often had only the cause of their imprisonment in common. Some homosexuals were interned under other categories by mistake, and the Nazis purposefully miscategorized some political prisoners as homosexuals. Prisoners marked by pink triangles to signify homosexuality were treated harshly in the camps. According to many survivor accounts, homosexuals were among the most abused groups in the camps. Because some Nazis believed homosexuality was a sickness that could be cured - a moderate and progressive view for the time, mind; take for instance the treatment and eventual fate of the father of Computer Science, Alan Turing - they sought, accordingly, to 'cure' homosexuals of their 'disease' through indoctrination, humiliation and labour. With emphasis on the latter two; guards ridiculed and beat homosexual prisoners upon arrival, often separating them from other inmates. There are no reliable figures for the number of homosexuals in the camps, let alone those who died in them.

Trough 5 millions of Soviet POWs were taken, only less than 2 millions were liberated come the end of the war: German treatment of Russians in captivity was diabolical. The Red Army's attitude to repatriated POWs, wasn't good either: ex-prisoners were sent into filtration camps, that was effectively high-secure prisons. After that most was sent back into the Red Army, with officers stripped of rank and sent into penal regiments for the crime of having surrendered. Penal regiments got the hard, dangerous, dirty jobs and the death rate for men condemned to them was far heavier. Policy of reconscripting men, brutalised by German imprisonment, arming them and sending them straight into a battle that more and more was being fought on German soil, was not good for German civilians unfortunate enough to be in the way of angry men with a desire for revenge. Contrary to public belief, many regular Red Army units did not rape and loot their way into Germany and behaved decently, it was released and re-armed POWs who ran amok in this infamous fashion.

Meanwhile the Imperial Army has mobilized just shy of half a million men for a final offensive against the forces of the Nationalist Party - Operation Ichigo. High Command's reasoning is that if the IJA can defeat Jiang Jieshi's 'core armies' in the field, they can go on the offensive and capture the Nationalists' last stronghold in the Sichuan basin. If they can capture this, the last agricultural area outside nominal Japanese control, the Nationalists will be forced to either surrender or starve and the Chinese warlords nominally allied with the Nationalists will (hopefully) join the Japanese rather than be wiped out one by one. If this happens, then China will effectively be secured for Japan and up to a million veterans of the seven-year China Incident will be freed up for duties elsewhere. This is the plan is presented to the ruling clique at home; but the real plan is far more realistic, which speaks volumes about the psychosis at the heart of the Imperial Cabinet. High Command hopes to eliminate certain Nationalist pockets, improving the logistics situation by linking up all their forces and capturing or rendering unsafe - or simply unsupplyable - the American airbases in Nationalist territory in the process. Many of said airbases are fairly close to the front lines and the planes operating from them are threatening Japanese troops and supply lines all over China, forcing valuable fighters into escort duty for strategic fire-bombing missions. The suddenness and intensity of the offensive catches the Nationalists off-guard, but even as the battles rage another offensive on the other side of the world catches the world's attention.

In the Pacific the Americans capture the island of Saipan after a terrible land and sea battle. The Japanese plan is desperate and mostly involves shore-based aircraft as the Americans outnumber them three to one in carriers, a sure sign that they're about to be crushed under the weight of US industrial production. The sea battle, officially known as the Battle of the Philippine Sea is quickly dubbed the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot when US pilots equipped with a new generation of carrier-borne fighters shoot down nearly 500 aircraft with virtually no losses of their own, effectively exterminating the last of Japan's trained naval aviators. The US Navy in turn loses approximately 100 aircraft (most due to fuel starvation) in their own counter-strike but manage to sink one Japanese carrier and seriously damage three others. Adding injury to further injury, two further Japanese carriers go down at the hands of US submarines, though by this point the loss of their carriers matters little since the Japanese no longer have the pilots to man them. The land battle is the usual horrific slog against deeply entrenched and fanatical Imperial defenders, though Saipan is different in that it is the first island taken to contain a significant population of Japanese civilians, most of whom commit suicide, horrifying all observers.

Saipan (and nearby Tinian, captured soon after) are close enough to allow US bombers to strike the Japanese Home Islands. This is initially of limited effectiveness,as strong winds over Japan make precision bombing impossible. Once someone suggests using [[Kill It with Fire|fire-bombs]] (sound familiar?) to set the cities ablaze, the bombing becomes much more effective and the war has finally come full circle as the very nation that started out decrying Japanese "terror bombing" in China is now deliberately targeting civilians themselves. Like many contemporary Chinese buildings, most Japanese buildings of the time used a lot of flammable materials ----wood, bamboo, rattan, rice paper--in their construction. The fire-bombing campaign is ''super'' effective, razing entire towns practically overnight and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. What's left of the Imperial Navy sallies forth for one last battle against the Americans and despite one portion of the fleet coming very near to its objective, is promptly annihilated in history's largest naval engagement, the Battle of Leyte Gulf. American [[Yanks With Tanks|soldiers]] make landfall in the Philippines in late 1944 and after several brutal months of combat, they wrest control of most of their former colony from the Japanese. By now, it is apparent even to the Japanese themselves that Japan's defeat is inevitable.

In Europe, despite Allied control of the air, the loss of their most experienced forces, and destruction of their factories, the Germans have one advantage left: they are no longer trying to defend all of Western Europe and the Allied supply problems are at critical levels. Hitler takes a leaf out of his Eastern Ally's book and gathers what offensive strength he has left to hurl it at the Western Allies in a surprise attack. In December 1944, his legions attack through the Ardennes - the same route by which they snuck into France four and a half years before - in a desperate and ill-advised attempt to cut a wedge between the American and British forces. However, there is a huge difference between the Ardennes of 1939 -- when forests were picketed by only a few detached cavalry vedettes -- and 1944, when the lines are manned by three full (but green) US Army Divisions, backed by Allied tactical airpower and the world's best artillery.

