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When Did the Second World War Begin?

Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini

The conventional answer to the question I've provided as our headline today is: the war began on September 1, 1939, when the Germans invaded Poland.

But it seems to me there are other plausible dates.

The most plausible is to see the first action in the war as the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in October 1935. This followed by just one month the passage of the Nuremberg laws in Germany "for the protection of German blood and German honor." Events were moving in parallel above and below the Alps, and below the Pyrenees as well.

In that case, we can begin to fill out a timeline of those usually neglected first four years of the second world war.

1936, Civil war erupted in Spain and The fascist regimes in Italy and Germany concluded a treaty of alliance (and supported their Spanish allies).

1937, Japan's tentative truce with China dissolves in fighting near the Marco Polo Bridge.

Dec. '37 - Jan. 38, Rap of Nanjing.

September '38, Mussolini cancels the civil rights of Italian Jews.

October '38, Germany annexes the Sudetenland.

We can see the War as divided into three parts: 1935 to 1939 (everything from Abyssinia to the invasion of Poland); 1939-41 (which takes us to the entry of the US and the fighting in the suburbs of Moscow); 1942-45 (as things close in and finally crash in on the Axis powers.)


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