05.1 Hist 20 podcast: 1940-1949

events in the 5th decade of the 20th C

Transcript

University of California UCOP | podcast 5.1

Hi, there. Let's continue in this fifth decade of the 20th century. The fifth decade starts in the 1940s. And they are,

by all accounts, pretty terrible years.

I mean, there's some good stuff that happens in there. But one of the worst global wars is fought in the 1940s.

And so it's going to be really hard for us to sort of say it was a good decade. But any advancements, and there

are advances, it's a trade-off. And so I want you to keep thinking about the push and pull of history as we talk

about this decade.

Now, World War II is a significant part of this decade. And depending on what aspects of history you're most

interested in, you can spend the rest of your life studying this. I mean, you could explore military strategies on

both sides. You could explore the Holocaust in its origins, its execution, whether German citizens were aware of it,

how long it took for the Allies to find out, how long it took for the Allies to care that Jews were being killed in mass,

and that homosexuals were being killed, that people that were considered to be physically less desirable were

being sent to die.

The politics of war could be part of your lifelong research. The technology of the war, the outcome of the war, all

of this is so complex that you could spend a lifetime studying it. In short, there really is a good reason why World

War II stands at the center of any review of the 20th century. But also, these are the same reasons why it's almost

impossible for me to cover them.

This was a major war. And it implicated a majority of the globe. Even countries that were not directly involved in

the war, like many Latin American countries, would become part of the war effort, either because they would have

to take sides, and because they were asked to support a side either with oil and material supplies, foodstuff. Or,

they would feel the economic effect of this major event that disrupted trade and travel throughout the world.

So in science, focus was also on the war. But what we learned in science during the war would have effects, well,

all the way to today. You know, advances in computing were massive during the war. And they matter today. The

discovery of just how powerful nuclear power could be, that has pretty much marked both our scientific evolution,

but also our policy and environmental evolution.

But first, let's focus on a few things about World War II. As I said, we're not going to cover the entire material. We

can't. But I do want you to know a few things about it.

So first, the first half of this war was unbelievably fast. So in the blink of an eye, entire countries fell to the

Germans and the Japanese between 1939 and 1942. And then between 1942 in 1945, it was really slow.The Allies slowly and agonizingly clawed their way back and pushed the Axis Powers back. So a little parenthesis

here, you'll often hear me and other people talk about the Axis Powers and the Allies when we talk about World

War II. And the Axis Powers, that is sort of the alliance, the axis of power formed between Germany, Italy, and

Japan.

And the word axis or at least the reason why they're called the Axis Powers is because Italy and Germany had

made an Axis Pact in 1936. And the Axis would also include Japan, eventually, who left the League of Nations

over its invasion of China in the 1930s. And the Axis Powers would also include the allies of these three, Italy,

Germany and Japan.

And that would be Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Finland. So when we talk about Axis Powers, we really mean

the three, Germany, Japan, and Italy. But it also includes these other four.

The Allies were the countries that, not surprisingly, Allied themselves against this axis of power. And it started with

Britain and their entire commonwealth, which were all the British colonies and ex-colonies, like Canada and

Australia, France as well, the Soviet Union, and eventually the United States. There were other countries that

were essentially allied with the Allied Powers, but they were occupied so quickly that it's hard to think of them as

Allied Powers.

They were occupied by Germany early on in the war despite the fact that they declared themselves neutral. But

they included, also, resistance forces. So there were large numbers of politicians and citizens in these occupied

territories that sided with the Allies Powers.

But at the same time, each of these countries also had strong resistance forces. I mean-- sorry, had strong forces

that collaborated with the German invaders. And so it's complicated. But think about it.

The Jewish population of the Netherlands was almost entirely eliminated in the early years of the war. So some of

you may be familiar with the history of Anne Frank, who was amongst these Dutch Jewish victims of German

occupation of the Netherlands. Now, it's not that the Dutch where necessarily siding with the German government.

But once they were invaded, they'd been occupied. And some Dutch collaborated with the Germans. The same

thing with Belgium. Belgium was very quickly occupied. And there were Belgian collaborators who were proud to

help.

German command declared the northern city of Antwerp [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] by 1941. Do you know what

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] means? It means free of Jews. So not a single Jew remained in that city. This was a

city that was at the center of the diamond cutting and diamond trade in which the Jewish community had alwaysbeen rather active.

