 |
| Hiroshima destroy by US Atomic Bomm |
Unfinished journey (44)
(Part forty-four, Depok, West Java, Indonesia, September
6, 2014, 9:23 pm)
Me three times to Japan, the first in 1982, when the
first time I went abroad for the first country I visited was Japan, before I
continue the flight to San Francisco, USA. The second visit late 1983, and the
third in 1995, while covering the shipment of liquefied natural gas from
Bontang, East Kalimantan to Osaka and Tokyo.
I see Japan is a modern and advanced country as well as
clean, especially the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki there are no more signs
of this former city devastated by the atomic bomb as a result in the United
States, due to Japanese ambitions with Germany and Italy want to conquer the
world.
The Japanese had invaded China and occupied Indonesia,
although eventually surrendered to the Allies during World War II, especially
after the city of Nagasaki and Hiroshima atomic bomb.
Emperor Hirohito, allied with Adolf Hitler (Germany) and
Mussolini of Italy.
Japan has now risen to third strongest country in the
world in terms of economy after the United States and China.
 |
| Hiroshima today |
World War II
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The Second World War" and "WWII"
redirect here. For the book series by Winston Churchill, see The Second World
War (book series). For the Antony Beevor book, see The Second World War (book).
For other uses, see WWII (disambiguation).
Page semi-protected
World War II
Infobox collage for WWII.PNG
Clockwise from top left: Chinese forces in the Battle of
Wanjialing, Australian 25-pounder guns during the First Battle of El Alamein,
German Stuka dive bombers on the Eastern Front in December 1943 US naval force
in the Lingayen Gulf, Wilhelm Keitel signing the German Instrument of
Surrender, Soviet troops in the Battle of Stalingrad
Date 1 September
1939 – 2 September 1945 (6 years, 1 day)[a]
Location Europe,
Pacific, Atlantic, South-East Asia, China, Middle East, Mediterranean, North
Africa and Horn of Africa, briefly North and South America
Result Allied
victory
Collapse of the Third Reich
Fall of Japanese and Italian Empires
Creation of the United Nations
Emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as
superpowers
Beginning of the Cold War (more...).
Belligerents
Allies
Soviet Union[b]
United States
United Kingdom
France[c]
China[d][e]
Poland
Canada
Australia
New Zealand
Yugoslavia
Greece
Netherlands
Belgium
South Africa
Norway
Czechoslovakia[f]
Ethiopia[g]
Brazil
Denmark[h]
Luxembourg
Cuba
Mexico
Client states and colonies:
India
Philippines
Mongolia
Axis
Germany[i]
Japan[d]
Italy[j]
Hungary
Romania[k]
Bulgaria[l]
Co-belligerents:
Finland
Thailand
Iraq
European client states:
Albania
Croatia
Slovakia
Japan's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere puppets:
Manchukuo
China-Nanjing
Mengjiang
Philippines
Burma
Azad Hind
Vietnam
Commanders and leaders
Allied leaders
Soviet Union Joseph Stalin
United States Franklin D. Roosevelt
United Kingdom Winston Churchill
Republic of China (1912–49) Chiang Kai-shek
Axis leaders
Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler
Empire of Japan Hirohito
Kingdom of Italy Benito Mussolini
Casualties and losses
Military dead:
Over 16,000,000
Civilian dead:
Over 45,000,000
Total dead:
Over 61,000,000 (1937–45)
...further details Military
dead:
Over 8,000,000
Civilian dead:
Over 4,000,000
Total dead:
Over 12,000,000 (1937–45)
...further details
[show] v t e
Campaigns of World War II
World War II
Alphabetical indices
A B C D E F G H I J K L M
N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
0-9
Navigation
Campaigns Countries Equipment
Lists Outline Timeline
Portal Category
v t e
World War II (WWII or WW2), also known as the Second
World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, though related
conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the world's
nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing
military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in
history, and directly involved more than 100 million people, from more than 30
different countries. In a state of "total war", the major
participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific
capabilities behind the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and
military resources. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the
Holocaust, the Three Alls Policy, the strategic bombing of enemy industrial
and/or population centres, and the first use of nuclear weapons in combat, it
resulted in an estimated 50 million to 85 million fatalities. These made World
War II the deadliest conflict in human history.[1]
The Empire of Japan aimed to dominate Asia and the
Pacific and was already at war with the Republic of China in 1937,[2] but the
world war is generally said to have begun on 1 September 1939 with the invasion
of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France
and the United Kingdom. From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns
and treaties, Germany formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan, conquering
or subduing much of continental Europe. Following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact,
Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned between themselves and annexed
territories of their European neighbours, including Poland, Finland and the
Baltic states. The United Kingdom and the other members of the British
Commonwealth were the only major Allied forces continuing the fight against the
Axis, with battles taking place in North Africa and the Horn of Africa as well
as the long-running Battle of the Atlantic. In June 1941, the European Axis
powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, giving a start to the largest
land theatre of war in history, which tied down the major part of the Axis'
military forces for the rest of the war. In December 1941, Japan attacked the
United States and European territories in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly
conquered much of the Western Pacific.
The Axis advance was stopped in 1942 when Japan lost a
critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, and Germany was defeated in North
Africa and then, decisively, at Stalingrad in the Soviet Union. In 1943, with a
series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasion of Italy
which brought about that nation's surrender, and Allied victories in the
Pacific, the Axis lost the initiative and undertook strategic retreat on all
fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded France, while the Soviet Union regained
all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944
and 1945 the Japanese began suffering major reverses in mainland Asia in South
Central China and Burma, while the Allies defeated the Japanese Navy and
captured key Western Pacific islands.
The war in Europe ended with an invasion of Germany by
the Western Allies and the Soviet Union culminating in the capture of Berlin by
Soviet and Polish troops and the subsequent German unconditional surrender on 8
May 1945. Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945, the
United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki on 6 August and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the
Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings,
and the Soviet Union's declaration of war on Japan and invasion of Manchuria,
Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945. Thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the
total victory of the Allies over the Axis.
World War II altered the political alignment and social
structure of the world. The United Nations (UN) was established to foster
international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The great powers that
were the victors of the war—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the
United Kingdom, and France—became the permanent members of the United Nations
Security Council.[3] The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival
superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46
years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers started to decline,
while the decolonisation of Asia and Africa began. Most countries whose
industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political
integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to stabilise postwar
relations and co-operate more effectively in the Cold War.[4]
Contents [hide]
1 Chronology
2 Background
3 Pre-war events
3.1 Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935)
3.2 Spanish Civil War (1936–39)
3.3 Japanese invasion of China (1937)
3.4 Japanese invasion of the Soviet Union and Mongolia
(1938)
3.5 European occupations and agreements
4 Course of the war
4.1 War breaks out in Europe (1939–40)
4.2 Western Europe (1940–41)
4.3 Mediterranean (1940–41)
4.4 Axis attack on the USSR (1941)
4.5 War breaks out in the Pacific (1941)
4.6 Axis advance stalls (1942–43)
4.7 Allies gain momentum (1943–44)
4.8 Allies close in (1944)
4.9 Axis collapse, Allied victory (1944–45)
5 Aftermath
6 Impact
6.1 Casualties and war crimes
6.2 Concentration camps, slave labour, and genocide
6.3 Occupation
6.4 Home fronts and production
6.5 Advances in technology and warfare
7 See also
8 Notes
9 Citations
10 References
11 External links
Chronology
See also: Timeline of World War II
The start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1
September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland; Britain and
France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of
war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July
1937,[5] or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931.
Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who
held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred
simultaneously and the two wars merged in 1941. This article uses the
conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II
include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935.[6] The British
historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of the Second World War as the
Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the
Soviet Union from May to September 1939.[7]
The exact date of the war's end is also not universally
agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the
armistice of 14 August 1945 (V-J Day), rather than the formal surrender of
Japan (2 September 1945); it is even claimed in some European histories that it
ended on V-E Day (8 May 1945).[citation needed] A peace treaty with Japan was
signed in 1951 to formally tie up any loose ends such as compensation to be
paid to Allied prisoners of war who had been victims of atrocities.[8] A treaty
regarding Germany's future allowed the reunification of East and West Germany
to take place in 1990 and resolved other post-World War II issues.[9]
Background
Main article: Causes of World War II
World War I had radically altered the political map, with
the defeat of the Central Powers—including Austria-Hungary, Germany and the
Ottoman Empire—and the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia. Meanwhile,
existing victorious Allies such as France, Belgium, Italy, Greece and Romania
gained territories, whereas new states were created out of the collapse of
Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman and Russian Empires.
To prevent the outbreak of a future world war, the League
of Nations was formally created during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The
organisation's primary goal was to prevent armed conflict through collective
security, military and naval disarmament, and settling international disputes
through peaceful negotiations and arbitration.
Despite strong pacifist sentiment after World War I,[10]
its aftermath still caused irredentist and revanchist nationalism to become
important in a number of European states. Irredentism and revanchism were
strong in Germany because of the significant territorial, colonial, and
financial losses incurred by the Treaty of Versailles. Under the treaty,
Germany lost around 13 percent of its home territory and all of its overseas
colonies, while German annexation of other states was prohibited, reparations
were imposed, and limits were placed on the size and capability of the
country's armed forces.[11] Meanwhile, the Russian Civil War had led to the
creation of the Soviet Union.[12]
The German Empire was dissolved in the German Revolution
of 1918–1919, and a democratic government, later known as the Weimar Republic,
was created. The interwar period saw strife between supporters of the new
republic and hardline opponents on both the right and left. Although Italy as
an Entente ally made some territorial gains, Italian nationalists were angered
that the promises made by Britain and France to secure Italian entrance into
the war were not fulfilled with the peace settlement. From 1922 to 1925, the
Fascist movement led by Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy with a
nationalist, totalitarian, and class collaborationist agenda that abolished
representative democracy, repressed socialist, left-wing and liberal forces,
and pursued an aggressive foreign policy aimed at forcefully forging Italy as a
world power, promising the creation of a "New Roman Empire".[13]
The League of Nations assembly, held in Geneva,
Switzerland, 1930
In Germany, the Weimar Republic's legitimacy was
challenged by right-wing elements such as the Freikorps and the Nazi party,
resulting in events such as the Kapp Putsch and the Beer Hall Putsch. With the
onset of the Great Depression in 1929, domestic support for Nazism and its
leader Adolf Hitler rose and, in 1933, he was appointed Chancellor of Germany.
In the aftermath of the Reichstag fire, Hitler created a totalitarian
single-party state led by the Nazis.[14]
The Kuomintang (KMT) party in China launched a
unification campaign against regional warlords and nominally unified China in
the mid-1920s, but was soon embroiled in a civil war against its former Chinese
communist allies.[15] In 1931, an increasingly militaristic Japanese Empire,
which had long sought influence in China[16] as the first step of what its
government saw as the country's right to rule Asia, used the Mukden Incident as
a pretext to launch an invasion of Manchuria and establish the puppet state of
Manchukuo.[17]
Too weak to resist Japan, China appealed to the League of
Nations for help. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations after being
condemned for its incursion into Manchuria. The two nations then fought several
battles, in Shanghai, Rehe and Hebei, until the Tanggu Truce was signed in
1933. Thereafter, Chinese volunteer forces continued the resistance to Japanese
aggression in Manchuria, and Chahar and Suiyuan.[18]
Adolf Hitler at a German National Socialist political
rally in Weimar, October 1930
Adolf Hitler, after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow
the German government in 1923, eventually became the Chancellor of Germany in
1933. He abolished democracy, espousing a radical, racially motivated revision
of the world order, and soon began a massive rearmament campaign.[19] It was at
this time that multiple political scientists began to predict that a second
Great War might take place.[20] Meanwhile, France, to secure its alliance,
allowed Italy a free hand in Ethiopia, which Italy desired as a colonial
possession. The situation was aggravated in early 1935 when the Territory of
the Saar Basin was legally reunited with Germany and Hitler repudiated the
Treaty of Versailles, accelerated his rearmament programme and introduced
conscription.[21]
Hoping to contain Germany, the United Kingdom, France and
Italy formed the Stresa Front; however, in June 1935, the United Kingdom made
an independent naval agreement with Germany, easing prior restrictions. The
Soviet Union, concerned due to Germany's goals of capturing vast areas of eastern
Europe, wrote a treaty of mutual assistance with France. Before taking effect
though, the Franco-Soviet pact was required to go through the bureaucracy of
the League of Nations, which rendered it essentially toothless.[22] The United
States, concerned with events in Europe and Asia, passed the Neutrality Act in
August.[23] In October, Italy invaded Ethiopia through Italian Somaliland and
Eritrea;[24] Germany was the only major European nation to support the
invasion. Italy subsequently dropped its objections to Germany's goal of
absorbing Austria.[25]
Hitler defied the Versailles and Locarno treaties by
remilitarising the Rhineland in March 1936. He received little response from
other European powers.[26] When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July, Hitler
and Mussolini supported the fascist and authoritarian Nationalist forces in
their civil war against the Soviet-supported Spanish Republic. Both sides used
the conflict to test new weapons and methods of warfare,[27] with the
Nationalists winning the war in early 1939. In October 1936, Germany and Italy
formed the Rome–Berlin Axis. A month later, Germany and Japan signed the
Anti-Comintern Pact, which Italy would join in the following year. In China,
after the Xi'an Incident, the Kuomintang and communist forces agreed on a
ceasefire to present a united front to oppose Japan.[28]
Pre-war events
Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935)
Main article: Second Italo-Abyssinian War
Italian soldiers recruited in 1935, on their way to fight
the Second Italo-Abyssinian War
The Second Italo–Abyssinian War was a brief colonial war
that began in October 1935 and ended in May 1936. The war began with the
invasion of the Ethiopian Empire (also known as Abyssinia) by the armed forces
of the Kingdom of Italy (Regno d'Italia), which was launched from Italian
Somaliland and Eritrea.[24] The war resulted in the military occupation of
Ethiopia and its annexation into the newly created colony of Italian East
Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana, or AOI); in addition, it exposed the weakness
of the League of Nations as a force to preserve peace. Both Italy and Ethiopia
were member nations, but the League did nothing when the former clearly
violated the League's own Article X.[29]
Spanish Civil War (1936–39)
Main article: Spanish Civil War
The bombing of Guernica in 1937, sparked Europe-wide
fears that the next war would be based on bombing of cities with very high
civilian casualties
During the Spanish Civil War, Hitler and Mussolini lent
military support to the Nationalist rebels, led by General Francisco Franco.
The Soviet Union supported the existing government, the Spanish Republic. Over
30,000 foreign volunteers, known as the International Brigades, also fought
against the Nationalists. Both Germany and the USSR used this proxy war as an
opportunity to test in combat their most advanced weapons and tactics. The
bombing of Guernica by the German Condor Legion in April 1937 heightened
widespread concerns that the next major war would include extensive terror
bombing attacks on civilians.[30][31] The Nationalists won the civil war in
April 1939; Franco, now dictator, bargained with both sides during the Second
World War, but never concluded any major agreements. He did send volunteers to
fight on the eastern front under German command but Spain remained neutral and
did not allow either side to use its territory.[32]
Japanese invasion of China (1937)
Main article: Second Sino-Japanese War
Japanese Imperial Army soldiers during the Battle of
Shanghai, 1937
In July 1937, Japan captured the former Chinese imperial
capital of Beijing after instigating the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which
culminated in the Japanese campaign to invade all of China.[33] The Soviets
quickly signed a non-aggression pact with China to lend materiel support,
effectively ending China's prior co-operation with Germany. Generalissimo
Chiang Kai-shek deployed his best army to defend Shanghai, but, after three
months of fighting, Shanghai fell. The Japanese continued to push the Chinese forces
back, capturing the capital Nanking in December 1937. After the fall of
Nanking, tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians
and disarmed combatants were murdered by the Japanese.[34][35]
In March 1938, Nationalist Chinese force got their first
major victory at Taierzhuang but then city Xuzhou was taken by Japanese in
May.[36] In June 1938, Chinese forces stalled the Japanese advance by flooding
the Yellow River; this manoeuvre bought time for the Chinese to prepare their
defences at Wuhan, but the city was taken by October.[37] Japanese military
victories did not bring about the collapse of Chinese resistance that Japan had
hoped to achieve; instead the Chinese government relocated inland to Chongqing
and continued the war.[38][39]
Japanese invasion of the Soviet Union and Mongolia (1938)
See also: Nanshin-ron and Soviet–Japanese border
conflicts
Japanese forces in Manchuoko had sporadic border clashes
with the Soviet Union, culminating in the Japanese defeat at Khalkin Gol. After
this, Japan and the Soviet Union signed a Neutrality Pact in April 1941, and
Japan turned its focus to the South Pacific.
European occupations and agreements
Further information: Anschluss, Appeasement, Munich
Agreement, German occupation of Czechoslovakia and Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano
pictured just before signing the Munich Agreement, 29 September 1938
In Europe, Germany and Italy were becoming more bold. In
March 1938, Germany annexed Austria, again provoking little response from other
European powers.[40] Encouraged, Hitler began pressing German claims on the
Sudetenland, an area of Czechoslovakia with a predominantly ethnic German
population; and soon Britain and France followed the counsel of prime minister
Neville Chamberlain and conceded this territory to Germany in the Munich
Agreement, which was made against the wishes of the Czechoslovak government, in
exchange for a promise of no further territorial demands.[41] Soon afterwards,
Germany and Italy forced Czechoslovakia to cede additional territory to Hungary
and Poland.[42]
Although all of Germany's stated demands had been
satisfied by the agreement, privately Hitler was furious that British
interference had prevented him from seizing all of Czechoslovakia in one
operation. In subsequent speeches Hitler attacked British and Jewish
"war-mongers" and in January 1939 secretly ordered a major build-up
of the German navy to challenge British naval supremacy. In March 1939, Germany
invaded the remainder of Czechoslovakia and subsequently split it into the
German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and a pro-German client state, the
Slovak Republic.[43] Hitler also delivered an ultimatum to Lithuania, forcing
the concession of the Klaipėda Region.
German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop signing the
Nazi–Soviet non-aggression pact. Standing behind him are Molotov and the Soviet
leader Joseph Stalin, 1939
Alarmed, and with Hitler making further demands on the
Free City of Danzig, France and Britain guaranteed their support for Polish
independence; when Italy conquered Albania in April 1939, the same guarantee
was extended to Romania and Greece.[44] Shortly after the Franco-British pledge
to Poland, Germany and Italy formalised their own alliance with the Pact of
Steel.[45] Hitler accused Britain and Poland of trying to "encircle"
Germany and renounced the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the German–Polish
Non-Aggression Pact.
In August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact,[46] a non-aggression treaty with a secret protocol.
The parties gave each other rights to "spheres of influence" (western
Poland and Lithuania for Germany; eastern Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and
Bessarabia for the USSR). It also raised the question of continuing Polish
independence.[47] The agreement was crucial to Hitler because it assured that
Germany would not have to face the prospect of a two-front war, as it had in
World War I, after it defeated Poland.
The situation reached a general crisis in late August as
German troops continued to mobilise against the Polish border. In a private
meeting with the Italian foreign minister, Count Ciano, Hitler asserted that
Poland was a "doubtful neutral" that needed to either yield to his
demands or be "liquidated" to prevent it from drawing off German
troops in the future "unavoidable" war with the Western democracies.
He did not believe Britain or France would intervene in the conflict.[48] On 23
August Hitler ordered the attack to proceed on 26 August, but upon hearing that
Britain had concluded a formal mutual assistance pact with Poland and that
Italy would maintain neutrality, he decided to delay it.[49] In response to
British pleas for direct negotiations, Germany demanded on 29 August that a
Polish plenipotentiary immediately travel to Berlin to negotiate the handover
of Danzig and the Polish Corridor to Germany as well as to agree to safeguard
the German minority in Poland. The Poles refused to comply with this request
and on the evening of 31 August Germany declared that it considered its
proposals rejected.[50]
Course of the war
Further information: Diplomatic history of World War II
War breaks out in Europe (1939–40)
Main articles: Invasion of Poland, Occupation of Poland
(1939–45), Nazi crimes against the Polish nation, Soviet invasion of Poland and
Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939–46)
Soldiers of the German Wehrmacht tearing down the border
crossing between Poland and the Free City of Danzig, 1 September 1939
On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland under the
false pretext that the Poles had carried out a series of sabotage operations
against German targets.[51] Two days later, on 3 September, France and United
Kingdom, followed by the fully independent Dominions[52] of the British
Commonwealth[53] – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa – declared
war on Germany. However, initially the alliance provided limited direct
military support to Poland, consisting of a small French attack into the
Saarland.[54] The Western Allies also began a naval blockade of Germany, which
aimed to damage the country's economy and war effort.[55] Germany responded by
ordering U-boat warfare against Allied merchant and war ships, which was to
later escalate in the Battle of the Atlantic.
German Panzer I tanks near the city of Bydgoszcz, during
the Invasion of Poland, September 1939
On 17 September 1939, after signing a cease-fire with
Japan, the Soviets also invaded Poland from the east.[56] The Polish army was
defeated and Warsaw surrendered to the Germans on 27 September, with final
pockets of resistance surrendering on 6 October. Poland's territory was divided
between Germany and the Soviet Union, with Lithuania and Slovakia also
receiving small shares. After the surrender of Poland's armed forces, Polish
resistance established an Underground State, a partisan Home Army, and
continued to fight alongside the Allies on all fronts in Europe and North
Africa, throughout the entire course of the war.[57]
About 100,000 Polish military personnel were evacuated to
Romania and the Baltic countries; many of these soldiers later fought against
the Germans in other theatres of the war.[58] Poland's Enigma codebreakers were
also evacuated to France.[59]
On 6 October Hitler made a public peace overture to the
United Kingdom and France, but said that the future of Poland was to be
determined exclusively by Germany and the Soviet Union. Chamberlain rejected
this on 12 October, saying "Past experience has shown that no reliance can
be placed upon the promises of the present German Government."[50] After
this rejection Hitler ordered an immediate offensive against France,[60] but
bad weather forced repeated postponements until the spring of 1940.[61][62][63]
After signing the German-Soviet treaty governing
Lithuania, the Soviet Union forced the Baltic countries to allow it to station
Soviet troops in their countries under pacts of "mutual
assistance."[64][65][66] Finland rejected territorial demands, prompting a
Soviet invasion in November 1939.[67] The resulting Winter War ended in March
1940 with Finnish concessions.[68] The United Kingdom and France treating the
Soviet attack on Finland as tantamount to its entering the war on the side of
the Germans, responded to the Soviet invasion by supporting the USSR's
expulsion from the League of Nations.[66]
Western Europe (1940–41)
Map of the French Maginot Line
View of London after the German "Blitz", 29
December 1940
In April 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway to
protect shipments of iron ore from Sweden, which the Allies were attempting to
cut off by unilaterally mining neutral Norwegian waters.[69] Denmark
capitulated after a few hours, and despite Allied support, during which the
important harbour of Narvik temporarily was recaptured by the British, Norway
was conquered within two months.[70] British discontent over the Norwegian
campaign led to the replacement of the British Prime Minister, Neville
Chamberlain, with Winston Churchill on 10 May 1940.[71]
Germany launched an offensive against France and, for
reasons of military strategy, also attacked the neutral nations of Belgium, the
Netherlands, and Luxembourg on 10 May 1940.[72] That same day the United
Kingdom occupied the Danish possessions of Iceland, Greenland and the Faroes to
preempt a possible German invasion of the islands.[73] The Netherlands and
Belgium were overrun using blitzkrieg tactics in a few days and weeks,
respectively.[74] The French-fortified Maginot Line and the main body the
Allied forces which had moved into Belgium were circumvented by a flanking
movement through the thickly wooded Ardennes region,[75] mistakenly perceived
by Allied planners as an impenetrable natural barrier against armoured vehicles.[76]
As a result, the bulk of the Allied armies found themselves trapped in an
encirclement and were beaten. The majority were taken prisoner, whilst over
300,000, mostly British and French, were evacuated from the continent at
Dunkirk by early June, although abandoning almost all of their equipment.[77]
On 10 June, Italy invaded France, declaring war on both
France and the United Kingdom.[78] Paris fell to the Germans on 14 June and
eight days later France surrendered and was soon divided into German and Italian
occupation zones,[79] and an unoccupied rump state under the Vichy Regime,
which, though officially neutral, was generally aligned with Germany. France
kept its fleet but the British feared the Germans would seize it, so on 3 July,
the British attacked it.[80]
In June 1940, the Soviet Union forcibly annexed Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania,[65] and then annexed the disputed Romanian region of
Bessarabia. Meanwhile, Nazi-Soviet political rapprochement and economic
co-operation[81][82] gradually stalled,[83][84] and both states began
preparations for war.[85]
On 19 July, Hitler again publicly offered to end the war,
saying he had no desire to destroy the British Empire. The United Kingdom
rejected this, with Lord Halifax responding "there was in his speech no
suggestion that peace must be based on justice, no word of recognition that the
other nations of Europe had any right to self‑determination ..."[86]
Following this, Germany began an air superiority campaign
over the United Kingdom (the Battle of Britain) to prepare for an invasion.[87]
The campaign failed, and the invasion plans were cancelled by September.[87]
Frustrated, and in part in response to repeated British air raids against
Berlin, Germany began a strategic bombing offensive against British cities
known as the Blitz.[88] However, the air attacks largely failed to disrupt the
British war effort.
