Based on the thread “What Was Hitler’s Biggest Blunder?” I am presenting this question.
Many people concluded that Hitler’s biggest blunder was invading Russia; but if he hadn’t invaded Russia, he wouldn’t have gone to war in the first place. I believe that presupposes that World War II was predominantly the brainchild of Hitler, himself and personally.
Considering that the Emperor Hirohito’s hawklike general staff was militantly (ha!) opposed to surrender, and that Germany was only one part of the tripartite Axis Powers, how much can we really blame Hitler personally for worldwide war involving scads of nations across thousands of miles? Hitler did, after all, put together a crack team of military leaders, strategists, propagandists and so forth who were more than willing to execute (ha!) his mad dreams. Face it — World War II was a not wholly original sequel. Would some other charismatic schemer come along to ignite Europe, had it not been for Toothbrush Face?
Some would like to think that it was Hitler’s dream and drive alone that catapulted the world into war; this is the Kurt Waldheim excuse of “I was only following orders!” and absolves everybody of any personal responsibility for their contributions. A cleansing claim for a guilty make to make, perhaps, but is it true?
Others would like to think that the war was bubbling below the surface of a resentful post-Great-War Germany, as the product of mere human nature, and could have erupted forth on its own, in some fashion, anyway.
The weaselly answer is, “It’s a little of both.” But to how much degree?
Not being a scholar of pre-WWII Germany and the antecedents of both wars, I’m curious to see the debate.
Without Hitler, the Nazi Party would have been a very different animal.
Without a quasi-fascist Nazi Party, the Weimar Republic would not have become the Third Reich.
Without a strong fascist leader & the doctrine of the Third Reich, the grievances & ambitions of German nationalists would have played out differently, & perhaps without much real territorial expansion at all.
Besides, with Hitler as Fuehrer, the Reich was steered by his idiosyncratic grievances, which were not identical to the preoccupations of the German academy & political class in general.
Hitler gets to take the lino’s share of the credit, regardless. Japan was messing around in China and considered either invading the Soviet Union or heading South prior to the war in an effort to sieze more raw materials. (A significant defeat in an small, undeclared war with the Soviets on the Manchurian border kept them out of Siberia.)
However, had Germany not already tied up Britain and eleminated most of the Dutch and French military prior to 1941, it is unlikely that Japan would have chosen to attack who they did when they did. (Having been chased out of the U.S.S.R. by a single tank division, what are the odds that Japan would have chosen to face the combined militaries of the U.S. (Philipines and scattered islands), France (Indochina), the U.K. (Hong Kong, Singapore, Burma, Malay, and India), and the Netherlands (Indonesia).
Is it probable that some war would have broken out somewhere, anyway? Sure. But Hitler’s actions in September, 1939 set the stage for the specific World War that broke out.
No, Hitler really owns World War II. There wasn’t anyone else in the nationalist movement with his charisma and ambition. Without him the nationalists would have been a minority voice in the government. It’s unlikely they ever would have gained control of the country.
If a right-wing dictatorship had emerged without Hitler it probably would have been as the result of a military coup. Having the army in control of Germany would have been a step backward, but it’s unlikely that it would have triggered a continent-wide war. Most of the senior officers were dubious about Germany’s prospects in a repeat of The Great War and only gradually came around to supporting Hitler. Without Hitler relentlessly cheerleading the idea of European conquest the army by itself never would have instigated the war.
(Not that this absolves the German generals from guilt. They certainly were happy to go along once the ball got rolling. It’s just that they were unlikely to have set things in motion in the first place.)
And, as others have pointed out, without Britain, France and the Netherlands tied up by the Nazis, it’s unlikely that Japan would ever have made its move in the Pacific.
