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THE ORIGINS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

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T.S.Tsonchev

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The Montreal Review, March 2010

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Hitler

A review of A.J. P. Taylor's book "The Origins of The Second World War" (Penguin Books, 1991, 357 pp.)

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The sources of conflict are always hidden in a fog of old crimes and injustices, unhealed wounds of damaged dignity, sufferings and traumas that could reveal even the worst criminal as a victim of unfortunate circumstances and past abuses. The evil of war and conflict is always simple in its outward manifestations and mystically obscure in its inner motives. A.J.P. Taylor's masterpiece The Origins of the Second World War, despite its great insights, cannot give us the full answer to the question "Why did Europe slide into a second bloody war after the nightmares of the First World War?"

Taylor's observations and conclusions are noteworthy, and many historians still passionately accept or reject them. His book on the origins of World War II is perhaps the most popular reading on the subject, but his interpretation cannot be taken as the final truth about the causes of the bloodiest war in human history. Taylor's fascinating narrative is right in some respects, wrong in others, and certainly does not give the full picture of the interwar period. It is only a fragment of a larger canvas that still awaits full revelation.

Taylor's most popular conclusion in "The Origins of The Second World War" is that Hitler had no real plan for German expansion. He argues that we should not confuse plans with intentions and fantasies. According to Taylor, Hitler hoped to achieve eastern expansion not through a great war, but through quick, targeted offensives or, if possible, without war at all. Hitler also did not expect France to capitulate so easily from its position as a great power. He had no clear vision of how the conquered Ukraine and Poland would actually be populated with Germans, nor was he able to militarize Germany faster than the other Great Powers during the 1930s. Hitler also had no plan for pulling Germany out of the economic depression. His most important political quality was the ability to wait, or strong nerves. He was a perfect opportunist, both in his domestic politics and in his foreign policy. At home, Hitler used the opportunities that von Papen and the other conservatives gave him to take power; his policy was one of constant improvisation -- he exploited the intrigues of his political opponents with the patience of a predator, having no clear strategy for how he would actually escape their control. He applied the same approach to foreign policy. He psychologically tortured France and Britain by arousing their fears and hopes and thus confusing them with his true ambitions; in fact, the confused French and British policies worked better for Germany's foreign expansion than Hitler's own offensive actions. He waited patiently for political victories to be handed to him by his own enemies through their mistakes.

When "The Origins of The Second World War" was published in 1961, most of the above observations were novel. Taylor's book caused a kind of shock in the general understanding of the origins of the Second World War, mainly by arguing that Hitler was not the only culprit for the war. However, Taylor's view was not so unconventional; he believed that the Treaty of Versailles was the real cause of the conflict. The harsh clauses of the treaty did not completely subdue Germany. Moreover, with or without the treaty, Germany was still the greatest power on the continent (pp. 47-48). "The Germans," observes Taylor, "had this measureless advantage that they could undermine the system of security against them merely by doing nothing." (p. 52) The truth of this observation explains the success of Hitler's opportunist policies. Everything in Europe worked in favor of a German politician who had an opportunistic talent, patience and iron will. The tragedy was that when this politician appeared, it was Hitler - a person with a distorted vision of the future, moved by lunatic and messianic theories and ambitions. If in Hitler's place there had been an intelligent, sensitive person with a rational judgment about the future of Germany, less obsessed with the will to power, perhaps the Second World War would not have happened. Unfortunately, great opportunists are not among the best-intentioned people; German leaders with a character combining pragmatism, opportunistic talent, and good intentions were practically impossible to find in the turbulent years after the First World War.

The Treaty of Versailles had one serious flaw -- neither the victors nor the vanquished truly believed that it was a fair settlement. (See the essay "The Treaty of Versailles: Peace without Justice") The defeated nations felt humiliated and saw themselves as the victims of a robbery; the victors--Britain, France, the United States, and Italy--had their own doubts about the rightness of their decisions. The general feeling, whether admitted or not, was that the Allies had punished Germany excessively. But the French, concerned about their future security, wanted the Germans on their knees. Meanwhile, the British could not ignore the wishes of their continental ally France, nor could they ignore anti-German public opinion at home in the immediate aftermath of the war; on the other hand, the Americans retreated into their traditional isolationism and did nothing significant to improve the political situation in Europe.

In the years after Versailles, the Allies pursued a chaotic foreign policy, pursuing their own interests and agendas. But as Taylor observes "there was no deliberate rejection of the wartime partnership. Events pulled the allies apart; and none of them strove hard enough to avert the process" (p.55). After the war, Britain felt secure and did not see Germany as a real danger; France had the opposite feelings and her obsession with the lack of security increased. While Britain tried to help Germany recover, France did everything in her power to prevent it. The French believed that the First World War had been caused by deliberate aggression, while the British tended to believe that it had happened by accident. (p. 65).

Under pressure from France, the amount of German reparations was not determined immediately after the war. This was a mistake. The actual profit from the reparations was insignificant for the Allies, and the reparations did not have as bad an effect on the German economy as it appears at first glance. The money from Germany was used by the Allies to pay American war debts, not to rebuild their economies, while at the same time Germany was the recipient of generous loans from the U.S. But the constant wrangling over the reparations issue, the inability to reach a fair deal, has been a constant source of tension.It created a bitter psychological environment in Germany that hindered the improvement of relations between the powers for years and fueled anti-Western radicalism among the Germans. The Germans believed that reparations were the main cause of their economic problems. "By an easy transaction reparations became the sole cause of German poverty, says Taylor. The businessman in difficulties; the underpaid schoolteacher; the unemployed worker, all blamed their troubles on reparations. The cry of a hungry child was a cry against reparations... The great inflation of 1923 was attributed to reparations; so was the great depression of 1932..." (p. 73). The sense of injustice developed from reparations to all the other clauses of the Versailles Treaty. In the end, all the economic difficulties, all the problems of Germany in the 1920s and 1930s were explained by the punitive clauses of Versailles.

But it is a myth, Taylor argues, that Germany's economic problems were due solely to external causes. The economic difficulties between the wars were due to flaws in German domestic policy itself. (p.75)

According to Taylor, Germany had one of its greatest politicians in the 1920s in the person of Gustav Stresemann. Stresemann knew that his country needed a peaceful Europe for its recovery, and that recovery would make the German state strong enough to revisit the Versailles clauses. In the mid-1920s, Stresemann, MacDonald, and French Foreign Minister Briand temporarily succeeded in pacifying the Europeans and normalizing the antagonisms between the Great Powers. The Treaty of Locarno seemed to satisfy all sides for the first time since 1917. Locarno gave Europe a glimmer of hope. It was the greatest and only triumph of the policy of "appeasement". Unfortunately, this triumph turned out to be more illusion than reality. True peace was impossible with a suspicious and insecure France and an unhappy Germany.

Ten years later, Hitler destroyed the political order of Locarno with the reoccupation of the Rhineland. As I said earlier, the dictator came to power in Germany thanks to the intrigues of the conservative political powers. Various factors contributed to the growing popularity of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, but von Papen and Hindenburg made the crucial mistake of appointing Hitler as chancellor with the naive intention of using him temporarily until the conservatives gained enough political power to govern on their own. No one expected Hitler to have the potential to initiate "revolutionary changes" at home or abroad. (p. 97) Taylor argues that Hitler gradually became a fascist, and that the most radical or "revolutionary" political change he made was the transformation of the German political system from democracy to dictatorship. In his foreign policy, according to Taylor, Hitler was not a "revolutionary." In foreign affairs, he simply continued the policies of his predecessors: freeing Germany from postwar restrictions, rebuilding its army, and restoring its normal status as a great continental power. (p.97)

As it has been said, in foreign policy, Hitler acted according to the circumstances - without a plan or a grand design. His mind operated under the simple truths of the ordinary German man, and his will produced actions according to these simple "truths". Taylor says that Hitler had "a powerful, but uninstructed intellect." His foreign policy reflected the spirit of the conversations that could be heard in every Austrian café and German beer house after the war (p. 98). There was only one element of systematic thinking in his foreign policy outlook, and it was not original: his vision was specifically "continental". His ambitions were confined to Europe, or more precisely to Eastern Europe. He wanted the East back in the German sphere of influence-Austria, Poland, Ukraine, the spoils of Brest-Litovsk. According to Taylor, Eastern expansion was the primary, if not the only, goal of Hitler's foreign policy. A "frightening literalism" was the driving force behind his political actions and intentions. (p. 100). Hitler set in motion "street" politics, he fulfilled the confused dreams of ordinary Germans, and he did it with patience and strong nerves, acting step by step, waiting for his opponents to make mistakes. "Perhaps," Taylor writes,"this waiting was not at first conscious or deliberate. The greatest masters of statecraft are those who do not know what they are doing." (p.100)

Hitler recognized the weakness of his opponents when he walked out of the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva in 1933. This action had no consequences, and he would continue to test and use the patience of the Western powers until the debacle of the Second World War. But this first act of independent action without consequence gave him the assurance that he was free to call the bluff and test the will of the Allies whenever the occasion permitted.

According to Taylor, Hitler's first foreign policy success was the Non-Aggression Pact with Poland in 1934. This agreement gave him the security he needed to outmaneuver France and Britain in the future. Hitler carefully explained the failure of the League of Nations to solve the problem of Italian aggression in Abyssinia. It showed him that the international community lacked the prestige to intervene in cases of violation of collective international obligations. So he reoccupied the Rhineland in 1935. In return, the French did virtually nothing, nor did Great Britain, Poland, or anyone else. The reoccupation of the Rhineland, says Taylor, nullified the Versailles system. Germany was free to rearm, and the international system returned to the familiar anarchy of the prewar years. Still, Taylor says, international anarchy makes war possible, but it does not make war certain (136). In 1935 there was still skepticism that Germany would start a war; indeed, Europeans feared a possible conflict in the Mediterranean between France and Italy. "Wars, when they come, says Taylor, are always different from the war that is expected. Victory goes to the side that has made the fewest mistakes, not to the one that has guessed right" (p. 151). In the pre-World War II period, Hitler is the side that made the fewest mistakes.

