Complete history of how World War II began (1918–1939)
1919 Versailles and the seeds of resentment 🕊️
I report from the ruins of one treaty that was meant to secure peace but instead planted the seeds of a future war. The Treaty of Versailles was supposed to close a chapter. Instead it reopened wounds. In the Hall of Mirrors on 28 June 1919, diplomats celebrated victory. For millions outside those gilded windows the celebrations felt like humiliation.
The treaty imposed strict limits on Germany, including reductions in the army to 100,000 men, a ban on tanks, military aircraft and submarines, and the transfer of territory that had been sources of national pride. The infamous Article 231 held Germany responsible for the war and set the stage for punitive reparations. Those reparations drained public coffers and fed political rage.
"This is not a treaty. It is a death sentence."
That was the reaction of a German delegate when handed the text. The line captures a political truth: when a peace settlement is perceived as vindictive, it becomes a political rallying point rather than a foundation for reconciliation. For a defeated nation, defeat felt like betrayal. Many veterans came home without jobs or dignity and found easy answers in national myths and conspiracy theories.
By the time the 1920s began, Germany lived with shortages, food queues, social unrest, and growing political violence. The blockades and shortages had created bitterness. The common thread through the decade was humiliation transformed into a demand for revenge. That shift, more than any single policy, changed the political landscape of Europe.
The Weimar crisis and the rise of extremism ⚠️
I cover the chaotic years of the Weimar Republic and report a society in chronic crisis. The Republic was fragile from the start. It was attacked from the left and from the right while its legitimacy was forever tainted by the Versailles label. Radical veterans joined paramilitary formations such as the Freikorps and later, militant political cadres would wear brown or black shirts as their uniforms.
By 1923, hyperinflation destroyed savings and social trust. A loaf of bread cost fortunes in paper currency. Households burned banknotes for warmth because fuel and food were scarce. Then France and Belgium occupied the industrial Ruhr in response to missed reparations payments, inflaming nationalist passions. The state called for passive resistance. Industry stalled. The political center could not contain the extremes.
The political consequences were predictable. Political violence erupted. In January 1920 and again with the Kapp Putsch and the turmoil of left-wing uprisings, streets became battlefields. Democracy looked weak and unreliable. People wanted a new promise: order, dignity, and economic stability. Extremist movements offered simple answers.
That vacuum of confidence is where Adolf Hitler and his movement found traction. He emerged from a failed coup in 1923 not broken but fortified. Prison gave him time to write and refine an ideology that mixed nationalism, racial theory and revenge. The recipe was effective in a country that had come to distrust its institutions and its money. When the global economy collapsed in 1929, mass unemployment and desperation turned political curiosity into mass support for radical solutions.
Hitler's emergence and Nazi consolidation 🔥
I trace how a small agitator became the face of a totalitarian movement. The National Socialist German Workers Party transformed in response to crisis. It was not simply a political party. It was an emotional machine built on propaganda, spectacle, and the creation of enemies. Large rallies, militant street units and a demonized list of internal foes turned politics into theatre.
By the early 1930s the Nazis were not just a force on paper. They were a mass movement with a distinctive brand. In elections they rose rapidly. The 1930 and 1932 electoral cycles made them a major parliamentary force. But their route to power was not strictly electoral success. Conservative elites and the president, fearful of communism, miscalculated.
On 30 January 1933 President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor as part of a bargain designed to contain him. The mistake was fatal. Over the subsequent months a combination of opportunism, violence and legal manipulation eliminated opposition. The Reichstag fire became the pretext for emergency decrees. The Enabling Act removed parliamentary constraints and handed Hitler unchecked authority.
Within a year political parties, trade unions and alternative centers of power were dismantled. The Gestapo infiltrated neighborhoods. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels turned mass media into a tool of mythmaking. The Third Reich was a hybrid of modern bureaucracy and mass spectacle. The economy began to rearm. Youth organizations turned children into disciplined instruments of state ideology. The old Germany, altered by Versailles and wounded by humiliation, seemed restored to pride, but built on a foundation of coercion and lies.
Japan's expansion and the collapse of international order 🌏
My coverage must go beyond Europe. A parallel drama unfolded in East Asia that also reshaped the international environment. Modern Japan had industrialized and aspired to natural resources and strategic depth. It played by rules until it did not. In September 1931 a manufactured incident along the Mukden railway became the pretext for a full scale invasion of Manchuria. Japanese officers crafted a puppet state and moved to secure resources for their industrial ambitions.
The League of Nations reacted with condemnation but no meaningful force. Japan withdrew from the organization in 1933 and showed that international institutions lacked the teeth to enforce collective security. That failure was a signal that would echo in Europe.
