The Road to World War II

The Treaty of Versailles was supposed to make the world safe. Twenty years later, it was kindling.

Between 1933 and 1939, Adolf Hitler systematically dismantled the post-World War I order. He rearmed Germany, remilitarized the Rhineland, absorbed Austria, carved up Czechoslovakia, and finally invaded Poland, all while the democracies of Western Europe watched, protested, and did nothing effective to stop him. This was not inevitable. At every stage, different choices by different leaders might have produced different outcomes. But the choices that were actually made, driven by fear, exhaustion, miscalculation, and genuine moral anguish, led to the most destructive war in human history.

The story of the 1930s is not simply a story of a dictator grabbing territory. It is a story about what happens when the states responsible for maintaining international order lack the will to enforce it. The League of Nations had no army. France had no stomach for another war. Britain convinced itself that reasonable concessions could satisfy an unreasonable man. The Soviet Union, distrusted by everyone, cut its own deal. And the United States retreated behind its oceans and pretended the world was not its problem.