What REALLY Drove Nazi Germany to Start WW2?

Why did Nazi Germany start World War 2? This documentary explores the complete history behind Hitler’s decision to invade Poland in 1939—the event that triggered the deadliest conflict in human history.

From the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles to the economic devastation of the Great Depression, from Hitler’s rise to power to the failed appeasement policies of Britain and France, we examine every factor that led to war. Understanding this history is crucial to understanding how nations can spiral into catastrophic conflict and how ordinary people can support extraordinary evil.

**In this 30+ minute documentary, we explore:**

• The Treaty of Versailles and German resentment (1918-1920)
• The chaos of the Weimar Republic and hyperinflation
• Hitler’s rise to power and the Nazi ideology
• German rearmament and Western appeasement (1933-1935)
• The Rhineland remilitarization and Munich Crisis
• Nazi expansion: Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland
• Hitler’s strategic miscalculation and the final decision
• Why ordinary Germans supported the regime
• The role of Western powers and failed deterrence
• The ultimate irony: how the war destroyed what Hitler sought to create

This documentary explains not just the military and political events, but the psychological, economic, and ideological forces that made war inevitable—and how different decisions at critical moments could have changed history.
#militaryhistory #history #worldwartwo #ww2 #germanarmy #ww2rebuilder #ww2 #shermantank #documentary #militaryhistory #automobile #documentary#ww2tales#soldierspen

# WHY NAZI GERMANY STARTED WORLD WAR 2 ## NOVEMBER 11TH, 1918. 11:00 
AM. COMPIÈGNE FOREST, FRANCE. The guns stopped firing. After four years of 
mechanized slaughter that killed 20 million people, the First World War ended not with German 
victory, but with German surrender. In a railway carriage in a French forest, German generals 
signed an armistice they believed was temporary. They thought they would negotiate peace as equals. 
They were catastrophically wrong. What they didn’t understand was that the war had already been 
decided—not on battlefields, but in the minds of Allied leaders who had determined that Germany 
wouldn’t negotiate. Germany would be annihilated. **[IMAGE 1: “Armistice signing 1918 Compiègne” –   Show the railway carriage or 
German generals signing]** On that November morning, German soldiers were 
told they had not lost militarily. The army was “undefeated in the field.” This lie would shape 
the next two decades of European history. German soldiers returned home believing they had been 
betrayed by politicians, not conquered by enemies. The seeds of resentment were planted in November 
1918. They would grow into fascism by 1933. The German officer corps understood something 
different. They knew the truth. General Erich Ludendorff, who had commanded German forces 
at the end, knew Germany had lost militarily. But he understood the propaganda value of the 
lie. If Germans believed they were undefeated, if they believed politicians had 
stabbed the army in the back,   the cycle of violence would continue. He 
was right. The cycle began immediately. ## JUNE 28TH, 1919. HALL OF 
MIRRORS, VERSAILLES PALACE. Six months after the armistice, the Treaty 
of Versailles was signed. It was not a peace   treaty. It was a humiliation disguised as 
diplomacy. The numbers were calculated to ensure German resentment for generations. Germany 
lost 13% of its European territory. The Rhineland, the industrial heartland, became a demilitarized 
zone. German colonies in Africa and Asia were stripped away. The army was limited to 100,000 
men. The navy was reduced to coastal defense vessels. Germany could have no air force, 
no tanks, no submarines. Most devastatingly, Article 231—the War Guilt Clause—forced Germany to 
accept sole responsibility for the war and imposed reparations of 132 billion gold marks, 
a sum designed to be impossible to pay. The mathematics of Versailles were 
calculated by economists and politicians   who understood human psychology perfectly. 
The reparations weren’t meant to be paid. They were meant to ensure perpetual German 
humiliation. Even if Germany recovered, the debt would never disappear. Even if 
Germans worked themselves to exhaustion,   they would fail. The psychological 
impact was precisely calibrated. French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, 
who designed much of the treaty,   understood what he was creating. When 
asked about the treaty’s severity, he said, “This is not a peace. It is an armistice 
for twenty years.” He was prophetic. Exactly twenty years and sixty-three 
days later, German tanks invaded Poland. The German population’s reaction to Versailles 
was volcanic. Germans felt betrayed, humiliated, robbed. Right-wing politicians claimed the 
army had been stabbed in the back by Jews,   communists, and liberals who signed 
the treaty. This “stab in the back” myth became the foundational narrative of 
German resentment. The Weimar Republic, the new German government created after the 
Kaiser’s abdication, was forever tainted. It had signed the humiliating treaty. 
