John Mearsheimer

What that tells you is you didn't need Adolf Hitler to start World War I, right?

And I believe that there is a good chance you would have had World War II in the absence of Hitler, right?

I believe that Germany was very powerful.

It was deeply worried about the balance of power in Europe, and it had strong incentives to behave aggressively.

in the late 1930s, early 1940s.

So I believe that structure mattered.

However, I want to qualify that in the case of Adolf Hitler, because I do think he had what you would call a will to power.

I've never used that word to describe him before, but it's consistent with my point that I often make, that there are two leaders, or there have been two leaders in

modern history who are congenital aggressors, and one was Napoleon and the other was Hitler.

Now, if you want to call that a will to power, you can do that.

I'm more comfortable referring to Hitler as a congenital aggressor and referring to Napoleon as a congenital aggressor, although there were important differences between the two because Hitler was probably the most murderous leader

in recorded history, and Napoleon was not in that category at all.

But both of them were driven by what you would call a will to power, and that has to be married to the structural argument in Hitler's case and also in Napoleon's case.

Well, the question of what led to Hitler is a very different question than the question of what led to World War II once Hitler was in power.

I mean, after January 30th, 1933, he's in power.

And then the question of what is driving him comes racing to the fore.

Is there resentment over the Versailles Treaty and what happened to Germany?

Yes.

Did that matter?

Yes.