The Origins of the Second World War: Historical Interpretations PDF
Preview The Origins of the Second World War: Historical Interpretations
The Origins of the Second World War The Origins of the Second World War Historical interpretations edited by E. M. ROBERTSON Selection and editorial matter© E. M. Robertson •97• All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. First published I97I by MACMILLAN AND CO LTD London and Basingstoke Associated companies in New Y01·k Toronto Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras Library of Congress catalog card no. 7~-u3636 ISBN 978-0-333-11461-2 ISBN 978-1-349-15416-6 (eBook) DOl 10.1007/978-1-349-15416-6 The Papermac edition of thia book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior conaent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Contents Acknowledgements vii lntroducton: World War II: The His torians and their Materials E. M. Robertson The Historiography of World War II 36 T. Desmond Williams 2 The Conquest of the Past: Some Recent German Books on the Third Reich 65 ]ames ]oll 3 A. J. P. Taylor, Hitler and the War H. R. Trevor-Roper 4 (a) How to Quote: Exercises for Beginners 100 A.]. P. Taylor (b) A Reply 102 H. R. Trevor-Roper 5 Some Origins of the Second World War 105 T. W.Mason 6 War Origins Again 136 A.]. P. Taylor 7 Critics of the Taylor View of History 142 C. Robert Cole 8 Hitler and the Origins of the Second World War: Second Thoughts on the Status of Some of the Documents 158 H. W.Koch 9 Hitler and the Origins of the Second World War 189 Alan Bullock vi Contents 10 Document: The Secret Laval-Mussolini Agreement of 1935 on Ethiopia .U5 D. C. Watt 11 Japanese Imperialism and Aggression: Re- considerations, II 243 Akira lriye u Japan's Foreign Policies between World Wars: Sources and Interpretations ll6ll Akira Iriye 13 Pearl Harbor and the Revisionists 272 Robert H. Ferrell · Notes on Contributors 293 Select Bibliography 295 ~~ ~ Acknowledgements Acknowledgements are due to the editors of the follow ing publications for permission to re.Publish the articles included in this volume: The Htstorian; Historical Studies (Proceedings of the Irish Historical Confer ences); International Affairs; Encounter; Past and Present; The Wiener Library Bulletin; The Historical Journal; Proceedings of the British Academy; The Middle East Journal; The Journal of Asian Studies. I am grcady indebted to Dr H. W. Koch, who is editing a similar volume to this one on the causes of the Second World War, and to Messrs Owen Dudley Edwards and Victor Kiernan for most valuable sug gestions; to Mr Colin Davies, Miss A. Jill R. Mcintyre and Dr H. Graml for the patient help in the editorial work. I owe a great deal to the stimulus provided by my students, who read as their special subject The Rome-Berlin Axis and the Destruction of Collective Security, and to my wife, who has encouraged me throughout. Introduction: World War II: The Historians and their Materials E. M. Robertson So much of European history is taken up with wars that we tend to concentrate on the destructive aspects of human life. Indeed, Professor Geoffrey Barraclough tells us that we should stop talking about the causes of wars and revolutions altogether and tum to their effects. Perhaps future historians, Barraclough main tains, will regard the two world wars as negative phenomena, which provided the peoples of Africa and Asia with an opportunity of asserting their own emerg ing culture ana national identity. Barraclough is cer tainly right in maintaining that we should judge the negative aspects of human life in terms of the positive, and it has not evaded his notice that the effect of one conflict is frequently the cause of a second.1 The con clusion to be drawn is that World War I may have been European in its theatre of action, world-wide in its effects; World War II was world-wide in both re spects. There is another Euro-centric approach to the relationship of the two wars to each other. They are only separated by twenty-one years, and since the lead ing protagonist in both was Germany it is sometimes assumed that the second war was a continuation of the first. 'Germany', according to A. J. P. Taylor, '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. .. .'3 The two wars were, however, regarded as entirely different by those who experienced them. The men who fought in the trenches of the first were so horror- E. M. Robertson struck by the human misery that it took much per suasion to get them to read books about the course of military operations. To recapture men's feelings, above all in Anglo-Saxon countries in the inter-war years, we are often told to shut our books and see films. Such famous productions as War is Hell, All Quiet on the Western Front were intended to preserve memories of the horrors of war and so, it was hoped, prevent future wars. But even an excellent series of contemporary films are no substitute for real documents. Private letters, written by men at the front, convey a far more harrowing impression of the fighting. Where else could we learn of expressions such as 'gun headache' except from such letters? There must be thousands of them (unread) in this country today. Very different was the public reaction after 1945· The British wished to know why they nearly lost; the Germans why Hitler came to power. Today it is far less easy to write about one of the wars and its causes without contrasting it with the other. They both formed part of a developing world crisis. After 1918 interest centred on the events which led to the outbreak of hostilities, and there was a good market for books on pre-1914 diplomacy. Historians were on the whole well served by government depart ments. Trotsky opened the sluice-gates by publishing the letters exchanged between William II and Nicholas II, the so-called Willy-Nicky correspondence. He also pul;>lished the treaties of alliance concluded be tween Russia and her allies. Trotsky's lead was taken up by the German Social Democrat leader, Eisner, and even Kautsky, who wished to discredit the Kaiser's foreign policy. But there were also German politicians who set out to discredit the allies. During the negotia tions for the Treaty of Versailles members of the Ger man delegation felt that Getmany's name had to be cleared. They proposed that a team of neutral his torians should mvestigate the causes of the war. The request was rejected. Henceforward, moderate German nationalists were convinced that a thorough study of the documents on the origins of the war would not Introduction 3 only expose allied propaganda, but prove that article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles by which Germany and her allies accepted the 'entire' responsibility for caus ing the war, was vicious. The Germans, under Thimme, worked hard on the publication of these documents, and by 19.116 some fifty-four tomes of Die Grosse Politik were published.3 Since the Germans were well ahead with their official publications, most of the early works on war origins were either Germano centric or pro-German. S. B. Fay's books, which were sympathetic to the Central Powers, were translated into German, but not the more critical writings of Bernadotte Schmitt and later those of L. Albertini.~ Hence, the historical picture of Germany in the critical years before Hitler came to power was favourable. For political reasons the publication of the British documents was much slower." Official policy before 1914 had been opposed by the more radical liberals, one of whose leading exponents, the late G. P. Gooch, claimed that the Boer War, which he opposed, forced him to turn from the history of ideas to that of foreign policy. Very courageously he had written a criticism of Grey's foreign policy as early as 1917.6 After the war, he and Harold Temperley, two men of conflicting political leanings, were commissioned to publish the British documents. But there was much less co-opera tion between the government and historians in Great Britain than in Germany. Gooch and Temperley con stantly had to threaten resignation if their work was tampered with. The final volume of the thirteen that .they edited was only published in 1938 by which time interest was focused on more recent events. Largely as a result of the publications on war origins civil servants and politicians in Britain knew that his torians were on their trail. The myth of unanimity of the Cabinet, anonymity of the Civil Service, had to be preserved: hence, a protective cover was found (even tually in the fifty-year rule). There was also, and still is, a tendency in this country not to file important docu ments but to bum them. One wonders how much material on the Suez Crisis has been allowed to survive.
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