Question:To what extent would it be correct to term the Second World War as ‘Hitler’s war”?

Answer: History, of all times and periods, is replete with enigmas. Enigmas have a peculiar quality about themselves. Enigmas live; and in those few years of life they dazzle and mystify. Then they depart; but they don’t die. They simply pass into posterity as cryptic swollen memories that would live on to be interpreted and construed in more ways than one. Among the most remarkable enigmas of the Twentieth century was Adolf Hitler; an individual who even after half a century of death haunts a world unable to explain the impact with which he left; one who sparked off an unending debate on whether he had singularly planned, directed and created the greatest military conflagration in human history.

The war from 1939 to 45 was truly a global war. The war had resulted, inevitably, in the skewed prioritisation of economic resources, all of which were pumped to the cause of war. When the war ended, all that remained was acute economic ruin, an unprecedented loss of life and a generation crippled with the psychological horror of the concluded war.

The earliest historical works on the origins of the Second World War were enmeshed in the emotional bitterness that came in the aftermath of the war. As a result, many of these early works tended to be too critical and judgemental in their assessments. New research, more detached from the emotions of the immediate post war period, have revised many of the earlier views, providing nuanced perspectives on the events and persons involved in the war. On this basis, the historical works on origins of the Second World War can be broadly classified into the orthodox and revisionist perspectives on the causes of the war.

Orthodox view:

The most pervasive explanation of the war was first advanced by the prosecution judges dealing with Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg who blamed Hitler and his foreign policy of expansionism as responsible for the outbreak of the war. The focus of this theory rests on Hitler who is seen as the prime causative factor for the war. This theory, bound with an individual, inevitably deposits much of its focus on the defining characteristics of Hitler: his personality, his feverish conviction in Nazism, and his unequivocal dominance within Germany, such that Hitler stood synonymous for the German state in this period. The emphases on the importance of Hitler within Germany, and on how he completely commanded the foreign policy of the state, are obvious. Hitler had, according to the proponents of this theory, singularly manoeuvred Germany and the world towards War, and had followed a programme of aggression that was coherent and consistent.

Hitler and his foreign policy being criticized:

The most trenchant critic of Hitlerand his Foreign policy has been Hugh Trevor Roper who explicated the theory that Hitler had followed a master plan lucidly laid out in his autobiographical classic, the Mein Kamph. Roper identifies two dominant themes in his writings in the Mein Kamph: his desire to gain the lebensraum or ‘living space’ in eastern Europe, and his determination to find a solution to the ‘Jewish question’. Allan Bullock, Andreas Hilgruber and Klaus Hildebrand have also supported the idea that Hitler’s policy of aggression was planned. In fact, Hildebrand suggests that Hitler had followed a calculated stage-by-stage plan, called stufenplan, where the destruction of the Soviet Union and the subsequent gain of the lebensraum in Eastern Europe were ‘prerequisites to world domination’.

The centrality attributed to Hitler has been rejected and revised by historians who, contrary to the established image of Hitler’s unchallenged domination, present him as weak and indecisive. These ‘revisionists’ highlight the intense internal rivalries between competing centres of power in the Third Reich. Mommsen states that Hitler’s foreign policy was an ‘ill thought-out expansion without object’; he thereby attaches to Hitler’s expansionism a spontaneous and unplanned character. To historians like Mommsen and Bracher, the idea of Hitler’s dominance was a Nazi propaganda myth. Hitler’s foreign policy, according to them, lacked any overall design and was nothing more than a ‘spontaneous response to internal divisions’.

Revisionist view:

German social product, not Hitler alone:

It is on questions relating to the degree of focus on Hitler that Ian Kershaw makes a brilliant contribution to the decades long research on the phenomena of Hitler and Nazism. Kershaw asserts that our focus while studying this period must not be on Hitler alone but on German society as well. The Power of Hitler was not solely derived from the individual of Hitler, but largely from German society. It is in this sense that Kershaw terms Hitler’s power as a ‘social product’. The aspirations, motivations and expectations of this society had motored Hitler’s rise to power. Such an impression of Hitler where he was seen as a saviour are evinced from eulogistic works like George Schott’s Das Verhsbuch vom Hitler where he spoke of Hitler as the “living incarnation of the nation’s yearnings”. The Nazi era, therefore, was a phenomenon that was a product of collaboration between Hitler and the social impulses that brought him to power.

