DBQ 21: Causes of World War II Essay Part
Uploaded by jakewitty7 on Mar 08, 2012
In 1939 the world was plunged into another World War. In Europe there was an accumulation of events that brought about the war. During this time many of the people of the “Big Four,” had different views on how to deal with aggression. The war was brought about finally because of the Munich Agreement, and the best response to aggression was collective security.
In 1939 the world was plunged into World War II because of the Munich Agreement. The Munich Agreement was an agreement regarding the Sudetenland Crisis between the major powers of Europe after a conference held in Munich in Germany in 1938. The Sudetenland was an important region of Czechoslovakia that had many german speaking people, and according to the Treaty of Versailles’s rule of National Self Determination, it should be under German leadership because of this. The Treaty of Versailles was the peace treaty created at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 which ended World War I. The Munich Agreement caused many disagreements between European countries.
Collective Security was an effective response to aggression. Winston Churchill, George F. Kennan, A.J.P. Taylor, and Keith Eubank did not agree to this. Churchill disagreed with the decision because “keeping peace depends on holding back the aggressor.” He thought that Europe needed to restrain Germany and that Britain and France together should have guaranteed security of Czechoslovakia. George F. Kennan, an American Secretary of State during the Cold War, spoke in America’s point of view and also disagreed. Kennan stated that the Munich Agreement was a “desperate act of appeasement at the cost of the Czechoslovak state.” A.J.P. Taylor, wrote in The Origins of the Second World War that other countries should have become involved by armed force in 1933 “to overthrow Hitler when he had come to power by constitutional means and was apparently supported by a large majority of the German people.” He also believed the German people were the only ones who could “turn him out,” because they were the ones that put him in power. He also stated that “the ‘appeasers’ feared that the defeat of Germany would be followed by a Russian domination over much of Europe,” which many people did not want. Keith Eubank argued in Origins of World War II that stopping Hitler prior to 1939 was not an issue for several reasons. One reason being that the people and the...