Was Hitler Responsible For WWII?

There are a lot of opinions on how the Second World War started, one of them being “Adolf Hitler is solely responsible for the second world war” that view might not take into account all historical information. Adolf Hitler is not solely responsible. For Hitler to be “solely responsible” he would have to be the only factor causing WWII to happen, however this is incorrect. Hitler may be the main contributor to WWII but there were many other factors that brought it to reality. These factors include The Treaty of Versailles and the weaknesses of the League of Nations. (M.Anderson et al, 2014).

The Treaty of Versailles was a peace treaty made to bring peace to Europe and to get revenge against Germany so they wouldn’t start another war(UA, 2014).

The terms of the treaty consisted of Germany only being allowed to have a small army of 100 000 men, loss of land, having to pay reparations of £6600 million and taking the blame for WWI (M.Anderson et al, 2014). Germany didn’t agree with this and didn’t want to succumb to The Allies. However, The Allies threatened to invade Germany if they didn’t sign the Treaty, they were forced to do so (UA, 2011). The Treaty of Versailles was signed by Germany on the 28th of June 1919 (UA, 2014). The Terms were Harsh but they didn’t seem harsh enough to render Germany useless to cause war. Still, If the terms were too severe it could have made Germany unable to restore itself to its former health (UA, 2011). The Treaty took away most of Germany’s means of production, their land and their jobs; The United States became the most powerful and influential country for production because Germany couldn’t keep up to it’s usual production rates. However, when the US’ Stock market crashed in 1929 it made the situation for

Hitler took over the Nazi Party in 1921 and worked really hard to gain more members. In 1925 there were only 25,000 members in the Nazi Party but by 1929 there was 180, 000. This growth was enormous but it got better when the Great Depression occurred in the 1930’s. People were unemployed and hitler used this to his advantage. There were only 800,000 votes in 1928 but by 1932, there were 14 million votes towards the Nazi Party. Late 1932 votes started to drop a little, however this did not stop Hitler from becoming chancellor in 1933.This was a big stepping stone towards WWII (M.G. Abdullah et al, 2014). That same year, in 1933, Hitler took Germany out of the League of Nations. Growth continued and by August 1934 Germany had become a state that consisted of one party; Hitler controlled germany (M.Anderson et al, 2014). Hitler started increasing Germany’s army size and started to begin the production of warships and an air force, this was done against the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles (H. Wheeler, 2014). In 1936 Hitler and the German forces made alliances with both Italy and Japan ((H. Wheeler, 2014). This would further their strength in the war as it would increase resources. Hitler later sent troops, in March 1938, to Austria to take back the land. Austria asked for Britain, France and Italy’s help but none of them gave them any support; both Britain and France were not ready to take action in