Essay: “Were the destructive impacts of World War II balanced by more positive effects in world history?”

In this essay I will address the question “Were the destructive impacts of World War II balanced by more positive effects in world history?”. This question poses some serious moral and ethical issues: is jet propulsion worth 50 million deaths(Hause and Maltby 2005, p.770)? Is it even right to ask such a question? The answers to these questions are dependent upon the context in which they are viewed. From a humanities standpoint, no, the developments were for the most part not worth such destruction. Those that were worth it, such as decolonisation and the end of empire, would have occurred anyway. However, when viewed from an engineering/scientific angle, war does serve a purpose. It gives people a real thing to work towards and it speeds up advancement, probably by a factor of 10. It is quite feasible to say that the technology of today would not have existed for perhaps another 50 years. This essay will take the humanities standpoint.

Let us start with a brief outline of the destructive impacts. The loss of life is the most obvious with various estimates ranging from 50 million to 75 million dead. The Australian War Memorial lists 56,307,334 although this figure is only comprised of Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States. The bombings of cities like Dresden, Tokyo, London, Coventry and others led to tremendous loss of civilian life, as well as cultural value and did little, if anything, to military forces. These attacks were nothing more than attempts, often successful, at terrorising the civilian populace. The holocaust of course cannot go unmentioned: a hideous example of what mankind is capable of, an estimated 11 million killed, 6 million of whom were Jews, all in the name of racial purity (Hause and Maltby 2005, p.766).

Now a brief outline of the technological advancements made during or as a result of World War Two. These advancements were made by both the Axis powers and the Allies. Rocketry moved from a spectacle to a billion dollar industry and the back bone of the modern world. Computers stopped being mechanical adding machines with cogs and gears and became huge vacuum tube and capacitor filled rooms and then too, the microchip filled boxes of today. Jet propulsion was propelled from patents and proof of concept prototypes to the standard purveyor of flight. Nuclear fission has gone from pure theory to the basis of weapons of deterrence and an inefficient way to boil water. Radar evolved from massive ineffective detection systems to smaller, highly accurate detection systems that can pick up a plan from kilometres away.

The cultural plundering that went on during World War Two is sometimes overlooked. Artworks such as Caravaggio’s ‘Saint Matthew and the Angel’(Schmidt 1997 p.96), Peter Paul Rubens’ ‘The Death of Adonis’(Sailer 1997, p.90), Lorenzo di Credi’s ‘Madonna and Child with Angels’(Pruszyñski 1997 p.52) and others were stolen, “misplaced” or destroyed. Buildings of religion and learning were destroyed or mistreated, like the State Museum of History in Novgorod, Russia, which was used as a barracks after the German army captured the city (Shvidkoi 1997 p.70).

As was fleetingly mentioned in a previous paragraph, the holocaust is one of, if not the most, disturbing event in human history. It caused the deaths of an estimated 11 million people including, 1,500 Jehovah’s Witnesses, 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war(USHMM), 5,000 homosexuals, 200,000 gypsies and almost 6 million Jewish people, 1.5 million of whom were children(Hause and Maltby 2005, p.766). The death toll could have been higher if not for efforts by the likes of André Trocmé and Marie Benoît who saved 5,000 and 4,000 Jews, by hiding and helping them to escape respectively(Hause and Maltby 2005, p.767). The Allies refused to do so much as bomb the railroad tracks leading to Auschwitz, even though they bombed factories in the vicinity.

Technological advancements were not the only positives to come out of the hideousness of the Second World War; it brought an end to the depression and started the downfall of traditional empires. The United Nations was formed as a result of the League of Nations total inability to prevent World War Two. While the United Nations is largely powerless and ineffective, the programs it runs such as UNICEF(United Nations Children’s Fund) and WHO(World Health Organization) are beneficial and perform valuable tasks that help millions of people around the world.

When I started this essay, it was being written with an answer of ‘Yes the positives do outweigh the negatives’. However, as I went on researching the death toll and such, I found myself feeling ashamed at taking such an view. All the good things to come out of the war, such as ending the depression, the end of empire, the United Nations, and the technology, would have happened anyway. The League of Nations was failing, even before the war started and would have been replaced, if not by the United Nations, then by something similar. The economy would have strengthened, they tend to be go through cycles, and the seeds of independence had been sown and while it might have taken longer, colonial empires would have ended. The technology would have been invented, the war merely gave the scientists working on them something to strive for, and gave them field testing to see what was wrong. All these things would have happened without the Second World War, and they therefore, should not have cost such a hefty price.

BIBLIOGRAPY:

Secondary Sources:
Steven C. Hause and William S. Maltby, ‘Western Civilization: A history of European society’. Thomson Wadsworth, Belmont, CA, 2005.

Australian War Memorial website
Homepage: http://www.awm.gov.au/index.asp
Statistics: http://www.awm.gov.au/atwar/statistics/ww2.htm

Elizabeth Simpson, ‘The Spoils of War’. Harry N. Abrams inc, New York, 1997.
Contributors referenced:
Jan P. Pruszyñski, ‘Poland: The War Losses, Cultural Heritage, and Cultural Legitimacy p.49-52
Mikhail Shvidkoi, ‘Russian Cultural Losses During World War II’ p.67-71
Gerhard Sailer, ‘Austria’ p.88-91
Werner Schmidt, ‘The Loss of German Artistic Property as a Result of World War II’ p.95-98

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website
Homepage: http://www.ushmm.org/
Articles referenced:
Nazi Persecution of Soviet POWs
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007178

Jehovah’s Witnesses
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005394