What were the causes of World War 2?

What Caused WW2

Strictly speaking, you could say that the war in Europe was caused by the German invasion of Poland and the war in Asia was triggered by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Searching for more root causes is more complicated and becomes intertwined with answers to "What could have prevented World War 2?" and "What chains of events led to WW2?"

Here are opinions from WikiAnswers Contributors.

Failure of the Treaty of Versailles

The treaty signed after World War I treated Germany very harshly and was greatly resented by the German people.

• The size of Germany's military was severely restricted.
• Germany was forced to give up territories its overseas colonies, and lost territory in Europe.
• Germany was ordered to pay $33 billion in reparations (war damages).

This left Germany with grievances. In the Great Depression, which hit Germany early in 1930 unemployment was at terrible levels. Hitler made it his responsibility to defy all of the charges made on Germany through the treaty. He re-armed his nation, built up a massive army, re-militarized the Rhineland, and threatened neighboring states. It was obvious he was preparing for war.

Appeasement, Isolationism, and the Failure of the League of Nations

• The Treaty of Versailles was not as unjust as some would see it. The lands taken from Germany were lands that were conquered (Alsace-Lorraine) or partitioned (Lower Silesia, the Polish Corridor) by Germany, Russia, and Austria in the late 1700's. The treaty itself wasn't unfair, rather was seen as such in Germany. This is because of the great myth that Gerrmany was never defeated on the battlefield in WWI (propagated by Field Marshals Hindenburg and Ludendorff, even though they were the two who told the government to seek an armistice) also contributed to mightily to the treaties as been seen as unfair andf contributed greatly to revisionists such as Hitler coming to power. Yet the treaty itself is not what started WWII (though it didn't stop it from happening). Rather it was the unwillingness of Great Powers such as Great Britain, and France along with the the League of Nations, to uphold the treaty provisions. When Germany announced that it had an air force, that they were re-introducing military conscription, that they were re-occuping the demilitarized Rhineland, that they had reached a naval agreement with Great Britain that allowed them to build a navy thirty-five percent the size of Great Britain's (roughly the size of France's) the League of Nations only provided paper protests and the Versailles treaty became as dead as a door-nail. WWII was started not only by Hitler's aspirations, but by an enfeebled West which did not comprehend the magnitude of its inactions.

• Leading up to the war, some European countries had weakened their own militaries (Denmark had basically disarmed itself, which made it the almost ideal trampoline for German forces into Norway) or had grown wary of enforcing the Treaty of Versailles despite the fact that a known madman had come to the helm in Germany.

• At the end of World War I, the victorious nations formed the League of Nations for the purpose of airing international disputes, and of mobilizing its members for a collective effort to keep the peace in the event of aggression by any nation against another or of a breach of the peace treaties. The United States, imbued with isolationism, did not become a member. The League failed in its first test. In 1931, the Japanese, using as an excuse the explosion of a small bomb under a section of track of the South Manchuria Railroad (over which they had virtual control), initiated military operations designed to conquer all of Manchuria. After receiving the report of its commission of inquiry, the League adopted a resolution in 1933 calling on the Japanese to withdraw. Thereupon, Japan resigned from the League. Meanwhile, Manchuria had been overrun and transformed into a Japanese puppet state under the name of Manchukuo. Beset by friction and dissension among its members, the League took no further action. Also in 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power as dictator of Germany and began to rearm the country in contravention of the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. He denounced the provisions of that treaty that limited German armament and in 1935 reinstituted compulsory military service. That same year the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini began his long-contemplated invasion of Ethiopia, which he desired as an economic colony. The League voted minor sanctions against Italy, but these had little practical effect. British and French efforts to effect a compromise settlement failed, and Ethiopia was completely occupied by the Italians in 1936.

• Alarmed by German rearmament, France sought an alliance with the USSR. Under the pretext that this endangered Germany, Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936. It was a dangerous venture, for Britain and France could have overwhelmed Germany, but, resolved to keep the peace, they took no action. Emboldened by this success, Hitler intensified his campaign for Lebensraum (living space) for the German people. He annexed Austria in March 1938, and then, charging abuse of German minorities, threatened Czechoslovakia.

• In September, as Hitler increased his demands on the Czechs and war seemed imminent, the British and French arranged a conference with Hitler and Mussolini. At the Munich Conference they agreed to German occupation of the Sudetenland, Hitler's asserted last claim, in the hope of maintaining peace. This hope was short lived, for in March 1939, Hitler took over the rest of Czechoslovakia and seized the former German port of Memel from Lithuania. There followed demands on Poland with regard to Danzig (Gdansk) and the Polish Corridor. The Poles remained adamant, and it became clear to Hitler that he could attain his objectives only by force. After surprising the world with the announcement of a nonaggression pact with his sworn foe, the Soviet Union, he sent his armies across the Polish border on Sept. 1, 1939.

