The Second World War was the most widespread war in human history, with the greatest losses and the greatest casualties. It has had a profound impact on the re-establishment of the world order, the reshaping of the geopolitical pattern and the development trend of human civilization. One might wonder why the United States, the world's largest industrial output, had not been drawn into the war in the early stages of the war, but why had it insisted on aiding Britain and the Soviet Union, and if the United States had not entered the war, what would have been the outcome of World War II?
Here is the conclusion, if the United States did not enter the war during World War II, then whether the Soviet Union or Germany won, the United States would be isolated. Only when the United States entered the war could it grab the greatest benefits and smoothly dominate the direction of the post-war situation. On this topic, we need to start with the evolution of the world's geopolitical pattern in the second half of the 19th century, detailing the policy changes of the world's major powers and their impact on U.S. foreign policy decisions and strategic choices.
The international geopolitical pattern before and after World War I
After the second industrial revolution of the second half of the 19th century, especially the development of railway transportation, the geographical advantages of the old hegemony of the British Empire, which relied on maritime hegemony, were gradually dissolved. Even the anglo-German naval competition of the late 19th and early 20th centuries would not have changed the rise of the three land-powered states of Germany, Russia and the United States.
At the same time, the Enlightenment and national liberation ideas began to gradually affect the peoples of the Asian, African and Latin American colonies, and Wilsonism in the late World War I put forward the principle of national independence (one of the fourteen-point peace principle) in international forums. Throughout the second half of the 19th century and the end of World War I, the numerous british and French colonies of the great powers spent more and more costly (repression, replenishment of troops, etc.) on the colonies, and the gains became more and more than worth the losses.
Because of this, the century-long "British Rule" since the late Napoleonic Wars has come to an end, the world hegemony of the British Empire and the Continental Power France continue to decline, Germany, Russia and the United States, plus a geographically distant and has completed the combination of land and sea by seizing the Korean Peninsula.
In fact, before the First World War, it was supposed that Britain was the worst in the global geopolitical situation, but the problem was that after Bismarck's downfall, Germany's policy was in a mess, slipped into the shackles of Germanism and zero-sum game thinking, and became the worst country in continental geopolitical situation in Europe.
Germany had already formed a grudge with France over the Franco-Prussian War, and had severed relations with Russia at the hands of Wilhelm II, prompting Russia to feel isolated and eventually contributing to the formation of the European Entente. At that time, Europe was a gathering place of world powers, which alleviated Britain's predicament. When World War I broke out, the United States finally decided to enter the game, and a very important reason was that if Germany rose and controlled the European continent (excluding Russia), the United States would be excluded from the Old World and isolated in the Americas.
The international geopolitical landscape between World War I and World War II
The geographical advantage of the United States is that there are no strong powers in the north and south, and no countries in the east and west. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are indeed natural barriers for the United States, but they are also the reason why they cannot reach the Continents of Asia, Europe and Africa. Such a geographical location made the United States vulnerable to isolation, and eventually it really became the situation in which the United States did not interfere in affairs outside the Americas and focused on the Americas as expounded in the Monroe Doctrine.
The problem is that if Eurasia is controlled by a certain country or a country camp, the United States will inevitably be trapped in an "O" type encirclement, and its development will gradually be contained.
After the end of World War I, the Paris Peace Conference signed the Treaty of Versailles, and the veteran colonial powers of Britain and France showed no mercy to the defeated countries such as Germany and Soviet Russia, and tried their best to ensure their own interests and the stability of the colonial system. The Americans, however, threw out Wilsonism and were widely praised by the people of the defeated countries, Asian, African and Latin American countries, and colonies. Britain and France went along with the flow, cloaked in the moral cloak of the "Fourteen-Point Principle", but what came out was the harsh punishment of the defeated countries. In the end, the U.S. Congress did not ratify the treaty, and the rest of the world was disappointed by the Paris Peace Conference, and even the people in Britain and France were full of guilt.
After World War I, the United States and the Soviet Union rose rapidly. Against this backdrop, Germany's geopolitical environment has improved considerably. If Britain and France can gain Germany's support, they will not be afraid of the United States and the Soviet Union; if the Soviet Union has Germany's support, it will not be afraid of Britain and France; if the United States can get Germany's support, it can blossom in Europe without fear of Britain, France and the Soviet Union. Germany was so sought-after, but France was still very jealous, and had joined forces with Belgium to send troops to the German Ruhr area, intending to turn the Ruhr industrial area and the Rhine area into permanent enclaves for the Entente. Germany retreated into the future, forcing Britain to intervene, and the Ruhr crisis was resolved. Since then, Germany's geostrategic space has suddenly increased, and only military and economic problems need to be solved.
