The Causes of World War II
Introduction
World War II began in 1939 and continued until 1945 when it was stopped after Germany surrendered. Ideally, the war mainly involved Germany under the leadership of Hitler who was fighting against other adversaries such as Britain, the US and France. Countries that were ruled by dictators such as Japan and Italy also supported Hitler in this war. There were various factors that caused the World War II. Some of the main factors that will be discussed in this paper include, the Treaty of Versailles, the failure of appeasement, Hitler’s actions, political instability, failure of the League of Nations, and economic devastation. In addition, the paper will also highlight the biographical information of Benito Mussolini as one of the main players in the World War II.
Treaty of Versailles
In 1919, four leaders met to discuss the measures to be adopted in making Germany pay for the damages that the World War I had caused. These leaders were Orlando from Italy, Lloyd from England, Woodrow Wilson from the United States and Clemenceau from France. Woodrow wanted the peace treaty to be based on a plan that would enhance peace in Europe while Clemenceau preferred a treaty that would direct revenge to discipline Germany never to start another war in future[1]. The other two leaders wanted to find a concession between Clemenceau and Wilson.
Some of the core provisions of the Versailles Treaty include the need for Germany to take responsibility for starting World War I and to pay more than $6,550 million for all the losses caused by the war[2]. The treaty also had a disarmament clause that allowed Germany only to own a small army and a few naval ships where tanks and other complicated military equipment were not permitted. Moreover, all the territorial land was also to be taken away from Germany and returned to the original owners. Germans were not impressed with the provisions of the treaty because they were expecting a treaty that would promote peace in Europe. Nonetheless, they did not have any option but to sign the treaty. Reparations were also too much and made people in Germany to be very poor. Prices of commodities were also high and people lost their employment. As a result, this caused dissatisfaction with the government and people were willing to vote for Adolf Hitler because he promised to break the Treaty of Versailles.
Political Instability and Economic Devastation in Europe after the World War I
The Great Depression was an economic depression that had affected various parts of the world in the period preceding the World War II. Although the timing of the recession was different in various nations it started in 1930 in most of the countries and extended to the 1940s. This depression started after the decline in stock prices in September 4, 1929. As a consequence of the Great Depression, both rich and poor countries were affected. Income revenue, profits, and prices dropped drastically while the international trade also dropped by 50%. Moreover, unemployment rate in the US rose to 24% while in some countries it had reached 34%. Most of the businesses in Europe had closed down causing massive unemployment across the region. During the 1930s, an economic depression like the one that was experienced in the US had also affected other countries in Europe such as Germany and Italy[3]. Moreover, most of the businesses and companies were in a verge of being bankrupt.
The treaty of Versailles, that brought the World War I to an end, made recommendations for Germany to pay damages to all the allied powers. This war debt had a negative implication for the Germany’s economy and made it difficult to have any meaningful recovery. Equally, most of the Germans believed that this treaty was unfair, a situation that caused Germans to have bitterness towards Great Britain, France, and other allies.
After the World War I, the Germany economy was affected by a high inflation rate. This was caused by the government of Germany that had decided to print more money to pay the war debt. The inflation had caused the value of the German currency to be worthless. With this, it was also difficult for banks and other businesses to have profitable operations. Eventually, economic problems led to political instability in Germany. At times, supporters of different parties held riots in the streets. Adolf Hitler was among the political leaders who led their supporters to the streets to protest the deteriorating economy. Hitler used this opportunity to attract more supporters through his Nazi party by promising to make Germany a stable economy.
Hitler’s Actions
When Germany was defeated in the World War I, the German military was dismantled and most of the Germans were left in tough economic conditions. Adolf Hitler was a plain soldier in the war where he had been severely wounded severally. Before the war, Hitler was a poor high school dropout from Vienna. Ironically, Hitler was not even a German citizen but an Austrian who had volunteered to the German military at the start of the World War I[4]. The other German soldiers in the war perceived Hitler to be weird because he had no friends or family in German and neither did he keep any contact with his family in Austria. This made Hitler to be quite unpopular among his peers.
