The Uneasy Peace

Abstract

The Second World War — in its European manifestation — has often been characterised as the final act of a thirty years war for domination of the continent. In this interpretation, the second war followed because the arrangements after the first war failed to settle the issues that caused it; principally the problem of a Germany that was the strongest nation in Europe, but was geographically constrained. The shared ambitions of the Kaiser’s and Hitler’s regimes for expansion in the east at the expense of the Slavs make this theory plausible.