Outlines

Midterm outline

Causes of world war 2

Berit Maute

Overview of the causes and war

• Economy

• The treaty of Versailles

• Militarism

• Appeasement

• Nazi ideology

• Alliances

• The league of nations

• Starting on September 1st, 1939

• Ended Sept 2, 1945

• The axis against allied

• Adolf hitler, benito Mussolini, hideki tojo

• FDR, Stalin, Churchill

• Neutral: Spain Sweden Switzerland

• Major conflicts

  • Pearl Harbor

  • D-Day

  • Liberation of France

  • Invasion of France and Poland* blitzkrieg

  • Battle of the bulge

  • The drop of the atomic bomb

• *marks the official start of the war

Economy

• The world was hit by depression in the late 1920s

• Reduced

  • Economies

  • Trade

  • Businesses

  • Prices

  • Banks

  • Employment

• Hitler was a promising solution

• The people resented the other countries for leaving them in the mess

• The Germans had to pay reparations

• Protectionism is “the theory or practice of shielding a country's domestic industries from foreign competition by taxing imports.”

• No more international trade

• Shortages of raw materials

• Caused the violation of the treaty of Versailles

• Need for more expansion as the need for raw materials grew

• Caused the formation of alliances

The treaty of Versailles

• Germany had to

  • Accept the blame for the war

  • Pay reparations to the allied countries

  • Annex large territories

• The treaty never took into consideration the want of the germans or any other defeated country

• Germany gave up territory in Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, return Alsace and Lorraine to France

• Give all of its overseas territories to allies

• Demilitarize its forces

• Brought in a worldwide economic depression

• The Germans were mad about the outcome of the treaty

• The small states placed on the border were strategic in Germany's invasions

• Germans thought they entered the war because of Russia

• Austria Hungary arguably started it

Militarism

• Hitler was secretly building Germany's military

• Allies knew about this

• Hoped to stop the spread of communism

• Hitler ordered to invade german-speaking territories of bordering countries

• Hitler made alliances as the allies were not prepared to fight

• The Japanese were hit hard by the depression

• People lost faith in the government

• They wanted the army to solve their problems

• Japan needed natural resources for their goods

• Resultantly invaded china

• China wanted help from LoN

• Japan ignored them and continued

• America grew concerned for its territories and japan attacked pearl harbor

Appeasement

• The American isolationism

• Direct response to ww1

• Britain and France had no ally

• Worked with the failure of the LON and Versailles

• The rearming of germans

• Germany took the Rhineland

• Germans wanted more

• Hitler pushed appeasement

• Britain did not intervene as Hitler took more land

• This resulted in the Munich agreement

• Hitler s public opinion changed

• Disregarded the treaty

• Britain and France thought the treaty was unfair to Germany

Nazi ideology

• Hitler exploited the loss of pride

• Creating national pride

• Aryans were a supreme race

• Jews were the cause of defeat

• Saught the final solution

• Ensure self-sufficiency

• Reconnecting all germans

• As early as the publication of his book

• He said the oncoming war was because of the lebensraum

• 
  

Alliances

• After ww1 Europe was very divided

• Intervened in the Spanish war

• Hoped to get right-wing supporters and weapons

• Mussolini also hoped to benefit from Germany

• Japanese distrusted the west

• Wanted to subjugate china

• Mirrored nazi objectives

• The soviet-nazi pact created the buffer zone

• 
  

The league of nations

• Envisioned that it would preserve peace

• It wanted all countries to be friends

• All disputes would be settled peacefully

• Not all countries joined

• They did not have an army to defend

• Members were hesitant to act

• The US did not join for fear of binding themselves

• Failed to intervene in many conflicts leading up to the war

• General weakness

• Incomplete representation

• Voting structure

Conclusion

Review causes

• Economy

• The treaty of Versailles

• Militarism

• Appeasement

• Nazi ideology

• Alliances

• The league of nations

• How the war ended (quick overview)

• Section 9: Preparing for the Midterm Essay

• Morgan Fisher

  • The Treaty of Versailles ending WWI:

    • The treaty of versailles was signed on June 28th of 1919

    • It was one cause of the end of WWI

    • It established the conditions of peace between Germany and the Allies (United States, France, and the UK were the major allied powers)

    • austria-Hungary signed the Treaty on the side of the allies

    • The treaty is very controversial

    • It essentially forced Germany and a few other central powers to take blame for the war

    • This was a pretty big mistake in retrospect

    • It forced Germany’s economy further into ruins and it’s government into instability

    • This led, just a year later, to the formation of Nazis

    • The economic demand the Treaty of Versailles placed on Germany, it would have taken multiple decades to pay off their debt

    • Because of the position that the Treaty of Versailles put on Germany, it was arguably the biggest cause of WWII

  • The League of Nations:

    • The League of Nations was created to prevent another war like WWI

    • It sought to solve conflicts through negotiation and disarmament

    • The League of Nations was different than other similar ideas because it was independent and had no amy, causing it to depend of the Great Powers to enforce it

    • There was not a lot of enforcement, leading it to fail

    • As it began to fail in minor conflicts before WWII, it was clear that disobeying it would come with no punishments

    • It was founded on january 10th of 1920

    • It was a result of the Paris Peace Conference, which helped to end WWI

    • September 28th of 1934 through February 23 of 1935 was the peak of the league, with 58 members

    • The United States did not join the League, a big cause of its failure

    • Because the League of nations was so powerless it led Germany to rebel, causing WWII

  • Rise of fascism:

    • Fascism is an authoritarian form of government that forcibly oppresses minorities and has a strict idea of society

    • It promotes inequality and is built on the idea that superiority comes from someone’s background

    • It was invented with the rise of Mussolini in the 1920s

    • Mussolini was influenced by Italian Nationalists to move away from his socalist beliefs

    • He became popular in sharing his new fascist beliefs

    • Italy was on the verge of a civil war and feared a communitst takeover

    • This led to Mussolini being elected as prime minister in 1922

    • Mussolini’s ideas greatly influenced Hitler

    • This led to the start of WWII as Hitler followed Mussolini’s footsteps to power and then used fascist ideas to begin war

  • Rise of militarism in Japan, Germany, and Italy

    • After the great depression Japan’s economy was not in a good place

    • They thought that if they could expand their territory with military victories it would help fix the economy

    • This caused a lot of tension within the country

    • Other countries began to view Japan as hostile

    • In November of 1936, Japan and Germany, signed the Anti-Comintern Pact

    • Italy signed it in 1937

    • The pact was against communists but was specifically targeted at the Soviet Union

    • Hitler, Mussolini, and the German-Soviet Non Aggression pact aggravated Japan

    • This led to the Tripartite Pact that stated that Japan, Germany, and Italy would assist each other with political, economic, and military matters if any of them got attacked by the Soviet Union or the United States

    • Militarism in Germany was similar because they also believed military expansion and control would help their economy

    • This led directly to the start of WWII

  • National expansion

    • Hitler wanted to start a war with the idea of expanding Germany, not only physically but also economically.

    • He wanted immense power and control, expansion of German superiority in any way possible

    • This what led to the war, because to gain respect, money, and land he needed to fight the other countries for it

  • Appeasement

    • Appeasement is the act of fulfilling someone's demand or doing as they say to placate them

    • In this case, British policy makers appeased to Hitler and the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s in order to end the crisis as easily as possible

    • He hoped that a negotiation could be reached that would potentially be kinder to Germany that the Treaty of Versailles had been

    • Winston Churchill warned against this, but the British did not listen

    • The appeasement was at its strongest in 1938 when British concedement to Hitler led to Germany’s annexation of Sudetenland

    • This allowed Hitler more power and gave him the ability to manipulate Britain to get his way

    • This only fueled Germany’s war efforts and made the beginning of WWII easier for them

  • The Axis coalition

    • The axis alliance was between Italy, Germany, and Japan

    • These countries saw Germany as powerful over most of Europe, Italy as powerful over the mediterranean, and Japan over East Asia and the pacific

    • They opposed the allied powers

    • They were formed around 1936

    • They all had strong senses of expansionism and militarism starting in the 1930s that made them strong and powerful during the war

    • Their power allowed them to have a strong impact on the war as a whole and helped the war to begin

    • Without the axis coalition the war would have had a weaker start and germany would have struggled more to create the impact he did

Sources:

• • • https://www.nationalgeographic.org/thisday/jun28/treaty-versailles-ends-wwi/

    • https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/the-league-of-nations/

    • https://www.livescience.com/57622-fascism.html

    • https://www.britannica.com/place/Japan/The-road-to-World-War-II

    • https://www.britannica.com/event/Anti-Comintern-Pact

    • https://www.dw.com/en/how-nazi-policies-of-expansion-led-to-world-war-ii/a-17889233

    • https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/did-appeasement-cause-second-world-war-policy-how-why/

    • https://www.britannica.com/topic/Chetnik

    • https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/did-appeasement-cause-second-world-war-policy-how-why/

    • https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/axis-alliance-in-world-war-ii

    • https://www.lcps.org/cms/lib/VA01000195/Centricity/Domain/10599/Causes%20of%20WWII.pdf

    • https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-tcc-worldciv2/chapter/causes-of-world-war-ii/

    • https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii

    • https://www.historyhit.com/causes-of-world-war-two-in-europe/

General Ranking:

1. Treaty of Versailles

2. Rise of fascism

3. Appeasement

4. Rise of militarism/axis coalition

5. National expansion

6. Failure of league of nations