visions of victory - cambridge university...

Visions of Victory

Visions of Victory explores the views of eight leaders of the major bel-ligerents in World War II – Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Chiang Kai-shek,Stalin, Churchill, de Gaulle, and Roosevelt – and compares their visionsof the future assuming their side emerged victorious. While the leaders pri-marily focused their attention on strategies for fighting and winning thewar, these strategies were often shaped by their aspirations and hopes forthe future. Weinberg assesses how subsequent events were impacted bytheir decisions and examines how their visions for the future changed andevolved throughout the war. What emerges is a startling picture of post-war worlds: Besides the extermination of the Jews, Hitler intended for allthe Slavs to die off and for the Germans to inhabit all of eastern Europe.Both Mussolini and Hitler intended to have extensive colonies in Africa.Churchill hoped to see the reemergence of the British and French Empires.De Gaulle wanted to annex the northwest corner of Italy (but Trumanforced him to back down). Stalin wanted control of eastern Europe, andhe got it. Roosevelt’s vision of the future was the closest to being fulfilled,including, importantly, the establishment of the United Nations. Aston-ishing in its synthesis and scope, Weinberg’s comparison of the individualportraits of the wartime leaders is a highly original and compelling studyof history that might have been.

Gerhard L. Weinberg is Professor Emeritus of History at the Universityof North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of numerous books andarticles on the origins and course of World War II, including A World atArms: A Global History of World War II (Cambridge, 1994), which wonthe George Louis Beer Prize of the American Historical Association, andGermany, Hitler, and World War II (Cambridge, 1995).

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Cambridge University Press978-0-521-85254-8 - Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II LeadersGerhard L. WeinbergFrontmatterMore information

http://www.cambridge.org/0521852544

http://www.cambridge.org


Visions of Victorythe hopes of eight

world war ii leaders

Gerhard L. WeinbergUniversity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill






cambridge university pressCambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo

Cambridge University Press40 West 20th Street, New York, ny 10011-4211, usa

www.cambridge.orgInformation on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521852548

C© Gerhard L. Weinberg 2005

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,

no reproduction of any part may take place withoutthe written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2005

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Weinberg, Gerhard L.Visions of victory : The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders / Gerhard L. Weinberg.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 0-521-85254-4 (hardback)1. World War, 1939–1945 – Biography. 2. Heads of state – Biography. i. Title.

d736.w46 2005940.53′092′2–dc22 2005000785

isbn-13 978-0-521-85254-8 hardbackisbn-10 0-521-85254-4 hardback

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To my students






CONTENTS

List of Maps • ix

Preface • xi

Maps • xvii

Introduction • 1

1. Adolf Hitler • 5

2. Benito Mussolini • 39

3. Tojo Hideki • 57

4. Chiang Kai-shek • 77

5. Josef Stalin • 95

6. Winston Churchill • 135

7. Charles de Gaulle • 161

8. Franklin D. Roosevelt • 175

9. The Real Postwar World • 211

Notes • 235

Bibliography • 267

Index • 285

vii






LIST OF MAPS

European Frontiers 1919–39 page xvii

Northern Europe June 1941 xviii

Polish-Soviet Border xix

Polish-German Border xx

Africa 1939 xxi

Pacific Area in 1939 xxii–xxiii

Division of Asia xxiv

ix






PREFACE

When working on my general history of World War II, I was in-

trigued by what appeared to me at the time to be a highly un-

usual concept of Charles de Gaulle, the leader of the Free French

movement. He evidently wanted the southern portion of the Ital-

ian colony of Libya annexed after victory to what was then French

Equatorial Africa. The area involved is desert, with one oasis. At

the time, France already controlled most of the Sahara Desert; why

acquire more desert? Into what sort of vision of the postwar world

held by de Gaulle did such an annexation fit? It was this question

that led me to the idea of looking at the postwar visions of major

leaders of World War II.

In my work on this project, I have again been indebted to the

William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust. A period as scholar in resi-

dence at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum provided

time and support for my work, though nothing in this book repre-

sents the views of the museum or its council. The librarians at the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have been as patient

and helpful as always. Any errors and shortcomings are, of course,

my own.

xi






xii • Preface

To assist the reader who would like to pursue the issues touched

on in the text further, I have tried to provide sources in English

wherever possible. If it looks at first as if numerous citations are

to a collection with a German title, the big series Dokumente zur

Deutschlandpolitik, it is important to note that the documents from

British and American archives reproduced in this collection invari-

ably appear in the original English and with proper archival refer-

ences. The broader context of the war can be followed in my A World

at Arms: A Global History of World War II, where relevant published

and unpublished sources are provided in considerable detail and my

many debts to institutions and individuals are acknowledged. In the

text, the spellings and names of places are generally those used at

the time. Thus, the colonies of European powers appear under their

old names, Chinese names have not been altered to the new sys-

tem, and Japanese names are in the Japanese form, with the family

name first.

