1918-1939: What Really Started World War 2?

September the 1st 1939 German troops thrust deep into Poland to win a swift and absolute victory barely 20 years earlier Their forefathers had also been on the march, but back into their homeland as a defeated army in November 1918 after four years of World War one Germany's Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm the second had been forced to abdicate His armies were being ground down by a remorseless offensive by British French and US troops his people faced starvation But already a dangerous myth was taking The German generals and troops claimed that they hadn't been defeated in battle, but betrayed by their own cowardly politicians Even so at 11 in the morning on November the 11th 1918 The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month World War one came to an end the following month President Woodrow Wilson of the United States arrived in Europe promising to create a new world order He persuaded the world's leaders to sign up to a new League of Nations At the Treaty of Versailles, they agreed that from now on Disputes between countries would be resolved not by fighting but by debate in the League The peoples of Europe were set free Germany's ally the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dismembered Out of it new nations were created Austria Poland Hungary Czechoslovakia Yugoslavia Latvia Lithuania and Estonia Germany itself was greatly reduced in size But this process contained a time bomb Not everyone celebrated the birth of countries like Czechoslovakia Several of them contained substantial German minorities One day the desire to reunite the German peoples would come to haunt you The war-torn German people also had one final indignity inflicted on them They were forced to pay a massive 6.6 billion pounds in reparations to France and Britain something they could ill afford And when he returned to America Wilson's new world order immediately fell apart The US Congress decided it could not risk being sucked into another war in Europe It refused to join his League and the US withdrew into isolationism Germany was now a very different nation It was still Europe's biggest country, but its militaristic monarchy had gone. It had become a democracy But its government the so-called Weimar Republic was soon struck by a series of hammer blows Street battles erupted between extreme right-wing nationalists and communists trying to start a revolution Then in 1923 the country was devastated by hyperinflation which reached hundreds of percent a month Ordinary people's savings were wiped out This was fertile ground for a new breed of rabble-rousing right-wing politicians Adolf Hitler Hitler had been born in Austria. He had fought bravely as a soldier in World War one and been awarded the Iron Cross On returning to Germany he settled in Munich and his fiery oratory soon enabled him to seize control of the small National Socialist or Nazi party in October 1923 Hitler and his henchmen Attempted an armed coup against the Weimar government. It failed and he was sentenced to nine months In prison, he wrote a book Mein Kampf My struggle in which he blamed Germany's ills on the Jews and Demanded that it rebuild its strength and seek new territories in the east On his release he set about building the Nazis into a proper disciplined political party From now on he would use the democratic system to achieve power But for the next five years Weimar Germany prospered. Support for extremist parties left and right dwindled Then suddenly Hitler's opportunity arrived. In October 1929 the US stock market crashed Billions of dollars were lost and an economic depression swept across the world Unemployment in Germany soared to over six million. Only extremist politicians seemed to offer a solution Politicians like Hitler By 1931 his Nazis were a true mass movement And they had their own brown-shirted thugs, the SA storm troops, who numbered almost three million In the 1932 elections the Nazis became the largest party in Germany's Parliament, the Reichstag But Hitler refused to join a coalition Leaving Parliament paralyzed To break the impasse President Hindenburg made him Chancellor in January 1933, head of the government Within a month the Reichstag burned down Hitler accused the communists and demanded emergency powers He then used them to ban all other political parties In August 1934 President Hindenburg died Hitler declared himself president. He was now absolute leader, the Führer of Germany At first there was little sign of what was to come The next three years the Führer concentrated on rebuilding Germany's economy He spent millions on public works including the 5,000 mile autobahn system to soak up the unemployment But in secret Hitler was also spending lavishly on a huge rearmament program Under the Versailles Treaty the German army had been limited to a hundred thousand men The country was forbidden to have an air force, tanks or submarines This small army was trebled in size Then in 1935 Hitler came out into the open He unveiled a brand new air force, the Luftwaffe It had two and a half thousand planes Far more than Britain or France Unemployment plunged and the Nazis became enormously popular Now emboldened, the Führer made his first expansionist move In 1935 he reoccupied the Saarland district on the French border After it voted to return from League of Nations to German rule A year later he sent German troops into the Rhineland, part of Germany which had been demilitarized at Versailles At the time many felt that Hitler was only claiming back what was rightfully Germany's Neither Britain nor France objected When Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympic Games, the Nazis were seen by many as firm but fair A government which was restoring the nation's pride and which didn't threaten anyone Of course there were signs The 1935 Nuremberg Laws forbade Jews to marry true Aryan Germans and