For Dummies...

I have not personally used the 'For Dummies' range before, but I remember that my tutor/history teacher used to like them.

I decided to purchase the World War II for Dummies book, as a) it is a weak area in my subject knowledge, so will undoubtedly serve some use sometime, and b) it has a small amount looking at the causes of WWII which include the rise of Nazism, ect.

Here is a summary;

The War's Beginnings

• WWI left Germany to bear the brunt of the 'victor's vindictive peace agreement.'


• Germany nurse a huge grudge


• The victors were not happy with the outcome either


• The peace agreement created new nations (Poland, Czechoslovakia & Yugoslavia)


• All nations had financial troubles following WWI - recovery came in Europe just before the U.S. market crash in 1929


• The rise of totalitarianism occurred when countries without a strong democracy became susceptible to the promises of stability and order by future tyrants - fledgling democracies gave way to dictatorships & totalitarian rule (Italy = Mussolini & Germany = Hitler)


• Fascism = political ideology in which the state is exalted above all else (freedom doesn't exist, only freedom to serve the state) - Nazism = Fascism, but with the race issue (Nazis believed that race was a fundamental trait and therefore a defining characteristic of a people)


• Hitler consolidated power by eliminating competition/opposition - he used propaganda as a tool to lull the German into believing what he told them was true - 'he had the ability to make the German people believe that by following him down the path to hell, they were fulfilling their destiny for greatness'

The End of One War and the Roots of Another

• Italy left the conference of the Treaty of Versailles because of its lack of spoils
• The League of Nations had little power other than moral indignation, could not control the growing threat of war in the 1930s
• The war changed the diplomatic/economic face of the world, creating instability/mistrust
• The Treaty created more problems than it solved - empty promises & sacrifice
• All involved nations had economic issues

Collapsing Economies: The Great Depression

• American loans were essentially supporting the European economies - with the economic downturn no European nation could provide the financial leadership to halt it
• In the midst of uncertainty, force seemed to be the answer
• Fascism's main ideas - the ruler as an embodiment of the state (supreme leader), the role of the individual (role of the citizen to serve the state), the role of the government (control over all institutions), the role of aggression (advocates violence against opponents)
• Blood & race was peculiar to Nazism - 'certain races are mean to lead and prosper'
• Hitler claimed that the Germans must control, subjugate & eliminate "inferior" races, eradicate liberal & socialist ideas & take their rightful place in the world
• The Germans bought Hitler's ideas of their own greatness after years of hardship & humiliating peace
• Hitler's ideas were based on Mussolini's - he could articulate the common German citizen's misery

Essentially, the start of this book describes how the Weimar Republic was broken & replaced by Hitlers dictatorship