Axis and Allies during World War II

There are many explorations and books written on the subject of World War II. But what few books explore in-depth is the men who were responsible for war, and why they chose the course they did. What drove Adolph Hitler to declare a global war he could never win? Why did Hirohito agree to sponsor a war he did not want to wage? Why did Mussolini agree to involve himself in a conflict he was ill-prepared to uphold? What inspired, or dominated, their choices, leading to the worst conflict in the history of the modern world?

The mastermind behind World War II was, in fact, an ideology suggested and discarded by writers, philosophers, and biologists as far back as Ancient Greece. Plato’s social views, which would one day lead to Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, was to have a far more dastardly effect on the entire world than either Communism or evolution could produce. Discarded by the end of his lifetime, Plato’s early philosophy was the focus of the nineteenth century writings of Karl Marx. While Marx’s interpretations of communal ownership and super-national establishment were inspired, they were not practical in an imperfect world, which was part of the reason Plato had eventually discarded his own theory. However, those words were to cross paths with an imprisoned Austrian decades later, and would be twisted by a medical insanity and a Napoleonic Complex until they formed the basis of a dictatorial state and a prejudiced ideology which eventually led to world war. That ideology, Nazism, aimed at building a new social order, first in Germany and then throughout the world. It focused on racial and biological character and perfection, and contained the views that only through conquest could Germany prove itself worthy of world-wide domination and leadership, and prove its superiority over the lesser races and nations.

The Nazi ideology shared the view that the world was a Darwinian environment in which only the strongest and fittest of creatures survived, purifying the gene pool by killing off the weakest of the species. But, for all Hitler’s delusions of racial purity, he despised outright socialism as much as he considered democracy a sign of weakness. Instead, he set out to establish a new political and social order in Germany, the so-called “Third Way,” between capitalism and communism. His ultimate purpose was to create a community of racially pure Germans, loyal to their leader, who would meet the challenges of Germany’s destiny as an empire. Hitler saw two main ethnic enemies to this empire. The first was the gypsies, who swore allegiance to no flag, nation, or leader, and would thus never be able to be trusted within the new world order Hitler was building. The second was the Jews, whom Hitler regarded as a an enemy to all other races because they controlled much of the money in Europe, and particularly in Germany.

There is physical evidence that a brain tumour was Hitler’s ultimate enemy, and the source of the insanity which drove him to push his troops into oblivion, commit genocide, and finally led to the deluded paranoia which prompted him to trust none of his advisors. However, Hitler never acted completely alone. There were many important men behind him who, had it not been for their support and direction, could have kept Hitler from ever rising to power or waging war. Military commanders such as Rommel and Von Manstein could have halted Hitler in his tracks by turning his own army against him. Instead, they continued to supply him with battleplans and strategies, as men such as S.S. leader Heinrich Himmler preyed on Hitler’s growing paranoia in an effort to extend their own power. Himmler was the Nazi head of the Secret Service (later called the Gestapo) from 1929 to 1945, and Germany’s minister of the interior from 1943 to 1945. He was a very ambitious man, and had no qualms about using a delusional Hitler to further his own agenda.

By January of 1933, the S.S. numbered 53,000 strong. Now it was time for Himmler’s next move - establishing the autonomy of the S.S. within the Nazi Party, craftily removing it from even Hitler’s sphere of control. Once he accomplished that goal, he had succeeded in making the S.S. answerable only to him, and sanctioned to do everything necessary to uphold the Nazi ideology as Himmler saw it. In short, Himmler assured that the S.S. not only operated outside the controls of the ruling regime, it also dominated ever sphere of security and policy made domestically.

In March 1933, Himmler became head of the Munich police, and used his growing power as head of the S.S. to establish Dachau, one of the first Concentration Camps. Then, in October 1939, he was given total control of the annexed portions of Poland. Within a year, he had pushed over one million Poles and three hundred thousand Jews eastward, replacing them with loyal Nazis. Then, in a grand coup, he was appointed minister of the interior in 1943. Heinrich Himmler now held all of the domestic cards, leaving Hitler with only the Armed Forces and foreign battles to truly command. The S.S., under Himmler, ran Germany and the German-occupied areas of Europe. By the arrival of the final months of the war, Himmler controlled Germany from the inside, and lacked only the commanding voice for the front-line army. If any one man could be held responsible for Germany’s wartime atrocities, it is Himmler, rather than Hitler, who should be singled out.

Where Germany’s true dictator was safely hidden behind a mad and vocal puppet, Japan’s was clearly no such thing. The Japanese Emperor, Hirohito, was not a dictator, but merely the unfortunate member of a long-standing Imperial tradition forced to comply with a war he personally, and on more than one occasion vocally, opposed. By the beginning of World War II, however, the position of Emperor had long since been reduced to a mere ceremonial post. He was, at the very most, an advisor to his government’s policy-making body, much as the Queen of England is to Parliament.

As the technical head of state, Hirohito was ceremonially responsible for Japan’s final declaration of war, six days before the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941. However, in truth, Hirohito reigned but did not rule. The powers of civil and military declaration which had once belonged solely to the Emperor were now in the hands of his ministers. He was incapable of vetoing any decision reached by the governing body. However, Hirohito possessed considerable public influence, even if he held no effective power. In 1940 and 1941, he endeavoured to use that influence to avoid war with the Western powers through his own Imperial Court, just as unsuccessfully and he had tried to avoid war with China in 1937. By November 2, 1941, Hirohito was faced with his failure to end mounting hostilities, and, on December 1, he was required by the Tojo government to give ritual sanction to commence the declaration of war.

The final chapter of the Axis powerplay would return to Europe, where an ineffectual Italian Fascist named Benito Mussolini would tarnish his nation’s long-standing history of conquest, established by pre-Christian Rome and upheld by the Papacy. Mussolini’s Fascist Party came to power in October 1922 and enabled Mussolini to assume dictatorial powers over Italy by 1925. As self-styled Duce (leader) and head of Italy, Mussolini had control of and responsibility for the Italian military for twenty years. He ran both Italy and its Armed Forces almost exclusively for most of that time.

Mussolini lacked Hitler’s organisational skills, and neither was his interest in wartime preparation as complete. When Italy joined forces with Germany, Mussolini claimed Italy was a major world power, when, in reality, it was only medium-rate, halfway between developed and underdeveloped. Hopelessly unable to compete with the great powers of Europe, Mussolini sought only prestigious coups. Though he signed Hitler’s Pact of Steel in May 1939, automatically binding Italy to side with Germany in any war Hitler declared, when that war broke out in September 1939, Mussolini proclaimed Italian neutrality. However, there was no way for Italy to avoid war, though it was woefully unprepared to wage war with world powers.

All in all, Mussolini was an incompetent dictator and war-leader, and had little real influence on the course of the Second World War. In the end, he was nothing more than a petty ruler and inept leader.

These men were all responsible, whether directly or indirectly, willingly or unwillingly, for one of the world’s bloodiest and most tragic wars, and it is a testament to humanity’s long memory that many of these men will live on only in infamy and wary agreement to keep their kind in check, so that the famous words of memorials around the world can be a promise kept: “Never Again.”