In 1937 a new phase began. The Marco Polo Bridge incident unleashed a brutal invasion of China. The capture of Nanking and the massacre that followed exposed a level of brutality that shocked observers. Tens of thousands of civilians were murdered, women were raped and entire communities were destroyed. The world saw the images and read the reports but decisive intervention did not follow.
Japan justified expansion with a doctrine of a Greater East Asia Co Prosperity Sphere presented as liberation from Western imperialism but actually replaced foreign rule with Japanese domination. Each successful act of aggression further eroded confidence in collective security. If the League of Nations could not stop Japan, many rulers elsewhere concluded that rules meant little without enforcement.
Remilitarization of the Rhineland and tests of appeasement ⚔️
I report the crucial moment of 7 March 1936 as a test of will between the republics and a resurgent dictatorship. Germany moved troops into the demilitarized Rhineland. The force was modest, only tens of thousands of soldiers and light artillery, but the political risk was enormous. The Versailles and Locarno treaties prohibited German forces there. France could have answered decisively with a vastly superior force. London could have supported Paris. Both did not.
The reaction in Paris was paralysis. Internal politics, memories of Verdun and the First World War and the economic strains of a depression stopped a military response. Britain viewed German action as a reasonable step toward correcting past grievances. Appeasement became the operative logic. The policy in London and Paris was not merely diplomatic—it became a habit of avoiding confrontation.
That hesitation taught a lesson. Aggression rewarded risk. When ranks of soldiers marched with trumpets and banners the German public celebrated. Propaganda turned the operation into recovery and honor. Hitler tested the resolve of the democracies and found it lacking. From the perspective of Berlin, Versailles had been cracked again. The regime could now openly rearm and take bolder steps knowing that the democratic states would likely blink first.
Spain's civil war, a practice ground for modern war 💣
I examine Spain in 1936 as the continent's battlefield laboratory. The Spanish Civil War quickly became an international proxy conflict. Nationalists under Francisco Franco confronted left wing Republicans. Italy and Germany supported Franco. The Soviet Union supplied arms and advisors to the Republic. Volunteers from across the globe joined International Brigades motivated by ideology and a sense of solidarity.
More than an ideological contest, Spain was a rehearsal. German air power, armored tactics and coordination were refined there. The Condor Legion tested combined arms and terror bombing in civilian areas. April 1937 brought Guernica, a small Basque town turned into an international symbol when aerial bombardment and strafing left civilians dead and ruins smoking. Pablo Picasso’s painting made a moral indictment of modern aerial warfare.
The lesson was grim. Aerial terror could shatter willpower. Combined arms tactics could beat older defensive methods. The democracies watched but restricted themselves to non intervention. That restraint allowed fascist forces to use Spain both as a staging ground and as a training center. By the time Spain fell to Franco, the experiment in violent modernization had been successfully completed for authoritarian regimes.
Anschluss and the dismembering of Czechoslovakia 🗺️
I describe the rapid expansion of the Reich in 1938 as a procession of diplomatic victories with few shots fired. In March 1938 German troops crossed into Austria and were greeted by crowds. Anschluss erased Austrian independence at almost no cost to the aggressor. The lesson for Hitler was clear: bold moves, dramatic gestures and a sympathetic or intimidated public could accomplish what treaties forbade.
Austria was the prelude. The Czech crisis became the major test of international policy. The Sudetenland, home to more than three million ethnic Germans, was the pretext. Hitler framed his demands as protection for German minorities. Behind the rhetoric lay strategic motives. Czechoslovakia was heavily fortified with modern defenses. Taking those border regions would leave Prague exposed and would hand heavy industry into German hands.
The result was the Munich Conference in September 1938. Britain and France met Hitler and Mussolini and approved the transfer of Sudetenland without Czechoslovakia present at the table. Neville Chamberlain returned to Britain with a signed agreement and declared he had achieved peace for our time. The statement was sincere but naive. The decision broke faith with a sovereign ally and displayed once more the limits of appeasement.
Within months the illusion crumbled. In March 1939 German forces occupied the remaining Czech lands. Slovakia became a puppet state. Munich had not satisfied ambitions. Rather it had emboldened them. The final act before war was now in plain sight: the rapid weakening of faith in treaties and the steady willingness of democracies to trade principles for delay.
The Nazi Soviet Pact, betrayal in plain sight 🤝
I explain how a cynical diplomatic bargain sealed the fate of Eastern Europe. On 23 August 1939 Molotov and Ribbentrop signed a pact of non aggression that stunned observers. Hitler and Stalin, sworn ideological enemies, had concluded a deal. The public face was a non aggression treaty. The secret agreed partition of Poland and the division of Baltic states was the real story.
The pact removed the strategic danger of a two front war for Germany and gave Stalin the pretext to secure territories westward. Western attempts to bring Moscow into a security arrangement had been half hearted and slow. Stalin chose pragmatism over ideological purity. The pact was brutal in its logic: two dictators divvied up sovereign territory as if geography were a chessboard.