German Luftwaffe, Heinkel He 111 bombers during the
Battle of Britain
Using newly captured French ports, the German Navy
enjoyed success against an over-extended Royal Navy, using U-boats against
British shipping in the Atlantic.[89] The British scored a significant victory
on 27 May 1941 by sinking the German battleship Bismarck.[90] Perhaps most
importantly, during the Battle of Britain the Royal Air Force had successfully
resisted the Luftwaffe's assault, and the German bombing campaign largely ended
in May 1941.[91]
Throughout this period, the neutral United States took
measures to assist China and the Western Allies. In November 1939, the American
Neutrality Act was amended to allow "cash and carry" purchases by the
Allies.[92] In 1940, following the German capture of Paris, the size of the
United States Navy was significantly increased. In September, the United States
further agreed to a trade of American destroyers for British bases.[93] Still,
a large majority of the American public continued to oppose any direct military
intervention into the conflict well into 1941.[94]
Although Roosevelt had promised to keep the United States
out of the war, he nevertheless took concrete steps to prepare for that
eventuality. In December 1940 he accused Hitler of planning world conquest and
ruled out negotiations as useless, calling for the US to become an
"arsenal for democracy" and promoted the passage of Lend-Lease aid to
support the British war effort.[86] In January 1941 secret high level staff
talks with the British began for the purposes of determining how to defeat
Germany should the US enter the war. They decided on a number of offensive
policies, including an air offensive, the "early elimination" of
Italy, raids, support of resistance groups, and the capture of positions to
launch an offensive against Germany.[95]
At the end of September 1940, the Tripartite Pact united
Japan, Italy and Germany to formalise the Axis Powers. The Tripartite Pact
stipulated that any country, with the exception of the Soviet Union, not in the
war which attacked any Axis Power would be forced to go to war against all
three.[96] The Axis expanded in November 1940 when Hungary, Slovakia and
Romania joined the Tripartite Pact.[97] Romania would make a major contribution
(as did Hungary) to the Axis war against the USSR, partially to recapture
territory ceded to the USSR, partially to pursue its leader Ion Antonescu's
desire to combat communism.[98]
Mediterranean (1940–41)
Australian troops of the British Commonwealth Forces man
a front-line trench during the Siege of Tobruk; North African Campaign, August
1941
Italy began operations in the Mediterranean, initiating a
siege of Malta in June, conquering British Somaliland in August, and making an
incursion into British-held Egypt in September 1940. In October 1940, Italy
started the Greco-Italian War due to Mussolini's jealousy of Hitler's success
but within days was repulsed and pushed back into Albania, where a stalemate
soon occurred.[99] The United Kingdom responded to Greek requests for
assistance by sending troops to Crete and providing air support to Greece.
Hitler decided that when the weather improved he would take action against
Greece to assist the Italians and prevent the British from gaining a foothold
in the Balkans, to strike against the British naval dominance of the
Mediterranean, and to secure his hold on Romanian oil.[100]
In December 1940, British Commonwealth forces began
counter-offensives against Italian forces in Egypt and Italian East
Africa.[101] The offensive in North Africa was highly successful and by early
February 1941 Italy had lost control of eastern Libya and large numbers of
Italian troops had been taken prisoner. The Italian Navy also suffered
significant defeats, with the Royal Navy putting three Italian battleships out
of commission by a carrier attack at Taranto, and neutralising several more
warships at the Battle of Cape Matapan.[102]
The Germans soon intervened to assist Italy. Hitler sent
German forces to Libya in February, and by the end of March they had launched
an offensive which drove back the Commonwealth forces which had been weakened
to support Greece.[103] In under a month, Commonwealth forces were pushed back
into Egypt with the exception of the besieged port of Tobruk.[104] The
Commonwealth attempted to dislodge Axis forces in May and again in June, but
failed on both occasions.[105]
By late March 1941, following Bulgaria's signing of the
Tripartite Pact, the Germans were in position to intervene in Greece. Plans
were changed, however, due to developments in neighbouring Yugoslavia. The
Yugoslav government had signed the Tripartite Pact on 25 March, only to be
overthrown two days later by a British-encouraged coup. Hitler viewed the new
regime as hostile and immediately decided to eliminate it. On 6 April Germany
simultaneously invaded both Yugoslavia and Greece, making rapid progress and
forcing both nations to surrender within the month. The British were driven
from the Balkans after Germany conqu
ered the Greek island of Crete by the end
of May.[106] Although the Axis victory was swift, bitter partisan warfare
subsequently broke out against the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia, which
continued until the end of the war.
 |
| Nagasaki Destroy by US atomic Bom |
The Allies did have some successes during this time. In
the Middle East, Commonwealth forces first quashed an uprising in Iraq which
had been supported by German aircraft from bases within Vichy-controlled
Syria,[107] then, with the assistance of the Free French, invaded Syria and
Lebanon to prevent further such occurrences.[108]
Axis attack on the USSR (1941)
Further information: Operation Barbarossa,
Einsatzgruppen, World War II casualties of the Soviet Union and Nazi crimes
against Soviet POWs
Animation of the WWII European Theatre
Soviet civilians in Leningrad leaving destroyed houses,
after a German bombardment of the city; Battle of Leningrad, 10 December 1942
With the situation in Europe and Asia relatively stable,
Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union made preparations. With the Soviets wary
of mounting tensions with Germany and the Japanese planning to take advantage
of the European War by seizing resource-rich European possessions in Southeast
Asia, the two powers signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April
1941.[109] By contrast, the Germans were steadily making preparations for an
attack on the Soviet Union, amassing forces on the Soviet border.[110]
Hitler believed that Britain's refusal to end the war was
based on the hope that the United States and the Soviet Union would enter the
war against Germany sooner or later.[111] He accordingly decided to try to
strengthen Germany's relations with the Soviets, or failing that, to attack and
eliminate them as a factor. In November 1940 negotiations took place to
determine if the Soviet Union would join the Tripartite Pact. The Soviets
showed some interest, but asked for concessions from Finland, Bulgaria, Turkey,
and Japan that Germany considered unacceptable. On 18 December 1940 Hitler
issued the directive to prepare for an invasion of the Soviet Union.
On 22 June 1941, Germany, supported by Italy and Romania,
invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, with Germany accusing the
Soviets of plotting against them. They were joined shortly by Finland and
Hungary.[112] The primary targets of this surprise offensive[113] were the
Baltic region, Moscow and Ukraine, with the ultimate goal of ending the 1941
campaign near the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line, from the Caspian to the White
Seas. Hitler's objectives were to eliminate the Soviet Union as a military
power, exterminate Communism, generate Lebensraum ("living
space")[114] by dispossessing the native population[115] and guarantee
access to the strategic resources needed to defeat Germany's remaining
rivals.[116]
Although the Red Army was preparing for strategic
counter-offensives before the war,[117] Barbarossa forced the Soviet supreme
command to adopt a strategic defence. During the summer, the Axis made
significant gains into Soviet territory, inflicting immense losses in both
personnel and materiel. By the middle of August, however, the German Army High
Command decided to suspend the offensive of a considerably depleted Army Group
Centre, and to divert the 2nd Panzer Group to reinforce troops advancing
towards central Ukraine and Leningrad.[118] The Kiev offensive was
overwhelmingly successful, resulting in encirclement and elimination of four
Soviet armies, and made further advance into Crimea and industrially developed
Eastern Ukraine (the First Battle of Kharkov) possible.[119]
The diversion of three quarters of the Axis troops and
the majority of their air forces from France and the central Mediterranean to
the Eastern Front[120] prompted Britain to reconsider its grand strategy.[121]
In July, the UK and the Soviet Union formed a military alliance against
Germany[122] The British and Soviets invaded Iran to secure the Persian
Corridor and Iran's oil fields.[123] In August, the United Kingdom and the
United States jointly issued the Atlantic Charter.[124]
By October Axis operational objectives in Ukraine and the
Baltic region were achieved, with only the sieges of Leningrad[125] and
Sevastopol continuing.[126] A major offensive against Moscow was renewed; after
two months of fierce battles in increasingly harsh weather the German army
almost reached the outer suburbs of Moscow, where the exhausted troops[127]
were forced to suspend their offensive.[128] Large territorial gains were made
by Axis forces, but their campaign had failed to achieve its main objectives:
two key cities remained in Soviet hands, the Soviet capability to resist was
not broken, and the Soviet Union retained a considerable part of its military
potential. The blitzkrieg phase of the war in Europe had ended.[129]
By early December, freshly mobilised reserves[130]
allowed the Soviets to achieve numerical parity with Axis troops.[131] This, as
well as intelligence data which established that a minimal number of Soviet
troops in the East would be sufficient to deter any attack by the Japanese
Kwantung Army,[132] allowed the Soviets to begin a massive counter-offensive
that started on 5 December all along the front and pushed German troops 100–250
kilometres (62–155 mi) west.[133]
War breaks out in the Pacific (1941)
Mitsubishi A6M2, "Zero" fighters on the Imperial
Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Shōkaku, just before the attack on Pearl Harbor
In 1939 the United States had renounced its trade treaty
with Japan and beginning with an aviation gasoline ban in July 1940 Japan had
become subject to increasing economic pressure.[86] During this time, Japan
launched its first attack against Changsha, a strategically important Chinese
city, but was repulsed by late September.[134] Despite several offensives by
both sides, the war between China and Japan was stalemated by 1940. To increase
pressure on China by blocking supply routes, and to better position Japanese
forces in the event of a war with the Western powers, Japan had occupied
northern Indochina.[135] Afterwards, the United States embargoed iron, steel
and mechanical parts against Japan.[136] Other sanctions soon followed.
In August of that year, Chinese communists launched an
offensive in Central China; in retaliation, Japan instituted harsh measures in
occupied areas to reduce human and material resources for the communists.[137]
Continued antipathy between Chinese communist and nationalist forces culminated
in armed clashes in January 1941, effectively ending their co-operation.[138]
In March, the Japanese 11th army attacked the headquarters of the Chinese 19th
army but was repulsed during Battle of Shanggao.[139] In September, Japan
attempted to take the city of Changsha again and clashed with Chinese
nationalist forces.[140]
German successes in Europe encouraged Japan to increase
pressure on European governments in Southeast Asia. The Dutch government agreed
to provide Japan some oil supplies from the Dutch East Indies, but negotiations
for additional access to their resources ended in failure in June 1941.[141] In
July 1941 Japan sent troops to southern Indochina, thus threatening British and
Dutch possessions in the Far East. The United States, United Kingdom and other
Western governments reacted to this move with a freeze on Japanese assets and a
total oil embargo.[142][143]
Since early 1941 the United States and Japan had been
engaged in negotiations in an attempt to improve their strained relations and
end the war in China. During these negotiations Japan advanced a number of
proposals which were dismissed by the Americans as inadequate.[144] At the same
time the US, Britain, and the Netherlands engaged in secret discussions for the
joint defence of their territories, in the event of a Japanese attack against
any of them.[145] Roosevelt reinforced the Philippines (an American possession
since 1898) and warned Japan that the US would react to Japanese attacks
against any "neighboring countries".[145]
USS Arizona during the Japanese surprise air attack on
the American pacific fleet, 7 December 1941
Frustrated at the lack of progress and feeling the pinch
of the American-British-Dutch sanctions, Japan prepared for war. On 20 November
it presented an interim proposal as its final offer. It called for the end of
American aid to China and the supply of oil and other resources to Japan. In
exchange they promised not to launch any attacks in Southeast Asia and to
withdraw their forces from their threatening positions in southern
Indochina.[144] The American counter-proposal of 26 November required that Japan
evacuate all of China without conditions and conclude non-aggression pacts with
all Pacific powers.[146] That meant Japan was essentially forced to choose
between abandoning its ambitions in China, or seizing the natural resources it
needed in the Dutch East Indies by force;[147] the Japanese military did not
consider the former an option, and many officers considered the oil embargo an
unspoken declaration of war.[148]
Japan planned to rapidly seize European colonies in Asia
to create a large defensive perimeter stretching into the Central Pacific; the
Japanese would then be free to exploit the resources of Southeast Asia while
exhausting the over-stretched Allies by fighting a defensive war.[149] To
prevent American intervention while securing the perimeter it was further
planned to neutralise the United States Pacific Fleet and the American military
presence in the Philippines from the outset.[150] On 7 December (8 December in
Asian time zones), 1941, Japan attacked British and American holdings with near-simultaneous
offensives against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific.[151] These included
an attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, landings in Thailand and
Malaya[151] and the battle of Hong Kong.
These attacks led the United States, Britain, China,
Australia and several other states to formally declare war on Japan, whereas
the Soviet Union, being heavily involved in large-scale hostilities with
European Axis countries, preferred to maintain its neutrality agreement with
Japan.[152] Germany, followed by the other Axis states, declared war on the
United States in solidarity with Japan, citing as justification the American
attacks on German submarines and merchant ships that had been ordered by
Roosevelt.[112]
Axis advance stalls (1942–43)
Seated at the Casablanca Conference; US President
Franklin D. Roosevelt and British PM Winston Churchill, January 1943
In January 1942, the United States, Britain, Soviet
Union, China, and 22 smaller or exiled governments issued the Declaration by
United Nations, thereby affirming the Atlantic Charter,[153] and agreeing to
not to sign separate peace with the Axis powers.
During 1942 Allied officials debated on the appropriate
grand strategy to pursue. All agreed that defeating Germany was the primary
objective. The Americans favoured a straightforward, large-scale attack on
Germany through France. The Soviets were also demanding a second front. The
British, on the other hand, argued that military operations should target
peripheral areas to throw a "ring" around Germany which would wear
out German strength, lead to increasing demoralisation, and bolster resistance
forces. Germany itself would be subject to a heavy bombing campaign. An
offensive against Germany would then be launched primarily by Allied armour without
using large-scale armies.[154] Eventually, the British persuaded the Americans
that a landing in France was infeasible in 1942 and they should instead focus
on driving the Axis out of North Africa.[155]
At the Casablanca Conference in early 1943 the Allies
issued a declaration declaring that they would not negotiate with their enemies
and demanded their unconditional surrender. The British and Americans agreed to
continue to press the initiative in the Mediterranean by invading Sicily to
fully secure the Mediterranean supply routes.[156] Although the British argued
for further operations in the Balkans to bring Turkey into the war, in May 1943
the Americans extracted a British commitment to limit Allied operations in the
Mediterranean to an invasion of the Italian mainland and to invade France in
1944.[157]
Pacific (1942–43)
Map of Japanese military advances, until mid-1942
By the end of April 1942, Japan and its ally Thailand had
almost fully conquered Burma, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Singapore, and
Rabaul, inflicting severe losses on Allied troops and taking a large number of
prisoners.[158] Despite stubborn resistance at Corregidor, the US possession of
the Philippines was eventually captured in May 1942, forcing its government
into exile.[159] On 16 April, in Burma 7,000 British soldiers were encircled by
the Japanese 33rd Division during the Battle of Yenangyaung and rescued by the
Chinese 38th Division.[160] Japanese forces also achieved naval victories in
the South China Sea, Java Sea and Indian Ocean,[161] and bombed the Allied
naval base at Darwin, Australia. The only real Allied success against Japan was
a Chinese victory at Changsha in early January 1942.[162] These easy victories
over unprepared opponents left Japan overconfident, as well as
overextended.[163]
In early May 1942, Japan initiated operations to capture
Port Moresby by amphibious assault and thus sever communications and supply
lines between the United States and Australia. The Allies, however, prevented
the invasion by intercepting and defeating the Japanese naval forces in the
Battle of the Coral Sea.[164] Japan's next plan, motivated by the earlier
Doolittle Raid, was to seize Midway Atoll and lure American carriers into
battle to be eliminated; as a diversion, Japan would also send forces to occupy
the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.[165] In early June, Japan put its operations
into action but the Americans, having broken Japanese naval codes in late May,
were fully aware of the plans and force dispositions and used this knowledge to
achieve a decisive victory at Midway over the Imperial Japanese Navy.[166]
US Marines during the Guadalcanal Campaign, in the
Pacific theatre, 1942
With its capacity for aggressive action greatly
diminished as a result of the Midway battle, Japan chose to focus on a belated
attempt to capture Port Moresby by an overland campaign in the Territory of
Papua.[167] The Americans planned a counter-attack against Japanese positions
in the southern Solomon Islands, primarily Guadalcanal, as a first step towards
capturing Rabaul, the main Japanese base in Southeast Asia.[168]
Both plans started in July, but by mid-September, the
Battle for Guadalcanal took priority for the Japanese, and troops in New Guinea
were ordered to withdraw from the Port Moresby area to the northern part of the
island, where they faced Australian and United States troops in the Battle of
Buna-Gona.[169] Guadalcanal soon became a focal point for both sides with heavy
commitments of troops and ships in the battle for Guadalcanal. By the start of
1943, the Japanese were defeated on the island and withdrew their troops.[170]
In Burma, Commonwealth forces mounted two operations. The first, an offensive
into the Arakan region in late 1942, went disastrously, forcing a retreat back
to India by May 1943.[171] The second was the insertion of irregular forces
behind Japanese front-lines in February which, by the end of April, had
achieved mixed results.[172]
Eastern Front (1942–43)
Red Army soldiers on the counterattack, during the Battle
of Stalingrad, February 1943
Despite considerable losses, in early 1942 Germany and
its allies stopped a major Soviet offensive in Central and Southern Russia,
keeping most territorial gains they had achieved during the previous year.[173]
In May the Germans defeated Soviet offensives in the Kerch Peninsula and at
Kharkiv,[174] and then launched their main summer offensive against southern
Russia in June 1942, to seize the oil fields of the Caucasus and occupy Kuban
steppe, while maintaining positions on the northern and central areas of the
front. The Germans split Army Group South into two groups: Army Group A struck
lower Don River while Army Group B struck south-east to the Caucasus, towards
Volga River.[175] The Soviets decided to make their stand at Stalingrad, which
was in the path of the advancing German armies.
By mid-November, the Germans had nearly taken Stalingrad
in bitter street fighting when the Soviets began their second winter counter-offensive,
starting with an encirclement of German forces at Stalingrad[176] and an
assault on the Rzhev salient near Moscow, though the latter failed
disastrously.[177] By early February 1943, the German Army had taken tremendous
losses; German troops at Stalingrad had been forced to surrender,[178] and the
front-line had been pushed back beyond its position before the summer
offensive. In mid-February, after the Soviet push had tapered off, the Germans
launched another attack on Kharkiv, creating a salient in their front line
around the Russian city of Kursk.[179]
Western Europe/Atlantic & Mediterranean (1942–43)
An American B-17 bombing raid, by the 8th Air Force, on
the Focke Wulf factory in Germany, 9 October 1943
Exploiting poor American naval command decisions, the
German navy ravaged Allied shipping off the American Atlantic coast.[180] By
November 1941, Commonwealth forces had launched a counter-offensive, Operation
Crusader, in North Africa, and reclaimed all the gains the Germans and Italians
had made.[181] In North Africa, the Germans launched an offensive in January,
pushing the British back to positions at the Gazala Line by early
February,[182] followed by a temporary lull in combat which Germany used to
prepare for their upcoming offensives.[183] Concerns the Japanese might use
bases in Vichy-held Madagascar caused the British to invade the island in early
May 1942.[184] An Axis offensive in Libya forced an Allied retreat deep inside
Egypt until Axis forces were stopped at El Alamein.[185] On the Continent,
raids of Allied commandos on strategic targets, culminating in the disastrous
Dieppe Raid,[186] demonstrated the Western Allies' inability to launch an
invasion of continental Europe without much better preparation, equipment, and
operational security.[187]
In August 1942, the Allies succeeded in repelling a
second attack against El Alamein[188] and, at a high cost, managed to deliver
desperately needed supplies to the besieged Malta.[189] A few months later, the
Allies commenced an attack of their own in Egypt, dislodging the Axis forces
and beginning a drive west across Libya.[190] This attack was followed up
shortly after by Anglo-American landings in French North Africa, which resulted
in the region joining the Allies.[191] Hitler responded to the French colony's
defection by ordering the occupation of Vichy France;[191] although Vichy
forces did not resist this violation of the armistice, they managed to scuttle
their fleet to prevent its capture by German forces.[192] The now pincered Axis
forces in Africa withdrew into Tunisia, which was conquered by the Allies in
May 1943.[193]
In early 1943 the British and Americans began the
"Combined Bomber Offensive", a strategic bombing campaign against
Germany. The goals were to disrupt the German war economy, reduce German
morale, and "de-house" the German civilian population.[194]
Allies gain momentum (1943–44)
US Navy Douglas SBD Dauntless flies patrol over the USS
Washington and USS Lexington during the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign,
1943
Following the Guadalcanal Campaign, the Allies initiated
several operations against Japan in the Pacific. In May 1943, Allied forces
were sent to eliminate Japanese forces from the Aleutians,[195] and soon after
began major operations to isolate Rabaul by capturing surrounding islands, and
to breach the Japanese Central Pacific perimeter at the Gilbert and Marshall
Islands.[196] By the end of March 1944, the Allies had completed both of these
objectives, and additionally neutralised the major Japanese base at Truk in the
Caroline Islands. In April, the Allies then launched an operation to retake
Western New Guinea.[197]
In the Soviet Union, both the Germans and the Soviets
spent the spring and early summer of 1943 making preparations for large offensives
in Central Russia. On 4 July 1943, Germany attacked Soviet forces around the
Kursk Bulge. Within a week, German forces had exhausted themselves against the
Soviets' deeply echeloned and well-constructed defences[198] and, for the first
time in the war, Hitler cancelled the operation before it had achieved tactical
or operational success.[199] This decision was partially affected by the
Western Allies' invasion of Sicily launched on 9 July which, combined with
previous Italian failures, resulted in the ousting and arrest of Mussolini
later that month.[200] Also, in July 1943 the British firebombed Hamburg
killing over 40,000 people.
Red Army troops following T-34 tanks, in a
counter-offensive on German positions, at the Battle of Kursk, August 1943
On 12 July 1943, the Soviets launched their own
counter-offensives, thereby dispelling any hopes of the German Army for victory
or even stalemate in the east. The Soviet victory at Kursk marked the end of
German superiority,[201] giving the Soviet Union the initiative on the Eastern
Front.[202][203] The Germans attempted to stabilise their eastern front along
the hastily fortified Panther-Wotan line, however, the Soviets broke through it
at Smolensk and by the Lower Dnieper Offensives.[204]
On 3 September 1943, the Western Allies invaded the
Italian mainland, following an Italian armistice with the Allies.[205] Germany
responded by disarming Italian forces, seizing military control of Italian
areas,[206] and creating a series of defensive lines.[207] German special
forces then rescued Mussolini, who then soon established a new client state in
German occupied Italy named the Italian Social Republic,[208] causing an
Italian civil war. The Western Allies fought through several lines until
reaching the main German defensive line in mid-November.[209]
German operations in the Atlantic also suffered. By May
1943, as Allied counter-measures became increasingly effective, the resulting
sizeable German submarine losses forced a temporary halt of the German Atlantic
naval campaign.[210] In November 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston
Churchill met with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo and then with Joseph Stalin in
Tehran.[211] The former conference determined the post-war return of Japanese
territory,[212] while the latter included agreement that the Western Allies
would invade Europe in 1944 and that the Soviet Union would declare war on
Japan within three months of Germany's defeat.[213]
Ruins of the Benedictine monastery, during the Battle of
Monte Cassino; Italian Campaign, May 1944
From November 1943, during the seven-week Battle of
Changde, the Chinese forced Japan to fight a costly war of attrition, while
awaiting Allied relief.[214][215][216] In January 1944, the Allies launched a
series of attacks in Italy against the line at Monte Cassino and attempted to
outflank it with landings at Anzio.[217] By the end of January, a major Soviet
offensive expelled German forces from the Leningrad region,[218] ending the
longest and most lethal siege in history.
The following Soviet offensive was halted on the pre-war
Estonian border by the German Army Group North aided by Estonians hoping to
re-establish national independence. This delay slowed subsequent Soviet
operations in the Baltic Sea region.[219] By late May 1944, the Soviets had
liberated Crimea, largely expelled Axis forces from Ukraine, and made
incursions into Romania, which were repulsed by the Axis troops.[220] The
Allied offensives in Italy had succeeded and, at the expense of allowing
several German divisions to retreat, on 4 June, Rome was captured.[221]
The Allies experienced mixed fortunes in mainland Asia.
In March 1944, the Japanese launched the first of two invasions, an operation
against British positions in Assam, India,[222] and soon besieged Commonwealth
positions at Imphal and Kohima.[223] In May 1944, British forces mounted a
counter-offensive that drove Japanese troops back to Burma,[223] and Chinese
forces that had invaded northern Burma in late 1943 besieged Japanese troops in
Myitkyina.[224] The second Japanese invasion of China attempted to destroy
China's main fighting forces, secure railways between Japanese-held territory
and capture Allied airfields.[225] By June, the Japanese had conquered the
province of Henan and begun a renewed attack against Changsha in the Hunan
province.[226]
Allies close in (1944)
American troops approaching Omaha Beach, during the
Invasion of Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944
On 6 June 1944 (known as D-Day), after three years of
Soviet pressure,[227] the Western Allies invaded northern France. After
reassigning several Allied divisions from Italy, they also attacked southern
France.[228] These landings were successful, and led to the defeat of the
German Army units in France. Paris was liberated by the local resistance
assisted by the Free French Forces on 25 August[229] and the Western Allies
continued to push back German forces in Western Europe during the latter part
of the year. An attempt to advance into northern Germany spearheaded by a major
airborne operation in the Netherlands ended with a failure.[230] After that,
the Western Allies slowly pushed into Germany, unsuccessfully trying to cross
the Rur river in a large offensive. In Italy the Allied advance also slowed
down, when they ran into the last major German defensive line.
