World War II, or the Second World War, was the global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world’s nations — including all of the great powers — eventually forming two opposing military alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, with more than 100 million military personnel mobilised. In a state of “total war,” the major participants placed their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Marked by significant events involving the mass death of civilians, including the Holocaust and the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, it was the deadliest conflict in human history, resulting in 50 million to over 70 million fatalities. The Peace Palace Library’s collection on World War II is focused on aspects of international law : the laws of war, international humanitarian law, international criminal law (war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes against the peace and security of mankind, genocide, aggression, the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials), war reparations and the politics of its memory.
This Research Guide is intended as a starting point for research on World War II. It provides the basic materials available in the Peace Palace Library, both in print and electronic format. Handbooks, leading articles, bibliographies, periodicals, serial publications and documents of interest are presented in the Selective Bibliography section. Links to the PPL Catalogue are inserted. The Library’s classification index code 497a. World War II : General Works and Various Essays and subject heading (keyword) World War II are instrumental for searching through the Catalogue. Special attention is given to our subscriptions on databases, e-journals, e-books and other electronic resources. Finally, this Research Guide features links to relevant websites and other online resources of particular interest.
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In December 1937, the Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking. Within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered—a death toll exceeding that of the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Using extensive interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents, Iris Chang has written what will surely be the definitive history of this horrifying episode. The Rape of Nanking tells the story from three perspectives: of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, of the Chinese civilians who endured it, and of a group of Europeans and Americans who refused to abandon the city and were able to create a safety zone that saved almost 300,000 Chinese. Among these was the Nazi John Rabe, an unlikely hero whom Chang calls the “Oskar Schindler of China” and who worked tirelessly to protect the innocent and publicize the horror. More than just narrating the details of an orgy of violence, The Rape of Nanking analyzes the militaristic culture that fostered in the Japanese soldiers a total disregard for human life. Finally, it tells the appalling story: about how the advent of the Cold War led to a concerted effort on the part of the West and even the Chinese to stifle open discussion of this atrocity. Indeed, Chang characterizes this conspiracy of silence, that persists to this day, as “a second rape”.
Chang, I., 2011The last months of the Second World War were a nightmarish time to be alive. Unimaginable levels of violence destroyed entire cities. Millions died or were dispossessed. By all kinds of criteria it was the end: the end of the Third Reich and its terrible empire but also, increasingly, it seemed to be the end of European civilization itself. In his gripping, revelatory new book Ian Kershaw describes these final months, from the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in July 1944 to the German surrender in May 1945. The major question that Kershaw attempts to answer is: what made Germany keep on fighting? In almost every major war there has come a point where defeat has loomed for one side and its rulers have cut a deal with the victors, if only in an attempt to save their own skins. In Hitler’s Germany, nothing of this kind happened: in the end the regime had to be stamped out town by town with a level of brutality almost without precedent. Both a highly original piece of research and a gripping narrative, “The End” makes vivid an era which still deeply scars Europe. It raises the most profound questions about the nature of the Second World War, about the Third Reich and about how ordinary people behave in extreme circumstances.
Kershaw, I., New York : The Penguin Press, 2011Der Luftkrieg gehört zu den zentralen Erfahrungen der Gewaltgeschichte im 20. Jahrhundert. Noch heute wird der Streit über Schuld und Verbrechen hoch emotional geführt. Das Buch von Dietmar Süß zeigt erstmals im Vergleich, welche Folgen der Bombenkrieg für Deutschland und England hatte und auf welche Weise Diktatur und Demokratie die Militarisierung der Bevölkerung betrieben.
Mit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg radikalisierte sich der Luftkrieg zur massenhaften Zerstörung von Städten und Militäranlagen. Er verband technische Modernität mit staatlicher Disziplinierung. Sirenen bestimmten seit 1939 den Kriegsalltag der Bevölkerung und ihre Kriegsmoral galt beiden Nationen als gesellschaftlicher Kitt. Doch was war gemeint, wenn von »guter« oder »schlechter« Kriegsmoral, von »Gemeinschaft« und vom »Durchhalten« die Rede war?
