Centerfield

A Series of Unfortunate Events: WW1 Begets WW2: WWI Mythology Part 2 of 3(LONG)

This post is about how mythology and overreaction arising from WW1 caused WWII. It's the second of a three-part series on WWI ( part 1 here). There were two important phases: the anti-German phase that resulted in the punitive bits of the Treaty of Versailles that let Hitler come to power and the anti-militaristic phase that resulted in appeasement policies that let the Axis grow strong.

In the first post, I talked about how Allied military was so stupid as cause widespread rebellion, like the Communists in Russia, Fascists in Italy, and way too many of both (but not majorities) in the Western democracies. The Western Allies sent millions of soldiers to die in charges of entrenched machine gun positions, a thing they had ample evidence to know was likely to lose those millions for little. And that's what happened. But not everybody rebelled. Let's go back for a bit to the majority response. My bit on the subject from the last post:

. . . To be sure, for most, the response was like Eric Maria Remarque's, jotted down for the generations in All Quiet on the Western Front, bitterness and distrust of all things military. . . .

This embittered majority will soon have its necessary place in the sun of events in the democratic Allies. Not quite yet, though.

Treaty of Versailles

First, we have a moment of vengeance. In Europe, vast majorities are elected on retributive platforms. Despite plenty of statesmanlike conduct to try and lessen the result, Versailles was an instrument of vengeance as well as peace and progress.

The Treaty had two kinds of severe terms that led to problems. One set made Germany out to be a permanent second class citizen, with annoying borders and prescription of 15 years before Allied occupation was due to end. Worse trouble came from the huge reparations assigned Germany to pay for some of the vast Allied war damage. While Germany had, in fact, arguably taken action resulting in vast damage, they had also suffered vast damage and wouldn't've been able to pay the reparations for many years. It just lingered as a vast shadow, perfect for demagogic politicians to play on.

On top of the Treaty, when Germany had the predictable trouble paying the harsh reparations, Prime Minister Poincare of France occupied the German Ruhr, a center of industry.

All this bad treatment was music to Hitler's and other extremists' ears. Though, another thing that helped them was that Germany had gone democratic of itself. The deal had left in place many judges and generals who monarchist and otherwise authoritarian in sympathy. Judges couldn't be bothered to give rightie traitors long sentences; many generals were far too ready to listen when Hitler took power. And, as is all too usual for new democracies, the first constitution was buggy.

Let's pause for a second and talk about the Treaty's upsides. Because President Wilson and the other signatories also advanced far in some ways. After almost exactly two millenia of subjection and Empire, the Treaty drew boundaries in ways not too far from how majorities in the various territories involved would've drawn them. He also worked hard to encourage democracies in much of Eastern Europe. Conservatives loved to titter about that when the Iron Curtain was in place, but Woodie got the last laugh, because now they're back just about in those same spots in Eastern Europe, and not so much elsewhere in the ex-Soviet-Union.

Now let's talk League of Nations. The League was what I'd call the Alpha test of the United Nations. That is, it was the start of a cool idea, but having serious problems that we didn't know about because it hadn't been tried. The worst problem was enforcement. Wilson sold WWI as the "War To End Wars," because, he said, his Fourteen Points, which included the League of Nations, would end war forever. He clearly thought the League of Nations really would end war, permanently.

Reality's gone down rather differently, of course. Reality includes WWII and the reality of plenty of small wars, even today. Every once in a while, an evil dictator decides that all these big, rich, peaceful democracies have been at peace so long they've lost the stomach for war. So, they attack another nation to try to expand, even if's a long-standing friend of a powerful democracy or strategically important. This will never stop. However, we can prevent evil dictators from hanging onto their ill-won gains so they don't get big enough to be dangerous, and free a friend or two. Other reasons for war in the last few decades have included well-funded rebellions and terrorists, and ethnic cleansing.

What has worked is that we haven't had any really big wars like WWI and WWII, though that's as much because of Mutually Assured Destruction as because of UN-style police actions.

Rise of Appeasement

A few years later, things had turned around. By that time, the harsh Versailles terms, particularly the reparations that could then be seen to be excessive, and perhaps more than the Central Powers could afford, were creating wide sympathy, especially for the Germans. When German ultra-high inflation had the side effect of all but wiping out the debt (it was valued in end-of-war amounts), there was probably quiet relief among most citizens of Allied democratic states. Later, when Hitler cmae to power, that sympathy helped him gain vast Allied concessions.

Another wide sentiment also bore its fruit for Hitler as well. The anti-militarism also became mature as a political sentiment around the same time. The first effect was that the Allies found it increasingly politically hard to maintain the various garrisons called for by Versailles and in spots where arrangements were slower to mature.

All the democratic Allies started reducing their militaries.

If you think about it, the kind of big military we have, and that Britain and France used to keep, reflects a popular trust in the military. Most of us listen to the generals when they remind us that evil men will take advantage if we fail to keep a big military, and mostly trust them to the vaguely right thing, with appropriate democratic supervision.

At this point, a majority of democratic citizens had lost faith in even listening to any voices associated with the military. People stopped believing that bad guys would come without constant deterrence and occasional military action. They were right, for a while. The ideological underpinnings for Appeasement had come, electing and returning with big majorities the politicians who later responded to Fascism with Appeasement.