 Kershaw further argues that the personality and ‘charisma’ of Hitler did have a crucial impact on German society in this period. He points out that ‘charismatic rule’ can in itself generate tremendous influence when it operates in ‘set’ socio- economic and psychological circumstances.

Nazi age was a continuity from German past:

But there are historians who do not agree with the uniqueness of the Nazi age in German history. Peukert, for instance, states that the Nazi Germany represented no break from the earlier development of the German society as the basic class structure in Nazi Germany remained unaltered. A.J.P Taylor, in his classic Origins of the Second World War, regarded the war as being the logical conclusion of the course of German history from 1871 to 1945. Taylor’s adherence to this idea of continuity is evident in his reference to the’ German problem’, one that remained unsolved even after the I^st World War. The problem, as Taylor perceives it, comes from Germany being the most powerful state in Europe. “The problem was not German aggressiveness, or militarism, or wickedness of her rulers”, rather, the fact that she was inherently the greatest power in Europe, something that brought her into inevitable conflict with others. William Shirer goes a good deal further in tracing this lineage of the IIIrd Reich when he speaks of Hitler as among the last in the line of the great adventurer conquerors like Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon. Fischer who asserted that German foreign policy only changed in form, not in central aims, also puts forward a strong view of continuity. This is supported by the fact that the desire for German dominance, and the subordination of the Slavs were aims of the Imperial government in the First World War. This school attempts to prove that Hitler and Nazism were not unique; that many of his policies were popular in Germany before 1914. The lebensraum, a concept integral to Nazi ideology is, according to these historians, traceable to the propaganda pamphlets of the pan–German league. Thus, Hitler’s ideology and policies, as McDonough puts it, ‘ reflected past views and prejudices, but did not invent them’.

Nazism was invented by Hitler:

This assertion is problematic. While a study of possible elements of continuity of Nazism to German past would warrant a more elaborate study, it would suffice to state that Nazism should not, and cannot, be seen as a logical conclusion of past trends in German foreign policy. Characteristic Nazi ideas of anti Semitism, Darwinism and the desire for the lebensraum may be traceable to earlier periods, but it has to be questioned (and it is here that the crucial difference lies) as to whether these ideas were part of state policy or were inchoate concepts that were one among the many other floating ideas of the ultra right in Imperial Germany and in Weimar democracy.

There are Historians who tend to underplay the distinctiveness of the Nazi period by emphasising its continuity with trends in German past. Meinecke and Dahrendorf reject any such claims to continuity and point at the rootlessness of the Nazi regime in German history. Ritter states that the defining features of Nazism: Anti Semitism, chauvinistic Nationalism and Social Darwinism, to name the prominent, were extraneous to the German society.

Further, the idea of continuity severely obscures the peculiar circumstances in which Nazism emerged in Germany. The ideas that coalesced to form Nazism under Hitler may have existed even in pre 1914 Germany. But never did they assume dominance among the German masses. Never before had the practise of Jewish extermination been part of German state policy and neither had chauvinistic nationalism ever been stoked to the extent as it was during the Nazi era. Nazism, rather any ultra left ideology, was confined to certain pockets of the population. The challenges to liberal democracy, and the growth of the far Right in Germany were propelled by certain distinct factors that emerged after the First World War. These included the German defeat, the subsequent episodes of German humiliations abroad and the internal turmoil of the Weimar republic (the most prominent being hyper inflation), which had fuelled popular antipathies and dissatisfactions against democratic regimes.

But the decisive moment for the rise of Nazism in Germany came with the Great Economic Depression from 1929 to 33. The crash disturbed the volatile politico-economic structures of the Weimar democracy. In the post World War One period, the world economy hinged on the fortunes of the US economy and the Weimar republic borrowed loans from the US for paying back war reparations and rebuilding the German economy. The debilitating impact of the crash on the German economy was thus sharp and instant. It was in the context of unprecedented unemployment, declining industrial production and collapsing agricultural prices that Hitler manipulated the peaking despair of the masses to the advantage of his Far Right party.

