World War I and the Treaty of Versailles as Causes of World War II

The Pearl Harbor “incident” brought America into World War II, in 1941, two years after it had begun in Europe. In order to understand why World War II started in Europe, it is necessary to understand how World War I, in 1918–1919, ended. As stated earlier, World War II was actually a continuation of World War I in Europe, primarily because of the vindictive and fraudulent Versailles treaty that ended World War I. Prior to World War II, Germany attempted to revise the treaty peacefully and, after being rebuffed by the Allies, decided to revise it forcibly. A.J.P. Taylor has written the definitive work on the true origins of World War II in Europe by cutting through the myths and false propaganda presented by the Allies. He comments that:

The second World war was, in large part, a repeat performance of the first. . . . Germany fought specifically in the second war to reverse the verdict of the first and to destroy the settlement which followed it. Her opponents fought, though less consciously, to defend that settlement. . . . If one asks the rather crude question, “what was the war about?” the answer for the first is: “to decide how Europe should be remade,” but for the second merely: “to decide whether this remade Europe should continue.” The first war explains the second and, in fact, caused it, in so far as one event causes another.[13]

Taylor goes on to explain how the peace treaty that ended World War I was a major cause of World War II and concludes that, “The peace of Versailles lacked moral validity from the start.”[14] Therefore, in order to understand the causes of World War II in Europe, we need to take a brief look at World War I and why it was fought, as well as how it was concluded by this treaty.

The entry of Great Britain into World War I was greatly influenced by the same British political and economic interests who later joined with J.P. Morgan to bring America into World War I and World War II. The story of this Anglo-American group is told by Professor Carroll Quigley from Georgetown University, who has studied its organization and its tremendous influence on British and American foreign policy throughout the twentieth century. Quigley held positions at Harvard and Princeton prior to going to Georgetown University—where, incidentally, he had a student by the name of Bill Clinton. (President Clinton has stated that Professor Quigley was one of his favorite teachers at Georgetown.) Quigley wrote a book published in 1965 that discussed the Anglo-American group and its beginnings in England in the late nineteenth century:

There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network. . . . I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies (notably to its belief that England was an Atlantic rather than a European Power and must be allied, or even federated, with the United States and must remain isolated from Europe), but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.[15]

Quigley explained that the group started in England under the leadership of Professor John Ruskin at Oxford University and received most of its money from the imperialist Cecil Rhodes. The American contingent was consolidated initially around the House of J.P. Morgan, which helps explain Morgan’s key role in getting America into World War I to help the British. He goes on to explain that,

The original purpose of these groups was to seek to federate the English-speaking world along lines laid down by Cecil Rhodes (1853–1902) and William T. Stead (1849–1912), and the money for the organizational work came originally from the Rhodes Trust.[16]

Soon after Quigley published his book Tragedy and Hope, the publisher took the book out of print and destroyed the plates without consulting Quigley.[17] That is probably why his next book, The Anglo-American Establishment, was much more critical of the group.[18] An accurate understanding of how and why the United States got into two world wars in the twentieth century to help the British Empire cannot be obtained without reading these two books by Quigley and Rothbard’s Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy.

Quigley concludes his analysis of this Anglo-American group and its influence on world events with this sobering thought: “In foreign policy their actions almost destroyed Western civilization, or at least the European center of it.”[19] Quigley also comments on the long-term significance of this group, especially the British portion thereof:

[O]ne of the chief methods by which this Group works has been through propaganda. It plotted the Jameson Raid of 1895; it caused the Boer War of 1899–1902; it set up and controls the Rhodes Trust; it created the Union of South Africa in 1906–1910 . . . it was the chief influence in Lloyd George’s war administration in 1917–1919 and dominated the British delegation to the Peace Conference of 1919; it had a great deal to do with the formation and management of the League of Nations and of the system of mandates; it founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1919 and still controls it; it was one of the chief influences on British policy toward Ireland, Palestine, and India in the period 1917–1945; it was a very important influence on the policy of appeasement of Germany during the years 1920–1940; and it controlled and still controls, to a very considerable extent, the sources and the writing of the history of British Imperial and foreign policy since the Boer War.[20]

The British were the first modern nation to make imperialism into an “art of government,” and they created their empire over several centuries by following three main aims: control of the sea, control of international banking, and control of the world’s natural resources.[21] The foreign policy of the British Empire since the latter part of the sixteenth century has been to prevent the rise of any strong power on the continent, something they accomplished by forming various alliances to prevent any one power from achieving supremacy. However, with the consolidation of the German states under the leadership of Bismarck in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, an aggressive and economically powerful German nation burst forth. Thereafter, the British political and economic leadership perceived this new German nation as an extreme threat to their balance of power policy in Europe and to their dominance in the world, both economically and militarily.