Take a look at the difference between Franco and Mussolini on one hand, and Hitler on the other hand. It seems pretty likely that some sort of right-wing fascist dictatorship would spring up in Germany even without Hitler. But that dictator wouldn’t have been Hitler. That dictator probably wouldn’t be as reckless as Hilter. Sure, alt-Germany might have thrown some weight around, might have made territorial demands against Poland and Czechoslovakia, might have torn up the Versailles treaty and remilitarized the Rhineland, and so forth. After all, Mussolini enjoyed his military adventures conquering Ethiopia, some sort of military adventurism would have been quite possible. But risking a continent-wide total war against France, Britain, and the Soviet Union? Pretty unlikely. And the French and the British citizenry were extremely anti-war after the slaughter and waste of WWI. A more circumspect German dictator might have absorbed some border provinces and been content. And the western allies at least would have let him get away with it.
Hmm. Tough call. I assume you mean the re-entry of Germany into the Saarland DMZ?
At that point in time, it is my understanding that among the political elite in the west, they felt that Germany had suffered enough for the “crime” of starting WW1. Restrictions were being lifted, debts forgiven, and so forth.
Since the Saarland was not independent (via a plebiscite in 1935), I assume it was felt to be a small concession to allow the (still relatively small) German military to enter it.
I am not sure how aggressive or dangerous Germany appeared to be in 1936. (Germany signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement in 1935, for example.)
It was much easier to see in 1938 that Germany was indeed becoming too aggressive for safety. (Anchluss, Sudetenland)
By that point, the UK had just initiated a rearming plan. Dunno about France… They both stalled for time.
Well…I’m unsure what exactly is being asked/debated here. Is it something along the lines of would there have been another war in Europe without Hitler? The answer to that is…most definitely. The uncertainty being…some time in the next half century, give or take a decade or so. We ARE talking about Europeans here after all…before they became tame. Russia, for one thing, would eventually have gone to war with Western Europe (and/or possibly Japan)…it just would have taken them a few more years (or a decade or so) to put their house back in order. I’m not sure exactly how that would have played out wrt a WORLD war…might have just been another in a series of Euro bloodletting event (maybe WE wouldn’t have been dragged in either).
I seriously doubt Japan would have done anything wrt broadening its own war beyond China had Hitler not tied up several of the western Euro powers. I don’t think they would have tangled with the US either, though I suppose it IS possible. That would have been strictly a US/Japan war though I think…I doubt Europe would have come to OUR aid if Japan had stabbed us in the back the way they did (though I could be wrong…anyone know or guess what the Europeans like the UK or France would have done in that situation?)
So…I think Hitler gets the lions share of the ‘credit’ for WWII…and rightfully so. Had he not been there, or had he been a bit less warlike, the larger conflict we know would never have happened. However, SOME kind of war was probably inevitable given the Soviets probable plans…and just the general nature of our Euro brethren.
But why would Japan attack the US? They wanted the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies and Malaysia, British and Dutch possessions. Without a pan-European war they wouldn’t have dared attack the colonial possessions. And therefore would have no need to attack the US to clear us out of our bases in the Phillipines.
If Japan doesn’t start fighting Britain, France, and the Netherlands in Asia, they certainly aren’t going to start fighting the USA.
And if the alt-Germans and Soviets start a war that doesn’t involve the western allies, the Japanese northern option against the Soviet Union looks a hell of a lot more likely than the southern option.
Heck, the alt-Germans play their cards right and they might eventually get some assistance from the Allies against the Soviets.
The US embargo maybe? Maybe not a pretext for war (I doubt they would have gone to war either without the western powers being so distracted by what Germany was doing in Europe), but they may just have felt threatened enough to try what they tried anyway.
That’s one, but the increase in the German Navy, and the restart of the air force should have been much more evident danger signals, especially since it was done unilaterally. It was probably too late to stop the movement to war in 1938. I know that it was politically infeasible to have done anything in 1936, but that doesn’t mean that France and England didn’t share some of the blame.
Maybe, but why assume that the US still places an embargo? The US government’s reaction to Japanese actions in China was influenced by its observations of what was happening in Europe.
Hmmm. Germany negotiated the Anglo/German Naval Treaty before this naval build up.
Here’s what Germany did up to 1936:
1933: Herr Hitler becomes Chancellor. (How well known outside of Germany is Hitler prior to this?)
Reichstag Fire.
Enabling Act.
Germany leaves League of Nations. (7 months after Japan.)
1934: German/Polish non-aggression pact.
