World War II Forum: Lili's Amazing Questions
Posted by: Canadian () on 12 Sep 2003 at 10:18:07 PM
In-Reply-To: Why did WW2 start? posted by lili on 7:01:00 PM 9 Sep 2003
You deserve some kind of answer to these questions although a really good one could not possibly be knocked together like this to do it justice. You need to go to the libray, for sure. However, we can get a real brief sketch. Germany was the great defeated enemy of Britain, France, and toward the end the United States in the First World War (1914-1918). It was roughed up severely in the peace too as the Treaty of Versailles that officially ended it was harsh to Germany and motivated more by French hatred than U.S. President Wilson's earnest pragmatism. Germany was prostrated and there swiftly grew a whole new group of vindictive political leaders, the most extreme of which was Adolf Hitler. His virulent hatred and anger and ceaseless energy set his country afire and Germany BURNED to avenge itself. But Hitler was also one of the most gifted speakers in our time and he held a hypnotic power over his people AND world leaders in that they could never seem to believe that he wanted anything but peace. Churchill was virtually alone in opposing Hitler FROM THE BEGINNING of his rise to power in Germany in 1933. Hitler wanted war more than anything and that explains a great deal about the war's start in Europe. He could not be appeased.
In Asia it is more complex to explain the rise of Japanese militarism but totalitarianism (the all-pervasive power of the State) was a world-wide phenomenon between the wars. Japan desired to expand much the same way that Germany did and it had to begin with China and then spread to S.E. Asia. The real threat to Japan's expansion strategically however was always the United States of America because of its military presence in the Pacific. The Japanese had to take the biggest gamble in its history and attack the US because any expansion would be impossible unless the US was neutralized in the Pacific. It HAD to attack Pearl Harbor. Japan weighed the pros and cons and felt true Empire for the Emperor was worth the cost of bitter American enmity and all-out war.
Click here to return to the Main01 forum room home page.
Current replies to this message:
To reply privately:
If the person posting this message left their e-mail address, we inserted some random characters to prevent spammers from harvesting their address. Spammers do this with automated "bots" that constantly search the Web looking for e-mail addresses. Since you're a human being, not a bot, you can easily obtain the real address by removing the text that says "ThisisToPreventSpam-XYZ-RemoveThis." including the random number XYZ and the period at the end. For example, <whitten@ThisIsToPreventSpam-123-RemoveThis.despammed.com> would become <chris-(@)-interesting.com>.
To reply to the group:
The forum software that created this message has been replaced with new and improved forum software. Click here to go to the new WWII discussion forums:
