Abstract
Two statements which generations of students have been invited to discuss as essay questions encapsulate the most popular and contradictory explanations of the causes of World War II: ‘The origins of World War II lie in the Versailles Settlement’ and ‘The causes of the Second World War can be summed up in one word, Hitler’. A third thesis, which has recently gained ground, is that the First and Second World wars were inextricably linked with a common cause, the upsetting of the balance of power of Europe by the emergence of a united Germany with expansionist ambitions.
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Notes
See E Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (1967); and E. Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism.
See P. M. H. Bell, The Origins of the Second World War in Europe (1986);
and Michael Howard, ‘A Thirty Years War? The Two World Wars in Historical Perspective’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser. (1991).
A. Lentin, Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson and the Guilt of Germany (1986), p. 132.
See V. Suvorov, The Icebreaker (1992).
F. Fischer, From Kaiserreich to Third Reich (1986), p. 84.
E. Eyck, A History of the Weimar Republic, vol. 2 (1967), p. 25.
See, for instance, K. Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich (1973).
M. Brozart, The Hitler State. The Foundation and Development of the Internal Structure of the Third Reich (1981);
and H. Mommsen, ‘National Socialism: Continuity and Change’, in Fascism, ed. W. Laquer (1976).
See T. Mason, ‘Labour in the Third Reich 1933–39’, Past and Present, vol. 33 (1966).
B. H. Klein, Germany’s Economic Preparations for War (1959).
This view has been persuasively argued by R. J. Overy in ‘Hitler’s War and the German Economy. A Reinterpretation’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., vol. 35 (1982).
Two recent and divergent views of Chamberlain’s policies are provided by John Charmley, Chamberlain and the Lost Peace (1984), who sees Chamberlain’s policies as rational and realistic;
and R. A. C. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement (1993), who considers they ‘stifled serious chances of preventing the Second World War’.
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© 1999 A.W. Purdue
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Purdue, A.W. (1999). The Origins of the Second World War. In: The Second World War. European History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27435-2_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27435-2_2
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