It's clear that the Allies did eventually defeat the Axis powers in WW2, but how and why this came about is still debated - and too often simplified. And, indeed, what did victory really mean in 1945? After all, in eastern Europe, certainly by 1947, a Nazi tyranny had been replaced by a repressive Stalinist system. Because we are so used to the fact of Allied victory in WW2, we tend to forget that there was nothing inevitable about this outcome. By early 1942, the Germans and their Axis partners had occupied most of western, central and northern Europe as well as the Balkans, Greece, much of North Africa, and huge swathes of Soviet territory reaching as far east as Moscow and Leningrad. By the same point, in the Far East the Japanese had conquered a third of China's population and, having overrun all the south-east Asian colonies of Britain, France and the Netherlands, as well as the US-owned Philippines, they now posed a direct threat to Australia and British India. In the ensuing three years, the Allies slowly reversed the tide, but even as late as February 1945, after heavy Allied casualties in north-west Europe, the Combined Chiefs of Staff were gloomily predicting that the war against Germany would go on till November of that year (it actually ended in May), while the conflict with Japan would not be finished until 1947 - in fact, the two atomic bombs and the successful Soviet incursion into Manchuria saw Japan surrender in August 1945. Hindsight is a fine thing, but at the time, for the actors on the ground, likely outcomes were often murky and uncertain - until they weren't.
Explore these issues with the historian RICHARD OVERY in Episode 2 of the new series of Unknown Warriors, which updates the familiar narratives of WW2 in the light of new research and changed perspectives.
If you think you know about WW2, it's time to think again.
An Understanding History Podcast
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