World War II

[und]

I know that this is a very big question to ask, but roughly, what were the main driving forces behind the events leading to the second world war?

I'm writing an essay to do with this over the next week, and I'll broadly cover all of the main reasons, so there is no need for great detail.

One thing which I find strange is that I'm finding it extremely difficult to find any sources explaining the Germany company Krupps' involvement in the invasion of Poland. Probably because we're taught all of that naive "France promised to help them" stuff, which I sometimes find hard to comprehend. That's just not how the world works. Every country acts for its own profit.

[ComradeOm]

A big question indeed but I'll try to churn out a brief summary tomorrow. What level are you writing for (I'm assuming secondary/high school) and are you looking for Marxist reasons?


Probably because we're taught all of that naive "France promised to help them" stuff, which I sometimes find hard to comprehend. That's just not how the world works. Every country acts for its own profit.Hmmm? France, and Britain, did indeed promise to come to Poland's aid with prompt action against Germany. This wasn't some verbal promise but a binding diplomatic treaty that went so far as to lay out a timetable for the expected French offensive. The Poles simply expected France to honour her word

[und]

A big question indeed but I'll try to churn out a brief summary tomorrow. What level are you writing for (I'm assuming secondary/high school) and are you looking for Marxist reasons?
Well.. I'm looking for reasons that I can safely mention in my essay (my teacher is quite right-wing).

Also, when I was talking about the naive stuff I meant the way we're taught. We're not taught the correct reasons for the diplomatic 'promises', but it's taught as if France?britain wanted to do favours.

[Absolut]

Correct me if Im wrong, but Id say that it was some sort of continuation of WWI, ie, a clash between the imperialist powers. Great Britain and France wanted to keep Germany down.

Concering the attack on the Soviet Union, one reason was the need for colonies that Germany had. Since they had been shut out of Africa and Asia, the only viable alternative was to advance eastwards and create colonies there. So you could say that the German lebensraum was a continuation of the colonialism and imperialism practiced by the leading nations accross the world.

[Manifesto]

Yeah it was kind of a continuation and because well the world kept Germany down they got desperate and followed Hitler who told Germany that they were jipped by the UN. I think it was Churchill that warned them not to push Germany.

[the last donut of the night]

WWII was just the continuation of imperialistic clashes we've seen since the birth of capitalism. Germany wanted new territories and the rich resources of Eastern Europe. Of course, Britain and France did not want this happening. When the war began, they all put their motives under the veil of fighting for democracy.

[ComradeOm]

Just a few brief and rambling thoughts below. I'm sure Wikipedia, or ant WWII site, has a whole list of practical causes. Usual disclaimer applies in that these are entirely my own opinions and may well be disputed by others. Reading-wise, I'd recommend Tooze, Wages of Destruction; Prukert, The Weimar Republic; and Finkel, The Hitler-Chamberlain Collusion

I wouldn't go so far as to label WWII a simple "continuation" of WWI (largely because I feel that the 'European Civil War' theories oversimplifies and glosses over the real and important events/movements of the interbellum) but there's no denying that the roots of the conflict lie in the unsatisfactory conclusion of the Great War. This isn't so much about the Versailles Treaty but rather the fact that in 1914 the established European order collapsed and no credible successor could be found found/accepted. This was almost literally the case in Central & Eastern Europe where the events of WWI had seen the collapse of the three (four if you include the Ottomans) great transnational empires that had ruled for centuries. Despite their victory, the 'democratic powers' were unable to (or uninterested in) extend their systems of government, their ideals, or even their economic interests into this void. Instead what arose was the USSR, a very fragile German Republic and a mass of petty nationalist dictatorships. Not a recipe for continued peace - the fighting often continued well past 1918 and the region was full of what we'd call 'frozen conflicts' in Cold War terminology

War probably would have occurred in any case (the democratic structures of Weimar Germany were buckling even before 1929) but it was the Great Depression that really made it inevitable. In my opinion of course, there remains a lot of academic debate on this. Germany was particularly hard hit* and this both finished off Weimar structures and radicalised a large segment of the population, thus creating the Nazi mass party. At the same time it also weakened France and Britain both by financially limiting their scope for action and raising the possibility that Germany might 'go Communist'. A large part of the excessively pro-German foreign policy of Britain during the 1930s can be attributed to the fear that social chaos would produce a 'Red Germany'. As such successive British governments were willing to facilitate German expansion eastwards**, even if this meant undermining the League of Nations or their own ally France, in order to provide for a bulwark against Soviet Russia

What ultimately sparked war between France/Britain and Germany was the realisation that Hitler intended to settle scores in the west before turning his attention east. France, not Russia, was the fight that he was preparing for in 1939/1940. Hitler was preparing to stake Germany's claim to dominance by vanquishing its oldest enemy; Chamberlain and co had fatally miscalculated

* War reparations were not as severe a factor as many historians make out because Germany was able to borrow from the US to pay France/Britain... who in turn paid off their debts to Washington. It was a merry-go-round of capital an one that worked fairly well until the US stopped lending in 1929. Suddenly Germany had to pay its debts and that negatively impacted its economy

** In the absence of colonial markets German intellectuals and politicians had long advocated the infamous Drang nach Osten with an eye towards securing the vast mineral resources of Eastern Russia. Even supposed moderates, such as Stresemann, remained convinced imperialists. The Nazis merely reformulated this into a desire for resettlement land (rather than control/markets) when devising lebensraum policies