The proximate cause of World War II may be found in the aggressively expansionist policies of Adolf Hitler's Germany (rationalized under the conceptual policy of Lebensraum), Benito Mussolini's Italy, and imperialist Japan. Behind these policies lay a complex of economic, political, nationalist, racial, and even mythological forces. Most of this complex was embodied in a conflict between political ideologies, particularly fascism and Nazism on the one hand versus communism on the other; another ideological dynamic was capitalist democracy (as embodied in the Western democracies) versus totalitarianism (as embodied in the fascist and Nazi powers). Had Hitler not betrayed the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact he concluded with Joseph Stalin, it is likely that the democratic versus totalitarian dynamic would have trumped the natural ideological opposition of fascism-Naziism versus communism. But the German invasion of the Soviet Union made uneasy allies of the western democracies and communist Russia. Hitler's pact with Stalin was, for Hitler, a matter of temporary convenience. Not only was Hitler ideologically opposed to communism, he was motivated by racial beliefs--the racial mythology at the heart of Nazism--that made the conquest of the Slavs a kind of racial duty and national destiny. Nazi racial mythology held that the Slavic "race" was inherently inferior to the German, or Aryan, race.

For Japan, race was also an issue. Since virtually the first extensive contact between the Western powers and the nations of Asia, Asians had been the economic, political, and cultural victims of white Christian racism. Western imperialism with regard to the East was rationalized in large measure by a Western assertion of cultural, moral, religious, and racial superiority. Asia was widely subjugated and colonized. Although Japan made compromises with the Western powers beginning in the mid- 19th century, it remained one of the few Asian nations that was never conquered or colonized. However, contact with the West resulted in a blending of Japanese and Western traditions. Particularly powerful was the synergy of Western military doctrine, tactics, and equipment with Japanese warrior traditions. By the beginning of the 20th century, Japan was becoming a formidable industrial power and, as the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) stunningly demonstrated, had already become a major military power. After Japan's victory over Russia, the Japanese military assumed an increasingly important role in Japanese government. Industry and militarization proceeded apace. Yet modernization did not produce greater social tolerance. As Japan became more powerful economically and militarily, it sought expansion of its empire, and it sought, in effect, redemption of Asia from white Western Christian imperialism. The racial dimension of Japan's desire for empire did not preclude its own treaty of convenience with the West: the Axis (Tripartite) Pact with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. . .

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