Now by contrast, Brussels, which is 50 miles south of Antwerp, had very few collaborators. And many Jewish

families survived in Brussels. They lived, they often hid in plain sight under assumed names, but really lived in

Brussels not hiding in the way that we know Anne Frank did.

So 50 miles could make all the difference. And it made the difference not because of the physical distance, but

because of the number of collaborators in a particular town. Right So that's one thing I wanted you to know about

the war.

The second one is a term, blitzkrieg, B-L-I-T-Z-K-R-I-E-G. And, essentially, it means lightning war. This was an

idea developed by the Germans. And it comes out of lessons from World War I.

And here are the main precepts of this lightning war. And, essentially, it's sort of all shrouded in the concept that in

order to win a war, you need to win it really quickly. And so how do you do that? Well, one, you attack without

warning.

Second, you deploy overwhelming force. The concept of shock and awe, that's what they were recommending.

Third point is you send in the dive bombers. You bomb the enemy's planes before those planes even leave the

airport.

The fourth point is you dive bomb the refugees. You dive bomb the civilians. What you want to do is spread panic,

clog up the roads, and make it impossible to manage civilians. I mean, blitzkrieg, really, it's horrible.

Fifth point in blitzkrieg was to send in the tanks right away. Once you've destroyed their aerial power and you've

spread panic, you send in the tanks and roll over. And right behind the tanks, you send in the infantry. Because

what you want is to have humans on the ground, boots on the ground, as it were.

Once the enemy is completely dazed by the dive bombers and confused by the amount of destruction and death,

that way the infantry will have an easy time taking over. And the point of taking over is to take the capital. Because

that is great for your army's morale and really bad for the enemy's morale.

And these were the rules of engagement that the Germans start with. And it's essentially what Hitler and the

German Army did in Poland. And then they did that in Norway, and then in Denmark, and then in Belgium, and in

the Netherlands.

German planes destroyed the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, making it impossible for them to have any

access or any ability to fight a war from the sea. And German panzers, tankers, just tore through the Belgianborder between Germany and Belgium and just rolled in. The French, based on their lessons they'd taken from

World War I, had built a pretty impressive defense line of bunkers and concrete fortifications along the border,

their northern border, with Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Germany.

They called this the Ligne Maginot after the military commander who'd sort of drawn and imagined the plan. And

they considered this Maginot Line to be a work of genius. It was, actually, rather impressive.

It had state of the art living conditions in these fortifications. It included air conditioning, so there was constant

fresh air flowing through all these bunkered fortification. There was safe food storage. It had an underground

railway system, so they could run up and down underground between the entire line.

It was protected against aerial bombings. It had a minor flaw, though. It did not extend to the border with Belgium.

Because Belgium had declared itself neutral. And the French didn't want to offend their natural neighbor. Yeah.

So when the Germans invaded Belgium without warning, and then just rolled through Belgium on their tanks, they

just kept on rolling straight into France through the wide open space in the Maginot Line. And Paris fell on June

14, 1940. This pretty much leaves only the British standing.

And they were pretty worried that they were next. But the British had a secret weapon. Well, it's not really a secret

weapon. Winston Churchill, that old lion, he wasn't exactly a young man anymore by the time World War II started.

But he was formidable. And he was a warrior. Look him up. You won't be disappointed. So he knew it would be

difficult. This blitzkrieg, this advance of Germans so quickly made things difficult. But, well, first of all, England was

separated by water from continental Europe.

And what Churchill knew is that the British didn't spend the last 300 years conquering the new world and India for

nothing. They were pretty good at controlling the sea. Second, the British had the Royal Air Force, which was not

just an effective network of planes, but it was air defenses, radars. They had systems by which they could control

the air as well.

And third, Britain was not just an island. It was a commonwealth. So it was not just the Island of Great Britain, it

was many other territories and many other people. So it could count on resources well beyond what it had

immediately.

And in fact, after the war, Australia-- well, Australia helped the Allies during the war. But after the war, Australia

would continue to ration its food supplies much, much longer than Great Britain did. It would continue to help

Britain even after Britain stopped rationing food.But before we get to that, it got really ugly. Germany bombed British airstrips. I mean, it made it really difficult for

Britain to use those planes. Because they destroyed the airstrips. So Britain used their radars to get their planes

off the ground before the Germans bombed the planes. But they bombed a lot of the airstrips, which made it hard

for planes to land.

But one night, a German bomber got lost in the fog in Britain. And instead of bombing an air strip, it bombed

London instead. Now, I'm not saying that that was a good thing.

