Question

Who started the World War II and why?

Answer 1

That's a loaded question. There are numerous actors involved. What are some you can think of off the top of your head?

Answer 2

well I think it was a quest for power

Answer 3

Certainly for some actors, yes. Who do you think was questing for power, and how were they involved in starting the War?

Answer 4

In Europe the Second World War started 1 September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Why did Hitler order the invasion? To acquire Poland, I guess, or rather a piece of it, since he cut a deal with the USSR to divvy the country up.

In the Pacific the Second World War started with the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese on 7 December 1941. Why did they do that? Well, they were hoping to acquire greater influence in the Pacific, and had already invaded and conquered a big chunk of China, and felt that the United States was the only power capable of threatening their ambitions. They hoped to smash US Pacific naval power by destroying the Pacific fleet at its base in Pearl Harbor, then conquer Southeast Asia and the Phillipines and settle Manchuria's hash before the US could rebuild its fleet, then present the US with a fait accompli (Japanese hegemony in the Pacific) and dare the weak-kneed syphilitic lazy white boys (as they thought of them) to do anything about it. That was obviously a wee bit of miscalculation.

Answer 5

World War II essentially was a continuation of WWI. Germany was humiliated after its defeat in the first world war + combined with The Great Depression following created the right environment for a strong nationalistic movement. As for Japanese in the Pacific, they were rapidly expanding due to industrialization in the early 20th Century, however, due to the fact that the nation itself is not rich in natural resources, they had to obtain the resources elsewhere (expansion/war). World War II was inevitable in a sense.

Answer 6

Well Sheng is right, WWII started because of the treaty of Versailles because the Western
powers wanted to punish Germany and blamed the country for the war, they took its colonies,island and you can say dignity & because of the great depression or we can say the rise of the dictators. Hitler of Germany, Lenin of Russia,Franco of Spain and Mussolini of Italy
rise.SLOWLY slowly they started to make lots of great armies Hitler started to capture more and more countries, BUT when Hitler invaded Poland. France and British declared war. While in the pacific the Japanese from my point of view i think that they wanted revenge from the united states and they attacked pearl harbor and destroyed the whole fleet.

Answer 7

In a sense, it's why some historians believe that the first world war never truly ended. The years between both were just a pause between conflicts. You can also almost say that the countries that humiliated Germany with Versailles were partly to blame for the extremism contributing to leading it down the path to war - something that politicians such as Woodrow Wilson were concerned over.

Hitler's aggressive actions bullied Europe into submission. No one wanted another war after seeing the horrors of WW1, so while some said to take a firm hand with him, others chose to act with appeasement. Chamberlain was fooled into thinking he would end his thirst for land with the betrayal of Czechoslovakia (which Hitler later bullied into complete capitulation). He could have been stopped at Munich in 1938, but no one chose to really stand up to him setting the stage for his grab for Poland as part of the Nazi's quest for Lebensraum.

In the East, I agree with Sheng's point on Japan's need for resources - it's what drove most of their aggression in their part of the world in order to be self-sustaining. They boasted of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, an Asia free of victimization by the West...but under their control which meant they were going to take over chunks of Asia whether people wanted them to or not before stripping them of everything that Japan needed to survive.

Based on that, the war between the US and Japan could be said to be inevitable given Japan's actions leading up to Pearl Harbor. To get the oil they needed, they planned to take on the Dutch East Indies, but as relations deteriorated between themselves and the US (who implemented embargoes on resources they needed), their military leaders felt they needed to do something to keep the US out of the war by striking first. Unfortunately for them, the US proved to be far more resilient than they anticipated even after Yamamoto's warnings.