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Contemporary Historiography on the Second World War

Nam Gyun Kim 1

1평택대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The peace in the post war world did not last long. The world was immediately trapped into terror of the Cold War between the West and the East. The Cold War situation naturally left a deep ideological impact upon the historical interpretation of the Second World War. In the West, many historians thought the Second World War was an ‘unnecessary war’ because it would not have been inevitable if the Western political leaders had wisely responded to Adolf Hitler’s aggression. The unnecessary war was thought to benefit the Soviet Union, which rose up as a great power and consequently initiated the Cold War. From this perspective, the Western political leaders were criticized for appeasing Hitler to initiate the Second World War and , regarding the reason of the Allies‘ victory, the industrial and economic power of the Western countries, especially the United States, was evaluated as the major factor in defeating the Axis powers. Concerning the issue of war responsibility, the Nazi leaders and Japanese militarists were considered to have fair trials at the war crimes tribunals. With the opening of the archives of Russia and Eastern European countries after the Cold War ended in the 1990s, however, conventional interpretation of the Second World War was strongly challenged. New materials discovered from the archives of the former communist countries provided contradictory evidence against the conventional interpretation about the Second World War. The history of the Second World War was required to be rewritten and reinterpreted. New interpretation of the Second World War in the post-Cold War era verifies the imperial ambition of the Germany ignited by Adolf Hitler as the major cause of the war. Along with Hitler, the historical experience of the First World War and its impact on the European and German societies have also been reevaluated regarding cause of the Second World War. Explaining the Allies’ victory, new interpretations emphasize the role of the Russian military forces in defeating the German forces in the Second World War. The critical turning points in the war were made in the eastern front rather than in the western front or in the Pacific. Because conquering Russia was the major war aim for Hitler, he deployed more forces in the East than in the West. He expected to get an easy victory in Russia. But he faced miserable defeats in the East against the formidable Russian forces, especially in Kursk, Stalingrad, and Moscow. The Allies’ victory was won because of the turning points made in the East. On the issue of the war crimes trials, new interpretations challenge the conventional one. The war crimes trials were not interpreted as effective in cultivating the ethics of responsibility in the defeated societies. The defeated countries did not voluntarily take any ethical responsibility about the war. In addition, more importantly, new interpretations based on recently opened materials show that the Allies also committed war crimes too. Stalin killed several millions of innocent civilians, who had nothing to do with the war, which is as many as Hitler did. Stalin’s massacre of civilians occurred in the regions between Russia and Germany, which were termed “Bloodlands” by Timothy Snyder. The justice of the war crimes tribunals therefore has been seriously questioned. Conclusively speaking, conventional interpretation of the Second World War seems to lose its ground against new interpretations in the post Cold War era. However, it is still very hard to define the decisive trend in the recent historical writings about the Second World War because there are still many various interpretations depending on ideology, race, nation and other factors about the war. As John Keegan predicts, it will not be easy to see a well-balanced interpretation of the Second World War in the near future. Maybe we need to wait another 100 years to read that kind of book.

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