What caused World War II immediately was Chamberlain’s issuing of an ultimatum that was ignored. But what led to Chamberlain issuing such an ultimatum is more illuminating: Nazi aggression against Germany’s neighbours. There is a story of how we got to that point too. The standard account in history is that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, leading to the outbreak of World War I. The settlement of that war produced the Treaty of Versailles, the harshness of which upon Germany led to the rise of an expansionist movement of National Socialism.
History
