The country that took the initiative for another world war was Germany, but because the regime that did so for novel reasons acted in a world in which others had started wars of their own, something has to be said about the latter. Furthermore, Russia, which had played a major role in the war in spite of military defeats, had collapsed internally, been taken over by the Bolsheviks, and was more interested in upsetting than maintaining the peace. The country most strengthened by the war had shoved the burden of keeping the peace on the countries most weakened by it. Both had been terribly damaged by the war and found themselves abandoned by the United States, which had helped save them from defeat in 1918, had participated in the writing of the peace treaties, but had then turned its back on the settlement. This situation especially affected the nominal victors, France and Great Britain. This horror, on the other hand, could favor a country determined on war by restraining those who in their revulsion at war had disarmed, were reluctant to rearm, and believed that almost any sacrifices these actions entailed were likely to be less than those a new conflict would exact. On the one hand, that memory led many to have such a horror of military conflict that they shrank from the very idea. The maintenance of peace in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s was both strengthened and weakened by the memory of the costs of World War I. BACKGROUND THE WIDENING CONFLICT THE TIDE TURNS ALLIED VICTORY CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY
0 kommentar(er)
