Skip to main content

How did militarism in Italy and Japan cause the Second World War?

Militarism is often a cause of wars and it certainly did help to bring about WWII.  Militarism can be defined in two parts.  First, it is the belief that a country should have a large military and should aggressively use that military to pursue its interests.  Second, it is the belief that the military is somehow superior to civilians, which leads to the military being respected excessively and even glorified.  Militarism was clearly present in all of the Axis powers, helping to bring about WWII.


In Japan, militarism drove Japanese foreign policy.  The military dominated the government and pushed hard for foreign expansion.  For example, it was the military that forced the government to invade China, not the other way around.  It was the military that pushed for the Pearl Harbor attack.  No other institution in society had anywhere near the prestige that the military had, which made it easy for the military to get its way.  Thus, militarism drove Japan to take aggressive actions that helped cause WWII.


In Italy, militarism was part of Mussolini’s drive to make Italy great again.  He wanted to increase Italy’s military strength to make it a major power in Europe.  A major step that Mussolini took due to militarism was his invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.  This did not lead directly to WWII in the way that Japanese militarism did, but it weakened the League of Nations and emboldened Germany.  Because Italy could get away with invading weaker countries, the Nazis felt it was more likely that they could use their own military power to get what they wanted as well.


Militarism often leads to wars because militarism encourages countries to use military force to get what they want.  Germany, Japan, and Italy all did this, causing WWII to begin.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more