Wars Within Wars: World War Two
An Historical Look at the Subsidiary Conflicts Around the Second World War
History is fascinating. One of the more interesting facets of history for me is how a war that starts off between two rival nations can grow and metastasize into a larger conflict. Additional belligerents become involved in the main war, with multiple connected wars and conflicts breaking out on the fringes of the primary conflict.
This article will focus on the Second World War in this vein, but realize that this is a trend we see throughout history and across many major wars.
Examples of this include the Thirty Years War, the American Revolutionary War, and the Napoleonic Wars, and, of course, World War Two, among many others.
The Thirty Years' War began as a religious revolt in Bohemia, but soon grew and involved most of the nations of Europe over thirty years, resulting in the deaths of millions and the devastation of most of central europe.
The American Revolution began as a rebellion in England’s American colonies (which was seen by other nations at first as an English civil war), but eventually drew in multiple Native American nations on both sides, as well as the nations of France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic (who all had valid reasons to see the British Empire weakened). Warfare among the colonists (rebel Patriots vs. Loyalist Tories) also can be considered an American civil war.
The Napoleonic Wars were an extension of the French Revolutionary wars, but also featured related conflicts such as the Anglo-Danish War, the Russian-Swedish War, a Russian-Ottoman War, the Wars of Liberation in Spanish America (literally from Mexico south to Argentina and Chile), the Haitian Revolution, and the Anglo-American War of 1812, to name a few.
The main focus of this article, the Second World War, is without doubt the best known and most researched conflict in human history. Nearly everyone knows who Hitler was, has heard about the Holocaust, is aware of what happened at Pearl Harbor, and many other facets of World War Two. Almost hidden within the larger conflict of World War Two are several smaller yet significant subsidiary wars and conflicts that were part of the worldwide conflict we call the Second World War.
NOTE: For the purposes of this article, we are considering World War Two to have begun in the following years in the following regions:*
In Asia, when Japan invaded China in July, 1937.
In Europe, when Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland in September, 1939.
In Asia, as Japan relentlessly pressed their attack on China, border issues developed along the Japanese-controlled Chinese borders with the Soviet Union and Soviet ally Mongolia.
This bloody multi-year Soviet-Japanese Border War, ending with the battle of Khalkhin-Gol (also known as the Battle of Nomonhan) between the Soviet Union and Japan in 1939. This battle, while won by the Soviets and Mongolians, helped convince the Soviets into their quasi-alliance with Germany in order to secure their western border, assuming that Japan was still an active threat on the eastern border. This German-Soviet deal led to the Soviets aiding in the German invasion of Poland. However, their loss to the Soviets at Khalkhin-Gol helped convince Japan that a future war against the West would be more fruitful than further conflict with the Communist colossus to their north. Out of this belief came the plan to eventually settle on a “Southern Strategy” that led Japan to attack the Americans and British in December, 1941.
Out of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact was a deal whereby Eastern Europe was divided between the two tyrannical powers. Out of this pact came the Soviet demand for concessions from the Baltic States, Romania, and Finland. All of these much smaller neighbors gave in to Soviet demands, all except Finland. The Finns rejected the bullying by the Soviets, and fought a brave, but futile Winter War. The Finns resisted bravely, and fended off massive attacks by the much larger Soviet forces. Eventually, though, the Finns had to agree to a peace deal that forced them to give up some territory to Russia. The Finns joined in the German war against Russia in 1941, seeking revenge.
After the Fall of France to the German forces in 1940, and the establishment of a puppet French regime in the city of Vichy, a very strange and tragic subsidiary conflict began. This conflict pitted two peoples with an ancient history of battle between them but a more recent history of military cooperation. In order to keep the powerful French Navy out of German hands, France's erstwhile British allies attacked and destroyed part of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir in French-ruled Algeria. Nearly 1,300 French sailors died in this British sneak attack; launching a period of desultory warfare we can call the Anglo-Vichy French Conflict, which would extend to the French possessions in the Middle East, Lebanon and Syria, as well as interfere with the Anglo-American Invasion of North Africa in 1942.
In conjunction with that Anglo-Vichy conflict, was a French civil conflict that pitted the Vichy French government against domestic resistance forces (referred to by several terms, including the Resistance, and the Maquis), and against the Free French forces led by General Charles DeGaulle.
