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Chapter Three: The World Wars
Review |
Chapter 3 examines World Wars I and II. This chapter introduces the issues of war and peace that are discussed in later chapters, examines events that mark the beginning of the modern era of global politics, and demonstrates efforts to build theory and explain war by reference to levels of analysis. The chapter opens by examining the events leading up to World War I and then analyzes the many sources of the war according to their levels of analysis and considers how political scientists have used this case to generalize about war. It then describes how World War I permanently altered global politics and ushered in the modern world. It reviews the sequence of events following World War I that led to the next world war: the harsh treatment of Germany in the Versailles Treaty, the failure of the League of Nations, and the policy of appeasement practiced by the West in the series of crises in the 1930s. The chapter closes by assessing the sources of World War II.
1. Events leading to the Great War
Some of the key factors contributing to the war were German unification, Europe’s diplomatic revolution, arms races, the spread of nationalism, and quarrels over the fate of the Balkans.
a) German unification and Europe's diplomatic revolution
- The three wars of German unification greatly increased German power and growing German power frightened Germany’s neighbors.
- The mercurial personality of Germany’s emperor and the atmosphere produced by nationalism contributed to growing animosity among Europe’s leading states.
- As a result of tensions, a diplomatic revolution occurred that divided Europe into two hostile alliances.
b) Arms races, nationalism, the Balkan imbroglio
- The Anglo-German arms race at sea and the competitive growth in arms on land between Germany, on the one hand, and Russia and France, on the other, intensified international tensions.
- National tensions in Austria-Hungary and a power vacuum in the Balkans produced intense Russo-Austrian competition in the region.
c) Crisis diplomacy
- A series of dangerous crises erupted in the decade before the Great War.
- The most important of these crises were the First and Second Moroccan Crises (1905-06, 1911), the Bosnian Crisis (1908-09), and the Balkan Wars (1912-13).
d) The Final Descent to War
- After the assassination of the Austrian Archduke, Germany gave a “blank check” to Austria-Hungary’s leaders, promising to aid them if Russia chose to aid Serbia, and Austria-Hungary sent an ultimatum to Serbia and then declared war.
- Russia’s military mobilization led to Germany’s declaration of war against Russia and France. Finally, Germany invaded neutral Belgium, prompting British entry into the war.
2. Explaining the outbreak of World War I
a) Several prominent theoretical explanations exist for the war, but no single explanation is sufficient to understand why World War I began.
b) Individual-level explanations focus on leaders who were products of an earlier era, and who did not understand the forces that were sweeping Europe.
c) State level explanations consider Germany’s growing ambitions after 1890 and its desire to prevent Russia from growing stronger, Austria-Hungary’s and Russia’s efforts to deflect domestic troubles by blaming other countries and achieving international victories, and clashes between expanding imperialist powers.
d) Global system-level explanations examine the changing distribution of global military and economic power; the violation of past expectations, the complexity and novelty of the 1914 crisis, and the onrush of events that produced a kind of collective nervous breakdown among leaders; and the failure of leaders and generals to understand the implications of technological change and their belief in the need to strike first, which reduced the time necessary to achieve a political solution to the crisis.
3. The peace of Versailles and its consequences
The Paris Peace Conference ended the war, with several major consequences for global politics in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
a) Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points
- Germany surrendered in the hope that President Wilson’s plan for a generous peace would be the basis of the settlement.
- The British and French turned down most of Wilson’s ideas except his plan for the League of Nations.
b) Versailles and the Principle of National Self-Determination
- The principle that national groups should govern themselves was at the heart of Wilson’s Fourteen Points and guided peacemakers in Paris.
- This principle was used in planning the postwar settlement in Central Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East, and its consequences remain with us today.
c) The Versailles Treaty and the Humiliation of Germany
The severe consequences imposed on the losers of World War I contributed to Hitler's rise to power and to alienating the Germans, Italians, and Japanese, who would become allies against the Western democracies in World War II.
4. The League of Nations
The first effort to construct a universal international organization to maintain peace and security never achieved the aims of its founders, and collapsed in the face of the challenges of the 1930s.
a) Origins and Controversies
- Wilson was instrumental in creating the League, but the U.S. Senate refused to back the president, thereby preventing American participation.
- Wilson hoped the League would keep the peace by means of collective security.
b) The League’s Record in Securing Peace
- During the 1920s, the League achieved a number of limited successes, but during the 1930s, defects in its Covenant and the failure of major countries to abandon their national interests in favor of the collective good doomed the League.
- The League’s most important failures were its inability to reverse Japan’s 1931 seizure of Manchuria, Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, and Hitler’s violations of the Versailles and Locarno Treaties.
5. Hitler comes to power
a) The Depression was instrumental in producing political extremism in Germany, Italy, and Japan, and in bringing Hitler and the Nazis to power.
b) Economic woes caused Western statesmen and publics to turn inward, try to reduce defense spending to balance budgets, and avoid taking steps necessary to halt aggression by Japan, Italy, and Germany.
6. Appeasement and the onset of World War II
The Western policy of appeasement in the 1930s was disastrous.
a) Appeasement in Europe
- The West, especially Britain, repeatedly sought to appease Hitler in the 1930s, most importantly, in allowing the Nazis to rearm, remilitarize the Rhineland, unite with Austria, and seize first the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia and then the remainder of that country.
b) On the Road to Pearl Harbor
- Following Japan’s seizure of Manchuria, militarists took power in Tokyo, and in 1937 invaded China.
