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Britain had no intent of quarreling with the Germans before 1914. However, due to the massive build-up that was spearheaded by the Admiral AlfredVon Tirpitz ensured that the German Navy had an impact of the peaceful co-existence of the two nations. This was a threat to Britain, and it forced the British to reinforce the territory by forming alliances with France and Russia. The disastrous policy that was articulated by the Germans tied them to England to Europe. Ideally, the holocaust and World War II could have been prevented with ease.
The Prevention of Holocaust and World War II
Kaiser Wilhem had been desperate to avoid the 1914 war. However, the Russian mobilization that was undertaken on July 31, 1914 ensured that the war was not to be stopped in the near future. The Germany claim that it was mobilized by the Russians meant that Germany had no option but to indulge into the war. Grey and Churchill were responsible for committing the Britain into the war (Sager 20). They made promises that France would be defended by Britain without the consent of the Parliament or Cabinet. Such promise tied the British government, and it was obliged to participate in the war. The involvement of the United States in the World War I would have been prevented. The Americans were dragged and deceived into the 1917 war. This was achieved by the speculations that there was the existence of Merchants of Death and the Belgium rape. The Americans could not contend with this propaganda and had to retaliate. As such, where this propaganda would have been mitigated, the war would have been contained with ease.
Hitler did not come into power through electoral victory. However, his electoral successes between 1930 and 1932 were the precondition for his elevation to the chancellorship on January 30, 1933. Both factors, the support of the nationalist masses and the decision of the ruling elites, were essential. Given the political will, the power centre around Hindenburg could have prevented Hitler’s takeover of the state. This would have gone a long way in preventing the Germans from entering into World War I and Holocaust War. The Junkers, foremost among those pushing for Hitler, at this time had a fantastic access than any other group to the real authority in the state, President Hindenburg. The Junkers’ power was not coincidental, but the result of their efforts under Bismarck, as well as Bismarck’s on behalf of them.
In addition, the harshness of Versailles Treaty had an impact on the World War II. The treaty was harsh to Germans, and they tried to reverse its contents, but it was declined. The Germany effort to revise the contents of the Treaty was just and moral. In an attempt to counter the Versailles Treaty, there was a need for the Brest-Litovsk Treaty (Pinkus 40). The Treaty ensures that the conditions that were against the Germany’s ways of norm were neutralized. In other cases, the Hungarians were not able to contend with the Trianon treaty as they considered it as a national crucifixion. Ideally, the treaties that were undertaken by these countries would have been undertaken after an interrogation in order to ensure that the nations are satisfied.
The humiliation imposed by the Versailles Treaty to the Germans ensured that they became more nationalistic and ultimately unite as a nation to fight the common enemy. Therefore, they had to put their confidence on Adolf Hitler for directions and their unification. According to Pavlac (23), he argues that Britain would have been neutral in its affairs on the Versailles Treaty in an attempt to minimize the adversity of the war. Indeed the successive French and British leaders did offer the revision of Germany in favor of the 1920s as there was the existence of the Weimar Republic. This was the vital reason for the Germans to turn to the leadership of Adolf Hitler.
The prevention of the initial development of the War would have been prevented if the political leaders had taken a strategic decision to mitigate the war (Grudem 102). Indeed, the German conquest of Poland in 1939 was the vital development that would have ultimately been prevented. The move was intended to regain lost territory; however, it also had ideological elements. The Germany was expanding its living space at the expense of racially inferior people, some of whom were enslaved and others who were persecuted or killed.
Consequently, Germany was not the only country as a result of the world economic crisis in 1929. The leaders were reluctant to initiate strategies that would have mitigated the adversity of the economic crisis. Old democracies like France and Britain also experienced crises in parliamentary rule in the period between the two world wars. However, France and Britain were victorious powers, and this fact prevented the national resentment from being mobilized there as they were in defeated Germany. As a rightist ideology of integration, nationalism was especially attractive in a country where the confessional divisions were as sharp as class divisions. Nationalism’s message of unification answered a broad social need. All of Europe feared civil war after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 (Wells 56).
In the weeks preceding Hitler’s momentous wartime decision to invade the Soviet Union, Goebbels began redirecting the propaganda towards its accustomed themes linking anti-Bolshevism and anti-Semitism. Ideally, this propaganda, if stopped, would have prevented the invasion. An intact Soviet Union was tying down 150 German divisions, which were needed on the western front. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, England had to lose its last hope on the whole of the Continent; therefore, agreeing to have a compromise with the Nazi Germany. As such, with the invasion of the anti-Hitler coalition between the Soviet Union and Britain, Nazi propagandists had a new set of events that called for an explanation. Once war began, it was easy to blame the British and French political leaders who had attempted to find a peaceful solution. It seemed obvious that, had firmer action been taken at the outset, the sequence of events that led to the invasion of Poland in 1939 might have been avoided. In the case where France and Britain had forced Germany out of the demilitarized zone in 1936, Hitler would have suffered a humiliating defeat. His generals might have turned against him and public rearmament, which could not then logically be stopped by Britain and France (Sager 12). This, in turn, led to success against Austria. Once Austria had fallen, Czechoslovakia was harder to defend as they depended on Austria.
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As the French and British political leaders began to give in to Hitler’s demands, the German leader had no reason to believe they would oppose him in any further action he might take. In Hitler’s eyes, appeasement showed that they had scant regard for treaty obligations or any democratic rights in Eastern Europe. It must have been clear that not a lot would be done to protect Czechoslovakia in 1939. The policy of appeasement might have convinced Hitler that the Polish Guarantee was meaningless and that nothing would be done to stop any invasion of Poland.
Conclusion
Indeed, the war would have been prevented in various ways. Those responsible for the policy played no part in the drawing up of Versailles Treaty. Those who endorsed appeasement did not bring about the economic crisis. This crisis distracted governments and people from foreign policy issues and made large-scale defense spending difficult and unpopular. They were facing a global system in which both Russia and the USA were cut off from European politics and unlikely to intervene in any war. They had to deal with a new phenomenon and the fanaticism of these dictators’ internal politics from their foreign policies. It was not as clear then as it later became that the Nazi ideology and Hitler’s foreign policy were so closely linked. This element of ideology has set the cause of the Second World War apart from those of the first and made it difficult for political leaders to make the right decisions.
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