Worlds Blown Apart, 1937–1949

The years 1937–1949 were a pandemic of global violence with Hitler, Mussolini, Togo, and Stalin leading the way. Each had goals that drove them. Hitler wanted to build an Aryan empire using land that stretched from Germany to the Ural Mountains as Lebensraum; and he wanted to destroy the Jews and others from whom he took offense. Mussolini wanted power and an empire in northeast Africa. Though Togo was not a ruler like the others, all Japanese leaders wanted to defeat and humiliate China and become the East Asian superpower. Stalin wanted to eliminate his enemies and to initiate military successes that would make the Soviet Union a major nation and prove that communism was a viable foundation for a state. Hitler, Mussolini, and Togo lost their wars; Stalin was an ally after Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler’s most heinous legacy was the Holocaust.