FREE ESSAY ON WWI IMPACT ON WWII

WWI IMPACT ON WWII

World War Two was a terrible and destructive war. Although many dynamics led to the advent
of World War Two, the catalyst of the Second World War was actually the aftermath of the
First World War. The First World War's aftermath set the stage for the rise of Hitler.
On Nov. 11, 1918, an armistice was signed by the German commanders in the railcar of the
French commander, Ferdinand Foch, ending the actual combat of World War One. The debacle
of the First World War, which killed between 10 to 13 million people, demanded
retribution. The Allies needed to draw up a treaty which formally ended hostilities
between the Allies and the Central Powers. This treaty, which was called the Treaty of
Versailles, was signed on June 28, 1919 and came into effect January 10, 1920. The
treaty, while providing a formal peace between the Central Powers and most of the Allies
(China and America), was not well liked by the Germans. They were made to agree to it
under the treat of invasion by the Allies. They called it a Diktat, or slave-treaty. The
treaty was very harsh towards the Germans. The treaty affected borders, hurt Germany, and
created international institutions.
The Treaty of Versailles changed many borders and created new countries. Out of parts of
the former German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires, Poland was formed. Out of the
former Austro-Hungarian empire, a multitude of smaller nations were formed. Germany's
size was decreased, while the sizes of France and Italy were increased. The Poles were
given a corridor to the sea, cutting the remainder of East Prussia off from the main part
of the German state. Danzig, a city in the Corridor, was not put under German or Polish
control, but under a Leagues of Nations administered republic nominally independent of
Poland and Germany. These new borders, in the end, contributed to the genesis of the
Second World War. 
The Treaty of Versailles was detrimental to Germany in the extreme. The Germans were
required to accept responsibility for the start of World War One. The Germans had to pay
substantial war reparations to the victorious Allies for the damage caused by World War
One. These reparations, if they had ever been paid in full, would have burdened the
German economy until the year 1988 under the plan Germany adopted. These reparations
angered the German people and broke the German economy. The German government didn't have
enough money to pay the reparations, so they had to print more. The German mark became
almost worthless. In 3 months in 1923, the exchange rate of the German mark to the dollar
went from 4.6 million marks to the dollars to 4.2 trillion marks to the dollar. Instead
of the strong monarchy that Germany had known before the war, the Treaty of Versailles
set up a weak republic in Germany. This republic, called the Weimar republic because it's
capital was Weimar, was generally not well liked by the German people. The Germans had to
drastically reduce the size of their army and eliminate their navy and air force
entirely. The Treaty of Versailles was very harsh on the Germans and soured the German
outlook on the rest of Europe and on the world in general. 
The Treaty of Versailles created many new international organizations. Two of these were
the League of Nations and the Permanent Court of International Justice. The Permanent
Court of International Justice was a court where grievances of nations and by nations
could be aired and adjudicated. The League of Nations was the forerunner of the United
Nations but it did not have nearly as much power as that international organization. Only
a few nations ever joined the League of Nations, and the United States of America was
never a member. The USSR joined in 1934, but was discharged in 1939. In the end, these
new international organizations could not stop initiation of the Second World War. 
The First World War had many effects other then those directly attributable to the Treaty
of Versailles. 10 to 13 million people were killed, one third of them civilians. In some
parts of France, 1 out of 4 young men were lost in action due to the war. After the war,
the Allies owed $10 billion for the voluminous financial aid given them. The Germans were
hard-pressed to pay the considerable war-reparations forced on them and because of these
debts, the world was in financial trouble. The governments who had to pay these debts
just printed more money and it was because of this that inflation ran rampant. The world,
after going through the carnage of the First World War, lost its optimism and became very
pessimistic.
Adolph Hitler, a soldier in the German army who ended the war with the rank of corporal,
was very bitter about the German defeat in the First World War. He shared the popular
belief that the Germans had not been defeated in the field but had been stabbed in the
back by traitors at home. He thought that the Jews had been among those traitors. He was
extremely anti-Semitic. In the autumn of 1919 he joined the German Worker's Party. He
eventually came to control it and rename it the NSDAP (German acronym for National
Socialist German Workers' Party or Nazi Party). In 1923 he, along with the then small
Nazi Party, tried to stage a revolt in the form of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch (German
for revolt), which failed. After the Putsch failed, he was sentenced to 5 years in
prison, of which he only served 9 months. He used these nine months well. During the time
he was is prison, he wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle), a book which outlined the brutal
policies which he so coldly put into motion after he took power. He thought that
democracy was evil and it only led to the advent of Communism as a form of government. 