Thus, Nazism- as ideology and state policy- emerged under certain extraordinary circumstances, under the aegis of Hitler, and only after the Great Economic Depression of 1929. Perhaps the most lucid evidence for the distinctiveness of the Nazi emergence is manifested in Hitler’s electoral climb from 1928 to 32. In the German elections of 1928, Hitler’s party – the NSDAPC (Nationalist Socialist German Workers party) won only 2% of the popular vote. This little support the party enjoyed was confined to small Protestant and rural towns in North West Germany. In the general elections of September 1930, following the crash, Hitler’s party witnessed a dramatic surge in popularity. The number of seats that the NSDAPC held in the Reichstag rose from 12 to 107 and the votes in it’s favour rose from 810,000 to a staggering 6.5 million, making it the second largest party in the Reichstag. In the elections of 31^st July 1932, the Nazi party witnessed another surge in mass appeal, winning 230 seats with 37.4% of the total votes polled going in their favour, making it the largest parliamentary group ever to sit in the Reichstag.

So, what had led to such a cataclysmic change in the fortunes of a political party over the period of only six years? Was it past, pre existing trends in German past that had made this inevitable? The argument above makes any such proposition untenable.

Nazism, therefore, was thrust into political power by a rare conjunction of economic, socio-psychological and political circumstances. It was never the logical conclusion of trends and processes in German past as Taylor and others contend. At the same, it must be remembered that Nazism was not pure abstraction. Nazism did draw from past historical concepts and philosophies, though in concocted forms: Nietzsche’s concepts of the master race and superman, for instance. Nazism, therefore, cannot be subsumed into the larger picture of German past. It was distinct. The brutality, horror and viciousness that defined it have had no parallel in the German past. Also inherent in this theory of continuity is the tendency to undermine the undeniably brutal character of Nazi rule; this is pernicious and unwarrantable.

Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement:

There has been no dearth of moral judgements when it comes to understanding the role of Neville Chamberlain in the period before the Second World War. This constitutes another perspective where the culpability for having caused the war is placed on Chamberlain’s policy of Appeasement. British left wing historians, in their caustic criticism of Chamberlain’s policy, branded him as the ‘guiltiest of the guilty men’. Bennett perceived the Munich agreement of 1938 as a case study in the ‘disease of political myopia that afflicted the leaders and people of Europe in the years between the wars. Similarly, Middlemass views Chamberlain’s policy as a case of ‘diplomacy of illusion’ based on a defence strategy that did not protect Britain from air attack, and on the illusion that Hitler would be satisfied with the revision of the treaty of Versailles. R.A.C Parker points out how Chamberlain went ahead with his policies of appeasement passionately as a ‘religious zealot’. He adds that Chamberlain’s stubborn adherence to appeasement encumbered the possibility of creating any barrier or alliance to stunt Hitler’s expansionism. These interpretations, though making certain relevant points, are evidently too personalised in their attack on Chamberlain.

Latterly works have put forward interpretations that are more ‘sympathetic’ to Chamberlain. This revisionism eschews from making moral judgements and has attempted to understand Chamberlain’s policy as an outcome of the circumstances that troubled England in the period before the war. The revisionist position emphasises the complex set of domestic, international, military and economic factors that made a belligerent policy towards the fascist regimes impracticable. Their focus is on the precarious economic condition of the British economy that was recuperating after the crash of 1929, and that had made rearmament and war unthinkable. They point at the British desire to avoid war at all costs.

Over the years, the revisionist argument has gained dominance, in fact there now exists a school of historians that justifies appeasement; that perceives Chamberlain and the appeasers as ‘prisoners of circumstances’. The appeasers were bound by certain circumstances, but it must be remembered that the adherence to appeasement had been at the cost of seeking other, perhaps more effectual, alternatives. These included the possibility of forging alliances with the Soviet Union and France or by invigorating the League of Nations that by the late nineteen thirties was reduced to a defunct, impotent organisation.

