I recently discovered the Real Time World War II Twitter feed. It's an interesting experiment where-in the author relates the events of the war as if they were happening in real time. It started last August 31st, conflating 1939 with 2011, and Tweeted the deception operation the Germans used to justify the war, then started in with the invasion of Poland.
As of today, we're on February 23rd, 1940, in what's called "The Phony War" period. Most of the fighting right now is between the Soviet Union and Finland, with the Russians having invaded after signing a non-aggression pact with Germany. It's instructive to note that the Russians were nearly as aggressive as the Germans in the early stages of the war, up to and including using various Communist elements in Britain and France to try to encourage the Allies to surrender or at least go to the negotiating table with Hitler! That's pretty funny considering that in a year and a half, those same Communists would be demanding an immediate invasion of Europe by the British to save the very Soviet Union that was trying to undermine them earlier!
If I have a quibble with the feed, its that it only focuses on events in Europe. The Chinese and Japanese had been fighting it out since July of 1937, but there's no coverage of it. Japan's massive commitment to the war in China was a huge factor in its inability to defend the territories it conquered in 1941 and '42, and the fact that there were so many troops involved on the mainland was much more important than the Battle of Coral Sea in keeping the Japanese out of Australia. Not only that, but the American embargo of war material to Japan in 1941, especially oil and rubber, was the main reason the Japanese attacked the USA in the first place. Without those materials, the Japanese couldn't sustain the war in China, and rather than give up years of hard won territory, the Japanese went to war with the USA to try and take the material they needed. I'm concerned that if these matters aren't at least touched on, it will perpetuate the myth that the Japanese just woke up one morning and decided to bomb Pearl Harbor. It wasn't like that, and the gradual descent into war between the USA and Japan is one of the more interesting aspects of the early war period.
Not to mention that there were battles and sieges just as dramatic as the ones in Poland and Finland happening in China at the same time. Those soldiers deserve their share of recognition too. What made it a "World War" was the fact that the fighting happened all around the world, not just in Europe.
For all that, I'll keep reading it as it comes out. In many ways, it reminds me of World War I: The Experiences of an English Soldier, albeit with greater scope and less depth. That blog was a recreation of World War I through the eyes of an Englishman through the letters he mailed back home over the length of the war. It's pretty much concluded now, but remains a good read regardless.
On a less serious note, Real Time World War II also very similar to Inner Sphere News Flash, which is counting down the days until Mechwarrior Online debuts by putting out daily news updates from the Battletech universe, where 2012 is 3049. Since MWO is supposed to keep up the same one real life day = one in game day once the game goes live, ISNF is just getting players ready for the pace of the game. Still pretty interesting, though.
As far as Real Time World War II goes, one thing that it does provide is a degree of perspective. It's popular in military history circles to say that the economic factors against the Axis made victory impossible. The thing that view leaves out is that we only know this with near perfect information about the production information of each side, information that wasn't available until after the war, and for the Soviet figures, not until way after the war. The people making the decisions at the time only had limited and often misleading or flat out wrong data to make those decisions with. As early as September 1939, there were French officials who were calling for a negotiated peace. By October, Mussolini was suggesting a peace conference with himself as the chair. Had different people been in charge, the war might have sputtered to a halt with the dissolution of Poland. Had there been someone besides Churchill in charge in the fall of 1940, maybe the United Kingdom would have made a separate peace after the Fall of France.
Seeing the events laid out day by day makes it easier to get into the mindset of the people and leaders of the time. Rather than a big data dump, you feel the campaigns developing over time, and I like that. It's a new perspective on the war, and that's hard to find 66 years and change after it ended. If you've got a Twitter feed, you could do much worse than to add Real Time World War II to it.
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