History UsefulNotes / WorldWarII

** In his "Asimov's Chronology of the World", Creator/IsaacAsimov even cites this exact trope (though well before TVTropes existed) by ending the book in 1945, saying that the post-Hiroshima world was so vastly different as to almost be a separate history of its own.

It was the most intensive and extensive war in history, with more than 100 million people serving in military units. In a state of "total war", the major participants eventually placed their entire financial, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, thereby erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. This included the enslavement of enemy POW and civilians as manual labourers, or coerced 'recruitment' as police and soldiers, by the Axis powers. The European Axis powers also perpetrated a number of genocides to maximise their economic performance and national security during the war. These programmes of enslavement and genocide are considered part of UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust, which was integral to the War Aims of the European Axis. Had they been victorious, these programmes would have been expanded considerably.

* NothingIsTheSameAnymore: The entire contemporary world is forged in the aftermath of the Second World War. No facet of modern life, social mores, culture, science and general worldview was left untouched. The Allied Powers created several institutions such as the United Nations, NATO, the World Bank, as well as start an ongoing debate about nuclear weapons (that is still ongoing) and human rights abuses and government measures to curtail the same.

* StukaScream: TropeMaker, TropeNamer, and TropeCodifier. Some versions of the German Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber were fitted with ''Jericho-Trompete'' sirens, which would make [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObJV_PITRjA a distinctive screaming sound]] to intimidate the targets of their attacks. American SBD Dauntless dive bombers had holes in their dive flaps that had a similar effect, the sound being described as a banshee wail. [=F4U=] Corsairs also achieved this as a result of high-speed air being forced through the oil coolers in the leading edge of the wings, famously leading to the aircraft being dubbed "Whistling Death",[[note]]supposedly by the Japanese, though there's little evidence to support it was anything other than propaganda[[/note]] and P-51 Mustangs from the supercharger intake, though in these two cases it was much more limited and dependent on which direction the aircraft was traveling in relation to the listener.
** The Jericho Trumpet was removed from later models of the Stuka, as the Germans quickly came to the conclusion that equipping a bomber with its own air raid siren to warn the enemy was [[AwesomeButImpractical counter-productive.]] Not to mention that the sirens caused a fair bit of drag and the ''lack'' of siren prior to being bombed ended up being a nasty surprise.

* CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys: The TropeMaker in the English speaking world's consciousness. The truth is a lot more complex and nuanced. Very few people (like General UsefulNotes/CharlesDeGaulle) saw the point in fighting on once France had 'already lost' the Battle Of France - Marshall Pétain's coup had a lot of popular support - and they saw no hope of Germany ever being defeated. But as the war went increasingly sour for Germany (Stalingrad, Donbass, North Africa, Kursk, central Ukraine) [[LaResistance resistance groups]] were founded with the aid of existing organisations such as the French Communist Party. By Mid-1944 they were ready to welcome the Allies' return with some of the best espionage work the world has ever seen. The Free French Forces also contributed several thousand combat troops to battles such as Bir Hakeim, Monte Cassino and Ouistreham (on Operation Overlord's D-Day), and once France was liberated they formed an army several hundred thousand strong to take over support roles and free up Anglo-American troops for the front lines (by taking charge of besieging the last German pockets on the Atlantic coast, for instance).

The war was also marked by the large-scale aerial bombardment of civilian populations and the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, and resulted in some 50 to 70 million dead (some higher estimates go to a nice round 100 million by counting the unborn... or just by simple, and usually not deliberate, miscounting[[note]]One infamous error made by someone compiling figures for military dead, missing, and wounded in the Soviet-German War/Ostfront was made by someone missing a zero, thereby claiming that a Soviet force lost more troops in a single operation/campaign ''than there were in the entire Red Army''. Someone else also arrived at an infamous estimate of 40+ million Soviet dead (versus a usual estimate of no more than 28 million) during the war by effectively miscounting 'wounded' soldiers as 'dead' soldiers (no more than 20-30% of 'wounded' soldiers died at any point; this guy assumed that it was considerably more than that) and failing to account for the Poles ethnically cleansed (forcibly evicted) from the western USSR in the immediate post-war period. Although the USSR was supposedly his specialty, he also put the Chinese deaths at 30-40 million (versus a usual estimate of no more than c.10-20 million) by choosing the highest possible estimate of war-dead and attributing the c.10 million dead of the later Chinese Civil War and post-war CCP purges (1946-50) to the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45). This is how he managed to arrive at a figure of 100 million dead, even though there's really no way it could've been more than 70. [[/note]]) -- making this war the deadliest and costliest conflict in human history. By such a huge margin, in fact, that even eighty years later it's still often referred to simply as "the War", despite being far from being the only conflict in history or the most recent.

