What is the puppet state in World War 2?

Answer 1

The wikipedia defines a puppet state as a country that is officially independent, but not in practice - as a country that is powered by a military force provided by an occupying country. It also states that puppet state is a biased term often used to denigrate the government of the alleged puppet state. Therefore if we heed to common sense that in times of war, any side in the war will tend to label their opponent's control over a territory as a puppet state - the question turns out to be loaded. Nevertheless If we consider all such forces that somehow earned the name of running a puppet state by its opponent the complete list documented at the Wiki page on WW2 puppet states. While the more public knowledge tends to label puppet states as those territorial administrations influenced by the Nazis and the Japanese , however what is less known but documented in the wikipedia page is that Britain ran two of the long running puppet states from during the times of WW2 to much after the war was over, namely the Kingdom of Iraq (1941-05-31 to 1958-02-14) and the Imperial State of Iran (1941-09-17 - 1953-08-19). Further several dictionaries including the Webster define puppet state as "a government that is appointed by and whose affairs are directed by an outside authority that may impose hardships on those governed" . As per the above definition, since both conditions of foreign appointment and imposition of hardships were true of all territories occupied by foreign governments during (and even from much before) the war) it can be logically concluded that existing colonial governments in distant lands that the European Imperial powers ran from Europe were also instances of puppet governments. This goes on to show how loaded the term puppet state actually is - in the context of WW2.