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World Wars: Causes Of World War II

Decent Essays

Ignacio Altamiranda
AP Language and Composition
Mr. Chesbro
11/15/15
Causes of the World Wars World War I and World War II both had devastating effects worldwide, and were major turning points in History. Even today we still feel the impact of these terrible conflicts. These conflicts had many similarities in how they began, but they also had their differences. Europe was dominated by feelings of nationalism in the early 1900s. The German government felt that it was in charge of Europe, mainly because of the enormous growth it had gone through in recent decades. The Germans wanted to continue their growth, and establish colonies. Colonies would supply Germany with the resources needed to maintain their army and give Germany a higher status. However, Britain had control over the ocean and it was not about to let Germany expand and gain more power. Because of …show more content…

As nations grew in power, they were offered territory as appeasement. Most notably Hitler was given Czechoslovakia. Fear of communism made people less critical of him and made some politicians more sympathetic to his demands. Many also thought that the treaty of Versailles had been too harsh on Germany and that it should regain some territory. The British Prime Minister Chamberlain was a strong supporter of this tactic, and he ended up handing Hitler territory and preventing nothing. He believed the only way to prevent a war was to appease Hitler, but he ended up realizing he was incredibly wrong. Nothing even resembling this appeared preceding WWI. The causes of both World Wars were similar in many ways but they also had several key differences. One notable difference was the presence of alliances in World War I, replaced with isolationism in World War II. But even if they had different causes, they both evolved into bloody, drawn out conflicts that took a massive amount of lives, and left their mark on Europe for

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