April 9, 1997 // 17.423 Causes & Prevention of War // Van Evera & Mendeloff
ORIGINS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR
I. WORLD WAR II IN CONTEXT
World War II was the greatest war in world history. Some 35-60 million
people died in this enormous global conflagration.
World War II closely followed the most elaborate and hopeful effort ever made to design
a peaceful world (the 1919 Versailles peace). Never before had world leaders sought so
consciously to use their power to shape a peaceful world as they did in 1919. And never
has the world seen such violence as it did in Versailles' aftermath. In contrast, the
peace that emerged in 1945 was undesigned yet proved far more durable. What does this
say of our capacity to engineer a more peaceful world? [1]
II. WAR & REMEMBRANCE: HOW ILLUSIONS REPLACED REALITY IN EUROPE'S MEMORY OF THE FIRST WORLD
WAR (See Holger Herwig, "Clio Deceived...")
Sometimes losers write history. They did here, and sold this history to the winners.
The world paid dearly for the German-authored Great Social Science Experiment of 1898-
1918 (the experiment destroyed the laboratory!); then someone falsified the lab notes.
III. NATIONAL POLICIES AND IDEAS
A. Germany:
1. Germans practiced creative history. Weimar-era (1920's) German schools &
scholars told and believed lies about:
a. The origins of WWI--"The Entente powers encircled Germany and instigated
the war!"
b. The causes and responsibility for Germany's defeat ("the Jews and the
socialists did it!"--not Ludendorff and the superhawks.) Germany's
blunders were not evaluated (those scholars who did evaluate were
persecuted.)
c. The harshness of the peace--"Versailles was Draconian!"
Moral drawn by Germany: "We need a bigger empire, to be safe from our
rapacious neighbors!" Instead of learning that a reach for lebensraum was
dangerous, indeed suicidal, Germans learned that gaining lebensraum was
essential!
2. Germans first embraced Nazi-like ideas (1920s), then the Nazis themselves
(1930s). (Was World War II really just a 1-man show--"Hitler did it!"?? He
had many willing helping hands!)
a. German neoconservative publishers, 1890-1930.
b. German war-cult literature, 1920s.
Who purveyed these Nazi-like ideas? For what reason? We don't have a
satisfactory answer: responsibility for this crime remains hidden in the mists
of history.
3. Nazi beliefs about international affairs:
a. "Germany is insecure", especially "Germany can be strangled by cutting off
food imports."
b. "An empire is the answer"--Germany needs more territory because it needs
an autarkic economy: hence "security is in direct proportion to its
territorial dimensions."
c. "Offense is easy."
i. Bandwagoning--Hitler's "avalanche" theory.
ii. Contempt for the Soviet Union--"Germans built the USSR, but mere
Jews run it now" so "We have only to kick in the door and the whole
rotten structure will come crashing down."
iii. The invention of Blitzkrieg and Manstein's war plan (this occurred
late--during 1939-1940--but Hitler seemed to foresee them, or their
equivalent.)
4. The German military buildup: during the late 1930s Germany spent a far larger
share of its GNP on the military than did Britain and France (see attached
Tables 30-32 from Paul Kennedy.) This gave Germany a large but temporary
military advantage during 1938-1940.
B. Japan:
1. Militarism appears in Japan: the military comes to dominate Japanese national
ideas about foreign affairs, 1900-1941.
2. Ideas the Japanese military believed and/or purveyed:
a. "Japan is insecure, and an empire is the answer."
i. "Others are hostile." Japan embraced the myth of "ABCD [American,
British, Chinese, Dutch] encirclement." It spiralled with
neighbors, unaware that it provoked the hostility it faced.
ii. "These hostile powers could strangle Japan." Specifically, "World
War I shows that states can strangle each other by blockading their
maritime trade--as the Entente strangled Germany. We could be
next."
iii. "Japan can and must address this threat by seizing an empire."
