Mini Easy on Causes of World War 2

Within the course of history there have been many events that have impacted the world. No matter what event is examined by historians most if not all have a cause or multiple causes. Even though historians have determined a cause or multiple causes for most historical events, it is the responsibility of the individual to determine which cause, if multiple causes have been determined, is the most important. The event that I have choose to examine the causes of is the Second World War, but unlike Felipe Perna'ndez-Armesto who states the most important cause is "the clash between different ideologies and forms of government…" (Fernandez-Armesto 2008), I support Jake Johnson when he stated the "slow economic growth…[is] considered the most probable culprit" (Johnson 2009).

As a country, in this case Japan, Russia, Germany, and Italy, one of the most important things to posses is power, which can be determined by many factors including economic gain. Each of these countries had the chance for economic gain from there surrounding countries. The first country's economic gain that I am going to discuss is Japan. According to Silviapages, "Japan wanted to expand in East Asia at the expense of Russia in Manchuria, Korea and China…the oil in the East Indies and raw materials in Indochina from Holland and France…" (Silviapages 2007). This quote shows that Japan had the goal of economic gain of land, oil and raw materials in mind, which led to a conflict between Japan and Russia, Korea, China, East Indies, Holland, and France. Along with this conflict Russia was also trying to gain their own economic power. According to Silviapages "Russia wanted to redraw the map of Eastern Europe. In particular, Russia wanted to regain territories lost at Versailles (Poland, Baltic states, Bessarabia)" (Silviapages 2007). This and the previous quote showed that Russia was not only defending their land, but they were also trying