However, one has to bear in mind that the broadside launched against the appeasers was done so in the immediate post war period and therefore from a position of hindsight. This would explain why a lot of criticism for appeasers like Chamberlain accused him for his lack of statesmanship and foresight to see that the demands of Hitler, and fascists at large, were insatiable. But in the 1930’s, Fascism was a new ideology, a new system, and the ‘appeasers’ responded to the demands of the fascists without any past precedent to follow; they were responding with a naivety that came from the newness of the challenge. Therefore, in the context of an ailing economy and strong opposition to the idea of war, the ‘appeasers’, would have been tempted to trust their nervous assumption that Hitler would, after Sudetenland, mellow down his demands.

The effect of appeasement was dual: it crippled the possibilities of alternative means to counter the Fascist threat, and it fuelled the Fascist plan of expansionism. On both these counts, appeasement was not salubrious to the cause of peace; it simply delayed war. It was therefore, and evidently so, among the principal factors that led to the Second World War.

Causes of the Second World War:

France:

Many other hypotheses have been put forward to explain the cause for the war. One of these focus on the instability of inter war France where 16 coalition governments came to power between 1932 and 40. French foreign policy in the 1930’s had no intention to stop Hitler by force; and out of an acute insecurity that they would lose British help in any future war with Germany, France willingly allowed Chamberlain to march her along the road to Munich.

Soviet Union:

The Nazi – Soviet pact of August 1939, and the motives of Soviet foreign policy during the 1930’s have also come under the scrutiny of this historical debate. The signing of the Non-Aggression pact was a crucial event in the period preceding the war. Many historians, in particular American historians during the cold war, have dubbed it as ‘Stalin’s blank cheque to Hitler’. Historians like A.J.P Taylor and Roberts have supported the sympathetic interpretation of Soviet foreign policy, called the ‘collective security approach’. Taylor argues that tactical flexibility was a key aspect of Stalin’s diplomacy but on the whole, Soviet foreign policy in the 1930s was defensive and supported the collective security approach as a means to stop Hitler’s rise to power. According to Roberts, Stalin’s desire to uphold collective security found no support from either Britain or France, and with the Munich agreement of 1939, he was convinced that Britain and France were happy as long as Hitler moved eastwards. The debate apart, it cannot be doubted that the pact was a crucial event that boosted Hitler’s confidence in launching an attack against the Western powers.

Treaty of Versaille—Lacked moral validity:

A.J.P Taylor makes an accurate assessment when he states that the treaty of Versailles was vindictive and lacked moral validity. No study on the causes of the Second World War can be complete without an examination of the peace treaties of 1919. The peace treaties had, literally, planted the seeds for a future conflict. The very basis of the peace treaties was flawed and its clauses had ramifications that determined the course Germany took during the inter war years. Hypocrisy underlined every aspect of the treaties. The Paris peace conference was premised on Woodrow Wilson’s fourteen point agenda for peace; it was a treaty that was to end the possibility of future wars.

It is remarkable to see how the announced idealism of the peace treaty was corrupted. In the first place, the treaty excluded the Soviet Union and Germany. Based on democratic ideals, the treaty was dominated, very apparently, by the leaders of four countries that had emerged powerful following the First World War. The treaty called for the creation of the League of Nations as an international forum to resolve future disputes, but the United States -who had played a leading role in its creation- refused to admit herself into the organisation. More importantly, the final treaty of Versailles that had aimed to solve the ‘German problem’ smacked of vindictive and hypocritical diplomacy. It was the crippling psychological impact of the treaty of Versailles on Germany that played a very significant role in the subsequent events. The ‘war guilt’ imposed on Germany and the humiliation the treaty caused wounded the German psyche. This sense of humiliation subsisted as an abscess that would burst only with the arrival of Hitler. The treaty served as a crucial rallying point for the revival of chauvinistic German nationalism, while a belief in its unfair harshness encouraged the British government to adopt the policy of appeasement.