The war was also marked by the large-scale aerial bombardment of civilian populations and the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, and resulted in some 50 to 70 million dead (some higher estimates go to a nice round 100 million by counting the unborn... or just by simple, and usually not deliberate, miscounting[[note]]One infamous error made by someone compiling figures for military dead, missing, and wounded in the Soviet-German War/Ostfront was made by someone missing a zero, thereby claiming that a Soviet force lost more troops in a single operation/campaign ''than there were in the entire Red Army''. Someone else also arrived at an infamous estimate of 40+ million Soviet dead (versus a usual estimate of no more than 28 million) during the war by effectively miscounting 'wounded' soldiers as 'dead' soldiers (no more than 20-30% of 'wounded' soldiers died at any point; this guy assumed that it was considerably more than that) and failing to account for the Poles ethnically cleansed (forcibly evicted) from the western USSR in the immediate post-war period. Although the USSR was supposedly his specialty, he also put the Chinese deaths at 30-40 million (versus a usual estimate of no more than c.10-20 million) by choosing the highest possible estimate of war-dead and attributing the c.10 million dead of the later Chinese Civil War and post-war CCP purges (1946-50) to the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45). This is how he managed to arrive at a figure of 100 million dead, even though there's really no way it could've been more than 70. [[/note]]) - making this war the deadliest and costliest conflict in human history.

** An inverse trope might well be 'Nazis Fight Alone'. The only Axis troops ever seen in most media are the Germans - the Italians very rarely make an appearance (aside from North Africa, and even then they still usually give way for more Germans), and the Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians, Bulgarians, Finns, and various SS volunteer units like the Northland (Scandinavians), Charlemagne (French), and Blue (Spanish) divisions are almost entirely absent. [[TheQuisling Quisling]] logistics troops including the Hiwis (Soviet citizens who served the ''Heer''), are also never seen. Even the Japanese get the short end of the stick, as it's incredibly rare to see a work that focuses on the Pacific front, and even more so to see one that doesn't do so at the exclusion of the European theater.

** When betraying and attacking UsefulNotes/JosefStalin's [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Soviet Union]], Adolf Hitler thought it would crumble in a matter of weeks or a few months. While it had been weakened by the successive paranoid purges of Stalin and horrors like UsefulNotes/TheHolodomor the decade prior and had to endure horrific human losses throughout the war and losses of large swathes of land in the second half of 1941 including the "bread basket" of UsefulNotes/{{Ukraine}}, the Soviet Union stood still, grounded the Axis forces in attrition and gradually outnumbered and out-produced them (along with a fair chunk of Lend-Lease), pushing them back all the way to Berlin and UsefulNotes/CentralEurope.

* AwakeningTheSleepingGiant: The TropeNamer. The USA was nominally neutral at the beginning of the war, although its trade embargo against Japan and its lend-lease policy with the British and quiet participation protecting British shipping from German U-Boat attacks on its side of the Atlantic was annoying the Axis powers. However, the Axis powers, despite warnings from IgnoredExpert authorities like Admiral Yamamoto, eventually went out of their way to provoke the United States into joining the fight. The result was that a country with a large population and a massive industrial base that was completely beyond the reach of any military attack (except for its shipping), and with an underestimated will to win at almost any cost, was now on the same side as Britain and the USSR. The night Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he went to bed with a deep sense of relief, because he knew that at long last America was going to join the war and that allied victory, although it might take a long time, was nevertheless inevitable.

* UsefulNotes/TheHomeFront
* UsefulNotes/HomeFrontUSA

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%% Only list tropes originating from or named by the people, events and organizations of [=WW2=].

* AdolfHitlarious: This was how the Allied media portrayed Hitler at the time. The revelation of UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust [[UnderStatement kind of]] [[FunnyAneurysmMoment put an end to it.]] It's gotten a resurgence in recent years, particularly by people like Creator/MelBrooks who want to make Hitler seem so absurd that his ideas will never be taken seriously again.

