The battle of Normandy

In 1920, nobody wanted war in Europe. In every village, the war had taken the lives of many young men, and everybody wanted peace. The French, for instance, called world war one "the last one of the lasts" ("la der des der"). There was no desire to fight, even in Germany. The desire for peace led to the creation of the League of Nations(the predecessor of the United Nations) in January 1920 and a peace treaty that should have preserved peace: the Jan. 1,1928 Kellogg-Briand-Stresemann Pact. 1. Despite these efforts, in twenty years, just the span of one generation, events would culminate in another dramatic conflict. How did this happen? The most durable cause was the peace treaty that the Germans were forced to sign just after world war one. Called the Versailles Treaty, it imposed on Germany very harsh conditions. The economist J.M. Keynes immediately predicted in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace that the treaty would lead to economic and political consequences that would touch the whole world. 2. October 1929 marked the start of the Great Depression, an economic crisis that touched the world. The US reacted from 1933 with the New Deal of President Roosevelt and Germany with a policy of vast public investments inspired by Hallmark Schacht, President of the Reich’s bank (1933–1939) and Minister of Economics (August 1934 – November 1937). The UK tried to impose measures of deflation that reduced the purchasing power of people and ended in more unemployment. The depression was less grave in France, but led to political turmoil. There were discontent people everywhere in Europe. 3. The creation of the Soviet Union (USSR) on Dec 29, 1922 polarized the world. People afraid of the Communist regime and its influence would rapidly view Hitler as a counter-balance. In the opinion of many, he became "acceptable" because of their fear of the USSR. 4. In the meantime, at the other side of the world, Japan was expansionist, invading Manchuria in 1931. In 1936, Japan signed an anti-communist treaty with Germany. In 1939, Japan started war against China, and in 1941 against the United-States. 5. Hitler became Chancellor on Jan.30, 1933. Re-armament and conquest were on his explicit program that very first day. The co-occurrence of all these events formed the perfect storm for World War 2. The Alliances World War 2 started when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Then, a cascade of alliances between nations enlarged progressively the war until all continents were touched by it. On the German side (called the Axis) were Italy and Japan as well as some smaller countries like Romania, Thailand and Hungary. On the allied side were first in Europe: Britain and France (when Germany invaded Poland), Belgium, the Netherlands, then Denmark, Norway and Greece (invaded by Germany), Yugoslavia. As India was then controlled by the British, it was involved in the conflict and partly invaded by Japan