IB History: The Second World War — notes, maps and essay questions

Chapter 1: The Gathering Storm

Versailles and Nazi revisionism. Germany lost territory and military strength under the 1919 settlement. The Nazis used resentment of those terms to build support for expansion, falsely describing each breach as a limited correction.

Depression and political weakness. Economic crisis damaged moderate parties and helped the Nazis come to power. It also put pressure on British and French military spending, while making support for another major war harder to secure.

Memory of 1914–18. Voters and leaders remembered the mass slaughter of 1914–18. Postponing another war seemed worth taking risks, especially when more time could help their countries rearm.

Failed collective security. The League of Nations failed to enforce its responses to Japan in Manchuria and Italy in Abyssinia. Those failures showed how an aggressor could act while other states struggled to agree on enforcement.

Chapter 2: The Pact and the Partition of Poland

Soviet distrust after Munich. Munich had excluded the Soviet Union. Stalin doubted that Britain and France would make an effective anti-German alliance, whereas a deal with Germany offered time, territory, and distance from a future front.

Hitler avoids two fronts. A neutral Soviet Union left Hitler free to attack Poland without an immediate war on two fronts and opened the way to Soviet trade. He expected Britain and France either to yield again or to fight without decisive effect.

Danzig as pretext. Demands over Danzig and the Polish Corridor provided Hitler with a public pretext. His larger purpose was Lebensraum, or living space, and the destruction of independent Poland.

Chapter 3: Blitzkrieg in the West

Concentrating the armor. France had many capable tanks and assigned much of its armor to infantry support. Germany brought tanks and other arms together in formations coordinated by radio, allowing force to be concentrated at a breakthrough.

Risk through the Ardennes. The revised German plan sent its main weight along a route the Allies thought unsuitable for a large, rapid armored advance. That choice offered surprise, but crowded columns on narrow roads were exposed.

Norway’s gain and cost. Norway protected Swedish ore shipments and offered Atlantic bases. The warships Germany lost there were unavailable to cover a later invasion of Britain.

The long peace — under a mushroom cloud. Since 1945 there has been no direct great-power war. Historians debate how much deterrence, exhaustion, institutions and luck contributed to that peace. Its limits become clear when we look beyond the great powers’ direct relations. Wars continued in the decolonizing world, including Korea, Vietnam and Angola, where outside powers supported opposing sides. A peace between powerful states could coexist with devastating fighting elsewhere.

Never again — the unfinished project. The catastrophe of 1939–45 helped produce human-rights law, refugee conventions and efforts to prevent genocide. Those commitments established reasons to act, but they did not ensure action when people were threatened. Atrocities in Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia tested them, and prevention often failed. The record leaves a question about what governments and others will do when warnings come.