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The roots of Japan's aggressive, expansionist foreign policy have often been traced to its concern over acute economic vulnerability. Historian Michael Barnhart tests this assumption by examining the events leading up to World War II in the context of Japan's quest for economic security. Drawing on a wide array of Japanese and American sources, this is the first English-language book on the war's origins to be based on research in archives on both sides of the Pacific. Barnhart focuses on the critical years from 1938 to 1941 as he investigates the development of Japan's drive for national economic self-sufficiency and independence and the way in which this drive shaped its internal and external policies. He also explores American economic pressure on Tokyo and assesses its impact on Japan's foreign policy and domestic economy. He concludes that Japan's internal political dynamics, especially the bitter rivalry between its army and navy, played a far greater role in propelling the nation into war with the United States than did its economic condition or even pressure from Washington. Japan Prepares for Total War sheds new light on prewar Japan and confirms the opinions of those in Washington who advocated economic pressure against Japan. At a time of growing interest in U.S.-Japanese economic relations, this book will be stimulating and provocative reading for scholars and students of international relations and American and Asian history. The roots of Japan's aggressive, expansionist foreign policy have often been traced to its concern over acute economic vulnerability. Michael A. Barnhart tests this assumption by examining the events leading up to World War II in the context of Japan's quest for economic security, drawing on a wide array of Japanese and American sources.Barnhart focuses on the critical years from 1938 to 1941 as he investigates the development of Japan's drive for national economic self-sufficiency and independence and the way in which this drive shaped its internal and external policies. He also explores American economic pressure on Tokyo and assesses its impact on Japan's foreign policy and domestic economy. He concludes that Japan's internal political dynamics, especially the bitter rivalry between its army and navy, played a far greater role in propelling the nation into war with the United States than did its economic condition or even pressure from Washington. Japan Prepares for Total War sheds new light on prewar Japan and confirms the opinions of those in Washington who advocated economic pressure against Japan.

During the Second World War, some 250,000 British servicemen were taken captive by either the Axis powers or the Japanese. As a result of this, their wives and families became completely dependent on the military and civil authorities. This book examines the experiences of the millions of service dependents created by total war. The book then focuses on the most disadvantaged elements of this group - the wives, children and dependents of men taken prisoner- and the changes brought about by the exigencies of total war. Further chapters reflect on how these families organised to lobby government and the strategies they adopted to circumvent apparent bureaucratic ineptitude and misinformation.This book is essential reading for both academic and general readers interested in the British Home Front during the Second World War.

To date, the alliance between Tokyo, Berlin, and Rome has been interpreted primarily as an alliance between nation-states and has therefore been studied using bi-national approaches. However, this article argues that the strength and globality of the Axis becomes comprehensible if we understand it first and foremost as an alliance between empires. By discussing the interwar years from the viewpoint of trans-imperial cooperation and competition, we discover an imperial nexus. The history, characteristics, diversity, and consequences of this imperial nexus are shown in three parts. The first describes how the nexus helped to bring the distantly located partners together. This occurred against the backdrop of what they called proletarian imperialism, which turned out to be a kind of post-colonial imperialism. The second part analyses how the imperial nexus led others, such as Great Britain, to believe in the existence and strength of a global Axis. In this context, the anti-colonial tendencies put forth mostly by the Japanese turned out to be dangerous. The last part shows how and why the imperial Axis remained intact during the war. Considered from the standpoint of an imperial nexus, the familiar reading of the alliance as well as of the world war shifts. First, Japan and Italy play more important roles than often assumed, while the primacy of Germany is relativized. Second, the chronologies change in relation to the genesis of the Axis and thus the origins of the Second World War. These origins are more strongly associated with non-European world regions and ‘colonial peripheries’, particularly with China and Ethiopia. Third, the issue of ideological similarities and thus of fascism once again becomes a key focus. Fourth and finally, the Axis appears far more diverse and also stronger than previously understood.