But the British retaliated against the bombing of London and bombed Berlin, which made Hitler completely insane.

He literally lost his mind. And he decided that he was going to destroy London. He was going to focus all that blitz

on London. And that's essentially what is known as the London Blitz.

However, while Hitler's air force was focused on destroying London, it gave the Royal Air Force time to rebuild

airstrips and fortify against future air attacks. And so by 1940, it was clear that Germany was simply not going to

be able to invade Great Britain, at least not via the air. But Hitler hadn't given up on destroying Great Britain yet.

And so he was now intent on starving the island. And he used his battleships to isolate England. Germany had a

lot of submarines. The German word for them are [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. You might have heard about it, U-

boat.

And so it sunk one after another of merchant ships that were bringing food and supplies to Britain. And so this is

actually a place where the still-neutral US comes in. Because the United States helped Britain at this time with

anything they needed to try to win the fight with food and supplies.

Because the US might have been neutral in the 1940s or early 1940 and '41, but it knew it was at some point

probably going to have to join the war effort. But it also tried to hold off as long as possible, understanding very

well that it needed to make sure that Germany was defeated. Now with the help of the United States, Hitler literally

never made it across the channel.

There's another reason Hitler never conquered Britain. One of the biggest innovations in science was in

computing. And this was also happening in England. And it was a direct consequence of the war.

But the Germans used an Enigma cyber machine to encode all the messages that they sent back and forth,

specifically those with information on their Luftwaffe, which is sort of their plane targets and the locations of their

submarines. And Bletchley Park, outside of London, was a location for the Government Code and Cipher School--

sounds cool, right-- where a variety of crypt analysts and mathematicians would spend the war trying to break the

codes that Germany produced. And they were intercepted by the Allies, and then hopefully decoded by these

master puzzlers.So the first wave of people they hired were really good at solving puzzles, not mathematicians yet. So they had

chess champions and crossword experts trying to sort of think about how to solve the code by really just studying

them. And they recruited men at the best universities at Oxford and Cambridge. And they recruited some women.

But, essentially, the women were largely recruited for administrative positions.

And they were recruited as computers. Did you know that women were the original computers? That's the word

that we use for people who did calculations before the advent of a mechanical machine that could do it. So the

word computer comes from the act of doing computation, which was a largely feminine job in the war and before.

Now, in 1939, Bletchley Park had started hiring more mathematicians. And among them is the now famous Alan

Turing. He's widely acknowledged to have devised the many techniques to break the Enigma code, especially A

system by which he could speed up the computing of the decryption of the codes.

And that process didn't rely on humans. It relied on the Turing machine. You know, he's very well known for that.

And he's specially sort of really remembered for his major contribution, the post-war work on his Automatic

Computing Engine, ACE, which essentially was the first design for stored program computer.

Alan Turing, like many other men and women at Bletchley Park, were brilliant. And he significantly helped the war

effort. And many say that he, in fact, shortened the war by many years by breaking the codes that allowed Allies to

bomb Axis Powers before Axis Powers bombed the Allies.

So he sort of contributed to Allied victory. He's also one of the best known victims of prosecution for homosexual

acts in the 1950s. So his intellect and his contribution to the war effort were one thing. But social mores in the late

'40s and '50s and the expectations in those days were quite another.

So, yes, on the one hand, we have great innovation. On the other hand, we have unbelievably closed-minded

attitudes. That's life, people.

All right. Well, let's see. So I've already told you that covering World War II is going to be pretty difficult. And you

can get a lot of information depending on what you're interested in pretty much anywhere else. And one lecture

can't possibly begin to do justice to the many lives lost in this conflict.

Hitler's obsession with racial purity had some pretty horrific consequences. But this decade was not just about

that. And this decade wasn't even not just about the Holocaust, it wasn't just about the war. The Holocaust was

not the only horrible thing to happen.

And I want to contextualize this a little bit by reminding you that in the 1940s, most of Africa was still a colony ofeither Britain, or France, or Belgium. And South Africa in the 1940s was institutionalizing really cruel racist policies

of its own. And so while the US and Britain and France were coalescing around fighting a racist tyrant and his Axis

Powers in Europe, in the US, African Americans still lived in segregated communities, could not drink out of the

same water fountains. couldn't go to the same schools, couldn't hold the same jobs, couldn't go to the same

bathrooms as white Americans.

Britain was still the colonial ruler in India and in Africa. And Africa was still largely a French, British, or Belgian

colony. So the World War ended on September 2, 1945. But all was not well in the world.