Dietmar Süß untersucht den Umgang mit dem »Tod aus der Luft« und geht der Frage nach, wie beide Nationen den Einsatz von Massentötungswaffen ethisch, religiös und politisch legitimierten. Welche Rolle spielten dabei die christlichen Kirchen, die Themen Vergeltung und »gerechter Krieg«? Das Buch zeigt, wie sehr solche Fragen auch nach 1945 immer wieder Wunden aufrissen und wie die Erinnerung an den Bombenkrieg noch bis in unsere Gegenwart hineinragt.
Süß, D., 2011The December 1937 incident that has come to be known as the Rape of Nanking is, without doubt, a tragedy that will not soon be forgotten. While acknowledging that a tremendous loss of life occurred, this study challenges the current prevailing notion that the incident was a deliberate, planned effort on the part of the Japanese military and analyzes events to produce an accurate estimate of the scale of the atrocities. Drawing on Chinese, Japanese, and English sources, Yamamoto determines that what happened at Nanking were unfortunate atrocities of conventional war with precedents in both Eastern and Western military history. He concludes that post-war events such as the war crimes trials and the impact of the Holocaust in Europe affected public opinion regarding Nanking and led to a dramatic reinterpretation of events.
The Rape of Nanking consisted of two distinct phases: the mass execution of prisoners of war (as well as conscription age men who appeared to be combatants) and the delinquent acts of individual soldiers. The first phase, which occurred immediately after Nanking’s fall and which claimed most of the atrocity victims, was the result of the Japanese military’s attempt to clear the city of Chinese soldiers thought to be in plain clothes. The second phase, which lasted approximately six weeks, was horrible, but resulted in a much smaller number of fatalities. It was characterized by numerous criminal acts, ranging from rape and murder to arson and theft, committed by unrestrained Japanese soldiers. The root cause for both phases was the Japanese military’s bureaucratic inefficiency and command irresponsibility. While both Chinese and American contemporary sources initially attributed the incident to these causes, subsequent Japanese atrocities against both military and civilian Allied personnel during World War II and evidence presented at war crimes trials would come to reshape perceptions of the Nanking events as an Asian counterpart to the Nazi Holocaust.
Ian Kershaw’s HITLER allows us to come closer than ever before to a serious understanding of the man and of the catastrophic sequence of events which allowed a bizarre misfit to climb from a Viennese dosshouse to leadership of one of Europe’s most sophisticated countries. With extraordinary skill and vividness, drawing on a huge range of sources, Kershaw recreates the world which first thwarted and then nurtured the young Hitler. As his seemingly pitiful fantasy of being Germany’s saviour attracted more and more support, Kershaw brilliantly conveys why so many Germans adored Hitler, connived with him or felt powerless to resist him.
Kershaw, I., 1998-2000Since 1945, the bombing of Dresden is considered by many as a violation of international law and as a crime against humanity, even though positive rules of international humanitarian law were absent at the time. The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, were among the first formal statements of the laws of war and war crimes in the nascent body of international law. However these conventions, adressing the codes of wartime conduct on land and at sea, were adopted before the rise of air power. Despite repeated diplomatic attempts (→ The Hague Rules of Air Warefare 1922/1923) to update international humanitarian law to include aerial warfare, it was not done before the outbreak of World War II. The absence of positive international humanitarian law does not mean that the laws of war did not cover aerial warfare, but there was no general agreement of how to interpret those laws.
The aerial bombardment of Dresden does not only raise the question as to whether or not it was an Allied war crime, but it also makes a moral appeal to prevent total war against civilian populations. It’s memory is kept alive.
Nearly 92 years after the official end of World War I, Germany made its final reparations-related payment for the Great War on October 3, thereby ending the conflict financially. The German newspaper Die Welt discovered a last installment for the Londoner Schuldenabkommen of 69,9 million euro’s in the German budget. Not being a direct reparations settlement but rather the final sum owed on bonds that were issued between 1924 and 1930 and sold to foreign (mostly American) investors, but then never paid.
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Hitler / , 1998-2000
The Rape of Nanking : the Forgotten Holocaust of World War II / , 2011
Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941 : Total War, Genocide, and Radicalization / , 2012
The Second World War / , 1948-1955
The Second World War / , 1989
The Second World War : a Complete History / , 1989