Karl Helfferich, a prominent German banker and the finance minister during the war, commented in 1918 upon the economic rivalry of Germany and the British Empire, as well as the reason the British declared war in August 1914:

England’s policy was always constructed against the politically and economically strongest Continental power. . . . Ever since Germany became the politically and economically strongest Continental power, did England feel threatened from Germany more than from any other land in its global economic position and its naval supremacy. Since that point, the English-German differences were unbridgeable, and susceptible to no agreement in any one single question.[22]

Helfferich sadly noted the accuracy of the declaration by Bismarck in 1897: “The only condition which could lead to improvement of German-English relations would be if we bridled our economic development, and this is not possible.”[23] American diplomat Henry White was instructed by his government in 1907 to meet with the appropriate British representatives in order to determine their views regarding the rising power of Germany. He met with Arthur James Balfour, who would later serve as the British foreign secretary during World War I and would become famous for the Balfour Declaration that led to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. As reported by historian Allan Nevins, White’s daughter overheard the following conversation at this meeting:

Balfour (somewhat lightly): “We are probably fools not to find a reason for declaring war on Germany before she builds too many ships and takes away our trade.”

White: “You are a very high-minded man in private life. How can you possibly contemplate anything so politically immoral as provoking a war against a harmless nation which has as good a right to a navy as you have? If you wish to compete with German trade, work harder.”

Balfour: “That would mean lowering our standard of living. Perhaps it would be simpler for us to have a war.”

White: “I am shocked that you of all men should enunciate such principles.”

Balfour (again lightly): “Is it a question of right or wrong? Maybe it is just a question of keeping our supremacy.”[24]

Also, by 1910, two of the new industrial powers, Germany and the United States, both had acquired strong centralized governments through their respective wars from 1861 through 1871, and this began to upset the “balance of power” in the world. Furthermore, Japan, with one of the world’s oldest monarchies and a strong centralized government, became the only country in Asia that decided to industrialize, and it shocked the world by defeating Russia in 1905. Therefore, the British political leadership perceived that their world supremacy was threatened on the continent and in both the Atlantic and the Pacific regions. From an economic standpoint, America in 1910 moved into first place in the world of manufacturing output while Germany was second and Great Britain was third.[25] In addition, the rapid industrial progress that was taking place in America, Germany Japan, and the British Empire had shown the extreme importance of oil. By 1912, the United States produced more than 63 percent of the world’s petroleum, while England commanded no more than 12 percent of the oil production.[26] Germany and Japan, on the other hand, had no independent, secure supply of oil.[27]

Great Britain’s balance-of-power policy, as applied by the British political leadership, viewed all these economic rivalries as a threat to its empire but saw Germany, which was the new strong man of Europe and which was only a short distance across the channel, as a far greater threat than either America, which was all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, or Japan, in the Pacific. The author of A Century of War concludes in his analysis of World War I that:

The British establishment had determined well before 1914 that war was the only course suitable to bring the European situation “under control.” British interests dictated, according to their balance-of-power logic, a shift from her traditional “pro-Ottoman and anti-Russian” alliance strategy of the nineteenth century, to a “pro-Russian and anti-German” alliance strategy as early as the late 1890s.”[28]

The British political and economic establishment did not expect the war to be as difficult or to last as long as it did and certainly did not think their “victory,” with American help, would be as debilitating and costly as it turned out to be. A.J.P. Taylor explains that, “The first World war would obviously have had a different end if it had not been for American intervention: the Allies, to put it bluntly, would not have won.”[29] He states further that, “The German army had been beaten in the field. It was in retreat. But it had not been routed or destroyed. The British and French armies, although victorious, were also near exhaustion.”[30] Germany had not been invaded; in fact, its army still occupied foreign territory, and although it was in retreat, it could still fight. It was, obvious, however, that with American intervention, the eventual outcome of the war was certain to cause their defeat.

