Although it is wasn’t until the Pearl Harbor attacks of Dec 8, 1941, that the United States got involved in World War II, there were many more social and economic forces that were responsible for this second world war. The basic causes of World War II were the nationalistic tensions, unresolved issues, and resentments resulting from the First World War and the interwar period in Europe, plus the ineffective reaction of the Roosevelt administration to the aggressive expansion of the Empire of Japan in the Far East in the 1930s. These are just a few of the reasons World War II occurred, but in this short paper I hope to examine more.
“World War One and its immediate aftermath drew the belligerents out of the world economy and toward the war effort and pulled the United States into the resultant vacuum” (Frieden, p.129). After World War I, the world was a chaotic muddle of unresolved issues including international distrust, resented economic hardship, and repressed feelings. Political conditions that existed after World War One created a tense atmosphere filled with international distrust, and aggression. Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended the war, did little to address the unresolved issues and actually promoted international distrust and resentment. Harsh economic conditions devastated millions of people in Europe and around the globe. Strong feelings of resentment, guilt, and fierce anger plagued the disillusioned citizens of the countries involved, and overrode thoughts of reason in much of the world. At the conclusion of World War I, the German people resented that they were blamed entirely for the war and were required by the Treaty of Versailles to pay for the war effort. They felt they had been stripped of their pride and honor.
After World War I Europe tried to rebuild, but this was very close to impossible. Central and eastern Europe was in the most severe of disarray. “The postwar inflations were not the gradual price increases of...