In any case, the starting point of the war is one thing; its causes are another.
Many authors simply identify the war’s causes as irrational militaristic national socialism on Hitler’s part, and as irrational militaristic imperialism on Japan’s part. These explanations seem simplistic, a sort of deus ex machina, and attribute the world’s most horrifying war to mental illness among a very small handful of people.
Reflection will hint at the notion that there must be more to the story. Millions of people aren’t mobilized based on a dozen people’s mental illness. The scores of other nations involved in the conflict didn’t declare war simply because of psychological illness among a tiny number of people.
By analyzing the diplomatic interactions between various nations in the late 1930s, historian A.J.P. Taylor argues that WW2 could have been avoided, had British diplomats taken certain steps. Taylor’s book is controversial — some scholars disagree passionately with Taylor — and the academic study of history generally abstains from counterfactual speculation. Nonetheless, Taylor’s writings are fascinating.
In the final days before the war in Europe began, diplomats were working feverishly to avoid armed conflict. On August 30, 1939, the Nazi government offered a compromise solution to Poland; the disagreement had been over city of Danzig, a German city which the Poles had annexed in the wake of WW1.
The compromise offer extended by Hitler’s government on August 30, called for the Poles to release Danzig to return to Germany, but offered the Poles continued economic rights in the city. The countryside surrounding the city would have a referendum, an election allowing it to decide for itself whether it would stay with Poland or return to German citizenship.
Had Poland even considered the offer — not necessarily accepted it — it would have bought more time for diplomats to seek further compromises and negotiations. But Poland rejected the offer outright.
The grave complicating factor was Britain’s treaty with Poland, signed in early 1939, which guaranteed British support should Poland find itself in a war with the Nazis. Had Britain not signed such a treaty in the first place, or had it found a way out of the treaty in the second place, Poland would have had a motive to find a peaceful solution to the Danzig situation. As it was, Poland felt confident that it could take on the Nazis, and the Soviet Union as Hitler’s ally, because it expected that both France and Britain would defend against Nazi and Soviet attacks on Poland.
In the wake of Poland’s refusal to negotiate, the Nazis declared war on Poland, and military action began on September 1, 1939.
Had the war remained a local conflict between Germany and Poland, it would have been small and brief.
Britain, however, faced a momentous decision: would it abide by its agreement to defend Poland? Would France do the same? The British government briefly considered alternatives, e.g., a negotiated ceasefire with Germany. In the end, Britain declared war on Germany. France did likewise.
French diplomat Georges Bonnet worked, in the very last hours, to stop the declaration of war. He hoped to draw Mussolini, who at the time was not strongly bound to Hitler, to apply pressure on Germany. France, like Britain, was bound by treaty to Poland, and Poland expected the French to launch a major military offensive against Germany’s western border. Such an attack would have diverted German troops from the attack on Poland. But the French had no intention of mounting such an attack.
Bonnet’s frantic, last-minute efforts are chronicled by A.J.P. Taylor:
Yet both the British and French governments, the French especially, went on believing in a conference which had vanished before it was born. Hitler had initially replied to Mussolini that, if invited to a conference, he would give his answer at mid-day on 3 September. Therefore Bonnet, and Chamberlain with him, strove desperately to postpone a declaration of war until after that time, even though the Italians no longer intended to invite Hitler or anyone else. Bonnet conjured up the excuse that the French military wanted the delay in order to carry through mobilisation, undisturbed by German air attack (which, they knew, would not occur anyway — the German air force was fully employed in Poland). Chamberlain conjured up no excuse except that the French wanted delay and that it was always difficult to work with allies. In the evening of 2 September he was still entertaining the House of Commons with hypothetical negotiations: “If the German Government should agree to withdraw their forces then His Majesty’s Government would be willing to regard the position as being the same as it was before the German forces crossed the Polish frontier. That is to say, the way would be open to discussion between the German and Polish Governments on the matters at issue”.
Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939. It was, at that point in time, a largely symbolic act. Britain had few combat-ready military units, and none were near Poland, nor could they be in Poland soon. No significant French or British military action began immediately.
The debate inside the British government was intense. Neville Chamberlain spoke indecisively in Parliament. When Chamberlain was done speaking, Arthur Greenwood rose to speak, encouraged by fellow MP Leo Amery, demanding more decisive action.
Thus it was possible for both France and Britain to continue to seek a diplomatic solution, although they did so clumsily. So even after a declaration of war, before major hostilities commenced, communications between the countries continued:
This was too much even for loyal Conservatives. Leo Amery called to Arthur Greenwood, acting leader of the Opposition: “Speak for England”, a task of which Chamberlain was incapable. Ministers, led by Simon, warned Chamberlain that the government would fall unless it sent an ultimatum to Hitler before the House met again. Chamberlain gave way. The objections of the French were overruled. The British ultimatum was delivered to the Germans at 9 a.m. on 8 September. It expired at 11 a.m., and a state of war followed. When Bonnet learnt that the British were going to war in any case, his overriding anxiety was to catch up with them. The time of the French ultimatum was advanced, despite the supposed objections of the General Staff: it was delivered at noon on 8 September and expired at 5 p.m. In this curious way the French who had preached resistance to Germany for twenty years appeared to be dragged into war by the British who had for twenty years preached conciliation. Both countries went to war for that part of the peace settlement which they had long regarded as least defensible. Hitler may have projected a great war all along; yet it seems from the record that he became involved in war through launching on 29 August a diplomatic manoeuvre which he ought to have launched on 28 August.
Winston Churchill emerges, in A.J.P. Taylor’s account, as having blundered England into war — a war that might have been avoidable. Under closer examination, Churchill emerges as a mixed figure: on the one hand, his moral instincts were outraged at Hitler’s aggressiveness, and he also nobly wished to preserve the British empire; but on the other hand, Churchill’s irrational hatred of Germany, which predated Hitler by many decades, may have propelled him, and Britain with him, too hastily into war, a war which turned out to be a pyrrhic victory for Britain, which proceeded to lose its empire in the immediate postwar years, having overextended itself in the war.
Some British historians have opposed Taylor’s account of the events of the 1930s, because this narrative would mean that Britain, and to a lesser extent France, was in a position to avert, or at least diminish the war.
If Taylor is correct, the war could have been contained, and would have been a local conflict between Germany and Poland. The Soviet Union wouldn’t have been pulled in.
The world will probably never know whether or not Taylor is correct. Counterfactuals do not belong to the realm of documented or evidential history. But Taylor’s investigations and detailed narratives, in any case, direct attention to often-ignored aspects and events of the late 1930s.