Who's to blame for WWII? Intentionalist vs. Functionalist

Just wondering what your thoughts are on the origins of the war. Was this "Hitler's War," a conflict that began due to the influence of one primary actor; or were the causes of the war more complex?

I am an "intentionalist". I personally think that Hitler and the Nazi regime were the primary catalysts of the war and that it was 'intentional' all along. I think with the strengthening of the German troops in the Rhineland, the invasion of the Sudetenland, the invasion of the rest of Czechoslovakia, and finally the invasion of Poland, Hitler's intents were clear from the beginning. He wanted to take over Europe, and wasn't afraid of Britain, France, or anyone else. I also believe that the Holocaust was the idea of the Nazi's, though this is much harder to prove. As a child Hitler thought Jews to be inferior, and backed by the rest of his Nazi generals and consultants, the Final Solution came underway. What do you think?

Please note, I'm not an expert in WWII but I'm always willing to learn more since it is a very interesting topic and quite an influential time for human beings. These views reflect my own opinions, and to be honest, there are probably some ignorant statements in what I write. I apologize in advanced!

 

The problems in Central Europe, and the Continent itself go back much further than the 19th Century, or even the 20th. If one really stretches back you can find wars and broken alliances from Charlemagne's three grandsons on in what is considered "modern history". Louis the German, Charles the Bald, and Lothair fought each other, allied with each other, and broke treaties with rapidity. Hitler was probably an inevitable incarnation of this ongoing rivalry between the established states of the partitioned nation/state Charlemagne produced.

And BTW, Hitler had no "hatred" of Jews as a child. He never really saw a person he recognized as a "Jew" until he went to Vienna as a late teenager. The only Jew he had close contact with, was Dr. Bloch his family doctor. He respected the good Dr., and allowed him to retain his practice and home, not wear the Jewish Star, and emigrate to Britain with his converted money, his family, and his honor as a physician after he came to power. Not the reflection of "hatred" of the one Jew he knew personally. Hitler also sent Dr. Bloch postcards with hand drawn sketches up until Dr. Bloch left Europe.

Hitler's view of Jews and other "untermensch" was an evolving concept post-WW1. No need to apologize, in advance or later. Opinions are welcome, and as such are flexible by their very nature. As I have not done this in the past; welcome aboard by the way!!

 

Personally I would blame the treaty of Versaille! The armistice didnt end the war, it only made it worse in theory.
I think blaming Versaille was the only thing that I would agree with the Nazis.

 

I think one of the catalysts you missed out which many do...and concentrate on Versaille..ww1...Rheinland etc...was the British German Naval agreement of 36. Thats when Britain together with the Washington naval treaty gave up the means of its own mechant marine survival and independant world wide survivability if you like...And sold the French and our other allies out. But I'd go further....I'd go back to the days of the Dutch British naval wars...William of Orange being invited to take the throne made us a naval power rather than a pirate and guerilla sailing nation...paved the way for Britain's power illusion that turned out to be a myth..held the line for years with string and a few men in red...Gave the world the wrong impression...Eventually paved the way and showed true weakness rather than Sudetenland etc with that one Anglo German navy treaty signing.

 

It is too facile to blame Versailles. Remember France and Britain had lost millions of its population and at a huge cost in the conflict which its public considered rightly to be caused by German Militarism.

Germany had ended the war with its industry intact whilst France's industrial area in the North East had been under German control and its coalfields deliberately destroyed by the Germans. If there had been no reparations then France would have suffered the cost of repairing its industry in addition to the costs of the War - Germany despite being the aggressor, would have only suffered the cost of the war. Clearly giving an advantage to Germany and hardly fair.

Britain estimated the cost the war was £24 billion - Germany was asked to pay £2.5 billion plus and extra £4billion (in C bonds which no one expected her to pay).

Britain had paid the lion's share of the War taking on the debts of Italy and Russia (which clearly would never be repaid) as well as guaranteeing the French War Debt. Most of the money was owed to the US. The suggestion that these debts might be reduced or cancelled in tandem with a reduction German reparations was refused by America.

So it is difficult to see how any French or British politician could have gone home after Versailles without some promise from Germany to pay.

In the event Germany did not pay and may even had made a profit at Versailles. Best estimates are that Germany paid £1.1billion but borrowed £1.275billion from American investors. Hitler refused to pay and cancelled these loans.

