Causes of World War
Two
Who or what?
Which War?
1.
•
•
2.
•
European War:1939 +
1941 +
The Asian Pacific Conflict:December 1941 +
These can therefore cover two wars in
‘different regions’
1939 The European War
 The
main Themes?
Appeasement??? Role of Hitler???
Ideology???
USSR???
The short-term causes and triggers?
US Isolation???
Mussolini???
Internal
Politics???
Economic
Interests???
The long-term, underlying conditions?
Versailles
Depression
Failure of League
And Collective
security
Fear of Communism
The Long Term Causes /
Conditions
1.



Versailles – Why?
The German reaction – bitterness etc
But……….
20 Years earlier
and most of Germany’s grievances had
been removed:Reparations cancelled, disarmament
ignored, Rhineland remilitarised,
Anschluss, Sudetenland (Munich)
2.






The Depression – Why?
Allowed Hitler to power
Italy more aggressive
(Japan invaded Manchuria)
Weakened Britain and France…
Appeasement more likely, League
weakened
Weakened USA, Isolation more likely
3.


The failure of the League and Collective
Security – Why?
Failed to control aggressors
Failed to secure disarmament
These are the underlying conditions.
Was war brought about by these alone?
If so why did war not come about sooner? all these had happened by 1936/37…..
APPEASEMENT?
Critics – ‘Orthodox’ Views:Alan Bullock : ‘Success and the absence of resistance
tempted Hitler to reach out further, to take
bigger risks’.
 Hitler not necessarily planning war, but
after Munich he was convinced that GB
and Fr would not act, so gambled on a war
with Poland.
 Chamberlain
criticised for making a stand
on the wrong issue
 German claims to Danzig and the Polish
Corridor more reasonable than her
demands for the Sudetenland
 Chamberlain should therefore have made
a stand at Munich and backed the Czechs
who were much stronger economically and
militarily than Poland.
R.A.C. Parker
 Chamberlain had a blind belief in
Appeasement so ignored alternatives
Defenders of Chamberlain
The Revisionists: Britain not in a position to stand up to
Hitler yet
 Not just Chamberlain
 Bought Britain a year to rearm
David Dilks
 Appeasement ‘hoped for the best but
prepared for the worst’
 Ch wanted peace but not at any price
John Charmley
 Chamberlain had little option
 His policies more realistic and reasonable
than the alternatives
Richard Overy
 Appeasement the right policy for Britain at
the time
 Britain forced Germany into a war sooner
than it wanted and at a time when Britian
stood a chance of not losing!
James Sheehan
 ‘The alternative to appeasing Hitler in
1938 was fighting him’
 Hitler ‘was not bluffing, and the threat of
war alone would not have stopped him…’
What about the French?
 Politically
France was deeply divided and
unstable
Duroselle: Internal Instability led to uncertain and
indecisive foreign policy
Girault: France impotent and preparing not for war but
inevitable defeat.
 French priority was security and defence not
standing up to Hitler
 Fear of losing British support
A
contrast between a) the British positive
and optimistic view of appeasement and b)
the French negative, pessimistic view defeat becoming increasingly inevitable
Adamthwaite: The French were too timid. Why?
1. Military chiefs did not believe victory was
possible.
2. French public opinion was divided
3. Active British support needed. Not
forthcoming.
Robert Young: So the French priority was security and
defence (eg Maginot Line)
 No offensive plan
 British
support had to be encouraged so
letting Chamberlain take the lead ensured
British involvement in decisions
THE USSR’S ROLE
 How
might they be blamed?
 The Nazi-Soviet Pact August 1939 or
the?
 ‘Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement’
 Allowed the carving up of Poland and this
was the key trigger
The ‘Collective Security
Approach’
A Sympathetic Intepretation
AJP Taylor: Soviet Foreign Policy was defensive
 Collective security was Stalin’s preferred
means to stop Hitler
 Stalin was forced to sign the N/S Pact
because of appeasement
Jonathan Haslam: Stalin’s actions based on pure national self
interest – the most secure option
Geoffrey Roberts: Stalin viewed the League as finished after
Munich
 Appeasers seemed happy with Hitler’s
eastward march (or were they
encouraging it?) so: N/S Pact an isolationist form of protection
from Germany
American Historians (during the
Cold War):Langer and Everett Gleason: ‘Stalin’s blank cheque’ to Hitler
Robert Tucker: Stalin aimed to divide the capitalist states
(GB/Fr and Germ) to make sure they went
to war with each other, exhausted each
other and then the USSR would be able to
make easy gains in Eastern Europe.
 Views coloured by?
The ‘German School’
Stalin to blame
 Stalin actively wanted to renew the SovietGerman relationship of Rapallo
Topitsch: Stalin’s War – key figure to blame and the
victor
 Had clear aims which agreed with
Tucker’s view
 ie Stalin manipulated Hitler for his own
ends
BUT…
Bell: Clear plan?
 USSR very badly prepared
 Confuses the outcome with the causes
 Recent
documents suggest that Stalin was
a believer in the League and Collective
Security, and an agreement with GB and
Fr in 1939
 SO Stalin Less to blame than Hitler?
Is Mein Kampf evidence of a
plan or is it just a rant?

