This is the first study of the aims that motivated the major powers – the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, Germany, and Japan – to fight in the Second World War. The book shows how some war aims were constants, unlikely to be abandoned except as a result of total defeat, while others arose as a result of the fortunes of war. The author sheds light on the wartime transition of the United States and the Soviet Union to superpower status. He shows that consistency of purpose is most evident in Great Britain, content with the international pre-war status quo, and Nazi Germany, inten ... More

This is the first study of the aims that motivated the major powers – the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, Germany, and Japan – to fight in the Second World War. The book shows how some war aims were constants, unlikely to be abandoned except as a result of total defeat, while others arose as a result of the fortunes of war. The author sheds light on the wartime transition of the United States and the Soviet Union to superpower status. He shows that consistency of purpose is most evident in Great Britain, content with the international pre-war status quo, and Nazi Germany, intent on replacing it with a new order in which all liberal and civilized values would be annihilated. The author examines the origins of the Second World War, from the flawed peace settlement of 1919 to the start of the true world war at Pearl Harbour in 1941. Reflecting current historical understanding of the subject, he discusses, within a chronological framework, the underlying issues, such as the clash between ‘have’ and ‘have not’ states, as well as their relative military and economic strengths. Did the cause of peace advance in the 1920s, only to be stopped in its tracks and threatened with reversal by the economic depression that began with the Wall Street crash in 1929? What was the nature of Nazi thinking about war, foreign policy and the (primarily British) policy of appeasement, which sought to accommodate the Third Reich? Why did Britain itself for long prefer appeasement to collective security?