History, of all times and periods, is replete with enigmas.

Enigmas have a peculiar quality about themselves. Enigmas live; and in those few years of life they
dazzle and mystify. Then they depart; but they don’t die. They simply pass into posterity as cryptic
swollen memories that would live on to be interpreted and construed in more ways than one. Among
the most remarkable enigmas of the Twentieth century was Adolf Hitler; an individual who even after
half a century of death haunts a world unable to explain the impact with which he left; one who
sparked off an unending debate on whether he had singularly planned, directed and created the greatest
military conflagration in human history.

The war from 1939 to 45 was truly a global war. The war had resulted, inevitably, in the skewed
prioritisation of economic resources, all of which were pumped to the cause of war. When the war
ended, all that remained was acute economic ruin, an unprecedented loss of life and a generation
crippled with the psychological horror of the concluded war.

The earliest historical works on the origins of the Second World War were enmeshed in the emotional
bitterness that came in the aftermath of the war. As a result, many of these early works tended to be too
critical and judgemental in their assessments. New research, more detached from the emotions of the
immediate post war period, have revised many of the earlier views, providing nuanced perspectives on
the events and persons involved in the war. On this basis, the historical works on origins of the Second
World War can be broadly classified into the orthodox and revisionist perspectives on the causes of
the war.

Orthodox view:
The most pervasive explanation of the war was first advanced by the prosecution judges dealing with
Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg who blamed Hitler and his foreign policy of expansionism as
responsible for the outbreak of the war. The focus of this theory rests on Hitler who is seen as the
prime causative factor for the war. This theory, bound with an individual, inevitably deposits much of
its focus on the defining characteristics of Hitler: his personality, his feverish conviction in Nazism,
and his unequivocal dominance within Germany, such that Hitler stood synonymous for the German
state in this period. The emphases on the importance of Hitler within Germany, and on how he
completely commanded the foreign policy of the state, are obvious. Hitler had, according to the
proponents of this theory, singularly manoeuvred Germany and the world towards War, and had
followed a programme of aggression that was coherent and consistent.

Hitler and his foreign policy being criticized:

The most trenchant critic of Hitler and his Foreign policy has been Hugh Trevor Roper who
explicated the theory that Hitler had followed a master plan lucidly laid out in his autobiographical
classic, the Mein Kamph. Roper identifies two dominant themes in his writings in the Mein Kamph:
his desire to gain the lebensraum or ‘living space’ in eastern Europe, and his determination to find a
solution to the ‘Jewish question’. Allan Bullock, Andreas Hilgruber and Klaus Hildebrand have also
supported the idea that Hitler’s policy of aggression was planned. In fact, Hildebrand suggests that
Hitler had followed a calculated stage-by-stage plan, called stufenplan, where the destruction of the
Soviet Union and the subsequent gain of the lebensraum in Eastern Europe were ‘prerequisites to
world domination’.

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The centrality attributed to Hitler has been rejected and revised by historians who, contrary to the
established image of Hitler’s unchallenged domination, present him as weak and indecisive. These
‘revisionists’ highlight the intense internal rivalries between competing centres of power in the Third
Reich. Mommsen states that Hitler’s foreign policy was an ‘ill thought-out expansion without object’;
he thereby attaches to Hitler’s expansionism a spontaneous and unplanned character. To historians like
Mommsen and Bracher, the idea of Hitler’s dominance was a Nazi propaganda myth. Hitler ’s foreign
policy, according to them, lacked any overall design and was nothing more than a ‘spontaneous
response to internal divisions’.

Revisionist view:
German social product, not Hitler alone:
It is on questions relating to the degree of focus on Hitler that Ian Kershaw makes a brilliant
contribution to the decades long research on the phenomena of Hitler and Nazism. Kershaw asserts
that our focus while studying this period must not be on Hitler alone but on German society as well.
The Power of Hitler was not solely derived from the individual of Hitler, but largely from German
society. It is in this sense that Kershaw terms Hitler’s power as a ‘social product’. The aspirations,
motivations and expectations of this society had motored Hitler’s rise to power. Such an impression of
Hitler where he was seen as a saviour are evinced from eulogistic works like George Schott’s Das
Verhsbuch vom Hitler where he spoke of Hitler as the “living incarnation of the nation’s yearnings”.
The Nazi era, therefore, was a phenomenon that was a product of collaboration between Hitler and the
social impulses that brought him to power.

