The Origins of the Second World War

[Otto Sell]

Thanks for the interesting quotes. Yes, opportunism surely played (and does
so still) a big role in Germany, as elsewhere too I assume.

"It turned out that the Italians, far from wanting war, wished to insist
that they could not be ready for war until 1942 at the earliest; and the
German representatives agreed with them. Thus, this marvellous directive
merely proves (if it proves anything) that Hitler was not interested at this
time in a war against Great Britain; and that Italy was not interested in
War at all. Or maybe it shows that historians should be careful not to seize
on an isolated cause in a document without further reading."

Are there any known reasons or are there reasons given why this "agreement"
of the axis didn't work? Or was it the typical Hitler-lie: written down in
march and war in September already!

Surely Germany and Italy wanted to reverse Versailles and get a bigger piece
of the imperialistic pie. And it's one of the things "They" have told us
after the war too: that sooner or later a war would have been inevitable.
But if this argument is meant to re-evaluate the question of which countries
are mainly responsible for the real WW-II that has happened I don't buy it.
There are Germany and Japan, and to an minor degree Italy. Stalin's role has
to be put into consideration too, relieving Hitler from pressure, enabling
and thus encouraging him and himself taking of Poland what the Germans did
not take. War between his both enemies, capitalism and fascism, seemed to be
in his interest, if, maybe, only to gain time because he might have read and
listened to Hitler whose "Lebensraum"-concept was directed towards Russia.

Otto