Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 9, 2025

A Correct Historical View of WW II: Key to Comprehensively Understanding the War’s Multiplicity and the Chinese Theater’s Status as the Main Battlefield in the East

(Abstract)

Wang Fusheng

World War II was a global conflict of unprecedented scale that profoundly shaped the course of world history. The Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression established the main battlefield in the East of the World Anti-Fascist War, making indelible contributions to national salvation, independence, liberation, and the pursuit of world peace. For decades, however, research on World War II history has been constrained by so-called “international mainstream” historical perspectives, which interpret the war primarily through a Western ideological lens. This narrative framework conceals the war’s origins and nature, overstates the role of the United States and some other Western countries, while deliberately downplaying the status of the Chinese theater as the main battlefield in the East. It further marginalizes, devalues, vilifies, or even denies the role of the socialist forces led by the Soviet Union. To study World War II, it is essential to maintain a materialist historical perspective and historical dialectics, uphold a Marxist theory of war, grasp the comprehensive, practical, and evolutionary nature of historical development. Such an approach helps to profoundly reveal the war’s origins, clarify its imperialist nature and evolution, thus properly understanding the architecture of power, its trajectory in the World Anti-Fascist War, the war’s outcome, and its various influences on today’s world. Meanwhile, it is necessary to oppose all attempts to glorify aggression or distort history. Guided by a correct historical view of World War II, criticism should be directed against the erroneous perspectives of historical nihilism, thus constructing an independent Chinese knowledge system of the history of the World Anti-Fascist War.