The Origins of a war: a study of the influence of international finance on the foreign policy of Great Powers, with particular reference to the causes of the outbreak of war between Germany and the United States in 1941 - together with a consideration of the origins of the foreign policy of Hitler and Roosevelt, and of the origins of world wars in general

Abstract

It may seem rather strange that in a thesis dealing with the origins of the war between the U.S.A. and Germany in 1941, only one chapter of the six deals directly with this subject. My major concern, however, has not been with this war in particular; it has been used as a test case to disprove the argument for economic determinism, and to erect the counter argument that the origins of wars are determined by human nature. There have been three major lines of attack concerning the problem of the causes of war. First there is the belief See, e.g., Robbins,'War', last chapter that world wars are caused by the anarchy of the international state structure, and that the establishment of a world government would automatically remove the origins of world wars. Second, there is the myth that a particular type of state structure is responsible for war. Thus, Wilson, Roosevelt and Dulles believed that totalitarianism was very largely responsible for war, whereas the Marxist theory, attaining its acme in Lenin's thesis of Imperialism: the Highest State of Capitalism, contends that the Western democracies' structure of finance capital must necessarily lead to world war. And finally, there is the argument, as propounded chiefly by Niebuhr, that war arises not from the state structure, but from within man himself.