The interwar years and the Second World War

The interwar years (1918–1939) were the age of the Versailles system, the Great Depression and totalitarian regimes. Their contradictions led to the most terrible war in human history — the Second World War (1939–1945). Exams ask about the stages of aggression, the turning-point battles, the wartime conferences and the sequence of dates.

§1. The interwar world: the Versailles–Washington system and the Depression

• After the First World War the Versailles–Washington system took shape; the League of Nations (1920) began work to keep the peace, but it had no army and little real influence.
• The 1920s were a boom in the USA: cars, radio, mass consumption; Germany paid reparations under the Dawes Plan with American loans.

Causes: output outran effective demand, stock-market speculation, growth built on credit. Consequences: mass unemployment, ruined banks and farmers, trade wars.
Ways out of the crisis differed:

1. USA — President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal (from 1933): state intervention in the economy, public works, social insurance, banking regulation.
2. Germany, Italy, Japan — the path of totalitarianism, militarisation and foreign expansion.

§2. Totalitarian regimes and centres of aggression

Features of totalitarianism: a single party and a leader cult, one official ideology, mass repression, total control over social life.

• Italy: Mussolini came to power after the 1922 "March on Rome" — fascism.
• Germany: Hitler became Reich Chancellor on 30 January 1933; Nazism meant racism, anti-Jewish laws (1935), the idea of "living space" and breaking the Versailles terms.
• USSR: Stalin's personality cult, forced collectivisation and purges.
• Other developments: the reforms of the Republic of Turkey (1923, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk); Gandhi's non-violent struggle in India; the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), won by General Franco.

Stages of aggression (a chain to memorise):

Cause and effect: appeasement did not stop the aggressor but encouraged him; no system of collective security was built.

§3. The course of the Second World War

First period (1939–1941): Poland was crushed within weeks; in 1940 Germany occupied Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and, in June, France. The Battle of Britain (1940) did not bring Germany victory.

• The Battle of Moscow (1941–1942) wrecked the "lightning war" plan.

The turning point (1942–1943):

• The Battle of Stalingrad (July 1942 – 2 February 1943): a German army was encircled and destroyed.
• In the Pacific — Midway (1942); in North Africa — El Alamein (1942).
• The Battle of Kursk (summer 1943) handed the strategic initiative firmly to the USSR; Italy surrendered in 1943.

Final period (1944–1945):

• April–May 1945 — the Berlin operation; on 8 May (9 May Moscow time) Germany surrendered unconditionally.
• 6 and 9 August 1945 — the USA dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; on 8 August the USSR declared war on Japan.

Allied conferences: Tehran (1943 — the second front), Yalta (February 1945 — the post-war order, the UN), Potsdam (July–August 1945 — demilitarisation and denazification of Germany).

§4. Uzbekistan in the war years and the results of the war

• Uzbekistan sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the front; Sobir Rahimov was the first Uzbek general.
• Hundreds of factories and many people, including thousands of children, were evacuated to the republic from the west. The Tashkent blacksmith Shoahmad Shomahmudov and his wife Bahri Akramova adopted 14 orphans of different nationalities — a symbol of our people's generosity.
• Cotton, food, ammunition and aircraft parts were produced for the front; women and teenagers worked hard in fields and factories.

Results of the war:

• The deadliest war in history: tens of millions died; the Holocaust — the extermination of the Jews.
• The Nuremberg Trials (1945–1946) judged the Nazi war criminals.

• The balance of power changed: the USA and the USSR became two superpowers, Europe was weakened, and the colonial system entered crisis — preparing the ground for the Cold War.

§5. The anti-Hitler coalition and the Resistance

Victory in the Second World War was the achievement not of a single country but of a broad alliance. Exams also ask how the coalition took shape and which documents formalised it.

• The coalition’s "Big Three" were the USA, Great Britain and the USSR; their leaders (Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin) met at Tehran and Yalta. At Potsdam the USA was represented by the new president Truman, and Britain, during the conference, by Attlee.
• Lend-Lease was extended to the USSR too: lorries, aircraft and food arrived via Iran, the northern sea routes and the Far East.

The Resistance was the struggle against the occupiers in conquered countries: General de Gaulle’s "Free France", Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia, and underground organisations in Poland, Greece and elsewhere. Through sabotage, intelligence work and guerrilla warfare they tied down enemy forces.
Why did the coalition succeed? The Allies’ economic potential (especially American industry) far exceeded that of the aggressors, and the fronts supported one another. However, the ideological differences between the Allies turned into open rivalry after the war.

Worked example

"Put these acts of aggression in order: the Munich Agreement; the seizure of Manchuria; the Anschluss; the invasion of Poland."

1. Manchuria — 1931.
2. Anschluss — March 1938.
3. Munich — September 1938 (same year, so compare months: March comes before September).
4. Poland — 1 September 1939.

Answer: Manchuria → Anschluss → Munich → Poland.

Worked example

"How many days did the Great Patriotic War (the Soviet–German war) last?"

1. From 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945.
2. 22 June 1941 to 22 June 1944 is 3 years: 365 · 3 + 1 = 1096 days (1944 was a leap year).
3. 22 June 1944 to 9 May 1945 is 321 days.
4. Total: 1096 + 321 = 1417 days; counting the first day as well gives the traditional 1,418 days.

Worked example

"How long did the Second World War last?"

1. Start — 1 September 1939 (the attack on Poland).
2. End — 2 September 1945 (the surrender of Japan).
3. 1945 − 1939 = 6 years (and one day); so the war lasted 6 years.

Check yourself

1. When and where did the Great Depression begin?

2. What was the essence of the New Deal?

3. When was the Munich Agreement signed and why is it called appeasement?

4. Which battles mark the turning point of the Second World War?

5. When was the second front opened?

6. At which conference were the UN and the post-war order mainly agreed?

7. What was Lend-Lease?

8. When was the Declaration by United Nations signed?

Common mistakes

• Dating the start of the world war to 22 June 1941 (that was the attack on the USSR; the world war began on 1 September 1939).
• Treating 9 May as the end of the war (it ended in Europe; Japan surrendered on 2 September).
• Confusing the Munich Agreement with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
• Mixing up the order of Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam.
• Dating the founding of the UN to 9 May 1945 (it was 24 October).