Questions to Ask About World War II
These questions to ask about World War II are meant to be argued over in a history class, an essay, a book group or a family conversation, so most of them have more than one defensible answer. They run in the order of the war itself: how it came about, the fronts and turning points, civilian life, the leaders and their decisions, then the ending and what it left behind. The final group is different in kind, written for a relative who was a child in those years or who now keeps a parent's stories.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Road to war
What caused World War II?
Why ask it
Expect a chain of causes: a peace settlement in 1919 that left Germany resentful, the Depression, governments in Germany, Italy and Japan set on expansion, and other powers unwilling to pay the price of stopping them early. Then ask which link, taken away, would have kept the war from happening.
When did World War II start, and why does the date depend on who is telling it?
Why ask it
September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, is the date in most European and American textbooks. A Chinese account may start in 1937 or even 1931, a Soviet one in June 1941 and an American family's in December 1941, so the date someone gives tells you whose war they have in mind.
Who fought on each side, and did the sides stay the same?
Why ask it
Germany, Italy and Japan led the Axis, and Britain, France, China, the Soviet Union and the United States were the largest of the Allies. The sides moved, though: the Soviet Union signed a pact with Germany in 1939 and was invaded by it in 1941, and Italy changed sides in 1943. Have a student mark those shifts on a timeline.
How did the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression help bring Hitler to power?
Why ask it
The treaty supplied the grievance: lost territory, a limited army, reparations and the blame for the last war. The Depression supplied the voters, since the Nazis were still a small party in the 1928 election and the largest one by 1932. An answer that leans on the treaty alone has to explain that four-year jump.
What was appeasement, and was it a mistake at the time or only in hindsight?
Why ask it
At Munich in September 1938, Britain and France agreed that Germany could take the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in exchange for a promise of peace. For a debate, give one side only what was known in 1938 (the memory of the trenches, rearmament half done) and give the other March 1939, when Germany occupied the rest of the Czech lands.
Why was Japan at war in Asia years before the fighting began in Europe?
Why ask it
Look for the seizure of Manchuria in 1931, the full-scale invasion of China in 1937, an army that had come to dominate the government, and a search for oil, rubber and other resources the home islands lacked. That background turns Pearl Harbor into one step in a longer war instead of a bolt from nowhere.
Why did Germany and the Soviet Union, sworn enemies, sign a pact in August 1939?
Why ask it
Each got something for the short term: Hitler could attack Poland without facing a war on two fronts, and Stalin gained time and, in a secret protocol, a share of Eastern Europe. Follow it by asking what the pact meant for Poland, the Baltic states and Finland over the next year.
Could World War II have been prevented, and when was the last real chance?
Why ask it
An essay question with no agreed answer. Make whoever answers pick a moment, such as the reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936 or Munich in 1938, and say what stopping Hitler then would have cost the people who had to decide.
Fronts
How did Germany overrun so much of Europe between 1939 and 1941?
Why ask it
The stock answer is one word, blitzkrieg: tanks, aircraft and radio used together to break through and keep moving. Push past it by asking what the defenders got wrong, since France fell in about six weeks in 1940 with an army that did not look the weaker one on paper.
What was the Battle of Britain, and why did it matter that Britain held out in 1940?
Why ask it
It was fought in the air over southern England in the summer and autumn of 1940, and Germany never won the control of the sky that an invasion needed. To see why holding out mattered, ask where the bombing campaign and the 1944 landings in France were later launched from.
Why did Hitler invade the Soviet Union in 1941, and why did the invasion fail?
Why ask it
The motives were ideological as much as military: land and resources in the east and the destruction of the Soviet state. Distance, winter, Soviet reserves and factories moved out of reach explain the failure. Then check how much room your textbook gives this front, where most of the German army's losses came.
Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor, and what did its leaders expect to happen next?
Why ask it
After the United States cut off oil in 1941, Japan's leaders chose to seize the resources of Southeast Asia and to cripple the American Pacific Fleet first. They were counting on a short war and a negotiated peace, and the gap between that plan and what followed deserves a discussion of its own. Then ask what Germany did four days later.
Which battle was the real turning point of the war?
Why ask it
Midway, El Alamein and Stalingrad all fall between mid 1942 and early 1943, and each has its champions. Do not settle for a name. Ask what 'turning point' means to the person answering: the last moment the Axis could have won, or the first moment the Allies could not lose.
