Introduction
Imperialism refers to an exercise of maintaining the powers or increasing the collections of territories either through force or fraud means. The action may further involve military conquest and deep exploration of natural resources from a nation through signing of treaties. In most cases, signing of treaties is considered to be the most effective method since it involves minimal efforts and conflicts. Therefore, imperialism involves intimidation procedures to the weak nations and government in order to win their courage of resistance when conquered (Buell, 1989). The urge to acquire more colonies from different nations brought a state of tension that some countries may raise to be super powers and hence there was need to stop some of nations that had so many colonies. When the competition intensively increased, there arose international aggression from different nations.
The rise of Hitler under his great influence to other leaders like Mussolini made him feel that he can conquer all the nations which were against him during the First World War. In this regard, Hitler had an ambition to bring the whole Europe under his control and Berlin would be his capital. The obsession became stronger when he took control of Morocco which was a significant place for his military training which in return would be used to take control over the nations which would not adhere to his conditions to surrender the colony to his powers (Buell, 1989). This brought a lot tension among the nations, as this meant that Hitler would take over the colonies they already had as he continued to acquire more colonies.
The imperialism level among the citizens and leaders of such nations like Belgium, The Great Britain and Portugal increasingly rose and hence the competition became stiffer resulting to a tension limit that resulted to a Great War with formation of alliances. Hitler, being a loser in World War II, wanted to maintain his country’s wealth and colonies’ natural resources to rebuild and resurrect his lost glory. In doing this, Hitler knew that the destructed Germany economy would be revived back by winning more colonies than his enemies (Immell, 2001). This is described to be one of the major causes of World War II. However, this cause is basically argued that it was strengthened as soon as the First World War ended.
The major motivation that led most people to join the Nazi party of Germany was as a result of rapid development in German nationalism just before the eruption of World War II. The German were strongly striving to improve the economic crisis that was caused by the great depression of World War I in Europe. On the other hand, some of the nations like the Greece, Austria and Hungary strongly rose to fight for their freedom as the spirit of nationalism rose to greater extend (Immell, 2001). The reason for this rapid rise of nationalism among the Greece, Austrians and the Hungarians was primarily as a result of increase in economic crisis after the World War II and constant manipulation from Nazi. In order to fight back this, other nations like Britain joined hands to fight against the German rule over these three nations. As a result of this, formation of alliances started in order to fight against German thus leading to excitation of World War II.
Before the invasion of the Manchurian in 1932, Japan had an equal power in terms of foreign policies and the level of industrialization was increasingly high just as compared to the Great Britain and U.S. However, Japan did not lose this significant framework. The industrial revolution that took place in Japan since 1850’s posed a threat to the most powerful nations by then, U.S.A and Britain. In order to reduce the rate of industrialization in Japan, a debate on foreign policy was set up against Japan. (Immell, 2001). However, other nations like Germany saw the need to support Japan in its industrial revolution policies in order to gain materialistically, this prompted a lot of misunderstandings that eventually led to the eruption of World War II.
References
Buell, T. B., Bradley, J. H., Dice, J. W., Griess, T. E., & United States Military Academy (1989). The Second World War. Wayne, N.J: Avery Pub. Group.
Immell, M. (2001). World War II. San Diego, Calif: Greenhaven Press.
