The Second World War Illustrated: The First Year: Archive and Colour Photographs of WW2

By Jack Holroyd

This fully illustrated history chronicles the road to WWII and the first year of combat through archival and color photographs accompanied by text.
 
The first volume in this series depicts the contributing factors that led to the outbreak of hostilities, including the rise of fascist dictators across Europe and in Japan. It also details the Blitzkrieg invasions that rocked the world as two superpowers, France and Great Britain, were soundly thrashed on the battlefield of Europe.
 
Overwhelmed by the Nazi onslaught, British Expeditionary Force fled across the Channel from Dunkirk, leaving most of their equipment behind. A possible invasion of Kent in the south of England by a triumphant enemy presented a spine-tingling threat to the British people. But Winston Churchill disparaged peace treaties with the Nazi regime, and the fight back began.
 
A few thousand fighter pilots of the Royal Air Force defeated the Luftwaffe by a very narrow margin, and Hitler changed his focus, looking to the east. The first year of the war ended, in September 1940, with Mussolini threatening Egypt and the Suez Canal. Rare wartime photographs capture the drama and humanity of this dark time in Europe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781526744418

Jack Holroyd

The author has been employed in printing and publishing for fifty years. His works include five fictional titles, two books on aviation topics, five further titles on the First World War and one covering the actions of the SS Totenkopf Division in the invasion of France in May 1940.

Book preview

2015

Prologue: Ascent of the Bullies

Benito Mussolini, lI Duce (29 July 1883 to 28 April,1945). Italian prime minister (1922–1943) First of the 20th-century dictators.

During the Great War Mussolini was wounded while serving with the bersaglieri – a corps of sharpshooters. As early as February 1918, he advocated the emergence of a dictator – ‘a man who is ruthless and energetic enough to make a clean sweep’. A few months later, in a speech in Bologna, he hinted that he might prove to be such a man. The following year the nucleus of a party prepared to support his ideas was formed in Milan. Assorted republicans, anarchists, socialists, revolutionaries, along with discharged soldiers, met to discuss the establishment of a new force in Italian politics.

Mussolini called them the fasci di combattimento (fighting bands), groups of fighters bound together by ties as close as those that secured the fasces of the lictors – the symbol of ancient Roman authority. So fascism was created and its symbol devised.

037ww2, 037aww2. A comment on Mussolini concerning his service in the Great War: He was promoted to the rank of corporal for merit in action. The promotion was recommended because of his exemplary conduct and fighting quality, his mental calmness and lack of concern for discomfort, his zeal and regularity in carrying out his assignments, where he was always first in every task involving labour and fortitude. Mussolini’s war service amounted to nine months of active front-line service. During this time, he contracted paratyphoid fever. His military exploits ended in 1917 when he was wounded accidentally by the explosion of a mortar bomb in his trench. He received over forty shards of metal in his body. The Bersaglieri were created in June 1836 to serve in the Army of the Kingdom of Sardinia, later to become the Royal Italian Army.

The fasces, an ancient Imperial Roman symbol of power: a bundle of sticks and an axe, indicating the power over life and death. Taken as the symbol of the Fascists.

Mussolini caught the imagination of the crowds at rallies, ringed by supporters wearing black shirts; his style of oratory held and roused his audience. His words were dramatic and extraordinarily effective. By late 1921, the Fascists controlled large parts of Italy, and the Communists had all but collapsed. The Italian government did little to combat the lawlessness and were relieved to see the mainly working-class left defeated. As the Fascist movement became well established around the ideas of nationalism and anti-Bolshevism, Mussolini began planning to seize power at the national level. Opportunity presented itself when the trade union movement called a general strike. Mussolini declared that would put it down. Fascist volunteers helped to defeat the strike and thus advanced their Fascist claim to power. At a gathering of 40,000 Fascists in Naples on 24 October 1922, Mussolini boasted, ‘Either power of government will be given to us, or we will seize it by marching on Rome’. The king invited Mussolini and the Fascists to take over the governent of Italy. Mussolini was proud of his achievement at becoming the youngest prime minister in Italian history.

035ww2 Mussolini and his Quadrumviri during the March on Rome in 1922: from left to right: Michele Bianchi, Emilio De Bono, Mussolini, Italo Balbo, and Cesare Maria De Vecchi. In ancient Rome, the quadrumviri were four citizens elected by the senate with jurisdictional powers and police functions, with a five-year mandate. These Fascist leaders are taking a dramatic pose which became all too familiar in later years.

036ww2 From left to right: Benito Mussolini, Cesare Maria De Vecchi and Michele Bianchi, on the march on Rome in 1922. It succeeded in destabilising the government. Asked to form an administration by King Vittorio Emanuele III.

