The real puzzeling(sp?) thing is why did Hitler declare war on the US after Pearl Harbor. The Japanese made it clear that they weren’t gonna help the Germans by attacking the USSR.
WWII was, as mentioned, mostly about opportunity. Italy didn’t like Germany. In fact Mussolini was the first to put up a show of force against Germany taking over Austria. (he later reconsidered this option)
Mussolini was greatly influenced by France and UK’s decsion to abandon Czechoslavkia. He was simply convinced Germany was more powerful and would win. And without the USA it most likely would’ve turned out that way.
Hitler had a gross misconception about how strong the USA was.
Same for Finland. Did it like Hitler? No it hated the USSR which took over, what?, like a fifth of their country. Had they been able to hold out agains the USSR, France and UK had considered sending help. That would’ve made the USSR and the Allies on opposite sides.
The Japanese saw themselves as liberators agains the imperal powers.
No problem, Chronos. And thanks for all the info, evryone - once again, thanks to all of you, I can feel less like an idiot when debating these issues with my slacker friends at the local cafe.
It made a certain degree of sense. Hitler realized the United States was increasing its military production and when it reached its full potential it would be undefeatable. So he figured the best chance Germany had of defeating the United States was to act in concert with Japan and try to knock the US out of the war before it could fully mobilize. He figured the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse so would soon no longer be a factor (which was probably why he didn’t insist on a mutual declaration of war from Japan) and Great Britain could be defeated as an adjunct of the war with the United States.
Hitler’s alternative was to allow the United States to fight an unassisted Japan. In that event, Japan was almost certain to lose; Hitler would then be faced with a fully mobilized US with no Pacific distractions by the mid-forties. And if by some miracle Japan managed to defeat the US without Germany’s help, that would be almost as bad; Japan would then be too powerful a rival itself.
Hang on a second. Hungary, Romania and Finland had very little choice when it came to taking sides in WWII. In particular Finland did not stand to gain anything, and when the USSR launched its own blitzkrieg on Finland by sending its bombers and tanks over the border in Nov 39 the decision was pretty much out of their hands. As it turned out they didn’t get much help from Germany, and although they signed an armistice within about 3 months and did not assist the Axis powers on other fronts, they had to pay reparations as if they were a fully paid-up member of the axis. To imply that Finland had territorial or other designs on its neighbours is to compound the injustice.
To address the main question, it is worth pointing out that the War in Europe and the War in the Pacific were quite separate wars, and neither Germany nor Japan offered the other material assistance AFAIK (apart from a single Japanese sub that turned up with supplies in Bordeaux; hardly worth the effort). In particular, Germany could not convince Japan to open a second front against the USSR in the far east.
re: **Germany, Italy, and Japan (along with smaller allies like Hungary, Romania, and Finland) were all countries that wanted something, generally territory that belonged to other countries. **
You said it, Hibernicus. What Finland wanted was not to be kicked around by Russia, as it had been so often in the past. Thus, when the “Good” Allies included the aggressive Soviets, right next door, Finland signed on with the opposing team, who were far away and not likely to have any effect on them.
Good answer, Little Nemo. Excellent essay, London Calling. Indeed the axis powers simply wanted tp keep the United States from interfering with their plans on the other side of either ocean. It has got to be the greatest myth of the 20th century that Germany and Japan were threatening the US with invasion, yet how often do we hear people say, “we’d all be speaking German if it weren’t for…” ?
To speculate a bit more on Hitler’s motives in declaring war in the US: The primary reason was undoubtedly to help Japan since it was in his best interests to do so given their common enemy in Great Britain, etc.
But the US was also supplying Britain directly and yet US neutrality was inconveniencing the U-boat campaign. Clearing away this stumbling block enabled Hitler to fully unleash the U-boats and tighten the blockade against Britain. And since the US Pacific fleet was at the bottom of Pearl Harbor and the Japanese fleet was running roughshod overthe Pacific, Hitler felt that the US would lack the naval strength to cross the Atlantic in force. He was wrong.
But in the long run/big picture, Hitler saw the US joining his “club” of big powers dominating the world, along with Germany, Italy, Japan, and Great Britain. Having gotten our fingers burned meddling in Europe ans Asia, Hitler and the Japanese felt the US would be content to dominate North and South America just as they were their repective spheres. A sort of if-you-can’t-lick-'em-join-'em scenario.
Hibernicus, Finland and the Soviet Union fought two wars during this period. The first short one was in 1939 when the Soviets declared war on Finland and annexed Finnish territory. The second one was in 1941, when Finland joined Germany and other European Axis powers in declaring war on the Soviet Union. The Finns did so in order to get their lost territory back. In both cases, the nation which was seeking territory was aligned with Germany, which tends to reinforce my previous point.
