World War Two was the most terrifying reality of modern times. It was the first global conflict to be fought with equal intensity in all parts of the world. It was fiercer and more destructive than any in history with domination of the world at stake.
Possibly, most people see World War Two in rather simplistic terms. Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo started the war; they were the aggressors; and got exactly what they deserved. However, in history there are few genuine villains and even fewer genuine heroes.
Today, one can afford to take a less emotional look at the greatest war in all history and examine its causes with a more critical eye. This is mainly due to documents only recently being made available which cast new light on the once seemingly simple story of the good guys defeating the bad guys. It can no longer be argued that Hitler, and Hitler alone, caused the war in Europe, any more than it can be argued that Japan started the war in the Pacific. It is debatable that both Germany and Japan were provoked by the Western Powers.
The Germany of the Weimar Republic was a creation of the First World War; it was born out of defeat and humiliation. By 1933 the Weimar Republic was wholly discredited, blamed both for the Treaty of Versailles, that shackled Germany, and for the Great Depression. Few Germans accepted the events of the final months of World War One.
After four nightmare years, they would not believe that the German army had been beaten. After all Germany's frontier had not been crossed by enemy troops in action. Indeed, only a few months before the wars end, the German army had pushed back the Allied front to within 40 miles of Paris. To the German civilian, at that time, victory had seemed imminent. Then General Ludendorf had urged the Berlin government to make peace. The German public was shocked when on the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month the armistice to end the First World War came into effect in 1918.
Bismarck's second Reich had collapsed, betrayed by the so called “November criminals”. To the masses, the German armies were not defeated in the field. They marched back into their own country with flags flying and bands playing after their long occupation of other countries, only to find that sailors and civilians had attempted a revolution whilst they had been fighting. The victorious powers then proceeded to strip Germany of territory and demanded her to pay huge reparations.
This served Hitler and the Nazis purpose and they promoted the “stab in the back” propaganda. The Treaty of Versailles imposed upon Germany undoubtedly sowed the seeds of World War Two. Germany sought vengeance and this was given added stimulus when Hitler came to power in 1933. Hitler threw off the shackles of the Versailles Treaty, remilitarised the Rhineland, introduced conscription, annexed Austria and occupied Czechoslovakia. Hitler promised and provided jobs; he also eradicated most political rights and began harassment of the Jews.
Britain and France did not begin to stir until Hitler's troops re-occupied the Rhineland in March 1936. At this stage France alone had the capability of moving into the Rhineland and if she had done, so. Hitler would have backed down rather than face a confrontation. But France lacked the will. From this moment on Hitler knew that the Western Democracies could be pushed. Only France believed in upholding the letter of the Treaty. Britain had no interest in the Treaty, which she now considered unjust (in theory anyway).
When Hitler marched the Wehrmacht into Austria in March 1938, Britain and France merely complained and did nothing. As long as he confined his interests to Eastern Europe, they were more or less content to let him have his way. The annexation of the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia was another matter. But Hitler argued that the people there were German speaking and wanted union with Germany, which was true.
British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain had no intention of going to war, and the Munich Conference sealed the fate of Czechoslovakia. It is now known that if Britain and France had resisted, the German General Staff would have overthrown Hitler. But the Western Powers had allowed Czechoslovakia to be abandoned and dismembered. On 15th March 1939 in the aftermath of Munich Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and drove through Prague in triumph. Thereby, dismissing claims he only wanted to bring Germans into the Reich. Millions of Slavs were unwillingly wedded to Germany, and Hitler's long-term goal of a German empire in the east was now evident.
This was a decisive moment for the West. Now it could no longer be argued that Hitler only wanted to bring Germans in Central Europe into his Reich. Herr Hitler was no longer considered a gentleman to be trusted. The policy of appeasement championed by Neville Chamberlain now lay in ruins. He felt betrayed by the Nazi seizure of Czechoslovakia, finally realising that his policy towards the dictator had failed. The will of Britain stiffened and with it the resolve of France, who was pledged to defend most of the states of Eastern Europe. The British began to mobilise on a war footing. The French did the same.
With Austria and Czechoslovakia now in his hands, Hitler turned to Poland. It was intolerable to him that the German province of East Prussia on the Baltic was separated from the rest of the Reich by a corridor that gave Poland its only access to the sea at Danzig. On April 1939 the British gave a public guarantee to Poland that were she to be attacked by Germany, Britain would go to war. Strange as it seems, no such guarantee was given regarding Soviet aggression.
When Hitler began his demand for the return of German Danzig, then under the League of Nations authority as a free city, Britain began to talk to the nation that she feared as much as Germany, the Soviet Union. But Stalin saw at once that Britain's tentative steps towards a Russian alliance were not sincere, and soon began covert negotiations with his bitter ideological enemy
Hitler read the situation correctly and initiated a brilliant diplomatic counter stroke which completely outwitted the Western Allies. Neither the Axis powers nor the democracies could engage in war without reaching some prior understanding with Russia.