[[caption-width-right:320:Humanity's best and worst were displayed for all the world to see.[[note]]Clockwise from top-right: A Nazi parade, US troops in a LCVP landing craft on the 'D-day' (initiation of mass-combat) of ''Operation Overlord'', the flag of the Soviet Union is raised over the German ''Reichstag'' (this is the second, staged, photo), the 'mushroom cloud' immediately following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, US Navy Air Force Douglas SBD Dauntless bombers flying over a Pacific atoll, and Imperial Japanese sailors at attention[[/note]]]]

** In his book of world history, Creator/IsaacAsimov even cites this exact trope (though well before TVTropes existed) by ending the book in 1945, saying that the post-Hiroshima world was so vastly different as to almost be a separate history of its own.

** An inverse trope might well be 'Nazis Fight Alone'. The only Axis troops ever seen in most media are the Germans - the Italians very rarely make an appearance (aside from North Africa, and even then they still usually give way for more Germans), and the Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians, Bulgarians, Finns, and various SS volunteer units like the Northland (Scandinavians), Charlemagne (French), and Blue (Spanish) divisions are almost entirely absent. Quisling logistics troops including the Hiwis (Soviet citizens who served the ''Heer''), are also never seen. Even the Japanese get the short end of the stick, as it's incredibly rare to see a work that focuses on the Pacific front, and even more so to see one that doesn't do so at the exclusion of the European theater.

!! Impacts of the [=WW2=] on pop culture:

* Returning American servicemen from the Pacific War bring home a fascination with UsefulNotes/{{Hawaii}} and the Polynesian culture (aka [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiki_culture "Tiki culture"]]), thus igniting the CyclicNationalFascination of the late '40s to well into the '60s.

World War II, or the Second World War (often abbreviated as WWII or [=WW2=]), was a global war fought from 1939[[note]]Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland is generally accepted as the start date of World War II, though several other conflicts that would be incorporated into the larger international conflict were already underway--the largest of which was the UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar, which "officially" started in 1937 but had been ongoing in some form since 1931. Many citizens of Russia/the old Soviet Union and the United States also generally consider 1941 to be the start date, June 22nd for the former at the start of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Russia, and December 7th for the latter following the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, when Germany and Japan both declared war on the US[[/note]] to 1945. It involved 62 out of the 73 existent/independent states at that time, which eventually formed two loose, opposing military alliances: the Allies or Allied powers (China, France, the UK, the USA, the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn USSR]] among others) against the Axis powers (UsefulNotes/NaziGermany, UsefulNotes/FascistItaly, UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan and various smaller countries allied to them).

World War II is most commonly described as having been fought in two main theaters of war.[[note]]There were also relatively minor skirmishes, bombings or other actions in other portions of the world such as in the Arctic, North America, Middle East and the South Atlantic, but essentially they were the most extreme geographic outliers of the two main theaters.[[/note]] The European Theater was the conflict between the Allied Powers against Germany, Italy and their European allies. This conflict was fought not only in Europe, but also in the Atlantic Ocean and North Africa. The conflict began with the invasion of Poland in September of 1939 and ended in May 1945 with the fall of UsefulNotes/{{Berlin}}. The Pacific Theater was the conflict fought between the Allies and Imperial Japan in the Pacific Ocean and Asia, which also included some action in the Indian Ocean. This conflict was born out of the UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar which started when the Japanese Empire invaded China in July 1937. This war became part of the 'world war' proper when Japan attacked Allied and American territories in December 1941.

The war was also marked by the large-scale aerial bombardment of civilian populations and the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, and resulted in some 50 to 70 million dead (some higher estimates go to a nice round 100 million by counting the unborn... or just by simple, and usually not deliberate, miscounting[[note]]One infamous error made by someone compiling figures for military dead, missing, and wounded in the Soviet-German War/Ostfront was made by someone missing a zero, thereby claiming that a Soviet force lost more troops in a single operation/campaign ''than there were in the entire Red Army''. Someone else also arrived at an infamous estimate of 40+ million Soviet dead (versus a usual estimate of no more than 28 million) during the war by effectively mis-counting 'wounded' soldiers as 'dead' soldiers (no more than 20-30% of 'wounded' soldiers died at any point; this guy assumed that it was considerably more than that) and failing to account for the Poles ethnically cleansed (forcibly evicted) from the western USSR in the immediate post-war period. Although the USSR was supposedly his specialty, he also put Chinese dead at 30-40 million (versus a usual estimate of no more than c.10-20 million) by choosing the highest possible estimate of war-dead and attributing the c.10 million dead of the later Chinese Civil War and post-war CCP purges (1946-50) to the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45). This is how he managed to arrive at a figure of 100 million dead, even though there's really no way it could've been more than 70. [[/note]]) - making this war the deadliest and costliest conflict in human history.

