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By Root 1567 0

war, especially against Germany. They wanted to stop Hitler’s rebuilding Germany, but they could not muster backing from their voters, or England, to oppose Hitler’s violations of the Versailles Treaty. Without England, France could not move. Hitler’s words were soothing, praising peace, but his actions threatened war. Hitler was rebuilding his army along with developing a large, modern air force and navy. The world’s newest weapon, the airplane, became war’s focal point. Germany could not rival England’s massive navy; however, airplanes could render the Royal Navy irrelevant. For the first time in history England’s navy could be leapfrogged by a major weapon system—the airplane. France expended vast sums on defense by constructing the Maginot Line, leaving little for aircraft and tanks.

Hitler then started making unreasonable territorial demands on neighboring nations. This went unchecked by the Western Democracies because their voters and intellectuals opposed arms races, increases in military spending, or standing up to Hitler. Virulent antiwar movements preached “Peace at any price” because of the sacrifices of the First World War. “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing,” stated England’s Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, on September 27, 1938. This sums up the feeling of the antiwar groups. Nothing was worth another conflict. Unfortunately, these attitudes threw away the sacrifices of WWI.

Meanwhile, Axis nations (the Axis: Germany, Italy, Japan) cheated on arms limitations agreements while the Western Democracies disarmed beyond the treaty requirements. Germany developed aircraft, submarines, and tanks in secret. Japan constructed super battleships in violation of the treaties. Unknown to the rest of the world, the Soviet Union was also preparing for war. In total secrecy the USSR developed the world’s best tank (the T-34) and a massive army. Stalin then decided to shoot the army’s officers, and for no reason.

The world stage began grimly drawing back the curtain on a catastrophe surpassing WWI. Once again, the world’s leading nations utterly mishandled the growing crisis, missing several chances to avoid war. Since 1900 Europe’s great powers, and the United States, had failed to stop WWI, the Great Depression, the ascension of brutal dictators, or the invasions of Ethiopia, Korea, and Manchuria. A decade long string of deadly decisions by European leaders triggered WWI, and similar decisions made it impossible to halt. Economic mismanagement produced the Great Depression, and it deepened because of governmental malfeasance. Now the Western Democracies chose to appease Hitler and ignore Japan. The West hoped Hitler and the Japanese warlords were rational, desiring peace, but diplomatic solutions meant nothing to the hungry dictators. Poor decisions by the major democratic powers led the world into a war in which the stakes were far higher than WWI.

English propaganda during the Great War portrayed German and its allies as an utter scourge; however, the Central Powers were more like their opponents than unlike them. Germany was no more a world scourge than England. No matter who prevailed in WWI, the world was safe from murdering, depraved dictators.

The enemies faced by the Western Allies in WWII were a scourge. The leaders of Germany, Italy, and Japan despised democracy. Hitler believed world conquest was his destiny, and Japan’s militarists thought Asia should be theirs. Mussolini was visualizing a new Roman Empire for himself around the Mediterranean. The Axis and Soviet dictators murdered massive numbers of people. Mild jokes about the Nazi regime often led to arrests and most unpleasant prison terms. To Hitler, Stalin, and militarist Japan, human life was meaningless. To these godless dictators every aspect of life was a part of the state while the individual was nothing. Life’s sole purpose was to serve the state, because an individual’s life belonged to