Kershaw further argues that the personality and ‘charisma’ of Hitler did have a crucial impact on
German society in this period. He points out that ‘charismatic rule’ can in itself generate tremendous
influence when it operates in ‘set’ socio- economic and psychological circumstances.

Nazi age was a continuity from German past:

But there are historians who do not agree with the uniqueness of the Nazi age in German history.
Peukert, for instance, states that the Nazi Germany represented no break from the earlier development
of the German society as the basic class structure in Nazi Germany remained unaltered. A.J.P Taylor,
in his classic Origins of the Second World War, regarded the war as being the logical conclusion of
the course of German history from 1871 to 1945. Taylor’s adherence to this idea of continuity is
evident in his reference to the’ German problem’, one that remained unsolved even after the Ist World
War. The problem, as Taylor perceives it, comes from Germany being the most powerful state in
Europe. “The problem was not German aggressiveness, or militarism, or wickedness of her rulers ”,
rather, the fact that she was inherently the greatest power in Europe, something that brought her into
inevitable conflict with others. William Shirer goes a good deal further in tracing this lineage of the
IIIrd Reich when he speaks of Hitler as among the last in the line of the great adventurer conquerors
like Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon. Fischer who asserted that German foreign policy only changed
in form, not in central aims, also puts forward a strong view of continuity. This is supported by the fact
that the desire for German dominance, and the subordination of the Slavs were aims of the Imperial
government in the First World War. This school attempts to prove that Hitler and Nazism were not
unique; that many of his policies were popular in Germany before 1914. The lebensraum, a concept
integral to Nazi ideology is, according to these historians, traceable to the propaganda pamphlets of the
pan–German league. Thus, Hitler’s ideology and policies, as McDonough puts it, ‘ reflected past views
and prejudices, but did not invent them’.

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Nazism was invented by Hitler:
This assertion is problematic. While a study of possible elements of continuity of Nazism to German
past would warrant a more elaborate study, it would suffice to state that Nazism should not, and
cannot, be seen as a logical conclusion of past trends in German foreign policy. Characteristic Nazi
ideas of anti Semitism, Darwinism and the desire for the lebensraum may be traceable to earlier
periods, but it has to be questioned (and it is here that the crucial difference lies) as to whether these
ideas were part of state policy or were inchoate concepts that were one among the many other floating
ideas of the ultra right in Imperial Germany and in Weimar democracy.

There are Historians who tend to underplay the distinctiveness of the Nazi period by emphasising its
continuity with trends in German past. Meinecke and Dahrendorf reject any such claims to continuity
and point at the rootlessness of the Nazi regime in German history. Ritter states that the defining
features of Nazism: Anti Semitism, chauvinistic Nationalism and Social Darwinism, to name the
prominent, were extraneous to the German society.

Further, the idea of continuity severely obscures the peculiar circumstances in which Nazism
emerged in Germany. The ideas that coalesced to form Nazism under Hitler may have existed even in
pre 1914 Germany. But never did they assume dominance among the German masses. Never before
had the practise of Jewish extermination been part of German state policy and neither had chauvinistic
nationalism ever been stoked to the extent as it was during the Nazi era. Nazism, rather any ultra left
ideology, was confined to certain pockets of the population. The challenges to liberal democracy, and
the growth of the far Right in Germany were propelled by certain distinct factors that emerged after
the First World War. These included the German defeat, the subsequent episodes of German
humiliations abroad and the internal turmoil of the Weimar republic (the most prominent being hyper
inflation), which had fuelled popular antipathies and dissatisfactions against democratic regimes.

But the decisive moment for the rise of Nazism in Germany came with the Great Economic
Depression from 1929 to 33. The crash disturbed the volatile politico-economic structures of the
Weimar democracy. In the post World War One period, the world economy hinged on the fortunes of
the US economy and the Weimar republic borrowed loans from the US for paying back war
reparations and rebuilding the German economy. The debilitating impact of the crash on the German
economy was thus sharp and instant. It was in the context of unprecedented unemployment, declining
industrial production and collapsing agricultural prices that Hitler manipulated the peaking despair of
the masses to the advantage of his Far Right party.