If the focus in this work is on a small number of individuals at

the top of their respective states, there are two reasons for this. The

first is what I would call the intrinsic fascination of the leaders of the

major powers involved in the greatest war in history. There are many

biographies and other studies of them and their activities, but none

that compares their views of the future assuming their side of the war

emerged victorious. The second reason is that, especially in wartime,

the urgent demands of the conflict almost automatically make the

individual at the top more important and, in terms of the society

that the individual leads, more powerful. This was most certainly

the case during World War II.

Whatever rivalries existed in National Socialist Germany, there

can be no doubt that the major decisions on policy were made

by Adolf Hitler himself. Benito Mussolini was obliged to defer






Preface • xiii

minimally to those elements that had enabled him to assume power,

but not only did he resent them, he generally kept them out of the

decision-making process – until they succeeded in removing him

from office. Tojo Hideki, as Chapter 3 demonstrates, was not in the

dictatorial position that Hitler and Mussolini held, but he played an

important role in the complicated way decisions were arrived at in

Tokyo all the same. After the great purges, there was certainly no

one in the Soviet Union who could imagine an internal challenge

to the absolute dominance of Josef Stalin. It should be remembered

that when assuming the office of prime minister, Winston Churchill

also insisted on creating and holding the office of minister of de-

fence. He did this so that he could work either directly with the

military chiefs of staff or do so through an intermediary, General

Hastings Ismay, whom he had chosen himself. Charles de Gaulle in

a real sense personified as well as led the Free French movement.

Franklin D. Roosevelt carefully emphasized his constitutional role

as commander-in-chief, and no one in the political or military hi-

erarchy of the United States had any doubts about that. When he

agreed with proposals submitted to him, he would note in the mar-

gin, after the initials of the proposer, “OK FDR.” But if he disagreed,

the typed indication of his disapproval would be followed by his full

signature with “Commander-in-Chief” typed underneath.

The leaders of World War II belligerents were in practice limited

by the human and material resources at their disposal as well as by

the geographic factors that often made some choices either impos-

sible or especially inviting. What I have found striking is the ex-

tent to which each of the leaders examined here tended to assume

that limitations of human and material resources could be coped

with by careful planning, the assistance of associated powers, and,

in the final analysis, by sheer determination and will-power. The






xiv • Preface

occasionally voiced view that the Allies won the war by sheer num-

bers of men, planes, ships, and tanks would have come as astonish-

ing news to the British pilots in the Battle of Britain, the Red Army

soldiers fighting in the streets of Stalingrad, and the sailors on the

three American aircraft carriers coping with the six Japanese car-

riers in June of 1942. The English Channel was equally wide and

stormy for the Germans at the height of their victories in 1940 as it

was for the Allies as they planned an invasion of northwest Europe

in 1943 and 1944. Certainly both resources and geography had to be

taken into account; what is so interesting is that in the urgencies of a

desperate war all leaders concentrated on aims first and strove to har-

ness resources and strategic decisions to them. It was the hundreds

of millions of ordinary people across the globe who fought, suffered,

labored, and died in the war, and they were the ones who had to

live, and work out the best adjustments that circumstances allowed,

in the postwar world that was so largely not of their own making.

It was also by no means precisely the postwar world that the leaders

studied here wanted or expected, but the aspirations that they held

during the great conflict are surely worthy of some attention.

The world created by the war is still very much the world in which

we live. Decisions and the outcomes of battles in places that few

can identify today have shaped our world. In many ways the suc-

cesses and the failures of the years of fighting have created the issues

that confront the governments of our own time. It is true that one

can now travel under the English Channel on a train, but the her-

itage of choices made by World War II leaders continues to affect

the relations of Britain with France and other states on the conti-

nent. The position of the United States in the world and the mul-

titude of newly independent countries in the United Nations – it-

self a wartime creation – are both examples of developments that






Preface • xv

cannot be understood unless their origins in World War II are taken

into consideration. This book is designed to assist in that process of

understanding.

Over a period of forty-five years of teaching, my students, both

undergraduate and graduate, have inspired, challenged, and cheered

me. It is to them that this book is dedicated.

Efland, North Carolina, July 2004






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xviii






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xix






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xx






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xxi






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xxii






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xxiii






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xxiv






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