And Eire famously remained neutral (though favouring the Allies).
Also…
“You’re built too low, son. The good ones are going over your head…”
(My favourite cartoon character.)
China suffered most horribly from the Japanese. They were treated like vermin, in the attack on Nanjing (Wikipedia)
Typical of the era. The Japanese also slaughtered a large number of Chinese suspected of aiding Doolittle’s airmen to escape after the bombing raid. Lives wer cheap.
The Chinese still hate the Japanese with a passion, and any Chinese politician who wants to rally pro-Chinese sentiment in a mass rally only has to trot out some excuse about why the crowd should protests against Japan.
Of course in the midst of this and also after the war, the communists and nationalists were fighting each other too. (Google “Long March” for something that has not been given its due in western history lessons)
Switzerland appeared to have been business-as-usual. Lichtenstein appeared to have profited with German contracts to produce ammunition.
Even in countries directly involved their were people living outside the war zones who were barely affected.
And as I understand, mainly laborers. They dug a lot of trenches and involved in manual logistics…
During WWI, if you’re digging trenches, you’re also getting shelled and gassed along with everyone else. It was important and dangerous.
As to the OP. Sri Lanka was a major logistics point. It was bombed in 1942 by the Japanese a battle famous for several RAF squadrons which flew to Ceylon from the UK to fight.
As for Kenya, Mombasa was a major Naval base.
The main difference for neutral countries was that they were not at risk of being bombed (except by accident) and they did not have troops fighting and dying in the conflict.
Otherwise the range of their experiences was similar to the range of experiences for belligerent countries. Some neutral countries had civilian rationing, and/or other governmental intervention in the economy. I don’t think any neutral country which didn’t already have a draft introduced one, but most or all stepped up their defence recruitment and expenditure. And some imposed various emergency powers regulations and restrictions, like a blackout, or the internment of people suspected of aiding one of the belligerents. Other, more remotely-located neutrals found no need to do these things.
All were affected, in varying degrees, by disruption to world trade and international transport and communications.
I was trying to be succinct, and consequently failed to be clear ! Was thinking in terms of individual inhabitants of nations, rather than the nations themselves. If I’m right, Canada and Australia’s joining the war meant that men of military age were conscripted, and had to go abroad and into danger (which, in the nature of things, not all of them would have wanted to do), with a heavy burden of work to replace that of the missing men, falling on those left at home. I gather that South Africa didn’t have conscription – enlistment was voluntary – and I’m not sure about New Zealand (though after late 1941, of course they had Japan – not at all far away – to worry about).
From what I understand, in the non-white parts of the British Empire, all joining of the armed forces was voluntary; beyond that, in places outside of the theatres of war, life would presumably not have been colossally different from usual. In the French empire, there would have been the complications of the whole Vichy / Free French mess; but I’d figure that for the indigenous population in those regions – except for those who actually wanted to fight, they’d have been left largely to their own devices.
Ireland (the 26 counties) was neutral as stated above.
10,000s of Irish workers migrated to Britain during the war years both to serve in the British Armed Forces and to replace men called up to service.
WWII was called “the Emergency” in Ireland. Rationing was put in place and lasted until a few years after the war. Ireland at the time was still a poor enough country but people seem to have got enough to eat if not so many of the luxuries that they might have had access to in the immediate pre-war years.
German bombs occasionally fell on neutral Ireland with the most significant attack being the North Strand bombing of 1941 which killed 28 people. This pales in significance when compared with the Belfast Blitz which caused huge loss of life and destruction of property. Emergency services from neutral Ireland went north of the border to help out in the aftermath of the blitz.
Although there were elements in Irish republicanism that were pro-German (“my enemy’s enemy”), the government was generally pro-Allies.
Another country pretty much totally unaffected by World War II, would seem to have been Tibet. The waters are muddied a bit here, by legalities and technicalities – as per one view of things, Tibet has for centuries, been de jure a part of China, though it has at times been independent de facto. Was definitely in a spell of independence, for practical purposes, during the 1940s: enjoyed peace then, in its position of relative detachment from the rest of the world – and was further west than the Japanese ever penetrated in WWII. Tibet’s idyll, if it was such, of course came to an end with invasion and occupation by the new People’s Republic of China in 1950.
An interesting record of the country in that period, is given by Heinrich Harrer’s book Seven Years in Tibet. Harrer (an Austrian) and three companions, on a Himalayan mountaineering expedition, were interned in India as enemy aliens at the beginning of World War II. In spring 1944 they and three others escaped from a camp north of Delhi, in which they were then held. Their plan was to link up ultimately – in one way or another – with the Japanese forces then fighting at the extreme eastern end of India. Five of the seven made first, for the relatively nearby Tibetan border; three “fell by the wayside” fairly quickly – Harrer and his companion Aufschnaiter made their way over the next year-and-some through Tibet to Lhasa, where they ultimately became friends with – and Western technical-expert advisers to – the young 14th Dalai Lama. With the war now over, they remained in Tibet until 1952.
If by “pro Allied” you mean turned pro ALlied when they realised that the Germans were going to lose and just how close the Allies were to beating the stuffing out of them.
Ireland was kept out of the UN till 1955 for their pro German views.
As for the colonies; well life was effected quite a lot. Many of them were foiught over; the ones in N Africa and the Far East. Others were a source of raw material and food (such as India which led to a famine which killed millions, a fact glossed over in Western histories of the War) or manpower (India) or light Industry and manufacturing (India again).
So yeah, life certainly was far from normal in most of these places.
In WW1, while China may not have been a belligerant, there was a :Labor Corps, in Germany, entirely manned by Chinese workers.
i have no more details.
No I mean pro allied as regards the entirety of the war and within the strictures of neutrality.Plan W was devised fairly early in the war. More on Irish neutrality from the wiki
As regards the UN, I was of the understanding the Soviet veto on Irish entry to the UN was due to Ireland having been neutral in the war and having no diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. If you have a cite for Ireland being vetoed for being “Pro-German” please provide it.
Even apparently remote islands like the Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean had an RAF airbase built there and sorties flown against the Japanese in Indonesia.
Iran wasn’t didn’t do anything militarily for the Axis… While they did try to resist allied and Russian invasion, they did it to preserve their economy, which was mostly reliant on trade with Axis countries. It gets put on a list of Allied countries as for most of the war, it was economically tied to the allies… and occupied by the allies.
Canada’s military was almost entirely voluntary. Approximately 1.6 million served in uniform, out of a population of about 11 million.
Canada did not have conscription until 1944, and it was primarily for home service. No more than 2,500 conscripts saw service overseas in the latter days of the war.
As I posted above, China was a belligerent and it was on the western side. The Labor Corps served in France not Germany. And Chinese workers composed less than a third of the overall Labor Corps; most workers were recruited in British and French colonies.
Thanks ! My reading about WWII has been fairly spotty – I admit to having likely picked up various misconceptions.
Nicholas Monsarrat, a Royal Navy corvette captain during WWII, wrote in The Cruel Sea about British sailors’ bitter resentment of Irish neutrality. Being unable to use Irish ports meant more time at sea and more time subjected to U-boat attacks, and many of the cargoes in British-convoyed ships were for eventual Irish use.
Indeed, the Big Three met there in 1943: Tehran Conference - Wikipedia