Fighting On All Fronts
Popular resistance in the Second World War

Date Written:  2015-07-09
Publisher:  Bookmarks Publications
Year Published:  2015
Pages:  348pp   Price:  13.99   ISBN:  978-1909026926
Resource Type:  Book
Cx Number:  CX19763

Gluckstein explores the impact of mass popular movements during World War Two.

Abstract: 
-

From the Publisher:

Seventy years separate the end of the Second World War from 2015
and yet the issues it raised remain fundamental to our understanding
of the world today.

Contrary to later claims of anti-fascist intentions on the part of Allied
governments, the Second World War began as a naked conflict
between the haves and have-nots of empire. But the masses did not
“keep calm and carry on” in the face of imperialism, or national or
class oppression.

In places where Axis powers seized swathes of territory many
governments were driven into exile, so domestic opposition to
occupation would depend on a tide of resistance from below.
Elsewhere pre-war class struggles were given a new intensity by
wartime conditions.

The result was a rejection of both foreign domination and a return
to pre-war Depression. Millions fought for economic, political and
social liberation despite appallingly difficult circumstances. The very
existence of such mass popular movements meant the outcome of the
war was not the one planned by the imperialists of either side.

Fighting On All Fronts explores the impact of these processes both
in the war in the West (Algeria, Ireland, Jewish resistance in Eastern
Europe, the Netherlands, Slovakia and the Soviet Union) and in the
East (Australia, Burma, China, Japan and the Philippines).
Whatever you think you know about the Second World War, this
book will make you think again.