After the Great War, defeated Germany, disappointed Italy, and ambitious Japan were all anxious to regain and increase their power. Therefore, the three countries eventually adopted forms of dictatorship that made the state supreme and called for expansion at the expense of neighboring countries. They all had the desire for peace on the part of the democracies, and this resulted in their military unprepared ness. In the end, the League of Nations was not able to promote disarmament and the long economic depression sharpened national rivalries and increased fear and distrust. Since the League failed to stop the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1931, there was an ultimate crescendo of treaty violation and acts of aggression. In 1932, when Hitler rose to power in Germany, he recreated the German army and prepared it for a war of conquest and in 1936, he remilitarized the Rhineland. Benito Mussolini conquered Ethiopia for Italy in 1935 and three years later, Germany invaded Austria. In 1938, the British and French policy of appeasement towards the Axis reached its height with the sacrifice of much of Czechoslovakia to Germany in what is now called the Munich Pact.
When Germany occupied all of Czechoslovakia and when Italy seized Albania, Great Britain and France abandoned their policy of appeasement. Germany and Italy signed a full military alliance in May 1939 and after that, the Soviet-German nonaggression pact removed Germany’s fear of a possible two-front war.
Like stated before, there are many reason why World War II occurred, the absolute aggression unleashed by dictators such as Hitler, Mussolini, and General Franco led to the build up of international conflict. The Treaty of Versailles was not enforced by the Allies, and for this reason, Germany disregarded and ignored it. Also, the efforts of disarmament failed miserably in most of the countries in Europe and Hitler sparked off the war by invading territories such as Austria and Poland. Nations lost faith in the League of Nations as an international authority and many countries sought war as the only means to settle mutual disputes.
The war ended when Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945 and Japan on September 2, 1945. Much of Europe and parts of Asia lay in ruins and millions of people were left starving and homeless. Europe’s leadership in world affairs had ended and the United States and the Soviet Union had become the world’s most powerful nations. Each of the vanquished countries was faced with humiliating peace treaties. Most countries of the world were left divided into two opposite blocs: the Capitalist and the Communist bloc. The war only proved how it was possible to wipe out the human race from the face of the earth.
