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Preface In a deep sense, World War II was a resumption of mass violence after “an armistice of twenty years,” as Maréchal Ferdinand Foch accurately predicted in 1919 would be the fate of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany The greatest war the world has ever known, or fears to know, was closely linked to that other stupendous clash of nations, of will and arms, economies and technology, of mass emotion and mass armies, called the “Great War” by the generation that fought it Not least of these connections was a sense of horror and exhaustion among those who waged the first world war of the 20th century Too often forgotten, however, are accompanying feelings of triumph and vindication among those who won the war Instead, near-caricature images portray World War I as an utterly futile confl ict on all sides, a dreary slog of mud-splattered lambs led to their slaughter by abysmally inept and dull-witted generals Better known is that dread of more war and satisfaction with the peace on the winning side was opposed by a deep desire for revenge and a revolutionary overthrow of the Great War’s outcome by many of those in the losing camp Dissatisfaction in support of violence was even felt by populations in some countries, most notably Italy and Japan, which numbered among the victors of 1918 Historians point to many other connections between the world wars: German and other national dissatisfaction with the Versailles system and international order; competitive, militant nationalisms among a host of injured or newly minted countries that nursed real and imagined grievances across several generations; confl icting imperial ideologies and interests; unresolved territorial issues; the growing capacity for total mobilization of whole societies and economies for industrialized war; emergence of new military technologies accompanied by aggressive, offensive fighting doctrines; and ever more clearly as time recedes, the path to genocide that is traceable from the Ottoman slaughter of Armenians in 1915 to the Shoah, the mass murder of European Jews, and to multiple other ethnic holocausts and horrors of the early 1940s The persistent confl icts of the first half of the 20th century encouraged erection of “war states” by several Great Powers, both in response to World War I and in preparation for what became World War II Germany and the Soviet Union, and in some measure Japan, mobilized tens of millions to war and reorganized their economies and societies in readiness to fight with radical drive to impose their political and ideological will on enemies Latterly, and to a degree neither they nor their opponents foresaw, after first disarming voluntarily to levels that matched the forced disarmament of Germany, Britain and the United States proved even more capable of organizing their peoples and market economies for war Under pressures of making total war, many countries underwent root social and governmental reorganization deemed necessary by elites to harness national or imperial economic capabilities Multiple societies witnessed new commitments in the scale and depth of public loyalty and sacrifice demanded from citizens, a call to arms and workplace, to supreme effort for the nation, reinforced by intense propaganda that aimed to inculcate ideological motivation and emotional commitment among mass populations There was also a great deal of raw coercion xlvi
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