Hitler’s Role?
1. The Orthodox View
Hugh Trevor-Roper 1950s
 Hitler was following a master plan for war
from the beginning. What?
 Lebensraum, Destroy Communism,
Jewish Question
Alan Bullock
 Hitler had clear aims but was opportunist
in his method and tactics
Martin Gilbert
 Remove the stigma of defeat in WW1 -‘the
only antidote to defeat in one war is victory
in the next’
Hilgruber
 3 Stage Plan to dominate Europe, then
Middle East, then the World.
Hildebrand
 ‘Stufenplan’ – stage by stage plan Lebensraum, then USSR, then World!
The Main ‘Orthodox’ Evidence?
 Mein Kampf 1924
 Hitler’s Secret Book 1928 – unfinished
 The Hossbach Memorandum Nov 1937
The Implications?
 Hitler
had clear personal intentions,
carried out with flexibility and improvisation
 Appeasement free from blame
 Hitler an exception in German History so
Germans largely free of blame.
The Hossbach Memorandum
 Read
Rogers and Thomas Pages 118-119
for the debate, and consider questions 1-4
 Adamthwaite
 Confirms Hitler’s aims in foreign policy
 Confirms continuity
 ‘Hitler’s warlike intentions were now
explicit’
 AJP
Taylor
 Questioned its reliability, and pointed out
that its purpose was to flush out and get
rid of potential opponents, eg Minister of
Economics, Hjalmar Schacht
 James Sheehan
 Agrees but also points out that Blomberg,
Fritsch and Neurath, present at the
meeting, and who expressed doubts about
Hitler’s plans, were replaced soon
afterwards
Read through a copy of the
Hossbach Memorandum
 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/hossbach.asp
 (Autarky
= Self-Sufficiency)
 To what extent does it sound as if Hitler was
planning for a general war?
 When?
 With reference to its origin and purpose,
evaluate the value and limitations of the
Hossbach Memorandum as evidence for
historians analysing the causes of WW2.
A.J.P.Taylor
 ‘The
Origins of the Second World War
1961’
 Hugely controversial
 dismisses Mein Kampf as a way to pass
the time in prison
 Hitler did NOT intend to cause a major
war, at most a short war with Poland
 Hitler’s aims similar to those of previous
rulers –
 Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Stresemann
 Just different methods
 Improvisation
and Opportunism
 ‘Spur of the moment bright idea’
 ‘An ordinary German statesman’
Other Revisionists
Bracher and others: No overall plan
 A response to internal divisions and
bureaucratic chaos
Mommsen: ‘expansion without object’
Continuity or Unique?
Namier: A German desire to dominate Europe was a
key common cause for WW1 and 2
AJP Taylor: WW2 the logical conclusion of German
history 1871-1945
 ‘It was no more of a mistake for the German
people to end up with Hitler than it is an
accident when a river flows into the sea’
Fischer: German foreign policy only changed in
form, but not in its central aims
Gordon Craig: The imperial elites which dominated
German policy before 1914, were the
same as those which invited Hitler to
power and supported his foreign policy.
Continuity – The evidence?
 ‘Lebensraum’
and a ‘Greater Germany’–: Nothing new – came from the PanGerman League (Pre 1914)
 Dominance of Eastern Europe
 Key German aim in WW1
 Anti Communism
 A key aim of the old elites (the Junker
class)
So it was nothing new….
 Or
was it?
 Anti-Semitic element?
Geoffrey Eley: Nazism was ‘more extreme in every way’
 Expansion and extermination which was
new
Other influences?
 To
control Eastern Europe…
 Weaken Slav nationalism…
 Weaken Russia…
ALL PARTS OF HAPSBURG AUSTROHUNGARIAN FOREIGN POLICY and…
 Anti-Semitism was widespread in Austria
Frank McDonough: ‘Hitler was the drummer of an old tune
accompanied by modern instruments’
US Isolation?
The Orthodox View
 Weakened the League and Britain and
France
 Contributed to Appeasement
Overy:See source 11 on separate sheet – USA
were militarily very weak and outdated and
therefore had ‘little to threaten with’
anyway.
Over to you…..
– McDonough p. 102-3
 Economic Explanations:- McDonough p 103-4
 The role of Mussolini:- McDonough p 97-99
 Ideology - McDonough p 105-106
 Versailles
Read:McDonough p90-107
Morris p 354-357
Other tasks
 Read
other articles
 Especially Mike Wells
 Rogers and Thomas Pages 111-128
Who or what was to blame for
the European War?