In the recently published book, The Pity of War, British historian Niall Ferguson asserts that Great Britain should not have entered the European war (helping to make it a world war) and that the German government, under the kaiser, was not truly a military or economic threat to the British Empire.[31] Ferguson concludes that if Britain had not entered the war, then America would not have entered, it would not have lasted so long, and it would have ended with a victory for the kaiser’s Germany. He points out that there were no binding legal ties with either Belgium or France to cause Great Britain to enter the war:

Britain’s decision to intervene was the result of secret planning by her generals and diplomats, which dated back to late 1905. . . . When the moment of decision came on 2 August 1914, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that Britain would intervene against Germany; the majority of ministers were hesitant, and in the end agreed to support [Foreign Secretary Sir Edward] Grey partly for fear of being turned out of office and letting in the Tories. It was a historic disaster.[32]

He further argues that, “[I]f a war had been fought, but without Britain and America, the victorious Germans might have created a version of the European Union, eight decades ahead of schedule,” and the British would have remained strong, especially financially.[33] Ferguson then states that a short war won by the kaiser’s Germany would have produced a far different world for the remainder of the twentieth century, without Nazism in Germany or Communism in Russia:

With the Kaiser triumphant, Adolph Hitler could have eked out his life as a mediocre postcard painter and a fulfilled old soldier in a German-dominated Central Europe about which he could have found little to complain. And Lenin could have carried on his splenetic scribbling in Zurich, forever waiting for capitalism to collapse—and forever disappointed. . . . It was ultimately because of the war that both men were able to rise to establish barbaric despotisms which perpetrated still more mass murder.[34]

Ferguson closes his book by recognizing that World War I was horrible not only because of its destructiveness, but, more importantly, because it was avoidable, not inevitable. British leaders made a great error in judgment by taking Britain into the war, changing the whole course of the twentieth century:

World War I was at once piteous, in the poet’s sense, and “a pity.” It was something worse than a tragedy, which is something we are taught by the theater to regard as ultimately unavoidable. It was nothing less than the greatest error of modern history.[35]

Murray Rothbard agrees with Ferguson’s assessment of World War I and the great error made by Britain in entering that war, but he laments even more the great error that President Wilson made:

American entry into World War I in April 1917 prevented [a] negotiated peace between warring powers, and drove the Allies forward into a peace of unconditional surrender and dismemberment, a peace which, as we have seen, set the stage for World War II. American entry thus cost countless lives on both sides, chaos and disruption throughout central and eastern Europe at war’s end, and the consequent rise of Bolshevism, fascism, and Nazism to power in Europe. In this way, Woodrow Wilson’s decision to enter the war may have been the single, most fateful action of the twentieth century, causing untold and unending misery and destruction. But Morgan profits were expanded and assured.[36]

Rothbard comments further about Morgan’s direct financial interest in getting America into the war, which Morgan claimed was only to help the British:

At the moment of great financial danger for the Morgans, the advent of World War I came as a godsend. Long connected to British, including Rothschild, financial interests, the Morgans leaped into the fray, quickly securing the appointment, for J.P. Morgan and Company, of fiscal agent for the warring British and French governments, and monopoly underwriter for their war bonds in the Unites States. J.P. Morgan also became the fiscal agent for the Bank of England, the powerful English central bank. Not only that: the Morgans were heavily involved in financing American munitions and other firms exporting war material to Britain and France. J.P. Morgan and Company, moreover, became the central authority organizing and channelling war purchases for the two Allied nations.[37]

As we all know, hindsight is easier than foresight, but lessons should be learned from history; these lessons come by studying the political choices that were available and then by following the consequences of the choices that were made, as well as the probable consequences of the choices that were not made.[38] The British decided to enter the war for very poor reasons, mainly economic, and thought that, with the French and Russians, they could defeat the Germans quickly and conclusively. This did not turn out to be the case; therefore, the British desperately sought American intervention in order to crush the German economic and military “threat” completely. Even if the British had entered the war, but without American intervention, and regardless of who the victors were, a peace treaty would have been entered into much earlier and would have been concluded on much more equal terms, with the original German government—and probably the original Russian government—still in place. In this case also, the twentieth century would have been far different without Nazism ruling Germany and probably without Communism ruling Russia.

Colonel Edward Mandell House, President Woodrow Wilson’s primary adviser, frequently visited England in 1914 and 1915 in order to discuss America’s possible entry into the war. Finally, on October 17, 1915, and in spite of his political speeches calling for neutrality, President Wilson wrote a secret letter to the leaders of the British government, offering to bring America into the war on the side of the Allies in order to cause them to win decisively. That would then allow Wilson to be the major player in dictating a permanent peace for the world.[39] House appealed to Wilson’s insatiable ego by telling the president that he would be the “Savior of the World” and the new “Prince of Peace.”[40] House praised Wilson’s humanitarian motives for bringing America into the war, stating that he would play the “the noblest part that has ever come to a son of man.”[41]