What was D-Day, and why did the Allies wait until June 1944 to land in France?
Why ask it
On June 6, 1944, American, British, Canadian and other Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy and opened a front in Western Europe. It took until then because landing craft had to be built, the Atlantic made safe and campaigns fought in North Africa and Italy first. Follow with how that delay looked from Moscow.
How was the war in the Pacific and Asia different from the war in Europe?
Why ask it
Listen for distance, aircraft carriers, fighting island by island and disease, and for the land war in China and Burma that many summaries skip. To make it concrete, have someone describe one campaign from each side of the world in the same year.
What was the war like for an ordinary soldier, sailor or airman?
Why ask it
On most days most people in uniform were not in combat: they drove trucks, repaired engines, cooked, typed or waited. For those who were, the answer changes with the place, so set a rifleman outside Moscow beside a sailor on convoy escort and a bomber crew over Germany. Letters home are the obvious source, with the caution that military censors read them first.
Why did the war at sea matter as much as any battle on land?
Why ask it
Britain lived on imports, and every American soldier, tank and gallon of fuel bound for Europe had to cross an ocean patrolled by submarines. Convoys, escorts, long-range aircraft and broken codes belong in the answer. It is a useful question for anyone who pictures the war only as a row of famous battles.
What part did codebreaking, radar and other new technology play in who won?
Why ask it
Cases to raise: radar in the Battle of Britain, the breaking of German Enigma messages, the American reading of Japanese naval signals before Midway, and the atomic bomb. Be wary of any claim that one invention 'won the war'. Ask instead what it shortened, and what factories and manpower still had to do.
Civilians
What was daily life like for civilians during the war?
Why ask it
It depended on where they stood. A British family knew the blackout and the ration book, a Polish family lived under occupation, Leningrad starved under siege, and an American town saw no bombs but a great deal of new work and movement. Have whoever answers choose one place and one year.
How did rationing work, and what did people go without?
Why ask it
The rules differed from country to country and changed as the war went on, so ask how it worked in the place you are studying instead of assuming one system. Coupons or books for food, fuel and clothing were common, and in Britain food rationing outlasted the war by years. With a relative, ask which food still tastes of that time.
How did factories, farms and shipyards at home decide what the armies could do?
Why ask it
American car plants switched to tanks and aircraft, Soviet factories were rebuilt far to the east, and Germany came to depend on forced labor from the countries it occupied. Ask which side could replace a lost tank or ship faster by 1943, then how each government raised the money, through taxes, war bonds or loans.
How did the war change women's work and women's lives?
Why ask it
Women took jobs in factories and on farms, joined auxiliary services and nursed near the front, and in the Soviet Union some flew combat missions and served as snipers. Always ask what happened when the men came home. Many women were expected to give the jobs back, which complicates the story of the war as a liberation.
What was the war like for children?
Why ask it
A good opening for younger classes, because the material is close to their own lives: evacuation from British cities, school under occupation, collecting scrap, a father gone for years, hunger. Diaries and memoirs by people who were children then give a class a voice of its own age to read.
How did governments use posters, radio and film to keep people behind the war?
Why ask it
Bring one poster and put three things to it: who made it, who was meant to see it and what it wanted them to do. Setting an Allied and an Axis poster on the same subject side by side shows how many of the same techniques both used.
Why were Japanese Americans forced from their homes into camps, and how has the United States judged that since?
Why ask it
After Pearl Harbor, an order signed in February 1942 led to the removal of about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast, most of them American citizens. In 1988 Congress apologized and paid redress to survivors. For comparison, ask what happened to Japanese Canadians, and to German and Italian residents.
How did the war change things for Black Americans, at home and in uniform?
Why ask it
The American forces were segregated throughout the war, and Black newspapers campaigned for a double victory, over fascism abroad and discrimination at home. A full answer brings in migration to war plants, units such as the Tuskegee Airmen and the order to desegregate the military in 1948. For another country, ask the same about its colonial troops.
What happened to people living under German or Japanese occupation?
Why ask it
Forced labor, requisitioned food, reprisals, collaboration and resistance all belong here, but the experience was far harsher in some places than others. Compare Denmark with Poland, or look at Nanjing, Korea or the Philippines. One country studied in depth teaches more than a tour of all of them.
Who resisted from inside Germany and the occupied countries, and what did it cost them?