On 22 June, the Soviets launched a strategic offensive in
Belarus (known as "Operation Bagration") that resulted in the almost
complete destruction of the German Army Group Centre.[231] Soon after that,
another Soviet strategic offensive forced German troops from Western Ukraine and
Eastern Poland. The successful advance of Soviet troops prompted resistance
forces in Poland to initiate several uprisings. Though, the largest of these in
Warsaw, where German soldiers massacred 200,000 civilians, as well as a
national Slovak Uprising in the south did not receive Soviet support, and were
put down by German forces.[232] The Red Army's strategic offensive in eastern
Romania cut off and destroyed the considerable German troops there and
triggered a successful coup d'état in Romania and in Bulgaria, followed by
those countries' shift to the Allied side.[233]
German SS soldiers from the Dirlewanger Brigade, tasked
with suppressing partisan uprisings against Nazi occupation, August 1944
In September 1944, Soviet Red Army troops advanced into
Yugoslavia and forced the rapid withdrawal of the German Army Groups E and F in
Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia to rescue them from being cut off.[234] By this
point, the Communist-led Partisans under Marshal Josip Broz Tito, who had led
an increasingly successful guerrilla campaign against the occupation since
1941, controlled much of the territory of Yugoslavia and were engaged in
delaying efforts against the German forces further south. In northern Serbia,
the Red Army, with limited support from Bulgarian forces, assisted the
Partisans in a joint liberation of the capital city of Belgrade on 20 October.
A few days later, the Soviets launched a massive assault against
German-occupied Hungary that lasted until the fall of Budapest in February
1945.[235] In contrast with impressive Soviet victories in the Balkans, the
bitter Finnish resistance to the Soviet offensive in the Karelian Isthmus
denied the Soviets occupation of Finland and led to the signing of
Soviet-Finnish armistice on relatively mild conditions,[236][237] with a
subsequent shift to the Allied side by Finland.
By the start of July, Commonwealth forces in Southeast
Asia had repelled the Japanese sieges in Assam, pushing the Japanese back to
the Chindwin River[238] while the Chinese captured Myitkyina. In China, the
Japanese were having greater successes, having finally captured Changsha in
mid-June and the city of Hengyang by early August.[239] Soon after, they
further invaded the province of Guangxi, winning major engagements against
Chinese forces at Guilin and Liuzhou by the end of November[240] and
successfully linking up their forces in China and Indochina by the middle of
December.[241]
In the Pacific, American forces continued to press back
the Japanese perimeter. In mid-June 1944 they began their offensive against the
Mariana and Palau islands, and decisively defeated Japanese forces in the
Battle of the Philippine Sea. These defeats led to the resignation of the
Japanese Prime Minister, Hideki Tōjō, and provided the United States with air
bases to launch intensive heavy bomber attacks on the Japanese home islands. In
late October, American forces invaded the Filipino island of Leyte; soon after,
Allied naval forces scored another large victory during the Battle of Leyte
Gulf, one of the largest naval battles in history.[242]
Axis collapse, Allied victory (1944–45)
Yalta Conference held in February 1945, with Winston
Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin
On 16 December 1944, Germany attempted its last desperate
measure for success on the Western Front by using most of its remaining
reserves to launch a massive counter-offensive in the Ardennes to attempt to
split the Western Allies, encircle large portions of Western Allied troops and
capture their primary supply port at Antwerp to prompt a political
settlement.[243] By January, the offensive had been repulsed with no strategic
objectives fulfilled.[243] In Italy, the Western Allies remained stalemated at
the German defensive line. In mid-January 1945, the Soviets and Poles attacked
in Poland, pushing from the Vistula to the Oder river in Germany, and overran
East Prussia.[244] On 4 February, US, British, and Soviet leaders met for the
Yalta Conference. They agreed on the occupation of post-war Germany, and on
when the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan.[245]
In February, the Soviets invaded Silesia and Pomerania,
while Western Allies entered Western Germany and closed to the Rhine river. By
March, the Western Allies crossed the Rhine north and south of the Ruhr,
encircling the German Army Group B,[246] while the Soviets advanced to Vienna.
In early April, the Western Allies finally pushed forward in Italy and swept
across Western Germany, while Soviet and Polish forces stormed Berlin in late
April. The American and Soviet forces linked up on Elbe river on 25 April. On
30 April 1945, the Reichstag was captured, signalling the military defeat of
the Third Reich.[247]
Several changes in leadership occurred during this
period. On 12 April, President Roosevelt died and was succeeded by Harry
Truman. Benito Mussolini was killed by Italian partisans on 28 April.[248] Two
days later, Hitler committed suicide, and was succeeded by Grand Admiral Karl
Dönitz.[249]
The German Reichstag after its capture by the Allies, 3
June 1945
German forces surrendered in Italy on 29 April. Total and
unconditional surrender was signed on 7 May, to be effective by the end of 8
May.[250] German Army Group Centre resisted in Prague until 11 May.[251]
In the Pacific theatre, American forces accompanied by
the forces of the Philippine Commonwealth advanced in the Philippines, clearing
Leyte by the end of April 1945. They landed on Luzon in January 1945 and
captured Manila in March following a battle which reduced the city to ruins.
Fighting continued on Luzon, Mindanao, and other islands of the Philippines
until the end of the war.[252] On the night of 9–10 March, B-29 bombers of the
US Army Air Forces struck Tokyo with incendiary bombs, which killed 100,000
people within a few hours. Over the next five months, American bombers
firebombed 66 other Japanese cities, causing the untold numbers of destruction
of buildings and the deaths of between 350,000–500,000 Japanese civilians.[253]
Japanese foreign affairs minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signs
the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on board the USS Missouri, 2 September
1945
In May 1945, Australian troops landed in Borneo,
over-running the oilfields there. British, American, and Chinese forces
defeated the Japanese in northern Burma in March, and the British pushed on to
reach Rangoon by 3 May.[254] Chinese forces started to counterattack in Battle
of West Hunan that occurred between 6 April and 7 June 1945. American forces
also moved towards Japan, taking Iwo Jima by March, and Okinawa by the end of
June.[255] At the same time American bombers were destroying Japanese cities,
American submarines cut off Japanese imports, drastically reducing Japan's
ability to supply its overseas forces.[256]
On 11 July, Allied leaders met in Potsdam, Germany. They
confirmed earlier agreements about Germany,[257] and reiterated the demand for
unconditional surrender of all Japanese forces by Japan, specifically stating
that "the alternative for Japan is prompt and utter
destruction".[258] During this conference, the United Kingdom held its
general election, and Clement Attlee replaced Churchill as Prime Minister.[259]
As Japan continued to ignore the Potsdam terms issued to
them on 27 July, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. Like the Japanese cities previously
bombed by American airmen, the US and its allies justified the atomic bombings
as military necessity to avoid invading the Japanese home islands which would
cost the lives of between 250,000–500,000 Allied troops and millions of
Japanese troops and civilians.[260] Between the two bombings, the Soviets,
pursuant to the Yalta agreement, invaded Japanese-held Manchuria, and quickly
defeated the Kwantung Army, which was the largest Japanese fighting
force.[261][262] The Red Army also captured Sakhalin Island and the Kuril
Islands. On 15 August 1945, Japan surrendered, with the surrender documents
finally signed aboard the deck of the American battleship USS Missouri on 2
September 1945, ending the war.[263]
Aftermath
Main articles: Aftermath of World War II and Consequences
of Nazism
Ruins of Warsaw in January 1945, after the deliberate
destruction of the city by the occupying German forces
Post-war Soviet territorial expansion; resulted in
Central European border changes, the creation of a Communist Bloc, and start of
the Cold War
The Allies established occupation administrations in
Austria and Germany. The former became a neutral state, non-aligned with any
political bloc. The latter was divided into western and eastern occupation
zones controlled by the Western Allies and the USSR, accordingly. A
denazification program in Germany led to the prosecution of Nazi war criminals
and the removal of ex-Nazis from power, although this policy moved towards
amnesty and re-integration of ex-Nazis into West German society.[264]
Germany lost a quarter of its pre-war (1937) territory.
Among the eastern territories, Silesia, Neumark and most of Pomerania were
taken over by Poland, East Prussia was divided between Poland and the USSR,
followed by the expulsion of the 9 million Germans from these provinces, as
well as the expulsion of 3 million Germans from the Sudetenland in
Czechoslovakia to Germany. By the 1950s, every fifth West German was a refugee
from the east. The Soviet Union also took over the Polish provinces east of the
Curzon line, from which 2 million Poles were expelled;[265] north-east
Romania,[266][267] parts of eastern Finland,[268] and the three Baltic states
were also incorporated into the USSR.[269][270]
In an effort to maintain peace,[271] the Allies formed
the United Nations, which officially came into existence on 24 October
1945,[272] and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, as a
common standard for all member nations.[273] The great powers that were the
victors of the war—the United States, Soviet Union, China, Britain, and
France—formed the permanent members of the UN's Security Council.[3] The five
permanent members remain so to the present, although there have been two seat changes,
between the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China in 1971, and
between the Soviet Union and its successor state, the Russian Federation,
following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The alliance between the Western
Allies and the Soviet Union had begun to deteriorate even before the war was
over.[274]
Germany had been de facto divided, and two independent
states, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic[275]
were created within the borders of Allied and Soviet occupation zones,
accordingly. The rest of Europe was also divided into Western and Soviet
spheres of influence.[276] Most eastern and central European countries fell
into the Soviet sphere, which led to establishment of Communist-led regimes,
with full or partial support of the Soviet occupation authorities. As a result,
Poland, Hungary, East Germany,[277] Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Albania[278]
became Soviet satellite states. Communist Yugoslavia conducted a fully
independent policy, causing tension with the USSR.[279]
Post-war division of the world was formalised by two
international military alliances, the United States-led NATO and the Soviet-led
Warsaw Pact;[280] the long period of political tensions and military
competition between them, the Cold War, would be accompanied by an
unprecedented arms race and proxy wars.[281]
In Asia, the United States led the occupation of Japan
and administrated Japan's former islands in the Western Pacific, while the
Soviets annexed Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.[282] Korea, formerly under
Japanese rule, was divided and occupied by the US in the South and the Soviet
Union in the North between 1945 and 1948. Separate republics emerged on both
sides of the 38th parallel in 1948, each claiming to be the legitimate government
for all of Korea, which led ultimately to the Korean War.[283]
In China, nationalist and communist forces resumed the
civil war in June 1946. Communist forces were victorious and established the
People's Republic of China on the mainland, while nationalist forces retreated
to Taiwan in 1949.[284] In the Middle East, the Arab rejection of the United
Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and the creation of Israel marked the
escalation of the Arab-Israeli conflict. While European colonial powers attempted
to retain some or all of their colonial empires, their losses of prestige and
resources during the war rendered this unsuccessful, leading to
decolonisation.[285][286]
The global economy suffered heavily from the war,
although participating nations were affected differently. The US emerged much
richer than any other nation; it had a baby boom and by 1950 its gross domestic
product per person was much higher than that of any of the other powers and it
dominated the world economy.[287] The UK and US pursued a policy of industrial
disarmament in Western Germany in the years 1945–1948.[288] Due to
international trade interdependencies this led to European economic stagnation
and delayed European recovery for several years.[289][290]
Recovery began with the mid-1948 currency reform in
Western Germany, and was sped up by the liberalisation of European economic
policy that the Marshall Plan (1948–1951) both directly and indirectly
caused.[291][292] The post-1948 West German recovery has been called the German
economic miracle.[293] Italy also experienced an economic boom[294] and the
French economy rebounded.[295] By contrast, the United Kingdom was in a state
of economic ruin,[296] and although it received a quarter of the total Marshall
Plan assistance, more than any other European country,[297] continued relative
economic decline for decades.[298]
The Soviet Union, despite enormous human and material
losses, also experienced rapid increase in production in the immediate post-war
era.[299] Japan experienced incredibly rapid economic growth, becoming one of
the most powerful economies in the world by the 1980s.[300] China returned to
its pre-war industrial production by 1952.[301]
Impact
Casualties and war crimes
Main articles: World War II casualties, War crimes during
World War II, War crimes in occupied Poland during World War II, German war
crimes, War crimes of the Wehrmacht, Japanese war crimes, Allied war crimes
during World War II and Soviet war crimes
World War II deaths
Estimates for the total casualties of the war vary,
because many deaths went unrecorded. Most suggest that some 75 million people
died in the war, including about 20 million military personnel and 40 million
civilians.[302][303][304] Many of the civilians died because of deliberate genocide,
massacres, mass-bombing, disease, and starvation.
The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the
war,[305] including 8.7 million military and 19 million civilian deaths. The
largest portion of military dead were 5.7 million ethnic Russians, followed by
1.3 million ethnic Ukrainians.[306] A quarter of the people in the Soviet Union
were wounded or killed.[307] Germany sustained 5.3 million military losses,
mostly on the Eastern Front and during the final battles in Germany.[308]
Of the total deaths in World War II, approximately 85
percent—mostly Soviet and Chinese—were on the Allied side and 15 percent on the
Axis side. Many of these deaths were caused by war crimes committed by German
and Japanese forces in occupied territories. An estimated 11[309] to 17
million[310] civilians died as a direct or indirect result of Nazi ideological
policies, including the systematic genocide of around 6 million Jews during the
Holocaust, along with a further 5 to 6 million ethnic Poles and other Slavs
(including Ukrainians and Belarusians)[311]—Roma, homosexuals, and other ethnic
and minority groups.[310]
Chinese civilians being buried alive by soldiers of the
Imperial Japanese Army, during the Nanking Massacre, December 1937
Roughly 7.5 million civilians died in China under
Japanese occupation.[312] Hundreds of thousands (varying estimates) of ethnic
Serbs, along with gypsies and Jews, were murdered by the Axis-aligned Croatian
Ustaše in Yugoslavia,[313] with retribution-related killings of Croatian
civilians just after the war ended.
The best-known Japanese atrocity was the Nanking
Massacre, in which several hundred thousand Chinese civilians were raped and
murdered.[314] Between 3 million to more than 10 million civilians, mostly
Chinese, were killed by the Japanese occupation forces.[315] Mitsuyoshi Himeta
reported 2.7 million casualties occurred during the Sankō Sakusen. General
Yasuji Okamura implemented the policy in Heipei and Shantung.[316]
Axis forces employed biological and chemical weapons. The
Imperial Japanese Army used a variety of such weapons during their invasion and
occupation of China (see Unit 731)[317][318] and in early conflicts against the
Soviets.[319] Both the Germans and Japanese tested such weapons against
civilians[320] and, in some cases, on prisoners of war.[321]
The Soviet Union was responsible for the Katyn massacre
of 22,000 Polish officers,[322] and the imprisonment or execution of thousands
of political prisoners by the NKVD,[323] in the Baltic states, and eastern
Poland annexed by the Red Army.
The mass-bombing of civilian areas in enemy territory,
notably the cities of Warsaw, Rotterdam, and London, aerial targeting of
hospitals and fleeing refugees[324] by the German Luftwaffe, and the bombings
of Tokyo and the German cities of Dresden, Hamburg and Cologne by the Western
Allies may be considered war crimes. The latter resulted in the destruction of
more than 160 cities and the deaths of more than 600,000 German civilians.[325]
However, no positive or specific customary international humanitarian law with
respect to aerial warfare existed before or during World War II.[326]
Concentration camps, slave labour, and genocide
Further information: Genocide, The Holocaust, Nazi
concentration camps, Extermination camp, Forced labour under German rule during
World War II, Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany and Nazi human
experimentation
Female SS camp guards remove bodies from lorries and
carry them to a mass grave, inside the German Bergen-Belsen concentration camp,
1945
The German Government led by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi
Party was responsible for the Holocaust, the killing of approximately 6 million
Jews (overwhelmingly Ashkenazim), as well as 2.7 million ethnic Poles,[327] and
4 million others who were deemed "unworthy of life" (including the
disabled and mentally ill, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, Freemasons,
Jehovah's Witnesses, and Romani) as part of a programme of deliberate
extermination. About 12 million, most of whom were Eastern Europeans, were
employed in the German war economy as forced labourers.[328]
In addition to Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet
gulags (labour camps) led to the death of citizens of occupied countries such
as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, as well as German prisoners of war
(POWs) and even Soviet citizens who had been or were thought to be supporters
of the Nazis.[329] Sixty percent of Soviet POWs of the Germans died during the
war.[330] Richard Overy gives the number of 5.7 million Soviet POWs. Of those,
57 percent died or were killed, a total of 3.6 million.[331] Soviet ex-POWs and
repatriated civilians were treated with great suspicion as potential Nazi
collaborators, and some of them were sent to the Gulag upon being checked by
the NKVD.[332]
Prisoner identity photograph taken by the German SS of a
fourteen year old Polish girl, sent as forced labour to Auschwitz, December
1942
Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, many of which were used
as labour camps, also had high death rates. The International Military Tribunal
for the Far East found the death rate of Western prisoners was 27.1 percent
(for American POWs, 37 percent),[333] seven times that of POWs under the
Germans and Italians.[334] While 37,583 prisoners from the UK, 28,500 from the
Netherlands, and 14,473 from United States were released after the surrender of
Japan, the number for the Chinese was only 56.[335]
According to historian Zhifen Ju, at least five million
Chinese civilians from northern China and Manchukuo were enslaved between 1935
and 1941 by the East Asia Development Board, or Kōain, for work in mines and
war industries. After 1942, the number reached 10 million.[336] The US Library
of Congress estimates that in Java, between 4 and 10 million romusha (Japanese:
"manual laborers"), were forced to work by the Japanese military.
About 270,000 of these Javanese labourers were sent to other Japanese-held
areas in South East Asia, and only 52,000 were repatriated to Java.[337]
On 19 February 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066,
interning about 100,000 Japanese living on the West Coast. Canada had a similar
program.[338][339] In addition, 14,000 German and Italian citizens who had been
assessed as being security risks were also interned.[340]
In accordance with the Allied agreement made at the Yalta
Conference millions of POWs and civilians were used as forced labour by the
Soviet Union.[341] In Hungary's case, Hungarians were forced to work for the
Soviet Union until 1955.[342]
Occupation
Main articles: German-occupied Europe, Lebensraum,
Untermensch, Collaboration with the Axis Powers during World War II, Resistance
during World War II and Nazi plunder
Blindfolded Polish citizens just before execution by
German soldiers in Palmiry, 1940
In Europe, occupation came under two forms. In Western,
Northern and Central Europe (France, Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, and
the annexed portions of Czechoslovakia) Germany established economic policies
through which it collected roughly 69.5 billion reichmarks (27.8 billion US
Dollars) by the end of the war, this figure does not include the sizeable
plunder of industrial products, military equipment, raw materials and other
goods.[343] Thus, the income from occupied nations was over 40 percent of the
income Germany collected from taxation, a figure which increased to nearly 40
percent of total German income as the war went on.[344]
In the East, the much hoped for bounties of Lebensraum
were never attained as fluctuating front-lines and Soviet scorched earth
policies denied resources to the German invaders.[345] Unlike in the West, the
Nazi racial policy encouraged excessive brutality against what it considered to
be the "inferior people" of Slavic descent; most German advances were
thus followed by mass executions.[346] Although resistance groups did form in
most occupied territories, they did not significantly hamper German operations
in either the East[347] or the West[348] until late 1943.
In Asia, Japan termed nations under its occupation as
being part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, essentially a
Japanese hegemony which it claimed was for purposes of liberating colonised
peoples.[349] Although Japanese forces were originally welcomed as liberators
from European domination in some territories, their excessive brutality turned
local public opinions against them within weeks.[350] During Japan's initial
conquest it captured 4,000,000 barrels (640,000 m3) of oil (~5.5×105 tonnes)
left behind by retreating Allied forces, and by 1943 was able to get production
in the Dutch East Indies up to 50 million barrels (~6.8×106 t), 76 percent of
its 1940 output rate.[350]
Home fronts and production
Main articles: Military production during World War II
and Home front during World War II
Allied to Axis GDP ratio
In Europe, before the outbreak of the war, the Allies had
significant advantages in both population and economics. In 1938, the Western
Allies (United Kingdom, France, Poland and British Dominions) had a 30 percent
larger population and a 30 percent higher gross domestic product than the
European Axis (Germany and Italy); if colonies are included, it then gives the
Allies more than a 5:1 advantage in population and nearly 2:1 advantage in
GDP.[351] In Asia at the same time, China had roughly six times the population
of Japan, but only an 89 percent higher GDP; this is reduced to three times the
population and only a 38 percent higher GDP if Japanese colonies are
included.[351]
 |
| Nagasaki City today |
Though the Allies' economic and population advantages
were largely mitigated during the initial rapid blitzkrieg attacks of Germany
and Japan, they became the decisive factor by 1942, after the United States and
Soviet Union joined the Allies, as the war largely settled into one of
attrition.[352] While the Allies' ability to out-produce the Axis is often
attributed to the Allies having more access to natural resources, other
factors, such as Germany and Japan's reluctance to employ women in the labour
force,[353] Allied strategic bombing,[354] and Germany's late shift to a war
economy[355] contributed significantly. Additionally, neither Germany nor Japan
planned to fight a protracted war, and were not equipped to do so.[356] To
improve their production, Germany and Japan used millions of slave
labourers;[357] Germany used about 12 million people, mostly from Eastern
Europe,[328] while Japan used more than 18 million people in Far East
Asia.[336][337]
Advances in technology and warfare
Main article: Technology during World War II
Nuclear "gadget" being raised to the top of the
detonation tower, at Alamogordo Bombing Range; Trinity nuclear test, July 1945
Aircraft were used for reconnaissance, as fighters,
bombers, and ground-support, and each role was advanced considerably.
Innovation included airlift (the capability to quickly move limited
high-priority supplies, equipment, and personnel);[358] and of strategic
bombing (the bombing of enemy industrial and population centres to destroy the
enemy's ability to wage war).[359] Anti-aircraft weaponry also advanced,
including defences such as radar and surface-to-air artillery, such as the
German 88 mm gun. The use of the jet aircraft was pioneered and, though late
introduction meant it had little impact, it led to jets becoming standard in
worldwide air forces.[360]
Advances were made in nearly every aspect of naval
warfare, most notably with aircraft carriers and submarines. Although
aeronautical warfare had relatively little success at the start of the war,
actions at Taranto, Pearl Harbor, and the Coral Sea established the carrier as
the dominant capital ship in place of the battleship.[361][362][363]
In the Atlantic, escort carriers proved to be a vital
part of Allied convoys, increasing the effective protection radius and helping
to close the Mid-Atlantic gap.[364] Carriers were also more economical than
battleships due to the relatively low cost of aircraft[365] and their not
requiring to be as heavily armoured.[366] Submarines, which had proved to be an
effective weapon during the First World War[367] were anticipated by all sides
to be important in the second. The British focused development on
anti-submarine weaponry and tactics, such as sonar and convoys, while Germany
focused on improving its offensive capability, with designs such as the Type
VII submarine and wolfpack tactics.[368] Gradually, improving Allied
technologies such as the Leigh light, hedgehog, squid, and homing torpedoes
proved victorious.
Land warfare changed from the static front lines of World
War I to increased mobility and combined arms. The tank, which had been used
predominantly for infantry support in the First World War, had evolved into the
primary weapon.[369] In the late 1930s, tank design was considerably more
advanced than it had been during World War I,[370] and advances continued
throughout the war with increases in speed, armour and firepower.
At the start of the war, most commanders thought enemy
tanks should be met by tanks with superior specifications.[371] This idea was
challenged by the poor performance of the relatively light early tank guns
against armour, and German doctrine of avoiding tank-versus-tank combat. This,
along with Germany's use of combined arms, were among the key elements of their
highly successful blitzkrieg tactics across Poland and France.[369] Many means
of destroying tanks, including indirect artillery, anti-tank guns (both towed
and self-propelled), mines, short-ranged infantry antitank weapons, and other
tanks were utilised.[371] Even with large-scale mechanisation, infantry
remained the backbone of all forces,[372] and throughout the war, most infantry
were equipped similarly to World War I.[373]
The portable machine gun spread, a notable example being
the German MG34, and various submachine guns which were suited to close combat
in urban and jungle settings.[373] The assault rifle, a late war development
incorporating many features of the rifle and submachine gun, became the
standard postwar infantry weapon for most armed forces.[374][375]
Most major belligerents attempted to solve the problems
of complexity and security involved in using large codebooks for cryptography
by designing ciphering machines, the most well known being the German Enigma
machine.[376] Development of SIGINT (signals intelligence) and cryptanalysis
enabled the countering process of decryption. Notable examples were the Allied
decryption of Japanese naval codes[377] and British Ultra, a pioneering method
for decoding Enigma benefiting from information given to Britain by the Polish
Cipher Bureau, which had been decoding early versions of Enigma before the
war.[378] Another aspect of military intelligence was the use of deception,
which the Allies used to great effect, such as in operations Mincemeat and
Bodyguard.[377][379] Other technological and engineering feats achieved during,
or as a result of, the war include the world's first programmable computers
(Z3, Colossus, and ENIAC), guided missiles and modern rockets, the Manhattan
Project's development of nuclear weapons, operations research and the
development of artificial harbours and oil pipelines under the English
Channel.[380]
See also
Portal icon World
War II portal
Book icon
Book: World War II
Air warfare of World War II
Diplomatic history of World War II
Home front during World War II
Military production during World War II
List of World War II battles
List of World War II military operations
World War II in popular culture
Documentaries
The World Wars (miniseries) The World Wars is a
three-part, six hour event miniseries by the History Channel that premiered on
Monday, May 26, 2014, (Memorial Day) airing for three consecutive nights. An
extended version of the series with never before seen footage was subsequently
broadcast on H2 and in more than 160 countries on June 22, 2014
Apocalypse: The Second World War (2009), a six-part
French documentary by Daniel Costelle and Isabelle Clarke about World War II
Battlefield, a documentary television series initially
issued in 1994–5, that explores many important World War II battles
BBC History of World War II, a television series,
initially issued from 1989 to 2005.
The World at War (1974), a 26-part Thames Television
series that covers most aspects of World War II from many points of view. It
includes interviews with many key figures
including Karl Dönitz, Albert Speer, and Anthony Eden.
Japan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the Wikipedia Manual of Style concerning
Japan-related articles, see MOS:JP
"Nippon" redirects here. For other uses, see
Japan (disambiguation) and Nippon (disambiguation).
Japan
日本国
Nippon-koku
Nihon-koku
Centered red circle on a white rectangle. Golden circle subdivided by golden
wedges with rounded outer edges and thin black outlines.