deprived them of their citizenship But when the first threats came to world peace, they didn't come from Hitler at all But from somewhere else entirely Japan at the start of the 20th century was already a military power It had defeated Russia in a war in 1905 and it had fought alongside the Allies in World War One After the war Japan was an acknowledged world power And it signed up to the League of Nations But politically it was a mess of contradictions Nominally a democracy, the feudal tradition was still strong Most Japanese revered their Emperor as a living God and regarded him as their true leader And the country faced major economic problems. Its population was exploding And it had no natural resources to fuel its rapidly expanding industries Its leaders needed solutions and they saw them in Chinese Manchuria Manchuria was a land of rich grain fields with plenty of coal and minerals It was a perfect target Japanese troops were already stationed there Other possible targets were the colonies ruled by the European powers Burma, Malaya and Hong Kong controlled by Britain Indochina ruled by France and the Dutch East Indies But at this stage Japan had to be cautious. They didn't want to rouse the other great power in the Pacific The United States For all its anti-imperialist slogans the US actually ran an unofficial empire in the Pacific The Philippines, Guam and several islands were under its direct rule It undoubtedly had the strength to take on Japan but since the end of World War one it had had other distractions This was America's jazz age Throughout the 1920s a nation concentrated on exploiting its vast resources It was an economic boom that seemed without end Fortunes were made both in industry and the stock markets America seemed lost to the increasing pursuit of pleasure With distractions like these Japan's growing pains in the Pacific seemed very far away America had slashed its army after World War one and agreed a naval reduction treaty with Britain, France and Japan This in effect handed naval superiority in the Pacific to the Japanese and then came the Great Depression As the economic devastation spread a quarter of the population lost their jobs Tens of thousands were made homeless living in shantytowns Whereas before it had been distracted by pleasure Now America was distracted by pain. It was time for Japan to make her move In 1931 without even informing their own elected government the Japanese forces in Manchuria Seized the capital Mukden and then overran the rest of the territory A puppet state Manchukuo was proclaimed under a puppet rule Henry Puyi the last Emperor of China who had been deposed in 1911 was dragged out of retirement At its headquarters in Geneva the League of Nations now faced its first great test Japan was universally condemned But her response was blunt Japan however Find it impossible to accept that it adopted by the assembly The Japanese then just walked out and the League suddenly realized there was nothing he could do about Manchuria Japan was declared an international pariah, but it didn't care Its leaders had turned their eyes to further conquests in China These were easy pickings China was in a state of chaos The government of generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek was locked in conflict with the Chinese Communist Party and the Mao Zedong There was civil war In 1936 as a precursor to invasion the Japanese signed a pact with Hitler The aim is to guard against any attack by Soviet Russia were it to move on China Then in July 1937 the Japanese provoked an incident with Chinese troops and invaded At first the Chinese were taken by surprise But they soon fought back fiercely the communists even joining the Kuomintang in a united front The Japanese responded with amphibious land By the end of 1937 they had overrun much of northern China and the coast The Japanese fought this war with exceptional brutality bombing cities indiscriminately Westerners living in the commercial center the port of Shanghai were now evacuated the city was then besieged for three months It suffered widespread damage the Japanese forces showing no pity or concern for the native population But it was after the capture of Nanking then the Chinese capital on December the 17th 1937 that the Japanese forces really ran over 300,000 civilians are estimated to have been massacred during a six-week orgy of rape and Indiscriminate killing The Japanese even attacked British and US warships which had been sent to protect their shipping and trade The worst incident came on December the 12th 1937 the American gunboat Panay was sunk by Japanese bombers 50 crewmen died Despite this the Western powers refused to interview So the League of Nations could do nothing In the United States President Roosevelt wanted to impose a naval blockade of Japan It has become clear that acts and policies of nations in other parts of the world Have far-reaching effects on us But the British would have none of it fearing that it might provoke a war So all Roosevelt could offer was a 25 million dollar loan to Chiang Kai-shek to buy arms Even though the communists were now fighting alongside the Kuomintang the Soviet Union did little to help either Its only involvement was a series of clashes along its own border with Manchuria But China itself received nothing Instead it had to fight on alone During 1938 the Japanese overran Canton and pushed the Chinese forces deeper into the west of the country All the rhetoric of the League of Nations all those promises to stop international aggression had come to nothing And by now the Western powers were facing aggression much closer to home It is necessary to crystallize a position of powerful injustice The blood of the princes that rise and that are born and the princes that decline, victory is for us, for the first Today it is easy to laugh at Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy All that posturing seems