ABSTRACT
The World Wars and the decades between constitute one unit in international and military history. The period of conflict was precipitated by the failure of political leadership in 1914 to prevent a general European war. Thereafter, the failure of the military leadership of the combatant nations to prosecute the war imaginatively resulted, after four years of unprecedented carnage, in an armistice rather than a peace. In the 1920s diplomatic efforts to adjust the terms of the armistice were combined with agreements to prevent a revived international arms race. Due to a fundamental lack of confidence in the durability of the peace, however, the political leadership of all the major powers sought to minimize the chances that a future war would resemble the conflict of 1914–18. In the 1930s, the radicalized politics of Germany and Japan pushed both toward rapid rearmament and aggressive foreign policies. Japan’s invasion of Manchuria violated international peace and divided the attention of the United States between the Asia-Pacific and Europe. When war came, cooperation among the political leaders of the Western Allies nonetheless enabled them to fight a long and more dynamic war to the decisive victory in 1945 that had eluded them in 1918.
