The Coming of the Second World War

The two world wars are the mountain ranges that dominate the historical landscape of the twentieth century. We still live in their shadows, in America as well as in Europe. Only with these wars did European and American history begin to coincide. The revolutions of 1820, 1830, 1848 and the wars leading to the unification of Italy and Germany marked the nineteenth century in European history, while the major events in American history were the westward movement, the Civil War and mass immigration. These events had certain transatlantic connections, yet not decisive ones. But in the twentieth century the two world wars have been the main events in the history of Europe and America as well.

For Europe World War I may have been more decisive than World War II, which was a radical continuation in many ways of the first war. For the United States World War II was more significant, both in its extent and in its consequences. American participation in World War I was short, and soon after the war American involvement in European affairs was repudiated for at least 20 years by the majority of American people. When Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, many Americans believed that somehow, or in some way, the United States would become involved. President Franklin D. Roosevelt expressed this when he declared U.S. neutrality at the start of the war, but added that he could not ask his fellow countrymen to be neutral in their sentiments.

This was very different from 1914, when the expressions of President Woodrow Wilson and the American people reflected a sometimes smug satisfaction toward the European war: that kind of war was something America had long left behind in its progressive, democratic evolution. It was typical of the Old World, not of the New. During World War I American neutrality was not abandoned until 1917; in World War II the United States was a de facto belligerent many months before Pearl Harbor.

In 1918 President Wilson announced, and tried to put into practice, the idea that this would be the war to end all wars. The history of the next 20 years was to prove him woefully wrong. It is one of the ironies of history that while for Americans the consequences of World War II were much more worrisome than those of World War I, it may well have been World War II-with all of its unsatisfactory consequences-that brought about the end of the period of world wars.