1. The Central Question
The historiography of the Second World War’s causes is dominated by two interrelated questions. The first is about Hitler: was he the primary cause of the war — a man with a fixed programme of expansion and racial war who drove Europe toward conflict — or was he an opportunist whose success depended on the structural conditions of international relations in the 1930s? The second is about appeasement: was the Anglo-French policy of appeasing German demands a reasonable attempt to prevent war in unpropitious circumstances, or a catastrophic failure of will that encouraged Hitler and made war more likely?
2. The Main Schools
The Traditional View: Hitler’s Programme (Trevor-Roper, Bullock)
Core argument: The dominant post-war view held that the Second World War was Hitler’s war, planned and caused by a dictator with a fixed ideological programme — Lebensraum in the east, racial war against the Jews, the destruction of Versailles — who pursued it with relentless consistency. Hugh Trevor-Roper and Alan Bullock established this framework in the late 1940s and 1950s. Appeasement, on this account, was a failure of nerve that gave Hitler what he wanted without resistance.
Key texts: Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler (1947); Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (1952).
AJP Taylor’s Revisionism: The Origins of the Second World War (1961)
Core argument: AJP Taylor’s The Origins of the Second World War (1961) was one of the most controversial history books of the 20th century. Taylor argued that Hitler was not a programmatic expansionist with a fixed timetable but a traditional German statesman pursuing German great-power interests in an opportunistic way — exploiting the weaknesses and miscalculations of other powers rather than executing a predetermined plan. The war was the result of everyone’s errors and misjudgements, not Hitler’s plan. Taylor was particularly revisionist on appeasement: the appeasers were not cowards but reasonable statesmen dealing rationally with limited information in unpromising circumstances.
Key text: AJP Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (1961).
Strengths: Challenges the ‘Hitler alone’ framework; restores complexity to the appeasement decision; a technically brilliant piece of historical argument that forced the field to sharpen its methodology.
Weaknesses: Widely criticised for ignoring or minimising ideological evidence of Hitler’s expansionist programme; Mein Kampf and Hitler’s ‘Second Book’ are more programmatic than Taylor acknowledged; the subsequent evidence from German archives has not been kind to the opportunist interpretation.
The Appeasement Debate
Traditional condemnation: The ‘guilty men’ view (from the 1940 pamphlet of that name) held that appeasement was a moral and strategic failure — Chamberlain and the appeasers gave Hitler what he wanted at Munich, destroyed the possibility of collective security with the Soviet Union, and made war inevitable on worse terms. Churchill was right; Chamberlain was wrong.
Revisionist defence: From the 1960s onward, historians including Donald Cameron Watt and Maurice Cowling argued for a more sympathetic reading of appeasement. Britain was militarily unprepared, economically strained, dependent on an empire whose dominions would not fight in a European war, and facing genuine uncertainty about Soviet reliability as an ally. The appeasers were not cowards but realists buying time. The Munich Agreement, on this reading, was not a capitulation but a rational calculation in difficult circumstances.
Key texts: Donald Cameron Watt, How War Came (1989); John Charmley, Chamberlain and the Lost Peace (1989).
Current synthesis: Most historians now hold that appeasement was defensible in 1937–38 given the constraints the British government faced, but that by 1939 it had become clear that Hitler’s demands were unlimited and that further concession was futile. The failure was not primarily moral but analytical — a failure to recognise Hitler’s ideological character in time.
Structural Accounts: International Relations and the Interwar System
Core argument: Some historians have emphasised the structural conditions that made war likely regardless of Hitler’s specific programme: the unresolved tensions of the Versailles settlement, the weakness of the League of Nations, the collapse of collective security, the Great Depression’s radicalisation of European politics, and the Soviet Union’s isolation from the Western alliance system. On this account, war was the product of a failed international order as much as of one man’s will.
3. How the Debate Has Developed
Taylor’s 1961 book provoked a sustained critical response that produced much of the best archival work on Nazi foreign policy and appeasement. The debate between the ‘programmatic’ and ‘opportunist’ interpretations of Hitler was eventually absorbed into the broader intentionalist/functionalist debate about the Nazi regime, with Kershaw’s synthesis providing the most widely accepted account of Hitler’s ideological consistency combined with tactical flexibility.
The appeasement debate has continued independently of the Hitler question, with historians revisiting the constraints facing British and French governments in the 1930s and reassessing whether alternative policies were genuinely available. The opening of British Cabinet records has allowed more detailed analysis of appeasement decision-making.
4. Where the Debate Stands Now
The professional consensus holds that Hitler bore primary responsibility for the war — Taylor’s opportunist interpretation has not survived archival scrutiny — but that structural factors and the failure of the international system contributed to the conditions that made Hitler’s aggression possible. Appeasement is now generally assessed more sympathetically than the immediate post-war ‘guilty men’ judgment, though not as sympathetically as Taylor suggested.
5. For Teachers: Exam Relevance
AQA, Edexcel, OCR, WJEC: The causes of WWII and the appeasement debate are examined across all four A-level boards. Taylor’s revisionist thesis is the standard AO3 framework — students must be able to assess and evaluate it against the traditional interpretation.
For Teachers — AQA Resources · For Teachers — Edexcel Resources · For Teachers — OCR Resources
6. Key Texts
AJP Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (1961) — The most important revisionist intervention. Essential reading as the foil against which subsequent historiography defines itself.
Ian Kershaw, Hitler (2 vols, 1998–2000) — The synthesis account of Hitler’s ideology and tactics. The best answer to Taylor on the programmatic/opportunist question.
Donald Cameron Watt, How War Came (1989) — The most detailed study of the diplomatic crisis of 1939. Sympathetic to the appeasers; essential for the revisionist defence.
Richard Overy, The Road to War (1989) — Accessible synthesis of the debate, covering all the major powers’ decisions. Good starting point for the structural approach.
7. Related Pages
Historiography · The Historiography of Nazi Germany · Fall of the Weimar Republic · Causes of World War One
Ideas · Fascism
Podcast Episodes · Best Podcasts on Fascism