Flag Imperial Seal
Anthem:
"Kimigayo"
"君が代"
MENU0:00
Government Seal of Japan
Seal of the Office of the Prime Minister and the
Government of Japan
五七桐
(Go-Shichi no Kiri?)
Capital Tokyo
35°41′N 139°46′E
Official languages None[1]
Recognised regional languages
Aynu itak
Ryukyuan languages
Eastern Japanese
Western Japanese
several other Japanese dialects
National language Japanese
Ethnic groups (2011[2])
98.5% Japanese
0.5% Korean
0.4% Chinese
0.6% other
Demonym Japanese
Government Unitary
parliamentary constitutional monarchy
- Emperor Akihito
- Prime Minister Shinzō Abe
- Deputy Prime Minister Tarō Asō
Legislature National
Diet
- Upper house House of Councillors
- Lower house House of Representatives
Formation
- National Foundation Day February 11, 660 BC[3]
- Meiji Constitution November 29, 1890
- Current constitution May 3, 1947
- San Francisco
Peace Treaty April
28, 1952
Area
- Total 377,944
km2[4] (62nd)
145,925 sq mi
- Water (%) 0.8
Population
- 2012 estimate 126,659,683[5] (10th)
- 2010 census 128,056,026[6]
- Density 337.1/km2
(36th)
873.1/sq mi
GDP (PPP) 2014
estimate
- Total $4.835
trillion[7] (4th)
- Per capita $38,053[7]
(22nd)
GDP (nominal) 2014
estimate
- Total $4.846
trillion[7] (3rd)
- Per capita $38,142[7]
(25th)
Gini (2008) 37.6[8]
medium · 76th
HDI (2013) Decrease
0.890[9]
very high · 17th
Currency Yen (¥) /
En 円
(JPY)
Time zone JST
(UTC+9)
- Summer (DST) not observed (UTC+9)
Date format
yyyy-mm-dd
yyyy年m月d日
Era yy年m月d日
(AD−1988)
Drives on the left
Calling code +81
ISO 3166 code JP
Internet TLD .jp
You may
need rendering support to display the Japanese text in this article correctly.
Japan Listeni/dʒəˈpæn/ (Japanese: 日本
Nippon or Nihon; formally 日本国 About this sound Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku, literally
"[the] State of Japan") is an island nation in East Asia. Located in
the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea,
South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the
East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters that make up Japan's
name mean "sun-origin", which is why Japan is often referred to as
the "Land of the Rising Sun".
Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago of 6,852 islands.
The four largest islands are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku, which
together comprise about ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area. Due to its
location in the Pacific Ring of Fire, Japan is substantially prone to
earthquakes and tsunami, having the highest natural disaster risk in the
developed world.[10] Japan has the world's tenth-largest population, with over
126 million people. Honshū's Greater Tokyo Area, which includes the de facto
capital of Tokyo and several surrounding prefectures, is the largest
metropolitan area in the world, with over 30 million residents.
Archaeological research indicates that people lived in
Japan as early as the Upper Paleolithic period. The first written mention of
Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other
nations followed by long periods of isolation has characterized Japan's
history. From the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal
military shoguns in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a long period
of isolation in the early 17th century, which was only ended in 1853 when a
United States fleet pressured Japan to open to the West. Nearly two decades of
internal conflict and insurrection followed before the Meiji Emperor was
restored as head of state in 1868 and the Empire of Japan was proclaimed, with
the Emperor as a divine symbol of the nation. In the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, victories in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and
World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing
militarism. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World
War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the atomic bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since adopting its revised constitution in 1947, Japan
has maintained a unitary constitutional monarchy with an emperor and an elected
legislature called the Diet.
Japan is a member of the UN, the G7, the G8, the G20. A
major economic great power,[2] Japan is a developed country and has the world's
third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the world's fourth-largest economy by
purchasing power parity. It is also the world's fourth-largest exporter and
fourth-largest importer. Although Japan has officially renounced its right to
declare war, it maintains a modern military with the world's eighth largest
military budget,[11] used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan ranks
high in metrics of prosperity such as the Human Development Index, with
Japanese women enjoying the highest life expectancy of any country in the world
and the infant mortality rate being the third lowest globally.[12][13][14]
Contents [hide]
1 Etymology
2 History
2.1 Prehistory and ancient history
2.2 Feudal era
2.3 Modern era
3 Government and politics
4 Foreign relations and military
5 Administrative divisions
6 Geography
6.1 Climate
6.2 Biodiversity
6.3 Environment
7 Economy
7.1 Economic history
7.2 Exports
7.3 Imports
7.4 Science and technology
7.5 Infrastructure
8 Demographics
8.1 Religion
8.2 Languages
8.3 Education
8.4 Health
9 Culture
9.1 Art
9.2 Music
9.3 Literature
9.4 Cuisine
9.5 Sports
10 See also
11 References
12 Further reading
13 External links
Etymology
Main article: Names of Japan
The English word Japan derives from the Chinese
pronunciation of the Japanese name, 日本 , which in Japanese is pronounced
Nippon About this sound listen (help·info) or Nihon About this sound listen
(help·info).
From the Meiji Restoration until the end of World War II,
the full title of Japan was Dai Nippon Teikoku (大日本帝國?), meaning "the Empire
of Great Japan". Today the name Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku (日本国?)
is used as a formal modern-day equivalent; countries like Japan whose long form
does not contain a descriptive designation are generally given a name appended
by the character koku (国?),
meaning "country", "nation" or "state".
 |
| Emperor Hirohito |
Japanese people refer to themselves as Nihonjin (日本人?)
and to their language as Nihongo (日本語?). Both Nippon and Nihon mean
"sun-origin" and are often translated as Land of the Rising Sun. This
nomenclature comes from Japanese missions to Imperial China and refers to
Japan's eastward position relative to China. Before Nihon came into official
use, Japan was known as Wa (倭?)
or Wakoku (倭国?).[15]
The English word for Japan came to the West via early
trade routes. The Old Mandarin or possibly early Wu Chinese (吳語) pronunciation of Japan was
recorded by Marco Polo as Cipangu. In modern Shanghainese, a Wu dialect, the
pronunciation of characters 日本 'Japan' is Zeppen [zəʔpən]. The old Malay word for
Japan, Jepang, was borrowed from a southern coastal Chinese dialect, probably
Fukienese or Ningpo,[16] and this Malay word was encountered by Portuguese
traders in Malacca in the 16th century. Portuguese traders were the first to
bring the word to Europe.[17] An early record of the word in English is in a
1565 letter, spelled Giapan.[18]
History
Main article: History of Japan
Prehistory and ancient history
The Golden Hall and five-storey pagoda of Hōryū-ji, among
the oldest wooden buildings in the world, National Treasures, and a UNESCO
World Heritage Site
A Paleolithic culture around 30,000 BC constitutes the
first known habitation of the Japanese archipelago. This was followed from
around 14,000 BC (the start of the Jōmon period) by a Mesolithic to Neolithic
semi-sedentary hunter-gatherer culture, who include ancestors of both the
contemporary Ainu people and Yamato people,[19][20] characterized by pit
dwelling and rudimentary agriculture.[21] Decorated clay vessels from this
period are some of the oldest surviving examples of pottery in the world.
Around 300 BC, the Yayoi people began to enter the Japanese islands,
intermingling with the Jōmon.[22] The Yayoi period, starting around 500 BC, saw
the introduction of practices like wet-rice farming,[23] a new style of
pottery,[24] and metallurgy, introduced from China and Korea.[25]
Japan first appears in written history in the Chinese
Book of Han.[26] According to the Records of the Three Kingdoms, the most
powerful kingdom on the archipelago during the 3rd century was called
Yamataikoku. Buddhism was first introduced to Japan from Baekje of Korea, but
the subsequent development of Japanese Buddhism was primarily influenced by
China.[27] Despite early resistance, Buddhism was promoted by the ruling class
and gained widespread acceptance beginning in the Asuka period (592–710).[28]
The Nara period (710–784) of the 8th century marked the
emergence of a strong Japanese state, centered on an imperial court in
Heijō-kyō (modern Nara). The Nara period is characterized by the appearance of
a nascent literature as well as the development of Buddhist-inspired art and
architecture.[29] The smallpox epidemic of 735–737 is believed to have killed
as much as one-third of Japan's population.[30] In 784, Emperor Kammu moved the
capital from Nara to Nagaoka-kyō before relocating it to Heian-kyō (modern
Kyoto) in 794.
Samurai warriors face Mongols, during the Mongol
invasions of Japan. The Kamikaze, two storms, are said to have saved Japan from
Mongol fleets.
This marked the beginning of the Heian period (794–1185),
during which a distinctly indigenous Japanese culture emerged, noted for its
art, poetry and prose. Lady Murasaki's The Tale of Genji and the lyrics of
Japan's national anthem Kimigayo were written during this time.[31]
Buddhism began to spread during the Heian era chiefly
through two major sects, Tendai by Saichō, and Shingon by Kūkai. Pure Land
Buddhism (Jōdo-shū, Jōdo Shinshū) greatly becomes popular in the latter half of
the 11th century.
Feudal era
Japan's feudal era was characterized by the emergence and
dominance of a ruling class of warriors, the samurai. In 1185, following the
defeat of the Taira clan in the Genpei war, sung in the epic Tale of Heike,
samurai Minamoto no Yoritomo was appointed shogun and established a base of
power in Kamakura. After his death, the Hōjō clan came to power as regents for
the shoguns. The Zen school of Buddhism was introduced from China in the
Kamakura period (1185–1333) and became popular among the samurai class.[32] The
Kamakura shogunate repelled Mongol invasions in 1274 and 1281, but was
eventually overthrown by Emperor Go-Daigo. Go-Daigo was himself defeated by
Ashikaga Takauji in 1336.
Samurai could kill a commoner for the slightest insult
and were widely feared by the Japanese population. Edo period, 1798
Ashikaga Takauji established the shogunate in Muromachi,
Kyoto. This was the start of the Muromachi Period (1336–1573). The Ashikaga
shogunate achieved glory in the age of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, and the culture
based on Zen Buddhism (art of Miyabi) prospered. This evolved to Higashiyama
Culture, and prospered until the 16th century. On the other hand, the
succeeding Ashikaga shogunate failed to control the feudal warlords (daimyo),
and a civil war (the Ōnin War) began in 1467, opening the century-long Sengoku
period ("Warring States").[33]
During the 16th century, traders and Jesuit missionaries
from Portugal reached Japan for the first time, initiating direct commercial
and cultural exchange between Japan and the West. Oda Nobunaga conquered many
other daimyo using European technology and firearms; after he was assassinated
in 1582, his successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi unified the nation in 1590. Hideyoshi
invaded Korea twice, but following defeats by Korean and Ming Chinese forces
and Hideyoshi's death, Japanese troops were withdrawn in 1598.[34] This age is
called Azuchi–Momoyama period (1573–1603).
Re-engraved map of Japan
Tokugawa Ieyasu served as regent for Hideyoshi's son and
used his position to gain political and military support. When open war broke
out, he defeated rival clans in the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. Ieyasu was
appointed shogun in 1603 and established the Tokugawa shogunate at Edo (modern
Tokyo).[35] The Tokugawa shogunate enacted measures including buke shohatto, as
a code of conduct to control the autonomous daimyo;[36] and in 1639, the
isolationist sakoku ("closed country") policy that spanned the two
and a half centuries of tenuous political unity known as the Edo period
(1603–1868).[37] The study of Western sciences, known as rangaku, continued
through contact with the Dutch enclave at Dejima in Nagasaki. The Edo period
also gave rise to kokugaku ("national studies"), the study of Japan
by the Japanese.[38]
Modern era
On March 31, 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry and the
"Black Ships" of the United States Navy forced the opening of Japan
to the outside world with the Convention of Kanagawa. Subsequent similar
treaties with Western countries in the Bakumatsu period brought economic and
political crises. The resignation of the shogun led to the Boshin War and the
establishment of a centralized state nominally unified under the Emperor (the
Meiji Restoration).[39]
Chinese generals surrendering to the Japanese in the
Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895
Adopting Western political, judicial and military
institutions, the Cabinet organized the Privy Council, introduced the Meiji
Constitution, and assembled the Imperial Diet. The Meiji Restoration
transformed the Empire of Japan into an industrialized world power that pursued
military conflict to expand its sphere of influence. After victories in the
First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905),
Japan gained control of Taiwan, Korea, and the southern half of Sakhalin.[40]
Japan's population grew from 35 million in 1873 to 70 million in 1935.[41]
Emperor Meiji (1868–1912), in whose name imperial rule
was restored at the end of the Tokugawa shogunate
The early 20th century saw a brief period of "Taishō
democracy" overshadowed by increasing expansionism and militarization.
World War I enabled Japan, on the side of the victorious Allies, to widen its
influence and territorial holdings. It continued its expansionist policy by
occupying Manchuria in 1931; as a result of international condemnation of this
occupation, Japan resigned from the League of Nations two years later. In 1936,
Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Nazi Germany, and the 1940 Tripartite
Pact made it one of the Axis Powers.[42] In 1941, Japan negotiated the
Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact.[43]
The Empire of Japan invaded other parts of China in 1937,
precipitating the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). The Imperial Japanese
Army swiftly captured the capital Nanjing and conducted the Nanking
Massacre.[44] In 1940, the Empire then invaded French Indochina, after which
the United States placed an oil embargo on Japan.[45] On December 7, 1941,
Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor and declared war, bringing the
US into World War II.[46][47] After the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and the
atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Japan agreed to an
unconditional surrender on August 15.[48] The war cost Japan and the rest of
the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere millions of lives and left much of
the nation's industry and infrastructure destroyed. The Allies (led by the US)
repatriated millions of ethnic Japanese from colonies and military camps
throughout Asia, largely eliminating the Japanese empire and restoring the
independence of its conquered territories.[49] The Allies also convened the
International Military Tribunal for the Far East on May 3, 1946 to prosecute
some Japanese leaders for war crimes. However, the bacteriological research
units and members of the imperial family involved in the war were exonerated
from criminal prosecutions by the Supreme Allied Commander despite calls for
trials for both groups.[50]
In 1947, Japan adopted a new constitution emphasizing
liberal democratic practices. The Allied occupation ended with the Treaty of
San Francisco in 1952[51] and Japan was granted membership in the United
Nations in 1956. Japan later achieved rapid growth to become the second-largest
economy in the world, until surpassed by China in 2010. This ended in the
mid-1990s when Japan suffered a major recession. In the beginning of the 21st
century, positive growth has signaled a gradual economic recovery.[52] On March
11, 2011, Japan suffered the strongest earthquake in its recorded history; this
triggered the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, one of the worst disasters in
the history of nuclear power.[53]
Government and politics
Main articles: Government of Japan and Politics of Japan
Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko
Japan is a constitutional monarchy where the power of the
Emperor is very limited. As a ceremonial figurehead, he is defined by the
constitution as "the symbol of the state and of the unity of the
people." Power is held chiefly by the Prime Minister and other elected
members of the Diet, while sovereignty is vested in the Japanese people.[54]
Akihito is the current Emperor of Japan; Naruhito, Crown Prince of Japan,
stands as next in line to the throne.
Japan's legislative organ is the National Diet, a bicameral
parliament. The Diet consists of a House of Representatives with 480 seats,
elected by popular vote every four years or when dissolved, and a House of
Councillors of 242 seats, whose popularly elected members serve six-year terms.
There is universal suffrage for adults over 20 years of age,[2] with a secret
ballot for all elected offices.[54] The Diet is dominated by the social liberal
Democratic Party of Japan and the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
The LDP has enjoyed near continuous electoral success since 1955, except for a
brief 11 month period between 1993 and 1994, and from 2009 to 2012. It holds
294 seats in the lower house and 83 seats in the upper house.
The Prime Minister of Japan is the head of government and
is appointed by the Emperor after being designated by the Diet from among its
members. The Prime Minister is the head of the Cabinet, and he appoints and
dismisses the Ministers of State. Following the LDP's landslide victory in the
2012 general election, Shinzō Abe replaced Yoshihiko Noda as the Prime Minister
on December 26, 2012.[55] Although the Prime Minister is formally appointed by
the Emperor, the Constitution of Japan explicitly requires the Emperor to
appoint whoever is designated by the Diet.[54]
Historically influenced by Chinese law, the Japanese
legal system developed independently during the Edo period through texts such
as Kujikata Osadamegaki.[56] However, since the late 19th century the judicial
system has been largely based on the civil law of Europe, notably Germany. For
example, in 1896, the Japanese government established a civil code based on a
draft of the German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch; with post–World War II
modifications, the code remains in effect.[57] Statutory law originates in
Japan's legislature and has the rubber stamp of the Emperor. The Constitution
requires that the Emperor promulgate legislation passed by the Diet, without
specifically giving him the power to oppose legislation.[54] Japan's court
system is divided into four basic tiers: the Supreme Court and three levels of
lower courts.[58] The main body of Japanese statutory law is called the Six
Codes.[59]
Foreign relations and military
Main articles: Foreign relations of Japan and Japan
Self-Defense Forces
JDS Kongō (DDG-173) guided missile destroyer launching a
Standard Missile 3 anti-ballistic missile
Japan is a member of the G8, APEC, and "ASEAN Plus
Three", and is a participant in the East Asia Summit. Japan signed a
security pact with Australia in March 2007[60] and with India in October
2008.[61] It is the world's third largest donor of official development
assistance after the United States and France, donating US$9.48 billion in
2009.[62]
Japan has close economic and military relations with the
United States; the US-Japan security alliance acts as the cornerstone of the
nation's foreign policy.[63] A member state of the United Nations since 1956,
Japan has served as a non-permanent Security Council member for a total of 20
years, most recently for 2009 and 2010. It is one of the G4 nations seeking
permanent membership in the Security Council.[64]
Japan is engaged in several territorial disputes with its
neighbors: with Russia over the South Kuril Islands, with South Korea over the
Liancourt Rocks, with China and Taiwan over the Senkaku Islands, and with China
over the EEZ around Okinotorishima.[65] Japan also faces an ongoing dispute
with North Korea over the latter's abduction of Japanese citizens and its
nuclear weapons and missile program (see also Six-party talks).[66]
Japan maintains one of the largest military budgets of
any country in the world.[67] Japan contributed non-combatant troops to the
Iraq War but subsequently withdrew its forces.[68] The Japan Maritime
Self-Defense Force is a regular participant in RIMPAC maritime exercises.[69]
Japan's military (the Japan Self-Defense Forces) is
restricted by Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which renounces Japan's
right to declare war or use military force in international disputes.
Accordingly Japan's Self-Defence force is a usual military that has never fired
shots outside Japan.[70] It is governed by the Ministry of Defense, and
primarily consists of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF), the Japan
Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) and the Japan Air Self-Defense Force
(JASDF). The forces have been recently used in peacekeeping operations; the
deployment of troops to Iraq marked the first overseas use of Japan's military
since World War II.[68] Nippon Keidanren has called on the government to lift
the ban on arms exports so that Japan can join multinational projects such as
the Joint Strike Fighter.[71]
In May 2014 Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan wanted
to shed the passiveness it has maintained since the end of World War II and
take more responsibility for regional security. He said Japan wanted to play a
key role and offered neighboring countries Japan's support.[72]
Administrative divisions
Further information: Prefectures of Japan, Regions of
Japan, Cities of Japan, Towns of Japan and Villages of Japan
Japan consists of forty-seven prefectures, each overseen
by an elected governor, legislature and administrative bureaucracy. Each
prefecture is further divided into cities, towns and villages.[73] The nation
is currently undergoing administrative reorganization by merging many of the
cities, towns and villages with each other. This process will reduce the number
of sub-prefecture administrative regions and is expected to cut administrative
costs.[74]
Regions and
Prefectures of Japan 2.svg
About this image
Geography
Main articles: Geography of Japan and Geology of Japan
Topographic map of the Japanese archipelago
Japan has a total of 6,852 islands extending along the
Pacific coast of East Asia. The country, including all of the islands it
controls, lies between latitudes 24° and 46°N, and longitudes 122° and 146°E.
The main islands, from north to south, are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and
Kyushu. The Ryukyu Islands, which includes Okinawa, are a chain to the south of
Kyushu. Together they are often known as the Japanese Archipelago.[75]
About 73 percent of Japan is forested, mountainous, and
unsuitable for agricultural, industrial, or residential use.[2][76] As a
result, the habitable zones, mainly located in coastal areas, have extremely
high population densities. Japan is one of the most densely populated countries
in the world.[77]
The islands of Japan are located in a volcanic zone on
the Pacific Ring of Fire. They are primarily the result of large oceanic
movements occurring over hundreds of millions of years from the mid-Silurian to
the Pleistocene as a result of the subduction of the Philippine Sea Plate
beneath the continental Amurian Plate and Okinawa Plate to the south, and
subduction of the Pacific Plate under the Okhotsk Plate to the north. Japan was
originally attached to the eastern coast of the Eurasian continent. The
subducting plates pulled Japan eastward, opening the Sea of Japan around 15
million years ago.[78]
Japan has 108 active volcanoes. Destructive earthquakes,
often resulting in tsunami, occur several times each century.[79] The 1923
Tokyo earthquake killed over 140,000 people.[80] More recent major quakes are
the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, a
9.0-magnitude[81] quake which hit Japan on March 11, 2011, and triggered a
large tsunami.[53] Due to its location in the Pacific Ring of Fire, Japan is
substantially prone to earthquakes and tsunami, having the highest natural
disaster risk in the developed world.[10]
Climate
Main article: Climate of Japan
Cherry blossoms of Mount Yoshino has been the subject of
many plays and waka poetry.
Autumn maple leaves (momiji) at Kongōbu-ji on Mount Kōya,
a UNESCO World Heritage Site
The climate of Japan is predominantly temperate, but
varies greatly from north to south. Japan's geographical features divide it
into six principal climatic zones: Hokkaido, Sea of Japan, Central Highland,
Seto Inland Sea, Pacific Ocean, and Ryūkyū Islands. The northernmost zone,
Hokkaido, has a humid continental climate with long, cold winters and very warm
to cool summers. Precipitation is not heavy, but the islands usually develop
deep snowbanks in the winter.[82]
In the Sea of Japan zone on Honshu's west coast,
northwest winter winds bring heavy snowfall. In the summer, the region is cooler
than the Pacific area, though it sometimes experiences extremely hot
temperatures because of the foehn wind. The Central Highland has a typical
inland humid continental climate, with large temperature differences between
summer and winter, and between day and night; precipitation is light, though
winters are usually snowy. The mountains of the Chūgoku and Shikoku regions
shelter the Seto Inland Sea from seasonal winds, bringing mild weather
year-round.[82]
The Pacific coast features a humid subtropical climate
that experiences milder winters with occasional snowfall and hot, humid summers
because of the southeast seasonal wind. The Ryukyu Islands have a subtropical
climate, with warm winters and hot summers. Precipitation is very heavy,
especially during the rainy season. The generally humid, temperate climate
exhibits marked seasonal variation such as the blooming of the spring cherry
blossoms, the calls of the summer cicada and fall foliage colors that are
celebrated in art and literature.[82]
The average winter temperature in Japan is 5.1 °C (41.2
°F) and the average summer temperature is 25.2 °C (77.4 °F).[83] The highest
temperature ever measured in Japan—40.9 °C (105.6 °F)—was recorded on August
16, 2007.[84] The main rainy season begins in early May in Okinawa, and the
rain front gradually moves north until reaching Hokkaido in late July. In most
of Honshu, the rainy season begins before the middle of June and lasts about
six weeks. In late summer and early autumn, typhoons often bring heavy
rain.[85]
Biodiversity
The Japanese macaques at Jigokudani hot spring are
notable for visiting the spa in the winter.
Japan has nine forest ecoregions which reflect the
climate and geography of the islands. They range from subtropical moist
broadleaf forests in the Ryūkyū and Bonin Islands, to temperate broadleaf and
mixed forests in the mild climate regions of the main islands, to temperate
coniferous forests in the cold, winter portions of the northern islands.[86]
Japan has over 90,000 species of wildlife, including the brown bear, the
Japanese macaque, the Japanese raccoon dog, and the Japanese giant
salamander.[87] A large network of national parks has been established to
protect important areas of flora and fauna as well as thirty-seven Ramsar wetland
sites.[88][89] Four sites have been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List
for their outstanding natural value.[90]
Environment
Main article: Environmental issues in Japan
In the period of rapid economic growth after World War
II, environmental policies were downplayed by the government and industrial
corporations; as a result, environmental pollution was widespread in the 1950s
and 1960s. Responding to rising concern about the problem, the government
introduced several environmental protection laws in 1970.[91] The oil crisis in
1973 also encouraged the efficient use of energy because of Japan's lack of
natural resources.[92] Current environmental issues include urban air pollution
(NOx, suspended particulate matter, and toxics), waste management, water
eutrophication, nature conservation, climate change, chemical management and
international co-operation for conservation.[93]
Japan is a world leader in developing and implementing
new environmentally-friendly technologies, subsequently ranking 26th in the
2014 Environmental Performance Index, which measures a nation's commitment to
environmental sustainability.[94] As a signatory of the Kyoto Protocol, and
host of the 1997 conference that created it, Japan is under treaty obligation
to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions and to take other steps to curb climate
change.[95]
Economy
Main article: Economy of Japan
The Tokyo Stock Exchange, the largest stock exchange in
Asia[96]
Economic history
Some of the structural features for Japan's economic
growth developed in the Edo period, such as the network of transport routes, by
road and water, and the futures contracts, banking and insurance of the Osaka
rice brokers.[97] During the Meiji period from 1868, Japan expanded
economically with the embrace of the market economy.[98] Many of today's
enterprises were founded at the time, and Japan emerged as the most developed
nation in Asia.[99] The period of overall real economic growth from the 1960s
to the 1980s has been called the Japanese post-war economic miracle: it
averaged 7.5 percent in the 1960s and 1970s, and 3.2 percent in the 1980s and
early 1990s.[100]
Growth slowed markedly in the 1990s during what the
Japanese call the Lost Decade, largely because of the after-effects of the
Japanese asset price bubble and domestic policies intended to wring speculative
excesses from the stock and real estate markets. Government efforts to revive
economic growth met with little success and were further hampered by the global
slowdown in 2000.[2] The economy showed strong signs of recovery after 2005;
GDP growth for that year was 2.8 percent, surpassing the growth rates of the US
and European Union during the same period.[101]
As of 2012, Japan is the third largest national economy
in the world, after the United States and China, in terms of nominal GDP,[102]
and the fourth largest national economy in the world, after the United States,
China and India, in terms of purchasing power parity.[7] As of December 2013,
Japan's public debt was more than 200 percent of its annual gross domestic
product, the second largest of any nation in the world. In August 2011, Moody's
rating has cut Japan's long-term sovereign debt rating one notch from Aa3 to
Aa2 inline with the size of the country's deficit and borrowing level. The large
budget deficits and government debt since the 2009 global recession and
followed by earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 made the rating
downgrade.[103] The service sector accounts for three quarters of the gross
domestic product.[104]
Exports
A plug-in hybrid car manufactured by Toyota, one of the
world's largest carmakers. Japan is the second-largest producer of automobiles
in the world.[105]
Japan has a large industrial capacity, and is home to
some of the largest and most technologically advanced producers of motor
vehicles, electronics, machine tools, steel and nonferrous metals, ships,
chemical substances, textiles, and processed foods. Agricultural businesses in
Japan cultivate 13 percent of Japan's land, and Japan accounts for nearly 15
percent of the global fish catch, second only to China.[2] As of 2010, Japan's
labor force consisted of some 65.9 million workers.[106] Japan has a low
unemployment rate of around four percent. Some 20 million people, around 17 per
cent of the population, were below the poverty line in 2007.[107] Housing in
Japan is characterized by limited land supply in urban areas.[108]
Japan's exports amounted to US$4,210 per capita in 2005.
