What Evans means by this is that the desperation of the people led them to polarising their votes and seeing radical leaders like Hitler as a solution to the mess that Germany had become. Hitler took advantage of this, and from there was able to play a huge role in the collapse of the Weimar Republic. The economic strain that Germany was placed under was also a major impact of the Depression on the collapse of the Republic. Firstly, the Depression had the obvious impact of the debt rising and the banking crises however, there were a number other impacts. Germany relied heavily on international trade for resources; almost one third of their resources came from overseas.
“We want a peace which will be just, but not vindictive. We want a stern peace because the occasion demands it, but severity must be designed, not for vengeance but for justice. Above all we want to protect the future against a repetition of the horrors of this war”. Woodrow Wilson’s aims were seen as building a better and more peaceful world from the ruins of the Great War. Wilson believed the treaty of Versailles should punish Germany but not so harshly that it would someday recover and seek revenge.
Fighting between some of the leading Nazi’s also meant that it would have been near impossible to put together an effective economy with all missions heading towards the same aim. It is fair to say that the strengths towards this statement highly outweigh the weaknesses, as the war economy was very poorly coordinated due to the many factors that contributed to German war production decreasing. In February of 1942, Albert Speer was appointed as Minister of Armaments, which at the time was a crucial role in the Nazi’s dominant mechanism. This was became the centralising ministry amongst all
These tensions started to disrupt their dual alliance with Austria-Hungary, even with a ‘Blank Cheque’ being given to them. With the Kaiser believing that foreign policy and civil war was increasingly the same, it can be assumed that aggressive foreign policy may have been set to distract the German public away from things at home and more onto how to become a strong world power. A factor that both strengthens and weakens the argument of aggressive foreign policy being the reason for the outbreak of war in 1914 is that of encirclement. Source V mentions ‘They felt encircled not merely by the Triple Entente, but also by the forces of change.’ First of all, Germany became sceptical about the alliance between Britain, France and Russia, the Triple Entente, they thought it was not going to work and did not fear it until they tried to cause problems between France and Britain with the ownership of the Balkan islands, which was unsuccessful. When Germany realised that the entente was a
Treaty of Versailles was the peace treaty which officially ended World War I. it was very burdensome on the German economy. Germany was just a devastated by the war as anyone else, but they were very hard pressed to rebuild with the massive reparation payments they were required to make. But the reason why they did soo debt on them is because of Germany made a great destruction on countries, especially on French. I think the reasons for WW2 were: Treaty of Versailles, Hitler’s rise to power and Militarism. Treaty
Churchill believed that in order to guarantee the security of Czechoslovakia, Europe should have held Germany back and Britain and France should have worked together as an alliance. George F. Kennan, an American Secretary of State during the cold war also disagreed with the Munich Agreement. Kennan thought that Chamberlain and Daladier only agreed with Germany’s proposal only because they didn’t want to participate in war. Chamberlain and Daladier wanted to maintain the peace in Europe. (Document 6) As written in The Origins of the Second World War, by A.J.P.
In order to avoid war the allies practiced appeasment and Russia signed non aggresion acts with Germany. An example of appeasement was the Munich conference. The munich conference was held on 9/29/1938 was a meeting between Hilter, Mussolini, Chamberlain, and Daladier to disscuss Germany’s annexation of the sudetenland and to avoid war. The result of the conferecne was Germany gaining the sudetenland.. Japan had a foregien policy similar to Germany. They wanted to conquer land to spread their empire and to gain resources.
‘The outbreak of the war in Europe 1914 was due to an aggressive German Foreign Policy which had been waged since c.1900’ How far do you agree with this opinion? Discussions over the causes of the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 have caused much controversy due to the breadth of events in multiple countries which took place over a short period of time, concluding in war. The evidence within source V, W and X refer to some of these events, thus hold different countries and individuals to blame to different extents. Whilst source V suggests that aggressive German Foreign policy did hold a considerable proportion of the blame, it places the Germans in a sympathetic position due to their encirclement leaving them no other option. Source W is very similar due to the fact that it blames Germany’s strengthening of the military and navy to a large extent, however proclaims their ‘peaceful intentions’; whereas source X dwarfs Germany’s contributions as a state, placing more responsibility for the outbreak of war on Austria-Hungary.
Communism and capitalism was not really a big issue, the big issue was the Axis Powers. Conflicts started escalate when Germany was defeated. Germany was unified among the allies after the war but there were two distinct groups. Russia wanted control over Germany because they suffered the most out of anyone and they were the main reason the Nazis were defeated. They feared of a future German invasion.
Although Truman’s actions and the new ‘policies’ that he introduced were a major factor to the deterioration of America-Soviet relations, it is important to understand the pre-1945 factors that affected these relations. After World War I, European countries adopted an appeasement ideology: The world was horrified by what the war had done to Europe, and a war like that must never happen again, so peace must be protected at all costs. This led to many attempts to preserve peace in Europe, which ultimately failed as Germany invaded Poland and the world realized that another war was about to begin. However, one of the last agreements that the western countries signed with the Nazis might have been the start of the bad Soviet relations with these countries: the Munich agreement. This agreement said that Hitler was free to invade a portion of Czechoslovakia, as long as he went no further.