How WWI led to WWII | Christopher Capozzola and Lex Fridman

Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:

GUEST BIO:
Christopher Capozzola is a professor of history at MIT.

PODCAST INFO:

SOCIAL:

[kevingallen]

The American general Pershing said when the 1918 armistice was being discussed, ”If we stop now we will be back in twenty years” He was right!

[gs]

Mentioning WW1 resentment without explaining where and why Fascism was born is quite the understatement.

[TurdFrguson]

"They also wanted to weaken Germany as much as possible so Germany couldn't rise again." - Christopher Capozzola
"We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine." SOD Lloyd Austin, 2022

[marcshantz]

Economic distress and hyperinflation in Germany didn’t help either.

[offmyface]

It never gets mentioned that it was ultimately about the new technology of the combustion engine and the Berlin to Baghdad railway leading to WW1. That Germany wanted to secure oil from the Middle East and Britain did everything to stop them at any cost, because they wanted to control the flow.

[BV-jqvg]

Lex! Dr. Peter Hayes would be an awesome guest on the show on this topic!

[benitocolombus]

"Churchill, Hitler and the unnecessary war" is a must read. This guy leaves a lot out, britain had a lot of chances to not get involved in world war 1 and this is expressed by a lot of the top british politicians at the time later on in their life including the prime minister.

"History is an agreed upon fable" -napolean

[MrS-pesd]

Lex, I’m saying this from a place of love, your Klonopin dose is way too high. I’ve seen it a million times. Get that shit adjusted, your sense of well-being isn’t going to fair very well if it stays that high for too long. In fact get off benzodiazepines completely. That will royally mess up your life.

[ah]

i feel the support for forgotten weapons go lex

[Asdfgfdmn]

Resentment and the humiliation feeling never paid off on the long run

[gs]

You could also make the point that Britain, like with Napoleon's expansion, couldn't allow the Central Powers to win on the Continent. So my argument is that the UK really couldn't stay out of it, when the defeat of France would affect the British so much.

The focus on Germany is sort of wrong. It was the Central Powers trying to supplant France and Britain. Austria-Hungary is one of the coolest multi-national empires ever, and they had to reassert their dominance. Germany was successful against both France and Austria in the past and wanted to become the master of Europe.

In British history-making, anybody who wants to become the master of Europe is a certified naughty boy, while if the Brits invade 1/3 of the planet, it's a legitimate act of a liberal and dandy nation. History is written by the victors – and by the ideological shadow of WW2, which ultimately was the weaponisation of Fascism by big industrial men against Communism. That's how Fascism began, and that's why it was seen as positive by both France and the UK. Also, France was a much more antisemite nation than Germany, before the National Socialists took power in Germany. A supportive point is how Italian antisemite laws came into effect in the third stage of fascism, just before WW2 began, even though the country was the first to idealise and adopt Fascism, in 1922.

[NoName-dsuq]

I need to point out that the US troops that first fought major actions in WWI were under Australian command embedded with our forces at the Battle of Amiens in 1918, under General Sir John Monash. This was the first major land defeat for the Germans.

[Demba]

Reminds me of Dan Carlin saying: "The times made Hitler possible and even maybe desirable to some. if you took him out of the equation, the trends and forces that made those times are still in place, so if Hitler doesn't come to power, does someone else walk through that door?" History could be different as we now it, but it's certain that WWII was going to happen at some point. Huge historic events are not caused by one person or one event but a build up from many different factors and causes

[staffsgtsullivan]

Obviously a very complicated subject but pinning blame on the US for not joining the LoN seems like a stretch. Due to the public perception of Versailles as harsh, German actions like re-militarizing the Rhineland were legitimized. The citizens of the western democracies were overwhelmingly against going to war over these kind of Versailles infringements and it was not close. That’s clear if one analyzes the media at that time. It’s only in hindsight are these things seen as the inevitable march toward total war.

[gs]

It's not only that the Entente "felt" it sacrificed more than the US. It's what they actually did; France sacrificed the most. Not to mention, Britain, France and Russia had disagreements already in 1914 on what it would take for new Entente members to do in order to be granted concessions after the war. And after the war, they would not respect those agreements, for example towards the Kingdom of Italy or the Arab people who revolted against the Turks. It was a reassertion of their world order, who seeded distrust and new challengers instead of healing disagreements. That's what happens when you play big boss and the imperial game, but don't recognise other countries' legitimacy to do the same.

[ronmexico]

Why would the allies declare war on Germany and not the Soviet Union when both invaded Poland?

[craigcolbourn]

Next title will read:

HOW DID WW2 LEAD TO WW3?

[ericpmoss]

There's even more. While the Treaty of Versailles was being finalized, Ho Chi Minh requested help from the US to achieve independence, or at least some autonomy, from the French. The US told him to go pound sand. Had the US intervened in a diplomatic way at that time, a whole lot of suffering might have been avoided.

[dennisalbert]

If there was no Napoleon... If there was no Alexandre

[Jeremy-Ai]

Defeat.
We all experience this on some level.
War… is a defeat that most of us alive right now hopefully never know.
Maybe we should try to remind ourselves that theory has no place in a terrible reality.
Lead with that concept in mind.