Download Chapter 21 The Second World War

World War II
The Causes
McKay 971-975 Section 21.105
Today’s Agenda
• WWII: The Causes
• Quiz (#1-15) 12 minutes (42 seconds per
question)
World War II
Treaty of
Versailles
1919
France
occupies Ruhr
-Beerhall
Pustch
Wall Street
Crash
1923
1929
Nuremberg
Laws
1933
Germany
occupies
Austria
1935
1936
Germany
occupies
Czechoslovak
ia (Sept.)
1938
1939
Rhineland
Reoccupied
Hitler
named
Chancellor
Munich
Conference
Germany
Invades
Poland
Warsaw, Poland September 1, 1939
Warsaw, Poland 1944
World War II
• Fought on 6 of the 7 continents
• More than 100 million soldiers mobilized
• Resulted in the deaths of 50 to 70 million people
– 40-50 million were civilian
– 26 million from Soviet Union
– 5.5 million Poles
• 3 million were Jewish Poles
– 6 million Jews perished by the perversion of
Darwinism, nationalism, Nietzscheism, & the
utilization of scientific management principals
• Resulted in the development of Nuclear Weapons
• Resulted in the emergence of two superpowers
• How could this happen in the same civilization
that produce humanism, secularism,
individualism (priesthood of all believers),
constitutionalism, universal rights, religious
tolerance, the Mona Lisa, The Birth of Venus,
Principia, Two Treatise on Government, “Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity”?
Causes of WWII
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Long Term
Treaty of Versailles
– Diktat, War Guilt Clause, Reparations, Polish Corridor
Weakness of League of Nations
– US not a member
Pacifism & disunity of the Powers
Weakness of Weimar Republic
– “November Criminals” who “stabbed army in the back”
Wall Street Crash
– Dawes Plan loans dried up credit for Weimar gov.
– Depleted savings of middle class Germans
– Disillusioned with capitalism, democracy
Zeitgeist of the 20s and 30s
– Nietzsche philosophy glorified violence, struggle
– Lunatic fringe movements seemed viable to some
• Fascist movements in Italy, Germany, Poland, Belgium, and
even France, and Great Britain (Oswald Mosley)
– Western democracies embraced pacifism
• Reluctant to make mistake of WWI again
Adolph Hitler
– Evil demagoguery spoke to the Freudian “Id” of German populace
Treaty of Versailles
• Wilson’s Fourteen Points largely ignored
• Article 231 (War Guilt Clause)
– Placed blame of war entirely on Germany
• GB’s aim was to retain colonies (disliked
Wilson’s self determination clause)
• France motivated by security and revenge
• Demanded reparations, Alsace-Lorraine,
demilitarized zone in Rhineland
Click for excellent clip
• Germany lost large part of Prussia to
“Polish Corridor”
• Diktat
– Germany had no say in the treaty
– It was “dictated to them”
Weakness of League of Nations & Pacifism of West
• League of Nations had little power to enforce peace
– US and USSR were not members
• Washington Naval Conference (1921-22)
– First disarmament conference in history
– 9 Pacific region nations attended
– USSR not invited
– Led to Four Powers Treaty
• US, France, GB, and Japan
• Agreed to maintain status quo in Pacific region
• But Treaty resulted in rise of Japanese Empire
• Locarno Pact (1925)
– Germany and European powers agreed to settle
all disputes peacefully
• Spirit of Locarno
– Hope from 1925 to 1920 that international peace
was at hand
• Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928)
– Agreement signed by 62 nations declared “war
illegal”
– Dubbed Parchment Peace
The Pacifism of the West
• West (US and GB) believed WWI was a mistake and found reasons to
avoid war
– Believed propaganda and arms manufactures led the world into war
– Treaty of Versailles was too hard on the Germans
– Germans and Italians needed room to expand
– Democracy was not suited to all nations
• France
– Lost 50 percent of the 20 to 30 year olds in WWI
– Built the Maginot line (French Wall of China) up to Ardennes
– Internally ideologically divided
• Conservative right leaning toward fascism and admired Hitler
– Action Française & Croix-de-Feu
» Founded after Dreyfus Affair
» Right-winged fascist groups
» Anti-foreigner, anti-Republican
» Romantic “Blood & Soil” notions of peasants
» Pro Catholic (but condemned by Pope)
• Popular Front
– Coalition of socialist, leftists, and communist
– Led by Leon Blume
– Formed out of fear of the Right
The Pacifism of the West
• US and Britain adopt defensive
postures
– Oxford students pledged in 1933
never to take up arms for their
nation under any conditions
• US became increasingly isolationist
– Peace movements arose in
universities
– The extremes of both the Left
(Stalin) and Right (Hitler) made a
unified foreign policy difficult
– Congress forbade loans, export of
munitions, use of shipping to any
belligerent
• Neutrality helped the aggressor
nations in Europe
Disunity of the Powers
• Soviet Union
– Resented cordon sanitaire (1919) which was the
buffer states from Finland to Romania & meant to
stop the spread of Bolshevism
– Still held to idea of world revolution
– Still terrified of being attacked
– Marxism made them inherently suspicious and
anti capitalistic
– Western intervention against the Reds in 1919
confirmed this
• Particularly alarmed by Germany
– Why?