It was the government of betrayal. ## BERLIN, 1919-1923. THE CHAOS YEARS. The Weimar Republic faced immediate crises. 
Communist uprisings threatened to turn Germany into a Soviet satellite. Right-wing militias 
fought communist paramilitaries in the streets. Political assassinations became routine. In 1921,   Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau was 
murdered by right-wing extremists. In 1923, reactionaries attempted a putsch in 
Munich. The state seemed to be collapsing. The economic situation deteriorated 
catastrophically. Germany couldn’t pay   reparations. When Germany defaulted in 1923, 
French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr Valley, Germany’s industrial center. German 
workers resisted through passive means. The government printed money to support them. The 
result was hyperinflation so severe that by November 1923, a single dollar cost 4 
trillion marks. People’s life savings became worthless overnight. Workers’ pensions 
evaporated. The middle class was destroyed. This wasn’t just economic collapse. It was 
the destruction of social stability itself. An Austrian corporal named Adolf Hitler, a 
decorated veteran of the First World War, watched this chaos with growing conviction that 
democracy was weakness, that strong leadership was necessary, and that someone needed to 
restore German greatness. He was not alone. Millions of Germans felt the same way. The soil 
for fascism had been prepared by Versailles, watered by hyperinflation, and would soon 
sprout with devastating consequences. ## MUNICH, NOVEMBER 8TH, 1923. BEER HALL PUTSCH. Hitler and the Nazi Party attempted their first 
violent takeover in a Munich beer hall. It failed spectacularly. Hitler was arrested and imprisoned. 
In jail, he wrote “Mein Kampf,” a rambling, antisemitic manifesto that outlined his vision 
for Germany. When released in 1924, he seemed politically finished. He was a failed putschist, 
a small-time agitator, easily dismissed. Germany’s establishment didn’t take him seriously. 
This was their first catastrophic error. The period from 1924 to 1929 saw Germany 
stabilize. American loans, the Dawes Plan, and the Young Plan restructured reparations 
into more manageable payments. The German   economy recovered. Living standards 
improved. People called it the “Golden Twenties.” Germans believed the 
worst was over. They were wrong. ## OCTOBER 29TH, 1929. WALL STREET CRASH. The global economy collapsed. The stock 
market crash in New York triggered a worldwide depression. For Germany, the consequences were 
devastating. American loans that had sustained German recovery were called in. German banks 
failed. Unemployment skyrocketed. By 1932, over 6 million Germans—one-third of the workforce—were 
unemployed. Entire towns became ghost towns. Families lost everything. Desperation returned to 
Germany just when people thought it had passed. Into this desperation stepped Adolf 
Hitler and the Nazi Party. The Nazis   offered simple answers to complex problems. 
Germany was weak because of the Versailles Treaty. Germany was economically ruined 
because of international capitalism. Germany was culturally corrupted. The 
solution was simple: strong leadership, racial renewal, and territorial expansion. The 
Nazis presented themselves as the answer to chaos. The Nazi message resonated across German 
society. The party grew from a fringe movement to the largest political force in Germany. In 
the 1930 elections, the Nazis won 107 seats in the Reichstag. In July 1932, they won 230 
seats—the largest party in Germany. They offered Germans something the Weimar Republic couldn’t 
provide: hope. False hope, but hope nonetheless. ## JANUARY 30TH, 1933. BERLIN. CHANCELLERY. President Paul von Hindenburg, an aging field 
marshal from the First World War, appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. The old elite 
believed they could control Hitler. They thought they could use him to restore order, then discard 
him. They were profoundly mistaken. Within months, Hitler transformed the chancellorship into 
absolute power. He dissolved parliament, banned rival parties, and established a 
totalitarian state. The Weimar Republic, which had never been loved by Germans, 
collapsed without significant resistance. The speed of the transformation shocked 
observers. What took years to accomplish   in other fascist countries took Hitler 
weeks. By summer 1933, the Nazi Party was the only legal party. Opposition 
politicians were in concentration camps. The police state was being constructed. Germans 
who had hoped for order got tyranny instead. But many didn’t care. For the first time since 1918, 
Germany had a government that promised to overturn Versailles and restore German greatness. For 
millions of Germans, that was worth any price. ## 1933-1935. REARMAMENT. Hitler’s first priority was rearmament. 
The Versailles Treaty limited Germany to 100,000 troops and forbade military production. 
