The Second World War (1939-1945)
Senior 6 · History
The Second World War (1939-1945)
Lesson 1 of 5
25 min
On 23 August 1939 the foreign ministers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov, signed a treaty of non-aggression in Moscow. The world was stunned: the two regimes had been bitter ideological enemies. What the world did not see was a second document. It was published only after the war, when the United States government printed captured German Foreign Office files. Read it and decide what it reveals about the outbreak of war nine days later.
Important
Source: the Nazi–Soviet Pact, 23 August 1939
"Both High Contracting Parties obligate themselves to desist from any act of violence, any aggressive action, and any attack on each other, either individually or jointly with other powers."
Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the USSR, Article I.
"2. In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement of the areas belonging to the Polish state the spheres of influence of Germany and the U.S.S.R. shall be bounded approximately by the line of the rivers Narew, Vistula, and San. The question of whether the interests of both parties make desirable the maintenance of an independent Polish state and how such a state should be bounded can only be definitely determined in the course of further political developments. […] This protocol shall be treated by both parties as strictly secret."
Secret Additional Protocol. Both from Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939–1941: Documents from the Archives of the German Foreign Office (U.S. Department of State, 1948).
The public treaty promised peace between the two states; the secret protocol divided Poland, and the Baltic states, between them in advance. Hitler could now attack Poland without fearing a two-front war. Note when and how we came to know this: the protocol was published by the United States in 1948, at the start of the Cold War, and the Soviet Union denied that it existed until 1989.
Definition
Lebensraum ("living space"): Hitler's aim of conquering land in eastern Europe for German settlement, at the expense of the Slav peoples living there.
Non-aggression pact: a treaty in which two states promise not to attack each other.
Sphere of influence: an area in which a power claims the right to control events without interference from other powers.
Guarantee: a promise to defend a state if it is attacked, like the British and French guarantee to Poland of 31 March 1939.
Long-term conditions. Versailles left Germany resentful but not crushed; the League had shown in Manchuria and Abyssinia that aggression went unpunished; the Depression brought Hitler to power, turned Japan to military expansion and made the democracies reluctant to rearm (Unit 5).
Hitler's aims. Overturning Versailles was popular in Germany, but Hitler wanted far more: Lebensraum in the east and a racial empire. From 1935 to 1939 he moved step by step, each success making the next demand more likely.
What let him act. Britain and France appeased him until March 1939. The United States stayed neutral. Britain and France negotiated with the Soviet Union in the summer of 1939, but slowly and without trust; Stalin chose a deal with Hitler that gave him territory and time.
The trigger. Hitler demanded Danzig and a road and railway across the Polish Corridor; Poland refused. On 1 September 1939 Germany invaded Poland. Britain and France, bound by their guarantee, declared war on 3 September; on 17 September the Soviet army invaded eastern Poland, as the secret protocol foresaw.
The road in Asia. Japan seized Manchuria in 1931 and began a full-scale war with China in July 1937, during which Japanese troops killed very large numbers of civilians in Nanjing. For China, the Second World War began in 1937, not 1939.
| View | Who | Argument |
|---|---|---|
| Hitler's plan | Hugh Trevor-Roper and most historians since | Hitler followed the programme set out in Mein Kampf: rearm, unite Germans, then conquer the east. The war was the result of his intentions |
| Opportunism | A. J. P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (1961) | Hitler was an opportunist who took chances offered by others' weakness; the war of 1939 came from miscalculation, not a timetable |
| Structures and economics | Tim Mason, Richard Overy and others | Economic pressures of rapid rearmament and the competition of Nazi agencies pushed the regime towards war sooner |
| A second Thirty Years' War | Historians who stress continuity from 1914 | 1914–45 was one long crisis; the unresolved problems of the First World War caused the Second |
Most historians today agree that Hitler's aims were the main cause, while the other factors explain why he was able to pursue them and why war came in September 1939 rather than at another time.
Warning
Don't make Versailles the main cause by default. Versailles explains German grievances, not a war of racial conquest in eastern Europe. Equally, don't treat appeasement as the cause: it allowed Hitler to expand, but it did not create his aims. Rank your causes and explain the ranking.
Tip
Use the "necessary and sufficient" test. Ask of each cause: without it, would war still have come? Without Hitler's aims, almost certainly not; without the Nazi–Soviet Pact, perhaps not in September 1939; without Versailles, Hitler would have lacked his best propaganda. This helps you build a ranked, argued answer.
Important
Discuss. Twice in Unit 5 and once in this lesson, great powers decided the fate of smaller countries without them: Ethiopia in the Hoare–Laval plan, Czechoslovakia at Munich, and Poland in the secret protocol. Why did smaller states have so little protection in the 1930s, and has the United Nations changed that?
Practice
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the analysis, the diagram, the table, the definitions and the exercises.
