The Roots of War
Treaty of Versailles, 1918
• Created a set of small new nations in Eastern
Europe = vulnerable to aggression from larger
neighbors (Germany & Soviet Union)
• Italy & Japan = failed to recognize their
stature as world powers
• Germany = betrayed (Stab in the back myth)
rather than defeated (this leads to the
unconditional surrender demand), harsh war
reparations and loss of lands
1920’s & 30’s
• Economic crisis and political instability fueled
the rise of right-wing dictatorships that
offered territorial expansion by military
conquest as way to redress old rivalries,
dominate trade, and gain access to raw
materials (Hitler, Germany; Mussolini, Italy;
Franco, Spain; Stalin, Russia; Emperor
Hirohito, Japan)
Japanese Nationalism
• Wanted to expel Europeans and Americans from Asia
and create a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
(Asia controlled by Japanese)
• Japanese ambition in Asia was to create a Pan-Asian
empire with Japan at the center as an imperial power
and a defensive ring of 500 miles to protect the
homeland.
• Most of Japanese territorial gains would be in China,
Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands
• Earliest national aggression in WWII was when Japan
invaded Manchuria in 1931
• In 1937 Japan launched a brutal invasion of China
European Nationalism
• Expansion of territories through military
aggression
• Italy: conquest of Ethiopia in 1935 & intervention
in Spain in support of Gen. Franco
• Germany: Hitler made himself the German
Fuhrer, 1934 (absolute leader)
• Thousand Year Reich – combined historic
German interest in eastward expansion with
tradition of German racial superiority
• Lebensraum (living space) created by taking land
from the Russian Slavic peoples
European Nationalism
• Genocide (systematic murder) of the Jewish
people of Europe
• Nuremburg Laws, 1935 denied civil rights to Jews
• NAZI government took Jewish property and
excluded Jews from most jobs
• Concentration Camps were prisons created by
the Nazis to punish political dissidents, Jews,
Gypsies, homosexuals, and other ethnic groups
considered undesirable
• The camps evolved into harsh labor camps and
finally into extermination camps
Rome-Berlin Axis, 1936
• Alliance between Germany & Italy
• Grew into the Tripartite Act, 1940 which
included Japan
• Alliance of Germany, Italy, and Japan became
known as the Axis Powers (aggressor nations)
Hitler’s War in Europe
Pre-War territorial expansion
• 1936 – re-occupied the German Rhineland,
violated terms of Versailles by re-militarizing
Germany
• 1938 – annexed (added) Austria
• Sept. 1938 – Munich Agreement = forced
Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland to
Germany
• March 1939 – Germany occupied the majority
of Czechoslovakia
German invasion of Poland
• Sept. 1, 1939 triggered start of WWII in Europe
• Blitzkrieg invasion “lightening war” included
armored divisions with tanks and motorized
infantry rapidly seized control of territory (new
form of warfare which made trench warfare of
WWI obsolete)
• Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, 1939 – cleared
the way for Hitler’s invasion of Poland with
Germany & Russia splitting the country between
them
War in Europe: 1939-1941
• May 1940 -German invasion of Denmark & Norway to
the North
• May & June 1940 – German invasion of Netherlands,
Belgium, and France to the West
• Defeat of France led to the narrow escape of British
soldiers from the beach at Dunkirk back to England
• Vichy French (Pro-Nazi) government established under
French Gen. Marshall Petain to govern southern France
during the war
• General Charles de Gaul – continued to lead the
French forces
War in Europe: 1939-1941
• Summer of 1940 –German aerial attack of Great Britain (Battle
of Britain)
• Failed to subdue Great Britain who would continue the war
against Germany
• May 1941 –Germany enlisted Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria as
allies and conquered Yugoslavia and Greece to the South in the
Balkans
• June 1941 = unable to knock Great Britain out of the war, Hitler
invaded the Soviet Union in the East
• Invasion caught Soviets off-guard due to the non-aggression pact
• Heavy losses by the Soviets coupled with deep penetration of
German, Italian, and Rumanian forces into the Soviet Union led
to the near capture of Moscow and other strategic cities