Hitler simply ignored the treaty. In secret, Germany began building an air 
force—the Luftwaffe. Tanks were   designed and tested. Submarines 
were constructed. Conscription was introduced, expanding the army 
from 100,000 to 500,000 men by 1935. The international response was feeble. Britain 
actually signed a naval agreement with Germany, legitimizing German rearmament. France protested 
but did nothing. The League of Nations was powerless. Germany was openly violating the 
treaty that was supposed to ensure peace, and no one stopped it. Hitler watched the 
international response and learned a crucial   lesson: the Western powers would protest but 
not act. They would negotiate but not fight. This understanding would guide his 
aggressive expansion for the next six years. The rearmament had profound effects on 
the German economy. War production boomed. Unemployment dropped from 6 million to 1 
million within three years. For the first   time since 1918, Germans had jobs and hope. 
The economic recovery was real, though built on an unsustainable foundation of military 
spending. Hitler understood economics poorly, but he understood something crucial: Germans 
would support him if he delivered prosperity. Rearmament delivered prosperity. Germans 
didn’t ask where it was leading. They were grateful for employment and dignity 
after fifteen years of humiliation. ## WHO WAS ADOLF HITLER? Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 in Austria. He 
was a failed artist, a rejected applicant to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. He was a 
mediocre soldier in the First World War, a private who received the Iron Cross 
but was never promoted to officer. He   was intelligent but uneducated. He was 
charismatic but crude. He was ambitious but lacked concrete skills. What he had 
was a unique ability to articulate the   resentments of millions of Germans who felt 
betrayed, humiliated, and cheated by history. Hitler believed in racial determinism. He 
believed history was a struggle between races for living space. He believed 
Germans were Aryans—a superior race destined to dominate Europe. He believed 
Jews were Germany’s primary enemy, a race that was biologically incompatible with German 
survival. He believed democracy was weakness, that strong leadership was necessary, that 
the strong had the right to dominate the   weak. These weren’t original ideas. They 
were common in European far-right circles. But Hitler combined them into a coherent ideology 
and presented them with mesmerizing rhetoric. Most importantly, Hitler believed in expansion. 
He believed Germany needed Lebensraum—living space in Eastern Europe. He believed Germany had 
the right and duty to conquer Eastern Europe, enslave the Slavic population, and establish 
a German racial empire. This wasn’t conquest for economic resources or colonial 
prestige. This was racial conquest, the elimination of one people to make room for 
another. This was genocide as state policy, decades before the Holocaust was conceived. ## THE GERMAN PEOPLE’S ACCEPTANCE. A crucial question: Did ordinary Germans support 
Hitler’s ideology? The answer is complex. Some did. Ideological Nazis who believed in racial 
superiority existed. But most Germans didn’t join the party out of ideological conviction. They 
supported Hitler because he delivered prosperity, restored national pride, and promised to 
overturn Versailles. They supported him because the alternative seemed to be chaos 
and communism. They supported him because   their neighbors supported him and refusing support 
brought social pressure and economic consequences. The regime’s propaganda was ubiquitous and 
sophisticated. Every newspaper, every radio broadcast, every film promoted Nazi ideology. 
From childhood, Germans were indoctrinated in schools. Young men joined the Hitler Youth. 
Young women joined the League of German Girls. Opposition to the regime became increasingly 
difficult and dangerous. By the mid-1930s, Nazi Germany had become a total state that 
penetrated every aspect of German life. But here’s what’s crucial for understanding why 
Germany started the war: most Germans didn’t know what was coming. They didn’t understand 
that Hitler’s rhetoric about lebensraum   meant genocide. They didn’t understand 
that his talk of racial struggle meant industrial-scale murder. They thought he 
meant territorial expansion, perhaps war, but they didn’t conceive of the Holocaust. 
They were manipulated, propagandized,   and gradually led down a path they didn’t fully 
understand. When war finally came, most Germans didn’t want it. But by then, they had no choice. 
The totalitarian state allowed no dissent. ## THE REMILITARIZATION OF THE 
RHINELAND, MARCH 7TH, 1936. In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles 
had established the Rhineland as a   demilitarized zone. German troops were 
forbidden to enter this region between Germany and France. The purpose was to ensure 
that Germany couldn’t rapidly mobilize for an invasion of France. For Hitler, the 
demilitarized Rhineland was intolerable. It represented ongoing French domination and 
German weakness. He decided to remilitarize it. On March 7th, 1936, German troops marched into 
the Rhineland. It was a massive gamble. If France responded militarily, German forces 
were outnumbered and would be defeated. Hitler later admitted that if 
France had responded militarily,   he would have been forced to withdraw in 
humiliation. But France didn’t respond. France protested diplomatically but 
took no military action. Hitler had   gambled and won. The lesson was clear: the 
Western powers would protest but not fight. British officials actually negotiated 
with Hitler after the remilitarization,   legitimizing German actions through diplomacy. 
