The Similarities and Differences of World War One and World War Two - Term Paper Example

Comparing and Contrasting the Effects of the First World War and the Second World War on the International System Comparing and contrasting the similarities and differences of World War One (WWI) and World War Two (WWII) on the international system basically wants to look at the similarities and differences that these two wars had on the international system. In effect, the paper would look at the combined similarities of the impact of the two wars, and then proceed to look at the differences independently. WWI was fought between 1914 and 1918, while WWII was fought between 1939 and 1945. Astonishingly, the combined effects of the two wars in changing the shape and trend of the international system has had no parallel since creation Cantor and Land (1985); Tuttle (1988); Goemans (2000); Karsmakers (2003) and ; the combined effects of the two wars changed the shape of the international system than all other recorded wars in history combined. Kvasnicka and Bethmann (2007) believe that posterity’s perfect understanding of the similar and combined effects of these wars can be enhanced by making a holistic view on the effects these wars had on migration, global population sex ratio and labor availability, and world order. Each of these perspectives would now be looked in context to see how the effects of the two wars were similar on them. Comparing the Effects WWI and WWII on the International System The comparison made here would centre on the similar effects that the two wars had on the international system. Migration In his book An Illustrated History of the First World War, Keegan (2001) maintains that the world’s population knew an unprecedented trend in location and relocation during WWI. This location and relocation was usually from one country to another or from one city/town to another. Such movement was usually to flee from danger from one part of the world to another part of the world where danger was not so imminent. According to Keegan, such movement was ever feasible because, although this war was termed a world war, it practically did not involve all the countries of the world per se. Infact, some authors like Keegan himself, Banks (2002); Gilbert (2004) have persistently held that the first world war was a European war, arguing that the US role in the war was more of an arbitration or mediating one. So some countries remained neutral and were favorable destinations for people to move from war-torn countries like Germany, Britain, France and Belgium. Meanwhile, contributions from authors on the Second World War pointing to the same issue of migration abound. Karsmakers (2003); Kvasnicka and Bethmann (2007) and Cantor and Land (1985) revealed that the bombings of the second world war made people to leave their homes to seek refuge elsewhere more that in a y recorded period in history. Such movement to flee from danger and seek refuge is consonant to the same scenario that was lived in the First World War. In view of the above, it can be seen that the international system knew a trend of migration for the periods 1914 to 1918 and 1939 to 1945 as people left their homes as refugees to flee bombings and other atrocities caused by the war. Global Population Sex Ratio and labor availability One of the most disastrous economic, social and demographic effects that were common to these wars was the decimation of the male population. As Kvasnicka and Bethmann (2007) put it, men were to provide the force and backup for war in each country, while the women stayed home to carry out duties like child upbringing. They argued that as each country lost soldiers in war fronts, the male to female ratio drastically reduced. One of the most severe impacts of this reduction in male to female ration was the fact that jobs hitherto undertaken by men were now occupied by women. Infact, in one study by Vari (1992), it was revealed that over 600,000 thousand Italians were killed in the First World War such that jobs like driving and other major production jobs in industries were occupied by women. While in Germany, Keegan (2001) informs, women undertook a variety of jobs previously held by men. They were now more widely employed in industrial jobs. He further argues that by 1918, 37.6 percent of the work force in the Krupp armaments firm in Germany was female. Elsewhere in England, the proportion of women works rose strikingly in public transport (for example, from 18,000 to 117,000 bus conductors), banking (9,500 to 63,700), and commerce (505,000 to 934,000). Many restrictions on women disappeared during the war. At the same time, literature from the Second World War (Karsmakers, 2003) suggests that the most visible impact of the war was on the reduction of the male to female ratio. For instance, in World War I and II led to a serious shortage of prime-aged men in Germany that caused women in their prime fertility years (20-40) to outnumber men in the same age bracket by a factor of 10 to 6 in the first post-war censuses. World Order According to historians, the most tremendous effects of the two wars were their impact on implementing a system of world order. At the end of the First World a system of world was implemented through the creation of the League of Nations. This world order began with the creation of the League of Nations as the brain child of the late US president Thomas Woodrow Wilson. The actions put in place by this system of world order now came to address other issues of the war like the