From such a low start, the chances of Hitler becoming a successful partisan leader were slim and almost impossible but he managed to do that in 13 years. Eventually, he resigned from the army in 1920 and joined politics as a leader of an extreme right political group that had not yet been registered as a party. After Adolf Hitler became a chancellor of Germany in January 1933, he embarked on a mission to develop Germany’s army. Immediately after taking up this position, Hitler abolished democracy and declared himself as a dictator with absolute power. Most of the Germans believed that Hitler would soon prove to be a charismatic leader and followed him blindly trusting all his judgments and actions. Hitler portrayed himself as an exceptional speaker and attracted a lot of people in his political rallies[5]. Moreover, his approach was quite different from his political opponents because he insisted that he had a great vision for Germany’s future. He gave clear illustrations on how he planned to achieve his visions and why he strongly believed his strategy would succeed.
Unlike, ordinary politicians who promised Germans a better future, Hitler promised his followers the world. This made Hitler to outdo all his political opponents as he also organized street violence. To warn his opponents of his brutality, Hitler operated a private army of more than 450,000 street gangsters who disrupted and attacked followers from other parties[6]. The leaders of the main parties realized that Hitler was dangerous, but they were still underestimating him until after the 1933 elections when he became Germany’s prime minister through the Nazi party while his partner Goering was appointed as the minister of the police. Although the Nazi party was the minority in the coalition government, Hitler used his authority and street violence to take control. By 1934, he had managed to have a strong army, an airforce and warships, and had made military service to be compulsory[7]. Even though Britain and France knew what Hitler was doing, they had a belief that a stronger Germany was critical in preventing the extension of communism to the West.
When the Germany military was stable, Hitler ordered an invasion to Rhineland in 1936. At this time, the German military was not strong enough and could have been defeated easily but France and Britain were not ready to start another war. In the same year, Hitler managed to form two alliances. The first alliance was the Rome-Berlin Axis pact that formed a friendship between Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. The Anti-Comitern Pact was the second alliance that united German with Japan.
Thereafter, Hitler was ready to take back all the land that Germany had lost as a result of the Versailles Treaty. This is what prompted the German troops to enter into Austria in March 1938 and force the Austrian leader to conduct a vote on whether people were ready to cooperate with Germany. The votes were manipulated to show that 99% of the Austrian people were willing to be part of Germany by forming a union between the two countries[8]. In order to portray that he had no ill motives, Hitler made a promise that he would not pursue any further territory expansion. All the other countries including France and Britain did not intervene as they tried to avoid a war. In contrast to what he had promised, Hitler demanded for Germany to be given the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. He was given this region in a condition that he would not invade the remaining part of Czechoslovakia. Again, he did not keep the promise and occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939[9]. Despite the fact that Czechoslovakia called for help from Britain and France, none of them was ready to engage in a war against Hitler. However, the two countries vowed to take military action if Hitler invaded Poland with the hope that Hitler would back off and stop the aggression. This was wrong because Hitler proceeded to invade Poland on 1st September 1939 which marked the start of the World War II.
Biographical Information about Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of Germany supported a political system referred to as fascism. In a government that supports this system, all the powers are placed on a dictator. As such, all the individual rights such as freedom of speech and religion are violated because the nation and power take priority[10]. Benito Mussolini was an Italian dictator who ruled the country from 1883-1945. He had risen to power during the World War I as a prominent supporter of fascist ideology. As a socialist, he formed a fascist movement in 1919 and became a prime minister in 1922. He eventually proceeded to dictatorial power from 1925[11]. Italy had become a predominant country after Mussolini had military expenditures in Somalia, Ethiopia, Albania, and Libya. After the military interventions in the mentioned countries, Mussolini’s armed forces were left exhausted and lagging technologically.
As a dictator, Mussolini appointed fascists to leadership positions and introduced an army thinking in the 1930s.Gradually, the fascist mentality overwhelmed Mussolini’s reasoning and believed he was a military genius when he was bale to interpret the diplomatic victories for Britain and France during the Ethiopian and Spanish wars (1935-1939). He firmly believed that he would lead Italy to greatness. Moreover, he planned for a Mediterranean-Africa empire by supporting war with the West. With this approach, he had confidence in gaining enough power to create a totalitarian state.
In May 1938, Mussolini had made a promise to support Adolf Hitler in any of the war he was associated with so long as he was fighting the democracies of the world. Mussolini was able to convince his supporters to change their pessimistic thoughts towards the Germans and allied himself with Adolf Hitler in May 1939[12]. He was expected to apply coordinated policies to stop German initiatives until such a time that the Italian forces would recover from their exhaustion. Initially, Mussolini had planned for a war in 1943-1945 but Hitler initiated the World War II in September 1939. This gave the Italians only week warning and caused humiliation to Mussolini.