As of 2012, Japan's main export markets were China (18.1 percent), the United
States (17.8 percent), South Korea (7.7 percent), Thailand (5.5 percent) and
Hong Kong (5.1 percent). Its main exports are transportation equipment, motor
vehicles, electronics, electrical machinery and chemicals.[2] Japan's main
import markets as of 2012 were China (21.3 percent), the US (8.8 percent),
Australia (6.4 percent), Saudi Arabia (6.2 percent), United Arab Emirates (5.0
percent), South Korea (4.6 percent) and Qatar (4.0 percent).[2]
Imports
Japan's main imports are machinery and equipment, fossil
fuels, foodstuffs (in particular beef), chemicals, textiles and raw materials
for its industries. By market share measures, domestic markets are the least
open of any OECD country.[109] Junichiro Koizumi's administration began some
pro-competition reforms, and foreign investment in Japan has soared.[110]
Japan ranks 27th of 189 countries in the 2014 Ease of
doing business index and has one of the smallest tax revenues of the developed
world. The Japanese variant of capitalism has many distinct features: keiretsu
enterprises are influential, and lifetime employment and seniority-based career
advancement are relatively common in the Japanese work environment.[109][111]
Japanese companies are known for management methods like "The Toyota
Way", and shareholder activism is rare.[112]
Some of the largest enterprises in Japan include Toyota,
Nintendo, NTT DoCoMo, Canon, Honda, Takeda Pharmaceutical, Sony, Panasonic,
Toshiba, Sharp, Nippon Steel, Nippon Oil, and Seven & I Holdings Co..[113]
It has some of the world's largest banks, and the Tokyo Stock Exchange (known
for its Nikkei 225 and TOPIX indices) stands as the second largest in the world
by market capitalization.[114] As of 2006, Japan was home to 326 companies from
the Forbes Global 2000 or 16.3 percent.[115] In 2013, it was announced that
Japan would be importing shale natural gas.[116]
Science and technology
Main article: Science and technology in Japan
The Japanese Experiment Module (Kibo) at the
International Space Station
Japan is a leading nation in scientific research,
particularly technology, machinery and biomedical research. Nearly 700,000
researchers share a US$130 billion research and development budget, the third
largest in the world.[117] Japan is a world leader in fundamental scientific
research, having produced sixteen Nobel laureates in either physics, chemistry
or medicine,[118] three Fields medalists,[119] and one Gauss Prize
laureate.[120] Some of Japan's more prominent technological contributions are
in the fields of electronics, automobiles, machinery, earthquake engineering,
industrial robotics, optics, chemicals, semiconductors and metals. Japan leads
the world in robotics production and use, possessing more than half (402,200 of
742,500) of the world's industrial robots.[121]
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is Japan's
space agency; it conducts space, planetary, and aviation research, and leads
development of rockets and satellites. It is a participant in the International
Space Station: the Japanese Experiment Module (Kibo) was added to the station
during Space Shuttle assembly flights in 2008.[122] Japan's plans in space
exploration include: launching a space probe to Venus, Akatsuki;[123][124]
developing the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter to be launched in 2016;[125] and
building a moon base by 2030.[126]
On September 14, 2007, it launched lunar explorer
"SELENE" (Selenological and Engineering Explorer) on an H-IIA (Model
H2A2022) carrier rocket from Tanegashima Space Center. SELENE is also known as
Kaguya, after the lunar princess of The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter.[127] Kaguya
is the largest lunar mission since the Apollo program. Its purpose is to gather
data on the moon's origin and evolution. It entered a lunar orbit on October
4,[128][129] flying at an altitude of about 100 km (62 mi).[130] The probe's
mission was ended when it was deliberately crashed by JAXA into the Moon on
June 11, 2009.[131]
Infrastructure
Main articles: Energy in Japan and Transport in Japan
A high-speed Shinkansen "Bullet train".
As of 2011, 46.1 percent of energy in Japan was produced
from petroleum, 21.3 percent from coal, 21.4 percent from natural gas, 4.0
percent from nuclear power, and 3.3 percent from hydropower. Nuclear power
produced 9.2 percent of Japan's electricity, as of 2011, down from 24.9 percent
the previous year.[132] However, as of May 5, 2012, all of the country's
nuclear power plants had been taken offline because of ongoing public
opposition following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, though government
officials have been continuing to try to sway public opinion in favor of
returning at least some of Japan's 50 nuclear reactors to service.[133] Given
its heavy dependence on imported energy,[134] Japan has aimed to diversify its
sources and maintain high levels of energy efficiency.[135]
Japan's road spending has been extensive.[136] Its 1.2
million kilometers of paved road are the main means of transportation.[137] A
single network of high-speed, divided, limited-access toll roads connects major
cities and is operated by toll-collecting enterprises. New and used cars are
inexpensive; car ownership fees and fuel levies are used to promote energy
efficiency. However, at just 50 percent of all distance traveled, car usage is
the lowest of all G8 countries.[138]
Dozens of Japanese railway companies compete in regional
and local passenger transportation markets; major companies include seven JR
enterprises, Kintetsu Corporation, Seibu Railway and Keio Corporation. Some 250
high-speed Shinkansen trains connect major cities and Japanese trains are known
for their safety and punctuality.[139][140] Proposals for a new Maglev route
between Tokyo and Osaka are at an advanced stage.[141] There are 175 airports
in Japan;[2] the largest domestic airport, Haneda Airport, is Asia's
second-busiest airport.[142] The largest international gateways are Narita
International Airport, Kansai International Airport and Chūbu Centrair
International Airport.[143] Nagoya Port is the country's largest and busiest
port, accounting for 10 percent of Japan's trade value.[144]
Demographics
Main articles: Demographics of Japan, Japanese people and
Ethnic issues in Japan
Ainu, an ethnic minority people from Japan
A Japanese wedding at the Meiji Shrine
Japan's population is estimated at around 127.3
million,[2] with 80% of the population living on Honshū. Japanese society is
linguistically and culturally homogeneous,[145] composed of 98.5% ethnic
Japanese,[146] with small populations of foreign workers.[145] Zainichi
Koreans,[147] Zainichi Chinese, Filipinos, Brazilians mostly of Japanese
descent,[148] and Peruvians mostly of Japanese descent are among the small
minority groups in Japan.[149] In 2003, there were about 134,700 non-Latin
American Western and 345,500 Latin American expatriates, 274,700 of whom were
Brazilians (said to be primarily Japanese descendants, or nikkeijin, along with
their spouses),[148] the largest community of Westerners.[150]
The most dominant native ethnic group is the Yamato
people; primary minority groups include the indigenous Ainu[151] and Ryukyuan
peoples, as well as social minority groups like the burakumin.[152] There are
persons of mixed ancestry incorporated among the 'ethnic Japanese' or Yamato,
such as those from Ogasawara Archipelago where roughly one-tenth of the
Japanese population can have European, American, Micronesian and/or Polynesian
backgrounds, with some families going back up to seven generations.[153] In
spite of the widespread belief that Japan is ethnically homogeneous (in 2009,
foreign-born non-naturalized workers made up only 1.7% of the total
population),[154] also because of the absence of ethnicity and/or race statistics
for Japanese nationals, at least one analysis describes Japan as a multiethnic
society, for example, John Lie.[155] However, this statement is refused by many
sectors of Japanese society, who still tend to preserve the idea of Japan being
a monocultural society and with this ideology of homogeneity, has traditionally
rejected any need to recognize ethnic differences in Japan, even as such claims
have been rejected by such ethnic minorities as the Ainu and Ryukyuan people.
Former Japanese Prime Minister Tarō Asō has once described Japan as being a
nation of "one race, one civilization, one language and one
culture".[156]
Japan has the second longest overall life expectancy at
birth of any country in the world: 83.5 years for persons born in the period 2010–2015.[13][14]
The Japanese population is rapidly aging as a result of a post–World War II
baby boom followed by a decrease in birth rates. In 2012, about 24.1 percent of
the population was over 65, and the proportion is projected to rise to almost
40 percent by 2050.[157]
The changes in demographic structure have created a
number of social issues, particularly a potential decline in workforce
population and increase in the cost of social security benefits like the public
pension plan.[158] A growing number of younger Japanese are preferring not to
marry or have families.[159] In 2011, Japan's population dropped for a fifth
year, falling by 204,000 people to 126.24 million people. This was the greatest
decline since at least 1947, when comparable figures were first compiled.[160]
This decline was made worse by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami which killed
nearly 16,000 people with approximately another 3,000 still listed as
missing.[161]
Japan's population is expected to drop to 95 million by
2050,[157][162] demographers and government planners are currently in a heated
debate over how to cope with this problem.[159] Immigration and birth
incentives are sometimes suggested as a solution to provide younger workers to
support the nation's aging population.[163][164] Japan accepts a steady flow of
15,000 new Japanese citizens by naturalization (帰化) per year.[165] According to the UNHCR,
in 2012 Japan accepted just 18 refugees for resettlement,[166] while the US
took in 76,000.[167]
Japan suffers from a high suicide rate.[168][169] In
2009, the number of suicides exceeded 30,000 for the twelfth straight
year.[170] Suicide is the leading cause of death for people under 30.[171]
v t e
Largest cities or towns of Japan
2010 Census
Rank Name Prefecture Pop. Rank Name Prefecture Pop.
Tokyo
Tokyo
Yokohama
Yokohama 1 Tokyo Tokyo 8,949,447 11 Hiroshima Hiroshima 1,174,209 Osaka
Osaka
Nagoya
Nagoya
2 Yokohama Kanagawa 3,689,603 12 Sendai Miyagi 1,045,903
3 Osaka Osaka 2,666,371 13 Kitakyushu Fukuoka 977,288
4 Nagoya Aichi 2,263,907 14 Chiba Chiba 962,130
5 Sapporo Hokkaidō 1,914,434 15 Sakai Osaka 842,134
6 Kobe Hyōgo 1,544,873 16 Niigata Niigata 812,192
7 Kyoto Kyōto 1,474,473 17 Hamamatsu Shizuoka 800,912
8 Fukuoka Fukuoka 1,463,826 18 Kumamoto Kumamoto 734,294
9 Kawasaki Kanagawa 1,425,678 19 Sagamihara Kanagawa 717,561
10 Saitama Saitama 1,222,910 20 Shizuoka Shizuoka 716,328
Religion
Main article: Religion in Japan
The Torii of Itsukushima Shrine near Hiroshima, one of
the Three Views of Japan and a UNESCO World Heritage Site
Japan enjoys full religious freedom based on Article 20
of its Constitution. Upper estimates suggest that 84–96 percent of the Japanese
population subscribe to Buddhism or Shinto, including a large number of
followers of a syncretism of both religions.[2][172] However, these estimates
are based on people affiliated with a temple, rather than the number of true
believers. Other studies have suggested that only 30 percent of the population
identify themselves as belonging to a religion.[173] According to Edwin
Reischauer and Marius Jansen, some 70–80% of the Japanese regularly tell
pollsters they do not consider themselves believers in any religion.[174]
Nevertheless, the level of participation remains high,
especially during festivals and occasions such as the first shrine visit of the
New Year. Taoism and Confucianism from China have also influenced Japanese
beliefs and customs.[175] Japanese streets are decorated on Tanabata, Obon and
Christmas. Fewer than one percent of Japanese are Christian.[176] Other
minority religions include Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Judaism, and since the
mid-19th century numerous new religious movements have emerged in Japan.[177]
Languages
Main articles: Languages of Japan and Japanese language
More than 99 percent of the population speaks Japanese as
their first language.[2] Japanese is an agglutinative language distinguished by
a system of honorifics reflecting the hierarchical nature of Japanese society,
with verb forms and particular vocabulary indicating the relative status of
speaker and listener. Japanese writing uses kanji (Chinese characters) and two
sets of kana (syllabaries based on simplified Chinese characters), as well as
the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals.[178]
Besides Japanese, the Ryukyuan languages (Amami,
Kunigami, Okinawan, Miyako, Yaeyama, Yonaguni), also part of the Japonic
language family, are spoken in the Ryukyu Islands chain. Few children learn
these languages,[179] but in recent years the local governments have sought to
increase awareness of the traditional languages. The Okinawan Japanese dialect
is also spoken in the region. The Ainu language, which has no proven
relationship to Japanese or any other language, is moribund, with only a few
elderly native speakers remaining in Hokkaido.[180] Most public and private
schools require students to take courses in both Japanese and
English.[181][182]
Education
Main article: Education in Japan
Announcement of the results of the entrance examinations
to the University of Tokyo
Primary schools, secondary schools and universities were
introduced in 1872 as a result of the Meiji Restoration.[183] Since 1947,
compulsory education in Japan comprises elementary and middle school, which
together last for nine years (from age 6 to age 15). Almost all children
continue their education at a three-year senior high school, and, according to
the MEXT, as of 2005 about 75.9 percent of high school graduates attended a
university, junior college, trade school, or other higher education institution.[184]
The two top-ranking universities in Japan are the
University of Tokyo and Kyoto University.[185][186] The Programme for
International Student Assessment coordinated by the OECD currently ranks the
overall knowledge and skills of Japanese 15-year-olds as sixth best in the
world.[187]
Health
Main articles: Health in Japan and Health care system in
Japan
In Japan, health care is provided by national and local
governments. Payment for personal medical services is offered through a
universal health insurance system that provides relative equality of access,
with fees set by a government committee. People without insurance through
employers can participate in a national health insurance program administered
by local governments. Since 1973, all elderly persons have been covered by
government-sponsored insurance.[188] Patients are free to select the physicians
or facilities of their choice.[189]
Culture
Kinkaku-ji or 'The Temple of the Golden Pavilion' in
Kyoto, Special Historic Site, Special Place of Scenic Beauty, and UNESCO World
Heritage Site; its torching by a monk in 1950 is the subject of a novel by
Mishima.
Main article: Culture of Japan
See also: Japanese popular culture
Japanese culture has evolved greatly from its origins.
Contemporary culture combines influences from Asia, Europe and North America.
Traditional Japanese arts include crafts such as ceramics, textiles,
lacquerware, swords and dolls; performances of bunraku, kabuki, noh, dance, and
rakugo; and other practices, the tea ceremony, ikebana, martial arts,
calligraphy, origami, onsen, Geisha and games. Japan has a developed system for
the protection and promotion of both tangible and intangible Cultural
Properties and National Treasures.[190] Sixteen sites have been inscribed on
the UNESCO World Heritage List, twelve of which are of cultural
significance.[90]
Art
19th-century Ukiyo-e woodblock printing The Great Wave
off Kanagawa, one of the best recognized works of Japanese art in the world.
Further information: Japanese art, Japanese architecture,
Japanese garden and Japanese aesthetics
The Shrines of Ise have been celebrated as the prototype
of Japanese architecture.[191] Largely of wood, traditional housing and many
temple buildings see the use of tatami mats and sliding doors that break down
the distinction between rooms and indoor and outdoor space.[192] Japanese
sculpture, largely of wood, and Japanese painting are among the oldest of the
Japanese arts, with early figurative paintings dating back to at least 300 BC.
The history of Japanese painting exhibits synthesis and competition between
native Japanese aesthetics and adaptation of imported ideas.[193]
The interaction between Japanese and European art has
been significant: for example ukiyo-e prints, which began to be exported in the
19th century in the movement known as Japonism, had a significant influence on
the development of modern art in the West, most notably on
post-Impressionism.[193] Famous ukiyo-e artists include Hokusai and Hiroshige.
The fusion of traditional woodblock printing and Western art led to the
creation of manga, a comic book format that is now popular within and outside
Japan.[194] Manga-influenced animation for television and film is called anime.
Japanese-made video game consoles have been popular since the 1980s.[195]
Music
Main article: Music of Japan
Japanese music is eclectic and diverse. Many instruments,
such as the koto, were introduced in the 9th and 10th centuries. The
accompanied recitative of the Noh drama dates from the 14th century and the popular
folk music, with the guitar-like shamisen, from the sixteenth.[196] Western
classical music, introduced in the late 19th century, now forms an integral
part of Japanese culture. The imperial court ensemble Gagaku has influenced the
work of some modern Western composers.[197]
Notable classical composers from Japan include Toru
Takemitsu and Rentarō Taki. Popular music in post-war Japan has been heavily
influenced by American and European trends, which has led to the evolution of
J-pop, or Japanese popular music.[198] Karaoke is the most widely practiced
cultural activity in Japan. A 1993 survey by the Cultural Affairs Agency found
that more Japanese had sung karaoke that year than had participated in
traditional pursuits such as flower arranging (ikebana) or tea ceremonies.[199]
Literature
Main articles: Japanese literature and Japanese poetry
12th-century illustrated handscroll of The Tale of Genji,
a National Treasure
The earliest works of Japanese literature include the
Kojiki and Nihon Shoki chronicles and the Man'yōshū poetry anthology, all from
the 8th century and written in Chinese characters.[200][201] In the early Heian
period, the system of phonograms known as kana (Hiragana and Katakana) was
developed. The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter is considered the oldest Japanese
narrative.[202] An account of Heian court life is given in The Pillow Book by
Sei Shōnagon, while The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu is often described as
the world's first novel.[203][204]
During the Edo period, the chōnin
("townspeople") overtook the samurai aristocracy as producers and
consumers of literature. The popularity of the works of Saikaku, for example,
reveals this change in readership and authorship, while Bashō revivified the
poetic tradition of the Kokinshū with his haikai (haiku) and wrote the poetic
travelogue Oku no Hosomichi.[205] The Meiji era saw the decline of traditional
literary forms as Japanese literature integrated Western influences. Natsume
Sōseki and Mori Ōgai were the first "modern" novelists of Japan,
followed by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, Yukio Mishima and, more
recently, Haruki Murakami. Japan has two Nobel Prize-winning authors—Yasunari Kawabata
(1968) and Kenzaburō Ōe (1994).[202]
Cuisine
Breakfast at a ryokan or inn
Main article: Japanese cuisine
Japanese cuisine is based on combining staple foods,
typically Japanese rice or noodles, with a soup and okazu — dishes made from
fish, vegetable, tofu and the like – to add flavor to the staple food. In the
early modern era ingredients such as red meats that had previously not been
widely used in Japan were introduced. Japanese cuisine is known for its
emphasis on seasonality of food,[206] quality of ingredients and presentation.
Japanese cuisine offers a vast array of regional specialties that use
traditional recipes and local ingredients. The Michelin Guide has awarded
restaurants in Japan more Michelin stars than the rest of the world
combined.[207]
Sports
Main article: Sport in Japan
Sumo wrestlers form around the referee during the
ring-entering ceremony
Traditionally, sumo is considered Japan's national
sport.[208] Japanese martial arts such as judo, karate and kendo are also
widely practiced and enjoyed by spectators in the country. After the Meiji
Restoration, many Western sports were introduced in Japan and began to spread
through the education system.[209] Japan hosted the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in
1964. Japan has hosted the Winter Olympics twice: Sapporo in 1972 and Nagano in
1998.[210] Tokyo will host the 2020 Summer Olympics, making Tokyo the first
Asian city to host the Olympics twice.[211] Japan is the most successful Asian
Rugby Union country, winning the Asian Five Nations a record 6 times and
winning the newly formed IRB Pacific Nations Cup in 2011. Japan will host the
2019 IRB Rugby World Cup.[212]
Baseball is currently the most popular spectator sport in
the country. Japan's top professional league, Nippon Professional Baseball, was
established in 1936.[213] Since the establishment of the Japan Professional
Football League in 1992, association football has also gained a wide
following.[214] Japan was a venue of the Intercontinental Cup from 1981 to 2004
and co-hosted the 2002 FIFA World Cup with South Korea.[215] Japan has one of
the most successful football teams in Asia, winning the Asian Cup four
times.[216] Also, Japan recently won the FIFA Women's World Cup in 2011.[217]
Golf is also popular in Japan,[218] as are forms of auto racing like the Super
GT series and Formula Nippon.[219] The country has produced one NBA player,
Yuta Tabuse.[220]
Benito Mussolini
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Mussolini" redirects here. For other uses, see
Mussolini (disambiguation).
Page semi-protected
Benito Mussolini
Mussolini biografia.jpg
Head of Government of Italy and
Duce of Fascism
In office
24 December 1925 – 25 July 1943
Monarch Victor
Emmanuel III
Preceded by Office
created
Succeeded by Office
abolished
27th Prime Minister of Italy
In office
31 October 1922 – 25 July 1943
Monarch Victor
Emmanuel III
Preceded by Luigi
Facta
Succeeded by Pietro
Badoglio
Duce of the Italian Social Republic
In office
23 September 1943 – 25 April 1945
Preceded by Office
created
Succeeded by Office
abolished
First Marshal of the Empire
In office
30 March 1938 – 25 July 1943
Preceded by Office
created
Succeeded by Office
abolished
Personal details
Born Benito Amilcare
Andrea Mussolini
29 July 1883
Predappio, Forlì
Kingdom of Italy
Died 28 April 1945
(aged 61)
Giulino di Mezzegra, Como
Kingdom of Italy
Resting place San
Cassiano cemetery, Predappio, Forlì, Italian Republic
Nationality Italian
Political party National
Fascist Party
(1921–1943)
Other political
affiliations Republican
Fascist Party
(1943–1945)
Italian Fasci of Combat
(1919–1921)
Fasci of Revolutionary Action
(1914–1919)
Autonomous Fasci of Revolutionary Action
(1914)
Italian Socialist Party
(1901–1914)
Spouse(s) Rachele
Mussolini
Relations Ida
Dalser
Margherita Sarfatti
Clara Petacci
Children Benito
Albino Mussolini
Edda Mussolini
Vittorio Mussolini
Bruno Mussolini
Romano Mussolini
Anna Maria Mussolini
Profession Dictator,
politician, journalist, novelist, teacher
Religion None
(atheist)
(See this section for details.)
Signature
Military service
Allegiance Kingdom
of Italy
Italian Social
Republic
Service/branch
Royal Italian Army
Years of service active:
1915–1917
Rank First Marshal
of the Empire
Corporal
Unit 11th
Bersaglieri Regiment
Battles/wars World
War I
World War II
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (Italian pronunciation:
[beˈnito musoˈlini]; 29 July 1883 – 28 April 1945) was an Italian politician,
journalist, and leader of the National Fascist Party, ruling the country as
Prime Minister from 1922 until his ousting in 1943. He ruled constitutionally
until 1925, when he dropped all pretense of democracy and set up a legal
dictatorship. Known as Il Duce ("the leader"), Mussolini was one of
the key figures in the creation of fascism.[1]
Originally a member of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI),
Mussolini was expelled from the PSI due to his opposition to the party's stance
on neutrality in World War I. Mussolini denounced the PSI, and later founded
the fascist movement. Following the March on Rome in October 1922 he became the
youngest Prime Minister in Italian history until the appointment of Matteo
Renzi in February 2014. After destroying all political opposition through his
secret police and outlawing labor strikes,[2] Mussolini and his fascist
followers consolidated their power through a series of laws that transformed
the nation into a one-party dictatorship. Within five years he had established dictatorial
authority by both legal and extraordinary means, aspiring to create a
totalitarian state. Mussolini remained in power until he was deposed by King
Victor Emmanuel III in 1943. A few months later, he became the leader of the
Italian Social Republic, a German client regime in northern Italy; he held this
post until his death in 1945.[3]
Since 1939, Mussolini had sought to delay a major war in
Europe until at least 1942. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939,
starting World War II. On 10 June 1940, Mussolini sided with Germany, though he
was aware that Italy did not have the military capacity in 1940 to carry out a
long war with France and the United Kingdom.[4] Mussolini believed that after
the imminent French surrender, Italy could gain territorial concessions from
France and then he could concentrate his forces on a major offensive in Egypt,
where British and Commonwealth forces were outnumbered by Italian forces.[5]
However the UK refused to accept German proposals for a peace that would involve
accepting Germany's victories in Eastern and Western Europe, plans for a German
invasion of the UK did not proceed, and the war continued.
