Second World War (1939-1945): Causes, Major Phases, Why the Allies Won, Consequences and Impact on India (UPSC Notes + PYQs)

Causes

• Versailles (1919): Germany lost territory and colonies, accepted war guilt and owed reparations; resentment fed nationalism.
• Great Depression (1929): unemployment and hunger helped Hitler (Chancellor from January 1933) and militarists in Japan.
• Fascist expansion: Japan in Manchuria (1931), Italy in Ethiopia (1935-36), Germany re-armed and reoccupied the Rhineland (1936), annexed Austria (1938).
• Failure of the League of Nations: no army, key powers absent or leaving.
• Appeasement: at Munich (September 1938) Britain and France let Germany take the Sudetenland; Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939.
• Nazi-Soviet Pact (August 1939): removed the risk of a two-front war for Germany and secretly divided eastern Europe.

Major phases

1939-41: Axis advances. Poland fell; in 1940 Germany overran Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries and France (Dunkirk evacuation). Britain held out in the Battle of Britain. 1941: the war goes global. Germany invaded the USSR (Operation Barbarossa, 22 June 1941); Japan attacked Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941), bringing the USA in. 1942-43: the turn. Midway (June 1942) checked Japan; El Alamein (October-November 1942) and Stalingrad (ended February 1943) broke Axis momentum. 1944-45: Allied victory. D-Day landings in Normandy (6 June 1944); Soviet advance from the east; Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945. The USA dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima (6 August) and Nagasaki (9 August); Japan announced surrender on 15 August and signed on 2 September 1945.

Why the Allies won

Industrial power (US factories out-produced the Axis many times over), Soviet manpower and endurance, control of the seas, code-breaking (Enigma at Bletchley Park), and Axis mistakes such as invading the USSR before defeating Britain and declaring war on the USA.

Consequences for the world

• Over 60 million dead, including about six million Jews killed in the Holocaust.
• United Nations founded on 24 October 1945; Bretton Woods institutions (IMF, World Bank) agreed in July 1944.
• USA and USSR as superpowers; Europe divided; start of the Cold War.
• Nuremberg and Tokyo trials created the idea of individual responsibility for war crimes.
• Weakened colonial powers led to decolonisation in Asia and Africa.
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Genocide Convention (1948).

India and the war

On 3 September 1939 Viceroy Linlithgow declared India at war without consulting Indian leaders. The Congress ministries resigned in protest in October-November 1939; the League celebrated “Deliverance Day”. Britain’s offers followed: the August Offer (1940), which Congress rejected, and the Cripps Mission (March 1942) offering dominion status after the war with the right of provinces to opt out, which Gandhi reportedly called a “post-dated cheque”. Congress then launched Individual Satyagraha (October 1940, Vinoba Bhave first) and the Quit India Movement (8 August 1942). Subhas Chandra Bose formed the Azad Hind government in Singapore on 21 October 1943 and led the INA with Japan; INA units fought around Imphal and Kohima in 1944.

India’s army grew to about 2.5 million, the largest volunteer army in history, fighting in North and East Africa, Italy and Burma; around 87,000 Indian servicemen died. India’s sterling balances rose sharply because Britain paid for supplies with IOUs. The Bengal famine of 1943 killed an estimated 2.1 to 3 million people, worsened by wartime policies, hoarding and the loss of Burmese rice.

How the war sped up independence

Britain ended the war bankrupt and dependent on US loans. The INA trials and the naval mutiny of 1946 showed that the loyalty of Indian soldiers could no longer be assumed. The Labour government wanted to leave. Within two years of the war’s end, India was independent and partitioned.

The war and the Indian economy

India paid heavily for the war. Britain bought Indian supplies on credit, building up sterling balances of over £1,300 million owed to India by 1945, financed partly by printing money. Prices rose sharply, and the Bengal famine of 1943, which killed about three million people, came from wartime hoarding, the loss of Burmese rice after Japan occupied Burma, a cyclone and the colonial government’s refusal to stop exports and import grain in time. Indian industry gained from war orders in steel, textiles and engineering, and the sterling balances later paid for imports after independence. The Bombay Plan of 1944, written by Indian industrialists, called for State-led planning, an idea that shaped the Planning Commission.

PYQ trend

Prelims asks India’s wartime politics: Cripps (2016), 8 August 1942 (2021), why Congress ministries resigned (2012). Mains GS-I has asked on the World Wars (2024, on the First World War and balance of power); a question on WWII causes or decolonisation is due.

World War 2: UPSC angle

World War 2 UPSC PYQs (Prelims)

Questions UPSC has actually asked, from the official papers. Pick an option to check yourself.

Mains PYQs on this topic

Questions from the official UPSC Mains papers (2023-2026 in the Battle IAS Mains bank), newest first. Each links to a model answer.

1. UPSC Mains 2024 · GS Paper I · Q12 · 15 marks

   How far is it correct to say that the First World War was fought essentially for the preservation of balance of power?

   Model answer and approach

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