During the middle to late 1920's, Germany was beginning to recover economically. This
hurt the NSDAP, which was preaching a solid Nazi party line of hatred, bigotry,
anti-Semitism, blaming others for the ills of society, and intolerance. Luckily for the
Nazis, the Great Depression started, triggered by the Great Crash of 1929. This threw
Germany's fragile economy into a fit of depression and cleared the way for the Nazis to
come to power. The Great Depression gave the Nazis the chance to tone down the bigotry
and to say that they were going to help Germany out of the Depression. The German
workingman still hated the Treaty of Versailles and the Allied victory and wanted to
believe that Germany had been stabbed in the back by people from within. The Nazis
promised revenge for the Diktat of Versailles. They promised to throw off the shackles of
Versailles and punish those who were responsible for Germany's defeat and those who had
stabbed Germany in the back.
Hitler promised to clear Germany of Communists and other enemies of the people. Most
German people of the time didn't want Hitler as chancellor, because they knew he'd turn
himself into a dictator. But the often too influential screaming minority and many people
including notable German industrialists and Oskar von Hindenburg (the German chancellor's
son) wanted Hitler as chancellor. A deal was worked out by January 30, 1933 in which
Hitler would become chancellor of Germany but the Nazis would only get two seats in the
Cabinet. On February 27, 1933 a fire was started that destroyed the Reichstag building
which housed the German Parliament. The Nazis quickly blamed the Communists and elections
for a new Reichstag were held on March 5, 1933. Even after using terror to influence
voters, the Nazis only got 43.9 percent of the vote. On the day that the new Reichstag
convened, the Communist delegates were locked out. This gave the Nazis a majority and
this majority declared Hitler dictator via the Enabling Act, a law which in essence
suspended basic human and civil rights for 4 years. The Gestapo (secret police) hunted
down enemies of the Nazis and shot them. By the time von Hindenburg died in August 1934,
the Hitler ruled Germany completely. He gave himself the title Fuhrer und Reichskanzler
(leader and empire chancellor).
Soon after Hitler had taken power, he started disobeying the Treaty of Versailles. In
1933 he started preparing Germany for war in violation of the treaty. In 1936 he sent
German troops into the Rhineland, a flagrant violation of the Treaty of Versailles. In
March of 1938 he annexed Austria. He annexed Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Hitler then
wanted Poland. But on March 30, 1939 France and the United Kingdom issued guarantees of
Polish independence. This guarantee alienated the Soviet Union, which swallowed up the
eastern half of Poland in cooperation with Nazi Germany. Hitler wanted war and invaded
Poland on September 1, 1939. This caused Britain and France to declare war on Germany
soon after. It was in virtue of this that we went to wa
r. said William Strang, British Foreign Office Official and later Permanent
Under-Secretaty regarding the guarantee France and Britain made of Polish independence on
Mar. 30, 1939. A few days after Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 Britain and
France made formal declarations of war on Germany. 
The aftermath of World War One was the real catalyst of the Second World War. The Treaty
of Versailles left many loose threads and didn't completely satisfy any party involved.
Hitler and Germany as a whole were bitter about Germany's defeat and Hitler capitalized
on that bitterness to take the reins of power in Germany. Hitler then started annexing
countries and expanding Germany's territories as an expression of his defiance of the
Treaty of Versailles and desire for a return to German empire. Perhaps no better example
of Hitler's bitterness exists than his making the French surrender in the same railcar
where the Germans signed the armistice that ended the real combat of World War One.
Although many dynamics instigated the Second World War, the real catalyst of the Second
World War was the occurrence of the first.
Bibliography:
1. Gelfand, Lawrence E. Versailles, Treaty of. World Book 1998 
Multimedia Encyclopedia. IBM Corp., 1998
2. Silva, Brett, Effects of World War I. 26 Mar. 1997. Online. Internet.
http://kanga.pvhs.k12.ca.us/~bsilva/projects/effects.htm. Feb. 26, 1998
3. Henderson, Nicholas. A fatal guarantee: Poland, 1939. History Today. Oct. '97:
p.19-26
4. Hoffman, Peter. Hitler, Adolf. World Book Encyclopedia 1997 USA: World Book Inc.,
1997
5. Deighton, Len. Blood, Tears, and Folly. New York City: Harper-Collins, 1993
6. Taylor, A.J.P. The Origins of the Second World War. New York: Fawcett Crest Books,
1961