1941: the conflicts become a world war
1941–1942
The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union opened an enormous eastern front. Japanese attacks in Asia and the Pacific brought the United States into the war. States with different political systems, interests and previous relationships united against Germany, Italy and Japan.
On 22 June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, breaking the 1939 pact. Hitler aimed to destroy Soviet military power and communism, acquire resources and conquer “living space” at the expense of local inhabitants. The military campaign was bound to the Nazi vision of remaking eastern Europe along racial lines.
Early encirclements inflicted immense losses on the Red Army, but the Soviet Union was not defeated. The German drive towards Moscow failed late in the year, and a Soviet counter-offensive in December pushed the invaders back. Rapid territorial gains had not destroyed the Soviet ability to keep fighting.
The United States assisted Germany’s opponents before entering the war itself. The March 1941 Lend-Lease Act enabled war supplies to be provided to countries whose defence was considered important to US defence. After the German invasion, Roosevelt sent Harry Hopkins to Moscow to meet Stalin; supplies to the Soviet Union followed. Material assistance connected industry with distant battlefields.
In Asia, the war in China continued and Japan extended its control into Indochina. It needed imported oil and other materials; the United States was an important supplier but now restricted trade and supported China. Japan’s “co-prosperity” project promised to free Asia from Western domination, but sought Japanese power and economic self-sufficiency, rather than the independence of conquered countries.
Japanese leaders chose further conquest. They planned to acquire Southeast Asia’s resources and protect them with a broad defensive perimeter in the Pacific. An attack on the American fleet was intended to limit US intervention. On 7 December 1941, Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor, alongside attacks on other American and British territories. Prime minister Tōjō and Emperor Hirohito are important to the story of these decisions.
The United States declared war on Japan on 8 December; Germany and Italy declared war on the US on 11 December. The Axis and Allies were the two principal wartime coalitions. Germany, Italy and Japan were linked by the 1940 Tripartite Pact. Their opponents now included Britain, the Soviet Union, China and the United States, which joined other governments in January 1942 in pledging not to make a separate peace.
A common enemy did not mean a common political system, or that every member fought every enemy. Stalin’s dictatorship allied with Western democracies against Germany, while the Soviet Union remained neutral towards Japan until 1945. Democratic states also violated rights: Roosevelt’s 1942 order led to the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans. Membership of an alliance is not an unqualified moral judgment on each of its members.
Places
- Moscow: defending the capital and negotiating aid
Talks about American aid after the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
- Pearl Harbor: an attack joins widening wars
The attack followed by US entry into war against Japan.
Before following the changing military balance, we turn to life under occupation.