Mussolini’s forces invaded Ethiopia (Abyssinia) in October 1935 and carried on a brutal campaign of colonial conquest during which the Italians released phosgene gas from aircraft upon the Ethiopian people. Europe was horrified; but did nothing. The League of Nations imposed sanctions but ensured that the list of prohibited exports did not include any strategic supplies such as oil, that might provoke a European war. An organization that carried high expectations was already proving to be impotent.

Italian General Pietro Badoglio requested permission to use chemical warfare, using as justification the torture and murder of a downed Italian pilot. Mustard gas was used to effectively destroy the Ethiopian armies confronting him on the northern front. On 31 March 1936, Badoglio defeated Emperor Haile Selassie commanding the last Ethiopian army on the northern front at the Battle of Maychew. On 26 April, with no Ethiopian resistance left between his forces and Addis Ababa, Badoglio launched his ‘March of the Iron Will’ to take the Ethiopian capital city and end the war. By 2 May 1936, Haile Selassie had fled the country to plead at the League of Nations. Both Ethiopia and Italy were members of the League and any dispute should have been settled by negotiation at Geneva.

040ww2 Ethiopian warriors prepared to take on the Italian army. Casualty figures vary, a total of 760,300 Ethiopians died by 1940. Italin casualties were about 208,000 killed or wounded.

039ww2 Italian infantry marching into Ethiopia.

On 26 April 1936, General Badoglio began his ‘March of the Iron Will’ to capture the capital Addis Ababa, an advance with a mechanised column against slight Ethiopian resistance. After the occupation of Addis Ababa, most of Ethiopia was still unoccupied and the fighting continued for another three years,

044ww2 General Badoglio.

L3 Lf light tank

CANT Z.1011 bomber

045ww2, 043ww2, 042ww2, 041ww2. Artillery, tanks, bombers, machines guns and poisonous gas, modern weapons employed against the native tribesmen.

At the Versailles peace talks, as one of the victorious Allies following The Great War, Italy fully expected to receive her share of the spoils when German territories in Africa were confiscated and shared out, but it did not happen. This would be put to rights with conquered Ethiopia and the territories Italy already held in East Africa, joined together to make a new Italian empire in the region.

048ww2 Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, addresses the League of Nations assembly, June 1936:

There is no precedent for a Head of State himself speaking in this assembly. But there is also no precedent for a people being victim of such injustice and being at present threatened by abandonment to its aggressor. Also, there has never before been an example of any Government proceeding to the systematic extermination of a nation by barbarous means, in violation of the most solemn promises made by the nations of the earth that there should not be used against innocent human beings the terrible poison of harmful gases. It is to defend a people struggling for its age-old independence that the head of the Ethiopian Empire has come to Geneva to fulfil this supreme duty, after having himself fought at the head of his armies. It is my duty to inform the Governments assembled in Geneva, responsible as they are for the lives of millions of men, women and children, of the deadly peril which threatens them, by describing to them the fate which has been suffered by Ethiopia. It is not only upon warriors that the Italian Government has made war. It has above all attacked populations far removed from hostilities, in order to terrorize and exterminate them... I ask the fifty-two nations, who have given the Ethiopian people a promise to help them in their resistance to the aggressor, what are they willing to do for Ethiopia? And the great Powers who have promised the guarantee of collective security to small States on whom weighs the threat that they may one day suffer the fate of Ethiopia, I ask what measures do you intend to take?

Representatives of the World I have come to Geneva to discharge in your midst the most painful of the duties of the head of a State. What reply shall I have to take back to my people?

049ww2 The League in session. France, the UK, Italy and Japan were the permanent members of the executive Council empowered to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, or provide an army when needed. However the Great Powers were often reluctant to do so. Also sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them. During the invasion of Ethiopia, when the League accused Italian soldiers of targeting Red Cross medical tents, Benito Mussolini responded: ‘the League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out’.

The League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by

Born Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili, he took the name ‘Stalin’ (meaning man of steel), becoming the dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1929. Under his dictatorship Russia was transformed from a peasant society into an industrial and military superpower. Unfortunately for his subjects, he ruled by terror and millions of his own citizens died during a brutal reign. After Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, Stalin gained control of the party. Once in power, he collectivized farming and had potential enemies executed or sent to labor camps.

051ww2,052ww2. Russian peasants being forcibly evicted from their homes during Stalin’s collectivization plan. Over one and a half million people, including women and children, were resettled from their villages. They were taken out to uninhabited regions and abandoned without food or agricultural implements, with no regard for the time of year. A great many of the resettled peasants died. Later, in February 1930, a government instruction was issued, in which the kulaks were allowed to keep some of their household articles and certain capital equipment with them after confiscation of their property.