Hungary and Romania joined the Axis for similar reasons. It’s true that both nations probably would have been occupied otherwise (as Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia were) but once they signed on, they sought territorial gains at the expense of their neighbors. For that matter, Poland was aligned with Germany for a period prior to 1939 and received Czech territory as a reward. Spain, as a counter example, was idealogically in the Axis camp but Franco was too busy with internal affairs to seek outside expansion. Consequently, Spain did not join the Axis.
So I’ll stick with my original premise. The unifying factor of the Axis was that every member wanted a piece of someone else’s pie.
Nemo, I accept your correction. I still think you’re being unfair, and here’s why:
Finland was seeking to regain occupied Finnish territory, rather than a piece of someone else’s pie. In my opinion this is a legitimate aspiration.
In any case, this is not why they allied with Germany, which happened before the loss of Southern Karelia.
Looking at the wider picture, all the countries of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe were “new”, dating from the period from the 1870s through to the aftermath of WWI. Many of these countries had expansionist aspirations, including Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Poland.
Some declared for the Axis, some for the Allies. In the case of Bulgaria and maybe others, they would have wished to join the allied side, but were forced into the Axis by lack of interest by Britain and France. Neutrality was not an option.
In general, it has taken us a long time to realise that both sides in the war contained quite a mix of decent and despicable regimes.
By the way, Poland had a non-agression pact with Germany, not an alliance. Also Poland’s invasion of Zaolzia is really small-scale stuff, albeit unforgiveably opportunistic. This territory had declared for Poland in 1918 and was awarded to Austria by the League of Nations.
That is still a matter of some dispute. At the 1940 conference in Hendaye, France, between Hitler and Franco, the latter made such exorbitant territorial demands* as the price for joining the war that Hitler refused to deal. Some have said that was a shrewd ploy by Franco deliberately designed to keep an exhausted Spain out of the war. Others think Franco was just a greedy SOB who overplayed his hand.
the demands included all of Morocco, Portugal and her colonies, and parts of southern France.
After joining ther Axis, Finland were asked by the Germans to send a military attache to Berlin. The Finns, who disapproved of certain Nazi policies, scrounged around their army until they found a Jewish colonel, who they promptly sent to participate in Hitler’s war councils.
IIRC, Finland did not declare war on the U.S. and Britain, nor did Britain and the U.S. declare war on Finland. From what I understand, the Allies knew that Finland’s alliance with the Axis was a matter of survival. I don’t recall whether the USSR and Finland were at war for the duration, but didn’t Finland avoid absorption into the Siviet Hegemony following the war?
I’ll certainly agree that Finland was not comparable to Nazi Germany. But let’s not get too sentimental here. The Finnish government in 1939 was a right wing military dictatorship. And while Finland can argue that they had legitimate cause for war with the Soviet Union, the fact is that Finland voluntarily joined in with the Axis in declaring war. It was not a defensive war or a case of national survival; the Soviet Union had already taken the territory it wanted via a treaty signed seventeen months earlier and was certainly in no position to re-invade Finland after June 1941.
As for who the territory legitimately “belonged” to; who knows? All of Finland had been a part of the Russian empire prior to the revolution, so my guess is that Finland took as much territory as it thought it could hold when it declared independance and a lot of this territory had a mixed population of ethnic Finns and Russians. In my personal opinion, anyone regardless of their background would have been better of not living under Stalin, but I’m betting neither side held a plebiscite among the locals.
Nemo, I think we’re in general agreement about most things. I just feel that we have all inherited a very simplistic view of WWII, in which “good” countries were ranged against “bad” countries.
Trying to shoehorn all the participants into “expansionist” versus “status quo” is equally simplistic. It doesn’t even work for USSR, not to mention smaller players we’ve discussed. A proper understanding requires each of the countries to be considered individually, and a recognition of geographical imperatives.
Actually the boundaries of Finland had been established under Tsarist Russia, when it created the Grand Duchy of Finland. It did not include any Russian speaking territories in the Grand Duchy. Upon independence Finland kept those boundaries, except for adding a tiny corridor to the Barents Sea above the artic circle in Lappland. The 1929 World Almanac gives the Russian population in all of Finland as 4806, so there were no large Russian populations in border areas to justify the Soviet expansionism.
The US did not, but Britain was formally at war with Finland, although taking no military action against her. Britain’s declaration of war occurred before American entry into the war, and was intended as a symbolic gesture of support to the USSR.