This book represents the first systematic research by a social scientist on the radical right-wing movements in Italy since 1945. During the heyday of right-wing violence between 1969 and 1980, street aggressions, attacks, and murders were commonplace. These bloody episodes were assumed to be the work of fanatical bands of \"political soldiers\" and urban warriors loosely controlled by secret services and other covert groups, which used them as part of a \"strategy of tension\" pursued in domestic and international circles. Franco Ferraresi here acknowledges that these rightist groups were in fact permitted a certain amount of freedom, and even in some cases actually aided, in the hope that revulsion at terrorist tactics would have the effect of mobilizing public opinion in favor of existing political arrangements. However, he also studies the extent to which they operated as autonomous units, while he carefully considers the political heritage, the doctrines, and the ideology that motivated them. With the decline of violent activity on both extremes of the political spectrum in the early 1980s, the theory and practice so comprehensively discussed by Ferraresi seemed to have entered a dormant stage. Ferraresi, however, places in context the recent resurgence of neo-fascist forces in Italy, and of the so-called New Right throughout Europe, together with the rise of fundamentalism in many parts of the world.

Between 1939 and 1945, some 80,000 Finnish children were sent to Sweden, Denmark, and elsewhere, ostensibly to protect them from danger while their nation's soldiers fought superior Soviet and German forces. This was the largest of all of World War II children's transports, and although acknowledged today as \"a great social-historical mistake,\" it has received surprisingly little attention. This is the first English-language account of Finland's war children and their experiences, told through the survivors' own words. Supported by an extensive introduction, a bibliography of secondary sources, and over two dozen photographs, this book testifies to the often-lifelong traumas endured by youthful survivors of war.

Contemporaries and historians alike have explained the imperialism of interwar Japan, Italy, and Germany through the paradigm of a ‘new world order’. This article critically revisits this received assumption by analysing the place of the Axis in the longer history of imperialism from the late nineteenth century to the Second World War. If we cast Axis empires – a blend of fascism and imperialism – in the larger framework constituted by the relationship between the nation and capital, it becomes clear that they were not so much the result of the peculiar national histories of Japan, Italy, and Germany, but products of larger, global forces. Through an examination of recent scholarship, this article offers a new conceptual interpretation of the link between imperialism and fascism. In so doing, it adds to our understanding of the interwar period by breaking down the neat boundaries between liberal and fascist world orders.

Between 1938 and 1943, Fascist intellectuals debated the problem of how to create a racial policy that would encompass the Japanese within the Aryan doctrine. This article demonstrates how internal divisions in the Fascist party over racial issues generated alternative versions of pro-Japanese propaganda, which influenced the racial thinking of the Italian far-right even long after the Second World War. I show how Italian racial theories developed to underpin the alliance with Japan were transnational in scope, as they involved both German and Italian scholars in a common effort to lobby state racial policies. Specifically, I consider George Montandon and Julius Evola as two transnational actors engaged in building a case for the inclusion of the Japanese in the family of Aryan races, speaking either from a ‘biological’ or ‘spiritual’ perspective. While by the end of the Second World War the ‘biological’ thesis for the inclusion of the Japanese race had evaporated, the ‘spiritual’ thesis would continue to influence a generation of Italian far-right militants, especially during the ‘Years of Lead’. To make sense of this legacy, I suggest that the foundational myth of Italian Fascism, based on the spiritual heritage of the multiethnic Roman empire, responded to the neofascist quest for transnational affiliations against Western materialism. Tra il 1938 e il 1943, gli intellettuali fascisti si posero il problema di come includere l'alleato giapponese nel contesto della dottrina ariana. Questo articolo dimostra come, a causa di divisioni interne al partito fascista sulle questioni razziali, due versioni alternative di propaganda filo-giapponese hanno influenzato il pensiero razziale dell'estrema destra italiana, anche molto tempo dopo la seconda guerra mondiale. L'articolo mostra come le teorie razziali italiane sviluppate per sostenere l'alleanza con il Giappone sono di natura transnazionale, poiché hanno coinvolto studiosi tedeschi e italiani in uno sforzo comune per fare pressione sulle politiche razziali dei propri rispettivi paesi. In particolare, considero George Montandon e Julius Evola come due operatori transnazionali impegnati a giustificare l'inclusione dei giapponesi nel novero delle razze ariane, a partire da una prospettiva ‘biologica’ o ‘spirituale’. Se alla fine della seconda guerra mondiale tramonta la tesi ‘biologica’ per l'inclusione della razza giapponese, al contrario la tesi ‘spirituale’ avrebbe continuato a influenzare una generazione di militanti italiani di estrema destra, specialmente durante gli ‘Anni del piombo’. La spiegazione che l'articolo offre per dare conto di questa longevità della proposta spiritualista conduce a considerare il mito prevalente del fascismo italiano, che è basato sull'eredità spirituale e multietnica dell'impero romano. Questo mito ‘ultra-nazionale’ ha offerto una risposta al bisogno di gruppi neofascisti alla ricerca di una coalizione transnazionale per combattere le forze del materialismo occidentale.