- American concern about Japanese ambitions led the US to impose economic sanctions on Japan that forced Japan to choose between giving way in China or starting a war with the U.S. and invading Southeast Asia to obtain necessary raw materials.
7. Explaining the outbreak of World War II
a) Hitler’s racism and ideology provide only a partial explanation of the war.
b) State-level explanations look at changes within states including the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany, and the political fragmentation in Britain and France.
c) Global-level explanations focus on the Versailles Treaty system, the balance of power in Europe, the failure of collective security, and the spread of extremist ideologies.
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Focus Questions |
Q1 What explains the outbreak of World War One in 1914?
A1 World War I had both long and short-term causes. For example, the alienation of Great Britain and Germany took place over a period of years, and Germany's growing power dates back to its unification 1870 and its effort to become a global power began after the young Kaiser Wilhelm II dismissed Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1890. The spread of nationalism and Social Darwinism were long-term. By contrast, the role of military mobilization and the resulting influence of generals over politicians, as well as Germany's willingness to give Austria-Hungary a "blank check" after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914 were short-term factors. Causes exist at all three levels of analysis. For instance, the changing distribution of power, the naval and land arms races, the formation of two antagonistic alliances, and the spread of racist ideologies-- causes commonly cited by realists and neorealists--are system-level factors. State-level factors include nationalist tensions in Austria-Hungary, the unpopularity of Russia's tsarist government, and Germany's authoritarian government—factors commonly cited by liberals. Finally, the Kaiser's mercurial temperament, the Tsar's inability to make decisions, and the general mediocrity of ruling elites trained in an earlier era are individual-level factors. For their part, Marxists see the prewar imperialism of major European states as a principal cause of war.
Q2 What were the consequences of the Versailles Treaty that brought an end to World War I?
A2 Germany agreed to an armistice that ended the fighting on November 11, 1918 partly because its new leaders believed the peace would be a liberal and conciliatory one based on President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points. Instead, divisions among the victorious allies, demands in Great Britain and France for vengeance against Germany and the Central Powers, and Wilson's willingness to surrender some of his principles in order to get a league of nations produced a vindictive peace. Only Germany was forced to disarm and lost territories, including inhabited by Germans. Germany was forced to admit its guilt for starting the war and was required to pay reparations.
Q3 What was the League of Nations, and why did it fail?
A3 The League of Nations was originally proposed as the last of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and was included as part of the Versailles Treaty. Wilson envisioned the League as replacing the balance-of-power system with a collective security system in which all member states would respond as a group to aggression or threats to the peace. However, the US Senate refused to ratify the Versailles Treaty, and the United States never joined the organization. American absence, along with that of at least one other great power during the existence of the League, proved an impediment to its effectiveness in maintaining peace. It became clear fairly soon that the great powers in the League were more interesting in pursuing their own national interests than in joining with others to maintain peace. The weaknesses of the League, including the need for unanimity in voting, became evident during the 1930s after the Great Depression made countries more concerned about their domestic affairs than foreign affairs and made them averse to spending money on armaments. Thus, the League failed to act vigorously after Japan's invasion of and subsequent establishment of a puppet government in Manchuria in China (1931). Anglo-French aversion to alienating Italy's Benito Mussolini and losing as a possible alliance partner against Germany meant that the two European powers refused to enforce the necessary sanctions authorized by the League after Italy's invasion of Ethiopia (1935). And their policy of appeasing Hitler's Germany made the League increasingly irrelevant during the 1930s.
Q4 What were the key events that culminated in the outbreak of World War Two in 1939?
A4 In Europe, the key crises on the road to World War II were German rearmament begun in 1935 and its reoccupation of the Rhineland (1936) both in violation of the Versailles Treaty, the Spanish Civil War (1936-9), the forcible German unification (Anschluss) with Austria (1938), the Munich crisis and surrender to Germany of the Sudentenland in Czechoslovakia (1938), Germany's invasion and occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia (1939), and the German invasion of Poland (1939). All of these events until the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland reflected the British policy of trying to prevent war by giving in to Hitler's demands (the policy of appeasement) and French unwillingness to act independently of Britain. The final acts in the drama were a unilateral Anglo-French guarantee to defend Poland, the signing of a Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Treaty by Hitler and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in which they secretly agreed to divide Poland, and the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. In Asia, Japan's invasion of Manchuria was followed by a full-scale invasion of China (1937). American efforts to use economic sanctions to bring an end to the invasion of China antagonized the Japanese government which had fallen under the influence of patriotic zealots and militarists. Japanese efforts to obtain additional raw materials by invading French Indochina (1940-1) led to additional American sanctions that threatened to bring the Japanese war machine to a halt. Instead of giving in to American demands, Japan planned and carried out a surprise attack on the giant American naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, thereby bringing America into the war.
Q5 What explains the outbreak of World War II?
A5 There are several explanation for World War II at different levels of analysis. System-level explanations include the failure of collective security, the breakdown of the balance of power in Europe and Asia, and division of the world into status quo and revisionist states caused by the Versailles Treaty. State-level explanations include political and social disunity in France and Britain that made it impossible for them to oppose Germany and the rise of fascism in Italy, Nazism in Germany, and militarism in Japan. Finally, individual-level factors include Hitler's desire to revenge Germany's humiliation at Versailles and his racist outlook as well as the widespread desired of Western leaders to avoid another bloody catastrophe like World War I and their sense of guilt over the treatment of Germany after the First World War. |
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