Talk:The Origins and Commencement of World War II

Why not put this as a subpage to World War II? I think World War II/Origins and Commencement would be a better place, or perhaps even World War II/Reasons and World War II/Commencement. --Pinkunicorn

Larry has views on sub-pages, some of which I subscribe to. This page is necessarily going to create a fair bit of discussion and will need a /talk page which we can't do easily with a subpage. sjc

Of course we can create a talk page for a subpage. It can't be called "/Talk", but I can't see that as an insurmountable problem. "World War II/Reasons Talk" is a perfectly good name as far as I'm concerned. It's only going to be referenced from the main page anyway, so there's no problem with links. --Pinkunicorn

The way I see this page going is that maybe we treat this as a standalone essay with links from wwii. It is complementary to, but not necessarily a constituent of, wwii in any case. sjc

I think this is how many more subpages should be titled. Subpages impose conceptual hierarchies that are often both controversial and limiting. (The origins and commencement of WWII is surely just as much a subtopic of WWII as it is of the topic of the origins of war. Why don't we have an "origins of war" page and make this page a subpage of that?) The great thing about hypertext is that it provides us a way to interlink and organize information without a hard-wired category scheme. I wrote a column on this theme (and I have another column bemoaning the evils of subpages). --LMS

As one of the primary perpetrators of subpages here, I'm happy to use subpages where they are useful and appropriate--but this isn't one of those cases. The article clearly stands by itself and can be categorized in more than one way. I think the way it is now is exactly the way it should be. --LDC

Name of the conflict

The term world war is something of a misnomer since it did not encompass a near-global level until the Japanese bombing of [Pearl Harbour]? in 1941, being confined principally to the European theatre of operations and North Africa until that point. The term is used however to describe both the initial stages of the conflict and the later American involvement. Even after the US became involved, however, not all countries were involved, some through neutrality (such as the Republic of Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland, others through strategic insignificance (Mexico).

Please. How would you call an armed conflict involving countries from and happening around the globe? 'WmRoI,S,SaoWII'? (That's 'World minus Republic of Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland and others War II' for the acronymically challenged)

Yes, it started 'slow', but so what? Would you better like a list (years are fictious):

1939 - 1939 German - Polish War
1940 - 1940 German - French War
1940 - 1940 German - Norwegian War
1940 - 1940 German - Danish War
1940 - 1940 German - Belgium War
1940 - 1940 German - Netherlandish War
ad infinitum

--Yooden

I presume that World War refers to the fact that Britain could draw troops from its empire which stretched around the world - this is similar to WWI which was only ever fought in Europe -though often with help from colonial troops. This could be added to the definition. The Seven Years War in the 1750's by contrast was fought in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, Carribean, Mediteranean, Pacific but is not counted as a World War - possibly because the term hadn't been invented yet. So the nomenclature is faulty in many ways. An argument can be made that WWII is the only world war or that it is one of several but the argument that it is only the second is very weak butwe are stuck with it.

We also have a problem with the early Japanese aggressions. July 1937 seems to be the beginning of the Chinese-Japanese part of the conflict which is before our starting point of 1939. Is the common 1939 starting date just more Eurocentrism? --rmhermen

You're right here, you can argue that it has been an European War (starting 1939) and a Pacific War (Starting 1936?). They are connected of course, but the name is sign for neo-west dominance in history perception.

Well you could argue that it wasn't until both theaters were active that it fit the description as a World War. Of course, there was still much of the World uninvolved even at its height. This is more true of WWI, but that had usually been "The Great War" prior to WWII -- GWO

Yes, AFAIK the Anschluß was nowhere near military in nature. (Except by threat.) --Yooden

WWI which was only ever fought in Europe

Nope, German troops fought in South-West Africa until after the ceasefire in Europe; the USA entered the war after the German government tried to persuade Mexico to do likewise. --Yooden

And WWI was also fought in the Arabian Peninsula (remember Lawrence of Arabia?). I would concur that attempting to change the name from World War II will be a waste of time and will tend to erode the value of the article -- named anything else, only wonks like us would know where to look for it.

Anschluß

Anschluß is not nearly the same as annexation. It implies that it is done voluntarily, like it actually did in the Saar.

Something is missing here, isn't it? "Chancellor of Austria" doesn't sound like it was annexed.

