ABSTRACT
The Second World War was a continuation of the First, and marked the end of a long episode of a Thirty Years’ War of the twentieth century. Germany worried about the position of the United States, which had effectively isolated itself from European conflicts through the 1937 Neutrality Act, which embargoed arms sales to any belligerents. Operation Barbarossa, the attack on the Soviet Union eventually launched on June 22, 1941, was a Blitzkrieg operation. Barbarossa was also the culmination of Adolf Hitler’s ideological obsessions: with the acquisition of large territorial expanses in the east, with the danger of international communism, and with racial wars to be waged against Jews, Slavs, and inferior peoples. German businesses started planning for peace, which they recognized would be a peace imposed by the Allies. Through Swiss newspapers and other reports, they followed with great attention the discussion of the United Nations monetary and economic conference at Bretton Woods.
