The Origins of the Second World War

The Origins of the Second World War
ISBN-10
1317865847
ISBN-13
9781317865841
Series
The Origins of the Second World War
Category
History
Pages
261
Language
English
Published
2014-01-14
Publisher
Routledge
Author
R. J. Overy

Description

The book explores the reasons why the Second World War broke out in September 1939 and not sooner, and why a European war expanded into world war by 1941. The war has usually been seen simply as Hitler’s war and yet the wider conflict that broke out when Germany invaded Poland was not the war that Hitler wanted. He had hoped for a short war against Poland; instead, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Richard Overy argues that any explanation of the outbreak of hostilities must therefore be multi-national and he shows how the war’s origins are to be found in the basic instability of the international system that was brought about by the decline of the old empires of Britain and France and the rise of ambitious new powers, Italy, Germany and Japan, keen to build new empires of their own.

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