Road to WW2 · CHAPTER 1 ·
Great Depression and causes of WW2
Chapter 1 of The Road to War, 1931–1941: “The World the Slump Made”
From 1929 the Great Depression cut world trade by roughly a third and discredited governments that defended free trade. Japan’s silk exports roughly halved and its farm villages fell into destitution, while in Germany the slump drove the Nazi vote toward a mass following. Yet many countries weathered it without turning to war.
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The map above is the world of East Asia and the Pacific, 1931 — The world of 1931.
Every state on the map that year: The world in 1930 · Europe in 1930.
Part of IB History: The Road to War →
SHORT EXPLANATION
The Depression posed a question to governments that depended on trade: how could they feed and supply their people if markets closed? The crash began in 1929, and the collapse of trade and employment weakened support for governments associated with international cooperation. In Japan and Germany, expansionists found a larger audience for ambitions that had existed before the slump. Other countries suffered too, without choosing conquest. Hardship made a difference, but it did not prescribe an answer.
One answer was autarky: economic self-sufficiency through control of essential production and resources. A government afraid of blockade or exclusion from another empire’s markets could see this as a way to protect its people. Yet Japan’s proposed lifeline in Manchuria and Germany’s later plans for eastern Europe meant taking territory from others. The routes to those ambitions were different. Japan’s army could act with considerable independence from the civilian cabinet; German conservatives would gamble that they could use Hitler for their own purposes.
The full story
Before the Pacific map changes, Japan already possesses an empire. In two generations it has acquired Korea, Taiwan and islands across the Pacific. Those possessions have not made its economy self-sufficient: industry needs imported oil and metals, and exporters need customers abroad. Nearby lie the colonial territories of Britain, France, the Netherlands and the United States, including British Malaya and the oil-producing Dutch East Indies. China is nominally unified under Chiang Kai-shek, but warlords and a communist insurgency limit his government’s reach.
The Depression made dependence on the outside world more frightening. Japan’s silk earnings fell sharply, bringing hardship to farming villages. Army officers could point to that suffering when they argued that foreign powers might deprive Japan of the resources it needed. Across the world, unemployment undermined German parliamentary parties, and the Nazis grew from a marginal party into a mass movement. The crisis gave expansionists an audience for promises of jobs and security as well as territory.
There was nothing inevitable about that response. Other countries endured the slump without invading their neighbors, and Japan’s empire and Hitler’s ambitions had roots older than the crash. Autarky nevertheless offered a language in which conquest could be presented as protection. Japanese planners called Manchuria a ‘lifeline’; Hitler would later seek eastern ‘living space.’ Both plans sought control over land and resources, though their ideologies were different.
Ideas required people able to turn them into policy. In Japan, field commanders could defy the cabinet. In Germany, conservatives who opposed democracy and the left hoped to make use of the Nazi movement. The Depression opened opportunities for both sets of actors; militarism, racial ideology and decisions made within their different institutions shaped what they did with them.
FULL EXPLANATION
Depression as enabling condition
The slump changed the standing of governments that had defended liberal capitalism. Trade collapsed, tariffs rose and unemployment spread. In Japan, falling silk prices damaged rural communities, giving officers a receptive audience when they claimed that survival depended on Manchurian resources. In Germany, the Nazi vote rose from 2.6 percent in 1928 to mass-party levels during the Depression. Established leaders seemed unable to protect people, while movements promising militarism, racial hierarchy and empire offered another direction. Yet the same crisis did not lead every country to conquest. Japan already had an empire, and Hitler’s racial and territorial aims predated the Wall Street crash. Economic distress made those ambitions politically more potent; ideology identified aims and enemies, while institutions and political choices determined whether their advocates could make state policy.
Autarky and the security dilemma
A country seeking autarky tries to reduce its dependence on foreign trade by controlling essential production and resources. Fear of blockade, tariffs or exclusion from rival empires helps explain the appeal. But consider the proposed means: Japanese designs on Manchuria and German plans for eastern ‘living space’ placed other people’s land under foreign control. Those facing seizure had reason to fear the policy. A related process is called the security dilemma. Measures one state takes for security alarm others; their sanctions or rearmament can then deepen the first state’s fear. This account helps us understand distrust, but it does not require conquest. Japan had trading alternatives and could have changed course in China; Germany could have pursued recovery without racial conquest. In these cases the resource argument served ambitions of empire as well as a search for security.