Thus, Nazism- as ideology and state policy- emerged under certain extraordinary circumstances, under
the aegis of Hitler, and only after the Great Economic Depression of 1929. Perhaps the most lucid
evidence for the distinctiveness of the Nazi emergence is manifested in Hitler’s electoral climb from
1928 to 32. In the German elections of 1928, Hitler’s party - the NSDAPC (Nationalist Socialist
German Workers party) won only 2% of the popular vote. This little support the party enjoyed was
confined to small Protestant and rural towns in North West Germany. In the general elections of
September 1930, following the crash, Hitler’s party witnessed a dramatic surge in popularity. The
number of seats that the NSDAPC held in the Reichstag rose from 12 to 107 and the votes in it ’s
favour rose from 810,000 to a staggering 6.5 million, making it the second largest party in the
Reichstag. In the elections of 31st July 1932, the Nazi party witnessed another surge in mass appeal,
winning 230 seats with 37.4% of the total votes polled going in their favour, making it the largest
parliamentary group ever to sit in the Reichstag.

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So, what had led to such a cataclysmic change in the fortunes of a political party over the period of
only six years? Was it past, pre existing trends in German past that had made this inevitable? The
argument above makes any such proposition untenable.

Nazism, therefore, was thrust into political power by a rare conjunction of economic, socio-
psychological and political circumstances. It was never the logical conclusion of trends and processes
in German past as Taylor and others contend. At the same, it must be remembered that Nazism was not
pure abstraction. Nazism did draw from past historical concepts and philosophies, though in concocted
forms: Nietzsche’s concepts of the master race and superman, for instance. Nazism, therefore, cannot
be subsumed into the larger picture of German past. It was distinct. The brutality, horror and
viciousness that defined it have had no parallel in the German past. Also inherent in this theory of
continuity is the tendency to undermine the undeniably brutal character of Nazi rule; this is pernicious
and unwarrantable.

Chamberlain’ s policy of appeasement:

There has been no dearth of moral judgements when it comes to understanding the role of Neville
Chamberlain in the period before the Second World War. This constitutes another perspective where
the culpability for having caused the war is placed on Chamberlain’s policy of Appeasement. British
left wing historians, in their caustic criticism of Chamberlain’s policy, branded him as the ‘guiltiest of
the guilty men’. Bennett perceived the Munich agreement of 1938 as a case study in the ‘disease of
political myopia that afflicted the leaders and people of Europe in the years between the wars.
Similarly, Middlemass views Chamberlain’s policy as a case of ‘diplomacy of illusion’ based on a
defence strategy that did not protect Britain from air attack, and on the illusion that Hitler would be
satisfied with the revision of the treaty of Versailles. R.A.C Parker points out how Chamberlain went
ahead with his policies of appeasement passionately as a ‘religious zealot’. He adds that Chamberlain’s
stubborn adherence to appeasement encumbered the possibility of creating any barrier or alliance to
stunt Hitler’s expansionism. These interpretations, though making certain relevant points, are evidently
too personalised in their attack on Chamberlain.

Latterly works have put forward interpretations that are more ‘sympathetic’ to Chamberlain. This
revisionism eschews from making moral judgements and has attempted to understand Chamberlain’s
policy as an outcome of the circumstances that troubled England in the period before the war. The
revisionist position emphasises the complex set of domestic, international, military and economic
factors that made a belligerent policy towards the fascist regimes impracticable. Their focus is on the
precarious economic condition of the British economy that was recuperating after the crash of 1929,
and that had made rearmament and war unthinkable. They point at the British desire to avoid war at all
costs.

Over the years, the revisionist argument has gained dominance, in fact there now exists a school of
historians that justifies appeasement; that perceives Chamberlain and the appeasers as ‘prisoners of
circumstances’. The appeasers were bound by certain circumstances, but it must be remembered that
the adherence to appeasement had been at the cost of seeking other, perhaps more effectual,
alternatives. These included the possibility of forging alliances with the Soviet Union and France or by
invigorating the League of Nations that by the late nineteen thirties was reduced to a defunct, impotent
organisation.

