by Gomez Gomez

Created on: September 11, 2009

An intricate combination of factors between 1918-1939 led to the outbreak of the Second World War. Anti-German social attitudes in France and Britain conflicted with American idealism and economic concerns to yield a flawed and arguably unjust post-World War One treaty - the Treaty of Versailles. The Versailles settlement's deficiencies helped to prompt and later facilitate the emergence of Fascism, an intensely militaristic form of governance whose disciples' aggression caused the Second World War. This was because the treaty's perceived injustices fostered social discontent in Germany and Italy, which combined with economic factors like the Great Depression and the raw material shortage in Japan to yield Fascism. Meanwhile, pervasive anti-war sentiments fueled a strategy of appeasement, which allowed the Fascist nations to improve their strength relative to the rest of the world. It also encouraged them to use military force since its invocation always seemed to transpire unopposed, at least up until the 1939 German invasion of Poland that started the war. This essay will attempt to provide a reasonably coherent narrative of these factors and their relationships to each other.

The Versailles conference attendees failed to cooperate in order to reach an equitable, enduring settlement that would render major conflict at least temporarily unlikely. While the United States President Woodrow Wilson and to a lesser extent Lloyd George of Britain advocated a benign peace, the French President Georges Clemenceau wanted to cripple Germany. [1] The United States' objectives, as outlined in Wilson's 1918 Fourteen Points speech, were to forge a new liberal world order founded on premises like national self-determination, transparent diplomacy, free trade, armament reduction. Lloyd George, although privately supporting Wilson's progressive, idealistic agenda, had recently won an election partly by promising to hang the Kaiser and otherwise punish Germany. [2] Resultantly he was forced to moderate his stance by pervasive anti-German British public sentiments. [3] America and Britain were in fact primarily concerned with Germany's continuation as an important trading power. [4] Conversely France, troubled by a history of recurring German invasions, supported permanently debilitating Germany economically and militarily. [5] All three leaders were tied to domestic public opinion, severely restricting their ability to make concessions. [6] The conference attendees' aims

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