Hitler’s series of successes in May 1940 prompted Mussolini to intervene in the World War II. However, Italy’s cautious generals spent most of their time in the Mediterranean and North Africa in June-October 1940[13]. Mussolini also suffered humiliation in Greece and North Africa and he only escaped a military coup through the intervention of the German military in 1941. Mainly, Mussolini suffered defeats in wars because his army was not prepared well and he was not a military genius as he believed himself to be. Thereafter, Hitler forced Mussolini to join him when the German-Soviet war was too much for the Axis strategy.
After the victories of the 1942, Mussolini persuaded Hitler to make peace with Joseph Stalin and pay more attention to overcoming British-American forces. When Hitler refused convince the Italian king to overthrow Mussolini in July 1943. It was Hitler who came to Mussolini’s rescue and made him a puppet dictator of northern Italy. As a way of rewarding Hitler, Mussolini was instrumental in facilitating the war for the Germans as well as in the creation of the fascist military forces. After Germany surrendered in April 1945 in Italy, Mussolini was forced to flee but insurgents incarcerated and killed him.
Failure of the League of Nations
The League of Nations was established in 1919 with an objective of keeping the world peace. Furthermore, all the countries were expected to be members and any dispute among them was supposed to be resolved through peaceful negotiation and not force. If the negotiations did not work trade sanctions would be issued against the aggressive country and military intervention would be invoked as a last result. Although the League of Nations recorded some successes at the initial stages, eventually it did not perform. For instance, in 1931 Japan experienced a depression that prompted people not to trust the government and instead turn to the military to look for a solution. In an effort to find a solution to the depression, the Japanese army invaded Manchuria in China because it had many minerals and other resources. When China sought for assistance from the League of Nations, the Japanese government was requested to order its army to leave Manchuria but they did not obey orders and instead Japan left the League of Nations. Likewise, the League of Nations failed to make any workable resolution when Italy invaded Abyssinia in 1935.
There were numerous factors that contributed to the failure of the League of Nations. To start with, not all the countries were part of the League of Nations. These included the US which had refused to join the League for undetermined reasons. Conversely, Germany was not permitted to join the League of Nations as a punishment for starting World War I while Russia was denied the chance due to the fear of communism[14]. There were also other countries that did not join the League while others joined and left later. Another reason why the League failed was because it did not have power or an army. The main weapon used by the League was to request the member states to issue trade sanctions to the aggressive countries but this failed since such countries continued to conduct business with non-member states. In case of a military intervention, the soldiers had to be provided by member countries and most of them were reluctant to do so due to the fear of the spoiling their relationship with the aggressive country. With such weaknesses, the League of Nations was unable to stop the World War II as well.
Failure of Appeasement
Britain and France were committed to approach and convince Hitler not to enforce his demands. In most of the crises that were initiated by Hitler, France and Britain political leaders participated in the appeasement of Hitler with the thought that he would change his mind. They did this even after receiving warnings from prominent personalities such as Winston Churchill and officials from the anti-Nazi opposition in the German military. It was quite clear that the British and France had flawed by making the decision to appease Hitler[15]. One of the logical flaws was the general belief that war was no longer necessary as was realized after the World War I. the assumption in this belief was the opposing sides in the future wars will be of similar capacity as in the World War I. They had also made a false assumption that modern technology in the military would make war a waste of resources due to the many deaths it was likely to cause. From these false assumptions, Britain and France did not see the need to modernize their military even with the knowledge that Hitler was building one of the strongest military forces equipped with technological skills. Hitler was doing this to blatantly violate the 1919 peace treaty. As a result the British and the French military forces gradually became inferior to the German military forces in terms of technological and tactical capabilities.
When the British military realized there was a possibility of another war they tried to make some military changes in 1938 but the duration was too short because the war started in 1939. Conversely, the French military was operating in the belief that war would not return any soon and hence was not prepared technologically or tactically[16]. Moreover, some war warnings directed to the French military by Colonel Charles De Gaulle, were ignored.
Another flawed assumption by Britain and France was the belief that Hitler could be appeased to cease making more demands and that he was also willing to avoid war. Both the British and French leaders should have used their intelligence systems to decipher that Hitler was not willing to avoid war. In contrast, Hitler made his position known to the whole world through the threats he issued in speeches and the book that he had written in 1923[17]. They also should have known from their past experiences that Hitler was always ready to initiate further crisis and demands after winning the previous crises. The British and French leaders failed to take note of the prevailing situations when dealing with Hitler.
