Hitler's Foreign Policy - Appesement and the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

A further reason that Britain followed a policy of appeasement was that many people agreed with Hitler that the Treaty of Versailles is unfair to Germany. They assumed that once these wrongs were put right then Germany would become a peaceful nation again.

Also Britain had economic problems which were a higher priority. It was still suffering from the effects of the Depression. They had large debts and huge unemployment.

. In this essay I am going to argue that the Nazi Soviet Pact was a more significant cause of World War Two than the Remilitarisation of the Rhineland. This is because the remilitarisation was just part of Hitler’s defiance against the Treaty of Versailles and ultimately, through appeasement, Britain was going to let Hitler do what he wanted. However the Nazi Soviet Pact can be directly linked with Hitler’s invasion of Poland which was the tipping point which started World War Two.

The demilitarisation of the Rhineland was one of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. By trying to remilitarise the Rhineland, Hitler was taking a huge gamble. His German army was still relatively weak and small and therefore had been ordered that if there was any resistance, they should withdraw. This would have caused humiliation and Hitler would have lost the support of the Germany army as most of the generals were unsure about him. However due to his great timing they succeeded. This gave Hitler a morale boost and ultimately made him take bigger risks, which resulted in Hitler starting WW2. It also showed Hitler what he could get away with as neither allied countries wanted to fight, a weakness which he later exploits. This also made it much easier to invade France as Germany now had troops on the border between the two countries.

The Nazi soviet pact saw Hitler’s enemy, Stalin, sign an agreement not to attack each other and secretly they decided to split up Poland into two. Stalin had originally wanted a

Treaty with Britain but he was not convinced that Britain and France would be strong enough as allies against Hitler. Stalin also did not believe that Hitler would keep his word, but he hoped for time to build up his forces against the attack he knew would come. This treaty cleared the way for Germany’s invasion of Poland. On 1st September 1939 the German army invaded Poland from the west. Soviet forces invaded Poland from the east and it soon fell.

I think that the Nazi Soviet Pact was a more important cause for the start of WW2 as it facilitated the invasion of Poland which Britain had vowed to go to war to protect, and in fact did. By invading Poland, Hitler stopped Britain appeasing (which might have continued) and started the war. Hitler was breaking many terms of the Treaty of Versailles and so his remilitarisation of the Rhineland was no different to building up his army or his navy which Britain had allowed Germany to do, and so did not directly cause the war to start.