On 24 July 1943, soon after the start of the Allied
invasion of Italy, Mussolini was defeated in the vote at the Grand Council of
Fascism, and the King had him arrested the following day. On 12 September 1943,
Mussolini was rescued from prison in the Gran Sasso raid by German special
forces. In late April 1945, with total defeat looming, Mussolini attempted to escape
north,[6] only to be quickly captured and summarily executed near Lake Como by
Italian partisans. His body was then taken to Milan where it was hung upside
down at a service station for public viewing and to provide confirmation of his
demise.[7]
Early life
Birthplace of Benito Mussolini in Predappio, now used as
a museum.
Mussolini's father, Alessandro
Mussolini's mother, Rosa
Mussolini was born in Dovia di Predappio, a small town in
the province of Forlì in Emilia-Romagna on 29 July 1883. In the Fascist era,
Predappio was dubbed "Duce's town", and Forlì was "Duce's
city". Pilgrims went to Predappio and Forlì, to see the birthplace of
Mussolini. His father Alessandro Mussolini was a blacksmith and a socialist,[8]
while his mother Rosa Mussolini (née Maltoni) was a devoutly Catholic
schoolteacher.[9] Owing to his father's political leanings, Mussolini was named
Benito after Mexican reformist President Benito Juárez, while his middle names
Andrea and Amilcare were from Italian socialists Andrea Costa and Amilcare
Cipriani.[10] Benito was the eldest of his parents' three children. His
siblings Arnaldo and Edvige followed.[11]
As a young boy, Mussolini would spend some time helping
his father in his smithy.[12] Mussolini's early political views were heavily
influenced by his father, Alessandro Mussolini, a revolutionary socialist who
idolized 19th-century Italian nationalist figures with humanist tendencies such
as Carlo Pisacane, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Giuseppe Garibaldi.[13] His father's
political outlook combined views of anarchist figures like Carlo Cafiero and
Mikhail Bakunin, the military authoritarianism of Garibaldi, and the nationalism
of Mazzini.[14] In 1902, at the anniversary of Garibaldi's death, Benito
Mussolini made a public speech in praise of the republican nationalist.[14] The
conflict between his parents about religion meant that, unlike most Italians,
Mussolini was not baptized at birth and would not be until much later in life.
As a compromise with his mother, Mussolini was sent to a boarding school run by
Salesian monks. After joining a new school, Mussolini achieved good grades, and
qualified as an elementary schoolmaster in 1901.[9]
Emigration to Switzerland and military service
Mussolini's booking photograph following his arrest by
Swiss police, 1903
In 1902, Mussolini emigrated to Switzerland, partly to
avoid military service.[8] He worked briefly as a stonemason in Geneva,
Fribourg and Bern, but was unable to find a permanent job.
During this time he studied the ideas of the philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche, the sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, and the syndicalist
Georges Sorel. Mussolini also later credited the Marxist Charles Péguy and the
syndicalist Hubert Lagardelle as some of his influences.[15] Sorel's emphasis
on the need for overthrowing decadent liberal democracy and capitalism by the
use of violence, direct action, the general strike, and the use of neo-Machiavellian
appeals to emotion, impressed Mussolini deeply.[8]
Mussolini became active in the Italian socialist movement
in Switzerland, working for the paper L'Avvenire del Lavoratore, organizing
meetings, giving speeches to workers and serving as secretary of the Italian
workers' union in Lausanne.[16] In 1903, he was arrested by the Bernese police
because of his advocacy of a violent general strike, spent two weeks in jail,
was deported to Italy, set free there, and returned to Switzerland.[17] In 1904,
after having been arrested again in Geneva and expelled for falsifying his
papers, he returned to Lausanne, where he attended the University of Lausanne's
Department of Social Science, following the lessons of Vilfredo Pareto.[18] In
December 1904, he returned to Italy to take advantage of an amnesty for
desertion, for which he had been convicted in absentia.[19]
Since a condition for being pardoned was serving in the
army, on 30 December 1904, he joined the corps of the Bersaglieri in Forlì.[20]
After serving for two years in the military (from January 1905 until September
1906), he returned to teaching.[21]
Political journalist and socialist
In February 1909,[22] Mussolini once again left Italy,
this time to take the job as the secretary of the labor party in the
Italian-speaking city of Trento, which at the time was part of Austria-Hungary.
He also did office work for the local Socialist Party, and edited its newspaper
L'Avvenire del Lavoratore (The Future of the Worker). Returning to Italy, he
spent a brief time in Milan, and then in 1910 he returned to his hometown of
Forlì, where he edited the weekly Lotta di classe (The Class Struggle).
During this time, he published Il Trentino veduto da un
Socialista (Trentino as seen by a Socialist) in the radical periodical La
Voce.[23] He also wrote several essays about German literature, some stories,
and one novel: L'amante del Cardinale: Claudia Particella, romanzo storico (The
Cardinal's Mistress). This novel he co-wrote with Santi Corvaja, and was
published as a serial book in the Trento newspaper Il Popolo. It was released
in installments from 20 January to 11 May 1910[24] The novel was bitterly
anticlerical, and years later was withdrawn from circulation after Mussolini
made a truce with the Vatican.[8]
By now, he was considered to be one of Italy's most
prominent Socialists. In September 1911, Mussolini participated in a riot, led
by Socialists, against the Italian war in Libya. He bitterly denounced Italy's
"imperialist war" to capture the Libyan capital city of Tripoli, an
action that earned him a five-month jail term.[25] After his release he helped
expel from the ranks of the Socialist party two "revisionists" who
had supported the war, Ivanoe Bonomi, and Leonida Bissolati. As a result, he was
rewarded the editorship of the Socialist Party newspaper Avanti! Under his
leadership, its circulation soon rose from 20,000 to 100,000.[26]
In 1913, he published Giovanni Hus, il veridico (Jan Hus,
true prophet), an historical and political biography about the life and mission
of the Czech ecclesiastic reformer Jan Hus, and his militant followers, the
Hussites. During this socialist period of his life Mussolini sometimes used the
pen name "Vero Eretico" (sincere misbeliever).
While Mussolini was associated with socialism, he also
was supportive of figures who opposed egalitarianism. For instance Mussolini
was influenced by Nietszche's anti-Christian ideas and negation of God's
existence.[27] Mussolini saw Nietzsche as similar to Jean-Marie Guyau, who
advocated a philosophy of action.[27] Mussolini's use of Nietzsche made him a
highly unorthodox socialist, due to Nietzsche's promotion of elitism and
anti-egalitarian views.[27] Mussolini felt that socialism had faltered due to
the failures of Marxist determinism and social democratic reformism, and
believed that Nietzsche's ideas would strengthen socialism.[27] While
associated with socialism, Mussolini's writings eventually indicated that he
had abandoned Marxism and egalitarianism in favor of Nietzsche's übermensch
concept and anti-egalitarianism.[27]
Expulsion from the Italian Socialist Party
Members of Italy's Arditi corps in 1918 holding daggers,
a symbol of their group. The Arditi's black uniform and use of the fez were
adopted by the Mussolini in the creation of his Fascist movement.
With the outbreak of World War I a number of socialist parties
initially supported the war when it began in August 1914.[28] Once the war
began, Austrian, British, French, German, and Russian socialists followed the
rising nationalist current by supporting their country's intervention in the
war.[29] The outbreak of the war had resulted in a surge of Italian nationalism
and the war was supported by a variety of political factions. One of the most
prominent and popular Italian nationalist supporters of the war was Gabriele
d'Annunzio who promoted Italian irredentism and helped sway the Italian public
to support intervention in the war.[30] The Italian Liberal Party under the
leadership of Paolo Boselli promoted intervention in the war on the side of the
Allies and utilized the Società Dante Alighieri to promote Italian
nationalism.[31][32] Italian socialists were divided on whether to support the
war or oppose it.[33] Prior to Mussolini taking a position on the war, a number
of revolutionary syndicalists had announced their support of intervention,
including Alceste De Ambris, Filippo Corridoni, and Angelo Oliviero
Olivetti.[34] The Italian Socialist Party decided to oppose the war after
anti-militarist protestors had been killed, resulting in a general strike
called Red Week.[35]
Mussolini initially held official support for the party's
decision and, in an August 1914 article, Mussolini wrote "Down with the
War. We remain neutral."[36] He saw the war as an opportunity, both for
his own ambitions as well as those of socialists and Italians.[36] He was influenced
by anti-Austrian Italian nationalist sentiments, believing that the war offered
Italians in Austria-Hungary the chance to liberate themselves from rule of the
Habsburgs.[36] He eventually decided to declare support for the war by
appealing to the need for socialists to overthrow the Hohenzollern and Habsburg
monarchies in Germany and Austria-Hungary who he claimed had consistently
repressed socialism.[36] He further justified his position by denouncing the
Central Powers for being reactionary powers; for pursuing imperialist designs
against Belgium and Serbia as well as historically against Denmark, France, and
against Italians, since hundreds of thousands of Italians were under Habsburg
rule.[34] He claimed that the fall of Hohenzollern and Habsburg monarchies and
the repression of "reactionary" Turkey would create conditions
beneficial for the working class.[34] While he was supportive of the Entente
powers, Mussolini responded to the conservative nature of Tsarist Russia by
claiming that the mobilization required for the war would undermine Russia's
reactionary authoritarianism and the war would bring Russia to social
revolution.[34] He claimed that for Italy the war would complete the process of
Risorgimento by uniting the Italians in Austria-Hungary into Italy and by
allowing the common people of Italy to be participating members of the Italian
nation in what would be Italy's first national war.[34] Thus he claimed that
the vast social changes that the war could offer meant that it should be
supported as a revolutionary war.[34]
As Mussolini's support for the intervention solidified,
he came into conflict with socialists who opposed the war. He attacked the
opponents of the war and claimed that those proletarians who supported pacifism
were out of step with the proletarians who had joined the rising
interventionist vanguard that was preparing Italy for a revolutionary war.[37]
He began to criticize the Italian Socialist Party and socialism itself for
having failed to recognize the national problems that had led to the outbreak
of the war.[37] He was expelled from the party due to his support of
intervention.
The following excerpts are from a police report prepared
by the Inspector-General of Public Security in Milan, G. Gasti, that describe
his background and his position on the First World War that resulted in his
ouster from the Italian Socialist Party.
The Inspector General wrote:
Regarding Mussolini
Professor Benito Mussolini, … 38, revolutionary
socialist, has a police record; elementary school teacher qualified to teach in
secondary schools; former first secretary of the Chambers in Cesena, Forlì, and
Ravenna; after 1912 editor of the newspaper Avanti! to which he gave a violent
suggestive and intransigent orientation. In October 1914, finding himself in opposition
to the directorate of the Italian Socialist party because he advocated a kind
of active neutrality on the part of Italy in the War of the Nations against the
party's tendency of absolute neutrality, he withdrew on the twentieth of that
month from the directorate of Avanti! Then on the fifteenth of November [1914],
thereafter, he initiated publication of the newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia, in
which he supported – in sharp contrast to Avanti! and amid bitter polemics
against that newspaper and its chief backers – the thesis of Italian
intervention in the war against the militarism of the Central Empires. For this
reason he was accused of moral and political unworthiness and the party
thereupon decided to expel him … Thereafter he … undertook a very active
campaign in behalf of Italian intervention, participating in demonstrations in
the piazzas and writing quite violent articles in Popolo d'Italia …[26]
In his summary, the Inspector also notes:
He was the ideal editor of Avanti! for the Socialists. In
that line of work he was greatly esteemed and beloved. Some of his former
comrades and admirers still confess that there was no one who understood better
how to interpret the spirit of the proletariat and there was no one who did not
observe his apostasy with sorrow. This came about not for reasons of
self-interest or money. He was a sincere and passionate advocate, first of
vigilant and armed neutrality, and later of war; and he did not believe that he
was compromising with his personal and political honesty by making use of every
means – no matter where they came from or wherever he might obtain them – to
pay for his newspaper, his program and his line of action. This was his initial
line. It is difficult to say to what extent his socialist convictions (which he
never either openly or privately abjure) may have been sacrificed in the course
of the indispensable financial deals which were necessary for the continuation
of the struggle in which he was engaged … But assuming these modifications did
take place … he always wanted to give the appearance of still being a
socialist, and he fooled himself into thinking that this was the case.[38]
Beginning of Fascism and service in World War I
Mussolini as an Italian soldier, 1917.
After being ousted by the Italian Socialist Party for his
support of Italian intervention, Mussolini made a radical transformation,
ending his support for class conflict and joining in support of revolutionary
nationalism transcending class lines.[37] He formed the interventionist newspaper
Il Popolo d'Italia and the Fasci Rivoluzionari d'Azione Internazionalista
("Revolutionary Fasci for International Action") in October 1914.[32]
His nationalist support of intervention enabled him to raise funds from Ansaldo
(an armaments firm) and other companies to create Il Popolo d'Italia to
convince socialists and revolutionaries to support the war.[39] Further funding
for Mussolini's Fascists during the war came from French sources, beginning in
May 1915.[40] A major source of this funding from France is believed to have
been from French socialists who sent support to dissident socialists who wanted
Italian intervention on France's side.[40]
On 5 December 1914, Mussolini denounced orthodox
socialism for failing to recognize that the war had made national identity and
loyalty more significant than class distinction.[37] He fully demonstrated his
transformation in a speech that acknowledged the nation as an entity, a notion
he had rejected prior to the war, saying:
The nation has not disappeared. We used to believe that
the concept was totally without substance. Instead we see the nation arise as a
palpitating reality before us! … Class cannot destroy the nation. Class reveals
itself as a collection of interests—but the nation is a history of sentiments,
traditions, language, culture, and race. Class can become an integral part of
the nation, but the one cannot eclipse the other.[41]
The class struggle is a vain formula, without effect and
consequence wherever one finds a people that has not integrated itself into its
proper linguistic and racial confines—where the national problem has not been
definitely resolved. In such circumstances the class movement finds itself
impaired by an inauspicious historic climate.[42]
Mussolini continued to promote the need of a
revolutionary vanguard elite to lead society. He no longer advocated a
proletarian vanguard, but instead a vanguard led by dynamic and revolutionary
people of any social class.[42] Though he denounced orthodox socialism and
class conflict, he maintained at the time that he was a nationalist socialist
and a supporter of the legacy of nationalist socialists in Italy's history,
such as Giuseppe Garibaldi, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Carlo Pisacane.[43] As for
the Italian Socialist Party and its support of orthodox socialism, he claimed
that his failure as a member of the party to revitalize and transform it to
recognize the contemporary reality revealed the hopelessness of orthodox
socialism as outdated and a failure.[43] This perception of the failure of orthodox
socialism in the light of the outbreak of World War I was not solely held by
Mussolini, other pro-interventionist Italian socialists such as Filippo
Corridoni and Sergio Panunzio had also denounced classical Marxism in favor of
intervention.[44]
These basic political views and principles formed the
basis of Mussolini's newly formed political movement, the Fasci Rivoluzionari
d'Azione Internazionalista in 1914, who called themselves Fascisti
(Fascists).[45] At this time, the Fascists did not have an integrated set of
policies and the movement was small, ineffective in its attempts to hold mass
meetings, and was regularly harassed by government authorities and orthodox
socialists.[46] Antagonism between the interventionists, including the
Fascists, versus the anti-interventionist orthodox socialists resulted in
violence between the Fascists and socialists.[47] The opposition and attacks by
the anti-interventionist revolutionary socialists against the Fascists and
other interventionists were so violent that even democratic socialists who
opposed the war such as Anna Kuliscioff said that the Italian Socialist Party
had gone too far in a campaign of silencing the freedom of speech of supporters
of the war.[47] These early hostilities between the Fascists and the
revolutionary socialists shaped Mussolini's conception of the nature of Fascism
in its support of political violence.[47]
Mussolini became an ally with the irredentist politician
and journalist Cesare Battisti, and like him he entered the Army and served in
the war. "He was sent to the zone of operations where he was seriously
injured by the explosion of a grenade."[26]
The Inspector General continues:
He was promoted to the rank of corporal "for merit
in war". The promotion was recommended because of his exemplary conduct
and fighting quality, his mental calmness and lack of concern for discomfort,
his zeal and regularity in carrying out his assignments, where he was always
first in every task involving labor and fortitude.[26]
Mussolini's military experience is told in his work
Diario Di Guerra. Overall, he totaled about nine months of active, front-line
trench warfare. During this time, he contracted paratyphoid fever.[48] His
military exploits ended in 1917 when he was wounded accidentally by the
explosion of a mortar bomb in his trench. He was left with at least 40 shards
of metal in his body.[48] He was discharged from the hospital in August 1917
and resumed his editor-in-chief position at his new paper, Il Popolo d'Italia.
He wrote there positive articles about Czechoslovak Legions in Italy.
On 25 December 1915, in Treviglio, he contracted a
marriage with his fellow countrywoman Rachele Guidi, who had already borne him
a daughter, Edda, at Forlì in 1910. In 1915, he had a son with Ida Dalser, a
woman born in Sopramonte, a village near Trento.[9][10][49] He legally
recognized this son on 11 January 1916.
Rise to power
Creation of the National Fascist Party
Main articles: Fascism and Italian Fascism
By the time he returned from Allied service in World War
I, there was very little left of Mussolini the socialist. Indeed, he was now
convinced that socialism as a doctrine had largely been a failure. In 1917,
Mussolini got his start in politics with the help of a £100 weekly wage from
MI5 (The equivalent of 6000 pounds today), to keep anti war protestors at home
and publish pro war propaganda. This help was authorized by Sir Samuel
Hoare.[50] In early 1918, Mussolini called for the emergence of a man
"ruthless and energetic enough to make a clean sweep" to revive the
Italian nation.[51] Much later in life Mussolini said he felt by 1919
"Socialism as a doctrine was already dead; it continued to exist only as a
grudge".[52] On 23 March 1919, Mussolini reformed the Milan fascio as the
Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Squad), consisting of 200
members.[51]
The platform of Fasci italiani di combattimento, as
published in "Il Popolo d'Italia" on 6 June 1919.
 |
| Benito Mussolini |
Italia Irredenta: regions considered Italian because of
ethnic, geographic and/or historical reasons, claimed by the Fascists in the
1930s: green: Nice, Ticino, and Dalmatia; red: Malta; violet: Corsica; Savoy
and Corfu were later claimed.
An important factor in fascism gaining support in its
earliest stages was the fact that it claimed to oppose discrimination based on
social class and was strongly opposed to all forms of class war.[53][54]
Fascism instead supported nationalist sentiments such as a strong unity,
regardless of class, in the hopes of raising Italy up to the levels of its
great Roman past. The ideological basis for fascism came from a number of
sources. Mussolini utilized works of Plato, Georges Sorel, Nietzsche, and the
socialist and economic ideas of Vilfredo Pareto, to create fascism. Mussolini
admired The Republic, which he often read for inspiration.[55] The Republic
held a number of ideas that fascism promoted such as rule by an elite promoting
the state as the ultimate end, opposition to democracy, protecting the class
system and promoting class collaboration, rejection of egalitarianism,
promoting the militarization of a nation by creating a class of warriors,
demanding that citizens perform civic duties in the interest of the state, and
utilizing state intervention in education to promote the creation of warriors
and future rulers of the state.[56] The Republic differed from fascism in that
it did not promote aggressive war but only defensive war. Also unlike fascism,
it promoted very communist-like views on property. Plato was an idealist,
focused on achieving justice and morality, while Mussolini and fascism were
realist, focused on achieving political goals.[57]
The basic underlying idea behind Mussolini's foreign
policy was that of spazio vitale (vital space), a concept in Fascism that was
analogous to lebensraum in German National Socialism.[58] The concept of spazio
vitale was first announced in 1919, when the entire Mediterranean, especially
so-called Julian March was redefined to make it appear a unified region that
had belonged to Italy from the times of the ancient Roman province of
Italia,[59][60] was claimed as Italy's exclusive sphere of influence. The right
to colonize the neighboring Slovene ethnic areas and Mediterranean, being
inhabited by what were alleged to be less developed peoples, was justified on
the grounds that Italy was suffering from overpopulation.[61]
Borrowing the idea first developed by Enrico Corradini
before 1914 of the natural conflict between "plutocratic" nations
like Britain and "proletarian" nations like Italy, Mussolini claimed
that Italy's principle problem was that it was "plutocratic"
countries like Britain that were blocking Italy from achieving the necessary
spazio vitale that would let the Italian economy grow.[62] Mussolini equated a
nation's potential for economic growth with territorial size, thus in his view
the problem of poverty in Italy could only be solved by winning the necessary
spazio vitale.[63]
Though biological racism was less prominent in Fascism
than National Socialism, right from the start there was a strong racist
undercurrent to the spazio vitale concept, in which Mussolini asserted there
was a "natural law" for stronger peoples to subject and dominate
"inferior" peoples such as the "barbaric" Slavic peoples of
Yugoslavia as Mussolini claimed in a September 1920 speech, when Mussolini
stated:
When dealing with such a race as Slavic - inferior and
barbarian - we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy … We should not
be afraid of new victims … The Italian border should run across the Brenner
Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps … I would say we can easily sacrifice
500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians …
—Benito Mussolini, speech held in Pula, 20 September
1920[64][65]
During the period of occupation between years 1918 and
1920, five hundred "Slav" societies (for example Sokol), and slightly
smaller number of libraries ("reading rooms") had been forbidden, and
specifically so later with the Law on Associations (1925), the Law on Public
Demonstrations (1926) and the Law on Public Order (1926), the closure of the
classical lyceum in Pazin, of the high school in Voloska (1918), the closure of
the five hundred[66] Slovene and Croatian primary schools followed. One
thousand "Slav" teachers were forcibly exiled to Sardinia and
elsewhere to South Italy.
In the same way, Mussolini argued that Italy was right to
follow an imperalist policy in Africa because all black people were
"inferior" to whites.[67] Mussolini claimed that the world was
divided into a hierarchy of races (stirpe), though this was justified more on
cultural than on biological grounds, and that history was nothing more than a
Darwinian struggle for power and territory between various "racial
masses".[67] The very fact that Italy was suffering from overpopulation
was seen as proving the cultural and spiritual vitality of the Italians, who
were thus justified in seeking to colonize lands that Mussolini argued on a
historical basis belonged to Italy anyway, which was the heir to the Roman
Empire.[67] In Mussolini's thinking, demography was destiny; nations with
rising populations were nations destined to conquer, and nations with falling
populations were decaying powers that deserved to die.[67] Hence, the
importance of natalism to Mussolini, since only by increasing the birth rate
could Italy ensure its future as a great power that would win its spazio vitale
be assured.[67] By Mussolini's reckoning, the Italian population had to reach
60 million to enable Italy to fight a major war—hence his relentless demands
for Italian women to have more children to reach that number.[67]
Mussolini and the fascists managed to be simultaneously
revolutionary and traditionalist;[68][69] because this was vastly different
from anything else in the political climate of the time, it is sometimes
described as "The Third Way".[70] The Fascisti, led by one of
Mussolini's close confidants, Dino Grandi, formed armed squads of war veterans
called Blackshirts (or squadristi) with the goal of restoring order to the
streets of Italy with a strong hand. The blackshirts clashed with communists,
socialists, and anarchists at parades and demonstrations; all of these factions
were also involved in clashes against each other. The government rarely interfered
with the blackshirts' actions, owing in part to a looming threat and widespread
fear of a communist revolution. The Fascisti grew so rapidly that within two
years, it transformed itself into the National Fascist Party at a congress in
Rome. Also in 1921, Mussolini was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the
first time.[10] In the meantime, from about 1911 until 1938, Mussolini had
various affairs with the Jewish author and academic Margherita Sarfatti, called
the "Jewish Mother of Fascism" at the time.[71]
March on Rome
Further information: March on Rome
Mussolini and the Quadrumviri during the March on Rome in
1922: from left to right: Michele Bianchi, Emilio De Bono, Italo Balbo and
Cesare Maria De Vecchi
In the night between October 27 and 28, 1922, about
30,000 Fascist blackshirts gathered in Rome to demand the resignation of
liberal Prime Minister Luigi Facta and the appointment of a new Fascist
government. On the morning of October 28, King Victor Emmanuel III who,
according to the Albertine Statute held the supreme military power, refused the
government request to declare martial law, which led to Facta's resignation.
The King then handed over power to Mussolini (who stayed in his headquarters in
Milan during the talks) by asking him to form a new government. The controverse
King's decision has been explained by historians as a combination of delusions
and fears; Mussolini enjoyed a wide support in the military and among the
industrial and agrarian elites, while the King and the conservative establishment
were afraid of a possible civil war and ultimately thought they could use
Mussolini to restore law and order in the country, but failed to foresee the
danger of a totalitarian evolution.[72]
Appointment as Prime Minister
As Prime Minister, the first years of Mussolini's rule
were characterized by a right-wing coalition government composed of Fascists,
nationalists, liberals, and two Catholic clerics from the Popular Party. The
Fascists made up a small minority in his original governments. Mussolini's
domestic goal was the eventual establishment of a totalitarian state with
himself as supreme leader (Il Duce) a message that was articulated by the
Fascist newspaper Il Popolo, which was now edited by Mussolini's brother,
Arnaldo. To that end, Mussolini obtained from the legislature dictatorial
powers for one year (legal under the Italian constitution of the time). He
favored the complete restoration of state authority, with the integration of
the Fasci di Combattimento into the armed forces (the foundation in January
1923 of the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale) and the progressive
identification of the party with the state. In political and social economy, he
passed legislation that favored the wealthy industrial and agrarian classes (privatizations,
liberalizations of rent laws and dismantlement of the unions).[10]
In 1923, Mussolini sent Italian forces to invade Corfu
during the Corfu Incident. In the end, the League of Nations proved powerless,
and Greece was forced to comply with Italian demands. Writing of Mussolini's
foreign policy, the American historian Gerhard Weinberg said:
"If the new regime Benito Mussolini installed in
1922 on the ruins of the old glorified war as a sign of vitality and repudiated
pacifism as a form of decay, the lesson drawn from the terrible battles against
Austria on the Isonzo river—in which the Italians fought far better than
popular imagination often allows—was that the tremendous material and technical
preparations needed for modern war were simply beyond the contemporary capacity
of the country. This was almost certainly a correct perception, but, given the
ideology of Fascism with its emphasis on the moral benefits of war, it did not
lead to the conclusion that an Italy without a big stick had best speak very,
very softly. On the contrary, the new regime drew the opposite conclusion.
