OPPapers.com

A Two Front War

A Two-Front War
Throughout the course of history there has been no conflict as cataclysmic and defining as that of World War II. In his book, The Good Fight, How WWII Was Won, author Stephen E. Ambrose called it "the greatest catastrophe in history" (4). This war was truly deserving of its "world" title. There was fighting on six out of the seven continents. Four of the major oceans had naval battles. In The United States and World War II, Vol. I, the editor notes that "it involved almost every great nation on the globe, and most of the smaller ones as well…it was fought in every quarter of the globe…and the war was almost total in its destructive character as well" (xiv). Multiple nations supplied thousands of troops with many of them escalating into the millions. Every nation was touched in some way by the events of this "world war". There have been an exhaustive number of theories on how the war could have gone different ways, but a consensus view is that the "Allies" were victorious because of one major swing; the entrance of the United States into the fighting. When many people think about WWII, one of two pictures is usually dominant. Either a picture of Europe comes to mind with the US forces fighting against German and Italian armies or a picture of the US fighting against Japanese forces in the Pacific is present. It is important that one views the entire US experience in WWII as a true worldwide saga instead of as almost two separate wars on two different sides of the globe.
Prior to America's entrance into the war, in the decades following World War I, the country had tried to hold an "isolationist" point of view. The overall attitude was to leave well enough alone regarding world events. WWI was still fresh in the country's mind, and no one was interested in putting the country back into a similar situation. The difference in the start of the two wars lies with how the country committed to each. With WWI, the US had made a conscious decision to...