DBQ: Causes of WWII

The road to appeasement, and thus to armed conflict, began in 1932 when the National Socialist party took control of the German government through a congressional election that gave Hitler authoritarian power. Tyranny must be fought when it first occurs as it is a virus that can spread if it is not eliminated. As Winston Churchill said, “I have always held the view that keeping peace depends on holding back the aggressor.” Unfortunately, Churchill’s predecessor believed in appeasement and diplomatic means when dealing with Germany, choosing not to believe that Germany had “made up its mind to dominate the world by fear” already. Unfortunately, by the time Great Britain, France, and Italy, had no choice but to knowledge this, plunging into WWII was their only chance of stopping Germany and Adolf Hitler’s reign of terror.

There were many instances where one would hope that the international community would step in. The League of Nations was created by the Treaty of Versailles. However this organization did not react to earlier similar aggressions. For example,Italy attacked Ethiopia in 1935. Haile Selassie was the emperor of Ethiopia at the time. He approached the League of Nations and asked them to defend them with military sanctions. They did nothing. Selassie’s response was that “God and history will remember your …show more content…
According to Hitler, Czechs were Aryan blood, meaning that they deserved to be under the same rule as the Germans. So, once again, Hitler invaded yet another country. He was faced by a diplomatic partition at the Munich Conference, “a desperate act of appeasement at the cost of the Czechoslovak state”. In order to appease Hitler, the conference paid “the price of that peace...the ceding by Czechoslovakia of the Sudeten territory”, to Germany. Germany was once again left unpunished for their violations of the Treaty of