Twenty years after the end of World War 1, the Second World War started. Due to the fact that it essentially involved every nation on the planet, it is regarded as the deadliest and most widespread conflict in history. The historical events have been studied by academics in an effort to understand what caused this devastating global war. Understanding the reasons behind this extreme event can therefore help one imagine how the global political landscape looked at the time. In order to determine the best course of action, it is essential to analyze the links between the Second World War and the post-World Wars. Additionally, learning about the approaches and decisions is of great significance in propelling the debate for historiographical claims and the future. This paper will highlight the primary causes of World War II, focusing on the origins of the war in Europe, and an analysis of how they are interconnected in engendering WWII.
Pretense of Peace Treaties
The procedures and agreements of conciliation gave an opportunity for Hitler to device an extensive foreign rule. Nevertheless, the conformist understanding is that Hitler was a monitoring autocrat with charisma; the ideological outlook argued that Hitler was more probable to respond to internal and external struggles. This means that Hitler lacked defined international rule in anticipation to rule Europe; however, his primary target was to fulfill his desires. Consequently, the later successive purgatives and attacks were as a result of flaws that formed within Europe. Hitler was highly skilled leader but was led with selfish interests by taking advantage of the unruly outcome of worldwide agreements.
When the First World War came to an end, the Versailles agreement was developed to preclude worldwide war from happening again. It is ironical that the efforts to resolve the challenge only led to increased far-reaching problems that gave Hitler more opportunities. When the globe was circumventing “contrary to the terrors of war”, the countries that triumphed during the First World War pledged to stop further war misfortune from happening once more through restricting the powers possessed by Germany. According to article 231, Germany was held accountable as the country accountable for the First World War blame and called for the decline of military powers, colossal financial compensations, and territory victims. As a result, this led to a psychological affliction to Germany since the entire world was seen to be coercing the people of Germany, and was also seen as way of demeaning Germany as a country by making it look inferior. Subsequently, the Versailles agreement created suffering and anger among Germany citizens, which made Germany people more and more vulnerable to Nazi publicity in future despite the agreement ability influence to enhance peace. The lack of autonomous support by all the Western nations was a clear indication of the failure of the treaty to enforce the anticipated peace conditions. Circumstances like the letdown of “Stressa Front”, which was caused by Britain’s withdrawal from the agreement terms to provide the appeasement action plan, revealed to Hitler that countries from the West were at odds. The divided rules gave Hitler an upper hand in playing diplomats off one another by snatching away land in Europe by manipulating contracts.
Moreover, the British ambassadors held that the agreement of Versailles was extremely cruel, something that made them to take the stand to walk away from the original standings. All along the 1920s, Chamberlain enthusiastically fought forth a conciliation strategy in response to the agreement of Versailles. Afterwards, historians described Chamberlain thought as the "mediation of illusion" since he thought that Hitler’s target was anticipation for reimbursements from the unfair agreement of Versailles. The appeasement rule results in subsequent global agreements like the Locarno treaty. Despite the fact that the Locarno agreement brought a transitory peace on Germany’s western facade, which also earned representatives a Noble Peace Prize, it simply proved to worsen the situation by weakening Hitler’s western influence. Consequently, the contradictory and fruitless strategies forged by the treaties only but powered the fires for the Nazi administration.
The failures of global associations developed by agreements offered Hitler the opportunity to flatten all the European countries. The League of Nations, developed due to the Paris Peace Conference, was completely ineffective towards accomplishing its goal of thwarting conflict across the globe. In the course of critical crisis times like when Italy invaded Abyssinia, the League of Nations remained soundless. When Japan established the Manchurian crisis, the League of Nations still remained silent about this provocative actions3. Accordingly, these activities made Hitler and the Axis rule to look at the League of Nations as of no use and unsuccessful and corrected them. The failure of the League of Nations to function effectively in military and policies administering was as a result of the lack of support from the USSR and the United States. Subsequently due to poor international structure to enforce peace gave Hitler a perfect setting to build and expand his policies making him extend his regulations to Eastern Europe.
Nonetheless, the unstable treaties were purely due to rough economic times that were facing Europe at that time. As a matter of fact, the injured economy stimulated a key pronouncement which gave rise to World War Two. The miserable economic made it impossible for British politicians to undertake any regulations that could foster peace, which paved the way for the National Socialist Party to take Germany’s control4. As a result, it became the origin of the conflict in the Pacific frontage. Accordingly because of the weak international regulation by the Western nations and the creation of Nazi Party it directly causes the Second World War.
Economic Factors
The economic state during the 1930s made concession regulations look reasonable to western rulers. Though the orthodox look of pacification was that Chamberlain was the “most remorseful among embarrassed men” for taking through with his ideas, later pragmatics interpretations revealed that these regulations were indeed right. Chamberlain was facing huge domestic economic problems all through this period, mainly because of the great depression. During this tough time of recovery, majority of the men serving in the army remained in reserve camps in anticipation that incase Chamberlain triggered these troops; the British industry would be finished. Also, the balance of economic challenges was vital for France’s politically unstable government that was struggling to reconcile its poles apart political parties. France shifted to policies to enhance security as a strategy to avoid economic decline, by constructing the Maginot line; instead of marshaling huge armies that would utilize the available resources and take away a weak work system of its workers. The tough and rough economic times that was facing the western countries like France and Britain is an evident major cause for WWII.
