ABSTRACT
Responsibility is a portmanteau word covering many different meanings. All the nations in a complex international society are to some degree involved with each other and in that sense share ‘responsibility’ for the most important international events such as war. In that sense, too, it is both true and misleading to conclude that Hitler’s Germany was not alone responsible for the outbreak of war in 1939 – misleading when responsibility is equated with blame, and blame, like responsibility, is considered something to be shared out between all the nations involved. Such an analysis of responsibility for the outbreak of the second great war in Europe, confuses more than it illuminates.