– Hitler’s Mein Kampf spoke of destroying
Bolshevism and taking parts of eastern Europe
• Fear led them to join the League of Nations in 1934
• Signed a treaty with France and Czechoslovakia in
1935
• In light of the Great Purges and Show trials of the
1930s, the West mistrusted the Soviets
Wall Street Crash
• Crash of ’29 led to US banks calling in loans
to Germany and denying any further credit
• Disillusioned middle class with Weimar and
capitalism
• As powers were distracted Japan invaded
Manchuria (China) in 1931
– Mukden Incident
• Japan claimed that a section of RR in
Mukden, S. Manchuria was dynamited
by Chinese
• Used supposed sabotage as excuse for
invasion
– Condemned by League but issued no
significant sanctions
– Japan withdrew from the League
• Hitler withdrew Germany from League in
1933
– Began rearmament program
Stresa Front (1935)
• Italy, Great Britain, and France
• Met to discuss growing German aggressiveness
• Also opportunity for Mussolini to propagandize
himself as elder peace maker
• Germany had withdrawn from League, began
rearmament program
– Instituted conscription to increase army to
750 thousand men
– Began building air force
• Hitler had sanctioned assassination of Austrian
dictator Dollfuss because he banned the Nazi
party
• Resolutions
– Reconfirmed the Locarno agreements
– Denounced Germany’s violations of the
Treaty of Versailles and Locarno
– Reaffirmed the independence of Austria
• Total failure
– Italy invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia
– GB signed naval pact with Germany
Second Italo-Abyssinian War
• Italians were dissatisfied with Versailles
• Had not gotten what they thought they deserved
• Memory of their defeat by Ethiopia at Adowa in
1896 still haunted them
• 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia
• Used Mustard Gas & modern weapons
• Over 500 thousand Ethiopians died
• Denounced by League and members were
forbidden to sell necessary war materials
(except oil)
• French actually sympathized with Mussolini
and GB didn’t want a larger war so they did
nothing
– Even allowed Italians to use Suez
• Combined it with Italian Somaliland and
Eritrea
• Haile Selassie appealed to the west at Geneva
• League of Nations showed its weakness again
• The Stresa Front dissolved
• Mussolini referred to himself as “Invincible
Duce”
• Exposed weakness of League of Nations
The March of Nazi and Fascist Aggression
• Hitler saw the weakness of
the coalition system and
began a diplomacy of
attrition to undo it
– made small moves
• Rant that he deserved the
whole cake and then
assure everyone that he
would be appeased with
just a slice
• He would get the slice and
start the process again
The Spanish Civil War, 1936 – 1939
• 1931 Alphonso XIII (Bourbon) was deposed
• Spanish Republic began reform movement
• Passed anticlerical legislation
– Church and state were separated
– Jesuit order was dissolved and its property
was confiscated
– Schools were removed from clerical control
• Large estates were redistributed
• Movement was not extreme enough for
radicals
– Strikes and uprisings erupted in Barcelona
and Asturias (mining town) but were
brutally put down
• Too extreme for the Church and conservative
parties
The Spanish Civil War:
1936 - 1939
The
Popular
Front
[Republicans]
 Anarcho-Syndicalists.
 Basques.
 Catalans.
 Communists.
 Marxists.
 Republicans.
 Socialists.
The
National
Front
[Nationalists]
 Carlists [ultra-Catholic
monarchists].
 Catholic Church.
 Falange [fascist] Party.
 Monarchists.
