Quote:
Originally posted by Greenhat
I assume that you consider the start of WWII as December 7, 1941?
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Actually, I consider September 18, 1931 the start of WWII.*
The point is, after we are all dust and distant memories, when historians speak of the Hundred Years' War, they may not be talking Agincourt and Joan of Arc. They will speak of a Great War for Civilization against the atavistic and nihilistic forces resisting modernity. Though each claims a different root ideal - race, class, religion - there is a common thread among fascism, communism and Islamism. What we call World War II, the Cold War and the Global War on Terror will be just phases.
I picked September 18, 1931 as the beginning of the shooting war, though I suppose you could go back to the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War. But while the Russian Civil War ended in 1922 (and the internal terror began), since the Mukden Incident there hasn't been a year that has not seen fighting somewhere in this greater conflict.
I suppose you could argue that Japanese fascism was of a different sort than Nazism and Bolshevism, but I tend to include it. If not, I suppose that pushes the start date back to the start of the Italo-Abyssinian War or the Spanish Civil War.