Political, Social, and Economics Factors
The various nations involved in World War II all maintained fairly distinct political, social, and economic justification for entering into and engaging in the conflict. Taylor (1961) provides a detailed analysis of the multiple factors that combined to facilitate war, though he makes not of the fact that ômost wars begin raggedlyö (vii). Indeed, the British date the Second World War from September 3, 1939, the day when England and France jointly declared war on Germany; the Chinese consider the war to have begun on June 22, 1937, while the Russians date the war as having begun on June 22, 1941. The American date, says Taylor (1961), is more sensible: the war became ôtruly world-wideö only after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (vii).
The main point is that the members involved in the conflict date the beginning of WWII as coinciding with their own political, economic and/or social reasons for engaging in it. Most of the combatants in the war would argue that the most significant causes of the war are economic crises, military actions, or political situations that directly impinged upon each individual nation. Thus, Germans might argue that the Treaty of Versailles and its effect on German economic, political, military and social life was the central factor responsible for renewed German militarism and military action (Dahrendorf 1969, 8-15). For the British and the French, GermanyÆs invasion of Poland is generally believed to have necessitated the declaration of war that followed on the heels of this action (Weiss 1969, 201-202). The Americans, of course, would maintain with equal validity that their own participation was mandated by the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, an act of aggression that literally forced American to join in what had been regarded as ôEuropeÆs Warö (Lafore 1970, 45).
In the years preceding the war, all of Europe suffered from the devastation o...