So first let's continue on what was not so well, was that the war ends with a horrible bang. The two only nuclear

bombs to have ever been used in warfare are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and 9th

respectively. 129 people died.

It did lead to the full surrender of Japan. And the US dropped those bombs with the approval of the British. So it's

not that the United States worked on its own here. But to this day, the use of the bomb, the nuclear bomb, is not

without controversy.

It's true that the Japanese had not surrendered yet, even though it was really clear that they had lost. But many

historians suggest that there were probably cultural reasons why the Japanese Emperor and Japan would not

respond to President Truman's request that they surrender. Others suggest that the reason why Truman had to

drop those bombs was because, essentially, once the awesomeness-- and by awesome, I don't mean in a, like,

oh, my god, how cool is that?

But the awe-inspiring sort of frightening strength of the nuclear bombings, once that was discovered in a sense,

Truman was also sending a message that this was technology that this was no trifle. This was no joke. This was

unbelievably powerful technology.

And not only did the United States have this power, but it also was a signal to the USSR. The Soviet Union might

have been an ally of the US in World War II, but they were not friends. And so in a sense, the dropping of the

nuclear bombs in Japan was also a signal to the rest of the world that these were not weapons that should ever

be used again.

And from that moment on, all future conflicts would happen in the shadow of this nuclear explosion. And that war

was going to be done by any means, just not by nuclear means. The discovery or the use of that power also lead

to sort of other innovations, nuclear submarines, nuclear power plants.

These are useful discoveries. But they also lead to the Cold War. This is what I meant by this sort of going to war,

but not nuclear war, is that from now on, for the next 50 years, every confrontation between the US and the SovietUnion or any other power would have to work really hard at not using nuclear power.

Now, let's think about superpowers here for a second. The US emerges from the war with the strongest economy

in the world and with a really, really strong new potential foe in Eastern Europe. Europe was completely destroyed.

The railroads had been destroyed. There were refugees everywhere.

And the United States was really worried that this kind of poverty and misery left unattended would lead to undue

influence by this new enemy of theirs, the Soviet Union. And they were worried that if they, if the US, didn't take

care of this destroyed Europe that there might be a communist takeover. And that was not something the United

States could contend with.

So the United States came up with an idea. It was called the Marshall Plan. The offer was we'll help rebuild

Europe. The United States offered money, expert advice on rebuilding.

It offered food, machinery, raw materials. And, essentially, there was no catch. Except, of course, if somebody is

that generous with you, you're friends now, right? So that meant that by accepting this help, Europe would

become a US ally.

And guess what the Soviet Union did? Under Stalin, they were like, no. We're not interested in the Marshall Plan.

So the United States expands its power in Europe, helps rebuild it, stations, has military bases throughout Europe.

There were American bases in Germany, and Italy, and Belgium. And Russia has bases also in Germany and

further east, in Poland and Hungary and sort of parts of Europe it will now consider to be under its influence. And

as the Marshall Plan improved living conditions in these countries and the countries that had accepted help, more

and more people that lived near these areas would move to areas on the Marshall Plan.

So remember I told you that the United States had stations in Germany and so did Russia? The US and Russia

shared Berlin. And the parts of Berlin that were under US control and that had funds from the Marshall Plan

started being pretty attractive to the Germans that were living on the side of Berlin that was under Soviet control.

And so Stalin really hated the way that made him look. He hated the fact that people were leaving his side of

Berlin. And in 1948, he announced he was cutting access to Berlin. Stalin hoped the Allies would really just

abandon Berlin and just let him have it.

But instead, the Western Allies-- not just the Allies, now they were the Western Allies, because Russia was clearly

no longer an ally-- airlifted support into the city for almost a year. Planes carried food and supplies into Berlin for

11 months until May 12, 1949 when Russia finally admitted defeat and opened the city up again. Actually, this is

where the Cold War starts.This is where it becomes obvious that the Soviet Union and the United States are not going to be friends. And

they're going to have conflicts. And they know they can't use the nuclear bomb. But right now, Russia doesn't

have one yet.

But there's going to be conflict between the two of them. And it's not exactly sure how it's going to unfurl. So stay

tuned for the continuation of the Cold War in the 1950s.

But before we get to the 1950s, I just wanted to talk about two, and I'm going to say "happier events,

" but really

I'm going to put quotes around "happier events.