Noisy eloquence and rabid journalism might be substituted for serious
preparations for war, a procedure that was harmless enough if no one took any
of it seriously, but a certain road to disaster once some outside and Mussolini
inside the country came to believe that the "eight million bayonets"
of the Duce's imagination actually existed."[73]
Acerbo Law
Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti was murdered a few
days after he openly denounced fascist violence during the 1924 elections
In June 1923, the government passed the Acerbo Law, which
transformed Italy into a single national constituency. It also granted a
two-thirds majority of the seats in Parliament to the party or group of parties
that received at least 25% of the votes.[citation needed] This law applied in
the elections of 6 April 1924. The national alliance, consisting of Fascists,
most of the old Liberals and others, won 64% of the vote.
Squadristi violence
The assassination of the socialist deputy Giacomo
Matteotti, who had requested that the elections be annulled because of the
irregularities,[74] provoked a momentary crisis in the Mussolini government.
Mussolini ordered a cover-up, but witnesses saw the car that transported
Matteotti's body parked outside Matteotti's residence, which linked Dumini to
the murder.
Mussolini later confessed that a few resolute men could
have altered public opinion and started a coup that would have swept fascism
away. Dumini was imprisoned for two years. On his release Dumini allegedly told
other people that Mussolini was responsible, for which he served further prison
time.
The opposition parties responded weakly or were generally
unresponsive. Many of the socialists, liberals, and moderates boycotted
Parliament in the Aventine Secession, hoping to force Victor Emmanuel to
dismiss Mussolini.
On 31 December 1924, MVSN consuls met with Mussolini and
gave him an ultimatum—crush the opposition or they would do so without him.
Fearing a revolt by his own militants, Mussolini decided to drop all trappings
of democracy.[75] On 3 January 1925, Mussolini made a truculent speech before
the Chamber in which he took responsibility for squadristi violence (though he
did not mention the assassination of Matteotti).[76]
Fascist Italy
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Police state
A young Mussolini in his early years in power.
Between 1925 and 1927, Mussolini progressively dismantled
virtually all constitutional and conventional restraints on his power, thereby
building a police state. A law passed on Christmas Eve 1925 changed Mussolini's
formal title from "president of the Council of Ministers" to
"head of the government" (though he was still called "Prime
Minister" by most non-Italian outlets). He was no longer responsible to
Parliament and could only be removed by the king. While the Italian
constitution stated that ministers were only responsible to the sovereign, in
practice it had become all but impossible to govern against the express will of
Parliament. The Christmas Eve law ended this practice, and also made Mussolini
the only person competent to determine the body's agenda. Local autonomy was
abolished, and podestàs appointed by the Italian Senate replaced elected mayors
and councils.
On 7 April 1926, Mussolini survived a first assassination
attempt by Violet Gibson, an Irish woman and daughter of Lord Ashbourne, who
was subsequently deported after her arrest.[77] On 31 October 1926, 15-year-old
Anteo Zamboni attempted to shoot Mussolini in Bologna. Zamboni was lynched on
the spot.[78][79] Mussolini also survived a failed assassination attempt in
Rome by anarchist Gino Lucetti,[80] and a planned attempt by the Italian
anarchist Michele Schirru,[81] which ended with Schirru's capture and
execution.[82]
All other parties were outlawed following Zamboni's
assassination attempt in 1926, though in practice Italy had been a one-party
state since Mussolini's 1925 speech. In the same year, an electoral law
abolished parliamentary elections. Instead, the Grand Council of Fascism
selected a single list of candidates to be approved by plebiscite. The Grand
Council had been created five years earlier as a party body but was
"constitutionalized" and became the highest constitutional authority
in the state. On paper, the Grand Council had the power to recommend
Mussolini's removal from office, and was thus theoretically the only check on
his power. However, only Mussolini could summon the Grand Council and determine
its agenda. To gain control of the South, especially Sicily, he appointed
Cesare Mori as a Prefect of the city of Palermo, with the charge of eradicating
the Mafia at any price. In the telegram, Mussolini wrote to Mori:
"Your Excellency has carte blanche; the authority of
the State must absolutely, I repeat absolutely, be re-established in Sicily. If
the laws still in force hinder you, this will be no problem, as we will draw up
new laws."[83]
Mori did not hesitate to lay siege to towns, using
torture, and holding women and children as hostages to oblige suspects to give
themselves up. These harsh methods earned him the nickname of "Iron
Prefect". In 1927 Mori's inquiries brought evidence of collusion between
the Mafia and the Fascist establishment, and he was dismissed for length of
service in 1929, at which time the number of murders in Palermo Province had
decreased from 200 to 23. Mussolini nominated Mori as a senator, and fascist
propaganda claimed that the Mafia had been defeated.[84]
Economic policy
Further information: Economy of Italy under Fascism
The inauguration of Littoria in 1932
Mussolini launched several public construction programs
and government initiatives throughout Italy to combat economic setbacks or
unemployment levels. His earliest, and one of the best known, was the Battle
for Wheat, by which 5,000 new farms were established and five new agricultural
towns (among them Littoria and Sabaudia) on land reclaimed by draining the
Pontine Marshes. In Sardinia, a model agricultural town was founded and named
Mussolinia, but has long since been renamed Arborea. This town was the first of
what Mussolini hoped would have been thousands of new agricultural settlements
across the country. The Battle for Wheat diverted valuable resources to wheat
production away from other more economically viable crops. Landowners grew
wheat on unsuitable soil using all the advances of modern science, and although
the wheat harvest increased, prices rose, consumption fell and high tariffs
were imposed.[85] The tariffs promoted widespread inefficiencies and the
government subsidies given to farmers pushed the country further into debt.
Mussolini also initiated the "Battle for Land",
a policy based on land reclamation outlined in 1928. The initiative had a mixed
success; while projects such as the draining of the Pontine Marsh in 1935 for
agriculture were good for propaganda purposes, provided work for the unemployed
and allowed for great land owners to control subsidies, other areas in the
Battle for Land were not very successful. This program was inconsistent with
the Battle for Wheat (small plots of land were inappropriately allocated for
large-scale wheat production), and the Pontine Marsh was lost during World War
II. Fewer than 10,000 peasants resettled on the redistributed land, and peasant
poverty remained high. The Battle for Land initiative was abandoned in 1940.
Corporatism
Concepts[show]
Schools[show]
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Related articles[show]
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v t e
He tried to combat economic recession by introducing a
"Gold for the Fatherland" initiative, encouraging the public to
voluntarily donate gold jewelry to government officials in exchange for steel
wristbands bearing the words "Gold for the Fatherland". Even Rachele
Mussolini donated her wedding ring. The collected gold was melted down and
turned into gold bars, which were then distributed to the national banks.
Government control of business was part of Mussolini's
policy planning. By 1935, he claimed that three-quarters of Italian businesses
were under state control. Later that year, Mussolini issued several edicts to
further control the economy, e.g. forcing banks, businesses, and private
citizens to surrender all foreign-issued stock and bond holdings to the Bank of
Italy. In 1936, he imposed price controls.[86] He also attempted to turn Italy
into a self-sufficient autarky, instituting high barriers on trade with most
countries except Germany.
In 1943, Mussolini proposed the theory of economic
socialization.
Propaganda and cult of personality
Main article: Italian Fascism
From 1925, Mussolini styled himself Il Duce (the leader).
Mussolini's foremost priority was the subjugation of the
minds of the Italian people and the use of propaganda to do so. A lavish cult
of personality centered on the figure of Mussolini was promoted by the regime.
Mussolini pretended to incarnate the new fascist
Übermensch, promoting an aestethics of exasperated machism and a cult of
personality that attributed to him quasi-divine capacities.[87] At various
times after 1922, Mussolini personally took over the ministries of the
interior, foreign affairs, colonies, corporations, defense, and public works.
Sometimes he held as many as seven departments simultaneously, as well as the
premiership. He was also head of the all-powerful Fascist Party and the armed
local fascist militia, the MVSN or "Blackshirts", who terrorized
incipient resistances in the cities and provinces. He would later form the
OVRA, an institutionalized secret police that carried official state support.
In this way he succeeded in keeping power in his own hands and preventing the
emergence of any rival.
Mussolini's personal standard.
Mussolini also portrayed himself as a valiant sportsman,
a skilled musician and a philosopher and political theoretician, as the
principles of the doctrine of Fascism were laid down in an article by
philosopher Giovanni Gentile and Mussolini himself that appeared in 1932 in the
Enciclopedia Italiana.
All teachers in schools and universities had to swear an
oath to defend the fascist regime. Newspaper editors were all personally chosen
by Mussolini and no one who did not possess a certificate of approval from the
fascist party could practice journalism. These certificates were issued in
secret; Mussolini thus skillfully created the illusion of a "free
press". The trade unions were also deprived of any independence and were
integrated into what was called the "corporative" system. The aim
(never completely achieved), inspired by medieval guilds, was to place all
Italians in various professional organizations or corporations, all under
clandestine governmental control.
Large sums of money were spent on highly visible public
works and on international prestige projects such as the Blue Riband ocean
liner SS Rex or aeronautical records such as the world's fastest seaplane the
Macchi M.C.72 and the transatlantic flying boat cruise of Italo Balbo, which
was greeted with much fanfare in the United States when it landed in Chicago in
1933.
Culture
Benito Mussolini and Fascist Blackshirt youth in 1935.
Nationalists in the years after WW1 thought of themselves
as combating the both liberal and domineering institutions created by
cabinets—such as those of Giovanni Giolitti, including traditional schooling.
Futurism, a revolutionary cultural movement which would serve as a catalyst for
Fascism, argued for "a school for physical courage and patriotism,"
as expressed by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1919. Marinetti expressed his
disdain for "… the by now prehistoric and troglodyte Ancient Greek and
Latin courses," arguing for their replacement with exercise modelled on
those of the Arditi soldiers ("[learning] to advance on hands and knees in
front of razing machine gun fire; to wait open-eyed for a crossbeam to move
sideways over their heads etc."). It was in those years that the first
Fascist youth wings were formed: Avanguardia Giovanile Fascista (Fascist Youth
Vanguards) in 1919, and Gruppi Universitari Fascisti (Fascist University
Groups) in 1922.
After the March on Rome that brought Mussolini to power,
the Fascists started considering ways to politicize Italian society, with an
accent on education. Mussolini assigned former ardito and deputy-secretary for
Education Renato Ricci the task of "… reorganizing the youth from a moral
and physical point of view." Ricci sought inspiration with Robert
Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, meeting with him in England, as well as
with Bauhaus artists in Germany. The Opera Nazionale Balilla was created
through Mussolini's decree of 3 April 1926, and was led by Ricci for the
following eleven years. It included children between the ages of 8 and 18,
grouped as the Balilla and the Avanguardisti.
Cover of La Domenica del Corriere of February 24, 1929:
signing of the Lateran Treaty.
According to Mussolini: "Fascist education is moral,
physical, social, and military: it aims to create a complete and harmoniously
developed human, a fascist one according to our views". Mussolini
structured this process taking in view the emotional side of childhood:
"Childhood and adolescence alike … cannot be fed solely by concerts,
theories, and abstract teaching. The truth we aim to teach them should appeal
foremost to their fantasy, to their hearts, and only then to their minds".
Benito Mussolini dressed in the fascist uniform.
The "educational value set through action and
example" was to replace the established approaches. Fascism opposed its
version of idealism to prevalent rationalism, and used the Opera Nazionale
Balilla to circumvent educational tradition by imposing the collective and
hierarchy, as well as Mussolini's own personality cult.
Another important constituent of the Fascist cultural
policy was Roman Catholicism. In 1929, a concordat with the Vatican was signed,
ending decades of struggle between the Italian state and the Papacy that dated
back to the 1870 takeover of the Papal States by the House of Savoy during the
unification of Italy. The Lateran treaties, by which the Italian state was at
last recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, and the independence of Vatican
City was recognized by the Italian state, was so much appreciated by the
ecclesiastic hierarchy that Pope Pius XI acclaimed Mussolini as "the Man
of Providence".[88]
The 1929 treaty included a legal provision whereby the
Italian government would protect the honor and dignity of the Pope by
prosecuting offenders.[89] In 1927, Mussolini was re-baptized by a Roman
Catholic priest. After 1929, Mussolini, with his anti-Communist doctrines,
convinced many Catholics to actively support him.
Foreign policy
In foreign policy, Mussolini was pragmatic and
opportunistic. At the center of his vision lay the dream to forge a new Roman
Empire in Africa and the Balkans, vindicating the mutilated victory imposed by
the "plutodemocracies" (Britain and France) that betrayed the Treaty
of London and usurped the natural right of Italy to achieve supremacy in the
Mediterranean basin.[90][91] However, in the 1920s, given Germany's weakness,
post-war reconstruction problems and the question of reparations, the situation
of Europe was too unfavorable to advocate an openly revisionist approach to the
Treaty of Versailles.
In his early years in power, Mussolini operated as a
pragmatic statesman, trying to achieve some advantages, but only with French
and British approval. An exception was the bombardment and occupation of Corfu
in 1923, following an incident in which Italian military personnel charged by
the League of Nations to settle a boundary dispute between Greece and Albania
were assassinated by Greek terrorists. Subsequently, Mussolini took part in the
Locarno Treaties of 1925, that guaranteed the western borders of Germany as
drawn in 1919. After Hitler came into power, threatening Italian interests in
Austria and the Danube basin, Mussolini proposed the Four Power Pact with Britain,
France and Germany in 1933. Mussolini also opposed any German attempt to obtain
Anschluss and promoted the ephemeral Stresa Front against Germany in 1935.
On 25 October 1936, an Axis was declared between Italy
and Germany.
Mussolini's foreign policy took a dramatic turn after the
Abyssinia Crisis of 1935–1936, when Italy invaded Ethiopia following border
incidents occasioned by Ethiopian militias. Historians are still divided about
the reasons for the attack on Ethiopia in 1935. Some Italian historians such as
Franco Catalano and Giorgio Rochat argue that invasion was an act of social
imperialism, contending that the Great Depression had badly damaged Mussolini's
prestige, and that he needed a foreign war to distract public opinion.[92]
Other historians such as Pietro Pastorelli have argued that the invasion was
launched as part of an expansionist program to make Italy the main power in the
Red Sea area and the Middle East.[92] A middle way interpretation was offered
by the American historian MacGregor Knox, who argued that the war was started
for both foreign and domestic reasons, being both a part of Mussolini's
long-range expansionist plans and intended to give Mussolini a foreign policy
triumph that would allow him to push the Fascist system in a more radical
direction at home.[92] Italy's forces were far superior to the Abyssinian
forces, especially in air power, and they were soon victorious. Emperor Haile
Selassie was forced to flee the country, with Italy entering the capital
city,Addis Ababa to proclaim an empire by May 1936, making Ethiopia part of
Italian East Africa.[93]
Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Italian
Foreign Minister Count Ciano, as they prepared to sign the Munich Agreement
From left to right, Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler,
Mussolini and Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano as they prepare to sign the
Munich Agreement.
Confident of having been given free hand by French Prime
Minister Pierre Laval, and certain that the British and French would be
forgiving because of his opposition to Hitler's revisionism within the Stresa
front, Mussolini received with disdain the League of Nations' economic
sanctions imposed on Italy by initiative of London and Paris.[94] In
Mussolini's view, the move was a typically hypocritical action carried out by
decaying imperial powers that intended to prevent the natural expansion of
younger and poorer nations like Italy.[95] In fact, although France and Britain
had already colonized parts of Africa and committed atrocities in their
colonies, the Scramble for Africa had finished by the beginning of the
twentieth century. The international mood was now against colonialist expansion
and Italy's actions were condemned. Retroactively, Italy was criticized for its
use of mustard gas and phosgene against its enemies and also for its zero
tolerance approach to enemy guerrillas, allegedly authorized by Mussolini.[93]
As a consequence, the sanctions pushed Mussolini further toward Hitler. In
order to escape diplomatic isolation, on October 25, 1936, Mussolini agreed to
form a Rome-Berlin Axis, sanctioned by a cooperation agreement with Nazi
Germany and signed in Berlin.
From 1936 through 1939, Mussolini provided huge amounts
of military support to the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. This active
intervention on the side of Franco further distanced Italy from France and
Britain. As a result, Mussolini's relationship with Adolf Hitler became closer,
and he chose to accept the German annexation of Austria in 1938, followed by
the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1939. At the Munich Conference in
September 1938, Mussolini continued to pose as a moderate working for European
peace, while helping Nazi Germany annex the Sudetenland. The 1936 Axis
agreement with Germany was strengthened by signing the Pact of Steel on May 22,
1939, that bound together Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in a full military
alliance.
Members of TIGR, a Slovene anti-fascist group, plotted to
kill Mussolini in Kobarid in 1938, but their attempt was unsuccessful.
World War II
The gathering storm
Benito Mussolini in a portrait.
By the late 1930s, Mussolini's obsession with demography
led him to conclude that Britain and France were finished as powers, and that
it was Germany and Italy who were destined to rule Europe if for no other
reason than their demographic strength.[96] Mussolini stated his belief that
declining birth rates in France were "absolutely horrifying" and that
the British Empire was doomed because one-quarter of the British population was
over 50.[97] As such, Mussolini believed that an alliance with Germany was
preferable to an alignment with Britain and France as it was better to be
allied with the strong instead of the weak.[98] The only arguments that held
Mussolini back from full alignment with Berlin were his awareness of Italy's
economic and military weakness, meaning he required further time to rearm, and
his desire to use the Easter Accords of April 1938 as a way of splitting
Britain from France.[99] A military alliance with Germany as opposed to the
already existing looser political alliance with the Reich under the
Anti-Comintern Pact (which had no military commitments) would end any chance of
Britain implementing the Easter Accords.[100] The Easter Accords in turn were
intended by Mussolini to allow Italy to take on France alone by sufficiently
improving Anglo-Italian relations that London would presumably remain neutral
in the event of a Franco-Italian war (Mussolini had imperial designs on
Tunisia, and had some support in that country.[101] ).[100] In turn, the Easter
Accords were intended by Britain to win Italy away from Germany.
In January 1939, the British Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain visited Rome, during which visit, Mussolini learned that though
Britain very much wanted better relations with Italy, and was prepared to make
concessions, that Britain would not sever all ties with France for the sake of
an improved Anglo-Italian relationship.[102] With that, Mussolini grew more
interested in the German offer of a military alliance, which first been made in
May 1938.[102] The new course was not without its critics. On 21 March 1939,
during a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council, Italo Balbo accused Mussolini of
"licking Hitler's boots", blasted the Duce's pro-German foreign
policy as leading Italy to disaster, and noted that the "opening to
Britain" still existed and it was not inevitable that Italy had to ally
with Germany.[103] Through many gerarchi like Balbo were not keen on closer
relations with Berlin, Mussolini's control of the foreign-policy machinery
meant this dissidence counted for little.[103] In April 1939, Mussolini ordered
the Italian invasion of Albania. Italy defeated Albania within just five days
forcing king Zog to flee, setting up a period of Albania under Italy. Until May
1939, the Axis had not been entirely official, but during that month the Pact
of Steel treaty was signed outlining the "friendship and alliance"
between Germany and Italy, signed by each of its foreign ministers.[104] The
Pact of Steel was an offensive and defensive military alliance, though
Mussolini had signed the treaty only after receiving a promise from the Germans
that there would be no war for the next three years. Italy's king Victor
Emanuel III was also wary of the pact, favoring the more traditional Italian
allies like France, and fearful of the implications of an offensive military
alliance, which in effect meant surrendering control over questions of war and
peace to Hitler.[105]
 |
| Adolf Hitler |
Hitler was intent on invading Poland, though Galeazzo
Ciano warned this would likely lead to war with the Allies. Hitler dismissed
Ciano's comment, predicting that instead that Britain and the other Western
countries would back down, and he suggested that Italy should invade
Yugoslavia.[106] The offer was tempting to Mussolini, but at that stage world
war would be a disaster for Italy as the armaments situation from building the
Italian Empire thus far was lean. Most significantly, Victor Emmanuel had
demanded neutrality in the dispute.[106] Thus when World War II in Europe began
on 1 September 1939 with the German invasion of Poland eliciting the response
of the United Kingdom and France declaring war on Germany, Italy did not become
involved in the conflict.[106]
War declared
Cover of the May 13, 1940 issue of Newsweek magazine,
headlining: "Il Duce: key man of the Mediterranean".
Main article: Military history of Italy during World War
II
As World War II began, Ciano and Viscount Halifax were
holding secret phone conversations. The British wanted Italy on their side
against Germany as it had been in World War I.[106] French government opinion
was more geared towards action against Italy; they were eager to attack Italy
in Libya. In September 1939, France swung to the opposite extreme, offering to
discuss issues with Italy, but as the French were unwilling to discuss Corsica,
Nice and Savoy, Mussolini did not answer.[106] Historian Alexander Gibson
stated that Allies were certain that Italy would join the war on the Axis side,
and tried to provoke Italy into fighting while she was still unprepared.[107]
So long as the Duce lives, one can rest assured that
Italy will seize every opportunity to achieve its imperialistic aims.
—Adolf Hitler, late November 1939[106]
Convinced that the war would soon be over, with a German
victory looking likely at that point, Mussolini decided to enter the war on the
Axis side. Accordingly, Italy declared war on Britain and France on 10 June
1940.[108] Mussolini regarded the war against Britain and France as a
life-or-death struggle between opposing ideologies - Fascism and "the
Masonic, democratic, capitalist world"[107] - describing the war as
"the struggle of the fertile and young people against the sterile people
moving to the sunset; it is the struggle between two centuries and two
ideas",[109] and as a "logical development of our
Revolution".[107]
Italy joined the Germans in the Battle of France,
fighting the fortified Alpine Line at the border. Just eleven days later,
France surrendered to the Axis powers. Included in Italian-controlled France
was most of Nice and other southeastern counties.[108] Meanwhile in Africa,
Mussolini's Italian East Africa forces attacked the British in their Sudan,
Kenya and British Somaliland colonies, in what would become known as the East
African Campaign.[110] British Somaliland was conquered and became part of
Italian East Africa on 3 August 1940, and there were Italian advances in Sudan
and Kenya.[111]
Path to defeat
Mussolini in an official portrait
In September 1940, the Italian Tenth Army commanded by
General Rodolfo Graziani crossed from Italian Libya into Egypt where British
forces were located; this would become the Western Desert Campaign. Advances
were successful, but the Italians stopped at Sidi Barrani waiting for logistic
supplies to catch up. During 25 October 1940, Mussolini sent the Italian Air
Corps to Belgium, where the air force took part in the Battle of Britain for
around two months.[112] In October, Mussolini also sent Italian forces into
Greece, starting the Greco-Italian War. After initial success, this backfired
as the Greek counterattack proved relentless, resulting in Italy losing
one-quarter of Albania.
Events in Africa had changed by early 1941 as Operation
Compass had forced the Italians back into Libya, causing high losses in the
Italian Army.[113] Also in the East African Campaign, an attack was mounted
against Italian forces. Despite putting up a resistance, they were overwhelmed
at the Battle of Keren, and the Italian defense started to crumble with a final
defeat in the Battle of Gondar. When addressing the Italian public on the
events, he was completely open about the situation, saying, "We call bread
bread and wine wine, and when the enemy wins a battle it is useless and
ridiculous to seek, as the English do in their incomparable hypocrisy, to deny
or diminish it."[114] Part of his comment was in relation to earlier
success the Italians had in Africa, before being defeated by an Allied force
later. In danger of losing the control of all Italian possessions in North
Africa, Germany finally sent the Afrika Korps to support Italy. Meanwhile
Operation Marita took place in Yugoslavia to end the Greco-Italian War,
resulting in an Axis victory and the Occupation of Greece by Italy and
Germany.[115]
General Mario Robotti, Commander of the Italian 11th
division in Slovenia and Croatia, issued an order in line with a directive
received from Mussolini in June 1942: "I would not be opposed to all (sic)
Slovenes being imprisoned and replaced by Italians. In other words, we should
take steps to ensure that political and ethnic frontiers coincide,",[116]
Mussolini first learned of Operation Barbarossa after the
invasion of Soviet Union had begun on 22 June 1941, and was not asked by Hitler
to involve himself. [117] Mussolini took the initiative in ordering an Italian
Army Corps to head to the Eastern Front, where he hoped that Italy might score
an easy victory to restore the Fascist regime's luster, which had been damaged
by defeats in Greece and North Africa. Mussolini told the Council of Ministers
of 5 July that his only worry was that Germany might defeat the Soviet Union
before the Italians arrived.[118] At a meeting with Hitler in August, Mussolini
offered and Hitler accepted the commitment of further Italian troops to fight
the Soviet Union.[119] The heavy losses suffered by the Italians on the Eastern
Front, where service was extremely unpopular owing to the widespread view that
this was not Italy's fight, did much to damage Mussolini's prestige with the
Italian people.[119] After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he declared war
on the United States on 11 December 1941.[120] A piece of evidence regarding
Mussolini's response to the attack on Pearl Harbor comes from the diary of his
Foreign Minister Ciano:
"A night telephone call from Ribbentrop. He is
overjoyed about the Japanese attack on America. He is so happy about it that I
am happy with him, though I am not too sure about the final advantages of what
has happened. One thing is now certain, that America will enter the conflict
and that the conflict will be so long that she will be able to realize all her
potential forces. This morning I told this to the King who had been pleased
about the event. He ended by admitting that, in the long run, I may be right.
