Who started WW2?

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While Hitler may have started the war as such the catalyst for the ripe conditions that led to his ascendency was the Treaty. There is no one simple singular answer since it was many things combined that came together to spawn it.
 
I agree. Hitler started WW2 and that is the end fact, however there were many many things, too many to actually account and state for that led to the starting of WW2. I personally think that the world as a whole was responsible for what led to WW2.
 

The Gotterdammerung would be nothing compared to that. Not stepping foot on German soil was a smart move on the Allies behalf, if you ask me.
 
No one asked you. But in any case, occupying German land would have proven to the German people that the German army was defeated. And there would have been nothing the Germans could have done about it. Even forcing Germany to take up arms against the Allies once again, and ultimately losing would have cost more Allied lives but would have proven once and for all that Germany had lost. Saving the rise of Hitler on the premise that the German politicians, the Jews, had cost Germany World War I, not the German military.
 
The Germans still had a lot of fight in them after the Armistice. My grandfather said he saw more action after Nov 11, than in the weeks before. As they advanced into the Rhineland they had to fight pitched battles with all the local units before they would surrender their weapons. It's pretty clear that most German soldiers didn't feel they'd been defeated.
 
That is because the German Army technically was not defeated in WW1. It was more of a stalemate than anything. The German decision to stop fighting was based mostly off of public opinion, advice from Military Commanders and the fact that most German soldiers were tired of fighting. Look at the German Navy that mutinied. The German Military was far from defeated at the end of WW1.
 
The German armed forces had almost no chance of winning the war after the 1918 spring offensive bogged down. Even with the defeat of Russia in the east, it was only a matter of time before Germany would have been defeated in the west after the arrival of the fresh American army. The war might have dragged on for another year but it would have seen the destruction of large parts of Germany as the lines moved eastward.
 
it was only a matter of time before Germany would have been defeated in the west after the arrival of the fresh American army.
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American troops were hardly a threat to the Germans at the time, it was the the raw materials and and equiptment that completely ensurred the defeat of the Germans, the U.S troops though not ill prepared from an equiptment standpoint, were not ready to fight independantly, they had to be put alongside british troops as "add ons" (forgive the expression) as the Canadians had to at the beginning.
 
The 2nd Division of the Marines did well at Bellau Woods in June, 1918 and I'm sure other American Divisions would have gained experience rapidly like the Canadians did. American material was important, but so were the hundreds of thousands of fresh troops who joined the veteran but tired French and Commonwealth soldiers.
 
The US Infantry units commited to battle in summer of 1918 were just the tip of the iceberg of what was coming.

Inexperienced yes, but with veteran British and French officers to shepard them, they soon would become veterans in their own right.

If the war had carried on into 1919, then the German army would have been defeated simply from exhaustion and no more man power, and nothing available from an ever expanding US military presence.
 
Perhaps if the treaty of Versailles did not treat Germany the way it did, and if it punished the real instigators of the Great War (Austria-Hungary) the Germans wouldnt have felt the need to invade the world as it were to simply take back what was, in a sense, rightfully theirs.
 
While I somewhat agree with you, at the same time you are quite a bit off with that. Yes parts of Czech and Danzig were rightfully German territory. Lets see though Poland? No was not German. The Rest of Czech? No was not German. France? No was not German. Russia? No was not German. N. Afrika? No was not German. Netherlands? No was not German. Luxemburg? No was not German. Greece? No was not German. Shall I keep going?
 
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