President Wilson was naive enough to believe that the only war aims of the Allies (England, France, and Russia) were those stated publicly “which included the restoration of Belgium, the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France, and the annexation of Constantinople by Russia.”[42] However, one of the American delegates to the Paris Peace Conference that followed World War I was a knowledgeable diplomat by the name of William C. Bullitt. He later resigned his position as a delegate in protest of Wilson’s actions at the peace conference, saying that Wilson did not understand the secret war aims of the Allies, and particularly those of the British, until the peace negotiations were all under way in regard to the Treaty of Versailles. Bullitt states the secret aims the British hoped to achieve at the peace conference:

[T]he destruction of the German Navy, the confiscation of the German merchant marine, the elimination of Germany as an economic rival, the extraction of all possible indemnities from Germany, the annexation of German East Africa and the Cameroons, the annexation of all German colonies in the Pacific south of the Equator . . . Palestine and as much of Syria as they might be able to get away from the French, the extension of their sphere of influence in Persia, the recognition of their protectorates of Cyprus and Egypt.[43]

Bullitt then concludes that “All of these secret war aims of the British were actually achieved in one form or another by the Treaty of Versailles.”[44]

The great classical liberal American writer, Albert Jay Nock, commented on World War I and the Treaty of Versailles:

The war immensely fortified a universal faith in violence; it set in motion endless adventures in imperialism, endless nationalistic ambition. Every war does this to a degree roughly corresponding to its magnitude. The final settlement at Versailles, therefore, was a mere scramble for loot.[45]

It was also during World War I that the British clearly recognized how important, even critical, the abundant supply of oil was, not only for industrial purposes but also for military purposes. Therefore, one of their main economic and military aims was to help free the Arabs from the rule of the Turks (the Ottoman Empire) and then to take over the Arab oil interests after the war. The British used their agent “Lawrence of Arabia” to lead the Arab revolt against the Turks. Then, during the negotiations that led to the Treaty of Versailles, the British doubled-crossed the Arabs by grabbing their oil for themselves. By 1925 the British controlled a major part of the world’s future supplies of petroleum.[46] It was not until World War II that America, through the trickery of President Roosevelt, was able to grab “its share” of the Arabs’ oil that the British had taken in World War I. William Engdahl states:

They [the Rockefeller companies of the Standard Oil Group, together with the Pittsburgh Mellon family’s Gulf Oil] had secured a major stake in concessions for oil in the Middle East, above all in Saudi Arabia. Partly through the clever diplomacy of President Roosevelt and the bungling of Britain’s Winston Churchill, Saudi Arabia slipped from the British grip during the war. Saudi King Abdul Aziz gained an unprecedented Lend-Lease agreement in 1943 from Roosevelt, a gesture to ensure Saudi goodwill to American oil interests after the war.[47]

Engdahl also comments on the Versailles peace treaty and the League of Nations:

Britain’s creation of the League of Nations through the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, became a vehicle to give a facade of international legitimacy to a naked imperial territory seizure. For the financial establishment of the City of London, the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of British lives in order to dominate future world economic development through raw materials control, especially of the new resource, oil, was a seemingly small price to pay.[48]

Engdahl further states that by 1919, after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the Persian Gulf became an “English lake.”[49]

Murray Rothbard points out that the first formal joining of the Anglo-American group occurred at the Versailles peace conference in Paris when:

[T]he British and U.S. historical staffs at Versailles took the occasion to found a permanent organization to agitate for an informally, if not formally, reconstituted Anglo-American Empire.

The new group, the Institute of International Affairs, was formed at a meeting at the Majestic Hotel in Paris on May 30, 1919.[50]

Rothbard continues by revealing the heavy representation of the House of Morgan in this Anglo-American group. He also points out that the intense economic and political warfare between the Morgan and the Rockefeller interests, which began in the early years of the twentieth century eventually ceased and that they joined forces to become the main leaders of the American portion of this group just before World War II.[51]

It is important to recall that, after World War I, a better informed and more realistic President Wilson admitted to the American people that World War I had not been an idealistic and humanitarian war to “make the world safe for democracy,” nor had it been the “war to end all the wars.” He toured the U.S. to try to influence public opinion to pressure the U.S. Senate to approve the Treaty of Versailles and to have the United States join the League of Nations, which the Senate wisely failed to do. Near the end of the tour, the discouraged president made a speech in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 5, 1919, wherein he abandoned his lofty statements and confessed to the American people what the real purpose of the war had been:

Why, my fellow-citizens, is there any man here, or any woman—let me say, is there any child here, who does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry? . . . This war, in its inception, was a commercial and industrial war. It was not a political war.[52]

The complete injustice of the Treaty of Versailles is a story that most British and American historians refuse to tell and one that very few of the American and British public know. In fact, the modern liberal line today, which is completely fallacious, is that World War II resulted mainly from the failure of the U.S. Senate to ratify the treaty and the failure of America to join the League of Nations. However, the true story of the Versailles treaty is very different and teaches an important lesson of history as we shall see.