Japanese believed that:
a. Due to factors i and ii Japan needed an autarkic economy that
could function without external trade.
b. A wide empire could provide autarky.
iv. "Japan can conquer an empire." Seizing an empire is a feasible
proposition.
a. Bandwagon dynamics allow it: "With the Axis Alliance we can
scare the US into accepting our expansion."
b. America won't resist: "If we hit America hard it will not fight
all-out."
b. A sugar-coated self-image--"our empire is good for our fellow-Asians" and
"we Japanese are not aggressive." After 1937 the Japanese press was
forbidden to print "articles that may give the impression that our foreign
policy is aggressive."
c. Note the disintegrated character of Japanese ideas:
i. "The US is so aggressive that they will destroy us unless we act;
and so nice they will let us conquer Asia, and will not respond
fully if we attack them."
ii. "Control of economic/industrial resources is so decisive in war that
we must gain such control"--in a war against a state with 10 times
Japan's net economic resources!
iii. "In World War I blockades strangled states, hence we need an
autarkic empire"--even a seaborne empire. But WWI also showed that
a seaborne empire could be strangled by an enemy with a superior
navy (like the USA.)
iv. "Our economy requires empire to expand"--even though Japan's economy
grew by leaps and bounds during 1871-1929 without one.
3. Did Japan have alternatives? What if Japan had accepted its island borders and
sought security through alliances, trusting the operation of the balance-of-
power/balance-of-threat to produce help from others if it were ever threatened?
C. Italy--the land of blue smoke & mirrors. Mussolini's government:
1. Badly misperceived the realities of the late 1930s:
a. It believed gross overestimates of Italian military strength.
b. It believed gross overestimates of the value of empire.
2. Believed false images of the past: "We, the Italians, won WWI for the Entente!
(And we were cheated of our fair share of the spoils!)"
D. Britain:
1. Was generally isolationist.
2. Was further weakened by WWI.
3. Was late to rearm in the 1930s.
4. Embraced an aerial cult of the offensive--"the bomber will always get through."
5. Adopted a strategy of appeasement toward Germany. Why? Three explanations are
common:
a. Craven cowardice. The British public and government were snivelling wimps
who cowered before German belligerence. (But if this is true, why did
Britain declare war on Germany in 1939 and bravely fight on alone against
Germany in 1940?)
b. Dilemmas of multiple contingencies. Some argue that Britain felt
overextended, and had to appease one of its adversaries--Japan, Italy, or
Germany. Germany got the nod, purely for reasons of resource limitation.
c. British belief that Germany was appeasable, due to false historical
understanding. Too many Britons read and believed German propaganda,
concluding that "We encircled and provoked the Germans; let's not do it
again!" and "we were too mean at Versailles--German demands to revise it
are legitimate"
a. After WWII a deterrence model myth arose around Munich, but...
b. After WWI a spiral model myth arose around the July crisis of 1914.
And meanwhile, too few Britons read Ewald Banse and Mein Kampf.
(But also ask: what if Britain had gone to war without attempting appeasement,
over issues of cloudy legitimacy? What if, therefore, the war had broken out
in a way that failed to clearly illuminate German responsibility? How could a
stable peace have then been made?)
E. The United States:
1. Embraced isolationism. Most important, Congress passed a series of neutrality
laws during 1935-1939 that tied the president to a policy of strict neutrality
in event of war elsewhere--an open message to the Nazis and Japanese saying "we
won't oppose your aggression!"
2. Adopted a mobilization military strategy that included no large standing forces.
3. Had no clear national grand strategy; hence America could not predict its own
behavior; hence others (Germany, Japan) couldn't predict it either.
F. France: unready for war.
G. The Soviet Union: indifferent to (even helpful toward) the rise of Nazis in Germany
in the early 1930s; later, suspicious of all capitalists, it was confident that a
war among western states would be a long stalemate, hence it did not fear that such
a war would end quickly, leaving the USSR facing a hegemonic Germany alone.
H. Everywhere except Germany: a military "cult of the defensive" gained currency.
National elites assumed that offense would be as difficult in the next war as it was
during 1914-1918.
IV. HOW THE STORM GATHERED: EVENTS IN EUROPE
A. Withdrawal of the USA, Britain, and USSR from central European affairs.
B. German rearmament--giving Germany an offensive capability and a fleeting
superiority. (Why didn't the allies prevent German rearmament?)
C. Hitler wins without a war: appeasement and peaceful German expansion.
1. Hitler's recoveries & conquests:
-- Remilitarization of the Rhineland 1936
-- Austria 1938
-- Czech sudetenland 1938
-- The Czech rump, 1939
-- Memel, 1939
a. This is quite a nice empire! Why didn't it sate Germany? (Should Britain
and France have launched a preventive war while it was being assembled?)
b. International effects of these German conquests:
-- Growth of German power.
-- Destruction of allied and German credibility.
