History notes

The Second World War, fought from September 1939 until August 1945, was the bloodiest conflict in history and saw the deaths of over 50 million people, both civilian and military, on the battlefields, in the cities or the lager. It was a conflict that changed the history of the 20th century and determined the world's political order up to the present day. At the origins of the war, there was the deep world economic crisis of '29. From the crisis, which affected all the world's economies, in the thirties, only the United States recovered with difficulty, which highlighted its resounding industrial supremacy and the insufficiency of the internal market to absorb the mass of goods produced and the consequent strategic plan to enlarge its commercial borders, but this aim clashed with the division of the world market, with competition from Great Britain on one side and Japan on the other (the other two only true economic powers). In this perspective, Stalin's Soviet Union welcomed a conflict between the capitalist nations, waiting for an eventual expansion towards the West (with its eyes on Poland). European nations that were always looking for new expansionist aims such as, for example, the continuous Italian-French and Italian-English contrasts, due to the claims of Italy in Nice, Savoy and Corsica and the nationalistic and militarist policy in North Africa of Mussolini's government in constant contrast with Great Britain. All this political-military and ideological fervour were in stark contrast with the immobility and inefficiency of the League of Nations. The League of Nations proved to have little effect in international controversies: from the Spanish Civil War to the Japanese war initiative in Manchuria, to Italian colonial expansionism in 1935, to the rearmament of Germany (violating the Treaty of Versailles) and the subsequent annexation of Austria, to Hitler's blackmail of Czechoslovakia (Munich Pact 1938) and the Russian refusal to continue to oppose Hitler's expansion policy of 39' (Hitler-Stalin Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939).

This war saw two opposing sides: on the one hand, the Axis powers (Germany, Italy and Japan) and, on the other, the allied countries (England, France), later joined by the Soviet Union and the United States (1941). Summing up the stages that led to the war that preceded the German invasion of Poland due to the question of Gdansk (the "Polish corridor" that would have allowed Germany to extend and reunify the old Prussian territories) were: the Japanese invasion of Manchuria (1931); the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935); the German and Italian intervention in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39); the German invasion of Austria and Czechoslovakia (1938-39), followed in 1939 by the invasion of Albania by Italy. In this complex geopolitical picture it was evident that if one part of the world did not want war and did everything to avoid it, another part glorified and desired it (Hitler, Mussolini and their Rome-Berlin axis).