President Wilson, after injecting America into World War I, promised the Germans that a peace treaty would be effected with America as the leader of the conference and that the terms would be equitable and would not demand punitive war payments from Germany. The treaty, he promised, would allow self-determination for people throughout Europe so they could select their own governments. America, France, and the British entered into a pre-armistice agreement with Germany on November 5, 1918, with America and its Allies agreeing to make peace on the basis of President Wilson’s famous Fourteen Points.[53] This promise proved to be fraudulent, and instead, a vindictive treaty was forced on Germany. A.J.P. Taylor describes the coercive measures, applied primarily by the British:

There were other measures of coercion than the renewal of the war and occupation of German territory. These measures were economic—some form of the blockade which was believed to have contributed decisively to Germany’s defeat. The blockade helped push the German government into accepting the peace treaty in June, 1919. . . . The negotiations between Germany and the Allies became a competition in blackmail, sensational episodes in a gangster film. The Allies, or some of them, threatened to choke Germany to death.[54]

After the signing of the formal armistice on November 11, 1918, the fighting stopped, but the British blockade of Germany continued, thereby causing the death by starvation of eight hundred thousand Germans, and resulting in a much-justified hatred of the Allies.[55] It was mainly the continuation of this naval blockade for six months after the war ended that forced the Germans into signing the unfair treaty.

The Treaty of Versailles divested Germany of its colonial possessions, allowing the British to expand their control in Africa to fulfill Cecil Rhodes’s dream of an all-British route from Cairo to the Cape by taking the German colonies under the “mandate” in 1919. Most important, from a future political standpoint, it deprived Germany of any military defense by reducing the maximum number of its armed forces to only one hundred thousand men, which could hardly defend Germany from its traditionally hostile neighbors, especially the French and now Soviet Russia. The treaty prohibited Germany from having any airplanes, submarines, heavy artillery, or tanks. Germany had scuttled its own high-seas fleet under the waters of Scapa Flow to prevent its capture while the British retained the world’s largest navy. The French, through the treaty, required the demilitarization of the Rhineland west of the bank of the Rhine which bordered on France, thereby keeping an open, undefended access to Germany’s industrial heart in the Ruhr. France also maintained on Germany’s border a great army, which was considered one of the world’s finest.[56] In complete violation of Wilson’s Fourteen Points, which called for self-determination, more than three million Germans were forcibly included in the country of Czechoslovakia and six million in Austria.[57] Furthermore, the treaty saddled Germany with the complete war guilt by branding her as the country that started the war, a conclusion which she did not agree with or accept.[58] Another great injustice done to Germany in the treaty is the one that became the immediate cause of World War II. The treaty carved a wide path, or “corridor,” through Germany from Poland to the German seaport city of Danzig, the strip of land that was taken from Germany in order to give Poland an outlet to the sea. The corridor completely separated East Prussia from the remainder of Germany, and the League of Nations took over the government of Danzig, declaring it a “Free City.” Half a million German citizens within Danzig and the corridor suddenly became subject to the government of Poland, in complete violation of Wilson’s promise of self-determination.[59] Finally, another great injustice was the creation of the huge debt for reparation payments or damages caused to the Allies, which was imposed on Germany in complete violation of Wilson’s promises and the pre-armistice agreement. William Engdahl states:

In May 1921, the Allied Reparations Committee met and drew up what was called the London Ultimatum, the “final” payments plan demanded of Germany. It fixed Germany’s Reparations Debt to the victorious Allies at the astronomical sum of 132 billion gold Marks, an amount which even British reparations expert, John Maynard Keynes, said was more than 3 times the maximum which Germany could possibly pay.[60]

Taylor comments about the reparation payments, which lasted for thirteen years, from 1919 to 1932: At the end the French felt swindled; and the Germans felt robbed. Reparations had kept the passions of war alive.”[61] He comments further: “Reparations counted as a symbol. They created resentment, suspicion, and international hostility. More than anything else, they cleared the way for the second World war.”[62]