Why ask it
Names to start from: the French Resistance, the Polish Home Army, Yugoslav and Soviet partisans, the White Rose students in Munich, the officers who tried to kill Hitler in July 1944. Ask what each could realistically achieve and what happened to those caught, because resistance is easy to admire and hard to weigh.
How does the Holocaust fit into the history of the war?
Why ask it
The murder of six million Jews was carried out under cover of the war, mostly in the occupied east after the invasions of Poland and the Soviet Union. It was neither a side story nor the reason the Allies went to war, and both points surprise students. Give it a lesson of its own instead of a paragraph inside this one.
Did the bombing of cities work, and how should it be judged?
Why ask it
London, Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo stand for campaigns that killed civilians in very large numbers. Keep two questions apart: what it was like underneath, and whether it broke morale or production as its planners hoped. Historians still argue the second, so it suits a structured debate.
Leaders
Who were the main leaders, and what did each of them want out of the war?
Why ask it
Hitler, Mussolini and Japan's military government under Tojo on one side; Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek on the other. The Allied leaders did not share one aim: an empire to keep, a border to secure and a postwar order to build do not point the same way. Ask whose aim had been met by the end of 1945.
Why did so many Germans go along with Hitler, and why did the country fight on to the end?
Why ask it
Several reasons overlap: jobs and restored national pride in the 1930s, the early victories, propaganda, a police state that punished dissent, and by 1944 dread of what defeat and the Red Army would bring. Test any answer that rests on fear alone, or on belief alone, against two years, 1936 and 1945.
How did Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin work together when they distrusted one another?
Why ask it
A common enemy did most of the work. Trace the strain through the conferences at Tehran and Yalta, and at Potsdam, where Truman had taken Roosevelt's place: when to open a second front, who would govern Poland, what to do with Germany. Then ask which of those quarrels became the Cold War.
How much of Germany's defeat was down to Hitler's own decisions?
Why ask it
The usual list is invading the Soviet Union with Britain undefeated, declaring war on the United States in December 1941 and forbidding retreat at Stalingrad. Add a caution about sources: German generals wrote memoirs after the war that blamed him for nearly everything, which also happened to excuse them.
Why did the United States stay out until December 1941, and how neutral was it by then?
Why ask it
Disillusion with the First World War and the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s kept it out. Yet by late 1941 it was sending arms to Britain and the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease and escorting convoys in the Atlantic. Ask the class to mark the point on that road where 'neutral' stopped being an honest word.
Why did Truman decide to use the atomic bomb, and what else could he have done?
Why ask it
Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, 1945 and Nagasaki on August 9. The case made at the time was that it would end the war without an invasion of Japan; the alternatives people raise are a demonstration, a blockade, waiting for the Soviet declaration of war, or a promise about the emperor. Require both sides of a debate to argue from what was known that summer.
Why did Japan's leaders fight on in 1945 when the war was already lost?
Why ask it
The reasons usually given are an army that hoped one costly battle would win better terms, fear for the emperor's position and the Allied demand for unconditional surrender. The surrender followed two atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war within a few days, and historians weigh those shocks differently. Pair it with the question about Truman.
End and legacy
How did the war end in Europe, and how did it end in the Pacific?
Why ask it
Two endings, about three months apart. In Europe, Soviet troops took Berlin, Hitler killed himself and Germany's surrender took effect on May 8, 1945; Japan announced its surrender on August 15 and signed on September 2. An answer that gives only one of them has told half the story.
How many people died in World War II, and why are the figures so uncertain?
Why ask it
Estimates run to tens of millions, commonly sixty million or more, and most of the dead were civilians. Records were destroyed, borders moved, and deaths from famine and disease are counted by some sources and not by others. Give a range, name the source, and ask which countries lost the largest share of their people.
What were the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, and what did they establish?
Why ask it
German and Japanese leaders were tried for planning aggressive war, for war crimes and for crimes against humanity, and 'I was following orders' was rejected as a defense. Critics then and since have called it victors' justice, since Allied conduct was not on trial. Ask for the strongest form of both views.
How did the war lead to the Cold War?
Why ask it
By 1945 the Soviet army stood across Eastern Europe, Germany and Berlin were divided among the victors, the United States held the atomic bomb, and Britain and France were exhausted. Ask for the single wartime decision that did most to set the two remaining great powers against each other, and expect disagreement.
How did the war redraw the map, and what new institutions came out of it?
