The Origins of World War II, 3d ed, and: War Aims in the Second World War: The War Aims of the Major Belligerents, 1939-1945 (review)

These two books furnish useful analytic treatments of the causes of the Second World War. Eubank's revised third edition of his Origins of World War II, first published in 1969, incorporates the greater complexity that recent historiography has added to understanding the causes of the conflict. The book continues to examine the fundamental questions the author first asked nearly forty years ago: why did the Western powers fail to discern the threat posed by Nazism? Why were they so reluctant to confront a previously defeated foe? Why was Germany permitted to rearm? Since the first edition, many studies have buttressed Eubank's original conclusion that Hitler bore primary responsibility for the war. Essentially the author's argument is that a false impression of sufficient security combined with the memories of the Great War so paralyzed the western powers that they could not thwart Hitler's skillful, incremental expansionism.

Elsewhere, Eubank examines the genesis of appeasement and emphasizes that this policy enjoyed widespread public support. In examining Anglo-French reluctance to confront Germany, Eubank argues that appeasement was rational since it sought to reduce international tensions by defusing sources of friction. With Britain clearly unprepared—both psychologically and militarily—for war, appeasement made sense, Eubank argues, to win time to prepare the British military and people for conflict. The author could place greater emphasis on Chamberlain's intellectual failure to understand Hitler as a product of the radicalizing Great War itself and that appeasement reinforced Hitler's "racial" disdain for Westerners thereby encouraging German aggression—as Churchill predicted it would. But Eubank is on the mark in stressing that few alternatives to appeasement existed.

The author also denies that Britain and France could have stopped German reoccupation of the Rhineland. Here the author appears to under-appreciate Hitler's domestic weakness during his consolidation of power: a significant foreign policy failure would have been potentially disastrous for the Führer. Moreover, Eubank ignores recent studies, like Wesley Wark's The Ultimate Enemy (1985), which illuminate the fact that the tremendous strains the German military experienced during its massive expansion ensured that it remained much weaker than its propaganda image.

The fact that Eubank's novel arguments of 1969 seem orthodox today testifies to the staying power of his scholarship. The major interpretive changes of the third edition—a reevaluation of Soviet foreign policy as more opportunistic and added emphasis on Hitler's central role in craving war—serve to enhance the work's quality. Overall, Eubank's revised edition is a succinct synopsis of the origins of World War II that is a useful text for undergraduates. Since, as a concise text, it can not explore historiography in depth, it is best utilized in conjunction with other interpretations of the origins of the conflict.

Victor Rothwell's War Aimsin the Second World War surveys the war aims of seven of the major belligerents in five chapters that examine: Germany and Italy; Britain and France; the United States; the Soviet Union; and Japan. In this thoughtful analysis Rothwell provides a concise summary of the key belligerents' war aims, something that few other monographs have done. The study usefully distinguishes between immutable war aims (that could not be abandoned short of defeat) and contingent war aims (that arose as a result of the fortunes of war). He argues that British war aims were the most consistent and limited in seeking to restore the status quo, while those of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were, obviously, the most absolute. Rothwell correctly emphasizes that the Holocaust was a product of World War II, particularly the war on the Eastern Front, and that...