Germany had been totally betrayed by America and the Allies in the peace negotiations. Delegate Bullitt commented upon the German reaction to the treaty:

The Treaty of Versailles was delivered to the Germans on May 7, [1919]. The President of the National Assembly at Weimar, upon reading it, remarked, “it is incomprehensible that a man who had promised the world a peace of justice, upon which a society of nations would be founded has been able to assist in framing this project dictated by hate.” The first German official comment on the treaty was made on May 10, 1919. It stated that a first perusal of the treaty revealed that “on essential points the basis of the Peace of Right, agreed upon between the belligerents, has been abandoned,” that some of the demands were such as “no nation could endure” and that “many of them could not possibly be carried out.”[63]

Many of Wilson’s advisers told him not to participate any further in the treaty negotiations and advised him to use his financial leverage over France and England to cause them not to enforce such a vindictive treaty against Germany. Wilson refused and continued to state publicly that he thought the treaty would be revised later by the League of Nations in order to make it fair.[64] Bullitt recounts that Wilson stated to Professor William E. Dodd later, “I ought not to have signed; but what could I do?” Bullitt then concludes, “He [Wilson] seems to have realized at times that the treaty was in truth a sentence of death for European civilization.”[65]

William Bullitt resigned from the Paris Peace Conference and wrote a letter of resignation to President Wilson dated May 17, 1919, which contained the following statement:

But our government has consented now to deliver the suffering peoples of the world to new oppressions, subjections, and dismemberments—a new century of war. And I can convince myself no longer that effective labor for “a new world order” is possible as a servant of this Government.[66]

Delegate Bullitt went on to state that this treaty would:

[M]ake new international conflicts certain. It is my conviction that the present League of Nations will be powerless to prevent these wars, and that the United States would be involved in them by obligations undertaken in the covenant of the league and in the special understanding with France. Therefore the duty of the Government of the United States to its own people and to mankind is to refuse to sign or ratify this unjust treaty, to refuse to guarantee its settlements by entering the League of Nations, to refuse to entangle the United States further by the understanding with France.[67]

The Treaty of Versailles destroyed Germany’s form of government, again violating Wilson’s promise of self-determination, and created instead the puppet-like democratic Weimar Republic, which virtually assured continued political convulsions within Germany itself. This unpopular government, which was enforcing the treaty against Germany’s interests, was finally overthrown by Hitler’s murderous Nazi movement, which won its power through the democratic and constitutional process with two main commitments: to fight communism and to end the unfair and vindictive treaty. Although the payments stopped in 1932, just before Hitler took office in 1933, the injustice of the payments had been a major part of his campaign. He continued to campaign against the remainder of the treaty after taking office and stated: “My programme was to abolish the Treaty of Versailles. . . . No human being has declared or recorded what he wanted more often than I. Again and again I wrote these words—the Abolition of the Treaty of Versailles.”[68] After gaining power, Hitler repeatedly petitioned the Allies to revise the treaty either to allow Germany to restore at least the equality of defense in military personnel and equipment with the other nations or to call for total disarmament by everyone. The Allies refused both offers.[69] Hitler then acted unilaterally to keep his promise to the German people by disregarding the treaty’s limitations on Germany’s defense and he rearmed Germany, first only to an adequate defensive position.

Hitler made one peace offer in 1936 that would have provided European security for the British and the French. He offered to agree that there would be no territorial claims in Europe, thereby accepting the German losses of territory in the treaty. He even proposed a twenty-five-year pact of nonaggression with all Western powers except Russia. Hitler had always maintained that the only war he wanted was with communism and Soviet Russia. In response to this peace offer, the British asked a few questions for further definitions but then refused to reply, and the French never replied at all.[70] A.J.P. Taylor comments on Hitler’s foreign policy as follows:

There was one element of system in Hitler’s foreign policy, though it was not new. His outlook was “continental,” as Stresemann’s had been before him. Hitler did not attempt to revive the “World Policy” which Germany had pursued before 1914; he made no plans for a great battle-fleet; he did not parade a grievance over the lost colonies, except as a device for embarrassing the British; he was not even interested in the Middle East—hence his blindness to the great opportunity in 1940 after the defeat of France. . . . He did not wish to destroy the British Empire, nor even to deprive the French of Alsace and Lorraine. In return, he wanted the Allies to accept the verdict of January 1918; to abandon the artificial undoing of this verdict after November 1918; and to acknowledge that Germany had been victorious in the East. This was not a preposterous program. Many Englishmen, to say nothing of Milner and Smuts,[71] agreed with it even in 1918; many more did so later; and most Frenchmen were coming round to the same outlook.[72]

