104 Khan Academy Lecture: Beginning of World War II, Pts 1-9
An overview of the run up to and very beginnings of World War II.
Transcript:
- 0:00 World War II was the largest conflict in all of human history.
- 0:05 The largest and bloodiest conflict
- 0:06 And so you can imagine it is quite complex
- 0:09 My goal in this video is to start giving us a survey, an overview of the war.
- 0:15 And I won’t even be able to cover it all in this video.
- 0:18 It is really just a think about how did things get started.
- 0:21 Or what happened in the lead up?
- 0:23 And to start I am actually going to focus on Asia and the Pacific.
- 0:27 Which probably doesn’t get enough attention when we look at it from a western point of view
- 0:33 But if we go back even to the early 1900s.
- 0:36 Japan is becoming more and more militaristic.
- 0:39 More and more nationalistic.
- 0:40 In the early 1900s it had already occupied…
- 0:43 It had already occupied Korea as of 1910.
- 0:47 and in 1931 it invades Manchuria.
- 0:51 It invades Manchuria.
- 0:53 So this right over here, this is in 1931.
- 0:58 And it installs a puppet state, the puppet state of Manchukuo.
- 1:03 And when we call something a puppet state,
- 1:06 it means that there is a government there.
- 1:07 And they kind of pretend to be in charge.
- 1:11 But they’re really controlled like a puppet by someone else.
- 1:15 And in this case it is the Empire of Japan.
- 1:18 And we do remember what is happening in China in the 1930s.
- 1:22 China is embroiled in a civil war.
- 1:25 So there is a civil war going on in China.
- 1:30 And that civil war is between
- 1:32 the Nationalists, the Kuomintang and the Communists
- 1:37 versus the Communists
- 1:41 The Communists led by Mao Zedong.
- 1:43 The Kuomintang led by general Chiang Kai-shek.
- 1:47 And so they’re in the midst of the civil war.
- 1:49 So you can imagine Imperial Japan is taking advantage of this
- 1:52 to take more and more control over parts of China
- 1:57 And that continues through the 30s
- 1:59 until we get to 1937.
- 2:02 And in 1937 the Japanese use some pretext
- 2:06 with, you know, kind of a false flag, kind of…
- 2:09 well, I won’t go into the depths of what started it
- 2:11 kind of this Marco-Polo Bridge Incident
- 2:14 But it uses that as justifications
- 2:16 to kind of have an all-out war with China
- 2:19 so 1937…you have all-out war
- 2:25 and this is often referred to as the Second Sino-Japanese War
- 2:30 …Sino-Japanese War
- 2:34 Many historians actually would even consider this the beginning of World War II.
- 2:38 While, some of them say, ok this is the beginning of the Asian Theater of World War II
- 2:42 of the all-out war between Japan and China,
- 2:45 but it isn’t until Germany invades Poland in 1939 that you truly have
- 2:49 the formal beginning, so to speak, of World War II.
- 2:53 Regardless of whether you consider this the formal beginning or not,
- 2:56 the Second Sino-Japanese War, and it’s called the second because
- 2:58 there was another Sino-Japanese War in the late 1800s
- 3:01 that was called the First Sino-Japanese War,
- 3:03 this is incredibly, incredibly brutal and incredibly bloody
- 3:08 a lot of civilians affected
- 3:10 we could do a whole series of videos just on that
- 3:14 But at this point it does become all-out war
- 3:16 and this causes the civil war to take a back seat
- 3:19 to fighting off the aggressor of Japan in 1937.
- 3:24 So that lays a foundation for what’s happening in The Pacific, in the run-up to World War II.
- 3:29 And now let’s also remind ourselves what’s happening…
- 3:32 what’s happening in Europe.
- 3:34 As we go through the 1930s
- 3:37 Hitler’s Germany, the Nazi Party, is getting more and more militaristic.
- 3:40 So this is Nazi Germany…
- 3:44 Nazi Germany right over here.
- 3:47 They’re allied with Benito Mussolini’s Italy.
- 3:50 They’re both extremely nationalistic; they both do not like the Communists, at all
- 3:56 You might remember, that in 1938…
- 4:00 1938, you have the Anschluss, which I’m sure I’m mispronouncing,
- 4:05 and you also have the takeover of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.
- 4:10 So the Anschluss was the unification with Austria
- 4:14 and then you have the Germans taking over the of Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia
- 4:18 and this is kind of the famous, you know,
- 4:20 the rest of the, what will be called the Allied Powers
- 4:23 kind of say, “Okay, yeah, okay maybe Hitler’s just going to just do that…
- 4:27 well we don’t want to start another war.
- 4:29 We still all remember World War I; it was really horrible.
- 4:31 And so they kind of appease Hitler and he’s able to, kind of, satisfy his aggression.
- 4:37 so in 1938 you have Austria, Austria and the Sudetenland
- 4:43 …and the Sudetenland…
- 4:47 are taken over, are taken over by Germany
- 4:50 and then as you go into 1939, as you go into 1939
- 4:55 in March they’re able to take over all of Czechoslovakia
- 4:59 they’re able to take over all of Czechoslovakia
- 5:02 and once again the Allies are kind of, they’re feeling very uncomfortable,
- 5:05 they kind of, have seen something like this before
- 5:08 they would like to push back, but they still are,
- 5:11 kind of, are not feeling good about starting another World War
- 5:15 so they’re hoping that maybe Germany stops there.
- 5:18 So let me write this down…
- 5:20 So all of Czechoslovakia…
- 5:23 …Czechoslovakia… is taken over by the Germans.
- 5:27 This is in March of 1939.
- 5:32 And then in August you have the Germans, and this is really in preparation for,
- 5:38 what you could guess is about to happen, for the all-out war that’s about to happen
- 5:41 the Germans don’t want to fight the Soviets right out the gate,
- 5:43 as we will see, and as you might know, they do eventually take on the Soviet Union,
- 5:49 but in 1939 they get into a pact with the Soviet Union.
- 5:53 And so this is, they sign
- 5:56 the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
- 6:05 with the Soviet Union, this is in August,
- 6:09 which is essentially mutual non-aggression
- 6:11 “Hey, you know, you do what you need to do, we know what we need to do.”
- 6:14 and they secretly started saying “Okay were gonna, all the countries out here,
- 6:17 we’re going to create these spheres of influence
- 6:19 where Germany can take, uh, control of part of it
- 6:22 and the Soviet Union, and Stalin is in charge of the Soviet Union at this point,
- 6:26 can take over other parts of it.
- 6:28 And then that leads us to the formal start
- 6:31 where in September, let me write this in a different color…
- 6:34 so September of 1939, on September 1st, Germany invades Poland
- 6:40 Germany invades Poland on September 1st,
- 6:44 which is generally considered the beginning of World War II.
- 6:48 and then you have the Great Britain and France declares war on Germany
- 6:55 so let me write this
- 6:58 World War II… starts
- 7:04 everyone is declaring war on each other, Germany invades Poland,
- 7:08 Great Britain and France declare war on Germany,
- 7:12 and you have to remember at this point
- 7:13 Stalin isn’t so concerned about Hitler he’s just signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
- 7:18 and so in mid-September, Stalin himself invades Poland as well
- 7:24 so they both can kind of carve out…
- 7:27 …their spheres of influence…
- 7:32 so you can definitely sense that things are not looking good for the world at this point
- 7:38 you already have Asia in the Second Sino-Japanese War,
- 7:42 incredibly bloody war,
- 7:43 and now you have kind of,
- 7:45 a lot of very similar actors that you had in World War I
- 7:48 and then they’re starting to get into a fairly extensive engagement.