<P> "No postwar German government believed it could accept such a burden on future generations and survive ...". Paying reparations is a classic punishment of war but in this instance it was the "extreme immoderation" that caused German resentment . Germany made its last World War I reparation payment on 3 October 2010, ninety - two years after the end of World War I. Germany also fell behind in their coal payments . They fell behind because of a passive resistance movement against the French . In response, the French invaded the Ruhr, the region filled with German coal, and occupied it . At this point the majority of Germans were enraged with the French and placed the blame for their humiliation on the Weimar Republic . Adolf Hitler, a leader of the Nazi Party, attempted a coup d'état against the republic to establish a Greater German Reich known as the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 . Although this failed, Hitler gained recognition as a national hero amongst the German population . The demilitarized Rhineland and additional cutbacks on military infuriated the Germans . Although it is logical that France would want the Rhineland to be a neutral zone, the fact that France had the power to make that desire happen merely added onto the resentment of the Germans against the French . In addition, the Treaty of Versailles dissolved the German general staff and possession of navy ships, aircraft, poison gas, tanks, and heavy artillery was made illegal . The humiliation of being bossed around by the victor countries, especially France, and being stripped of their prized military made the Germans resent the Weimar Republic and idolize anyone who stood up to it . </P> <P> Other than a few coal and iron deposits, and a small oil field on Sakhalin Island, Japan lacked strategic mineral resources . At the start of the 20th century in the Russo - Japanese War, Japan had succeeded in pushing back the East Asian expansion of the Russian Empire in competition for Korea and Manchuria . </P> <P> Japan's goal after 1931 was economic dominance of most of East Asia, often expressed in Pan-Asian terms of "Asia for the Asians .". Japan was determined to dominate the China market, which the U.S. and other European powers had been dominating . On October 19, 1939, the American Ambassador to Japan, Joseph C. Grew, in a formal address to the America - Japan Society stated: </P> <P> the new order in East Asia has appeared to include, among other things, depriving Americans of their long established rights in China, and to this the American people are opposed...American rights and interests in China are being impaired or destroyed by the policies and actions of the Japanese authorities in China . </P>

What were the causes and effects of world war 2