Why ask it
Put a map of 1938 beside one of 1949. Germany is divided, Poland has shifted west, Korea is split, Japan is under occupation, and the United Nations has replaced the League. Millions of people were expelled or resettled to fit those new lines, which is the part a map does not show.
Why did so many colonies win independence in the twenty years after the war?
Why ask it
The European empires came out of the war in debt, Japan's conquests had shown in Asia that they could be beaten, and soldiers from India, Africa and the Caribbean had fought for a freedom they did not have at home. India in 1947 is the usual starting case. A strong question for students whose family history lies outside Europe and North America.
What happened to soldiers, prisoners and refugees once the fighting stopped?
Why ask it
Europe and Asia were full of people on the move: freed prisoners, forced laborers, camp survivors, expelled populations, and troops who waited months for a ship home. What a returning soldier was offered in schooling, housing or work differed by country, so ask how it worked where your subject lived. Most family stories have a chapter that begins here.
How is the war remembered differently from one country to another?
Why ask it
Russia remembers a Great Patriotic War that began in 1941, Britain the year it stood alone, the United States a 'good war', and Germany and Japan have each had long arguments about how to teach it. Take one event and compare how two countries' textbooks or museums present it.
What do films and novels about the war tend to leave out?
Why ask it
Made for book groups. Start with the title in front of you: whose war does it tell, who is missing from it, and does everyone behave better than people usually do? Soviet, Chinese and colonial soldiers, and civilians of every country, are the usual absences in English-language war stories.
Which lessons do people draw from World War II, and which of them hold up?
Why ask it
'Never appease a dictator' is the one heard most, and it has been cited in arguments for many later wars, with mixed results. Test each lesson against a later case before accepting it. Hold this question back until the other groups have been covered, since every one of them feeds the answer.
Family
Where was our family living when the war began, and how old was everyone?
Why ask it
Do this first and write it down as a small table. Ages decide what each person could have seen: a six-year-old remembers sirens and food, and a twenty-year-old was of an age for service or war work. If your relative is passing on a parent's stories, get the parent's year of birth.
What is your earliest memory of the war, or the first story about it you were told?
Why ask it
The wording works for someone who was a child then and for someone a generation younger. Note which kind of answer you got, a memory or a story handed down, because a school project should say whose words it is using.
Who in the family served, who did war work, and who stayed at home?
Why ask it
Go through the family person by person, the women included, and anyone who was exempt, refused or was turned down. Collect full names, services and rough dates. How to request a service record depends on the country, so ask its national archive how that works there.
What was hard to get, and how did the family make do?
Why ask it
Expect gardens, mended clothes, traded coupons and perhaps a word about the black market. Shortages were different in every country, so let the description stand without checking it against a textbook. Small domestic details are what make a family history worth reading.
Did the war ever come close to home, through bombing, occupation, evacuation or a telegram?
Why ask it
Ask it gently and accept a short answer. For an American family it may be a telegram or a star in a window, while a family from Europe or Asia may have had soldiers in the street. Let them decide how far in to go.
Was anyone in the family on the other side, or treated as an enemy where they lived?
Why ask it
Families with German, Italian or Japanese roots in Allied countries, and families who lived in Axis countries, often carry this quietly: a changed surname, an internment, an uncle in the wrong uniform. Ask without judgment. 'We never talked about it' is still an answer, and worth writing down as one.
Where was the family on the day the war ended, and what did they do?
Why ask it
Notice which day they choose: May 1945, August 1945, or the day months later when someone walked back through the door. Some families remember a street party and others the person who was not there for it.
What did your parents never talk about, and why do you think that was?
Why ask it
Written for the relative who is keeping someone else's memories. Silence was common in families of that generation, and the guess at the reason is the relative's own, so record it as a guess. A gap like this is sometimes one that service or immigration records can partly fill.
Are there letters, photographs, ration books, medals or papers I could see and copy?
Why ask it
Photograph both sides of everything and write names and dates on a separate sheet, never on the object. Ask who else in the family has a box like this one. An envelope with a postmark or a unit stamp can date a story the teller could not.
If I could write down only one story from our family's war, which should it be?
Why ask it
It makes them choose, and what they choose is usually the story they think of as theirs. Take it down in their own words, read it back to them, and ask who else in the family ought to hear it.
How did the war change the family afterward: where we live, the work people did, who married whom?