Mussolini was happy, too. For a long time he has favored a definite
clarification of relations between America and the Axis".[121]
Dismissed and arrested
Main article: 25 Luglio
Marshal Pietro Badoglio succeeded Mussolini as Prime
Minister.
By early 1942, Italy's military position had become
untenable. After the defeat at El Alamein at the end of 1942, the Axis troops
had to retreat to where they were finally defeated in the Tunisia Campaign in
early 1943. Italy suffered major setbacks on the Eastern Front as well. The
Allied invasion of Sicily brought the war to the nation's very doorstep.[122]
The Italian home front was also in bad shape as the Allied bombings were taking
their toll. Factories all over Italy were brought to a virtual standstill due
to a lack of raw materials, as well as coal and oil. Additionally, there was a
chronic shortage of food, and what food was available was being sold at nearly
confiscatory prices. Mussolini's once-ubiquitous propaganda machine lost its
grip on the people; a large number of Italians turned to Vatican Radio or Radio
London for more accurate news coverage. Discontent came to a head in March 1943
with a wave of labor strikes in the industrial north—the first large-scale
strikes since 1925.[123] Also in March, some of the major factories in Milan
and Turin stopped production to secure evacuation allowances for workers'
families. The physical German presence in Italy had sharply turned public
opinion against Mussolini; for example, when the Allies invaded Sicily, the
majority of the public there welcomed them as liberators.[124]
Earlier in April 1943, Mussolini had begged Hitler to
make a separate peace with Stalin and send German troops to the west to guard
against an expected Allied invasion of Italy. Mussolini feared that with the
losses in Tunisia and North Africa, the next logical step for Dwight
Eisenhower's armies would be to come across the Mediterranean and attack the
Italian peninsula. Within a few days of the Allied landings on Sicily in July
1943, it was obvious Mussolini's army was on the brink of collapse. This led
Hitler to summon Mussolini to a meeting in northern Italy on 19 July 1943. By
this time, Mussolini was so shaken from stress that he could no longer stand
Hitler's boasting. His mood darkened further when that same day, the Allies
bombed Rome—the first time that city had ever been the target of enemy
bombing.[125]
Dismissal of Mussolini and appointment of Badoglio
MENU0:00
Italian radio statement announcing the dismissal of
Mussolini and appointment of Badoglio, 25 July 1943.
Problems playing this file? See media help.
Some prominent members of Mussolini's government had
turned against him by this point. Among them were Grandi and Ciano. With
several of his colleagues close to revolt, Mussolini was forced to summon the
Grand Council of Fascism on 24 July 1943: the first time that body had met
since the start of the war. When he announced that the Germans were thinking of
evacuating the south, Grandi launched a blistering attack on him.[122] Grandi
moved a resolution asking the king to resume his full constitutional powers, in
effect, a vote of no confidence in Mussolini. This motion carried by a 19–7
margin. Despite this sharp rebuke, Mussolini showed up for work the next day as
usual. He allegedly viewed the Grand Council as merely an advisory body and did
not think the vote would have any substantive effect.[123] That afternoon, he
was summoned to the royal palace by King Victor Emmanuel III, who had been
planning to oust Mussolini earlier. When Mussolini tried to tell the king about
the meeting, Victor Emmanuel cut him off and told him that he was being
replaced by Marshal Pietro Badoglio.[123] After Mussolini left the palace, he
was arrested by Carabinieri on the king's orders.[126]
Mussolini rescued by German troops from his prison in
Campo Imperatore on 12 September 1943.
By this time, discontent with Mussolini was such that
when the news of his downfall was announced on the radio, there was no
resistance.[123] In an effort to conceal his location from the Germans,
Mussolini was moved around the country before being sent to Campo Imperatore, a
mountain resort in Abruzzo where he was completely isolated.[122] Given the
large Nazi presence in Italy, Badoglio announced that "the war continues
at the side of our Germanic ally" in the hopes that chaos and Nazi retaliation
against civilians could be avoided.[122] Even as Badoglio was keeping up the
appearance of loyalty to the Axis, he dissolved the Fascist Party two days
after taking over. Also, his government was negotiating an Armistice with the
Allies, which was signed on 3 September 1943. Its announcement five days later
threw Italy into chaos, a civil war of sorts. Badoglio and the king fled Rome,
leaving the Italian Army without orders. Immediately after the Italian
surrender was announced, German troops started taking over the Italian
Peninsula by force as part of Operation Achse and occupied Rome on 10
September.[127] After a period of anarchy, Italy finally declared war on Nazi
Germany on 13 October 1943 from Malta; thousands of troops were supplied to
fight against the Germans, others refused to switch sides and had joined the
Germans. The Badoglio government held a social truce with the leftist partisans
for the sake of Italy and to rid the land of the Nazis.[128]
Italian Social Republic
Main article: Italian Social Republic
Only two months after Mussolini had been dismissed and
arrested, he was rescued from his prison at the Hotel Campo Imperatore in the
Gran Sasso raid by a special Fallschirmjäger unit on 12 September 1943; present
was Otto Skorzeny.[126] The rescue saved Mussolini from being turned over to
the Allies, as per the armistice.[128] Hitler had made plans to arrest the
king, Crown Prince Umberto, Badoglio, and the rest of the government and
restore Mussolini to power in Rome, but the government's escape south likely
foiled those plans.[125]
A rain-soaked Benito Mussolini reviewing adolescent
soldiers in northern Italy, late 1944
Three days following his rescue in the Gran Sasso raid,
Mussolini was taken to Germany for a meeting with Hitler in Rastenburg at his
East Prussian headquarters. Despite public professions of support, Hitler was
clearly shocked by Mussolini's disheveled and haggard appearance as well as his
unwillingness to go after the men in Rome who overthrew him. Feeling that he
had to do what he could to blunt the edges of Nazi repression, Mussolini agreed
to set up a new regime, the Italian Social Republic,[122] informally known as
the Salò Republic because of its administration from the town of Salò where he
settled in just 11 days after his rescue by the Germans. Mussolini's new regime
faced numerous territorial losses: in addition to losing the Italian lands held
by the Allies and Badoglio's government, the provinces of Bolzano, Belluno and
Trento were placed under German administration in the Operational Zone of the
Alpine Foothills, while the provinces of Udine, Gorizia, Trieste, Pola (now
Pula), Fiume (now Rijeka) and Ljubljana (Lubiana) were incorporated into the
German Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral.[129]
Mussolini inspecting fortifications, 1944
In addition, the German army occupied the Dalmatian
provinces of Split (Spalato) and Kotor (Cattaro), which were subsequently
annexed by the Croatian fascist regime. Italy's gains in Greece and Albania
were also lost to Germany, with the exception of the Italian Aegean Islands,
which remained nominally under RSI rule.[130] Mussolini opposed any territorial
reductions of the Italian state and told his associates "I am not here to
renounce even a square meter of state territory. We will go back to war for
this. And we will rebel against anyone for this. Where the Italian flag flew,
the Italian flag will return. And where it has not been lowered, now that I am
here, no one will have it lowered. I have said these things to the
Führer".[131]
For two years, Mussolini lived in Gargnano on Lake Garda
in Lombardy. Although he insisted in public that he was in full control, he
knew that he was little more than a puppet ruler under the protection of his
German liberators—for all intents and purposes, the Gauleiter of Lombardy.[125]
After yielding to pressures from Hitler and the remaining loyal fascists who
formed the government of the Republic of Salò, Mussolini helped orchestrate a
series of executions of some of the fascist leaders who had betrayed him at the
last meeting of the Fascist Grand Council. One of those executed was his
son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano. As Head of State and Minister of Foreign Affairs
for the Italian Social Republic, Mussolini used much of his time to write his
memoirs. Along with his autobiographical writings of 1928, these writings would
be combined and published by Da Capo Press as My Rise and Fall. In an interview
in January 1945, a few months before he was captured and executed by Italian
anti-fascist partisans, he stated flatly: "Seven years ago, I was an
interesting person. Now, I am little more than a corpse." He continued:
“ Yes, madam,
I am finished. My star has fallen. I have no fight left in me. I work and I
try, yet know that all is but a farce … I await the end of the tragedy and –
strangely detached from everything – I do not feel any more an actor. I feel I
am the last of spectators. ”
—Benito Mussolini, interviewed in early 1945 by Madeleine
Mollier.[132]
Death
Cross marking the place in Mezzegra where Mussolini was
shot.
File:Execution of Mussolini (1945).ogg
American newsreel coverage of the death of Mussolini in
1945
Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were stopped by
communist partisans Valerio and Bellini and identified by the Political
Commissar of the partisans' 52nd Garibaldi Brigade, Urbano Lazzaro, on 27 April
1945, near the village of Dongo (Lake Como), as they headed for Switzerland to
board a plane to escape to Spain. During this time Clara's brother posed as a
Spanish consul.[133] After several unsuccessful attempts to take them to Como
they were brought to Mezzegra. They spent their last night in the house of the
De Maria family.
The next day, Mussolini and Petacci were both summarily
shot, along with most of the members of their 15-man train, primarily ministers
and officials of the Italian Social Republic. The shootings took place in the
small village of Giulino di Mezzegra. According to the official version of
events, the shootings were conducted by Colonnello Valerio, whose real name was
Walter Audisio.[citation needed]
Mussolini's corpse
On 29 April 1945, the bodies of Mussolini, Petacci, and
the other executed Fascists were loaded into a moving van and trucked south to
Milan. There, at 3:00 am, they were dumped on the ground in the old Piazzale
Loreto. The piazza had been renamed "Piazza Quindici Martiri" in
honor of 15 anti-Fascists recently executed there.[134]
The dead body of Mussolini (second from left) next to
Petacci (middle) and other executed fascists in Piazzale Loreto, Milan, 1945
After being shot, kicked, and spat upon, the bodies were
hung upside down on meat hooks from the roof of an Esso gas station.[135] The
bodies were then stoned by civilians from below. This was done both to
discourage any Fascists from continuing the fight and as an act of revenge for
the hanging of many partisans in the same place by Axis authorities. The corpse
of the deposed leader became subject to ridicule and abuse. Fascist loyalist
Achille Starace was captured and sentenced to death and then taken to the
Piazzale Loreto and shown the body of Mussolini. Starace, who once said of
Mussolini "He is a god,"[136] saluted what was left of his leader
just before he was shot. The body of Starace was subsequently hung up next to
the body of Mussolini.
After his death and the display of his corpse in Milan,
Mussolini was buried in an unmarked grave in the Musocco cemetery, to the north
of the city. On Easter Sunday 1946 his body was located and dug up by Domenico
Leccisi and two other neo-Fascists.
On the loose for months—and a cause of great anxiety to
the new Italian democracy—the Duce's body was finally "recaptured" in
August, hidden in a small trunk at the Certosa di Pavia, just outside Milan.
Two Fransciscan brothers were subsequently charged with concealing the corpse,
though it was discovered on further investigation that it had been constantly
on the move. Unsure what to do, the authorities held the remains in a kind of
political limbo for 10 years, before agreeing to allow them to be re-interred
at Predappio in Romagna, his birthplace. Adone Zoli, the prime minister of the
day, contacted Donna Rachele, the dictator's widow, to tell her he was
returning the remains, as he needed the support of the far-right in parliament,
including Leccisi himself. In Predappio the dictator was buried in a crypt (the
only posthumous honor granted to Mussolini). His tomb is flanked by marble fasces,
and a large idealized marble bust of him is above the tomb.[137]
Personal life
Mussolini was first married to Ida Dalser in Trento in
1914. The couple had a son one year later and named him Benito Albino
Mussolini. In December 1915, Mussolini married Rachele Guidi, his mistress
since 1910, and with his following political ascendency the information about
his first marriage was suppressed and both his first wife and son were later
persecuted.[49] With Rachele, Mussolini had two daughters, Edda (1910–1995) and
Anna Maria (born 3 September 1929, Forlì, Villa Carpena – died 25 April 1968,
Rome), married in Ravenna on 11 June 1960 to Nando Pucci Negri; three sons
Vittorio (1916–1997), Bruno (1918–1941), and Romano (1927–2006). Mussolini had
several mistresses, among them Margherita Sarfatti and his final companion,
Clara Petacci. Mussolini had many brief sexual encounters with female
supporters, as reported by his biographer Nicholas Farrell.[138]
Religious views
Atheism and anti-clericalism
Mussolini was raised by a devoutly Catholic mother[139]
and an anti-clerical father.[140] His mother Rosa had him baptized into the
Roman Catholic Church, and took her children to services every Sunday. His
father never attended.[139] Mussolini regarded his time at a religious boarding
school as punishment, compared the experience to hell, and "once refused
to go to morning Mass and had to be dragged there by force."[141]
Mussolini would become anti-clerical like his father. As
a young man, he "proclaimed himself to be an atheist and several times
tried to shock an audience by calling on God to strike him dead."[140] He
denounced socialists who were tolerant of religion, or who had their children
baptized. He believed that science had proven there was no God, and that the historical
Jesus was ignorant and mad. He considered religion a disease of the psyche, and
accused Christianity of promoting resignation and cowardice.[140]
Mussolini was an admirer of Friedrich Nietzsche.
According to Denis Mack Smith, "In Nietzsche he found justification for
his crusade against the Christian virtues of humility, resignation, charity,
and goodness."[142] He valued Nietzsche's concept of the superman,
"The supreme egoist who defied both God and the masses, who despised
egalitarianism and democracy, who believed in the weakest going to the wall and
pushing them if they did not go fast enough."[142] On his 60th birthday,
Mussolini received a gift from Hitler of a complete twenty-four volume set of
the works of Nietzsche.[143]
Mussolini made vitriolic attacks against Christianity and
the Catholic Church, which he accompanied with provocative and blasphemous
remarks about the consecrated host, and about a love affair between Christ and
Mary Magdalene.[144] He believed that socialists who were Christian or who
accepted religious marriage should be expelled from the party. He denounced the
Catholic Church for "its authoritarianism and refusal to allow freedom of
thought …" Mussolini's newspaper, La Lotta di Classe, reportedly had an
anti-Christian editorial stance.[144]
Lateran Treaty
Despite making such attacks, Mussolini tried to win
popular support by appeasing the Catholic majority in Italy. In 1924, Mussolini
saw that three of his children were given communion. In 1925, he had a priest
perform a religious marriage ceremony for himself and his wife Rachele, whom he
had married in a civil ceremony 10 years earlier.[145] On 11 February 1929, he
signed a concordat and treaty with the Roman Catholic Church.[146] Under the
Lateran Pact, Vatican City was granted independent statehood and placed under
Church law—rather than Italian law—and the Catholic religion was recognized as
Italy's state religion.[147] The Church also regained authority over marriage,
Catholicism could be taught in all secondary schools, birth control and
freemasonry were banned, and the clergy received subsidies from the state, and
was exempted from taxation.[148][149] Pope Pius XI praised Mussolini, and the
official Catholic newspaper pronounced "Italy has been given back to God and
God to Italy."[147]
After this conciliation, he claimed the Church was
subordinate to the State, and "referred to Catholicism as, in origin, a
minor sect that had spread beyond Palestine only because grafted onto the
organization of the Roman empire."[146] After the concordat, "he
confiscated more issues of Catholic newspapers in the next three months than in
the previous seven years."[146] Mussolini reportedly came close to being
excommunicated from the Catholic Church around this time.[146]
Mussolini publicly reconciled with the Pope Pius XI in
1932, but "took care to exclude from the newspapers any photography of
himself kneeling or showing deference to the Pope."[146] He wanted to
persuade Catholics that "[f]ascism was Catholic and he himself a believer
who spent some of each day in prayer …"[146] The Pope began referring to
Mussolini as "a man sent by Providence."[144][146] Despite
Mussolini's efforts to appear pious, by order of his party, pronouns referring
to him "had to be capitalized like those referring to God …"[146]
In 1938 Mussolini began reasserting his anti-clericalism.
He would sometimes refer to himself as an "outright disbeliever," and
once told his cabinet that "Islam was perhaps a more effective religion
than Christianity" and that the "papacy was a malignant tumor in the
body of Italy and must 'be rooted out once and for all', because there was no
room in Rome for both the Pope and himself."[150] He publicly backed down
from these anti-clerical statements, but continued making similar statements in
private.
After his fall from power in 1943, Mussolini began
speaking "more about God and the obligations of conscience", although
"he still had little use for the priests and sacraments of the
Church,".[151] He also began drawing parallels between himself and Jesus Christ.[151]
Mussolini's widow, Rachele, stated that her husband had remained
"basically irreligious until the later years of his life.[152] Mussolini
was given a Catholic funeral in 1957.[153]
Mussolini and the Holocaust
Mussolini with Adolf Hitler in Berlin, 1937.
The relationship between Mussolini and Adolf Hitler was a
contentious one early on. While Hitler cited Mussolini as an influence and
expressed privately great admiration for him,[154] Mussolini had little regard
for Hitler, especially after the Nazis had assassinated his friend and ally,
Engelbert Dollfuss, the Austrofascist dictator of Austria in 1934.
With the assassination of Dollfuss, Mussolini attempted
to distance himself from Hitler by rejecting much of the racialism
(particularly Nordicism and Germanicism) and antisemitism espoused by the
German radical. Mussolini during this period rejected biological racism, at
least in the Nazi sense, and instead emphasized "Italianizing" the
parts of the Italian Empire he had desired to build.[155] He declared that the
ideas of eugenics and the racially charged concept of an Aryan nation were not
possible.[155]
When discussing the Nazi decree that the German people
must carry a passport with either Aryan or Jewish racial affiliation marked on
it, in 1934, Mussolini wondered how they would designate membership in the
"Germanic race":
“ But which
race? Does there exist a German race? Has it ever existed? Will it ever exist?
Reality, myth, or hoax of the theorists?
Ah well, we respond, a Germanic race does not exist.
Various movements. Curiosity. Stupor. We repeat. Does not exist. We don't say
so. Scientists say so. Hitler says so.
”
—Benito Mussolini, 1934.[156]
When German-Jewish journalist Emil Ludwig asked about his
views on race, Mussolini exclaimed:
“ Race! It is
a feeling, not a reality: ninety-five percent, at least, is a feeling. Nothing
will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist
today. Amusingly enough, not one of those who have proclaimed the
"nobility" of the Teutonic race was himself a Teuton. Gobineau was a
Frenchman, (Houston Stewart) Chamberlain, an Englishman; Woltmann, a Jew;
Lapouge, another Frenchman. ”
—Benito Mussolini, 1933.[157]
In a speech given in Bari, he reiterated his attitude
toward German racism:
“ Thirty
centuries of history allow us to look with supreme pity on certain doctrines
which are preached beyond the Alps by the descendants of those who were
illiterate when Rome had Caesar, Virgil and Augustus. ”
—Benito Mussolini, 1934.[158][159]
Mussolini's rejection of both racialism and the
importance of race in 1934 during the height of his antagonism towards Hitler
contradicted his own earlier statements about race, such as in 1928, when he
emphasized the importance of race:
“ [When the]
city dies, the nation—deprived of the young life-blood of new generations—is
now made up of people who are old and degenerate and cannot defend itself
against a younger people which launches an attack on the now unguarded
frontiers … This will happen, and not just to cities and nations, but on an
infinitely greater scale: the whole White race, the Western race can be
submerged by other coloured races which are multiplying at a rate unknown in
our race. ”
—Benito Mussolini, 1928.[160]
Though Italian Fascism varied its official positions on
race from the 1920s to 1934, ideologically Italian fascism did not originally
discriminate against the Italian Jewish community: Mussolini recognised that a
small contingent had lived there "since the days of the Kings of
Rome" and should "remain undisturbed".[161] There were even some
Jews in the National Fascist Party, such as Ettore Ovazza who in 1935 founded
the Jewish Fascist paper La Nostra Bandiera ("Our Flag").[162]
By 1938, the enormous influence Hitler now had over
Mussolini became clear with the introduction of the Manifesto of Race. The
Manifesto, which was closely modeled on the Nazi Nuremberg laws,[75] stripped
Jews of their Italian citizenship and with it any position in the government or
professions. Marriage between Jews and non-Jews was prohibited. Jews were not
permitted to own or manage companies involved in military production, or
factories that employed over one hundred people or exceeded a certain value.
They could not own land over a certain value, serve in the armed forces, employ
non-Jewish domestics, or belong to the Fascist party. Their employment in
banks, insurance companies, and public schools was forbidden.[163]
The German influence on Italian policy upset the
established balance in Fascist Italy and proved highly unpopular to most
Italians, to the extent that Pope Pius XII sent a letter to Mussolini
protesting against the new laws.[citation needed] Mussolini and the Italian
Army in occupied regions openly opposed German efforts to deport Italian Jews
to Nazi concentration camps.[164] Italy's refusal to comply with German demands
of Jewish persecution influenced other countries.[164]
In September 1943 semi-autonomous militarized squads of
Fascist fanatics sprouted up throughout the Republic of Salò. These squads
spread terror among Jews and anti-Fascists for a year and a half. In the power
vacuum that existed during the first three or four months of the occupation,
the semi-autonomous bands were virtually uncontrollable. Many were linked to
individual high-ranking Fascist politicians.[165] Italian Fascists, sometimes
government employees but more often fanatic civilians or paramilitary
volunteers, hastened to curry favor with the Nazis. Informers betrayed their
neighbors, squadristi seized Jews and delivered them to the German SS, and
Italian journalists seemed to compete in the virulence of their anti-Semitic
diatribes.[166]
It has been widely speculated that Mussolini adopted the
Manifesto of Race in 1938 for merely tactical reasons, to strengthen Italy's
relations with Germany. Mussolini and the Italian military did not consistently
apply the laws adopted in the Manifesto of Race.[164] In December 1943,
Mussolini made a confession to Bruno Spampanato that seems to indicate that he
regretted the Manifesto of Race, as Mussolini put it:
“ The Racial
Manifesto could have been avoided. It dealt with the scientific abstruseness of
a few teachers and journalists, a conscientious German essay translated into
bad Italian. It is far from what I have said, written and signed on the
subject. I suggest that you consult the old issues of Il Popolo d'Italia. For
this reason I am far from accepting (Alfred) Rosenberg's myth. ”
—Benito Mussolini, 1943.[167]
Mussolini also reached out to the Muslims in his empire
and in the predominantly Arab countries of the Middle East. In 1937, the
Muslims of Libya presented Mussolini with the "Sword of Islam" while
Fascist propaganda pronounced him as the "Protector of Islam."[168]
Legacy
Tomb of Mussolini in the family crypt, in the cemetery of
Predappio.
Mussolini was survived by his wife, Rachele Mussolini,
two sons, Vittorio and Romano Mussolini, and his daughters Edda, the widow of
Count Ciano, and Anna Maria. A third son, Bruno, was killed in an air accident
while flying a P108 bomber on a test mission, on 7 August 1941.[169] His oldest
son, Benito Albino Mussolini, from his marriage with Ida Dalser, was ordered to
stop declaring that Mussolini was his father and in 1935 forcibly committed to
an asylum in Milan, where he was murdered on 26 August 1942 after repeated
coma-inducing injections.[49] Alessandra Mussolini, daughter of Romano
Mussolini, Benito Mussolini's fourth son, and Sophia Loren's sister, Anna Maria
Scicolone, has been a member of the European Parliament for the far-right
Social Alternative movement, a deputy in the Italian lower chamber and
currently serves in the Senate as a member of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia
party.
Although the National Fascist Party was outlawed by the
postwar Constitution of Italy, a number of successor neo-fascist parties
emerged to carry on its legacy. Historically, the largest neo-fascist party was
the Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano), which disbanded in
1995 and was replaced by National Alliance, a conservative party that distanced
itself from Fascism (its founder, former foreign minister Gianfranco Fini,
declared during an official visit to Israel that Fascism was "an absolute
evil"[170] ). National Alliance and a number of neo-fascist parties were
merged in 2009 to create the short-lived People of Freedom party led by then
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, which eventually disbanded after the defeat
in the 2013 general election.
In popular culture
American wartime comic advertising the government sale of
low-return War Bonds by showing Mussolini, Hitler and Hirohito beaten by
superheroes
Charlie Chaplin's 1940 film The Great Dictator satirizes
Mussolini as "Benzino Napaloni", portrayed by Jack Oakie. In the
Three Stooges' I'll Never Heil Again, Cy Schindell plays
"Chizzolini", from the then topical insult of "chisler".
More serious biographical depictions include a look at
the last few days of Mussolini's life in Carlo Lizzani's movie Mussolini:
Ultimo atto (Mussolini: The last act, 1974) starring Rod Steiger and George C.
Scott's portrayal in the 1985 television mini-series Mussolini: The Untold
Story.
Another 1985 movie was Mussolini and I, in which Bob
Hoskins plays the dictator (with Susan Sarandon as his daughter Edda and
Anthony Hopkins as Count Ciano). Actor Antonio Banderas also played the title
role in Benito in 1993, which covered his life from his school teacher days to
the beginning of World War I, before his rise as dictator. Mussolini is also
depicted in the films Tea with Mussolini, Lion of the Desert (also with
Steiger) and the award-winning Italian film Vincere.
A Canadian television miniseries named "Il Duce
Canadese", aka Il duce canadese: Le Mussolini canadien aired on CBC
Television in 2004.
A comic strip ran in the British comic The Beano entitled
"Musso the Wop". This strip, which ran from 1940 to 1943, featured
Mussolini as an arrogant buffoon.[171]
"Il Duce" is the nickname of a character played
by actor Billy Connolly in the movie The Boondock Saints.
"Il Duce" is a 1985 7" single by noise
rock band Big Black.
""Il Duce" Mussolini is the protagonist of
the 2009 film Vincere, directed by Marco Bellocchio. (Continoe)
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