Hitler's War Analysis

As one of the most influential events in the 20th century, the Second World War dominates world history classes and textbooks. Students can expect to learn about the Allies and the Axis, Hitler and Nazis, Pearl Harbor, and the Holocaust, but hardly any time is spent to learn about colonial politics, or the effects on colonized people. Gerhard L. Weinberg preserves this conventional narrative of the war in his textbook World War II: A Very Short Introduction. Weinberg’s analysis focuses on ‘Hitler’s War’ in Europe, with only brief remarks on the conflicts in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Pacific theatre. This interpretation of the war is insufficient, as it fails to credit colonialism and the mobilization of empires as major factors …show more content…
To fix this assumption, Weinberg’s text should explain the significance of the Washington Treaty in his chapter “The Inter-War Years,” when he discusses the Versailles Treaty, because the Washington Treaty became a large contributor to Japan’s anti-western frustrations. Likewise, instead of keeping the European theatre and the Asian-Pacific theatre separated throughout the text, the narrative should combine them to explain how they related and reacted to each other throughout the war. As tensions rose in Europe with the rise of fascism and Nazism, tensions between Japan and the West had been growing from before WWI. Japan colonized many Chinese territories, and continued to expand its empire into Korea, the Pacific, and Southeast Asia. After WWI, the League of Nations mandated many colonies taken from Germany to Japan, in an effort to placate Japan in an era of growing racism and discrimination. However, the Washington Treaty restricted the amount of ships Japan could build more so than other western white countries. Including these perspectives in Weinberg’s book would demonstrate how closely actions in the west caused consequences in the east, and tie Asia into the main