Why ask it
This ties the kitchen-table story to the history in the first five groups: a move for a factory job that became permanent, a marriage across an ocean, schooling paid for after service, a country left for good. For a school project it is the strongest question to finish with.
Using these in a classroom, an essay and a family kitchen
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Picking questions for the job in hand
A class discussion
Choose questions that have a real argument inside them: appeasement, the turning point, the bombing of cities, Truman and the bomb. Give the room the plain facts from the note first, then the question, so the argument is about judgment and not about who remembers the date.
An essay
An essay needs a question with at least two answers that can be defended. 'Could the war have been prevented', 'how much of Germany's defeat was Hitler's doing' and 'which lessons hold up' all qualify. Then cut it down before drafting: 'was appeasement a mistake' becomes 'what else could Britain have done in September 1938', which a single essay can settle.
A book group
Open with the question about what films and novels leave out, applied to the book you have just read. Then go to the group the book lives in: a novel set in occupied France belongs with Civilians, a general's biography with Leaders. Two or three questions are plenty for an evening.
A ten-question assignment
For a worksheet that wants ten, take two from each group from Road to war through End and legacy, so the ten run from the causes to the aftermath. With a relative available, trade two of them for Family questions and name the person who answered in the write-up.
Checking an answer against the record
Fix the place and the year
London in 1940, Stalingrad in 1942 and Manila in 1945 were three different wars. Before accepting any answer, ask where and when it is true. Most confident statements about 'what people went through' shrink to one country and one year when tested this way.
Find something made at the time
A front page, a poster, a newsreel or a censored letter home fixes what a person could have known on that day, which is less than we know now. Ask who made it and for whom. National archives and war museums have put a great deal online, though what is free to view depends on the archive, so look at its own terms.
Treat every number as an estimate
Casualty totals differ from source to source because they count different things: soldiers only, civilians too, deaths from hunger and disease or not. Quote a range, say whose count it is, and be suspicious of a figure given to the last digit.
Remember that memoirs argue a case
Generals and politicians on every side wrote after 1945 with reputations to protect. Read a memoir beside an account from the other side of the same decision, and notice what each leaves out. The same goes for a wartime speech, which was written to persuade and not to record.
Sitting down with a relative
Know whose memory you are hearing
Almost anyone who remembers the war at first hand was a child or a teenager during it, so many of these conversations are with a son, daughter or niece who carries a parent's stories. Mark each story as you go: seen by the teller, or told to them. Both are worth having, and a careful project keeps them apart.
Bring a map and one photograph
Borders and place names have changed since the 1940s, and a map lets a relative point where a word fails. A single photograph on the table starts names coming faster than any question. Write down each name as it is said and check the spelling before you leave.
Leave the textbook at the door
A relative may put an uncle at a battle his unit never reached, or remember an air raid in the wrong year. Take the story down as told and add your own line saying where it and the history book part. Arguing the point in the room usually ends the conversation, and the mismatch is itself something to write about.
When a subject hurts
Some answers stop short: a brother who did not come back, a winter without food, a relative who wore the losing side's uniform or was locked up as an enemy alien. Do not press for the rest. Move to something plainer, such as school, the kitchen or the first job after the war, and leave it to the relative whether to pick the subject up on another visit.
Ask before recording or sharing
Get a clear yes before you switch on a recorder, and a second yes for anything that will go into a school display, a family tree site or a post online. Offer to read back what you have written. People say more when they know where their words are going.
Where questions about the war go wrong
Telling one country's war
A version built only from Pearl Harbor, D-Day and Hiroshima, or only from Dunkirk and the Blitz, leaves out the fronts where most of the fighting and dying took place. Whatever country you start from, add one question about the Eastern Front and one about China before you call the list complete.
Judging with hindsight
Nobody at Munich in 1938 knew what 1945 would look like. A fair question about a decision asks what its maker knew, feared and could afford on that day. Hindsight is useful afterwards, for asking what they might have seen and did not.
Questions that end in one word
'Who won?' and 'When was D-Day?' test memory and stop the talk dead. Add 'and why then', 'and how do we know' or 'and who paid for it', and the same fact becomes something a group can work on for ten minutes.
Treating the Allied side as beyond question
The cause was just and the conduct was not always, and a class can hold both ideas at once. The bombing of cities, the camps for Japanese Americans and the alliance with Stalin are part of an honest account. Asking about them takes nothing away from the people who fought.