The accuracy of wind power generation predicted by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations combined with meteorological wind data was validated based on comparisons with directly measured data for a small vertical axis wind turbine system installed on a university campus. The CFD simulations were performed in accordance with established guidelines and frameworks for the prediction of urban wind environments. At the rooftop location, where small wind turbines are typically installed, the deviations in wind velocity from the measurements are quite large. However, in the present study, the prediction accuracy for the wind turbine site, which was 4 m above the ground, was acceptable. The total power generation estimated using the assumed power curve based on the rated output of the turbine was 56% larger than that directly measured by the power generator. However, using the power curves obtained from the measurements, the total power generation could be predicted with a high degree of accuracy and with an error of approximately 3%. It is suggested that not only the accuracy of the wind velocity but also that of the power curve is very important because they are directly related to that of the predicted power generation.

InMaking Sense of War,Amir Weiner reconceptualizes the entire historical experience of the Soviet Union from a new perspective, that of World War II. Breaking with the conventional interpretation that views World War II as a post-revolutionary addendum, Weiner situates this event at the crux of the development of the Soviet--not just the Stalinist--system. Through a richly detailed look at Soviet society as a whole, and at one Ukrainian region in particular, the author shows how World War II came to define the ways in which members of the political elite as well as ordinary citizens viewed the world and acted upon their beliefs and ideologies. The book explores the creation of the myth of the war against the historiography of modern schemes for social engineering, the Holocaust, ethnic deportations, collaboration, and postwar settlements. For communist true believers, World War II was the purgatory of the revolution, the final cleansing of Soviet society of the remaining elusive \"human weeds\" who intruded upon socialist harmony, and it brought the polity to the brink of communism. Those ridden with doubts turned to the war as a redemption for past wrongs of the regime, while others hoped it would be the death blow to an evil enterprise. For all, it was the Armageddon of the Bolshevik Revolution. The result of Weiner's inquiry is a bold, compelling new picture of a Soviet Union both reinforced and enfeebled by the experience of total war.

Broken glass, twisted beams, piles of debris--these are the early memories of the children who grew up amidst the ruins of the Third Reich. More than five decades later, German youth inhabit manicured suburbs and stroll along prosperous pedestrian malls.Shattered Pastis a bold reconsideration of the perplexing pattern of Germany's twentieth-century history. Konrad Jarausch and Michael Geyer explore the staggering gap between the country's role in the terrors of war and its subsequent success as a democracy. They argue that the collapse of Communism, national reunification, and the postmodern shift call for a new reading of the country's turbulent development, one that no longer suggests continuity but rupture and conflict. Comprising original essays, the book begins by reexamining the nationalist, socialist, and liberal master narratives that have dominated the presentation of German history but are now losing their hold. Treated next are major issues of recent debate that suggest how new kinds of German history might be written: annihilationist warfare, complicity with dictatorship, the taming of power, the impact of migration, the struggle over national identity, redefinitions of womanhood, and the development of consumption as well as popular culture. The concluding chapters reflect on the country's gradual transition from chaos to civility. This penetrating study will spark a fresh debate about the meaning of the German past during the last century. There is no single master narrative, no Weltgeist, to be discovered. But there is a fascinating story to be told in many different ways.