Causes of the Second World War
a) Name the treaty signed by Italy, Germany and Japan
b) Mention some of the ideologies that emerged after the First World War
c) What was the policy followed by the statesmen of the major world powers
d) What did Hitler violate?
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Some long-term causes of World War II are found in the conditions preceding World War I and seen as common for both World Wars. Supporters of this view paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz : World War II was a continuation of World War I by the same means. In fact, World Wars had been expected before Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler came to power and Japan invaded China. [1]
Among the causes of World War II were Italian fascism in the 1920s, Japanese militarism and invasion of China in the 1930s, and especially the political takeover in 1933 of Germany by Hitler and his Nazi Party and its aggressive foreign policy. The immediate cause was Britain and France declaring war on Germany after it invaded Poland in September 1939.
Problems arose in Weimar Germany that experienced strong currents of revanchism after the Treaty of Versailles that concluded its defeat in World War I in 1918. Dissatisfactions of treaty provisions included the
demilitarization of the Rhineland , the
prohibition of unification with Austria (including the Sudetenland ) and the loss of German-speaking territories such as Danzig and Eupen-Malmedy despite Wilson's Fourteen Points, the limitations on the Reichswehr making it a token military force, the war-guilt clause , and last but not least the heavy tribute that Germany had to pay in the form of war reparations , which became an unbearable burden after the Great Depression . The most serious internal cause in Germany was the instability of the political system, as large sectors of politically active Germans rejected the legitimacy of the Weimar Republic.
After his rise and take-over of power in 1933 to a large part based on these grievances, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis heavily promoted them and also ideas of vastly ambitious additional demands based on Nazi ideology, such as
uniting all Germans (and further all Germanic peoples ) in Europe in a single nation; the acquisition of "living space" ( Lebensraum ) for primarily agrarian settlers ( Blut und Boden ), creating a "pull towards the East" ( Drang nach Osten ) where such territories were to be found and colonized ; the elimination of Bolshevism ; and the hegemony of an " Aryan "/" Nordic " so-called Master Race over the "sub-humans" ( Untermenschen ) of inferior races, chief among them Slavs and Jews .
Tensions created by those ideologies and the dissatisfactions of those powers with the
interwar international order steadily increased. Italy laid claim on Ethiopia and conquered it in 1935, Japan created a puppet state in
Manchuria in 1931 and expanded beyond in China from 1937, and Germany systematically flouted the Versailles treaty, reintroducing
conscription in 1935 with the Stresa Front's failure after having secretly started re-armament , remilitarizing the Rhineland in 1936,
annexing Austria in March 1938, and the
Sudetenland in October 1938.
All those aggressive moves met only feeble and ineffectual policies of appeasement from the League of Nations and the Entente Cordiale , in retrospect symbolized by the "peace for our time" speech following the
Munich Conference , that had allowed the annexation of the Sudeten from interwar Czechoslovakia . When the German Führer broke the promise he had made at that conference to respect that country's future
territorial integrity in March 1939 by sending troops into Prague , its capital, breaking off Slovakia as a German client state, and absorbing the rest of it as the " Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia ", Britain and France tried to switch to a policy of deterrence.
As Nazi attentions turned towards resolving the " Polish Corridor Question" during the summer of 1939, Britain and France committed themselves to an alliance with Poland, threatening Germany with a two- front war. On their side, the Germans assured themselves of the support of the USSR by signing a non-aggression pact with them in August, secretly dividing Eastern Europe into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence .
The stage was then set for the Danzig crisis to become the immediate trigger of the war in Europe started on 1 September 1939 . Following the Fall of France in June 1940, the
Vichy regime signed an armistice, which tempted the Empire of Japan to join the Axis powers and invade French Indochina to improve their military situation in their war with China . This provoked the then neutral United States to respond with an embargo . The Japanese leadership, whose goal was Japanese domination of the Asia-Pacific , thought they had no option but to pre-emptively strike at the US Pacific fleet , which they did by attacking Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 .
