If the world’s powers prior to the rise of Hitler had possessed nuclear weapons, World War II would have been preventable. Following World War I, the most deadly war in all of human history and what would be become known as The Great War, countries feared war, and the various heads of states held a meeting in Paris to lay the groundwork for a peace that they hoped would last for the near future. Despite the expectation that the Treaty of Versailles would create peace, the world found itself in an even worse war barely two decades after the treaty’s signing. Hypothetically, if nuclear weapons existed in the period after the signing of the Versailles Treaty, their deterrence capabilities may have prevented the outbreak of another global war. The injection of nuclear weapons into pre-WWII Europe would have provided a stronger backbone to the allied powers, allowing them to deter German aggression.
I. World War II: Historical Causes Historically, Hitler’s aggressive tactics in pre-WWII Europe would lead to the outbreak of war. However, it is important to analyze how extremist leaders like Hitler both rise to power and consolidate power centrally enough to have total control of a nation such as Germany. Ultimately, one can attribute Hitler’s rise to and retention of power to two overarching conditions. First, the pacifist…show more content… Alone, a radical disposition is not enough to incite global war; however, radicalism combined with a dictator such as Hitler is enough to create the culture of aggression and militarism that existed in Germany in the 1930s. While post WWI Germany was initially passive “more clearly than ever before,” national mythmaking and propaganda from the Weimar government would ultimately replace values of peace with a desire for aggressive European