The British-German Naval Agreement of 1935 and the inaction after the Rhineland remilitarization 
demonstrated to Hitler that Britain and France   were either unwilling or unable to stop German 
expansion. This miscalculation—that the Western powers would continue to back down—would 
ultimately lead to his invasion of Poland. ## THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, 1936-1939. Hitler’s support for Francisco Franco’s 
nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War   served multiple purposes. First, it tested German 
military equipment and tactics. German fighters, bombers, and tanks were deployed in Spain 
against the Spanish Republic. The German air force—the Luftwaffe—gained combat experience that 
would prove invaluable in World War 2. Second, it demonstrated German strength to the world. 
Germany was intervening decisively in European affairs. Third, it created an ideological alliance 
with Italy, another fascist power. By 1936, Germany and Italy were forming what 
would become the Rome-Berlin Axis. The Spanish Civil War also revealed the 
bankruptcy of Western democratic response to fascist aggression. Britain and France maintained 
official non-intervention while Germany and Italy openly intervened. The Western democracies 
seemed paralyzed. They protested but did nothing. Meanwhile, Hitler was successfully 
intervening in European affairs,   proving that fascism was a dynamic force 
while democracy was weak and reactive. ## THE ANSCHLUSS, MARCH 11TH, 1938. Austria, Germany’s neighbor to the south, had 
a significant German-speaking population. The Treaty of Versailles forbade union between 
Germany and Austria. Hitler believed that Austria’s Germans should be part of a 
united German state. In February 1938, he pressured Austria’s government to incorporate 
Nazi officials into the cabinet. By March, German troops marched across the border into 
Austria. There was no military resistance. German soldiers were greeted as liberators by many 
Austrians who had supported union with Germany. The international response was again feeble. 
The League of Nations protested. Britain and France protested. But no military action was 
taken. The Anschluss demonstrated that Hitler could annex territory, violate international 
treaties, and face no military consequences. It also expanded Germany’s territory 
and population. Austria’s resources, its industrial capacity, and its 
6.5 million people were now part of   the German state. Germany’s economic and 
military power increased significantly. ## THE MUNICH CRISIS, SEPTEMBER 1938. Hitler now turned his attention to 
Czechoslovakia. The Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia had a German-speaking 
population. Hitler demanded that these territories be incorporated into Germany. 
Czechoslovakia refused. War seemed imminent. But at the last moment, Britain and France 
agreed to negotiate. The Munich Conference was held in September 1938. Without the 
Czechoslovak government even being present, Britain and France agreed to allow 
Germany to annex the Sudeten region. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain 
returned to London claiming to have achieved “peace for our time.” The policy was called 
appeasement—the idea that if Britain and   France gave Hitler what he wanted, he would 
be satisfied and peace would be maintained. It was catastrophically naive. Hitler had 
no intention of being satisfied. He had calculated that the Western powers would always 
back down. The Munich agreement proved him right. Six months later, in March 1939, Hitler violated 
the Munich agreement by annexing the rest of Czechoslovakia. Now the Western powers finally 
understood. Hitler’s word meant nothing. His expansion would never stop. Only military force 
would halt him. But by then, it was almost too late. Germany was now the dominant military 
power in Europe, and war seemed inevitable. ## AUGUST 1939. BERLIN. 
HITLER’S STRATEGIC CALCULUS. By summer 1939, Hitler had decided 
that war with Poland was inevitable and necessary. But why Poland? Why risk 
a general European war over Poland? The answer reveals Hitler’s strategic thinking and 
the racial ideology that drove Nazi expansion. First, Poland stood in the way of Hitler’s 
ultimate goal: lebensraum in Eastern Europe. Hitler believed Germany needed to conquer 
Eastern Europe to acquire land and resources   for German racial expansion. Poland 
was the first step. Conquering Poland would give Germany access to the vast 
territories beyond it—the Soviet Union,   Ukraine, and the agricultural 
heartland of Eastern Europe. Second, Hitler misunderstood 
the international situation.   He believed that Britain and France would not 
fight for Poland. He believed they would protest, make diplomatic gestures, but ultimately 
acquiesce to German expansion just as they   had acquiesced to the Rhineland 
remilitarization, the Anschluss, and the seizure of Czechoslovakia. He believed 
Britain and France were decadent democracies incapable of sustained military effort. He 
believed they would negotiate rather than fight. This was Hitler’s fundamental miscalculation. 
