A-Infos (en) France, Monde Libertaire - HISTORY PAGES No. 102: A World War (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

Two major syntheses revisit lesser-known aspects of the Second World 
War: the Asian front and the Soviet front. These comprehensive syntheses 
offer a history of the Second World War in Asia and the USSR from a 
grassroots perspective. These two regions bore the brunt of the war's 
violence. The total number of victims there exceeded 50 million, 
representing more than 80% of the total deaths during the conflict. The 
authors reconstruct the main military operations but give central 
importance to eyewitness accounts and, above all, demonstrate that this 
war was primarily a war against civilians. The war in Asia began in 
1937—or even in 1931 with Japan's invasion of Manchuria—and ended after 
the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

As in Nazi Germany, Japanese nationalists considered themselves superior 
to other Asian peoples. This sentiment was compounded by an imperial and 
anti-Western view that Europe had corrupted and impoverished the 
country. These factors legitimized the annexation of neighboring 
countries and, above all, authorized the massacre of civilian 
populations. The first example of these massacres was the destruction of 
Nanjing. It was accompanied by the murder of 30,000 to 60,000 Chinese 
soldiers and 30,000 civilian victims. The Japanese army also engaged in 
widespread wartime rape. These practices of rape and mass murder 
continued throughout the war. In 1945 in Manila, while the Japanese army 
was in retreat on all fronts, the last fighters in this pocket massacred 
nearly 1,000 people in a similar manner. Simultaneously, the Japanese 
reduced first the captured Chinese to a state of near-slavery, and then 
the entire population of the continent, including the Indonesians, who 
were subjected to the same treatment. Thus, Margolin lists the 
systematic methods of looting, plundering, and mass murder practiced by 
the army. A welcome synthesis of the often-forgotten violence of this 
part of the world. The chapter on Hiroshima and Nagasaki can be extended 
by two works that highlight the reversal of violence.

The first is Keiji Nakazawa's manga, Barefoot Gen. It recounts the lives 
of the city's inhabitants after August 6, 1944. Literally, Gen is a 
contraction of several terms meaning symbol, chemical, vitality, and 
courage. The protagonist lost most of his family in the bombing. His 
pacifist father, ostracized by Japanese society, dies, as do his brother 
and sister. The work analyzes the long process of reconstruction in a 
society still dominated by nationalism, violence, and racism. Thus, 
Koreans are seen as inferior beings. The protagonist, as a 
counter-example, dreams of a different Japan; Gen and his brother choose 
life and friendship. Keiji Nakazawa also discusses the American presence 
in the archipelago.

While the geopolitical dimensions of the American presence in Japan 
after 1945 are evident, Michael Lucken demonstrates that it cannot be 
reduced to this perspective alone. There was a pragmatic vision. The 
primary objective was to re-educate the Japanese, not in the way the 
Soviets might have done by establishing a dictatorship, but to instill 
in them the fundamentals of freedom and equality through national 
reform. While the early years were marked by an educational focus, a 
conflict quickly arose between Japanese leaders and the Americans, the 
latter twisting the principles of liberty to embrace the myths of 
Imperial Japan. Ultimately, faced with this rejection, which was 
nonetheless accepted by the majority of the population, the Americans 
abandoned this approach to refocus on economic interests.

Alexandre Sumpf's synthesis analyzes the dual phenomenon of violence 
perpetrated by both the Nazis against the Soviets and the Party-State 
against its own people.

The signing of the German-Soviet Pact of 1939, while offering a respite 
to the USSR, was also, in a sense, a "phony war" and the beginning of a 
war of conquest for the USSR, with the annexation and Sovietization of 
the Baltic states and eastern Poland. This was accompanied by the Katyn 
massacre and the deportation of some of the elites from the annexed 
territories to Siberia. This "phony war," however, was the prelude to a 
temporary defeat. The USSR was not ready for a large-scale conflict, and 
the Great Terror had only exacerbated the situation, as demonstrated by 
the disastrous attempted invasion of Finland. Operation Barbarossa 
caught the high command off guard. This debacle was accompanied by a 
scorched-earth policy; wherever the Red Army retreated, it left nothing 
behind. It massively relocated part of the population to the rear of the 
front: more than 3 million people and several hundred factories. At the 
same time, the Nazis were practicing mass terror, murdering nearly one 
million Jews by shooting and killing several hundred thousand other 
Soviet citizens in the same way. The disaster continued until mid-1942. 
On July 28, 1942, Order 227 forbade soldiers from taking "one step 
back." The Soviet regime resorted to repression; NKVD detachments 
executed 158,000 people for desertion or treason, and nearly one million 
were court-martialed and sent to disciplinary units. The violence 
against traitors was accompanied by calls for revenge against the enemy, 
as evidenced, for example, by Ilya Ehrenburg's poem, "Kill Me." In both 
cases, the war was accompanied by wartime rape; the author notes that 
nearly 10 million women were raped by Germans between 1941 and 1945.

Stalingrad symbolizes the turning point. Within a year, the Red Army had 
recaptured most of the lost territory. Furthermore, partisan units 
reached a record number of nearly 10,000 people, who often lived 
according to their own laws. Considered heroes, they were nevertheless 
brought to heel and purged by the NKVD between 1944 and 1946. The 
"liberation" of western Russia and then Eastern Europe was accompanied 
by a renewed systematic subjugation of the annexed or dominated 
countries. The war resulted in the deaths of at least 27 million Soviet 
citizens, including 16 million civilians, largely due to the war of 
annihilation waged by Germany. This war stemmed from Stalin's 
paradoxical view that man was the most valuable asset, used to serve the 
interests of the Party. The author extends his work by showing how 
Stalin exploited the Allied victory, largely due to American aid and the 
sacrifice of the Soviet people, to consolidate his power over half the 
world.

The Other Second World War
Asia-Pacific, from Nanking to Hiroshima
Jean-Louis Margolin
Perrin 2025, 462 pp. €25

Barefoot Gen
Keiji Nakazawa
2 volumes, 288 and 252 pp. €13.90 each
Le Tripode, 2025

The Occupiers
Michael Lucken
La Découverte, 2025, 336 pp. €22

The Soviets at War
Alexandre Sumpf
Tallandier, 2025, 622 pp. €27.50

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