Lost at Sea on the Brink of the Second World War | Hacker News Reader

Lost at Sea on the Brink of the Second World War

newyorker.com

64 pointsstass27 comments

That's a great yarn. Makes me think about what the refugees coming to Europe face.

Do Americans really consider 1941 to be the brink of WWII? I've always considered that it started on September 3, 1939, with the first declaration of war between major powers.

Well since America wasn't directly involved until late 1941 (after Pearl Harbor) I guess... yes? Up until then it wasn't really a world war yet.

Well it was pretty much a world war since about every other country that mattered at the time was at war, except for the US/Canada. Note that the US was anyway part of the War efforts as they were supporting Great Britain, too.

Canada declared war on Germany on September 10th, a week after Britain. (The delay was because Parliament was recalled and debated the matter first.)

Thanks for the correction. Did Canada actually send troops to Europe at that time?

The war in the west didn't start until May 1940, when Germany invaded France. Shortly after that (June 1940) the air battle over Britain started, and at least there was a Canadian participation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-British_personnel_in_the_R...

Edit: Canada already sent infantery units to Britain during the Phoney War (that was the period until the war in the west started:

"The Royal Air Force dropped propaganda leaflets on Germany and the first Canadian troops stepped ashore in Britain, while western Europe was under a period of uneasy calm for seven months.[8]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoney_War

> The war in the west didn't start until May 1940, when Germany invaded France.

To be picky, the Battle of the Atlantic started the same day as the British and French declaration of war, with the sinking of the SS Athenia. And the Norwegian Campaign began the month before the invasion of France.

What about Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939?

Sorry - by war in the west I meant from a European perspective, not global. Poland being the 'war in the east', from a German perspective.

Yes, or at least, shortly thereafter.

But the wars weren't connected: aside from some skirmishes between the USSR and Japan (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Japanese_bord...), there was a British/French/Russian/German war going on in Europe, and a Sino-Japanese war in Asia. It wasn't until Pearl Harbor, and the simultaneous Japanese declaration of war on the European Allied powers, that the two wars became one.

The war was not just going on in Europe. North Africa was also heavily involved in skirmishes between Allies and the Axis.

As for the connection there was only one country that was fighting on two fronts at the same time: the US. Limiting the WW2 definition to when the US started to enter the War is reductive, I think.

Not correct:

"In effect, Australia fought two wars between 1939 and 1945[2] – one against Germany and Italy as part of the British Commonwealth's war effort and the other against Japan in alliance with the United States and Britain. While most Australian forces were withdrawn from the Mediterranean following the outbreak of war in the Pacific, they continued to take part in large numbers in the air offensive against Germany."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Australia_...

In my opinion, World War II started on September 18, 1931, when Japan invaded Manchuria, because 1) the Chinese and Japanese didn't stop fighting until 1945, and 2) it had much the same spirit as the following conflicts. Admittedly, this subjective timing stuff is awful fuzzy.

I agree with this idea; the view that invasion of Poland was start of this global war is rather Euro-centric.

However, as you said it is fuzzy: the hostilities were still somewhat limited even after the invasion in Manchuria; but total war broke out in July 1937 after the Marco Polo Bridge incident.

Japan's invasion of Manchuria triggered which web of military alliances to fight against which web of military alliances?

Invasion of Manchuria was 1931; 1937 was invasion of mainland China until Zhejiang and Hubei. In consequences, there was the alliance of Germany and China fighting against the Soviet attack on Xinjiang, for instance.

It directly contributed to sanctions such as American embargo of Japanese imports, and things like Export Control Act of 1940 and then the Tripartite Pact.

(BTW, thanks for asking; this made me read more about history in the area - I had no idea, for instance, that Soviet artillery and airplanes had attacked Chinese Muslim nationalist (KMT) troops with mustard gas in 1934 in the Soviet invasion of Xinjiang, nor that there were still White Russian troops that operated on same side with NKVD and GPU troops. What a murky business.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Xinjiang

KMT was the ruling party Kuomintang: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuomintang

nothing to do with muslims

There are things like Muslim Chinese nationalists.

Kuomintang had, among others, Muslim generals/warlords and troops, in this case I was referring to Ma Hushan's Hui (Muslim) troops.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Hushan

Compare to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_rebellion_in_Xinjiang_...

That muslims were members of the KMT and served in the KMT army means nothing. The KMT was not a muslim organization. It had no religious affiliations at all. It was a chinese nationalist political party.

I don't think I said KMT was a muslim organisation. It was a nationalist organisation, or a warlord organization - the allegiance of generals to the party was often quite nominal.

However, it bears some relevance to the matter that KMT-affiliated troops that fought against Soviet invasion in a predominantly Muslim-populated area were Muslims. I don't see here any particular parallels towards Islamic or Islamist movements today.

Embargos aren't war, otherwise the West is at war with Russia right now due to it's annexation of Crimea and activities in the Ukraine. And does it really count as Germany at war with the Soviets if there were no German troops involved?

Similarly, if you're counting political events that foment war as being part of that war, then WWII started at least as far back as 1919, when Ferdinand Foch stated that the WWI peace treaty "wasn't a peace, but an armstice for 20 years".

The thing is that Japan's military adventurism in China was a regional affair, conducted between neighbours, whereas Germany attacking Poland brought in countries from all inhabited continents except South America.

For me, Japan's large-scale military attack in China in 1937 was more than a "political event".

It's not so clear-cut where policy ends and war starts, and when a war turns into a global war, but I cannot say that September 1, 1939, would clearly be where we draw the line. The fighting in China in 1937 (Battle of Shanghai) was actually bigger in scope than the invasion of Poland in September 1939, and with more casualties. Then the Winter War in Finland exceeded these, with big losses for USSR, and then large-scale war started on the Western front in the Battle of France in 1940 which was even bigger than Winter War in terms of casualties.

For me, the expression is "A is on the brink of war", not "the brink of war was at T", so I read it as the Americans being on the brink of war, not as 1941 being the brink of war.

I once saw an american cartoon episode (of Freakazoid!) where the hero went back in time and prevented World War II from ever happening, by intervening at Pearl Harbour.

Even in Europe a more appropriate date for the start of WWII is September 30, 1938 when the Munich Pact between Germany, Italy, France and Britain awarded large parts of Czechoslovakia to Germany, and, effectively, to Poland and Hungary.

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