He didn’t understand that there were limits to Western patience. He didn’t understand 
that the seizure of Czechoslovakia had   finally convinced British and French leaders 
that Hitler could not be appeased. He didn’t understand that the Western powers were now 
prepared to fight rather than accept further   German expansion. When he invaded Poland, 
believing Britain and France would accept it, he triggered their declaration of war. 
The Second World War began not because   Hitler wanted a general European war, but 
because he miscalculated Western resolve. ## THE NAZI-SOVIET PACT, AUGUST 23RD, 1939. Two weeks before invading Poland, Hitler 
made a shocking move. On August 23rd, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the 
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression pact between the two ideological enemies. The 
pact included a secret protocol dividing Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of 
influence. Poland would be divided between them. This pact stunned the world. Nazis and communists 
were supposed to be mortal enemies. Yet they signed a pact of mutual non-aggression. The 
pact served Hitler’s purposes perfectly. It meant Germany wouldn’t face a two-front 
war. It meant Germany could attack Poland   without fear of Soviet intervention. It meant 
Germany could consolidate its power in Eastern Europe before eventually turning on the Soviet 
Union, which Hitler had always intended to do. The pact was a brilliant tactical move but a 
strategic disaster for Germany. It proved that Hitler had no ideological principles—he would 
ally with communists if it served his purposes. It demonstrated Nazi cynicism to the world. 
Most importantly, it meant that when Germany eventually invaded the Soviet Union, as Hitler 
always planned to do, the Soviet Union would be Germany’s mortal enemy. Germany would face 
exactly what Hitler feared most: a two-front war. ## SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1939. 4:45 AM. POLAND. On September 1st, 1939, German forces attacked 
Poland without a declaration of war. The Luftwaffe bombed Polish airfields, railways, and cities. 
German tanks and motorized infantry poured across the border. Polish forces, equipped with 1920s-era 
weapons and cavalry units, were overwhelmed. Within days, Polish military resistance had 
collapsed. Within weeks, Poland was defeated. On September 3rd, 1939, Britain and France 
declared war on Germany. Hitler’s gamble had failed. He had believed the Western powers 
would accept German conquest of Poland. He was wrong. The Second World War had begun—not 
because Hitler wanted a global conflict, but because he miscalculated. He thought 
appeasement meant the Western powers would   accept unlimited German expansion. He 
learned too late that there were limits. ## THE CONVERGENCE OF CAUSES. The Second World War happened because multiple 
causes converged at a specific moment in history. The Treaty of Versailles created German 
resentment. The Great Depression created   German desperation. The weakness of the Weimar 
Republic created political instability. The rise of fascism offered Germans a false solution. 
The Western policy of appeasement encouraged German aggression. And most crucially, Adolf 
Hitler miscalculated. He believed the Western powers would accept his conquest of Poland. They 
didn’t. His miscalculation triggered the war. If any single element had been different—if 
Versailles had been more moderate,   if the depression had been less severe, 
if the Weimar Republic had been stronger, if the Western powers had opposed 
rearmament militarily, if Hitler   had been less aggressive—the 
war might not have happened. ## THE QUESTION OF INEVITABILITY. Some historians argue that the war was inevitable 
given the conditions in Europe after 1918. They argue that aggressive fascism was the 
inevitable response to the perceived injustice   of Versailles, that the Western powers 
were powerless to stop German expansion, that conflict was written into the 
structure of the postwar international   system. Other historians argue that the war 
was contingent—that different decisions by different leaders at different moments 
could have led to a different outcome. The truth is likely both. The conditions 
created by Versailles and the Great Depression made conflict likely. But whether 
that conflict took the specific form of the Second World War depended on decisions. If 
Hitler had not been appointed chancellor, a different German leader might have pursued 
revisionism less aggressively. If the Western   powers had shown military resolve earlier, Hitler 
might have been deterred. If Hitler had made different calculations about Western resolve, 
he might have waited before attacking Poland. History was not inevitable. It was 
shaped by decisions made by real   people in real moments. Understanding 
why Germany started the war requires understanding those decisions and 
the context in which they were made. ## THE ROLE OF VERSAILLES. The Treaty of Versailles created the conditions 
for Hitler’s rise, but it didn’t make the war   inevitable. Many nations have faced humiliating 
peace treaties without resorting to fascism and aggressive war. What made Germany 
different was a combination of factors:   a democratic government that was never 
truly accepted by the German elite, an economic system fragile enough to be destroyed 
by depression, a military tradition that valued strength and expansion, and the emergence of Adolf 
Hitler, a figure whose combination of resentment, ideology, and ruthlessness created a 
perfect vehicle for German aggression. Versailles was too harsh—harsh enough to 
ensure German resentment for decades. But it wasn’t the sole cause of the war. If 
the Weimar Republic had been more stable,   if the economic depression had been less severe, if appeasement had not been pursued, 
history might have taken a different path. ## THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY. Hitler’s racial ideology was not unique to him. 