Among the causes of World War II were Italian fascism in the 1920s, Japanese militarism and invasion of China in the 1930s, and especially the political takeover in 1933 of Germany by Hitler and his Nazi Party and its aggressive foreign policy. The immediate cause was Britain and France declaring war on Germany after it invaded Poland in September 1939.
Problems arose in Weimar Germany that experienced strong currents of revanchism after the Treaty of Versailles that concluded its defeat in World War I in 1918. Dissatisfactions of treaty provisions included the
demilitarization of the Rhineland , the
prohibition of unification with Austria (including the Sudetenland ) and the loss of German-speaking territories such as Danzig and Eupen-Malmedy despite Wilson's Fourteen Points, the limitations on the Reichswehr making it a token military force, the war-guilt clause , and last but not least the heavy tribute that Germany had to pay in the form of war reparations , which became an unbearable burden after the Great Depression . The most serious internal cause in Germany was the instability of the political system, as large sectors of politically active Germans rejected the legitimacy of the Weimar Republic.
After his rise and take-over of power in 1933 to a large part based on these grievances, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis heavily promoted them and also ideas of vastly ambitious additional demands based on Nazi ideology, such as
uniting all Germans (and further all Germanic peoples ) in Europe in a single nation; the acquisition of "living space" ( Lebensraum ) for primarily agrarian settlers ( Blut und Boden ), creating a "pull towards the East" ( Drang nach Osten ) where such territories were to be found and colonized ; the elimination of Bolshevism ; and the hegemony of an " Aryan "/" Nordic " so-called Master Race over the "sub-humans" ( Untermenschen ) of inferior races, chief among them Slavs and Jews .
Tensions created by those ideologies and the dissatisfactions of those powers with the
interwar international order steadily increased. Italy laid claim on Ethiopia and conquered it in 1935, Japan created a puppet state in
Manchuria in 1931 and expanded beyond in China from 1937, and Germany systematically flouted the Versailles treaty, reintroducing
conscription in 1935 with the Stresa Front's failure after having secretly started re-armament , remilitarizing the Rhineland in 1936,
annexing Austria in March 1938, and the
Sudetenland in October 1938.
All those aggressive moves met only feeble and ineffectual policies of appeasement from the League of Nations and the Entente Cordiale , in retrospect symbolized by the "peace for our time" speech following the
Munich Conference , that had allowed the annexation of the Sudeten from interwar Czechoslovakia . When the German Führer broke the promise he had made at that conference to respect that country's future
territorial integrity in March 1939 by sending troops into Prague , its capital, breaking off Slovakia as a German client state, and absorbing the rest of it as the " Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia ", Britain and France tried to switch to a policy of deterrence.
As Nazi attentions turned towards resolving the " Polish Corridor Question" during the summer of 1939, Britain and France committed themselves to an alliance with Poland, threatening Germany with a two- front war. On their side, the Germans assured themselves of the support of the USSR by signing a non-aggression pact with them in August, secretly dividing Eastern Europe into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence .
The stage was then set for the Danzig crisis to become the immediate trigger of the war in Europe started on 1 September 1939 . Following the Fall of France in June 1940, the
Vichy regime signed an armistice, which tempted the Empire of Japan to join the Axis powers and invade French Indochina to improve their military situation in their war with China . This provoked the then neutral United States to respond with an embargo . The Japanese leadership, whose goal was Japanese domination of the Asia-Pacific , thought they had no option but to pre-emptively strike at the US Pacific fleet , which they did by attacking Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 .
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(a)
• The treaty signed by Italy , Germany and Japan on 27th September 1940 in Berlin is called as Tripartite Pact (Berlin Pact).
(b)
• The ideologies that emerged after the First World War was that all the nations had stop fighting amongst them and also the environment for maintaining peace was negotiated.
(c)
• The policy followed by the statesmen of the major world powers was that they pledged to meet and to settle down the disputes.
(d)
• Hitler violated because he broke the agreement between Locarno Pact and the Treaty of Versailles by sending the force of the German military into Rhineland.
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