On the same note, the poor economic state in Germany was the leading cause of Hitler’s triumph to power. During the establishment of the National Socialist Party, it was considered as a revolutionary party. In the 1920s the boom years the people of Germany were thriving economically as well as socially a condition that made Germany not to seek for retribution against the western rulers1. Conversely, with the collapse of the stock market in 1929 and the worldwide depression that followed brought to an end Germany’s peaceable period. Subsequently, the United States stopped its support that it initially offered the Dawes program a condition that heightened Germany’s financial liability. The constriction of money, as well as credit, finally lead to the collapse of Austria’s leading bank in 1931, the Kreditanstalt, which starts off a wave of the closure of banks across Central Europe. The increase in unemployment and the skyrocketing of inflation in the country among common individuals started the blame against the contracts of Versailles as well as biased terms created after the First World War. Ultimately since the Nazi party was created on political grounds to salvage initial glory, many citizens turned on it. The support for Nazi party started both in the country side and in the major cities giving it power over the Reichstag. With Hitler as the leader, Germany soon developed into a progressively armed nation, causing pressures and setting the stage for WWII.
The decline in the economic conditions in Germany offered a great chance for Nazi Party growth from a comparatively small peripheral group a great and powerful national leading political party. As a result of Nazi propaganda blame on the Versailles agreement to Germany’s rising economic hardships, it fuels Hitler’s triumph in popularity that makes him German leader in 1933. Indeed the economic collapse proved an avenue for the Nationalist Socialist party the chance to enforce the radical and extreme regulations.
Differences in Ideologies
The French, Americans, British and Soviets were in possession of huge colonial territories to turn to for access to the highly raw materials demand, nations like Italy, Germany and Japan had not this chance. Moreover, the weakening of the global trade resulted in the development of more regional trade blocs with the “have” countries establishing blocs on colonial basis such as the Great Britain’s Imperial Preference system1. On the other hand, the “have-not” countries viewed to create their regional trade blocks. However, these countries found it much important to apply military force to seize territories with the enough required possessions. These military forces demanded for broad base arming and for the case of Germany this directly meant violation of the Versailles agreement. As a result, rearmament strengthened the demand for more raw materials which subsequently created the need to extend the territory. The coming of these imperialist conquests such as Italy’s invasions of Ethiopia in 1935, Japan’s conquest of Manchuria in the 1930s and Germany’s annexation of Austria in addition to portions of Czechoslovakia in 1938, all these were outcomes of the want to increase territories. However, these conquests soon proved the ire of Europe’s major powers, and as a result of Germany’s invasion of Poland, it led to Italy and Britain asserting war on Germany, which leads to the start of the WWII.
As a result of the conservative interpretation putting a lot of emphasis on the ideological inspirations of the western powers and the Axis powers was the stepping stone for Second World War. The United States different propaganda movies, it described the war as a fight between the liberties of social equality in contrast to the fear of dictatorship. Nevertheless, the western countries joined the war specifically due to political and economic stiffness in addition to ideological dissimilarities. At this juncture it is important to distinguish the two types of ideology: there was a clash between fascist states and democracies. In addition, there are conflicting types of national ideologies like that of the Stalin’s Communism and Hitler’s Nazism. This paper agrees that despite the fact that the clashing fascist states had a small influence towards the emergence of the World War II. Consequently, the powerful pulse of the national ideas is held accountable to a certain scope towards making the aggressive countries teaming up and becoming extremely aggressive.
At the time of the interwar, the United States remained in “golden seclusion” as it was not prepared to rearm particularly due to the differences in ideas. Regardless of the worsening and declining situation in Europe because of the United States unwillingness to support Europe, the Congress declines to offer defense forces as well as other types of back up to calm down Europe. As a matter of fact, this situation was a clear indication that though fascism in Europe was on the rise, the United States took no action to oppose it3. The United States silent action on the weakening European nations makes no sense. Hence, this reveals that the US purely made use of the story of ideological variations to intensify efforts to start the war which has been triggered by the disaster at Pearl Dock. On the same note peoples, different types of ideology also play a significant role towards the accumulation of defense forces in Europe. The Nazi party of Hitler was developed on the precarious thoughts of Lebensraum as well as Semitism as illustrated in Mein Kampf. When Nazi party advanced into a huge party, Hitler made use of these vital pillars to amplify his war efforts and drives the nation towards the path of war, this could have had perceived lasting impact with the coming of Cold War.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the economic aspects, the pretense of peace treaties, and difference in ideology led to the development of the devastating agreements that resulted in the Second World War. A comparison between different conventional and revisionists views makes the case for how poor treaties openly escalated tension in Europe; but it was primarily an economic aspect that developed the foundation for conflict globally. Nevertheless, ideological stands involved in a more of groundbreaking part during the course of these actions. The combination of all these circumstances greatly stimulated the poor overseas strategy and resulted in the worldwide conflict of the Second World War.
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