Key places on the map
On this day
Why it happened
The Depression and a closing world. World trade’s dollar value fell by roughly two-thirds between 1929 and 1933. Governments also raised barriers: the United States passed Smoot–Hawley in 1930, and Britain adopted imperial preference in 1932. Japan already possessed an empire, yet its leaders saw competitors controlling markets and raw materials elsewhere. If trade was being organized into protected blocs, some reasoned, Japan needed a larger bloc of its own. Manchuria became a ‘lifeline’; Hitler would later call the east ‘living space.’
The Washington order and its limits. The Washington treaties of the 1920s offered rules for the Pacific: naval ratios, the Open Door in China and consultation among powers. Their force depended on governments respecting them or acting when they were broken. The League had no army, and Britain and the United States were unwilling or unable to commit force to reverse the seizure of Manchuria. China could appeal to agreements, but the agreements did not automatically bring protection.
The army and the cabinet. Japan’s army claimed a direct relationship with the Emperor rather than ordinary subordination to the prime minister. That left Tokyo with a difficult problem when officers in the field disobeyed. Kwantung Army officers guarding the Manchurian railway concession assassinated the warlord Zhang Zuolin in 1928 and escaped effective punishment. In 1931 the army minister sent a general to check another plot, but word of the visit reached the officers concerned. Civilian weakness would matter when they acted.
China’s divided position. Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists had nominally unified China in 1928, but their government faced rival warlords and communist bases in the south. Catastrophic Yangtze floods added to its troubles in 1931. Japanese radicals expected Nanking to seek legal help abroad rather than offer effective immediate military resistance. They were less attentive to what repeated concessions and humiliation could do over time: resentment could strengthen Chinese nationalism.
THE TURNING POINT
Mukden, the night of 18 September 1931. At the ✕ near Mukden, an explosion damaged the Manchurian railway only slightly on 18 September 1931. The Kwantung Army used it as a pretext for seizing territory. The agreements meant to protect the postwar order were now tested: protests followed, but conquest was not reversed. The next chapter follows the incident; this one has established the fears and institutions that gave the officers their opportunity.
What it changed
A pretext takes shape. In the summer of 1931, Kwantung Army staff officers Ishiwara and Itagaki prepared a railway incident, choosing where to place the explosive charge. The next chapter follows their plan into the night of the explosion.
The Weimar center weakens. The European map shows another political consequence of the slump. Weimar’s last majority government fell in 1930, and by late 1932 the Nazis were the largest party in a fragmented Reichstag, though they had no majority. Chapter 3 follows the bargain that brought Hitler to office.
The democracies and defense. Economic pressure also affected the democracies’ defenses. They reduced military spending, while Britain’s ‘ten-year rule’ assumed that a major war was not imminent. As threats grew, those decisions left the democracies less prepared; the advantage to an aggressor varied with the country and theater.
DISCUSSION QUESTION — How far was the road to war laid by economics rather than ideology?
The Depression changed politics dramatically: the Nazi vote rose from 2.6% in 1928 to 37% in July 1932, and Japanese military radicals gained support amid rural hardship. But distress did not select the goals of those movements. Other countries suffered without invading their neighbors, and internationalist alternatives remained available in both Germany and Japan. Historians often call the Depression an enabling condition: it weakened confidence in existing arrangements and made expansionist promises more persuasive. Ideology supplied aims and enemies; institutions and choices helped determine who could act, from Japan’s army beyond effective civilian control to German conservatives willing to bring Hitler into government.
An interesting fact
Before the invasion of Manchuria, Japan was a founding member of the League of Nations with a permanent Council seat. Its diplomat Nitobe Inazō had served as a League under-secretary-general, and his portrait later appeared on a 5,000-yen note. After the Manchurian crisis, Japan became the first major power to leave the League. Later fears of ‘ABCD encirclement’ named America, Britain, China and the Dutch as opponents.
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