" The creation of the State of Israel and the creation of the

Independent State of India, these are both events that had longed been hoped for, both events with bloody and

lengthy consequences on the world stage. Now, in the case of the creation of the State of Israel, there was large

scale consensus that after what the world had witnessed, after the liberation of concentration camps like Birkenau,

and Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen, something was owed to the Jews who survived.

They couldn't really be expected to return to Germany. And they really couldn't expect to believe that they were

welcome anywhere but in a Jewish state. I mean, Jews had been applied to settle in Palestine since the late

1930s and early 1940s.

Remember it was under British mandate. And there were rising tensions as more and more people moved into

Palestine. I mean, the Palestinians were complaining that they were being shoved aside for these newcomers.

What were they going to do with the survivors of the concentration camps? I mean, surely they had a claim to a

safe haven. And you remember the Balfour Declaration from World War I, right? The British had promised to help

the Jews have a homeland.

The Jewish agency in Palestine, which was as close to government as the Jews had in Palestine, was led by

David Ben-Gurion, who was at this time putting enormous pressure on the British to allow more Jews to come into

Palestine. But he was also putting pressure on Jewish terrorist organizations to stop attacking each other, to stop

attacking the British, and to stop attacking the Palestinians. So he understood that Jews could not be violent about

their demands, that this needed to be handled overtly, legally, and not violently. A Jewish state that was really

wrested out of violence was not going to be particularly helpful to the cause of Jewish survival.

In 1947, the British had sort of other issues to deal with. And we'll talk about that in a second. So they were really

tired of dealing with this. And they handed the mandate of Palestine over back to the United States-- not the

United States, sorry-- the United Nations. And the United Nations, at that moment, decided that Palestine just

would have to be partitioned, that there was going to be one Palestinian state, and there'd be a Jewish state.And that Jewish state was going to be named Israel. And on May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion hoisted the flag of

Israel and formally declared the formation of the state. And guess what happened that very day? Arab forces from

Palestine, Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq attacked Israel that day.

Happy birthday, Israel. We're attacking you now. The Israeli Army largely pushed them back. But attacks from

Arab forces continued throughout the decades. And counter attacks by the Israeli Army also continued.

And we'll be talking about that over the next couple of decades. But, essentially, the outcome of the partition of

Palestine into a Palestinian state, which doesn't quite exist yet, and an Israeli state with a ton of moving borders,

the outcome are thousands of Palestinians many of which by now have only known life as refugees in what they

consider to be their own land. So, happy birthday to Israel and a significant global issue that continues to this day.

The reason why I told you Britain was sort of eager to hand over the mandate of Palestine back to the United

Nations was because it was dealing with India. India had been a British colony since sort of officially the middle of

the 19th century. But, in fact, the British had been in India since the middle of the 18th century.

And since the beginning of the 20th century, there's been a really strong Indian nationalist movement. And it was

growing stronger. And when World War II broke out, Gandhi had launched a new campaign asking the British to

please quit India. Really, what's the point at this stage?

And he was right. The British had finally understood that they needed to leave. The same way that the British

could not continue to maintain a mandate in Palestine, they really couldn't continue being a colonial power.

And so they sent a last viceroy to India, that was Earl Mountbatten. And his task was to help pull out of Britain,

Britain from India, and help India become an independent state by the summer of 1948. But there was one major

problem, which was that India has a majority Hindu population. But it had also a minority Muslim population.

And as subjects of the British crown, the Muslims had equal rights under the British crown. But in an independent

India, Muslims would be a minority. And the leader of India's Muslim League was worried. This man, Muhammad

Ali Jinnah, asked independent India to be partitioned-- there's that word again-- into a separate Muslim state.

So there'd be India, which would be the Hindu state, and Pakistan, the Indian Muslim state. Now, the problem was

that Muslims lived everywhere in India. So a partitioned state wouldn't really help, right? Millions would have to be

physically moved to Pakistan.

And yet, that's ultimately what happened. And it was not a smooth transition. There was significant violence in

1946 and enormous mistrust among the people who had just before been subject of the same king fighting for the

same thing, independence from that king.Gandhi himself was completely heartbroken by the idea of dividing India into a Hindu and a Muslim state. But his

heartbreak was for naught. His policy of nonviolence had helped gain Indian independence. And it would do

nothing to keep it together.

So I know that I started this lecture by saying that there were good things and bad things about the 1940s. And I'm

afraid that maybe there were just bad things in the 1940s with a couple of bright lights. But I will let you ponder

that. And we will talk again soon.