Journalistic Chronicle of the Second World War

World War II: six years of conflict that changed history forever

The WWII (1939-1945) was one of the greatest conflicts in the recent history of humanity and the most important of the entire 20th century. In one way or another, not only the great economic and military powers of the time were involved, but also most of the nations of the planet, whether on the side of the Allies (USA, United Kingdom, France and the USSR) or on the side of the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, Japan). The six years that this “total war” lasted forever transformed the political configuration of the planet and left scars that even today, almost 80 years after its completion, remain in memory collective.

1939 – The start of hostilities

Nazi Germany had already shown signs of its territorial ambition, expressed by Adolf Hitler himself in terms of lebensraum (“vital space”) in his book My struggle (1925), in which he had laid out his political, social, and military plan for Germany, and the latter's need to seize the territories of the Eastern European nations. With this in mind, on August 23, 1939, the German regime signed a non-aggression pact with Stalin's Soviet Union, in which —it would come to light much later— they divided up the Polish territory and agreed on a new border between their nations.

This pact meant a carte blanche for the invasion of Poland, an event that started World War II. Germany had already annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia without the allied nations lifting a finger to prevent it; but on that September 1, 1939, when the German army invaded Polish territory, the alliances political and military policies of Poland with France and Great Britain lit the fuse of a much higher. World War II was about to start.

On September 3, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany, while the United States tried to remain neutral. With the Soviet Union breaking through on the other side of Polish territory, Warsaw surrendered on the 27th of the same month, so half of its territory was added to what was already called the drittesDeutsches Reich, that is, the third German Empire. Almost a month later, the first German Jews were deported to Polish territory, their property confiscated, and they themselves were forced to wear a yellow star on their clothing.

Later that year, an attempt on Hitler's life in Munich failed on November 8. The last chance to prevent large-scale conflict was lost forever. However, the Germans were not the only ones to expand their borders illegally: the Soviet Union invaded the territory of Finland, while Japan was advancing its dominance of northern China, as part of the Sino-Japanese War that had started in 1937.

1940 – The fall of Western Europe

The winter between 1939 and 1940 was calm. As Germany regrouped her forces, the nations of Western Europe played defensively. This caused the press of the time to baptize the conflict as "the joke war" or "the lie war". But the arrival of spring brought with it new advances: Germany invaded Denmark and Norway on April 9, 1940, revealing the effectiveness of its blitzkrieg or blitzkrieg. For its part, Denmark quickly succumbed; but in Norway the fighting continued until June, thanks to the help of British soldiers.

The next territories to fall to the Wehrmacht German were those of Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland and the north of France, all during the month of May 1940. Meanwhile, in occupied Poland, the German Empire was building what was the largest of its concentration camps. concentration and extermination of political enemies and citizens of races considered "inferior": the complex of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In June 1940, German aircraft bombed Paris. His Italian allies then decided to join the war, and in turn invaded the south of France. The French government signed an armistice with its aggressors on June 22 and they created a puppet government, known today as Vichy France. Germany would have liked to invade the United Kingdom as well, but it was much more complicated since it was of an island, for which an intense bombardment of the English cities began from the 13th of August.

For its part, the Soviet Union conquered the Baltic countries in June of that year, to expand its own empire throughout Eastern Europe. In August, Japanese forces did the same with Indochina and Italian forces with Greece and North Africa, wanting to seize their colonial territories from the European powers Africans. At the height of their victories, on September 27 the governments of Germany, Italy and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact of Powers that established them as allies. On November 20 Hungary would join them and in March 1941 Bulgaria would also join.

Against this background, the United States found it increasingly difficult to maintain its neutrality. In November they offered financial aid to allied countries, and in early 1941 they provided $50 million in military supplies to Britain and 37 other allied countries.

1941 – The expansion of the conflict

The year 1941 began with the expansion of Germany in North Africa, after the arrival of its army -known as the Afrika Korps— to Libya. His mission was to compensate for the failures of Italy in its attempt to conquer the British African colonies. Similarly, the war spread to the Balkans, especially to the Yugoslav territory, whose government surrendered to Germany on April 17. Greece, after being liberated from the Italians by a joint operation British-Australian-Indian, fell again to the Axis forces, this time facing the army German, April 27.

On June 22, the unthinkable happened: Germany began its invasion of Soviet territory, known as Operation Barbarossa. Allied with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and later Finland, the German Empire violated the agreed borders in the invasion of Poland, expanding decisively towards the east. From that moment he sustained the war on all fronts.

According to testimonies of Nazi diplomats such as Rudolf Hess or Joachim Von Ribbentrop, Hitler was sure that, sooner or later, the rest of the Western world would understand that his empire was the only brake on the advance of Soviet communism, and would support his crusade against Stalin. What happened was just the opposite: on July 12, the Soviet Union and Great Britain signed a mutual military assistance pact.

The German advance on the Soviet Union was swift and relentless, but not fast enough. Thirty kilometers from Moscow, the harsh Russian winter came to the aid of the defenders. And the war from then on began a 180-degree turn. The German offensive came to a halt and had to withdraw up to 250 kilometers from Moscow.

At the same time, on December 7, Japan decided to bomb the US base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, to which the United States responded with a declaration of war. And allied with the Japanese Empire, both Germany and Italy declared war on the United States a day later. A decision that would cost them dearly.