What stoked the resentments of Versailles and imparted an ‘unsettled’ character to the peace treaties were the war reparations that dragged the inequities of Versailles into the lives of ordinary German citizens. Reparations became the rallying point of all grievances of the German people. Besides damaging democracy in France, it adversely affected the relations between France and Britain who increasingly diverged on questions relating to the scale and continuity of reparations. With the collapse of Czarist Russia, and hence the Franco Russo alliance, France became increasingly dependent on Britain for her security. But French anxieties of a possible German recovery were met by British sympathy for Germany. This sympathy, however, served the vested interests of the British economy that desired a revival of trade with Germany.

 Economic interpretation by the Marxists:

There also exists an economic interpretation for the cause of the Second World War. The Marxists state that the one most important reason for the breakdown of the diplomatic system of the 1930’s was the economic crisis from 1929 to 33. Many other Marxists claim that the Second World War was due to ‘an unresolved economic crisis in the capitalist system’. Some historians have suggested that monopoly capitalists favoured the rise of Hitler. Mc Donough however points out that Nazism was not the first but the last resort of the Monopoly Capitalists. Mason states that there was a clear ‘primacy of politics’ over the demands of the Monopoly Capitalists in the process of decision-making in the Third Reich. Mason also suggests that a crisis in the German economy in 1939 had propelled Hitler to embark on a ‘war of economic plunder’ in order to avert economic collapse. Overy rejects this hypothesis by showing how the economic condition of Germany was not so exigent that it necessitated war. Power politics, according to Overy, was what overwhelmed economic considerations in Hitler’s foreign policy.

It is more germane to discuss the Great Economic Depression than any German crisis in its influence in having caused war. The crash of 1929, as shown before, had a preponderant influence in determining new equations of political power in Germany. The depression could be seen as having been the raison de etre for the emergent ultra-right fascist power in Europe. The economic pulverization of the masses in the wake of the depression was what accounted for the spectacular rise of Nazism in Germany. But the crash was not a direct cause for the war, for by 1939, when the war broke out, the crash was well over, and Europe was in the midst of resurgent economic growth.

Not an ideological war:

The conflict of ideologies is also held as a possible explanation for the war. From one angle, the conflicting ideological orientations of the warring nations cannot be overlooked. If viewed from this ideological paradigm then the war was, in a sense, the war between Capitalism, Fascism and Communism. But it is difficult to see the war as a ‘war of ideologies’ as countries adhering to similar ideologies were not monolithic blocs that fought unitedly on the front of a common ideology. In fact, the category of ‘Allied powers’ that emerged in course of the war not only comprised of Capitalist Britain and U.S.A but communist U.S.S.R as well. Further, leaders like Hitler and Stalin may have often stoked the ideological rhetoric, but it needs to be questioned how sincere they were in fighting the war at an ideological level. A clear negation of all ideas suggesting the paramountcy of ideology is seen in the Nazi- Soviet pact of 1939 where the Communist hating Hitler established a non-aggression alliance with Stalin. Similarly, to preserve Italian friendship, Hitler was prepared to give Tyrol to Italy. He had to watch Mussolini’s backed forces clamp down on Austrian Nazis. These are cases where one can lucidly see how expediency often overcame ideological considerations.

There were two theatres of the IInd world War: the European conflict and the Asia – Pacific conflict. The latter forms the sub debate of the larger European debate. A complex set of factors caused the war in this region, most importantly, the stalemate in the war with China, the U.S oil embargo on Japan, and the possibilities of seizing Dutch, French and British colonies in Southeast Asia with the German advance. All these factors encouraged Japan. There are also theories propounded by historians like Paul Schroeder that suggest that the Pacific war was ‘unnecessary and unavoidable’ and was caused because of Roosevelt’s desire to join the European war; thus American belligerence towards the Japanese was to spark off an event that would be the pretext for U.S entry into the war.

Was the Second World War Hitler’s war?

So, was the Second World War Hitler’s war? Was it borne from his actions, his caprice; and that alone? A nuanced approach to understanding history would be apprehensive of monocausal explanations to events, particularly those as unprecedented in scale and complexity as the II nd world war. But an overview of the background of the war, and the war itself, leaves us with the rare conclusion that Hitler had indeed played a dominant role in determining the war.