Racial antisemitism and racial determinism were common in European far-right circles. What was 
unique was Hitler’s combination of ideology with ruthlessness and his ability to articulate 
resentment in ways that resonated with millions of Germans. His ideology provided the worldview that 
made aggressive war seem justified and necessary. But ideology alone doesn’t cause wars. Nations 
with aggressive ideologies have often refrained from war when the costs seemed too high. 
What made the difference was that Hitler   believed the Western powers would not fight. 
He believed his combination of military power, ideological conviction, and ruthlessness would 
allow him to dominate Europe without facing serious resistance. When he invaded 
Poland, he discovered he was wrong. ## THE ROLE OF THE WESTERN POWERS. Britain and France pursued appeasement because 
they were war-weary, economically weakened, and uncertain about their ability 
to defeat Nazi Germany militarily.   They believed that accommodating 
German territorial ambitions, at least in Eastern Europe, was preferable to 
another general European war. They were wrong. Appeasement encouraged Hitler to believe that 
the Western powers would not fight. When Hitler finally overreached—invading Poland—the 
Western powers were forced to respond,   but by then Germany had acquired significant 
territorial and military advantages. A more forceful Western response to German 
rearmament, to the remilitarization of the   Rhineland, or to the seizure of Czechoslovakia 
might have deterred Hitler. A unified Western response demonstrating that further expansion 
would be met with military force might have   halted German aggression before it spiraled into 
a general European war. But Western leadership was divided, uncertain, and focused on 
avoiding another war at almost any cost. By the time they recognized the 
danger, it was too late. War had begun. ## THE FINAL IRONY. The greatest irony of Hitler’s decision to 
start the war is that it led to the exact   outcome he most feared: German defeat and 
occupation by the Soviet Union. Hitler’s ultimate goal was to conquer Eastern Europe 
and establish a German racial empire. But in pursuing that goal through war, he created 
a two-front war that destroyed Germany. The war with the Western powers, combined with 
the invasion of the Soviet Union, exhausted German resources, led to total defeat, and resulted 
in the Soviet occupation of Eastern Germany. Hitler had sought to overturn the 
humiliation of Versailles. Instead,   his war created an even greater humiliation. 
Germany was divided into zones of occupation. German territory was lost to Poland and the 
Soviet Union. German cities were destroyed. Millions of Germans died. And rather than 
establishing German hegemony over Europe, Germany became a divided nation occupied by 
foreign powers for the next forty-five years. The Second World War was not inevitable. 
It resulted from specific decisions made by specific people in specific 
historical moments. Understanding   those decisions and moments is crucial to 
understanding why the war happened and to learning lessons that might prevent 
similar catastrophes in the future. ## WHY IT MATTERS. Understanding why Germany started the Second World 
War matters because it reveals how catastrophic   outcomes can result from the convergence 
of grievance, ideology, weak leadership, miscalculation, and appeasement. It reveals how 
ordinary people can support extraordinary evil when they feel desperate, humiliated, and offered 
hope by a charismatic leader. It reveals how international systems can fail to prevent wars 
when member nations are divided and uncertain. And it reveals a profound truth: in history, 
outcomes are not determined by abstract forces. They are determined by decisions. The Second 
World War happened because Hitler decided to invade Poland, because the Western powers 
decided to fight rather than acquiesce,   because millions of Germans decided to support 
the regime or accept it or remain silent. Understanding those decisions—understanding the 
context in which they were made, understanding   the beliefs and fears of those who made them—is 
the key to understanding not just why the Second World War started, but how history works and how 
to prevent similar catastrophes in the future.