2. The failure of a strong anti-German defensive alliance to emerge.
D. Hitler attacks Poland, Sept. 1 1939, launching World War II.
Questions about the outbreak of war:
1. Why did deterrence fail, Sept. 1, 1939? 6 explanations:
a. British non-strategy.
b. Growth of German power, 1932-39.
-- When aggressors are stronger than status quo powers, we get war.
-- This is particularly true when the aggressor advantage is fleeting--
this spurs preventive war by the aggressor.
c. Appeasement destroyed British & French credibility.
d. Hitler's bandwagon beliefs destroyed British & French credibility: Hitler
assumed that Britain and France would shrink from war if the USSR agreed
to stay neutral, as it did on August 25, 1939 (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.)
e. Britain made the wrong threat to Germany? Some say Britain should have
written off Poland, and only warned Germany not to invade the USSR--a
threat that Britain had more capacity to carry out, and which therefore
would have been more credible.
f. Lack of allied (Franco-British) offensive capability against Germany?
2. Could Hitler's policy of peaceful expansion have worked in a Europe of nuclear-
armed powers?
E. Hitler declares war on the United States, December 1941. Why?
V. HOW THE STORM GATHERED: EVENTS IN ASIA
A. The Japanese reach for empire, 1931, 1937 ff.: the China advance ultimately requires
the southern advance.
B. The Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis alliance, Sept. 1940 (also called the Tripartite Pact.)
C. The progressive hardening American policy, 1931-1941 (what were American motives?)
-- Why did the US goals expand? Specifically, why did the U.S. begin demanding
Japanese withdrawal from China as the price of peace in July 1941?
Ideas that helped motivate the U.S. hard line position include:
1. The China Market beckons. "Sell every Chinaman a shirt and we'll all get
rich."
2. The strategic importance of British colonies in Asia to the British war
effort in Europe--a myth the British helped promote.
3. The illusion of the Axis monolith: "Japan is Germany's loyal and obedient
ally; hence Japan's gains accrue to Germany."
4. "An Asian war can be a back door to a European war." (But might it not also
be a trap door to an Asian morass that diverts the U.S. from Europe?)
Note: the China Lobby and the British government promoted some of these ideas.
-- Why did the US embargo Japanese oil, July 1941? Utley v. Heinrichs
interpretations.
D. Japan's decision to attack Pearl Harbor (was this smart? why not just bypass the
Philippines?)
E. Lessons of Pearl Harbor: Munich in reverse? Japan wasn't appeased--and it still
went to war!
VI. WHAT CAUSED WWII?
A. German Expansionism--but what caused that?
Dubious explanations:
1. German national character? (But look at today's peaceful Germans...)
2. Versailles--a "harsh peace"? (But it wasn't harsh--and 1945 was far harsher,
but produced peace!)
3. Hitler? (The "great man" theory?) (But wasn't German society primed to
accept Hitler?)
4. Militarism? (But the Weimar German military, while hardly benign, wasn't the
main purveyor of Nazi ideas.)
Problematic explanations:
1. The Great Depression, 1929-39--it brought the Nazis to power. (But the
depression was worldwide. Why did it make only Germany crazy?)
2. War ---> War: Was 1914-1945 one great, single war? Germans were steeped in
the propaganda of WWI, and it's effects lived on later. (But why didn't WWI
propaganda have the same effects in Britain, France, and the USA? And why
didn't WWII later have the same effects as WWI?)
Other explanations:
1. "Continuity" from before 1914: was Naziism an after-echo of the militarism &
hyper-nationalism of 1890-1914? Was German national thought transformed by
this earlier militarist/nationalist inculcation? (Hitler himself was steeped
in the crazed pre-1914 writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Gobineau, and
Haushofer. See Carr, Hitler).
2. Nationalist mythmaking? We saw plenty after 1918. (A disease of a young
democracy?)
3. Non-evaluation: of the German policies of 1890-1918 during 1919-32; and of
Hitler's ideas, 1932-1941. (Another disease of a young democracy?)
B. Allied diplomacy. Could the allies have deterred Germany?
C. Japanese Expansionism.
D. Military factors: the security dilemma and its offspring.
VII. ESCALATION OF WWII
VIII. HITLER'S OTHER WARS: THE HOLOCAUST AND HITLER'S OTHER MASS MURDERS
IX. AFTERMATH OF WWII: A STABLE PEACE (WHY?)
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1. A professional political scientist (Woodrow Wilson) was the chief architect of Versailles. Hmmmm.