Rise of Fascism

Fascism seems to've rarely commanded a majority anywhere. It didn't when it came into power in Germany, Italy, Japan, or Spain. Or, I'd argue, in Putin's Russia today before our eyes. They can only win elections unfairly. There probably was a majority in Germany after France fell, and in the times after Allied civilian bombing brought people together but before the defeats had started coming fast.

The Fascists of that era came to power undemocratically. All of them. Mussolini (Italy) and Tojo (Japan) were appointed by their monarchs. Hitler (Germany) hacked a buggy democratic Constitution. Franco (Spain) won a civil war. Now, notice that for these ways to power to work, each of the rulers had already had to work hard and long at getting lots of the existing elites on their sides.

Germany and Italy appear to have gone Fascist partially as results of unhappiness with WWI. Germany, of course, was unhappy about the loss - Hitler famously loved to propagate a "stabbed in the back" notion. Italy's less clear, because all we do know is that the King handed power to Mussolini with the excuse of keeping the Communists from taking over; was that an excuse or a reality? It does seem to've been true that Italy was as at least as unhappy about their fighting of the war as the rest of the Democractic Allies in WWI (maybe worse, because they never got the tank). Radicalism on both sides really does seem to've increased greatly in Italy after WWI.

The Great Depression also helped tip Germany into fascism. Though it didn't make the Nazis a majority party, it did make it one of the bigger ones, and thus a good coalition partner.

Fascist Japan does seem to've been different in an important way from the other hostile Axis nations - they weren't unhappy with WWI. The war had mostly been far away, and they'd lost one destroyer in the Med, but gained some German turf in the Far East. All the Axis Powers were historically recently emerged Great Powers that consequentially, had many elites who felt that their ownings under colonialism did not befit their realistic military ranking. Mussolini felt the same way, but notions of conquest were backed by much less public opinion in Italy, which explains the widespread WWII Italian military failures.

Taking Advantage of Appeasement

There is nothing unusual at all in history about the rise of groups of aggressive dictatorial states. What's not so usual is the level of irresolution in surrounding states against them. Part of this was because Hitler was a democratic politician for awhile and understood about appealing to parties and coalitions in democracies. Part of ancient Macedonia's rise was made possible by Alexander's being tutored by Aristotle to understand at least some democratic politics. Alexander successfully split opinion in several powerful states that might otherwise have united as against Cyrus.

Hitler kept the West off-guard by often talking publically about how he wanted nothing but peace. Well, there's some truth to that, actually, it wasn't ALL a big lie. He wanted a Pax Germanica, with all the most important bits of the world under his control. But he DID lie about how he didn't want to conquer his various neighbors, to many people and in many places. Before he invaded, he often invented a crisis about German minorities in the target country. Many people believed him.

But this time, there was also the wide military distrust serving appeasement. First, states in the new League of Nations failed to confront Italy when Mussolini invaded Abyssinia, and then Hitler took that to be a good sign that he could invade places without being confronted; he was right for a good, long time.

Churchill has pointed out that Hitler could've been stopped far, far more easily if it had been done earlier. Hitler's first steps were to reoccupy the German Ruhr and Rhineland, in defiance of treaty. At that point, the German Army was utterly tiny, just a skeleton, and a confrontation would've been trivial.

Hitler followed those unopposed successes up by annexing Austria and then Czechoslovakia. Nobody stopped him. In fact, France had mutual defense treaties with Czechoslovakia, and Britain with France, so that should've started WWII. There was an infamous meeting in Berlin over Czechoslovakia, in which Hitler persuaded France and Britain that there would be peace if they failed to help Czechoslovakia.

Czechoslovakia was the first spot where the German Army was big enough to noticeably slow a Western invasion. But even there, the Allies would've been in a much better situation than when they actually went to war, because the correlation of forces would've allowed immediate French invaaion. Most of the much-smaller Wehrmacht was off invading Czechoslovakia instead of defending German defensive works. When Poland was invaded, Germany had enough forces to do both, meaning France didn't have enough force to invade. That put off the day of reckoning until Germany built its army enough to conquer France. Churchill pointed out that Czechoslovakia had a good-size army in good strategic position to give Germany plenty of headaches that would've been on the Allied side.

Thus, without that distrust of the military from WWI, I'd guess that, at the very latest, the West would've confronted Hitler over Czechoslovakia, and at worst, the war would've been alot shorter.

WWII Begins

Britain and France finally decided to confront Hitler over Poland, after their armed forces were inferior, especially when the effects of the western Siegfried Line with France on any considered invasion. They had to lay passive until Hitler could build up his forces enough to take over France.

Summary

There would be no WWII without the absolutely amazing number of myths and overreactions from WWI. First came the determination to squeeze Germany to the last Deutchmark and submit it to retributive treaty limitations.

Then came the determination on the Allied side to distrust any idea of using the military - normally a grim necessity in the world, as it was in those decades as well, coupled by the rise of the aggressive and militaristic Fascist regimes similarly propelled by the political rebounds of WWI.

What would WWII have been like without Hitler or Mussolini in power, or if the West had taken early action against their aggression? It's hard to guess. Would Japan have declared war alone? Would it instead have involved confronting Stalin on his aggression? Would the axis have been of the USSR and Japan instead?