Thẻ: World War II

Lessons of Second World War Must Continue to Guide United Nations Work, General Assembly Told During Meeting Marking Seventieth Anniversary

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UN.org SIXTY-NINTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY 5 MAY 2015

Several Speakers Call for Security Council Reform to Address Present Challenges

The lessons of World War II — on whose ashes the United Nations was founded — must continue to guide the Organization’s work, even as it adapted to meet the evolving challenges of the modern world, delegates commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the end of the war told the General Assembly today.

“We must never forget the international community’s responsibility to stand up to tyrants, despots and all those that attempt to suppress the enduring nature of the human spirit,” said Sam Kutesa (Uganda), Assembly President.  Having survived the catastrophe of the Second World War, humankind sought to embrace new means to prevent the recurrence of such tragic events.

To that end, he said, the Organization was established to ensure unity and harmony among nations.  As envisaged in the United Nations Charter, it was founded to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”.  Over the last seven decades, the war had not only shaped the Organization’s mission, but its lessons continued to guide its work around the world.

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The Day After Trinity – Documentary

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The film tells the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967), the theoretical physicist who led the effort to build the first atomic bomb, tested in July 1945 at Trinity site in New Mexico.It features interviews with several Manhattan Project scientists, as well as newly declassified archival footage.

Part 1

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Critical Minerals in World War 2

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Arizona.edu

How Minerals Made Civilization, the UA Lowell Institute for Mineral Resources’ YouTube video series on the role of mineral resources in history, is launching a trilogy about how mineral resources influenced the war.  Part 1, posted today, covers mineral resources during the interwar buildup: how mineral resources figured in national (and transnational) politics in the 1930s, how resource-poor nations sought to build up their supplies, and how the struggle for resources eventually culminated in the outbreak of the war. From the video, here are a few fun facts you may not have known:

  •  Coins for combat: During the early to mid-1930s, both Germany and Japan reissued old silver coinages in nickel so they would have a nickel supply for gun steels when the war broke out.
  •  Coal, meet hydrogen: Coal-to-oil conversion was invented too late to change the outcome of World War 1, but it was about to play a major role in supplying Germany in the next war.
  •  Why we use molybdenum in steels: The Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 redirected Soviet manganese exports from the USA to Germany, so American metallurgists developed improved molybdenum-alloy steels as a substitute using molybdenum from Arizona and Colorado.

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50,000 evacuate German city over unexploded WWII bombs

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Al Jazeera

Authorities in Hanover defuse two bombs, while a third requires special equipment to be neutralised.German authorities are under pressure to remove unexploded WWII bombs [Peter Steffen/AFP]

More than 50,000 people were evacuated from Germany’s northern city of Hanover on Sunday in one of the country’s largest post-war operations to defuse unexploded World War II-era bombs.

Residents in a densely populated part of the city were ordered to leave their homes for the operation, planned since mid-April, to remove several recently discovered unexploded bombs.

Authorities had expected to remove at least five explosive devices, but only three were found. Two were defused successfully, while the third required special equipment to be made safe.
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World War II started in 1937 in Asia, not 1939 in Europe, says Oxford historian

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ChannelNewsAsia

Professor Rana Mitter tells Conversation With why the war began with Japan’s conflict with China, not when Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the date most history books use.

Historian and political scientist, Rana Mitter.

OXFORD – Many history texts use 1939 as the date marking the start of the Second World War. More America-centric accounts use 1941, the year Japan attacked the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

However, using recently-released documentation, Oxford University professor of history Rana Mitter argues that the real start of the global conflict was 1937 – when Japan attacked China in what has been called the Marco Polo Bridge incident, outside of Beijing.

Prof Mitter’s book, The Forgotten Ally, points out that the terrible eight-year-long conflict took a massive toll on China, with more than 14 million Chinese dead.

By comparison, military and civilian casualties for the US and United Kingdom combined totaled around 900,000. Tiếp tục đọc “World War II started in 1937 in Asia, not 1939 in Europe, says Oxford historian” →

CSIS AMTI Brief – August 13, 2015

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AMTI Brief – August 13, 2015

CSIS
Remembering World War II in Maritime Asia
On August 15, 2015, the world observes the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in the Pacific Theater. This edition of AMTI commemorates the conclusion of the conflict and its legacy for maritime Asia. Read special features on the strategic role that maritime Asia played for the victorious allies, including the United States, European powers, and the Soviet Union, as the war ended. Below, view 15 maps that help to explain why the Pacific Theater looked the way it did in August 1945, and why the conclusion of the conflict continues to shape geopolitics in East Asia today. [Read On]
 

Expert Analysis
August 1945: A Snapshot of American Maritime Strategy in the Pacific
When Japan surrendered 70 years ago this month, the United States stood supreme in the Pacific.  Only the Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy had surface combatants that could roam freely from the Indian Ocean to the East China Sea and these remained a fraction of the massive “Big Blue Fleet” the U.S. Navy had deployed.  With the exception of Taiwan, parts of the Dutch East Indies, the Japanese archipelago and a smattering of isolated South Pacific atolls, the entire offshore island chain in the Western Pacific was under the control of the United States and its allies. [Read more from Michael Green] 
 


Calm and Storm: the South China Sea after the Second World War
In the early hours of 4 February 1945 two Australian commandos, Alex Chew and Bill Jinkins, paddled away from an American submarine, the USS Pargo, and landed on Woody Island in the Paracels. In the weeks beforehand, American airmen had reported seeing a French tricolour flying on the island and ‘Z Force’ had been tasked to investigate. Chew and Jinkins discovered there were indeed French people on the island but also Japanese sailors and so retreated to the sub. The Pargo surfaced and shelled the buildings for several minutes. The first ‘Battle of the Paracels’ was a one-sided affair. [Read more from Bill Hayton]

The Legacy of the Soviet Offensives of August 1945
The Second World War was an unparalleled calamity for the Soviet Union. As many as 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians died as a result of the conflict that started with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and ended with the Japanese surrender in August 1945. Consumed by this existential struggle along its western border, the Soviet Union was a comparatively minor factor in the Pacific War until the very end. Yet Moscow’s timely intervention in the war against Japan allowed it to expand its influence along the Pacific Rim. With the breakdown of Allied unity soon heralding the onset of the Cold War, Soviet gains in Asia also left a legacy of division and confrontation, some of which endure into the present. [Read more from Jeff Mankoff]

Featured Maps

Japanese Centrifugal Offensive, December 1941
In December 1941, Japan’s Centrifugal Offensive was launched to gain control of the Western colonies in Southeast Asia and create a defensive perimeter to protect against an Allied offensive. It succeeded in capturing most U.S., British, and Dutch held territory. By the end of February 1942, Tokyo had secured all Western colonial possessions with the exception of part of New Guinea and Macau.

 

Estimated Japanese Strength on or about August 15, 1945
As fighting concluded in the Pacific Theater, an estimated 4.9 million Japanese soldiers remained stationed throughout the Pacific Islands and Asia.

 

Areas Under Allied and Japanese Control, August 15, 1945
At the conclusion of the war, Japan was still extended throughout the Pacific as Allied offensives continued to chip away at its holdings.

 

Territorial Clauses of the Japanese Peace Treaty

Attached to the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951, this map illustrates the territory Japan relinquished in the postwar settlement. Chapter II, Articles 2 and 3 of the Treaty are included in small print indicating the treaty’s territorial clauses with relevant island groups marked as shown. These include the Kuril Islands/Northern Territories, the Ryukyu Islands (including the Senkakus), and the Spratly and Paracel Islands.