economic, social, legal, geographical, technological impacts of the war. The addressing of these issues now shaped the international system to set u the various international communities we have today. For instance, the League of Nations oversaw the Permanent Court of International Justice and several other agencies and commissions created to deal with pressing international problems. These were the Disarmament Commission, the Health Organization, the International Labour Organization, the Mandates Commission, the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation, the Permanent Central Opium Board, the Commission for Refugees, and the Slavery Commission. However, the League of Nations failed to implement the world order and control it had been conceived for; and the world was once again plunged into another devastating war later to be described as the Second World War. The Second World War therefore appeared to pose a threat to human civilization. This gave the leeway for a renewal of President Thomas Woodrow Wilson’s vision of an international organization to keep the peace. Organizing efforts were begun even while the war was on. In June1945, therefore, 51 nations were represented at the founding conference in San Francisco. In October, 1945, the United Nations was officially established. Unlike the League of Nations, the UN had the full support and leadership of the United States. The Soviet Union (USSR) and all the most significant nations of the world were members. It can now be seen that the impact of this war on implementing a system of world order was the creation of the United Nations Organization (UNO). The UN basically came to revise the statutes of the League of Nations. Then, some more control organs were added to the UN as well major changes made in the appellation of these organs. For example, the arm of the UN concerned would addressing global issues on education, science and culture (UNESCO) was called the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation under the era of the League of Nations. Contrasting the Effects WWI and WWII on the International System While historians have written enormously on the related devastating effects that the two world wars had on the international system, they never failed to point out the differences that existed between the two. First of all, while historians have hardly agreed on the actual number of people who died separately in the two wars, they agreed that more people died in the Second World War than in the First World War (Cantor and Land (1985) , and there was also much difference in the manner in which people were killed. Therefore the Second World War decimated global population than the First World War did. Keegan (2001) provided evidence that nuclear proliferation in the world today came on the backdrop of the Second World War when the first nuclear (atomic) bomb was used by the US against Japan. It would be noted that two of these bombs were dropped over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the effects of these bombs were indelible for the survivors for over close to four decades. This was in great contrast to the First World War during which no nuclear weapons were used. Secondly, the Second World War opened the flood gates for advances in scientific research (Richard, 2000) as well as advances in information and communication technology. Such research was geared towards developing combat ammunitions like aircrafts, warships, guns, radar systems and other attacking and defensive devices. To support this claim, Keegan (2001) noted that it was during this period of the Second World War that scientists like Albert Einstein came to the lime light of scientific research and discoveries. For as far back as 1933 in the build up to the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Albert Einstein informed the then US president Franklin Roosevelt that an atomic bomb was possible. For example during the Second World War, advances in scientific research made the English to develop the radar which would be the forerunner of television. Progress in electronics and computers, made during the war, built a foundation for further development which fundamentally transformed the postwar world. As per the First World War, there was little precedence set interms of scientific research and discoveries. Thirdly, the First World War had a severe impact on the international system than the Second World War with respect to its effect on world governance. After the First World War socialistic ideas experienced a boom as they spread not only in Germany and Austria who had been accused of sparking the war, but also made advances in Britain (1923) and France (1924). However, the most popular type of government to gain influence after World War I was the republic. Before the war, Europe contained 19 monarchies and 3 republics, yet only a few years afterward, had 13 monarchies, 14 republics and 2 regencies. Evidently, revolution was in the air and people began to more ardently express their desires for a better way of life. The Second World War, on the other hand did not have a severe impact on the changing of the system of governance in various parts of the world.  