faintly ridiculous now, but it didn't seem that way in 1922 Back then Italy had seemed to be on the edge of anarchy, the country was riven by strikes and land seizes The democratic government just as in Germany seemed powerless in the face of such unrest So Benito Mussolini, a war veteran and a journalist decided to take a stand He organized a right-wing nationalist party, the fascists With a country paralyzed by a general strike in August 1922, Mussolini ordered his followers to march on Rome Fearing a civil war, Italy's king, Victor Emmanuel, asked him to form a government Mussolini swiftly stamped out any political opposition and assumed dictatorial power By 1928 his position seemed secure Parliament was appointed rather than elected and all power was firmly in the hands of the fascist Grand Council Like Hitler, Mussolini's first acts made him immensely popular Massive programs of public works provided employment and transformed Italy's infrastructure Corruption was rooted out and the Mafia more or less eliminated Italy's armed forces were built up, including an advanced modern air force In the Mediterranean, Mussolini launched a powerful Navy bigger than the combined might of the British and French Mediterranean fleets When the Great Depression came, Italy seemed to weather it better than most Mussolini became a source of worldwide inspiration Political leaders, not least Adolf Hitler in Germany, saw the fascist system as a role model Strong and purposeful in contrast to the weakness of the democracies in Britain and France But Mussolini wanted more than adulation He wanted to recreate the Roman Empire And he already had a target in mind for his first imperial land growth his target was Abyssinia, today's Ethiopia Italy already had colonies on its borders in Eritrea and Italian Somaliland In December 1934, Italian forces provoked a clash with Abyssinian troops at an oasis in the Ogaden region well inside Abyssinian territory Mussolini then sent reinforcements to Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, demanding that Abyssinia pay reparations The Emperor of Abyssinia, Haile Selassie, appealed in person to the League of Nations He called on it to live up to its ideals Here was a small nation under threat from another member of the League This was the supreme test, but the League did nothing Britain's foreign minister, Anthony Eden, at least tried to broker a peace deal, but Mussolini would have none of it In early October 1935, the Italian army invaded from Eritrea and Italian Somaliland The primitive Abyssinian forces stood little chance against a modern army equipped with artillery and tanks The Italian Air Force had total command of the air and harried the Abyssinians On occasions dropping gas bombs, even though gas had been outlawed at Versailles as a crime against humanity After six months, Abyssinia was completely overrun The Emperor Haile Selassie fled into exile in Britain From its headquarters in Switzerland, the League of Nations wrung its hands It did impose economic sanctions, but they had little effect Mussolini's aggression had revealed two things The League of Nations, that great hope for peace, was impotent And both Europe's supposed major powers, the democracies Britain and France, no longer had the stomach for a fight Both Britain and France had been shattered by World War I, and their economies had never really recovered Both had witnessed waves of strikes and unrest Both had suffered mass unemployment, even before the Great Depression Both also faced the cost of controlling empires Now swollen by taking on Germany's former colonies and the Middle Eastern territories once run by the Turkish Ottoman Empire And above all, both had been traumatized by the horrific casualties of World War I A succession of British leaders, Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald, and above all, Stanley Baldwin all resolved to keep Britain out of future conflicts Despite horrific casualties on the Western Front, Britain had ended World War I with a large and very effective conscript army This was immediately run down to a small professional force designed to police its sprawling empire And when the Great Depression struck, any ideas of modernizing the army were abandoned It meant that Britain went into the run-up to war economically and militarily weak French losses during World War I had been even worse than the British Ever mistrustful of the Germans, a large conscript army was maintained But throughout the 1920s, France's birth rate had declined It became clear that there would be a manpower shortage by the mid to late 1930s France realized it could never compete with Germany on the size of its army alone The solution was to adopt an entirely defensive mentality The Maginot Line, a series of fortifications, was begun in 1930 along the frontier with Germany and ran as far as the Belgian border There, it theoretically linked up with fortifications planned by the Belgians This new French military approach meant that France was only capable of waging a defensive war It just did not have the ability to launch an attack on Italy Even if the British had had the troops to help And of course both countries knew that their navies in the Mediterranean were outnumbered by Mussolini's new fleet So when Italy conquered Abyssinia, it made sense for both powers to do nothing It just seemed too remote, too much someone else's problem By now, they both had to deal with all the traumas of the Great Depression That seemed so much more pressing And above all, they were now faced with a military threat far closer to home A resurgent and re-arming Germany And Germany's power, and that of Italy too, was soon about to be demonstrated In supporting the rise of another dictator in Spain In 1936, civil war erupted in Spain It was exceptionally vicious, setting family against family Communists against fascists, believers against atheists In 1931, a left-wing