The Role of Rearmament in International Relations Essay

The Role of Rearmament in International Relations - Essay Example After the World War I, many nations were disarming themselves to concentrate on rebuilding as the war had destroyed a lot of resources in terms of public infrastructure, killed a lot of people and the economies of most nations were on the downfall. Germany on the other hand left the league of nations and begun rearming itself again. This caused a threat to other nations in the region they could no sit back and wait to be attacked. 1The UK also embarked on rearmament program because Germany was becoming a threat. In the middle of 1930s, the British government obtained the biplanes to be used by the Royal Air Force and this was quite different from that which was being used in the First World War. Other weaponry obtained by the rearmament program included hawker hurricane, battleships, aircraft carriers and super marine spitfire. This came to be useful to them during the Second World War. 2 The end of the First World War was marked by the signing of the accord termed as the treaty of Versailles in the year 1919. The treaty was assented to by France, Italy, the Great Britain and not the US since it was later to draft its own accord with Germany in 1921. Many historians view the signing of the Versailles treaty as the major driving force that lead to the Second World War. ... Rearmament in the Rest of the World It's quite obvious that the most war oriented nations are those that spend a lot on rearmament obtaining more dangerous weaponry and military personnel. Germany has been criticized a lot for stimulating or rather initiating the Second World War. This is because by the time other nations were disarming and concentrating on development to recover what had been lost in the war, the Germans did the contrary and started building new weapons. In reaction to that, other countries like the UK begun to build weapons in fear that the Germans would attack them as the memories of the First World War were still fresh in their minds. 3 Hitler decided to violate the Versailles treaty claiming it was imposed to the German people. He called on all Germans to reunite and rearm and he stated clearly that the German would be the centre of the Europe and use the land to produce the food that the nation needed. For him to achieve this, Adolph Hitler realized that he needed a stronger army, than what he had inherited from his predecessor. He ordered the then army general to prepare an army of about 300,000 men, the ministry in charge of military was ordered to build 1,000 war planes and more military barracks were built as well. When the French refused his proposal to rearm, Hitler led the Nazi Germany out of the Geneva conference and was seen by many leaders as not being a supporter of external democracy and foreign policy. This led to reaction from other nations to follow suit. Japan was one of the nations to initiate a rearmament program. In 1936, its expenditure on national defense was estimated to be about 307 million dollars. France spent 716 million, the United Kingdom spent