Are We on the Brink of World War III?

The Speaker of the Finnish Parliament, Jussi Halla-aho (Finns Party), has given an interview in which he has, so to speak, painted devils on the wall. In other words, he has expressed fears that the Third World War may already be underway, but people are unwilling to recognize it.

According to him, the current situation is similar to the one leading up to the Second World War in the late 1930s. Therefore, I thought I would remind you, dear readers, of what happened back then.

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One of the causes of the Second World War is considered to be the Treaty of Versailles, which was imposed after the First World War. Its terms were regarded as overly harsh in Germany. After all, German soldiers had still occupied enemy territories in both the east and the west at the end of the war, unlike at the conclusion of the Second World War.

In addition to territorial losses, Germany’s military was drastically reduced. However, Hitler disregarded this and began rebuilding his country's military strength in the mid-1930s. This went unchallenged; for example, Britain signed a naval agreement with Germany, allowing its navy to be 35% the size of Britain’s own – then the most powerful in the world.

The Second World War was preceded by the Spanish Civil War, which ended with General Francisco Franco coming to power by overthrowing the democratically elected left-wing government. In this conflict, Germany and Italy supported Franco, while the Soviet Union backed the Republicans. This war provided an opportunity for these powers to test their weaponry and assess their military needs.

In 1936, Hitler capitalized on Germany's increased military strength by remilitarizing the demilitarized Rhineland. France protested, but Britain accepted the action, and no military threat was posed to Germany. Instead, Hitler orchestrated a "referendum" in the Rhineland, where 98.8% of those who voted supported his actions.

Hitler also engineered Austria's annexation into Germany, despite this being prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles. He received support from Italy for this move.

Some Austrians opposed the loss of independence and organized protests. However, these ended when Austrian Interior Minister Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who facilitated the unification, invited Hitler's army to restore order.

The next step in Hitler’s march towards war was the annexation of the Sudetenland, the German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia. The Czechs wanted to defend themselves, but their allies, France and the Soviet Union, refused to assist them. Thus, the issue was resolved through the Munich Agreement, led by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, which granted the Sudetenland to Germany.

After acquiring the Sudetenland, Hitler annexed the Czech region outright and reduced Slovakia to a puppet state. Shortly thereafter, Hungary annexed the Hungarian-speaking areas of Slovakia.

Following these events, Hitler demanded the transfer of Memel (now Klaipėda) to Germany. Once again, the victim, Lithuania, sought help from foreign powers, but assistance was denied.

It should also be remembered that before the Second World War, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which divided Eastern Europe between them. Under this agreement, Hitler invaded Poland in early September 1939, and the Soviet Union occupied the eastern part of the country.

As a result, France and Britain eventually declared war on Germany, but not on the Soviet Union. Thus, the Second World War had begun, even though little fighting occurred along the German-French border until May 1940. Before that, Hitler had already occupied Denmark and advanced into northern Norway, prompting a response from France and Britain – though, at this stage, they suffered defeats.

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If we examine the events I described earlier in light of Halla-aho’s perspective, we can make the following observations.

Firstly, it seems that Putin views the collapse of the Soviet Union as a comparable event to the Treaty of Versailles for Germany. After all, Russia lost a vast portion of the territories it controlled, from the Baltic states to the newly independent nations of Central Asia.

Russia’s actions in Syria were successful and undoubtedly reinforced Putin’s perception of the effectiveness of his military, much like the Spanish Civil War shaped the views of Hitler and Mussolini. However, unlike Hitler’s army, Putin’s forces have not been able to use their experiences in Syria to improve their available weaponry. A particularly striking example of this is the widely advertised Armata tank, which has proven incapable of participating in the war in Ukraine despite being a flagship product of Russia’s defense industry.

We have yet to see an event analogous to the unification of Austria and Germany, but the recent discussions surrounding Belarus being integrated into Russia would correspond quite closely. Additionally, it seems to me that Russia’s annexation of Crimea mirrors the events in Czechoslovakia in 1938: Ukraine wanted to fight, but Western nations at the time denied it military support and left it just as isolated as Czechoslovakia had been.

Furthermore, parts of occupied Ukraine (Donetsk and Luhansk) were, for a time, turned into puppet states of Russia, much like Hitler had done with Slovakia. The West sought to legitimize all this through the so-called Minsk Agreement, which closely parallels the Munich Agreement of 1938, which sealed Czechoslovakia’s fate.

Hitler’s invasion of Poland can, of course, be quite effectively compared to Ukraine’s situation from 2022 onward. Western nations have not declared war on Russia, but then again, the Western Front of 1939 didn’t see much actual fighting either.

However, Western countries are providing Ukrainians with some military aid, which—alongside the courage of the Ukrainians themselves—has enabled them to defend their country, though not to drive the aggressor out entirely. Poland, on the other hand, received no such support during the rapidly progressing war and wasn’t even provided with weapons in time.

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And is there a modern-day Chamberlain and a 1930s-style Britain? Isn’t this self-evident?

What else are we to think of Germany’s Olaf Scholz, who has done his utmost to minimize military aid to Ukraine, thereby playing into Russia’s hands in much the same way as Britain’s prime minister did back then?

What I’ve written above shows that the Speaker’s view of the similarities between the current situation and the events leading up to the Second World War is astonishingly accurate. However, I also see some differences.

The most significant of these is that Putin’s Russia is not a great power comparable to Hitler’s Germany. Certainly, Russia possesses nuclear weapons, but wars fought with them have no winners. At least not in a large-scale war, where a U.S. counterstrike would be inevitable and therefore too great a risk for the Russians.

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On the other hand, we also have China, which is rising as an increasingly powerful military force. It certainly has its own interests, particularly regarding Taiwan, but would it go to war as Russia’s ally against the entire world?

In my view, the answer is unequivocal. And it is a resounding "no"—especially regarding direct warfare. China will not engage in a large-scale war against the West, at least not as long as it can gain power and wealth through other means.

However, the question remains whether China might exploit Russia’s weakness and seize old Chinese territories in East Asia. Since the situation is quite similar to Taiwan, the answer is "possibly yes." But in that case, we are no longer talking about a Third World War but rather localized military actions.

Finally, I want to emphasize that although I do not believe, for the reasons outlined above, that a Third World War is about to break out, I do agree with Speaker Halla-aho (and many others) that it is better to prepare for war before it begins than to be naïve.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Do Belarusians Have the Will and Ability to Preserve Their Independence?
Strategic Experts Predicted Russia’s Collapse but Fell into Wishful Thinking
From Finland to Olaf Scholz: The Imperative of Supporting Ukraine's Independence instead of its Finlandization