1942 – A tragic interlude

The expansion of Afrika Korps Germans to the Middle East allowed the Allies to regroup their forces in Africa in early 1942. The weakening of the invading forces began to become apparent after the First Battle of El Alamein in July 1942, where British forces halted the German advance on Egypt.

In general, the advance of the Axis forces slowed down as they ran into new forces of resistance. The naval battle intensified with the entry of the United States into the conflict and the Pacific became one of the most intense battle fronts, while German air superiority began to decline in favor of aircraft Americans. In this interlude, the Wannsee Conference took place, where the high Nazi hierarchs decided to implement the "final solution" to exterminate the population Jew of Europe. This, sadly, would be known only at the end of the war and in its later years.

In September of this year, German forces desperately tried to contain the Soviet counteroffensive. The German Sixth Army was besieged by the Red Army at Stalingrad, starting a battle that ended the following year with the surrender of the Germans.

1943 – The beginning of the end

The year 1943 brought bad news for the Axis Powers. The African campaign failed, when German forces capitulated to the British in Tunisia on May 13. That left an open corridor for the Allied landing on the island of Sicily. The performance of the Italian forces was disastrous and in July of that year the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini collapsed. Impeached by the king of Italy and deposed by the advice of his own party, Mussolini lost control of the country and the first peace negotiations with the allies took place.

On September 3, the allied troops invaded mainland Italy and 5 days later the Italian government surrendered, as previously agreed. This forced Germany to move troops into Italy, to free Mussolini on September 12 and create a puppet Italian government, known as the Italian Social Republic. The arrival of the German army prevented the passage of the allies until the beginning of 1944.

Meanwhile, the Soviet counteroffensive pushed further and further into Europe. By the end of the year, his troops were already on the edge of the former German-Soviet border in Poland, and the defeat of the German forces seemed only a matter of time. A similar fate befell the Japanese against the US Army in the Pacific: by September they had lost their most important bases in New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Salamaua. The Marshall Islands fell early the following year and were followed by the Philippines.

On November 28 of that year, the leaders of the allied side met face to face for the first time, at the Tehran Conference: Josef Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

1944 – The Axis collapses

At the beginning of the new year, the advance of the Soviet army on the eastern front was already unstoppable. Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria, former Axis allies, fell one by one to the Red Army and their respective new governments declared war on the German Empire. The closeness of the Soviet army also inspired the Polish and Yugoslav resistance, which began to revolt towards the end of 1944, while the German forces did their best to cover the tracks of genocide perpetrated in his concentration camps.

On June 6, the Normandy landings in France took place, and the bloody liberation of Europe began. Already in October, the Allied forces the north of France and the Belgian city of Aachen; the Germans, defeated, could only bombard the allies with their V-1 and V-2 missiles, trying to slow down their advance. His despair was such that on July 20 a new attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler failed.

For their part, British and Indian forces launched an offensive against the Japanese in Indochina towards the end of the year, while US aviation left the Japanese Empire without access to important materials, by destroying its navy merchant. The scarcity of resources among the Axis powers became critical and decisive.

1945 – The horror that ends the horror

On January 27, the Red Army advancing on Poland liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp, and its horrific images came to light for the first time. At the same time, the allied forces bombed German cities, especially the capital of Berlin and the city of Dresden, the most affected in Europe during the conflict. In the latter, between 60 and 225 thousand people died. The same happened in the Japanese city of Tokyo, set on fire under US bombs, where around 80,000 people died in the flames.

On February 15, British forces were on the banks of the Rhine River, and a couple of months later, the Red Army stormed Berlin from the other side. All was already lost for the German Empire. On April 25, in southern Germany, US and Soviet troops came face to face for the first time in the war. Three days later, Italian communist partisans captured Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci and executed them in a square. And just two days later, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin. The war in Europe was over.

Despite the unconditional surrender of her allies, Japan held out for several more months. The bloody battle raged in the Pacific until, in August 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Almost 150,000 people lost their lives instantly, and a new symbol of horror was added to the catalog of humanity. However, on August 14, Japan announced its intention to surrender unconditionally. His troops in China did the same on September 9.

Only then did World War II end. Between 40 and 100 million people had lost their lives. Europe, Asia and part of Africa were in ruins. The world would never be the same again.

References:

• “Chronicle (journalistic genre)”in Wikipedia.
• "World War II" in Wikipedia.
• "World War II" in National Geographic in Spanish.
• "Chronicle of World War II" in Deutsche Welle (D.W.).
• “World War II (1939-1945)”in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.

What is a journalistic chronicle?

The journalistic chronicle is a type of narrative text Y expository, that among the journalistic genres occupies a particular place, being considered as a hybrid genre. This means that it combines features of the informative genres and the interpretive genres, that is, it recounts a series of real events, not fictitious, providing objective, verifiable information, but also showing a subjective, personal view that reflects the way of thinking of the chronicler.

The chronicle is a modern journalistic genre, which has its roots in the travel accounts and diaries of the great explorers of yesteryear (such as the Chronicles of the Indies of the Spanish conquerors in America), reinvented in light of current journalistic needs. It is typical of war reporters, investigative journalists, and even writers, in what has been baptized as the journalistic-literary chronicle, because it uses traditional expressive resources of writing literary.

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