In 1939, countries expected war to be imminent. The cause of the Second World War is to be found in the diktat imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. The growing expansionism of the Axis powers (Germany, Italy and Japan) and the failure of the League of Nations are the main causes of the Second World War.
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Completely bloodless the day after the first World War, the victorious countries, under the impetus of France, want to make the vanquished pay the price of the conflict. Germany must thus pay 132 million gold marks (or 23 million euros) in compensation. As a result, the country falls into hyperinflation further aggravated by the world economic crisis of 1929. In addition, the German army is reduced to heartache with 100,000 soldiers, and the border regions with France are demilitarized. The feeling of revenge then grew in the country against France and its allies. A feeling that contributes to the rise of Nazism.
The expansionism of the Axis powers
The Second World War was above all the consequence of the actions of the three Axis Powers: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Imperial Japan. They have all invaded territories to the detriment of respect for international law. Thus, Germany invaded the Sudetenland, in Czechoslovakia, in the 1930s, and annexed Austria. It was the invasion of Poland on 1er October 1939, which led to the conflict. Fascist Italy colonizes Ethiopia in particular. Finally, Japan gained a foothold in Manchuria in 1931, then in the rest of China in 1937.
The ineffectiveness of the international community
The end of the first world war saw the creation of the League of Nations responsible for preventing wars. In 1928, the Briand-Kellogg pact, named after the French and American foreign ministers, condemned war as a political tool. The refusal of a new butcher’s shop leads the various French and British politicians to close the eyes on the expansion of Nazi Germany which rebuilt an army. In 1938, France and the United Kingdom signed the Munich agreements which confirmed the annexation of part of Czechoslovakia by Germany to the detriment of the alliance agreements. L’invasion of Poland by Germany, 1er September 1939, triggers the second World War.
Namely: Adolf Hitler, in his book Mein Kampf, justifies German expansionism by the Lebensraum, the living space, essential to the Aryans.
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