• When Hitler invaded Austria (what they called Anschluss, the uniting of Germany and Austria) he was violating one of the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, but yet the Allies did nothing. When Hitler took the Czechs' main defensive wall, along with all of its factories, etc, the Allies still did nothing. For good reason, Hitler believed that France and Britain would not come to the aid of Poland.

• The US policy of isolationism. Leading up to World War II, the United States of America maintained a policy of isolation. The United States focused little attention on any conflicts occurring outside of their borders.

Fascism, Nationalism, Totalitarianism, and Collectivist Ideology

• Fascists fully support the military and feel war is acceptable in achieving national goals. Because of this, Italy and Germany were prepared to follow this policy and expand and form empires of their own. Germany wanted to unite the dominant Aryan (Germanic) race. This lead to the Czech crisis.

• An increase in German nationalism since Bismark helped unify the country.

• There was a rise in collectivist sentiments in Germany such as notions of self-sacrifice and altruism towards those with similar blood. Meanwhile, there was an extreme fear of Bolshevism.

• In the opinion of some, the European war was a culmination of different branches of Marxist-inspired thought butting heads, but very few professional historians accept this view.

Expansionism

• The war was caused by the expansionist desires of Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese imperialists.

• Germany, Italy and Japan wanted to conquer new territiries and enslave or exterminate the peoples living there.

Economic Depression and Instability

• The Great World Depression in 1929 became a very important cause of the war. It sent the German economy into a great disaster, causing a humungous number of unemployed people. In the book "Causes and Consequences of World War Two" it states that, to the Germans, Hitler was now a strong, determined, and efficient leader who knew exactly where he was going. But did the people actually know where he was leading them? No, the people believed that Hitler was leading them out of the depression but, in actuality Hitler motives were different from what the people thought they were. He used the Great Depression to connive his way into an authority. His real motives were to abolish the Treaty of Versailles, expand German territory, and dominate Europe and the whole world. In order to achieve these goals he first wanted to conquer France, and Russia while he was still on the same side as Italy and Britain. He believed that Italy and Britain would stay to his side until he began full the destruction of the Jews.

• The Weimar Republic was unable to tackle important issues, form a stable government, or control runaway inflation. Germany was in total economic chaos.

• If there had been no Great Depression, do you think World War 2 would still have happened? The political climate created by this depression allowed dictators such as Hitler to rise to power.

• Japan was trying to gain natural resources to feed its industry. Japan has almost no natural resources itself. It attacked the US to "clear the way" for its conquest of American, Dutch, British, and Australian colonies and gain their resources.

Entangling Alliances

• England and France's treaty with Poland had a great deal to do with the war in Europe. I suggest that if England and France had instead decided to not fulfill their obligations under the treaty that instead the war in Europe might very well have ended up with just a war between Germany and Russia. Communism was already being considered a major threat to Western nations and the threat of communism in Germany helped to propel Hitler to power. Only after great reluctance did the Allies accept and aid Russia in her fight with Germany and the primary reason for that was that they were very concerned that Germany would defeat Russia and then become too powerful to stop. Keep in mind that Russia also invaded Poland in 1939 as part of their treaty with Germany and later in November of 1939 Russia invaded Finland. At the outbreak of the European element of the war Russia was on the Axis side as far as the Allies were concerned. It was only Germany's alarming early success in the invasion of Russia that compelled the Allies to take Russia into the Allied fold.

• The point of view that the Versailles Treaty was too onerous, and that this is the cause of World War II, is an American high school history teacher's myth. It is a point of view that can be traced to the isolationists of the 1930s, who declared that World War I had been a mistake, and resisted American preparations for and involvement in World War II right up until Pearl Harbor. German territories that were taken from Germany after World War I by treaty were the result of Prussian imperial victories in the 18th and 19th centuries: the partitions of Poland, the Franco-Prussian War, the brief war against Denmark (1864). They were ethnically mixed border regions where much of the population was not German and had resisted Germanization in the century before World War I. Although the Versailles treaty imposed monetary reparations on the Germany, Allied assistance to the Weimar Republic, both through the Dawes Plan and through investment in Germany during the 1920s, greatly exceeded the repartions taken from Germany under provisions of the Versailles Treaty. Readers would do well to revisit a forgotten treaty, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 1918), to see what peace conditions imperial Germany imposed on Russia (the Soviet Union) as the price of peace after the Russians were defeated and forced out of the war in 1917.