Stalin ruled by terror and with a totalitarian grip so that he might eliminate anyone he considered to be a threat. He expanded the powers of the secret police, encouraged citizens to spy on one another and had millions of people killed or sent to the Gulag system of forced labour camps. During the later part of the 1930s, Stalin began the Great Purge, a series of action intended to rid the Communist Party, the military and other parts of Soviet society of those he considered a threat. At first it was his own subjects he persecuted rather than attacks on peoples of other nations. In 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, Stalin and German dictator Adolf Hitler signed a nonaggression pact. Stalin then proceeded to annex parts of Poland, Romania, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. He also launched an invasion of Finland.

057ww2 Hirohito, Emperor of Japan. (29 April, 1901 – 7 January, 1989)

055ww2 Prince Fumimaro Konoe (12 October 1891 – 16 December 1945). Prime Minister in the lead up to Japan entering the Second World War.

055ww2 Hideki Tōjō, (December 30, 1884 – December 23, 1948). Chief of Staff, Minister of War and later Prime Minister.

The Mukden Incident was provoked by Japanese officers to provide an excuse to invade Manchuria in 1931. On 18 September 1931, Lieutenant Kawamoto exploded a small charge close to a railway line owned by Japan’s South Manchuria Railway near Mukden. The Imperial Japanese Army accused Chinese dissidents of an act of sabotage and retaliated with an all-out invasion and occupation of Manchuria. Within months Japan established its puppet state of Manchukuo.The deception was later exposed in 1932, leading to international condemnation. In March 1933 Japan withdrew from the League of Nations.

In June 1937, Prince Konoe became Prime Ministerof Japan. One month later, Japanese troops clashed with Chinese troops near Peking in the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Within three weeks the army launched a general assault. In August 1937, Chinese sentries killed two Japanese marines who crashed a gate at a Chinese airfield in Shanghai. Konoe sent two divisions to defend Japanese honour. His cabinet then issued a declaration, accusing both nationalist and communist Chinese of increasingly provocative and insulting behavior toward Japan.

The Marco Polo Bridge Incident

Tensions between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China had been heightened since the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and their creation of a puppet state, Manchukuo. The Japanese forces extended their control deeper into Chinese territory to obtain raw materials. A commission of enquiry from the League of Nations made a critical report into their actions, leading to Japan pulling out of the League.

There were many armed flare-ups of a limited nature, followed by a return to the uneasy peace. The significance of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident is that tensions did not subside following it. Trouble escalated with larger forces being introduced by both sides. The Marco Polo Bridge incident became the starting point of the Sino-Japanese War.

After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident provoked the start of the Second Sino Japanese War, Tojo ordered his forces to attack Hebei Province and other targets in northern China.

060ww2 A Japanese detachment inspects arms taken from the Chinese garrison after the fall of Mukden, the key city on the South Manchurian Railway.

054ww2 Chinese delegate addresses the League of Nations in 1932 after the Mukden Incident. Japanese delegates staged a walk out and Japan left the League. The Japanese were free from official censure as a member nation and began a programme of violent expansionism.

061ww2 Japanese reinforcements making a sea-borne landing on the Chinese coast to support the attack on Shangai, July 1937.

062ww2 A Japanese Navy torpedo bomber, the Mitsubishi B2M, used as a light bomber against Chinese cities. Manufactured by British aircraft manufacturer Blackburn.

065ww2, 066ww2. Japanese marines storming the Chinese army strongpoints thrown up in Shangai city.

Chinese Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek sent 600,000 of his best-trained soldiers to defend Shanghai. His forces suffered over 200,000 casualties, with Chiang losing the best of his officers. Though the Chinese lost militarily, the battle for Shangai dispelled Japanese claims that it could conquer China in three months. It also demonstrated to the Western powers that the Chinese would continue the fight. By December, the capital city of Nanking had fallen to the Japanese.

063ww2 Pre teenage Japanese boys, being trained in the culture of aggression and national domination, give a hearty ‘Banzai!’ Meaning, ‘live ten thousand years’ – a greeting given to the Emperor and adopted by soldiers and sailors as a battle cry.

067ww2 Chiang Kai-shek during the early days of the Battle of Shanghai.

064ww2 Some of the Chinese defenders of Shangai reinforcing a street barricade. They had been taken by surprise because of the ferocity of the Japanese attack and stood little chance of defeating the invasion.

068ww2 An Imperial Japanese Army Type 41 75 mm field gun in action on the streets of Shangai, July 1937.

071ww2 A citizen of Nanking about to be be-headed.

070ww2 Bodies of victims outside Nanking’s west gate, along the Qinhuai River, during the Nanking Atrocities.

072ww2 A Tokyo newapaper article on a ‘Contest to kill 100 people using a sword’. The headline reads: Incredible Record (in the Contest to Cut Down 100 People) Mukai 106, Noda 105. Both these second lieutenants go into extra innings. The public flaunting of barbarity and cruelty, boasted about in this newspaper story, bode ill for the looming world war and Japan’s