* WartimeCartoon: Every major cartoon-producing studio in Hollywood produced propaganda cartoons with various aims (supporting the war effort, vilifying the enemy and so forth). Other nation such as Germany, Japan and USSR also produced propaganda cartoons.

** An inverse trope might well be 'Nazis Fight Alone'. The only Axis troops ever seen in most media are the Germans - the Italians very rarely make an appearance (aside from North Africa, and even then they still usually give way for more Germans), and the Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians, Bulgarians, Finns, and various SS volunteer units like the Northland (Scandinavians), Charlemagne (French), and Blue (Spanish) divisions are almost entirely absent. Quisling logistics troops including the Hiwis (Soviet citizens who served the ''Heer''), are also never seen. Even the Japanese get the short end of the stick, as it's incredibly rare to see a work that focuses on the Pacific front, and even moreso to see such a game that doesn't do so at the exclusion of the European theater.

World War II, or the Second World War (often abbreviated as WWII or [=WW2=] or The End of The End of the War to End all Wars), was a global war fought from 1939[[note]]Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland is generally accepted as the start date of World War II, though several other conflicts that would be incorporated into the larger international conflict were already underway--the largest of which was the UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar, which "officially" started in 1937 but had been ongoing in some form since 1931. Many citizens of Russia/the old Soviet Union and the United States also generally consider 1941 to be the start date, June 22nd for the former at the start of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Russia, and December 7th for the latter following the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, when Germany and Japan both declared war on the US[[/note]] to 1945. It involved 62 out of the 73 existent/independent states at that time, which eventually formed two loose, opposing military alliances: the Allies or Allied powers (China, France, the UK, the USA, the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn USSR]] among others) against the Axis powers (UsefulNotes/NaziGermany, UsefulNotes/FascistItaly, UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan and various smaller countries allied to them).

The war was also marked by the large-scale aerial bombardment of civilian populations and the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, and resulted in some 50 to 70 million dead (some higher estimates go to a nice round 100 million by counting the unborn... or just by simple, and usually not deliberate, miscounting[[note]] One infamous error made by someone compiling figures for military dead, missing, and wounded in the Soviet-German War/Ostfront was made by someone missing a zero, thereby claiming that a Soviet force lost more troops in a single operation/campaign ''than there were in the entire Red Army''. Someone else also arrived at an infamous estimate of 40+ million Soviet dead (versus a usual estimate of no more than 28 million) during the war by effectively mis-counting 'wounded' soldiers as 'dead' soldiers (no more than 20-30% of 'wounded' soldiers died at any point; this guy assumed that it was considerably more than that) and failing to account for the Poles ethnically cleansed (forcibly evicted) from the western USSR in the immediate post-war period. Although the USSR was supposedly his specialty, he also put Chinese dead at 30-40 million (versus a usual estimate of no more than c.10-20 million) by choosing the highest possible estimate of war-dead and attributing the c.10 million dead of the later Chinese Civil War and post-war CCP purges (1946-50) to the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45). This is how he managed to arrive at a figure of 100 million dead, even though there's really no way it could've been more than 70. [[/note]]) - making this war the deadliest and costliest conflict in human history.

World War II, or the Second World War (often abbreviated as WWII or [=WW2=] or The End of The End of the War to End all Wars), was a global war fought from 1939[[note]]Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland is generally accepted as the start date of World War II, though several other conflicts that would be incorporated into the larger international conflict were already underway--the largest of which was the UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar, which "officially" started in 1937 but had been ongoing in some form since 1931. Many citizens of Russia/the old Soviet Union and the United States also generally consider 1941 to be the start date, June 22nd for the former at the start of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Russia, and December 7th for the latter following the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, when Germany and Japan both declared war on the US[[/note]] to 1945. It involved 62 out of the 73 existent/independent states at that time, which eventually formed two loose, opposing military alliances: the Allies or Allied powers (China, France, the UK, the USA, the USSR among others) against the Axis powers (UsefulNotes/NaziGermany, UsefulNotes/FascistItaly, UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan and various smaller countries allied to them).