The legendary German foreign minister Streizermann first broke down the barriers of the national concept and cooperated with the Soviet Union, which even used its own territory to train the German army. He then worked with the United States to obtain a large number of superior loans with the support of the United States, and the restrictions on World War I reparations were gradually relaxed. The United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union competed to flatter Germany, and Germany just happened to be right and left, borrowing strength to fight. Eventually, with the help of the Soviet Union, Germany's military scale was rebuilt, and the two countries had a lot of common interests in Britain, France, and Poland (Poland frequently provoked the Soviet Union and Germany in the early days of World War I); with the help of the United States, the German economy re-emerged.
The international geopolitical landscape during World War II
From the beginning of the Monroe Doctrine, the United States has always used the sea power shield of the British Empire to develop without interference from the European powers and launch a westward expansion movement. After the end of the land westward expansion in the second half of the 19th century, the United States took control of Hawaii after excluding Japan in 1893, beginning the process of the westward expansion of the sea. When the Treaty of Maguan was signed in 1895, Japan gained access to the south through control of the island of Taiwan, but was blocked by Guam and the Philippines, which the United States occupied in the Spanish-American War of 1898. The Pacific Ocean, long neglected by Britain (mainly too far away and lacking in profitable interests), became the strategic direction of the United States, and it faced only one major competitor, Japan.
In World War I, Japan took advantage of the geopolitical gap in the Asia-Pacific region to frantically grab a large number of benefits on the basis of its victory in the Russo-Japanese War, and its naval standards had surpassed that of Britain. What the United States needed to consider at that time was that although its industrial production value was already the largest in the world, it was too far from Eurasia (it was the only great power that was not on The Eurasian continent) and was always at risk of isolation. In fact, whether Britain, France, Germany, or the Soviet Union become hegemons, the United States will have no chance. The problem is that the Soviet Union and Germany are rising countries, Britain and France are declining countries, and it is natural to cooperate with Germany when the war has not yet occurred, but once the war breaks out, it needs to be judged according to the situation on the battlefield.
In the end, the stock market crisis triggered the Great Depression in the capitalist countries, the advantages of the Soviet Union were more obvious, the United States had a strong foundation, and Germany and Britain and France, which relied on the development of American capital, suffered the most severe impact, of which Germany suffered the most severe impact. Under the social unrest, Germany, shrouded in radical national sentiment, repeated the mistakes of the pre-World War I era and once again fell into the quagmire of narrow German thinking. Germany was united in 1871, and as a modern state, it is too young to have a deep diplomatic and internal background.
At this time, Britain was also in a pre-World War I crisis, the Soviet Union was at odds with itself, Japan was encroaching on its sphere of influence in the Far East, Germany was eager for revenge, and the United States was waiting for an opportunity to replace its hegemony. Looking around, it seemed that only the more declining France was its ally. The British decided, in any case, to avoid being drawn into the conflict first, and the policy of appeasement and fortification began.
The French did not trust the British wholeheartedly after the Ruhr Crisis, and they built the exquisite Maginot Line, but stationed some scattered fortifications and personnel deployments in Belgium, and forced the British to assist in the defense. Of course, belgium itself and geographical conditions, but more importantly, this forced Britain, which had long attached importance to the Low Countries, to be tied together by France. In World War I and World War II, when Germany had to attack the Low Countries to bypass the Franco-German border, Britain was always drawn into the war.
On the other hand, Britain and France jointly betrayed the interests of Czech Snophak, and the last step in bringing misfortune to the East and promoting the Soviet-German conflict should be to smash Poland, a buffer country between the Soviet Union and Germany, but after Hitler dismembered Czech Snolvak, the public opinion in Britain and France was surging, Chamberlain resigned, Churchill came to power, and ensured that the voices of Poland, Romania and Greece had the upper hand. The Soviet Union and Italy completely fell to the german side, a huge Soviet-German land power alliance loomed, and the United States had to compromise with Japan in order to seek the establishment of an Anglo-French-American-Japanese maritime alliance.
At this time, on the one hand, the British were in trouble in Europe, and when the Soviets and Germans attacked Poland, there was a sit-in war; on the other hand, they built a Singapore fortress with the intention of isolating Japanese power east of the Strait of Malacca and allowing the United States and Japan to fight a big fight. The problem was that Britain underestimated the speed of maneuvering of German armored forces after the internal combustion engine revolution, the German army blitzed northern Europe and Western European countries, and Britain had only a few data points left in Europe; Britain also underestimated japan's naval and army strength, the Singapore fortress fell, and the British army retreated to India, turning to the Bay of Bengal as a geopolitical border. At this time, France was defeated, Japan attacked, Britain was completely isolated in Eurasia, the United States was considering whether to aid Britain, and the Atlantic Charter in August 1941 determined to assist Britain.
After the September 18 Incident, the Soviet Union maintained negotiations with Japan on the one hand, and on the other hand, it vigorously aided China to contain Japan, and finally Japan ventured northward, but after the Battle of Nomonhan, it snuffed out the idea of going north, which was one of the factors that Japan refused to join the US maritime alliance. The Soviet-German joint attack on Poland's shock to Japan made it think that it was joining a profitable chariot, but it did not know that a new change was brewing. The U.S. military, led by Marshall, believed that the British Empire was weakening day by day and that limited resources should be placed on building the Atlantic fortress. However, Roosevelt was determined to aid Britain, intending to use Britain as a grip to divide the Soviet Union.
