How Did Hitler Rise To Power

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction

World War II occurred in September 1939, just two decades following World War I, when Britain and France declared war on Germany after the German invasion of Poland. The war spread around the globe, especially in Europe and Asia. The surrender of Germany and Japan led to the end of World War II in 1945. From realist perspectives, World War II was regarded as the continuation of World War I because there was unstable balance of power in Europe (Nau, 2011). Normally, the cause of war is categorized in three levels which are individual level, state level, and international system level. Thus, this paper will assess the major causes of World War II according to three levels of analysis. The following questions are used as a guide:

How did Hitler’s rise of power lead to the war?

Why Treaty Versailles be considered as the major cause of War II?

How did international system affect the world security?

According to this paper, reader will understand about the causes of World War II from realist perspectives.

Causes of the War

Theory

From realist perspective, there are many causes of war. Theoretically, realists have pessimistic view of human nature: human is egoist, selfish, and greedy of power. Then, people are always trying to pursue for their own power rather than considering about the morality and ethics. Similarity, it is applied to the state’s policy as well. As Morgenthau stated, "Realism maintains that universal moral principles cannot be applied to the actions of states" (as cited in Donnelly, 2009, p.31). Since national interest and national security are very important, they will determine one country’s foreign policy. In addition, it is viewed that when all states are equal within international system, they can establish a more stable world and there will be peace and security. However, it is hard to achieve since there are always the stronger and the weaker, and they the strong state will take advantage over the weaker states. In such anarchic world, there will be only the struggle of power, and peace will be hard to be achieved. The above factors are all the possible causes of war from realist perspectives. Thus, war is hardly to be prevented.

Brief of the causes

After World War I, it is believed that there would be peace in the world. However, following by the Resentment of Germany resulting from the Treaty of Versailles, the Great Depression, the spread of Fascism in German, the strong state’s invasion of weaker states as well as ineffectiveness of the League of Nations, it led to the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. The war then spread over the world and the causalities were very high.

Level of analysis

Individual level

First of all, realists normally have a pessimistic view of human nature. People desire to gain the power and aiming to enjoy advantages over other, so they have to compete with each other in order to become the strongest. In individual level of analysis, decisions made by individual or a group of few people could shape a country’s foreign policy and even affected the world politics. Many people believed that Adolf Hitler was the primary cause of World War II because he always tried to invade other countries and seized for power in order to build up a strong Germany when he became German leader.

Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 and began to raise his political power in 1919, just a year after the end of World War I. He was one of the founding leaders of the Nazi party. Hitler and his supporters believed that he would rebuild Germany and win back its past glory. Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and started to build up German army and weapons secretly. The following year, he increased the size of the army and began build up warships and established German air force. Moreover, it was necessary to do the Military service at the time so that it would increase German military forces. According to Wheeler (2005), Hitler commanded German troops to enter the Rhineland in 1936, but they were easily defeated as their force was not very strong at that moment. At the same year, Hitler also made alliance with Italy and Japan. As German leader, Hitler’s next goal was to take back the lost territory since he had responsibility to seek the advantages for his state. In March 1938, German troops entered Austria and forced Austrian leaders to hold a vote asking their people to be part of Germany. Unsurprisingly, almost every Austrian agreed with Anschluss (Union with Germany). However, this was not the end of Hitler’s expansionist aims because human desire in not easily to be fulfilled. Six months later, Hitler demanded the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to be under German occupation. In order to prevent war, Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Britain, met with Hitler several times and flew to Berchtesgaden in September to negotiate directly with Hitler. Then, the Munich Agreement was signed and Hitler gained the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia with the condition that he wouldn’t conquer the rest of Czechoslovakia. However, the decision making of one country’s policy is based on the valuable calculation of individual power and interest rather than the ethics. Thus, in order to gain more power and made Germany became stronger and larger, Hitler did not keep his promise and continued his expansionism by invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Although the Czechoslovak government asked for help, neither Britain nor France was ready to take action against Hitler. Believing that Poland would be Hitler’s next target, Britain and France began to take some action. They promised to take military action against Germany if Hitler invaded Poland. By doing so, Chamberlain thought that Hitler would stop his invasion because German might be aware of war with Britain and France. Still, Chamberlain was wrong. German forces invaded Poland on 1st September 1939, and Britain and France declared war on Germany as what they had promised. Consequently, World War II broke out.

As what has been explained above, human is a political animal that is born to seek for power and human desire is not easily to be fulfilled. Thus, even Britain and France tried to use appeasement policy to fulfill what Hitler demanded, the war still could not be prevent because it was the only way to prohibit Hitler’s expansionism and brought peace to the world.

