Did the Second World War begin politically in 1919?

Can the political and economic beginning of the Second World War be dated to early 1919?

Some historians argue that, but the case overlooks too many contingent developments in the 1920s and early 1930s.

The audience suggests that the political and economic history of the Second World War began in the first half of 1919. Historians have made this case, but the answer finds it too neat. Events in the 1920s and early 1930s created contingencies that a straight line from 1919 can obscure. The exchange separates a war's long origins from the claim that its later course had already begun.