On the whole, the effects of the Second World War have been seen to be far devastating in shaping the international economic, political and geographic landscape than the First World War. This can be seen in the specifics that follow on the countries that were directly involved in the war: for example, in the Second World War, Germany was totally defeated, and the Nazi regime brought down. For the first time, country leaders were tried for crimes against humanity at Nuremberg (Germany), the former site of Nazi propaganda triumphs. Hitler escaped trial and execution by committing suicide in his Berlin bunker at the end of the war as German cities were in ruins from a massive bombing campaign. In a related view, Germany was divided into 4 zones of occupation by the victorious powers, pending a more permanent political settlement. While this went one, Japan lay in complete ruins from repeated and extensive bombings while military leaders were tried and convicted of war crimes and Japan temporarily placed under US military rule. Around the time of the war, in Europe, England was a major world power but was devastated by the war, having experienced extensive bombing in 1940 from the aggressive Germans. Its economy then depended upon aid US and probably laid the groundwork for the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank which the US controls today. England rapidly phased out most of its remaining imperial holdings in the years immediately following the war. France had not experienced the enormous human losses sustained in the First World War. Like England, France would be obliged to dismantle its colonial empire in the years following the war. This was a particularly harrowing and drawn out process for the French, in Africa and in Vietnam where they fought catastrophic wars in an attempt to maintain their colonial control. In view of this, England and France no longer held a status of power comparable either to the United States or the Soviet Union. Under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, the Russians had suffered immeasurably during the war, and western Russia was devastated by the land warfare which was primarily on Russian territory. But, in the process of defeating the Germans, the Russians had built a large and powerful army, which occupied most of Eastern Europe at the end of the war. The great resources and population of Russia assured that the Soviet Union would be, along with the US, one of two super-powers. At the centre of this war, the US economy was greatly stimulated by the war, more than it did in the First World War. The depression in the country in the count down to the war was brought decisively to an end, and new industrial complexes were built all over the country. Practically, the US was spared of much physical destruction and this propelled it to dominate the world economy. And so, just after 4 years of military buildup, the U.S. had also become the leading military power. Since then, this position as world leader has remained more obvious than ever. On the heels of the second world war came the struggle for national independence of non-European countries, more than it was the case with thr first world war. This struggle was greatly enhanced and stimulated by the war following the weakness of the England and France. This was most visible in countries of Africa, where the great majority of countries there started craving for their independence. This came to set the path for an imminent collapse of the European empires in the 3 decades following the war. And then in 1944, almost to the end of the war, representatives of the major economic powers met to create an International Monetary Fund and to agree upon a regime of international tariff regulation known as GATT. There was a determination to avoid the mistakes of the interwar years which had triggered the Great Depression. So, the Second World War came to shape the international system such that the world community was thought to be entering a new era of international cooperation. Conclusion From the above findings, the simple lesson to be drawn is that these two wars came to change the course of history for good, then all recorded disasters combined. Ironically, these two wars were supposedly sparked off by the same country; Germany. Despite this, the role played by Germany on international politics and other issues is parallel only to that of the US. Such powers come only from its transformation at the end of the Second World War than at the end of the First World War. Among other issues, it can be said that the Second World War had a more telling impact on the international system than the First World War. Reference List Banks, A. (2002). A Military Atlas of the First World War. Pen and Sword, London. David Cantor, D and Land, K.C. (1985). Unemployment and Crime Rates in the Post-World War II United States: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis. American Sociological Review, Vol. 50, No. 3. Gilbert, M. (2002). The First World War: A Complete History. 2nd Edition. Holt Goemans, H.E. (2000).War and punishment: The Causes of war termination and the First World War. Princeton University Press. Hinton, J (2002). Women, Social Leadership, and the Second World War Continuities of Class Oxford: Oxford University Press. Karsmakers, Y. (2003). The Effects of the Bombings in World War Two in Literature and Society. A Comparison between Gert Ledig’s Vergeltung and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Kvasnicka, M. and Dirk Bethmann, D. (2007). World War II, Missing Men, and Out-of-wedlock Childbearing. University of. Richard, H. (2000). The First World War. Auflage, Routledge. Tuttle, W. (1988). Children in Wartime: The Second World War in the Lives of Americas Home-Front Children. American Sociological Association Annual Meeting. Vari, A. (1992). Strikes, Social Conflict and the First World War. An International Perspective. Auflage, Routledge. Read More