Internationally the reaction was shock and confusion. Communist parties shifted positions. Propaganda in Germany reinterpreted Bolshevik threat in pragmatic terms. Nobody fully understood at once the scope of cooperation tucked away in secret protocols. But for Poland the message was immediate and clear: the state would face an invasion from west and east with little prospect of rapid relief.
The invasion of Poland and the outbreak of general war 🚨
I write about the morning when war began to sweep Europe. 1 September 1939 started with an act of naval bombardment. The Schleswig Holstein opened fire on Westerplatte in the Free City of Danzig. That shot was the signal for a larger, coordinated assault. Fall Weiss was put into motion: a rapid, mechanized invasion designed to defeat Poland before the Allies could effectively intervene.
German forces used a doctrine of blitzkrieg. Tanks punched through weak points, motorized infantry filled the gaps, and the Luftwaffe shattered defenses from the air. The tactic was designed to collapse not just armies but will. Polish cavalry and soldiers fought bravely but were not equipped to counter mechanized and aerial firepower at scale.
On 3 September Britain and France honored their guarantees and declared war. That declaration made the conflict formally worldwide. But declarations are not the same as defensive action. In the weeks that followed the western front remained strangely inert. The Sitzkrieg, or phoney war, underscored the gap between rhetoric and military initiative.
Poland was also betrayed from the east. On 17 September Soviet forces invaded in line with the secret protocols and occupied territory allocated to them. Poland was squeezed between two totalitarian states. The result was catastrophic. Cities fell, resistance was crushed, and the occupiers began brutal repressions. Poland ceased to exist as an independent actor by the end of September.
The declarations of war and the strange lull of the Sitzkrieg ⏰
I examine the paradox of a declared war that did not immediately become total fighting in the west. Britain and France had declared war but they did not launch major offensive operations to relieve Poland. Instead the period until May 1940 became a tense waiting game. Troops dug in, supplied lines were organized and militaries prepared plans. But decisive action did not occur.
France invested in the Maginot Line, a vast system of defenses designed to prevent a modern invasion. It was an expensive and defensive posture. Britain sent the expeditionary force across the Channel. Naval blockades resumed and submarine warfare began again. The Atlantic turned into an early battleground. But in ground operations the front stayed quiet until spring 1940.
That lull allowed Germany to regroup, to reassign forces and to refine its plans. In May 1940 those plans would become devastatingly effective. German forces would go through the Ardennes and bypass the Maginot defenses, cutting through to the English Channel and enacting the rapid collapse of France. The calm months were a deceptive silence. The war had merely paused for a breath before roaring into life.
Lessons and final thoughts 🧭
I emphasize the structural lessons of the two decades that led to war. The path from 1918 to 1939 is not a tale of inevitability. It is a report of cumulative failures: punitive peace, economic collapse, political fragmentation, the normalization of violence and the erosion of institutions designed to manage interstate conflict.
Several themes stand out:
- Punitive settlements create politics of grievance. When a peace looks like punishment it breeds revisionism and revanchism.
- Economic crisis undermines legitimacy. Hyperinflation, unemployment and depression make radical solutions attractive.
- Appeasement rewards risk. Repeated concessions signal weakness and invite escalation.
- International institutions without enforcement are fragile. The League of Nations lacked coercive instruments to stop aggression.
- War modernized quickly. Spain showed how air power and combined arms could terrorize civilian populations long before Europe fully entered total war.
- Realpolitik can create unstable coalitions. The Nazi Soviet Pact is a reminder that ideology can be subordinated to short term strategic gain with catastrophic human consequences.
Beyond the lessons, there is a moral dimension. Each diplomatic compromise, each public silence, each economic shock, and each act of brutality left scars. Those scars shaped decisions and perceptions. A series of misjudgments by leaders and institutions became amplified by mass mobilization, ideology and technology. The result was a conflagration that engulfed the globe.
Reporting on this history I am struck by how often normal political tools were used for abnormal ends. Law, diplomacy and public opinion can restrain aggression, but only when backed by credible will. The absence of that will in the 1930s allowed dictators to test boundaries, to probe defenses, and to learn. When they were finally stopped, the cost was staggering.
Seventy five years of scholarship since the events have sharpened our understanding but the core pattern remains chilling. Punitive settlements, economic collapse, political radicalization and failures of deterrence can happen again if institutions and leaders do not learn the right lessons.
Closing dispatch
I leave this report with a simple charge: understanding this trajectory is not merely a matter of recording dates and events. It is about recognizing how political economies and collective decisions produce outcomes. If I can name one responsibility for readers today it is this: respect the limits of vengeance, insist on institutions that can enforce justice, and maintain the credible will to defend those institutions. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is the presence of order that is fair and enforceable.