State level

The state level of analysis views the nature of state and the impact it has on the way it performs internationally. In this level, we are going to analyze how a state’s political system, economic system, history as well as culture determined a country’s international behave. From realist perspectives, values of national security and state survival are very important. The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919 as the end of World War I. The aim of the treaty was to prevent war and maintain peace, but in the end it was one of the main causes of another disaster – World War II. The treaty mentioned that Germany should accept the blame for causing World War I, and it had to pay £6, 600 million for the damage resulted from the war. Moreover, the treaty also provided for German disarmament, so that Germany was only allowed to have a small army and six naval ships. Germany was not permitted to have its own tanks, air force, and submarines. At the same time, the Rhineland area was to be de-militarized as well. Lastly, the treaty caused the loss of German territory. Some German land was taken away and distributed to other countries, and Anschluss (Union with Austria) was prohibited (Wheeler, 2005).

While the Treaty of Versailles was successfully weakened Germany, its terms would later lead to World War II. The treaty was quite an embarrassment for Germany which used to be the greatest power in the world. Under the treaty, it seemed that Germany was inferior to other states, especially to Britain and France. At the same time, since Germany had to pay for the repartition of World War I and it could not afford with that payment, German economic was affected as well. People were very poor at that time: there were not many jobs and the cost of living was high. Because of these factors, German people were dissatisfied with this treaty. Thus, people were very disappointed with the government and it helped the rise of fascism and Hitler in Germany after World War I. In order to defend for their national interest as well as seeking for a better life that might be provided a strong state, German people supported and voted to power Hitler who promised to rip up the Treaty of Versailles.

So, it was noticeable that dissatisfaction of people to the government because of the political reason, poverty or level of economic development was the cause of the reform of the government and lead to war because people had to do so in order to defend for their national interest as well as seeking for a better living condition.

International System level

International system is examined in this level in order to see how that influences the state’s performance. In this level, it is believed that the causes of war are found at the global level including the power transition, multipolar, and anarchic world. After World War I, there was no balance of power and no system of law enforceable at that time. Even the League of Nations was established in after World War I with the aim of keeping world peace, but it was not working well. Theoretically, the League of Nations was a good idea and did have some achievements in the earlier period. However, ultimately it was a failure because World War II was still occurred.

In the late 1920s, the world was in the great depression; trade is reduced, businesses failed, prices fall, and unemployment increased. In 1931, Japan was affected seriously by the depression. People disappointed with the government and turned to support the army in order to find out a solution. Then, Japanese army invaded Chinese Manchuria, which was an area rich in minerals and resources, because it was seeking for the natural resources to expand their economic development. China demanded the help from the League, immediately. The Japanese government then was told to remove their force from Manchuria. However, the army took no notice of the government and continued its invasion of Manchuria. After that, the League called on its members not to trade with Japan, but because there was great depression at that time, many countries dared not to risk losing trade and did not agree with the League’s request. The League then tried to make a further call for Japan to withdraw its army from Manchuria, but Japanese response was to leave the League of Nations. Thus, it was remarkable that there is no real harmony in the anarchy world at that time because each state preferred using force to achieve its goals. Moreover, since any state had ability to use force at any time to implement its own policy, all states then had to be ready either to counter force with force or to pay the cost of weakness. As a result, the war still occurred. Similarly, in October 1935, Italy conquered Abyssinia, but the Abyssinian had no strength to fight back with Italy so that it asked the League for help. The League took action by condemning the Italian attack and called on members to impose trade sanction with Italy. Unluckily, Italy was still able to trade with non-member states, especially America. In addition, Britain and France at that time did not want to have a dispute with Italy as well. In order to end Italy’s aggression, Britain and France leaders held a meeting and decided to give Italy two areas of land in Abyssinia with the condition that there would be no further invasion of the African countries. Even though this idea was accepted by Italian leader Mussolini, but there was a public outcry in Britain and the plan had to be canceled. So, in the anarchy world, the war is likely to happen because there is no balance of power and no international system that could deal with the conflicts. After World War I, the world was multipolar power system, so the power was distributed separately and there is no central power and no balance of power at that time. Many scholars believed that bipolar world is more stable than multipolar world. In order to keep peace and international order, collective security or balance of power is very important.

From above, it is clear that the anarchic structure of international system is one of the main sources of war. Since there is no concentrated power and balance of power along with no functional international organization, the war could not be controlled and prevented.

Conclusion

In conclusion, realism states that war is inevitable in the political system. Since human nature is bad, men are trying to pursue the power without the consideration of morality. It is also mentioned that no state can be trusted because national interest would always come first. Similarly, peace is hardly to achieve in the anarchic world where there is no balance of power. It is noticeable that after World War I, the world is not stable yet since there was no balance of power at that time. The world was in disorder and each state was trying to seek for its own interest as well. Combining with the rise of power of Hitler at that time, the war was finally broke out. Thus, according to above factor, war is inevitable and only war that could provide the peace and solution to the problem. .