Night of the Long Knives.
Hindenburg dies. Hitler combines the offices and powers of the Precidency and the Chancellor.
1935: Saarland votes to rejoin Germany.
Hitler institutes the draft, annouces the formation of the Luftwaffe.
The A/GNT is signed.
1936: Germany sends it’s military into the Rhineland.
Spanish Civil War begins. Germany, Italy, and the USSR send various forms of aid. (Not sure how much and when.)
Germany and Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact, which is not a formal alliance, but more of a “statement of concern” vis-a-vis the Soviets and communism.
Up to this point, all Germany has done is rearm, and the Nazis do some (internal to Germany) housecleaning and consolidation of power.
Italy (invading Ethiopia) and Japan (in China) appear more of a threat to their neighbors.
Only in the sense of the way the events unfold timeline-wise.
If there was no general war in Europe, and the UK and France appeared to be ready to go to war versus Japan in China (or more aggressively confront Japan diplomatically), the US could have stayed more neutral.
However, I beleive that the UK and/or France would have been trying to convince the US and Netherlands to join in an embargo on Japan, in order to reinforce whatever diplomatic efforts the UK and France themselves were doing.
I feel that the embargo of oil and steel would have happened anyway, independent of events (or nonevents) in Europe. The only way to avoid the embargo was for Japan to get out of China.
But things might have come to a boil a tad bit sooner in the Pacific, if the UK and France did not have to worry about what was going on in Europe.
I think that the OP’s theory is applicable to WWI, but not to WWII.
WWI was caused mostly due to the state of Europe at the time, with everyone eyeing each other over their borders and making treaties every which way. They all wanted to go for it, in a sense.
WWII, on the other hand, while certainly not coming into existence in a vaccum, still wasn’t something inevitable, I don’t think. If Hitler (or whoever) had only built up the economy and infrastructure, that would have allayed the grand majority of any German animosity to the rest of Europe. I suspect that regardless of anything that they still would have done a good bit of dick wagging from having accomplished a bunch of quick advances in the economy and in technology, but I don’t see any reason to think that that would necessitate trying to conquer Europe.
As others have said, I think it was pretty much Hitler’s fault. Most of Germany’s other leaders had to be dragged along reluctantly - they thought Hitler was taking too many big risks. And Japan, Italy, and the other Axis powers wouldn’t have been able to confront the Western powers without Germany having made them vulnerable.
Austria and Germany lost a heck of a lot of territory after WWI
they had a gripe, and I can understand it.
Perhaps one should ask ‘what would have happened if Churchill had not been around ?’
Would the moment have made the man - I think so - but I could be wrong.
As for the Japanese, their entry was precipitated by the USA cutting off oil supplies, something I did not know until a few years ago.
We were also supplying China with weaponry and money.
Japan was already attacking China previous to WWII beginning, based on the rationalization that they needed to conquer China before China became a Communist nation (in truth it was more to establish themselves in the position formerly held by Britain in regards to China.) Roosevelt didn’t want to get involved, but he did want to help, so he started giving the Chinese aid. Which eventually ended up spurring Pearl Harbor–with the Japanese thinking that this might convince the US to back off.
You speak of that that you do not know of ( vernacular is bollocks ), Britain and all other States were rigidly excluded from messing around with inland China.
Go read J G Ballard’s excellent book, the ‘Empire of the Sun’
Europeans were restricted to Cantons (or districts)
Probably Roosevelt saw that we were bust, and that we would hardly pay back lend-lease if we were part of Groesser Deutschland - and anyway there is always the theory that we shared cracked transcripts that foretold Pearl Harbour.
I graduated from a Japanese college. So while I am admittedly taking my (British) teacher’s word for it, I have to imagine that as a scholar of Japanese political history he knew from whence he spoke.
Russia, for one thing, would eventually have gone to war with Western Europe (and/or possibly Japan)…it just would have taken them a few more years (or a decade or so) to put their house back in order. I’m not sure exactly how that would have played out wrt a WORLD war…might have just been another in a series of Euro bloodletting event (maybe WE wouldn’t have been dragged in either).