Main Causes Of The Second World War Essay

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The immediate cause of the Second World War was the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. Britain and France got involved by declaring war on Germany, and soon Europe and the wider world were involved in the War. However, the underlying causes of the war are much more complicated than what it seems to be. There were many factors that had contributed to the initiation of the war; the major ones were the Treaty of Versailles, the emergence of fascism and communism, the hatred of Jews, the Great Depression, the failure of the League of Nations, and the rise of dictators. The Treaty of Versailles was signed to make the Great War "the war to end all wars." It would cripple Germany by demanding $33 billion reparation, the huge loss of its…show more content…
The second world war was different as it had ideological (Nazism v Communism) as well as racial (Aryan v Slav) elements, but even many other countries were involved, the 'central' theme of both World Wars is Russo-German conflict. It seems strange to say it, but the result of the WWI was unsatisfactory for both Russia (revolution, political withdrawal from the conflict) and Germany (defeat, internal political turmoil that stopped short of revolution) and so it's almost like they ended up having a rematch. * The failure of the League of Nations as an organisation, principally over aggressive Italian imperialism in Ethiopia in the mid 1930s but also during the Spanish Civil War later in the decade. Because the League of Nations failed to act in those cases, Italy and Germany thought they could do what they liked: that lesson wasn't lost on Russia and Japan either. * Along the same lines as the failure of the League of Nations, the short term failure of the appeasement policy of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the late 1930s was a contributory factor, especially after Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938/39. However, Chamberlain reflected the popular feeling within Britain and should not be judged too harshly: as Churchill said later 'to jaw, jaw is always better than war,

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