Key points

• From 1868 onwards, Japan underwent a rapid period of industrialization and modernization, with profound social, economic, and political consequences.

• To find new markets, raw materials, and land for Japan's growing population, Japan began to expand into northern China, whilst China was in a protracted state of civil war.

• Japan, although it fought against Germany during World War I, emerged from that war similarly dis­satisfied with the post-war settlement.

• Between 1931 and 1933, Japan consolidated its hold over Manchuria, establishing a puppet state, 'Manchuguo': the League of Nations' response to the most blatant act of aggression it had thus far faced was minimal.

• By 1937, Japan was at war with China, which caused worsening relations with the US—ultimately lead­ing to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.

The path to war in Europe

As the crisis in the Far East deepened during the 1930s, Europe lurched from one crisis to the next: Italy's invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia); Germany's remilitarization of the Rhineland; civil war in Spain; Germany's expansion into Austria, then Czechoslo­vakia, followed by Poland, at which point Britain and France declared war on Germany in September 1939.

The controversy over the origins of the Second World War

It was suggested earlier in this chapter that in many ways the Second World War was a continuation of the First: another manifestation of Europe's deep-rooted instability, and a reflection of the imbalance of power which had existed on the continent ever since the unification of Germany. However, many historians would argue that besides the profound structural forces which were at work undermining the stability of Europe, human agency also played a role in bringing about the Second World War. Indeed, to tell the story of the origins of that war without reference to Hitler, would be akin to telling the story of Adam and Eve without the serpent. To many (historians or otherwise), the Second World War was, quite simply, 'Hitler's war', which he planned, and which was the conscious result of his determination to achieve world mastery. This was also the verdict of the post-war Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals.

However, the origins of the Second World War have been—perhaps surprisingly—a matter of con­siderable historiographical dispute. While most his­torians agree that responsibility for the war rests with Hitler and Nazi Germany, they have differed over whether Hitler actually planned the war, and what the extent of his territorial ambitions was— mastery of Europe, or German hegemony of the world? Did Hitler have a timetable for the expansionist ambitions he had set out in his autobiography-cum-manifesto Mein Kampf? Had he decided, by 1937, to take Czechoslovakia and then Poland, before turning to Western Europe, as a document (entitled the Hossbach Memorandum) used in the Nuremberg tribunal seemed to suggest? Did he think he could expand German power in Europe without causing a major war? Or did he believe that a Total War was inevitable, but did not foresee this coming about until the 1940s, when the German economy would be fully mobilized for such a war? All these questions have been posed by histor­ians, and divergent answers given (Robertson 1971; Finney 1997).

The most controversial treatment of the war's ori­gins by a serious historian remains A. J. P. Taylor's The Origins of the Second World War, first published in 1961 to a barrage of criticism. The cause of the furore was Taylor's suggestion that Hitler essentially resembled any other European statesman. Nazi ideology—though responsible for the 'evil of the gas chambers' —did not suffice to explain the war. Hit­ler, like his Weimar predecessors, had merely sought to enhance Germany's position after the Versailles settlement, and to reverse its unfavourable, and unfair, aspects. Far from having a timetable for expansion, and general war, Hitler was an opportun­ist, who capitalized on the blunders of others, and the opportunities afforded him by the appeasers in Britain and France. War in September 1939 caught Hitler essentially by surprise. Although Taylor later claimed in his autobiography that his view of Hitler as blunderer and opportunist had become the new orthodoxy, this is something of an exaggeration (Taylor 1983: 299). It is probably truer to say that most historians believe that Hitler had a long-term fixity of purpose—expansion in Europe, if not fur­ther afield-coupled with a short-term flexibility in his tactics and riming. Certainly, most reject Taylor's contention that Nazi ideology had nothing whatever to do with the Second World War.