No - the real problem was that Germany did not accept she had been beaten and had to change her ways.


A key mistake of Versailles was that the Germany Army could hide behind the fiction that it had not been beaten but was betrayed by weak politicians and (later) Jews - both completely wrong.

 

Maybe that you are partially correct, scipio. But how will you explain that to the germans who lived in the french sector where all industry was "stolen". Or the millions of unemploed people which had nothing than her lifes and clothes? I think there is much more behind it and i don´t believe that Germany made a plus at Versailles. They´ve lost 90% of their merchant fleet and the whole foreign assets. I think it was not a joke for the people.

 

Thanks for a great post again. Furthermore:

At the beginning of the 20th century the inevitable has happened: two German empires have fallen and at their ruins new independent nations have emerged. That was a long awaited deliberation after centuries of oppression.

For centuries, German and Austro-Hungarian empires have deliberately colonized carefully chosen territories with citizens of German ethnicity. Usually, peasants were relocated to secure borders of the empire. Once oppressed nations have gained power over their territories, many millions of Germans have remained at the territories ruled by the former subjugated nations.

Germany wanted to resolve this issue at the battlefield.

 

This sounds like a very long planned plot of the Germans to justify future wars! Do you really believe it?

 

The causes for the war had too many moving parts to single out any simple reason for its occurance. I an not altogether sure had Hitler been killed in the twenties by well aimed brick thrown at a contested rally, that the war would not still have happened in some form anyway.

Too many nations had expansionistic plans in the works to lay everything on Hitler's/Germany doorstep. Granted Hitler helped ensure it was the massive horror it was, but nature abhorres a vacume, or so PBS tells me.

 

No Ulrich! German Empires have approached very difficult situation because problems have been accumulating for centuries without adequate social adjustments.

 

Exactly. The circumstances have developed to the level where the "Judgement Day" was inevitable. That was a point-of-no-return.

 

When you go to war, your ships in port in an enemy nation are routinely "impounded"; then while at war your merchant fleet is as much at risk as any other merchant fleet of your enemy. The "foreign assets" is a bit of a query, unless you are speaking of colonies they held pre-war. Lastly, what exactly do you consider “stolen” here, certainly not the industry since it remained in the hands of its original owners. Krupp was barred from making weapons (which it figured ways around), and resorted to making kitchen appliances and their original products of railway goods, but they retained ownership and control of the compay post-WW1.

From the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire (which was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire) at the end of the Thirty Years War the Alsace-Lorraine district had been French for 223 years before it was “ceded” to Germany in the 1871 Treaty of Frankfort. It was then “German” for about 48 years, but returned to France post WW1. Who stole what from who?

The Rhineland was not taken over by the western allied forces or nations post-WW1, it was demilitarized. The Germans retained control of the industry, the electoral politics, and policing any civilian crime. There were “occupation troops” (Belgian, American, French) stationed there for a time immediately post-Versailles, but they left pretty early on, and then returned in late 1921 when the French took control of the industrial areas as a “policing” force. They (France) didn’t take control of the industry, the homes, the cities or towns, or anything else. They re-stationed troops there in an attempt to force reparations payments to resume. This didn't help the situation in the least, but they never took control of nor "stole" the industry.

The workers had gone on strike for wages and benefits their own government was holding back trying to pay the reparations. This was all resolved by the Dawes Plan wherein the German Weimar government and local industry received US loans to rebuild and start to use a “sliding scale” to repay the money owed to the west. No industry was "stolen", the fleet may have been sunk (merchant and military), but those are costs of war. Germany lost its colonies, but really what rational human wouldn't think they should. They had taken the colonies by force like other European nations, and lost them to force.

This German debt was mostly to the US in a 'round about fashion, since the French and British owed us war debts up the “wazzoo”, and it was a major mistake for America not to simply forgive, reduce, or alter the repayment protocol. Coolidge refused to even consider moderating or reducing the "war debts", saying famously that: "The business of America is business!" Meaning that we will get what is owed no matter what. Then what happened is that we (America) ended up paying Germany’s war debt, through our “allies” and back to ourselves. German unemployment during the Dawes Plan years had fallen to less than 8%, the inflation was no worse than the rest of the world's until the Great Depression happened, and that may have been of America's own fault for many reasons.