"Province" was not an existing legal entity at the time. Should it be replaced with another word? --Yooden

Sudetenland/Czechoslovakia

This part has several loopholes, but I don't know enough to fill them in:

The "natural mountainous defence line" contained a line of fortresses supposed to be impregnable.

True: the sudeten mountains had fortifications along them comperable to the Maginot Line in France.

"to continue the search for Lebensraum": First, the Anschluß was not considered to be part of this search; Austria was supposed to be part of core Germany. Second, even Sudetenland/Czechoslovakia was not meant to be Lebensraum; Hitler just tried to swallow as much as possible before the UK/F had enough. He could not possibly loose, because he wanted war. (cf. his later statement wrt mediation attempts in August or September).

the whole idea behind the Lebensraum argument is that this is what Hitler used to justify to the German people his expansive tendencies. Ok, Austria and the Sudetenland targeted because of their large Germanic populations but it was still regarded (by Hitler) as new Living space for the Germans. (I think your comments fits better here. OK? --Yoo)

There already lived people considered German, so this sounds wrong. Do you have sources?

: No sources that actually call the occupation of the Sudetenland and the anschluss of Austria search for Lebensraum, sorry. The Germanic populous of Austria and the Sudetenland constituted the majority of the population in those regions. Other areas such as Bohemia and Moravia (that were laken later) contained only a minority of Germans. In my reckoning this follows to the Lebensraum argumement. - Chris

The complete Lebensraum line of thought is Nazi propaganda like Anschluß (which it wasn't), Dolchstoßlegende (which was wrong) and later the Auschwitz-Lüge and should not be used at face value.

Don't call him dictator, it sounds like a sentence. We are not here to sentence.

It's not a sentence. He was a dictator.

The definition of dictator is probably vague. The Reichspräsident had dictatorial powers and this was considered a good thing. I think however that 'dictator' is usually considered a bad thing. By calling names, we diminish any articles value. Just describe the type of government and let the reader decide.

I don;t believe we are stating anything but fact. The type of government that existed during the third reich was a regime that outlawed and persecuted all opposition to itself and did not allow any further elections. Now that is a dicatorship. And the person who rules it is a dictator! - Chris

Speaking about sentences: The last but one should be shot.

duh?

The last but one sentence almost qualifies as German. It's far too long and complicated.

I agree, change it if you can. - Chris

"It was only a mater of a few months." Huh? Time went by and one morning, Czechoslovakia was a goner?

Yes, Bohemia and Moravia capitulated only a few months after the occupation of the Sudetenland! - Chris

So it just happened? One morning the head of state of Czechoslovakia woke up, called Hitler and said: "Oh, I had you all wrong"? (One cone of ice cream for the one recognizing the movie.) Seriously, there must be some events worth mentioning when a state disappears. Cf. this to the part about Austria.

--Yooden

The Pacific Theatre

Should the incident over the proposed Racial Equality Clause in the League of Nations Charter be mentioned?

It was proposed by the Japanese and rejected by the United States and the European powers, and in many historians' opinions this was an unmitigated diaster for several reasons - it helped cripple the League's moral authority (which was all it had, after all) and, by deeply offending the Japanese, gave Japan a good hard nudge down the road to disaster

The name of this article is clearly wrong per wikipedia naming conventions on capitalization. However, I am far pressed to simply move the article to the origins and commencement of World War II beause the wording just doesn't seem right and a Google search on it only comes up with this wikipedia artilce and no other articles anywhere. My question is this: Is there an accepted name for this period of history? And if so, what? --maveric149

I have once again pushed myself into being bold on updating pages and killed this page. In detail, I made the following changes:

I merged the content into World War II, where I feel it belongs. There was much information on that page already about the events preceding 1939 (in the West) and 1941 (in the East), and this page was only duplicating it.
I merged a couple of paragraphs over to Weimar Republic, as far as the rise of the Nazis was concerned. The Munich Beer Hall Putsch really doesn't have all that much to do, and Weimar Republic is the comprehensive place for how the Nazis came to power. (At least I have spent a considerable amount of time hoping that it would become something like that.)

Next, I will fix a bunch of links and do other minor cleanup around this move. Hope nobody is offended; I did not intend to make any semantic changes. Rather, I wanted to put information where it most intuitively belongs. -- djmutex 15:11 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)