More Input

• Germany, Italy and Japan, each in their own way and for their own reasons, decided they had the right to conquer other nations and enslave or exterminate the peoples who lived in them. When they tried to do this, other people fought back.

• The war started because the 14 points failed. and when the nazi party had formed and started to slaughter innocent people. Also the treaty that ended world war one failed. The reason why the 14 points had fail was because Germany started to build up their military status which was against the 14 points.

• The causes of World War II are naturally a debated subject, but a common view, particularly among the allies in the early post-war years, ties them to the policy of appeasement, which was directed by Britain and France after the First World War and expansionism of Germany and Japan: Germany had lost wealth, power and status following the First World War and the main purpose of the economic, military, and (eventually) territorial expansion was to give Germany a place as a world power again and, in addition, to obtain resource rich land at the expense of Poles and Ukranians. In Germany, there was a strong national desire to escape the bonds of the Treaty of Versailles, and eventually Hitler and the Nazis assumed control of the country by calling for a heroic mass effort to restore past glory. They led Germany through a chain of events: rearmament, reoccupation of the Rhineland, a merger with Austria (Anschluss), incorporation of Czechoslovakia and finally the invasion of Poland. In Asia, Japan's efforts to become a world power and the rise of militarist leadership (in the 1930s, the government in Japan was undermined as militarists rose to power and gained de facto totalitarian control) led to conflicts with first China and later the United States. Japan also sought to secure additional natural resources, such as oil and iron ore, due in part to the lack of natural resources on Japan's own home islands. The League of Nations was powerless and mostly silent in the face of many major events leading to World War II such as Hitler's re-militarisation of the Rhineland, occupation of the Sudetenland and annexation of Austria. The League commissioner in Danzig was unable to deal with German claims on the city. It was a significant contributing factor in the outbreak of World War II in 1939.[3]

• Commonly held general causes for WWII are the rise of nationalism, the rise of militarism, and the presence of unresolved territorial issues. In Germany, resentment of the harsh Treaty of Versailles, specifically article 231 (the "Guilt Clause"); the belief in the Dolchstosslegende; and the onset of the Great Depression fueled the rise to power of Adolf Hitler's militarist National Socialist German Workers Party (the Nazi Party). Meanwhile the treaty's provisions were laxly enforced, due to the fear of another war. Closely related is the failure of the British and French policy of appeasement, which sought to avoid war but actually gave Hitler time to re-arm. The League of Nations also failed in its mission of preventing war. Japan in the 1930s was ruled by a militarist clique devoted to Japan's becoming a world power. Japan invaded China to bolster its meager stock of natural resources. This angered the United States, which reacted by making loans to China, providing covert military assistance, and instituting increasingly broad embargoes of raw materials against Japan. These embargoes would have eventually wrecked Japan's economy; Japan was faced with the choice of withdrawing from China or going to war in order to conquer the oil resources of the Dutch East Indies. It chose to go ahead with plans for the Greater East Asia War in the Pacific.

• You could spend the rest of your life debating the answer to this question, but the short answer is that Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany by using the Jews and other groups as scapegoats for the problems Germany was facing at the time. He then set out to improve conditions by persecuting these groups and invading other European countries to enforce this twisted ideology all over Europe.

• As for the Pacific War, Japan had long been coveting Mainland resources, invading China and (en route) Korea for centuries. Under the guise of The Co-Prosperity Sphere (8-Lands Under One Umbrella), Japan plotted an imerial takeover of Asia and the Pacific a la Western Imperialism less than a century earlier. The US opposed this movement and placed embargoes on Japan. Searching for supplies and rebelling against US intervention, Japan embarked on its Oriental conquest. Hoping to keep the US Air Force out of Japan's way, Adm. Yamamoto led the attack on Pearl Harbor. Unfortunatley they opened fire 30 minutes before the proclamation of war was officially delivered, so many viewed it as a violation of military convention (Adm. Yamamoto regretted this fact, he admired Western military practices). As for the Russians, they've long been in territorial disputes with China and Japan (Korea was just a trophy for the three countries), so Russo-Japanese animosity was already well-grounded by the time the Soviets invaded Japanese-acquired Manchuria (after joining the Allies near the end of the war).

Cause

Three men wanted to rule the world. In the 1920s the West thought it could eliminate war by destroying or limiting weapons. This resulted in an inability to confront evil men until they nearly prevailed.

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