There has been much criticism of the Munich Pact as appeasement, but Taylor comments:

Only those who wanted Soviet Russia to take the place of Germany are entitled to condemn the “appeasers”; and I cannot understand how most of those who condemn them are now equally indignant at the inevitable result of their failure.[73]

Britain’s reason for appeasement was primarily caused by the sense of guilt on the part of the political and economic interests identified by Rothbard and Quigley as the British portion of the Anglo-American Establishment, because they were the principal authors and beneficiaries of the unfair Versailles treaty. This British group, usually called the Milner Group, negotiated the treaty and virtually controlled British foreign policy during World War I and thereafter. They were willing for Hitler to set aside much of the treaty on a piecemeal basis, which would allow Germany to reclaim certain territory in Europe. However, the Milner Group would not give up its economic gains received through the treaty. These British leaders especially wanted Hitler to rearm to a sufficient extent so that he could prevent Russian Communism from taking over Europe, but they wanted it done unilaterally by Hitler without their specific agreement, because that might reflect badly on their “wisdom” in negotiating the original treaty.

The real irony of the beginning of World War II is that it started over Danzig and the Polish Corridor question, which both the British and French political leaders found to be the most indefensible part of the treaty and one which most needed to be revised peacefully. Hitler made numerous offers to the Allies and to Poland for settlement of the corridor question, one being to take Danzig back and letting the people inside the corridor remain subjects of the Polish government. Another offer was to let the people within the corridor vote on which government they wanted. The British and the French, who were formal allies of Poland, pushed the Poles to accept these offers from Hitler.[74] Britain and France also requested that President Roosevelt push the Poles to accept Hitler’s offers, but Roosevelt refused even to discuss the matter with Poland’s representatives.[75] The Polish government arrogantly refused even to reply to these offers, and Hitler finally attacked Poland on September 1, 1939. Because of their treaty obligations, France and England then declared war against Germany on September 3 but refused to assist Poland in any way. Hitler had not expected the British and French to go to war over a treaty provision that they knew and declared to him to be completely unfair to Germany and to her people located in Danzig and the corridor. Taylor comments on this irony:

In this curious way the French who had preached resistance to Germany for twenty years appeared to be dragged into war by the British who for twenty years preached conciliation. Both countries went to war for that part of the peace settlement which they had long regarded as least defensible. . . .

Such were the origins of the second World war, or rather the war between the three Western Powers over the settlement of Versailles; a war which had been implicit since the moment when the first war ended. . . . Great Britain and France did nothing to help the Poles, and little to help themselves. The European struggle which began in 1918 when the German armistice delegates presented themselves before Foch in the railway-carriage at Rethondes, ended in 1940 when the French armistice delegates presented themselves before Hitler in the same carriage. There was a “new order” in Europe; it was dominated by Germany.[76]

It is both ironic and noteworthy that Germany and Soviet Russia attacked Poland in September 1939 but that France and England only declared war against Germany while the Soviets became the allies of Britain and America thereafter. The final irony at the end of World War II was that Poland was not saved from tyranny at all but was simply transferred from German domination to that of Soviet Russia.

The French and British war on Germany was called “the phony war” because there was little activity on either side. However, in April and May of 1940, the Germans shocked the world by defeating the French in about thirty-five days of combat and drove an Allied army of 335,000 men, who were mostly British, to the beach at Dunkirk where they were hopelessly trapped.[77] Hitler gave orders to allow the helpless British army to escape in order to demonstrate dramatically that he had no quarrel with the British and desperately wanted to negotiate a treaty with them. He thought that a massacre at Dunkirk would inflame British public opinion and preclude a settlement with them. However, Winston Churchill became prime minister on May 10, 1940, and not only did he refuse to negotiate, but he immediately initiated bombing raids on German cities and civilians. War propaganda by the Allies, including America, has always stated that Hitler started the bombing of cities with his attack on the British city of Coventry, but the records now clearly indicate that Churchill initiated this.[78] Taylor, the British historian, comments on this propaganda by stating that there was “almost universal belief that Hitler started the indiscriminate bombing of civilians, whereas it was started by the directors of British strategy, as some of the more honest among them have boasted.”[79] During the summer of 1940, after the bombing of civilians in German cities by the British, Hitler again tried desperately to reach a settlement with Churchill, but Churchill flatly refused to negotiate. It was not until November 1940 that Hitler retaliated by bombing British civilians and cities that were not military targets, such as Coventry.[80]

