When A War Went Worldwide 75 Years Ago

Townhall.com ^ | July 28, 2016 | Victor Davis Hanson

[Kaslin]

Seventy-five years ago, the world blew up in just six months.

World War II ostensibly started two years earlier, when Germany invaded Poland. In truth, after the rapid German defeat of Poland in September 1939, the conflict was mostly confined to Western Europe for nearly the next two years. By summer of 1940, only Britain had survived Hitler's European victories.

The dormant European war only went global on June 22, 1941, when Germany suddenly surprise-attacked the Soviet Union, its former partner.

America and Asia were still not directly involved in the 1941 expansion of the war until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and British Malaya on December 7-8.

Yet the war was even then not truly global until Germany and Italy inexplicably declared war on the United States on December 11.

America was suddenly mired in a two-front war on land, sea and in the air against the Axis powers -- from the Arctic Circle to the Sahara Desert, and from the coast of Florida to China.

These three calamitous events of 1941 marked the real beginning of World War II, in which some 65 million perished, more than 60 percent of them civilians.

[minnesota_bound]

Everyone knows it was the evil United States that started WW2 then used atomic weapons on the poor Japanese and called them bad names.
(Tom Hanks ref)

[Kaslin]

What an idiot.

[minnesota_bound]

Tom Hanks: “Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods,” he told the magazine. “They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”

Hanks brought up the comparison again while promoting “The Pacific” during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“’The Pacific’ is coming out now, where it represents a war that was of racism and terror. And where it seemed as though the only way to complete one of these battles on one of these small specks of rock in the middle of nowhere was to - I’m sorry - kill them all. And, um, does that sound familiar to what we might be going through today? So it’s— is there anything new under the sun? It seems as if history keeps repeating itself.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/tom-hanks-wwii-comments-spark-controversy/

[Hulka]

So, what about St Thomas Aquinas and his development of Just War?

[reg45]

Actually, World War I marked the beginning of the end of Western Civilization. World War II was just a continuation.

[Oztrich Boy]

Well there were a few incidents half a world away