Discuss how the (i) imperialistic ambition of Adolf Hitler and (ii) German attack
on Poland - an immediate cause, became factors that also caused the Second
World War.
Answers
Answer:
Historians from many countries have given considerable attention to studying and understanding the causes of World War II, a global war from 1939 to 1945 that was the deadliest conflict in human history. The immediate precipitating event was the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939, and the subsequent declarations of war on Germany made by Britain and France, but many other prior events have been suggested as ultimate causes. Primary themes in historical analysis of the war's origins include the political takeover of Germany in 1933 by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party; Japanese militarism against China; Italian aggression against Ethiopia; and Germany's initial success in negotiating a neutrality pact with the Soviet Union to divide territorial control of Eastern Europe between them.
The German battleship Schleswig-Holstein attacked Westerplatte at the start of the war, September 1, 1939
Destroyer USS Shaw exploding during the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941
During the interwar period, deep anger arose in Weimar Germany regarding the conditions of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which punished Germany for its role in the First World War with severe conditions and heavy financial reparations in order to prevent it from ever becoming a military power again. This provoked strong currents of revanchism in German politics, with complaints primarily focused on the demilitarization of the Rhineland, the prohibition of German unification with Austria, and the loss of some German-speaking territories and overseas colonies.
The 1930s were a decade in which democracy was in disrepute; countries across the world turned to authoritarian regimes during the worldwide economic crisis of the Great Depression.[1] In Germany, resentment and hatred of other countries was intensified by the instability of the German political system, as many activists rejected the legitimacy of the Weimar Republic. The most extreme political aspirant to emerge from this situation was Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party. The Nazis took totalitarian power in Germany beginning in 1933 and demanded the undoing of the Versailles provisions. Their ambitious and aggressive domestic and foreign policies reflected the Nazi ideologies of anti-Semitism, unification of all Germans, the acquisition of "living space" (Lebensraum) for agrarian settlers, the elimination of Bolshevism, and the hegemony of an "Aryan"/"Nordic" master race over "sub-humans" (Untermenschen) such as Jews and Slavs. Other factors leading to the war included aggression by Fascist Italy against Ethiopia and Albania, and by Imperial Japan against much of East Asia, resulting in the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the gradual annexation of most of China.
At first, these aggressive moves met with only feeble and ineffectual policies of appeasement from the other major world powers. The League of Nations, established after the First World War, proved helpless regarding China and Ethiopia. A decisive proximate event was the 1938 Munich Conference, which formally approved Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Hitler promised it was his last territorial claim, but in early 1939 he became even more aggressive, and European governments finally realized that appeasement was not guaranteeing peace. Britain and France badly fumbled diplomatic efforts to form a military alliance with the Soviet Union, and Hitler instead offered Stalin a better deal in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939. An alliance formed by Germany, Japan, and Italy led to the establishment of the Axis Powers.