The British government realized that Hitler was not willing to reduce his demand in 1939 when Czechoslovakia had already been given to him. When Hitler made took the decision to attack Poland, Britain decided to support Poland as its ally even if this had to be done through war. The French government had some intention of avoiding the war even after Poland had been attacked but joined the war after being persuaded the British government.
By applying the appeasement policy, France and Britain only resulted to using diplomatic way when Hitler violated the peace treaties, improved his military power and involved his military in the Saar region. After Hitler demanded the western region of Czechoslovakia, the British and the French government put pressurized the Czech government to give in to Hitler’s commands in order to avoid war that Hitler had threatened. The two governments also failed to take any action when Hitler demanded the rest of Czechoslovakia[18]. Likewise, Britain and France did not intervene when Italy, Hitler’s supporter in dictatorship, invaded Ethiopia and Albania. With time, Hitler acquired more territory and population and became more powerful. In addition, acquired resources from these territories and grabbed the military equipment from the disintegrated armies of the captured nations. A good example is Czechoslovakia that had an advanced military force before the Hitler’s invasion. If France and Britain had supported Czechoslovakia, the Czechs were ready to fight using their modern military. In this case, Britain and France betrayed Czechoslovakia by issuing threats to the Czechs that if they did surrender the demanded regions to Hitler, they would be blamed for causing the war. When Czechs gave in to the pressure, they surrendered the land and the military equipment that was there. This made the country to remain defenseless[19]. Hitler was aware that the Czechs would have posed a major threat to his success due to their military might. After gaining all the military equipment from the dismantled Czech forces, Hitler was at an advantage because the German military used the acquired modern equipment in World War II. Most of the military tanks that were being used in the World War II were being supplied by the Czech military industry which was under Hitler’s control.
Conclusion
World War causes can be quite voluminous depending on how they are interpreted. The treaty of Versailles was relatively harsh to the Germans and eventually causes an economic downturn in Germany where elevated levels of inflation and unemployment were experienced. As a result, the Germans felt that they needed somebody who would guarantee them a bright future and hence Adolph came in at the right time to violate the treaty. The failure of appeasement by Britain and France also played a key role in causing the World War II because the two nations failed to stop Hitler’s actions that lead to the war. If the League of Nations was stronger, it would have succeeded in stopping the World War II but its lack of an army and withdrawal of members contributed to its failure. Moreover, fascism, and the economic situation in Europe also played a part in causing the war. Although all of these factors contributed to the war, Hitler’s actions played the biggest role in causing the World War II and without him, the war would probably not have occurred.
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[1] Divine, Robert, Causes and Consequences of World War II, New York: Penguins, 1969.
[2] Eubank, Keith, World War II: Roots and Causes, Boston: Heinemann, 2006.
[3] Schneider, Carl and Schneider, Dorothy. World War II, New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009.
[4] Weinberg, Gerhard, Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German, London: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
[5] Tsouras, Peter, Hitler Triumphant: Alternate Decisions of World War II, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2006
[6] Weinberg, Gerhard, Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German, London: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
[7] Tsouras, Peter, Hitler Triumphant: Alternate Decisions of World War II, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2006.
[8] Tsouras, Peter, Hitler Triumphant: Alternate Decisions of World War II, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2006.
[9] Weinberg, Gerhard, Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German, London: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
[10] Marshall Cavendish Corporation, History of World War II: Origins and Outbreak, Michigan: Marshall Cavendish, 2004.
[11] Morgan, Philip, The Fall of Mussolini: Italy, the Italians, and the Second Word War, New York: Routledge, 2007.
[12] Morgan, Philip, The Fall of Mussolini: Italy, the Italians, and the Second Word War, New York: Routledge, 2007.
[13] Morgan, Philip, The Fall of Mussolini: Italy, the Italians, and the Second Word War, New York: Routledge, 2007.
[14] Kiester, Edwin, Incomplete History: World War II, New York: Mudorch Books, 2007.
[15] Tsouras, Peter, Hitler Triumphant: Alternate Decisions of World War II, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2006.
[16] Raum, Elizabeth, World War II: An Interactive History Adventure, Michigan: Capstone, 2009.
[17] Stone, Norman, World War Two: A Short History, New York: Routledge, 2013.
[18] Weinberg, Gerhard, Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German, London: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
[19] Dowswell, Paul, The Causes of World War II, Michigan: John Wiley & Sons, 2008.