The impact of the treaty of Versailles and the Great Economic Depression of 1929-33 cannot be regarded as the direct causes for the war. The most important- and devastating-impact of these events was manifested in the rise of Nazism in the late 1930’s; it was a fatal concoction of economic deprivation and battered national pride coupled with the appearance of a man as astute as Hitler who- through his charisma, iconic presence, dazzling oratory and promise for future had an impact that transformed the fledgling Nazi party in 1928 to the largest party to sit in the Reichstag in 1932. It is a remarkable irony that Hitler’s ascendancy to power did not take place through a coup (though a putsch had been attempted earlier) but through the democratic system. Ironically, through elections, democracy was to transmogrify overnight into dictatorship.

An overview would also bring out the remarkable fact that almost all the themes that dominate this historical debate- from the Ist World War and German defeat, the treaty of Versailles and the ‘German problem’, the failure of the Weimar democracy, the impact of the Depression- most profoundly on Germany, the rise of Nazism with its ideological grounding in the Mien Kamph, the League of Nations and its failure to control Fascist aggression, the re armamnece of Germany, the Stresa front to Munich to the Nazi Soviet pact of 1939 and Hitler’s belligerence from 1937 to 41 – all have a deep and powerful German connection. It is an unavoidable fact that in World War II, the principal protagonist was Nazi Germany. The most dramatic and determining events of the 1930’s were borne either from the initiative of Nazi Germany, or were a response to the policies of Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany was the focus of attention throughout the 1930s and 40s. Hitler’s shrewd and bellicose foreign policy greatly determined the course of the period of the war, and of that preceding it.

But was Hitler singularly responsible?

But was Hitler singularly responsible? Are Hitler and war inextricable? Would there have been no Second World War had Hitler not appeared? To understand this one would have to assess the nature of Htiler’s regime in the context of domestic German politics and in the context of international regimes. The treaty of Versailles and the humiliation it brought for Germany was a theme that dominated domestic German politics; the demand for a revision of the Versailles treaty was so overwhelming that none of the German governments could dare to accept it. As a result, the leaders of the Weimar democracy undertook the demand for revision even prior to Hitler. But there lay a massive difference between the Weimar and Nazi diplomacy in their approach to such revisionism.

Weimar diplomacy, led by Stresemann, was conciliatory and compromising. The very obverse to this approach was the one followed by Nazi Germany where the desire for revisionism acquired an aggressive edge; and it was this aggression that had propelled Germany to war. Thus, while revisionism continued, the crucial difference lay in the approach to achieving it. The belligerent demand for revision was peculiar to Nazism and, therefore, one can question whether it would have been followed by a democratic regime, which is if democracy had survived till the 1930’s and 40’s.

Would war have taken place had there been no Hitler? Was Nazi Germany the sole aggressor in Europe in the 1930’s? Even within fascism, one has to draw a distinction between Nazism and the other fascist regimes such as those in Italy and Japan. None of these variants of fascism possessed the belligerent quality of Nazism. More importantly, none of them had a leader like as indomitable as Hitler. Furthermore, the policy of appeasement, for all its failure, also reveals that war was not the priority for status quo powers like Britain, France and the US.

It is remarkable how, in any study of the inter war years one is consistently confronted by the overwhelming influences of Germany, Nazism and Hitler. This examination, thus, concretises the notion of ‘Hitler’s war’. One individual; and a cause for such profound change. The eminent German historian Frederic Meinecke had accurately stated that Hitler is “one of the great examples of the singular and incalculable power of personality in historical life”.

Inherent in the study of history is the inability to quantify degrees of culpability. One can only pander along approximations; and that becomes a source of ambiguity that one can take advantage of while stating that the Second World War, to a great extent, was, indeed, ‘Hitler’s war’.

‘Enigma’ is also a remarkable word in the English language. A word that rests neutral; one that can be associated to individuals for reasons too good or for reasons only too forgettable. The enigma of the Fuhrer would instantly find its way to the latter, but he lives on, as a swollen, unavoidable enigma, for us, and for ever.

Deepak Nair

III History

St. Stephen’s College

Tutor: Dr. Shivshankara Menon, St Stephen’s College

Score: 6.5/10