This contradiction, still unresolved, is closely linked with the last pair of opposite interpretations: was the Second World War in Europe a dis-tinctively ideological war, or a war between states over issues of power, material interests, or simply survival? The ideological element in the Europe of the 1930s was unavoidable. No one could travel in Germany and Italy without observing the ostentatious display of the fascist and Nazi regimes. Few travelled in the USSR, but those who did were very vocal.
The Soviet regime attracted some and repelled others with tremendous force, and added much to the ideological vibrancy of Europe. The contrast with the condition of Europe before 1914 was marked. ‘Before 1914 the foreign policies of the European states all belonged to a single species. The chancelleries of the parliamentary democracies conformed to the same philosophy of civilised Machiavellianism as that of the dynastic states. . . .’
Raymond Aron, who wrote these words, had no doubt of the importance of the change. It was exemplified, before the Second World War and even more after it began, by the number and significance of the ‘ideological traitors’ – Germans who preferred the defeat of their own country to a victory by Hitler; Frenchmen who supported a German victory out of
H I S T O R Y A N D H I S T O R I A N S 5 1
disillusion with the Third Republic or active sympathy with Nazism;
Russians who fought with their country’s enemies against Stalinism. The same phenomenon was exemplified in the resistance movements against German occupation which took shape in Europe in 1939–41. Resisters were not numerous; and they were usually patriots above all; but often they were also ideologically committed. Aron, as both a Frenchman and a Jew, wrote from the heart: ‘man, without being in uniform, was defend-ing his soul. The victory of either side signified, or seemed to signify, a conversion of souls by force.’21
The result was a situation in which there was ideological conflict between states – between the Nazi and fascist regimes and Bolshevik Russia, and between both of these and the parliamentary, capitalist democracies of Britain and France. There were also frequent cases of rebellion by indi-viduals against the ideological character of their own country. When war came, the battle-lines often ran between fellow-citizens of the same coun-try, as well as between one country and another. Moreover, the ideological conflicts involved ideals, values, and the whole working of political and social systems, so that the stakes of war were very high.
Against this is set the view that, despite the undoubted presence of ideological elements, the war was primarily one between states, fought for issues of national security or material gain. John Lukacs, for example, though well aware of the ideological aspects of the war, insisted that
‘Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, de Gaulle were statesmen first of all. They subordinated their philosophical and political preferences to what they thought were the interests of their states.’22Churchill and de Gaulle above all, the men who refused absolutely to come to terms with Germany in 1940, drew their convictions from a simple, old-fashioned patriotism, rooted in the past and in their view of history; and Lukacs believed that their motives were less complicated and their resistance more steadfast than in those who were impelled by ideology. Stalin too seems to have fought above all for the security and survival of his Russian empire, appealing in 1941 to Russian patriotism and the heroes of the past rather than to communism, even though millions in other countries saw him as the leader of the Workers’ Fatherland. In other versions of events, the war appears primarily as a struggle for economic advantage. Germany, with a booming domestic economy and a vast programme of armaments, went to war to secure its imports of raw materials and food. The war was launched by those who were convinced it could be made to pay, and forced upon those whose economic interests were attached to the status quo, and who foresaw only economic ruin resulting from another great conflict.23
5 2 T H E O R I G I N S O F T H E S E C O N D W O R L D W A R I N E U R O P E
The arguments continue. They are not likely to be stilled unless some complete lack of interest or innovation supervenes, leaving the issues to congeal into some inert and uninspiring immobility. So far, there is no sign of this. ‘History will judge’ was the cry in 1939. Its judgements have been, and still are, multifarious and often contradictory. Two wide-ranging and conflicting interpretations still stand, in the Thirty Years War thesis on the one hand, and the explanation from the depression plus Hitler on the other. More detailed examination brings out a wide range of differing views, here marshalled into four sets of contrasting pairs. Some of these views lend support to the Thirty Years War thesis; others – notably those which stress the role of Hitler and of ideology – oppose it. Many years of ardent and industrious historical work have brought us into something of a maze. Can we find a thread which will lead us through it?