In similar fashion, on the other side of the world, Thailand saw the French defeat by the Germans and the subsequent destruction of Vichy French military assets at Mers-el-Kebir as an opening to seize territory from French-ruled Indochina. This resulted in the Franco-Thai War of 1940. While the French fared better in the fighting, Japan forced both sides to a peace agreement that required France to surrender some territory to Thailand. Japan and the Thais had made a secret deal that would bring Thailand into a future war with Britain as a Japanese ally.
Also in French Indochina, the colony that incorporated Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, we see at least four distinct conflicts that were a part of World War Two..
In September 1940, the Vichy French in Indochina and the Japanese struck a deal that allowed Japan to station troops in Indochina. Some Japanese commanders, unhappy with the slow pace of negotiations, attacked the French on their own initiative (the Japanese Army had a problem with overly aggressive officers), initiating several days of Franco-Japanese fighting as Japanese forces attacked at the Vietnamese border towns of Dong Dang and Lam Son. Following the end of this unauthorized combat, Japanese forces entered French-ruled Indochina peacefully after striking a deal with the Vichy French government. The Vichy French still ruled Indochina, and put down a Vietnamese Nationalist Rebellion in December 1940. The Viet Minh, led by Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh, gained control of territory in northern Vietnam and began anti-French and anti-Japanese guerrilla activities. Viet Minh actions against the Japanese increased following the second round of Franco-Japanese fighting from March to May, 1945. This takeover of French Indochina led to major fighting between Vichy French and Japanese forces, with the defeat of the French. Following the Japanese takeover, local insurgencies against the Japanese gained momentum in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, open warfare would break out between the French and the Viet Minh, in what became known as the First Indochina War.
Chinese Civil War: Chinese Communist forces, led by Mao Tse-Tung, had engaged in civil war against the Nationalist Chinese government, led by Chiang Kai-Shek since 1927. The Japanese invasion of 1937 forced a semi-truce on the two sides, as they both resisted the Japanese. However, the Nationalists and the Communists would also fight among themselves at times. After the Japanese surrender, the Civil War resumed as a full scale war, though this phase of the civil war would see the United States support the Nationalists, and the Soviet Union actively support the Communists. By the end of 1949, the Communists ruled mainland China, and the Nationalist forces fled to the island of Formosa (now called Taiwan). The China-Taiwan conflict is still a major flashpoint of a potential major war in the 21st Century.
And speaking of major flashpoints, in the Middle East we see other little-known conflicts that connect with more recent, Twenty-First Century wars: we have the British Invasion of Iraq in 1941 to counteract a pro-German coup in Baghdad that, if left unchecked, could have changed the course of World War Two. In addition, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the British and the Soviets launched a joint Invasion and Occupation of Iran to protect their supply lines and assure an uninterrupted oil supply. Neither nation would be free of foreign occupation until after the end of the war.
There are other, similarly little-known wars within the greater conflict we call World War Two, and an examination of these conflicts will show how even smaller, largely forgotten wars had a measurable impact on the course of world history.
In Europe, many anti-Axis resistance groups formed in all occupied territories, but in several instances, these resistance groups (largely referred to as “Partisans”), fought each other nearly as much as they fought the Germans. In most cases, these “Partisan Civil Wars” were between communist factions versus monarchical or republican factions within those nations. The two most significant of these partisan civil wars were in the Balkan states of Yugoslavia and Greece.
Greek Partisan Civil War: Greek resistance to Axis (German, Italian, and Bulgarian) occupation began in 1941, but by 1943, fighting began between the larger Greek Communist partisans against non-Communist Greek partisan groups. After the German retreat from Greece, a full-blown civil war broke out, with British troops, who landed in Greece after the German withdrawal, helping suppress the Greek Communist forces.
Yugoslav Partisan Civil War: Yugoslav partisan forces fell into two major groups. The Communist Partisans and the Royalist Chetniks. Both fought the Axis occupiers, but also fought each other. By the end of the war, the communist forces had liberated most of Yugoslavia and became the ruling party in post-war Yugoslavia.
These are all examples of smaller, yet significant subsidiary conflicts that swirled around the fringes of the primary conflicts of World War Two. Each of these, while in some ways separate from the main war, all involved belligerents to the main conflict, and each of these wars had, in ways both large and small, an impact on the Second World War, the participants, and on the course of world history.
* For the purposes of this description of how World War Two grew to include so many other conflicts, we are keeping the starting point for the primary war itself simple. Most historians agree to the 1937 start date in Asia and the 1939 start date in Europe. However, technically, those can also be considered the start dates for just two very large regional wars that actually had little to do with each other. This view sees the actual Second World War beginning with the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies in December, 1941 as the point at which the two big regional wars combine into one true world war, as explained in a past post.