Therefore, we see that one of the main causes of World War II in Europe was the vindictive Versailles treaty and the failure of the Allies to revise it peacefully in the interim period between the wars. However, the Allies continued their parade of injustice at the Nuremberg war trials after World War II. One of the charges contained in count two was “crimes against peace,” which was interpreted to mean that Germany had violated the Versailles peace treaty. The initial unfairness of the treaty was considered irrelevant and inadmissible testimony; this effectively prevented Germany from explaining any of her actions from 1919 to 1939, and prohibited her from showing the attempts to revise the treaty peacefully. At the trials, the Allies made it appear that Germany was simply an unprovoked aggressor against the peaceful powers of Europe, just as the war guilt clause of the Versailles treaty branded the Germans with sole responsibility for the outbreak of World War I.

None of this explanation for the cause of World War II should absolve Hitler for his murderous domestic policy. As Taylor points out, it was not Hitler’s foreign policy that was evil; in fact, it was understandable and just, up to a point. Instead, it was Hitler’s evil domestic policy, which resulted in the deaths of twenty-one million innocent, unarmed men, women, and children killed during the war after Hitler had taken total control of the German government. Although Hitler achieved his office in a democratic and constitutional manner by promising to revise the Versailles treaty and oppose communism, after he obtained office, he went beyond Bismarck’s consolidation of the states into a nation by abolishing all the states and creating a strong, totalitarian government. He finally declared himself dictator. As Taylor states:

He changed most things in Germany. He destroyed political freedom and the rule of law; he transformed German economics and finance; he quarrelled with the Churches; he abolished the separate states and made Germany for the first time a united country. In one sphere alone he changed nothing. His foreign policy was that of his predecessors, of the professional diplomats at the foreign ministry, and indeed of virtually of all Germans. Hitler, too, wanted to free Germany from the restrictions of the peace treaty; to restore a great German army; and then make Germany the greatest power in Europe from her natural weight.[81]

Hitler’s domestic policy, however, was again proof of Lord Acton’s famous phrase, “All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” There is no question that Hitler ranks as one of the most evil murderers in all history, but he still ranks third behind Soviet Russia’s Stalin and Mao of Communist China. Stalin was personally responsible for more than forty-two million murders of innocent men, women, and children from 1929 to 1953, and the Soviet Empire itself ranks as the greatest political tyranny the world has ever known, with a total of sixty-two million murders of its own citizens from 1917 until 1987.[82] Mao ranks number two behind Stalin because as the Chinese dictator from 1923 to 1976, he murdered more than thirty-seven million of his own people.[83] One of the bizarre results of World War II was that it enhanced the two great Communist powers of Russia and China and destroyed the three most anticommunist governments: Germany, Japan, and Italy. World War II made the world much safer for communism and, thereby, more at risk to tyranny.

Finally, in regard to World War I and America’s intervention, it is important to note that two of the key players in that war were also important figures in World War II. Franklin Roosevelt served in the Wilson administration as assistant secretary of Navy, and Winston Churchill played a much more significant role in the British government as the first lord of the Admiralty. Churchill’s role in the Lusitania incident is remarkable, and this event became one of the major “reasons” Wilson used to bring America into World War I.

Just prior to World War I, the Cunard steamship company in England had received a government subsidy in order to build the Lusitania, which was the world’s fastest ocean liner. This subsidy allowed the government to participate in the design of the ship, which included a secret compartment where weapons and ammunition could be stored aboard ship. This subsidy further allowed the British government to take over full control of this ship during wartime. Colin Simpson, in his explosive 1972 best-seller, The Lusitania, gives the details of how the British, primarily through the actions of Churchill, used the sinking of the Lusitania to bring America into World War I to help defeat Germany.[84] When the Lusitania sank, more than one hundred Americans lost their lives.[85] On this fateful voyage, the British Admiralty, under Churchill’s leadership, changed captains, substituting Captain William Turner for the usual captain. As the Lusitania drew near to its final destination, orders came from the British Admiralty to the military escort ship, the Juno, to abandon its usual mission, thereby leaving the ocean liner without protection from submarines. The Lusitania was not told that it was now alone, nor was it told that a German submarine was directly in its path—a fact known by the Admiralty. Finally, the Admiralty ordered Captain Turner to reduce his speed, thereby making the Lusitania an easy target for torpedoes.

At the hearing held in England following this disaster, Captain Turner was made the scapegoat and found guilty of negligence, just as the American commanders at Pearl Harbor would later be made scapegoats for that disaster in World War II.