World War II: Continuation of the Trend toward Total or Pure War

• Background:– US enters the war to end all wars and to make

the world safe for democracies: Revolutionary aims vs. European imperial system for global order and legitimacy

– Versailles Treaty to end the war with Germany establishes the Wilsonian principle of collective security: end the balance of power

Flaws of the Versailles Treaty and the Principle of Collective Security

• The U.S. returns to a traditional isolationist position in European security and politics– President Wilson’s ideas of collective security, end of empires

and self-determination, and democratic rule are rejected– United States refuses to join the League of Nations

• Germany is not re-integrated into the community of states as Napoleonic France was in 1815– Germany is accused of starting the war and must pay

burdensome reparations– Germany’s military forces are limited and under the control of

the liberal democratic states -- but without the US

Failures of the League of Nations and Collective Security

• Japanese invasion of Manchuria (1931) and war with China (1937-45)

• Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935• German reoccupation of the Rheinland in 1935• Russian invasion of Finland in 1939-40• German attack on Poland in September 1939• World War II begins

German Empire, 1941-42

United States Enters the War

• Japanese Pearl Harbor attack, December 7, 1941• Japanese War Aims: Protect Japanese Empire

against U.S.– Eliminate the threat to Japan from U.S. naval forces– Seek a sphere of influence understanding with the

United States• Similar to German-Soviet agreement in August, 1939• US sphere of influence extends to Hawaii; Japan’s sphere in

the western Pacific, China and Southeast Asia: Dutch Indonesia and French Indo-China; and British Hong Kong and Singapore

United States War Aims: Total Political and Military Victory

• Return to Wilsonian revolutionary aims of a new global order:– Victory of Liberal democratic coalition– Destruction of the German and Japanese empires and

political regimes– End of Europe’s empires and the global institutional

principle of self-determination– Creation of a postwar liberal, global trading system– The democratic rule of a system of nation-states under

United Nations auspices dedicated to a peaceful world order

American and Allied Strategic Military Aims

• Destruction of the military forces of German and Japan and their allies

• Complete political submission of the German and Japanese states, regimes, and peoples to allied rule

Japanese Empire: 1942

Total Warfare in Europe and Pacific

• Germany defeated in May 1945

• Japanese surrenders in August, 1945 in the wake of atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Atomic Bomb over Hiroshima, 1945

Destruction of Hiroshima, 1945

World War II as Total War: Hobbes and Clausewitz Return

• 72 million civilian and military deaths– Civilian: 47 million– Military: 25 million

Total Casualties in Percentages of Allied and Axis Deaths

Flaws of the Allied Coalition and the Cold War” 1945-1991

• Liberal Democracies vs. Soviet Union

• United States vs. European Empires– France– United Kingdom– Netherlands– Portugal– Belgium