>>28940
>it is a legitimate view that the war was inevitable
It was very likely to happen. In states that were defeated (Germany) or didn't feel they got what they deserved (Italy) there was too much emnity and thirst for vengeance. Unlike in 1945 onwards there was no feeling that such aims had been decisively crushed, and no means to suppress revanchists from getting to power and trying to revise the situation. The true victors, on their part, were happy with the status quo of weakened rivals and superior access to land and resources, but they were also steeped in pacifism. On revisionist states the population did not want war, either -at least that was the case in Germany, when the initial mobilization against Poland was met with apathy- but the regimes could go ahead with a hawkish attitude.
But I don't think the Western powers would have attacked a doveish Germany. They were in a reactive position. The status quo was good enough for them. There was too much internal opposition to war, particularly in America where isolationist influence would surge in the event of an offensive war against a peaceful Germany; such an attack would be even more politically complicated at the height of German prestige in 1936. And the entire Western strategy was "turtling", waiting and waiting to convert economic into military superiority, rather than an immediate invasion. France didn't even attack during the reoccupation of the Rhineland.

If a war was truly inevitable, though, then Germany's prospects were indeed bleak. An inevitable war would be followed by an inevitable defeat, as was predicted.