History

(A) Long Term Causes of The Second World War
1. Failure of Democracies in Europe and Rise of Dictatorships : The peculiar problems created after the First World War could not be successfully tackled by the democratic governments. As such, in countries like Italy, Germany, Russia, Spain, Portugal and others dictators rose in power.
2. Unjust and Humiliating Treaty of Versailles : The victors of the First World War (Britain, France and U.S.A.) forced Germany to sign the unjust and humiliating Treaty of Peace. It imposed heavy war-penalties on Germany, made her surrender large chunks of her territories like Saar, Rhineland, Ruhr area ect. and some parts of her foreign colonies. The Treaty also prohibited Germany from re-arming herself; her army was disbanded beyond a limit of one lakh soldiers. The German found it too humiliating. Moreover, the attitude of France towards Germany was revengeful. Now when Germany lay prostrate before France. She took revenge from her by taking the Saar valley and the Ruhr Zone in 1923 A.D.
3. Aggressive Nationalism and Expansionism : The rulers of Germany, Italy, Japan believed in aggressive type of nationalism. They also wanted to acquire colonies for their countries to satisfy their nationalist urges and for their economic interests. As such Italy annexed Ethopia (Abyssinia) and Albania. Japan annexed Manchuria ; Germany annexed its neighboring states like Austria and Czechoslovakia ; Soviet Russia too pounced upon the weak countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Again there was a war between China and Japan in 1937 A.D. and many Chinese cities fell into Japanese hands. The League of Nations failed to check these nations in their aggressive policies of territorial annexation.
4. The Armament Race : In order to achieve their territorial aims, as noted above, Germany, Italy and Japan began producing firearms, tanks, guns, war-ships, aircrafts and other weapons of destruction at a large scale. The Disarmament Conferences failed to stop the stock-piling of the arms and ammunition. The League of Nations also did not achieve any success in this regard. All the nations followed only one policy, namely “Security first and disarmament after wards”.