However, one has to bear in mind that the broadside launched against the appeasers was done so in the
immediate post war period and therefore from a position of hindsight. This would explain why a lot of
criticism for appeasers like Chamberlain accused him for his lack of statesmanship and foresight to see

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that the demands of Hitler, and fascists at large, were insatiable. But in the 1930’s, Fascism was a new
ideology, a new system, and the ‘appeasers’ responded to the demands of the fascists without any past
precedent to follow; they were responding with a naivety that came from the newness of the challenge.
Therefore, in the context of an ailing economy and strong opposition to the idea of war, the ‘appeasers’,
would have been tempted to trust their nervous assumption that Hitler would, after Sudetenland,
mellow down his demands.

The effect of appeasement was dual: it crippled the possibilities of alternative means to counter the
Fascist threat, and it fuelled the Fascist plan of expansionism. On both these counts, appeasement was
not salubrious to the cause of peace; it simply delayed war. It was therefore, and evidently so, among
the principal factors that led to the Second World War.

Causes of the Second World War:

France:
Many other hypotheses have been put forward to explain the cause for the war. One of these focus on
the instability of inter war France where 16 coalition governments came to power between 1932 and
40. French foreign policy in the 1930’s had no intention to stop Hitler by force; and out of an acute
insecurity that they would lose British help in any future war with Germany, France willingly allowed
Chamberlain to march her along the road to Munich.

Soviet Union:
The Nazi - Soviet pact of August 1939, and the motives of Soviet foreign policy during the 1930’s
have also come under the scrutiny of this historical debate. The signing of the Non-Aggression pact
was a crucial event in the period preceding the war. Many historians, in particular American historians
during the cold war, have dubbed it as ‘Stalin’s blank cheque to Hitler’. Historians like A.J.P Taylor and
Roberts have supported the sympathetic interpretation of Soviet foreign policy, called the ‘collective
security approach’. Taylor argues that tactical flexibility was a key aspect of Stalin’s diplomacy but on
the whole, Soviet foreign policy in the 1930s was defensive and supported the collective security
approach as a means to stop Hitler’s rise to power. According to Roberts, Stalin’s desire to uphold
collective security found no support from either Britain or France, and with the Munich agreement of
1939, he was convinced that Britain and France were happy as long as Hitler moved eastwards. The
debate apart, it cannot be doubted that the pact was a crucial event that boosted Hitler’s confidence in
launching an attack against the Western powers.

Treaty of Versaille---Lacked moral validity:

A.J.P Taylor makes an accurate assessment when he states that the treaty of Versailles was vindictive
and lacked moral validity. No study on the causes of the Second World War can be complete without
an examination of the peace treaties of 1919. The peace treaties had, literally, planted the seeds for a
future conflict. The very basis of the peace treaties was flawed and its clauses had ramifications that
determined the course Germany took during the inter war years. Hypocrisy underlined every aspect of
the treaties. The Paris peace conference was premised on Woodrow Wilson’s fourteen point agenda for
peace; it was a treaty that was to end the possibility of future wars.

It is remarkable to see how the announced idealism of the peace treaty was corrupted. In the first
place, the treaty excluded the Soviet Union and Germany. Based on democratic ideals, the treaty was
dominated, very apparently, by the leaders of four countries that had emerged powerful following the
First World War. The treaty called for the creation of the League of Nations as an international forum
to resolve future disputes, but the United States -who had played a leading role in its creation- refused
to admit herself into the organisation. More importantly, the final treaty of Versailles that had aimed to

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solve the ‘German problem’ smacked of vindictive and hypocritical diplomacy. It was the crippling
psychological impact of the treaty of Versailles on Germany that played a very significant role in the
subsequent events. The ‘war guilt’ imposed on Germany and the humiliation the treaty caused
wounded the German psyche. This sense of humiliation subsisted as an abscess that would burst only
with the arrival of Hitler. The treaty served as a crucial rallying point for the revival of chauvinistic
German nationalism, while a belief in its unfair harshness encouraged the British government to adopt
the policy of appeasement.

