One Long War?

“The Great War” was fought from 1914 to 1918. But when another major conflict happened from 1939 to 1945, the two events became known as the First World War and the Second World War. As with books or movies, this sounds less like separate wars and more like two parts of the same story. Indeed, many historians argue it was all one long continuous war. Are they right? One way to find out if two events are continuous is to look for continuities—the themes and situations that connect them.

Aggressive nationalism and competing colonial ambitions for empire drove Europeans and Asians to war in the beginning of the twentieth century. When the fighting ended in 1918, many of those ambitions were still present, and nationalism had gotten even more intense. The result was widespread violence until the second war ended in 1945. Let’s explore the continuities of nationalism, empire, and colonialism of this deadly period in history. We’ll also consider the causation that links them.

Continuity: Nationalism

We’ll start with nationalism. Basically, nationalism is when a country and its people think they are better and more important than any other country. It was one of the most important continuities of the First World War and the Second World War because of its growth and prevalence in both conflicts.

In June of 1914, a young Bosnian Serb who opposed the Austro-Hungarian Empire assassinated a key political figure in Sarajevo. This event initiated a series of events that led political leaders in Vienna and Berlin to strengthen alliances in preparation for war. The assassination might have been a surprise, but everyone’s desire to fight was not. Several decades of conflict had created a hostile atmosphere between European leaders. In addition, many of these leaders had big plans beyond Europe. They sought resources and markets to build national wealth by means of imperialism.

The major European states responded quickly to the assassination, believing the war would be short and inexpensive. It was neither. It snowballed into the bloodiest conflict up to that point in world history. Worse still, at the “end” of the war in 1919, the same territorial disputes, diplomatic misunderstandings, and national tensions still remained. The biggest difference was that now 17 million people were dead, another 20 million wounded, and the continent was more unstable. Then came part two, from 1939 to 1945, when another war killed millions more on an even more global scale.

Between the two wars, an important new actor entered the story: Adolf Hitler. About a decade after the 1919 peace treaty, most Germans were hungry, humiliated, and furious at the harsh terms they had to accept. It was no secret that the terms were designed to crush the Germans’ military, industry, and spirit. Germans’ growing resentment toward the European nations that had defeated them was timed perfectly for a charismatic national leader such as Hitler and his Nazi party. The nationalism that had been fostered by German politicians in 1914 was nothing compared to this new and zealous desire to prove Germany’s superiority on the world stage. The Nazis drew on these deep wells of German nationalism.

In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler appealed to and inspired German national pride. He also demanded lebensraum, German for “living space,” for the German people. Twenty years or more before, France, Germany, Russia, and other powers had also had national pride and land as war goals. Some might argue that the Nazi nationalism of the 1930s was more brutal, racist, antisemitic and destructive than the national goals of the states that fought in the First World War. But weren’t both sides promoting a similar vision of the world, one in which their nation was supreme above all others?

Continuity: Empire and colonialism

A second continuity between the two wars was the importance of empire. As industrial, military, and colonial rivalries spread across the globe, so did a dangerous hunger for controlling foreign lands and people as colonies. Many non-Europeans fought for their European colonizers in these wars and millions of them would die. Survivors, both civilian and military, suffered long after the war was over.

One example—of many—is Japan. The Japanese state had a very small empire when it joined an alliance against Germany and Austria-Hungary during the First World War. As a result of being on the winning side, Japan expanded its sphere of influence over China. Its forces also captured the German colonies in Asia, and took control of many Pacific sea lanes (trade routes). Its empire was expanding, but the Japanese economy still wanted more.

In the 1930s, nationalist politics in Japan were turning increasingly toward militarism, totalitarianism, and expansion. A shortage of raw materials in Japan pushed industrialists to demand sources for natural resources— colonies, in other words. These colonies also served as markets where they could sell their goods. To broaden its economic sphere of influence, Japan invaded and occupied China in 1937. The Chinese were treated as conquered colonial subjects. Japanese forces killed some 400,000 Chinese people and raped tens of thousands of women.

One could argue that the German and Italian states during this period were trying to expand their empires as well.
Benito Mussolini rose to be the Fascist dictator of Italy. He declared to his people that he was going to rebuild the Roman Empire for a new Italy. Under his leadership, Italy invaded Albania, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Greece in this attempt to do so. Germany under Nazi rule turned its ambitions mainly toward Eastern Europe, beginning large- scale invasions in 1939. In both cases, most conquered people were treated as colonial subjects.

In 1940, these three expansionist empires signed a pact to pursue their shared goals. In December of 1941, Japan bombed the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The objective was to prevent the American military from interfering with Japan’s imperial goals in Asia. The United States entered the Second World War in response, which was already three years under way in Europe. Four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy declared war on the United States. The European and Pacific conflicts had merged into one.

Causation: German moves

One can also argue that the way the First World War ended and the events of the years immediately following (1919–1928) led to the rise of fascism and the Nazi Party in Germany. Scholars who hold this view focus on the treatment of the German people at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Within the first weeks of the First World War, Germany’s enemies had seized many of its colonies in Africa and the Pacific. After its defeat in 1919, Germany lost the rest of its colonial possessions. Those losses were added to the humiliations of the Treaty of Versailles, the settlement produced by the 1919 conference. Heavy reparations,¹ dismantled industries, and forced disarmament in the wake of defeat meant Germany could never reach world-power status. The victors of the First World War, especially the French government, wanted to punish Germany for its role in starting the war. They also hoped to permanently weaken the German nation so it could never be a threat again. The plan backfired.

This solution, while reasonable to some, ultimately had dangerous consequences for the world. Holding the German people collectively guilty for their leaders’ choices in the First World War left German citizens dejected and humiliated. Their resentment paved the way for an authoritarian state.

Hitler and his Nazi party came to power partly because they harnessed the desperation of German citizens after the First World War. People were also eager to find someone to blame for their losses and humiliation. Opportunistic leaders gained power by channeling widespread prejudice and hatred. They aimed it at Jews, communists, and other groups. Such fear mongering spoke to the hearts of a once proud and powerful nation. The vision of a resurrected Germany inspired great national effort and sacrifice. It also fueled sweeping German victories in the first years of the war.

Yet, Germany and Japan were both defeated in 1945 and so failed to achieve their nationalist dreams. That defeat came at the end of the second phase of this 30-year conflict (1939–1945), but not before the unprecedented loss of more than 70 million lives.

Conclusion

The continuities between the First World War and the Second World War suggest that the unsatisfying conclusion of the first conflict contributed to the second. Remember that the Second World War was even deadlier than the first. There were more deaths in combat, in state-sponsored extermination campaigns, and in soaring death rates of civilians from disease and famine. We can ask ourselves if the end of the First World War was a missed opportunity to create a longer-lasting peace. We can wonder whether the year 1919 was a missed chance to learn to deal more effectively with militarism, nationalism, and imperialism. But historical questions like these should give us pause. Larger questions often loom. Were these continuities a result of the mistakes made by the people who negotiated the end of the First World War? Or did they arise from deeper issues that were not so easily resolved?

Fun fact: “Fascist” is capitalized when referring to the actual National Fascist Party that Mussolini led. Hitler was also a fascist, but there the word is lowercase because it refers to his style of leadership, not the name of his political party. In a fascist state, as Hitler’s Germany would become, strict economic and civic laws can be enacted without a democratic process.

1 In this context, reparations means the money that the defeated owes the victor after a war.