World War II: Was the Conflict Inevitable?

While World War II scholarship has remained relatively stable following the 1940s, several controversies have emerged calling question to the foundations of the war. Following World War II, the dominant historiography held that World War II was essentially inevitable because Nazi Germany was such an ominous force that it had to be stopped. Further, Hitler’s aggressions are portrayed as the breakdown in diplomacy between the Allies and the Axis powers. However, in decades following the war, contentious sources assert that the threat posed by Hitler was overemphasized and that allied forces failed to mitigate the conflict through diplomatic means. While this latter argument provides a unique perspective on the motivations that informed Hitler’s decisions, the work of countering historians reveals that it is highly inaccurate. As a historiographical analysis reveals, economic issues exacerbated by Hitler’s aggressive intentions made World War II unavoidable.

The Moral Justification for World War II

As Donald Schilling contends, the historiography of World War II has remained relatively stable for the initial two decades following the war. As a distinguished scholar of and participant in World War II, Winston Churchill published his six-volume work The Second World War, which outlined the moral justifications for entering the war. Churchill’s account, which represented the dominant historiography following the conflict, promoted the view that the Allies had to become involved in the war in order to stop German aggressions and halt German atrocities. Thus, from this perspective, the heroism of the decisions made by the Allied Forces was unquestioned.

The Revisionist Explanation of World War II

However, historian A.J.P. Taylor provided the first serious challenge to this view through his presentation of a revisionist history. In his 1961 publication Origins of the Second World War, Taylor asserted World War II was not premeditated by Nazi Germany, and thus the prevailing view that Hitler was a bellicose politician was exaggerated. Additionally, Taylor asserted that the primary cause of aggression by Germany was the unfavorable reparations requirements imposed in the Treaty of Versailles. The implication of Taylor’s thesis is that the Allies possessed the opportunity to mitigate the conflict by offering Germany leniency on their reparations payments. Additionally, Taylor held that Hitler was primarily a rational political leader and that clues to his bellicose nature, such as Mein Kamp should be disregarded as superficial, yet destructive propaganda. Taylor’s writing significantly challenged assumptions that were taken for granted regarding the nature of Germany’s hostilities.

Taylor’s scholarship was highly contested, there are several points that can be made to his credit. First, Taylor counters the belief that morality motivated the cause of the Allies. As Schilling contends, the human dimensions of World War II, such as the Holocaust are only recent additions to the historiography of World War II. Further, in the 1960s through the mid-1980s, the historiography evolved to consider the shortcomings demonstrated by the Allies in relation to their moral responsibility to aid the Jews. Recent scholarship reveals that despite possessing knowledge of Nazi atrocities against civilians, the Allies failed to enable Jewish immigration, create a Jewish state, or call international attention to the atrocities. Moreover, only recently during the 2000s has scholarship expanded to document the details of the mass murders and “ethnic cleansings” committed by German forces. Thus, while the moral components of World War II are nearly inseparable from the modern historiography, the delay of examining the extent of Nazi atrocities makes it unlikely that humanitarian concerns propelled the Allies into war.

Limitations of the Revisionist Historiography

The main shortcoming in Taylor’s historiography is that he discounts the impact of economics in precipitating conflict between the European states. As Robert J. Caputi and Richard Overy highlight, economic considerations were an extension of the expansionist intentions of German political leaders. As early as 1914, Germans had outlines plans to dominate Central Europe for the purpose of economic expansion. As Chamberlain’s aids noted, Hitler’s administration was forced to accept reductions in the standard of living among the population or engage in warfare to expand their economic influence. Further, the Great Depression contributed to the instability that enabled Germany to gain support for extremism among the German population. As a review of the scholarship reveals, Hitler was not only pressured by global economic conditions, but he utilized the financial crisis as a tool for promoting an expansionist agenda that had already been outlined by German elites.

In addition, scholarship also confirms that appeasement was an ineffective method of preventing armed conflict because of Germany’s hostile intentions. While Neville Chamberlain was a proponent for preventing conflict with Germany through appeasement, sources reveal that he even became uncertain of Hitler’s motivation by 1939. As Arnold A. Offner asserts, Hitler utilized hostile economic policies, such as an autarchic system of trade to undermine United States interests; further, Germany rejected several appeasement offers made by the United States between 1931 and 1939 that were intended to reduce the economic impact of the Versailles Treaty. Further evidencing Germany’s hostile intentions, Germany confirmed in March 1935 that it had built an Air Force in violation of the terms of the Versailles Treaty. As these actions demonstrate, Germany openly displayed its disinterest in negotiation and its intention of further military aggressions well before 1939.

Additionally, the assertion by Taylor that Hitler was not personally a belligerent actor can be refuted by the evidence. Demonstrating Hitler’s disrespect of the appeasement process, he took action in 1937 to remove advisors who were fearful of armed conflict with the British. Finally highlighting the extent of Hitler’s bellicose nature, recent Soviet scholarship confirms that Hitler entered a secret pact with the Soviet Union to invade and divide Poland. The willingness of Germany to follow through on its plans can especially be established by its preemptive threats to engage in aggression against France. In consideration of the extensive body of evidence, it is unlikely that Germany was truly open to halting its military aggressions following negotiations with the United States or Great Britain.

Conclusion

According to the assertions of A.J.P. Taylor, Hitler was a benign political leader who could have been reached through effective appeasement. From this point of view, World War II was entirely avoidable. Overall, Taylor is correct that moral dimensions played less of a factor in causing World War II. Because Nazi atrocities have only become the focus of recent scholarship, it is unlikely that humanitarian causes contributed to the war. However, from an economic and political standpoint, the war was inevitable. Because of the burden of reparations and the poor climate caused by the Great Depression, Germans were open to the radical foreign policy ideas of the Nazi regime.

Yet, Taylor is mistaken in his assumption that these stances were merely bargaining tools by a government seeking rational options for economic growth. Though the United States offered appeasement to the Germans several times prior to World War II, Germany still engaged in hostile actions, evidencing its disinterest in seeking economic concessions. Further, Russian histories widely contend that Stalin had entered a pact with Germany, evidence that the Germans were interested in pursuing an expansionist foreign policy regardless of United States or British feedback. Through shunning Great Britain and the United States while openly engaging in expansionist behaviors, it is indisputable that armed conflict was the only solution to preventing the expansion of Nazi Germany.

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