The concise encyclopedia of world war II 2 volumes (greenwood encyclopedias of modern world wars) ( PDFDrive ) 47

Preface

In a deep sense, World War II was a resumption of mass violence after “an
armistice of twenty years,” as Maréchal Ferdinand Foch accurately predicted in
1919 would be the fate of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany. The greatest war
the world has ever known, or fears to know, was closely linked to that other stupendous clash of nations, of will and arms, economies and technology, of mass
emotion and mass armies, called the “Great War” by the generation that fought it.
Not least of these connections was a sense of horror and exhaustion among those
who waged the first world war of the 20th century. Too often forgotten, however,
are accompanying feelings of triumph and vindication among those who won the
war. Instead, near-caricature images portray World War I as an utterly futile confl ict on all sides, a dreary slog of mud-splattered lambs led to their slaughter by
abysmally inept and dull-witted generals. Better known is that dread of more war
and satisfaction with the peace on the winning side was opposed by a deep desire
for revenge and a revolutionary overthrow of the Great War’s outcome by many
of those in the losing camp. Dissatisfaction in support of violence was even felt
by populations in some countries, most notably Italy and Japan, which numbered
among the victors of 1918.
Historians point to many other connections between the world wars: German
and other national dissatisfaction with the Versailles system and international
order; competitive, militant nationalisms among a host of injured or newly minted
countries that nursed real and imagined grievances across several generations; confl icting imperial ideologies and interests; unresolved territorial issues; the growing
capacity for total mobilization of whole societies and economies for industrialized
war; emergence of new military technologies accompanied by aggressive, offensive
fighting doctrines; and ever more clearly as time recedes, the path to genocide that
is traceable from the Ottoman slaughter of Armenians in 1915 to the Shoah, the
mass murder of European Jews, and to multiple other ethnic holocausts and horrors of the early 1940s.
The persistent confl icts of the first half of the 20th century encouraged erection of “war states” by several Great Powers, both in response to World War I and
in preparation for what became World War II. Germany and the Soviet Union,
and in some measure Japan, mobilized tens of millions to war and reorganized
their economies and societies in readiness to fight with radical drive to impose
their political and ideological will on enemies. Latterly, and to a degree neither

they nor their opponents foresaw, after first disarming voluntarily to levels that
matched the forced disarmament of Germany, Britain and the United States
proved even more capable of organizing their peoples and market economies
for war. Under pressures of making total war, many countries underwent root
social and governmental reorganization deemed necessary by elites to harness national or imperial economic capabilities. Multiple societies witnessed new commitments in the scale and depth of public loyalty and sacrifice demanded from
citizens, a call to arms and workplace, to supreme effort for the nation, reinforced
by intense propaganda that aimed to inculcate ideological motivation and emotional commitment among mass populations. There was also a great deal of raw
coercion.

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