Download The Road to World War II

World War II Erupts
“The Rise of Dictators”
Learning Goals
1. Describe the cause and effect of American
isolationism during the 1930s (USH.4.8)
2. Compare and contrast President Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s world view with that of Germany’s
Adolph Hitler (USH.5.1)
3. Identify and describe key events that resulted in
the United States entry into World War II
(USH.5.2)
4. Identify and describe key leaders and events
during World War II (USH.5.3)
The Rise of Dictators
Main Ideas
1. Europe After WWI
2. Totalitarian Leaders Arise
3. Totalitarian Governments and Military Force
4. Hitler Takes Action
Europe after WWI
• Economy was in ruin
• Great personal & financial losses
• Many nations were unhappy with Treaty of
Versailles
- not harsh enough
- France & Italy
• Germany suffered the most
- reparations and lost land
- people & military humiliated
- Weimar Republic
- hyperinflation
Totalitarian Leaders Rise
• Reflected and expressed the people’s anger
• Promised a return to greatness
- people gave up basic freedoms for hope of
future glory
• Benito Mussolini (Italy-1922)
- National Fascist Party
- stressed glory of state
- blamed problems on Communist government
- encouraged violence
Totalitarian Leaders Rise
• Adolf Hitler (Germany-1933)
- National Socialist Party (NAZI)
- great speaker and motivator
- “Mein Kamph”
- stressed nationalism and devotion to state
- Germanic Empire
- ‘Aryan’ superiority
- blamed Jews
- eliminated opponents
- harshness of Treaty of Versailles
- secretly built-up military
Adolf Hitler
Totalitarian Leaders Rise
• Francisco Franco
(Spain – 1936)
- Spain Civil War in 1936
- Communists vs. Nationalists
- Franco received aid from
Italy & Germany
- became Fascist dictatorship
Totalitarian Leaders Rise
• Joseph Stalin (Soviet
Union – mid 1920s)
- violently crushed opponents
- created a myth of his own
greatness
- dominated all aspects of
Soviet life
Totalitarian Leaders Rise
• Japan torn by political and economical
conflict
• Military leaders (early 1930s) used
violence to overthrow government
• Nationalistic dreams of greatness
• Soon leads to war
Totalitarian Governments
and Military Force
• Japan invades
Manchuria (1931)
• Expansion
throughout Southeast
Asia until 1942
Japanese Expansion
Totalitarian Governments
and Military Force
• Italy invades Ethiopia
(1935)
• Conquered Albania
(1939)
• Failed invasion on
Greece (1940)
Totalitarian Governments
and Military Force
• Soviet troops enter Poland (1939)
- divided between Germany and the USSR
• Russian-Finnish War, Finland cedes territory to
the USSR (1939 – 40)
• Occupy Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (1940)
- incorporated into the USSR
• Romania cedes Bessarabia and North Bukovina
- Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic
Hitler Takes Action
•
•
•
•
Rhineland (1936)
Anschluss
Austria (1938)
Sudetenland
France/Great Britain Reaction
• Avoided war
• Munich Conference
(1938)
1. Neville Chamberlain
- appeasement
2. Annex Sudetenland
- Hitler promised end of
expansion
- Chamberlain criticized
- Winston Churchill