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. 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.

** It's worth noting that one of the reasons the invasion was planned for Normandy instead of Calais was the English Channel off Calais ''wasn't wide enough to hold all of the ships''.

** He also told the Japanese Government that attacking Pearl Harbor or taking the Philippines, or even capturing Hawaii, would not mean defeating America. He warned that the only way to win a war against the USA was to conquer the entire nation and dictate peace terms in the White House. [[Twisting the Words|When the US got wind of the quote, it was misinterpreted as a boast by Yamamoto that he would do exactly that.]]

* [[Badass Bookworm]]: Admiral Spruance of the US Navy, who may have been America's best Admiral.

* [[Better to Die Than Be Killed]]: Hitler and most of his [[The Dragon|Dragons]].

** Soviet Air Force made up for their lack of loud dogfighting successes with ridiculously well-performing dive bombers like Pe-2 and Tu-2. They also had a few ground attack planes called Il-2 that quickly became a scourge of German armies everywhere.

** Perhaps closer to [[Grey and Grey Morality]]. It was generally seen that way at the time. It was only after the war that it became clear exactly what the Axis powers had been doing with civilians in their spare time.

** The US Navy actually had two traditions where they trumped all others, including the Royal Navy: Fire Control and Damage Control.

** There is famous writings on walls of the Brest Fortress: "We'll die but we'll not leave the fortress". "I'm dying but I won't surrender. Farewell, Motherland. 20.VII.41." - after month under assault and being surrounded.

** Isolated Japanese soldiers continued to "fight" the war until as late as ''1974''.

** History lesson: the Sullivans were a family of five brothers who joined the Navy and insisted on being posted together. They were. The ship they were on was destroyed. In one fell swoop, the poor Sullivan parents lost every single one of their sons.

* [[Evil Army]]: The Wehrmacht, the Japanese army, [[Token Evil Teammate|The Red Army,]] and ''especially'' the Waffen SS were considered this.

* [[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."

* [[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.

* [[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.]]

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

* [[It's Raining Men]]: 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.

** And also where the concept of [http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/airborne-tactics.htm Little Groups Of Paratroopers] was realized:

* [[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.

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

** 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?":

* [[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-operate rather than compete and advance technologically. By all accounts, they ought to have been fairly harmless, really...

** Japan was this as well. The whole country was ruled by a militaristic frenzy, and even generals were in danger of being "fragged" if they weren't warlike enough. Italy wanted to do this but was too lazy to quite cut it and instead became [[Chew Toy|mocked]] for years after, even though they did put up a better showing than is generally made out.

** Showa, i.e. Hirohito, seems a reasonable guy when one considers his decision to surrender once it became obvious that America would just [[Nuke'Em]] until they capitulated. [[Subverted Trope|However,]] even if he had not been the driving force behind the China Incident and the War in the Pacific, he certainly didn't do anything to stop or limit them. It's speculated that Tojo Hideki took a lot of the fall for Hirohito's own ideas.

* [[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 insurgency. Some Axis troops in Yugoslavia did continue fighting for a couple of weeks after Germany surrendered, though.

** Of particular note: The White Death.

* [[The Spock]]: Spruance. He was so cold-blooded that he could probably sink Japanese ships by [[Elemental Powers|breathing ice on them]].

** 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 special attack squadron. Take a wild guess what they specialized in.

* [[This Is Not a Drill|AIR RAID PEARL HARBOR THIS IS NOT A DRILL]]

** The invention of the Atomic Bomb all but ensured this. If there is going to be a war of this scale, it will only last a few hours, or as long as it will take for the world's nuclear stockpile to go off.

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

** Arguably starts out as a type two, but becomes a type three in later years.

** 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.

* [[You Will Be Spared]]: This trope most likely lay at the heart of the cynical German-Japanese military alliance from at least the Nazis' perspective (but possibly the Japanese as well). A paranoid, virulently racist, white supremacist country decides to team up against other enemies with a nation they probably deem subhuman when it gets down to it. [http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000120.html This article] from ''Our Dumb Century'' puts it best.

* ''[[Flags of our Fathers]]'' - the lives of the flag-raisers in the famous photo of raising the flag upon Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima

* ''[[Windtalkers]]'' - focuses on a group of Amerindians trained as signalmen because their language is entirely unknown outside the U.S.

* ''[[When Trumpets Fade]]'', set in the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest.

This is not to say that the USAAF had it any better. Flying by day meant they had a monstrously high casualty rate, particularly before P-51s were available for long range escort. There was a policy of "25 and out". Once an airman had done 25 missions, his war was over. The ball turret gunner, despite not having a parachute close to hand and being exposed to ground fire, wasn't actually that dangerous, relatively speaking. Just unpleasant, as they ended up doing somersaults in a tiny, cold, plexiglass and metal ball looking at a really long drop. The 25 got upped to 30 and then 35. The average crew got shot down around the [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog|20th mission]].

The Air War in the Pacific has received comparatively less attention, even though the scope and nature of the Pacific theater meant that air power played an even larger role there than it did in Europe. The strategic bombing campaign against Japan in particular has not received much attention, perhaps because it's difficult to portray massive fire raids against civilians in a heroic light. Even those who participated rarely considered it to be anything more than a [[Necessarily Evil|necessary evil]].

Most people tend to focus on the French Resistance, but the Greeks and Poles did a very good job too. The Yugoslav partisans were actually so good at their job, they effectively liberated their country themselves before the Red Army could get there.

* ''[[The English Patient]]'', set mostly in Italy and North Africa, with a bit of Britain, India, and Canada.

* ''[[Blood Rayne]]''

* ''B-17 Flying Fortress''