It was the most intensive and extensive war in history, with more than 100 million people serving in military units. In a state of "total war", the major participants eventually placed their entire financial, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, thereby erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. This included the enslavement of enemy POW and civilians as manual labourers, or coerced 'recruitment' as police and soldiers, by the Axis powers. The European Axis powers also perpetrated a number of genocides to maximise their economic performance and national security during the war. These programmes of enslavement and genocide are considered part of the UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust, which was integral to the War Aims of the European Axis. Had they been victorious, these programmes would have been expanded considerably.

World War II, or the Second World War (often abbreviated as WWII or [=WW2=] or The End of The End of the War to End all Wars), was a global war fought from 1939[[note]]Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland is generally accepted as the start date of World War II, though several other conflicts that would be incorporated into the larger international conflict were already underway--the largest of which being the UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar, which "officially" started in 1937 but had been ongoing in some form since 1931. Many citizens of Russia/the old Soviet Union and the United States also generally consider 1941 to be the start date, June 22nd for the former at the start of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Russia, and December 7th for the latter following the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, when Germany and Japan both declared war on the US[[/note]] to 1945. It involved 62 out of the 73 existent/independent states at that time, which eventually formed two loose, opposing military alliances: the Allies or Allied powers (China, France, the UK, the USA, the USSR among others) against the Axis powers (UsefulNotes/NaziGermany, UsefulNotes/FascistItaly, UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan and various smaller countries allied to them).

* FinalSolution: [[TropeNamers Trope Namer]] and TropeCodifier. Nazis referred to ''die Endlösung der Judenfrage'', "the Final Solution to the Jewish Question." It should be noted the image most people gained from the popular media (crematoria, burning pits, gas chambers, fierce guards with dogs, [[MadDoctor experiments on people]] and so on) comes from the final phase of UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust, the extermination of Hungarian and Transylvanian Jews, [[NightmareFuel when the death industry finally broke down overloaded with dead bodies]]. This is the plain reason [[Film/SchindlersList for which we have survivors to tell the tales]], because at that moment there were people to escape or survive. Previous campaigns of mass murder (euthanasia of the mentally disabled, extermination of the Soviet prisoners, extermination of Jews in Operation Reinhard camps in Poland) were so efficient they barely left any survivors.

World War II, or the Second World War (often abbreviated as WWII or [=WW2=] or The End of The End of the War to End all Wars), was a global war fought from 1939[[note]]Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland is generally accepted as the start date of World War II, though several other conflicts that would be incorporated into the larger international conflict were already underway--the largest of which being the UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar. Many citizens of Russia/the old Soviet Union and the United States also generally consider 1941 to be the start date, June 22nd for the former at the start of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Russia, and December 7th for the latter following the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, when Germany and Japan both declared war on the US[[/note]] to 1945. It involved 62 out of the 73 existent/independent states at that time, which eventually formed two loose, opposing military alliances: the Allies or Allied powers (China, France, the UK, the USA, the USSR among others) against the Axis powers (UsefulNotes/NaziGermany, UsefulNotes/FascistItaly, UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan and various smaller countries allied to them).

World War II, or the Second World War (often abbreviated as WWII or [=WW2=] or The End of The End of the War to End all Wars), was a global war fought from 1939[[note]]Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland is generally accepted as the start date of World War II, though several other conflicts that would be incorporated into the larger international conflict were already underway. Many citizens of Russia/the old Soviet Union and the United States also generally consider 1941 to be the start date, June 22nd for the former at the start of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Russia, and December 7th for the latter following the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, when Germany and Japan both declared war on the US[[/note]] to 1945. It involved 62 out of the 73 existent/independent states at that time, which eventually formed two loose, opposing military alliances: the Allies or Allied powers (China, France, the UK, the USA, the USSR among others) against the Axis powers (UsefulNotes/NaziGermany, UsefulNotes/FascistItaly, UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan and various smaller countries allied to them).

* StupidJetpackHitler: UsefulNotes/NaziGermany developed some advanced technologies that were ahead of their time, such as the first operational jet airplanes, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. German scientists also played a key role in the development of the US and Soviet ballistic missile and space programs after the war. But no jetpacks.