Secret Stories of World War II

Author: Li Hongtu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: On February 28, 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed, officially ending the First World War. However, even before the ink was dry on the Treaty of Versailles, leaders of some countries began preparing to launch a Second World War. Just a few months after the Treaty of Versailles was signed, the flamboyant Italian politician Benito Mussolini established the anti-democratic Fascist Party, with members wearing black shirts, and two years later, he seized control of the then-weak government. Mussolini sought to expand the Italian Empire and revive the glory of the ancient Roman Empire, beginning to build a modern army, navy, and air force. The Treaty of Versailles limited Germany to an army of 100,000 civilian volunteers and prohibited the possession of aircraft and artillery. In 1921, these restrictions were cleverly circumvented. The members of the army were not civilian volunteers but rather the elite wartime officer corps. The Soviet Union signed a secret agreement with Germany, supplying tanks, aircraft, artillery, shells, and even poison gas. In the late 1920s, Japan saw the military clique take control of the country, drafting the Tanaka Memorial—an ambitious plan to conquer the Pacific and eventually invade the United States. Throughout the entire 1930s and the six years of the Second World War, global powers gained military, political, economic, and psychological advantages through numerous covert operations. These covert operations played a decisive role in the war, though only a portion of them took place on the battlefield. These covert operations included spies, informants, propagandists, traitors, stealing blueprints, bribery, traps, codebreaking, and plots to kidnap or assassinate prominent figures. Hollywood filmmakers would dismiss most of these covert activities as unbelievable—they did indeed occur and influenced the outcome of the Second World War. Based on extensive research, the author has arranged the materials in chronological order, recreating those fascinating and unpredictable events in the book.