Stephen Schuker, a University of Virginia historian and author of "American 'Reparations' to Germany, 1919- 1933", believes the Germans, by using the proceeds of American loans (Dawes Plan) to pay off their debts in Europe, ultimately paid no reparations at all. And when the Germans defaulted in the early thirties as a result of the "Great Depression" (Schuker argues), American bankers had effectively paid reparations to Germany.

According to Schuker's calculations, the total net transfer from the United States to Germany in the period 1919-1931, adjusted for inflation, "amounted to almost four times the total assistance that the United States furnished West Germany under the Marshall Plan from 1948 to 1952." (emphasis mine)

That (paying Germany to pay France and Britain to pay America) did NOT work, and contributed to the stock market crash and may have precipitated the Great Depression as much as the bank debts of the failing American farmer did. But that is a separate discussion.

So let's see here, no industry stolen or changed hands, merchant fleet and military fleet put at risk and lost to war, and colonies taken by force lost as well. Seems like starting a war isn't such a good thing. Ask us as we enter our tenth year in Afghanistan if this is a "good thing", I think not.

 

Good written Clint! But it seems there are some points not so good written by myself. With losing the merchant fleet was meant that they was taken away by some winners nations and not the losses from sinkings. The foreign assets are the colonies but more meant the money they had abroad. And i never meant the alsace. I was more on the Saarland and the Pfalz where the French tried to annex this parts of Germany in a very rude way. And if you´ve ever talked to older citizen from this regions( now more or less impossible) they have told you some bad stories of the French habits during the years from 1918 to 1930. And in their history you can read that the French indeed had stolen lots of Industry, smaller ones not the huge ones like Krupp, before they left this area.

Some is here to read but only with Google translator because its in German: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns - Französische Besetzung der Pfalz, 1918/19-1930

The numbers of unemployed had their highest point in 1923 with more than 4 million unemployed and sunk later to this numbers:

271.660 (Juni 1920), 426.600 (März 1921), 11.671 (September 1922), 1.588.939 (Januar 1924), 195.099 (Juli 1925), 2.058.412 (Februar 1926), 329.734 (Oktober 1927). Only to climb to more than 6 million in 1932.

Yes the Americans helped in more than one way and more than one time, but that can´t prevent that the French took their extra bonus.

 

I'm with Belasar...it was always going to happen..like ww1 and assasination...A trigger...always going to be a trigger but that is not the reason obviously.

Origins....causes...trigger...that order...take those 3 and you can work out just why if you wish to any war or conflict starts.

The Trigger willl happen...the causes are because of the origins...the origins matter...but that gets us into politics and strategy. Politics is not so welcome on this forum but I for one cannot take the politics out of warfare...that is usually the real reason the main reason...the usual origin. Be it ethnic...interstate or civil war.

Then we have the old human nature and human need for.....some say....war.

 

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That is new to me! Never thought that each single German was practicing imperialist.

 

Indeed, Britain was more severely damaged by the victory in the Great War than Germany was hit by the defeat! Britain lived on exports, the cost of war reduced British investments abroad to 1/3. British trade 1920 was ½ the level of 1913 while dominions gained independence in 1926. Britain needed a stable world to maintain its position of the leading World nation. Britain needed peace to retain her position while Nazis, on the other side, needed instability and a war to attain their objectives. This was origin of the conflict between Nazis and Britain. Nazis were a direct threat to Britain even though the real target was Soviet Union.

This is a paradox, but Britain was forced to oppose Nazis even though she was neither a target nor strong enough to win a war alone. This was a war Britain had to wage also because of her responsibilities towards other nations.

Intentionalists are right: not only Hitler, but practically entire German nation wanted to "re-design" the world order – through the war.

 

It is simple (people always are making things complicated):the Germans did not accept the result of Versailles in Easteren Europe,thus,Hitler wanted to undo Versailles :for Poland,he had territorial claims (Dantzig was one of them) and he wanted to make Poland some satellite (as Slowakia).
Poland said no,and Hitler attacked,convinced that Britain and France would not intervene.
If there was no Hitler,I think there still would be a war between Poland and Germany,resulting in WWII (without the Endlösung).

 

You're quite right, but there is difference between questions (i) How? and (ii) Why? To answer the question (i) How you just have to describe things just like they have happened. To answer the question (ii) you need to investigate the reasons. Answers to the both questions are important.