The World War II Memorial located in Washington D.C.

Today in class we continued our conversations about WWII, Hitler, and all the parties involved as we discuss the major causes of the the war. As we take a look at the contributing factors we will focus on four main points:

• Treaty of Versailles – We discussed yesterday how the treaty left Germany in a very poor state economically and emotionally. Due to the guilt they had to take on for causing the war they were very bitter and the war reparations they had to pay to other countries really hurt their economic status. Because of this they were desperate for someone to deliver them from current state and they bought in to what the very persuasive Hitler was buying at the time.
• Hitler’s Actions – After Hitler was in office he then started making power moves. He would quickly begin to build up his army and weaponry in preparation to start expanding Germany’s boundaries. It would not be be long before he was moving into Austria and Poland with his troops. Just as important as the actions he took was the action that other countries didn’t take when he started his expansionism.
• Failure of Appeasement – Countries such as Great Britain, France, and Italy believed that Germany was not treated fairly in the Treaty of Versailles. So in the Munich Agreement leaders of these countries decided to give back a portion of land to Germany in agreement that they would not seek out more territorial conquest…this however would backfire and Germany would break their agreement.
• Failure of the League of Nations – This was a international organization set up to promote world peace. The league was a great idea in theory but it would ultimately become a failure for a few reasons. They were not able to get all countries to join the league which meant it became very hard to promote a program in which people wouldn’t buy into. Also the league had no real power or an army, without either of these the league was very limited on how it would police other countries.

When we meet back together on Monday, we will continue to talk about all of these factors as we continue our study of WWII.

Mr. McClung