Francisco Franco
• Feb. 1936 elections
• Leftists (republicans, socialists,
syndicalists, anarchists, communists)
formed a Popular Front against the Right
(old regime, monarchists, clericals,
Falangist (Spanish fascists) and won
• But in July ’36, Military led by Franco
moved against the Republican government
• Civil war broke out as much of the
country supported the Republican
government
• 600,000 lives lost
• Franco won in March 1939
• 1939 Franco established a fascist type rule
over Spain
Spain Splits the World
• Spanish Civil War was
dress rehearsal for WWII
• Britain and France did
not intervene
• U.S. maintained
neutrality
• Germany, Italy, and
USSR intervened
• German planes were
tested via bombings of
Guernica (total war),
Madrid, Barcelona
• Mussolini sent troops
(100 thousand Italians)
Rome-Berlin Axis (1936)
• After their cooperation
during the Spanish Civil
War, Italy and Germany
increased relations
• Rome-Berlin Axis 1936
• Called Fascintern
• Formal fascist alliance
between Germany and
Italy
• Japan joined the Axis in
’36 under Anti-Comintern
Pact
• Now Hitler was free to
pursue union with Austria
Remilitarizing the Rhineland
• Saar (through Nazi agitation) voted
to join the Reich 1935
• March 1935 Germany openly
repudiated Versailles & began an
arms build up while West did
nothing
• Rhineland (1936)
– In March 1936 Hitler repudiated
the Locarno agreements and sent
troops into the Rhineland
(supposed to be demilitarized)
• French was stronger than Germany at
this time
– unwilling to act without GB
• Exposed weakness of League and
Allies
• Two years later Hitler demanded that
Germany be linked with Austria
Anschluss
• Austrian gov being terrorized by Nazis
– Assassination of Dolfuss, bombings
• Hitler demanded that known Austrian Nazis be
appointed to prominent gov positions
• Austria's Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg agreed
• Hitler ignored this and demanded Schuschnigg
hand over gov to Austrian Nazis
• Schuschnigg planned referendum of union with
Germany to discredit Austrian Nazis
– Government overthrown
• tried to hold a referendum for a vote on the issue
• In March 1938 Austrian Nazi party assumed
power
• “asked” Germany to annex Austria
• Germany marched in without firing a shot
• PM Chamberlain rejected joining an alliance with
France and Russia
• Believed he could negotiate with Hitler
The Munich Crisis: Climax of Appeasement
• Anschluss
– surrounded Czechoslovakia
– added 6 million Germans
• 3 million Germans lived in
Czech (Sudentenland)
• Czechoslovakia
– Had strong alliance with
France, USSR
– Part of the Little Entente with
Romania and Yugo
• Had strong army, highly dev.
Munitions industry, good
fortresses in the North
(Sudeten)
– Sudeten population was
almost entirely German
The Munich Crisis: Climax of Appeasement
• Sudeten Germans agitated
via German Nazis and
demanded unity with
Germany
• May 1938 rumors of
German invasion caused
Czechs to mobilize
– French, Brits, and USSR
issued warnings and Hit
backed down
• Allowed British PM
Chamberlain to negotiate
Appeasement: The Munich Agreement (Sept. 1938)
• Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain
• Hit raised demands higher and
mobilized war seemed imminent
• Chamberlain “appeased” Hitler
by giving him Sudentenland if
Hitler promised no more
territorial demands
• Loss of mountainous region of
Sudetenland left Czech
defenseless
• Chamberlain
– “peace in our time”
Now we have “peace in our
time!” Herr Hitler is a man we
can do business with.
Western Democratic Weakness
• Munich crisis revealed the weakness
of western democracies
• Western democracies were not
prepared to take on an invigorated
Germany
• By playing the “nationalism” card
Hitler placed the West in a difficult
diplomatic situation
– Liberal West agreed with the
concept of nationalism
• Saw fascism as a possible bulwark
against the spread of communism
• Maybe Russia and Germany would
destroy each other (they hoped)
End of Appeasement
• In March of 1939 Hitler took the rest of
Czechoslovakia
– protectorate of Germany
• Electrified Western European opinion
– Hitler could not longer claim that he was
merely uniting Germanic peoples
• Britain gave diplomatic guarantees to Poland,
Romania, and Greece
• Difficult diplomatic position
– west wanted Soviet help, but the Soviets
were communist
– Poles and Baltic states refused to allow
Soviet troops in their borders
– Western powers had sent lesser diplomats
to Moscow
• Chamberlain flew himself to meet
Hitler
• Soviets were offended & suspicious
– West would allow Soviets and Germans to
bleed each other out
• West offered no territorial gains
The Nazi-Soviet Pact
• AKA. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
• Soviets believed the Anglo-French alliance
was a way to make the USSR to take the
brunt of a Nazi attack
• Soviets openly signed a nonaggression pact
with Nazi Germany 8/23/39
– Secret clause was to divide Poland
– USSR would retain control over the
Baltic states
• Guaranteed Hitler a one front war
– No need for Schlieffen Plan
• Stupefied the world
– Oil and Water Mixed?
• Fascism & Communism are polar
opposites
• Germany invaded Poland 8 days later
(September 1)
• Britain and France declared war against
Germany (Sept. 3)
• World War II has begun