The Americans understood that they had to enter the situation at this time, because if Britain was defeated, the United States would be kept out of the Atlantic, and aid to Britain would only need to overcome the shallow English Channel. Eventually, when the Soviet-German negotiations reached a stalemate in Berlin, Churchill, who had been informed of the intelligence, decided to bomb Berlin with an air force that could only freely enter and leave The Continent. Stalin continued to raise the asking price, but angered Hitler, who already looked down on the Slavs, and he decided to turn to the Soviet Union.
Germany believed that the Soviet Union's long alliance negotiations with it were an important reason for Britain's reluctance to compromise, and the Barbarossa Plan began. After the outbreak of the Soviet-German war, Britain breathed a sigh of relief, the United States did not need to continue to promote the reconciliation between the United States and Japan, and the economic sanctions against Japan increased step by step. Misjudging the power of the Soviet Union and Japan, the Americans vigorously aided the Soviet Union in containing Germany, but ignored Japan's strength. At this time, Japan decided to preemptively attack Pearl Harbor, the base of the US Pacific Fleet, and the Pacific War broke out.
The outbreak of the Pacific War gave both Stalin and Churchill a sigh of relief, and the last player to play leisurely outside the chessboard was swept in. The United States stepped up its assistance to China's anti-Japanese cause, but the Soviet Union shifted its main energy to Europe. After germany cut the Soviet Union, it was found that although the purge campaign had a great impact on the Soviet army, it restored the basic structure with strong mobilization ability and resource base, and the resistance intensity was increasing, which meant that Germany's defeat was decided.
The struggle between the United States, the Soviet Union, and britain for dominance of the post-war order in the late second world war
Just as Germany underestimated the Soviet Union, Japan underestimated the United States. When the Soviets and Germans attacked Poland in 1939, the U.S. Army had only a hundred thousand troops, which was naturally scorned by Germany; but at this time, the U.S. Navy was no less than the Japanese Navy, but it was still ignored by the Japanese military. After the outbreak of the Pacific War, some clear-eyed people on the Japanese side had already seen the potential of the United States for war, and Japan's defeat was decided. However, many people on the Japanese side hoped to mediate with the Soviet Union, which was still in a peaceful state, but did not know that the defeat on the battlefield had turned themselves into chips in the great power game.
Stalin was angry about the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, but on the eve of World War II, he quietly received Japanese diplomats. At that time, it was the honeymoon period between the Soviet Union and Germany, and it was not contradictory to win Japan in holding the United States back and assisting China to counter Japan. However, times changed, and by the end of World War II, the situation changed dramatically. Churchill's reluctance to assist in the Anti-Japanese campaign in Burma and the opening of a second european battlefield prematurely was to further deplete the soviet, American, and Japanese forces and pave the way for Britain's leadership in the post-war order. Roosevelt and Stalin were not idle people, and they knew exactly who their next opponent would be after the fall of the Axis powers.
Jointly dismembering the world hegemon, Britain, is a tacit agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union during World War II. At this time, the United States once again misjudged Japan's strength, mistakenly believing that the Japanese army could still maintain the combat effectiveness of Guadalcanal and was considering reducing its own war losses, Roosevelt decided to sell China at the Yalta Conference in exchange for the Soviet Union to fight against Japan. At that time, the United States was already at the end of the development of nuclear bomb weapons, and it was increasingly eager to end the war. The United States and the Soviet Union jointly rejected Churchill's plan to open a second battlefield in southern Europe, and the Soviets knew that this was a British delaying tactic, and the Americans knew that this was a plan to deplete their forces in the mountains of southern Europe. Although the Allies were able to penetrate deeper into parts of southern Europe due to Italy's anti-water reaction, the second front was opened from France.
On the eve of the end of World War II, atomic bombs exploded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
When the war ended, the U.S. military occupied Western Europe and Japan, and in order to prevent another situation of isolation, it changed its previous isolationist policy and began to station troops for a long time to prevent the possibility of being out of reach.
The Soviet army also occupied Eastern Europe, intending to take advantage of the convenience of geographical location to take advantage of the next round of US-Soviet hegemony. However, the problem is the emergence of nuclear bombs, which led to the maintenance of the Cold War under the nuclear balance of power. The Cold War was a contest of economic heritage, and this was precisely the strength of the United States, which was incomparable to the Soviet Union, which mainly relied on the wartime military industry. In order to prevent the resurgence of the old hegemon, even if Churchill changed his position and advocated the concept of the Iron Curtain on the side of the United States, the United States still chose to join forces with the Soviets to continue to contain Britain and France. In the Suez Canal War, Britain, France and Israel were overwhelmed by the United States and the Soviet Union, and Britain relied on "special relations" to follow the United States.