After the reoccupation of the Rhineland, there was no serious incentive for rearmament in France and Britain. There were three general reasons for this - the British and French still did not believe that the policy of "appeasement" had failed, they did not want another war, and economic difficulties prevented any plans for military spending. Germany did begin some militarization, but it was not as great as people usually think. The conventional wisdom is that Germany was the only country (except Soviet Russia) to enjoy full employment after 1935, and that this was due to rearmament. In reality, the economic success was due to Hitler's unorthodox approach to the economy, which allowed the government to spend money on public projects despite the depression. In fact, this was a typical expression of autocratic state capitalism, which for a certain period of time is very effective in facilitating the vitality of the economy through measures such as central control of industries and active state manipulation of prices and investment.

Yet, according to Taylor, the watershed between the two world wars lasted exactly two years."The post-war period ended when Germany reoccupied the Rhineland on 7 March 1936, the pre-war began when she annexed Austria on 13 March 1938."

Taylor insists that the prewar period began without a plan. According to him, the popular "Hossbach Memorandum," which was recovered for the purposes of the Nuremberg trials and serves as the main evidence of Hitler's foreign policy strategy, was nothing more than a documented conference meeting at the Chancellery in 1937, at which Hitler hoped to convince his conservative ministers (of whom only Göring was a Nazi) to support his program of increased armaments against the financial scruples of Economics Minister Schacht.

The "Hossbach Memorandum" was not a real plan of action. The Austrian Anschluss in March 1938 came before the "planned" destruction of Czechoslovakia, contrary to the goals expressed in the memorandum. Hitler's policy toward Austria had been no different from the traditional German evolutionary approach of waiting for the Austrian Germans to merge with the ethnic mainland without active outside assistance. But circumstances allowed for an earlier German invasion. After the Anschluss, "geography and politics automatically put Czechoslovakia on the agenda" (p. 190), not the points in the memorandum.

Czechoslovakia was a Central European country composed of national minorities and surrounded by unfriendly neighbors (except for Romania). The destruction of the Czech state was easy - its allies France and Soviet Russia did not have the courage to defend it, Great Britain was convinced that the risk of its destruction was less compared to the possibility of a second great war. Hitler, with the blessing of Great Britain and France in Munich, occupied the Sudetenland, where the German minority lived. The last station of this unbroken order of narrow but highly effective steps was the free city of Danzig and the Polish corridor that had separated Germany from Eastern Prussia. Danzig marks the real beginning of the Second World War, according to Taylor's interpretation.

Finally, what summary can we make based on Taylor's book? What were the origins of World War II?

First, the seeds of future discord were sown at Versailles. The treaty that was supposed to create a secure post-war order was a complete failure. It was drawn up without the consent of the defeated nations, was not a collective agreement, and was in fact a compromise with French fears and public opinion in the victorious states. The Versailles system was incredibly and unduly damaging to the greatest nation in Europe, Germany, and thus produced constant cancers of instability. During the interwar years, every European politician knew that Versailles was a mistake, but no one was sure how to correct it without endangering the others or losing his country's international status.

Second, the French and the British had different ideas about the postwar world order. France was engaged in actions to ensure its security, but it was never satisfied; Britain cared about its tranquility and preferred peace. France was obsessed with security issues, but she was unable to resist the German threat without the support of Britain; on the other hand, Britain knew that Germany had the right to seek justice and sincerely believed that once her demands were satisfied, she would be pacified. Britain regarded France as the main obstacle to German recovery and, consequently, the main disturber of peace. It was unthinkable for Britain to support France militarily in order to remove any cause for open conflict.

Third, during the interwar period, Germany experienced a series of political and economic problems, and for all of them, Versailles was, fairly or not, the alleged cause. The radicalization of German society produced the extremist Nazi movement and made the Nazi regime possible. The political environment in Germany and abroad would sooner or later produce a rude, cold-blooded politician who would cut the Gordian knot of the Versailles system. That politician was Hitler. He was a madman who believed that whatever man had achieved was due to his originality and brutality (Gordon W. Prange, ed. Hitler's Words, Washington, D.C., 1944, p. 8). He was a man without doubt, his criminal actions had a "granite foundation" in his anti-Semitic philosophy, and he was free of moral constraints. Such a person cannot be intelligent enough to create a plan for world domination, he can only expose the defects of the international system. This is Taylor's view: Hitler was a by-product of a corrupt world, and the responsibility for the outbreak of World War II should not be placed on one shoulder alone, as it was in 1917.

 
 
 
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