There are certainly clues which may be followed. First, it helps to remember that even widely differing interpretations are not necessarily incompatible with one another, but sometimes explain different aspects of the same events. Second, several apparent contradictions are less difficult to comprehend when we grasp firmly that we are dealing with a lengthy process, covering some five or six years, as well as with particular events. It is natural that different explanations applied, and in varying degrees, to different elements in this complex development. Third, we must examine both the underlying forces behind the process by which Europe moved from civil strife and undeclared war to local and eventually Continental war, and also the various points along that road when particular states decided, or were compelled, to go to war. The next part of the book is therefore devoted to a consideration of the underlying forces of ideology, economics, and strategy; and the final part moves to a narrative of events from the mid-1930s to 1941. In this way, while we cannot resolve all the problems and conflicts of evidence and interpretation, we can nevertheless follow a thread which offers a way through the labyrinth.
References
1 See: W. Roger Louis (ed.), The Origins of the Second World War: A. J. P.
Taylor and his Critics (New York 1972); Gordon Martel (ed.), ‘The Origins of the Second World War’ Reconsidered. The A. J. P. Taylor debate after twenty-five years (London 1986). A recent volume of essays, Robert Boyce and Joseph Maiolo (eds), The Origins of World War Two: The Debate Continues (Basingstoke 2003), shows that the A. J. P. Taylor controversy has largely run its course, and is now a part of the historiography.
H I S T O R Y A N D H I S T O R I A N S 5 3
2 Michael Howard, War and the Liberal Conscience (London 1978), p. 115.
3 G. P. Gooch, ‘The coming of the war’, Contemporary Review, July 1940, p. 9.
4 The whole problem is reviewed in Pierre Ayçoberry, The Nazi Question. An essay on the interpretations of National Socialism 1922–1975 (London 1981).
For some of the questions under discussion, see e.g. R. Palme Dutte, Fascism and Social Revolution (London 1934); Franz Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National-Socialism (London 1942), emphasising the role of conflicting groups; J. W. Wheeler-Bennett, The Nemesis of Power (London 1953), on the officer corps.
5 US Department of State, Nazi–Soviet Relations, 1939–1941. Documents from the archives of the German Foreign Office, R. J. Sontag and J. S. Beddie (eds) (Washington 1948). Soviet Information Bureau, The Falsifiers of History (Moscow and London 1948).
6 Marlis G. Steinert, Les Origines de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale (Paris 1974), p. 15; cf. John Lukacs, The Last European War (London 1977), p. 25.
7 W. S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. I (London 1948), p. viii.
8 L. B. Namier, Diplomatic Prelude (London 1950), p. ix.
9 Patricia Meehan, The Unnecessary War. Whitehall and the German Resistance to Hitler (London 1992), p. 186; see generally, pp. 113–86.
Both the Rhineland and the plot of 1938 have come to look increasingly unconvincing as lost opportunities (see below, pp. 217, 240–2, 268–9);
but they have left their mark on historical and popular opinion.
10 Churchill, Second World War, vol. I, p. 148.
11 House of Commons Debates, 5th series, vol. 333, col. 95.
12 A. J. P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (London 1961), p. 278.
13 Alan Bullock, Hitler: a study in tyranny (London 1952), ch. 9.
14 O. Desbrosses, in Revue d’Histoire de la deuxième guerre mondiale, no. 29, Jan. 1958, pp. 84–5.
15 Gordon Brook-Shepherd, Anschluss (London 1963).
16 Eberhard Jäckel, Hitler’s Weltanschauung (Middletown, Conn. 1972).
17 A. Hillgruber, Hitlers Strategie (Frankfurt 1965); Klaus Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich (London 1973).
18 K. D. Bracher, The German Dictatorship (London: Penguin Books 1973), p. 37.
19 See William Carr, ‘National Socialism: foreign policy and Wehrmacht’, in Walter Laqueur (ed.), Fascism: a reader’s guide (London: Penguin Books 1979), p. 121.
5 4 T H E O R I G I N S O F T H E S E C O N D W O R L D W A R I N E U R O P E
20 Donald Cameron Watt, How War Came. The immediate origins of the Second World War, 1938–1939 (London 1989), pp. 619, 623.
21 Raymond Aron, Peace and War (London 1966), pp. 298, 173.
22 Lukacs, Last European War, p. 327.
23 A. S. Milward, War, Economy and Society, 1939–1945 (London 1977).