Handout // March 16

17.423

Origins of World War II in Europe: Part 1
Background

I. Two Competing Visions of World War II:

A. WW II: The second half of a "Thirty years war." An inevitable continuation of WW I which was not wholly resolved.

B. The Great Depression and Hitler caused the war.

 II. War and Remembrance: How illusions replaced reality in Europe’s memory of the First World War. (See Holger Herwig, "Clio Deceived . . .") A. Sometimes losers write the history; they did here, and sold the history to the winners. 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 WW I — "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 the reach for lebensraum was dangerous, indeed suicidal, Germans learned that gaining lebensraum was essential!
 

 2. Germans first embraced Nazi-like ideas (1920’s), then the Nazis themselves (1930s). Was World War II really just a one-man show­"Hitler did it!"??? Many of the ideas he put forth preceded him and 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. Bandwagoning­Hitler’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 late­during 1939-1940­but 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. This gave Germany a large but temporary military advantage during 1938-1940. (See attached Paul Kennedy tables.)
  B. Italy­the land of blue smoke and mirrors. Mussolini’s government believed:
  1. Gross overestimates of Italian military strength.   2. Gross overestimates of the value of empire.   3. False images of the past: "We, the Italians, won WW I for the Entente! (And we were cheated out of our fair share of the spoils!)"
  C. Britain:
  1. Was generally isolationist.   2. Had been declining in relative power, but was further weakened by WW I.   3. Was late to rearm in the 1930s. (Cult of the defensive.)   4. Embraced an aerial cult of the offensive­"the bomber will always get through."   5. Adopted a strategy of appeasement toward Germany. Why? Craven cowardice? False historical understanding? Failure to carefully study Germany in the 1930s?
  a. 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 Versailles­German demands to revise it are legitimate."
  i. After WWII a deterrence model myth arose around Munich, but-

ii. After WWI a spiral model myth arose around the July crisis of 1914.

b. Too few Britons read Ewald Banse and Mein Kampf.
 

 (But also ask: what if Britain had gone to war without 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?)

D. The United States:
 

1. Embraced isolationism.   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 US behavior either.

E. France: unready for war, perhaps unwilling to replay 1914-1918.
F. Soviet Union: indifferent to (even helpful toward) the rise of Nazis in Germany in the early 1930s; later, suspicious of all capitalists, USSR 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.
G. 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 in 1914-1918.

 

IV. Coming soon: How the storm gathered! Not suddenly as in July 1914, but in stages­perhaps "missed opportunities" to stop the coming war!