What stoked the resentments of Versailles and imparted an ‘unsettled’ character to the peace treaties
were the war reparations that dragged the inequities of Versailles into the lives of ordinary German
citizens. Reparations became the rallying point of all grievances of the German people. Besides
damaging democracy in France, it adversely affected the relations between France and Britain who
increasingly diverged on questions relating to the scale and continuity of reparations. With the collapse
of Czarist Russia, and hence the Franco Russo alliance, France became increasingly dependent on
Britain for her security. But French anxieties of a possible German recovery were met by British
sympathy for Germany. This sympathy, however, served the vested interests of the British economy
that desired a revival of trade with Germany.

Economic interpretation by the Marxists:

There also exists an economic interpretation for the cause of the Second World War. The Marxists
state that the one most important reason for the breakdown of the diplomatic system of the 1930 ’s was
the economic crisis from 1929 to 33. Many other Marxists claim that the Second World War was due
to ‘an unresolved economic crisis in the capitalist system’. Some historians have suggested that
monopoly capitalists favoured the rise of Hitler. Mc Donough however points out that Nazism was not
the first but the last resort of the Monopoly Capitalists. Mason states that there was a clear ‘primacy of
politics’ over the demands of the Monopoly Capitalists in the process of decision-making in the Third
Reich. Mason also suggests that a crisis in the German economy in 1939 had propelled Hitler to
embark on a ‘war of economic plunder’ in order to avert economic collapse. Overy rejects this
hypothesis by showing how the economic condition of Germany was not so exigent that it necessitated
war. Power politics, according to Overy, was what overwhelmed economic considerations in Hitler’s
foreign policy.

It is more germane to discuss the Great Economic Depression than any German crisis in its influence
in having caused war. The crash of 1929, as shown before, had a preponderant influence in
determining new equations of political power in Germany. The depression could be seen as having
been the raison de etre for the emergent ultra-right fascist power in Europe. The economic
pulverization of the masses in the wake of the depression was what accounted for the spectacular rise
of Nazism in Germany. But the crash was not a direct cause for the war, for by 1939, when the war
broke out, the crash was well over, and Europe was in the midst of resurgent economic growth.

Not an ideological war:

The conflict of ideologies is also held as a possible explanation for the war. From one angle, the
conflicting ideological orientations of the warring nations cannot be overlooked. If viewed from this
ideological paradigm then the war was, in a sense, the war between Capitalism, Fascism and
Communism. But it is difficult to see the war as a ‘war of ideologies ’ as countries adhering to similar
ideologies were not monolithic blocs that fought unitedly on the front of a common ideology. In fact,
the category of ‘Allied powers’ that emerged in course of the war not only comprised of Capitalist
Britain and U.S.A but communist U.S.S.R as well. Further, leaders like Hitler and Stalin may have
often stoked the ideological rhetoric, but it needs to be questioned how sincere they were in fighting

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the war at an ideological level. A clear negation of all ideas suggesting the paramountcy of ideology is
seen in the Nazi- Soviet pact of 1939 where the Communist hating Hitler established a non-aggression
alliance with Stalin. Similarly, to preserve Italian friendship, Hitler was prepared to give Tyrol to Italy.
He had to watch Mussolini’s backed forces clamp down on Austrian Nazis. These are cases where one
can lucidly see how expediency often overcame ideological considerations.

There were two theatres of the IInd world War: the European conflict and the Asia - Pacific conflict.
The latter forms the sub debate of the larger European debate. A complex set of factors caused the war
in this region, most importantly, the stalemate in the war with China, the U.S oil embargo on Japan,
and the possibilities of seizing Dutch, French and British colonies in Southeast Asia with the German
advance. All these factors encouraged Japan. There are also theories propounded by historians like
Paul Schroeder that suggest that the Pacific war was ‘unnecessary and unavoidable’ and was caused
because of Roosevelt’s desire to join the European war; thus American belligerence towards the
Japanese was to spark off an event that would be the pretext for U.S entry into the war.

Was the Second World War Hitler’ s war?

So, was the Second World War Hitler’s war? Was it borne from his actions, his caprice; and that alone?
A nuanced approach to understanding history would be apprehensive of monocausal explanations to
events, particularly those as unprecedented in scale and complexity as the II nd world war. But an
overview of the background of the war, and the war itself, leaves us with the rare conclusion that
Hitler had indeed played a dominant role in determining the war.

