The World at That Time: Global Context
To understand the war documented in these color photos, we must first grasp the world that birthed it. The 1930s were a decade of immense turmoil, defined by the long shadow of the Great Depression and the aggressive rise of expansionist powers. In Europe, the unresolved grievances of World War I festered. Germany, under the Nazi regime, sought to overturn the Treaty of Versailles and establish dominance over the continent. Italy, under Mussolini, pursued its own imperial ambitions in the Mediterranean and Africa, most notably with its invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.
But the storm was not confined to Europe. In Asia, the Empire of Japan had been on an expansionist path for decades. Its invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the subsequent full-scale invasion of China in 1937 marked the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War, a conflict that would eventually merge into the broader world war. These actions destabilized East Asia and directly challenged the interests of Western colonial powers and the United States. Across the world, vast territories remained under colonial rule. The British and French empires, though weakened, still spanned the globe, drawing millions of colonial subjects into the looming conflict. From the soldiers of the British Indian Army to the Tirailleurs Sénégalais of French West Africa, the war would be fought and supplied by a global network of peoples.
Latin American nations, while largely maintaining neutrality in the early years, were crucial economic players, supplying raw materials to the Allies. The Soviet Union, having undergone brutal collectivization and industrialization under Stalin, stood as a massive, ideologically opposed power, initially signing a non-aggression pact with Germany before becoming a central target of Nazi invasion. This interconnected web of empires, rising powers, and economic dependencies ensured that when war broke out, it could not be contained. It was a world system on the brink of collapse, and color photography was just coming of age to document it. Major world history resources include the British Museum and the British Library. The UNESCO World Heritage Centre documents sites of global cultural significance.