The impact of the treaty of Versailles and the Great Economic Depression of 1929-33 cannot be
regarded as the direct causes for the war. The most important- and devastating-impact of these events
was manifested in the rise of Nazism in the late 1930’s ; it was a fatal concoction of economic
deprivation and battered national pride coupled with the appearance of a man as astute as Hitler who-
through his charisma, iconic presence, dazzling oratory and promise for future had an impact that
transformed the fledgling Nazi party in 1928 to the largest party to sit in the Reichstag in 1932. It is a
remarkable irony that Hitler’s ascendancy to power did not take place through a coup (though a putsch
had been attempted earlier) but through the democratic system. Ironically, through elections,
democracy was to transmogrify overnight into dictatorship.

An overview would also bring out the remarkable fact that almost all the themes that dominate this
historical debate- from the Ist World War and German defeat, the treaty of Versailles and the ‘German
problem’, the failure of the Weimar democracy, the impact of the Depression- most profoundly on
Germany, the rise of Nazism with its ideological grounding in the Mien Kamph, the League of Nations
and its failure to control Fascist aggression, the re armamnece of Germany, the Stresa front to Munich
to the Nazi Soviet pact of 1939 and Hitler’s belligerence from 1937 to 41 - all have a deep and
powerful German connection. It is an unavoidable fact that in World War II, the principal protagonist
was Nazi Germany. The most dramatic and determining events of the 1930’s were borne either from
the initiative of Nazi Germany, or were a response to the policies of Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany
was the focus of attention throughout the 1930s and 40s. Hitler’s shrewd and bellicose foreign policy
greatly determined the course of the period of the war, and of that preceding it.

But was Hitler singularly responsible?

But was Hitler singularly responsible? Are Hitler and war inextricable? Would there have been no
Second World War had Hitler not appeared? To understand this one would have to assess the nature of
Htiler’s regime in the context of domestic German politics and in the context of international regimes.
The treaty of Versailles and the humiliation it brought for Germany was a theme that dominated

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domestic German politics; the demand for a revision of the Versailles treaty was so overwhelming
that none of the German governments could dare to accept it. As a result, the leaders of the Weimar
democracy undertook the demand for revision even prior to Hitler. But there lay a massive difference
between the Weimar and Nazi diplomacy in their approach to such revisionism.

Weimar diplomacy, led by Stresemann, was conciliatory and compromising. The very obverse to this
approach was the one followed by Nazi Germany where the desire for revisionism acquired an
aggressive edge; and it was this aggression that had propelled Germany to war. Thus, while
revisionism continued, the crucial difference lay in the approach to achieving it. The belligerent
demand for revision was peculiar to Nazism and, therefore, one can question whether it would have
been followed by a democratic regime, which is if democracy had survived till the 1930’s and 40’s.

Would war have taken place had there been no Hitler? Was Nazi Germany the sole aggressor in
Europe in the 1930’s? Even within fascism, one has to draw a distinction between Nazism and the
other fascist regimes such as those in Italy and Japan. None of these variants of fascism possessed the
belligerent quality of Nazism. More importantly, none of them had a leader like as indomitable as
Hitler. Furthermore, the policy of appeasement, for all its failure, also reveals that war was not the
priority for status quo powers like Britain, France and the US.

It is remarkable how, in any study of the inter war years one is consistently confronted by the
overwhelming influences of Germany, Nazism and Hitler. This examination, thus, concretises the
notion of ‘Hitler’s war’. One individual; and a cause for such profound change. The eminent German
historian Frederic Meinecke had accurately stated that Hitler is “one of the great examples of the
singular and incalculable power of personality in historical life”.

Inherent in the study of history is the inability to quantify degrees of culpability. One can only pander
along approximations; and that becomes a source of ambiguity that one can take advantage of while
stating that the Second World War, to a great extent, was, indeed, ‘Hitler’s war’.

‘Enigma’ is also a remarkable word in the English language. A word that rests neutral; one that can be
associated to individuals for reasons too good or for reasons only too forgettable. The enigma of the
Fuhrer would instantly find its way to the latter, but he lives on, as a swollen, unavoidable enigma, for
us, and for ever.

Deepak Nair