government had come to power determined to get rid of the centuries-old Spanish monarchy The king was forced into exile and a republic was declared In February 1936, the parties of the left combined in a popular front To take on the forces of the right in a general election The popular front won narrow Even though its reform program was modest, a wave of strikes and land seizes led the right to fear that a communist takeover was inevitable Within the Spanish army, long a bastion of conservative and Catholic thinking Senior officers began to consider the possibility of a coup Among them was General Francisco Franco The former chief of staff who had been effectively exiled to command Spain's forces in the Canary Islands On July the 17th, 1936 The units of the army fighting guerrillas in Spain's colony in Morocco mutinied The next day, Franco flew to join them Proclaiming a new nationalist movement which would save Spain from communism Mainland garrisons now joined this revolt The popular front responded by calling for volunteers to defend the republic Battle lines had been drawn At first Franco faced problems He and his army were in North Africa and he had to get across the Straits of Gibraltar back to Spain So he turned to the one person he thought might help Adolf Hitler Within a month Transport aircraft from Hitler's new Luftwaffe had begun an airlift, taking Franco's battle-hardened veterans over to southern Spain At this stage, the Republic still seemed to have the advantage The pro-Franco military uprisings in Madrid and Barcelona were quickly crushed Leaving it in control of most of the east of the country Franco's nationalists were confined largely to the northwest and part of the south But the nationalist situation was transformed when Hitler and Mussolini started to pour in troops and weapons The German dictator seized the opportunity to test his new equipment and expanding armed forces The first panzer tanks were sent along with some 12,000 troops And the Luftwaffe deployed its Condor Legion with its ultra-modern new bombers and fighters Mussolini sent a so-called volunteer corps of 50,000 men and more than 700 aircraft In vain did the Republicans appeal to Britain, France and the Soviet Union for help But London and Paris were scared of setting off a European war. They declared a policy of non-intervention Cynically, both Germany and Italy signed up to this But when it became obvious that they were still sending arms to the nationalists Josef Stalin, the Soviet leader, announced that he would help the Republic Stalin's worry was the rise of fascism in Germany Hitler had made it abundantly clear that he believed communism to be Nazism's ultimate enemy Stalin saw the Spanish conflict as a way of keeping Germany and Italy occupied while building up the Soviet Union's military strength About 700 military advisers were sent along with tanks and fighter aircraft It was something but no match for the support Franco had received In fact, the largest source of outside help for the Republic didn't come from a country at all But from volunteers, the international brigades About 30,000 left-wing Americans, British, French and Germans signed up to fight in Spain With their new fascist support, the nationalists were able to open two fronts One advancing towards Barcelona from the north, the other led by Franco pushing up towards Madrid from the south By the end of 1936, Madrid was enveloped on three sides and virtually under siege The fighting was intense and often accompanied by appalling atrocities against civilians The Republicans hunted down and murdered Roman Catholic priests The nationalists slaughtered anyone accused of being communist German and Italian air power was used indiscriminately against civilian targets Madrid was heavily bombed But the worst incident came in April 1937 when the Basque town of Guernica was virtually obliterated with 6,000 civilian deaths The area controlled by the Republic was steadily ground down Its forces fought with great gallantry But under-trained and under-equipped amateurs were no match for the professional soldiers led by Franco or for the combined modern weaponry of Italy and Germany As the war dragged on, the fighting around Madrid became a symbol of the left's determination not to be crushed by a fascist dictatorship But behind the scenes the Republican Alliance was falling apart The communists and socialists wanted to concentrate on winning a military victory But the more idealistic anarchists and syndicalists saw the war as an opportunity for a mass revolution by the workers These disagreements burst out into the open in May 1937 Fighting broke out in Barcelona between the anarchists and communists. It was a fatal weakening of the Republican cause By the end of 1938 the nationalists had penned their enemy into a small enclave around Barcelona And another stretching eastward from Madrid to the coast Madrid continued to hold out, but the international brigades were withdrawn More and more nations began to recognize Franco's government as his forces closed in for the final assault on Madrid at the end of March 1939 His defenders exhausted after nearly three years of fighting, the capital finally surrendered A month later, Franco formally declared hostilities at an end The scars of Spain's civil war took years to heal and in some ways they never have And internationally, Franco's victory over the Republic proved a disaster Hitler and Mussolini were confirmed in their belief that the democracies of Britain and France were impotent to resist any real pressure While Stalin despaired of their willingness to confront fascism Hitler in particular saw his way open to begin the aggressive policies outlined in Mein Kampf Even before the Spanish Civil War ended, his armies were on the march From the moment he became Chancellor of Germany on January the 30th, 1933 Hitler had begun to put his long-term ambitions into action On February the 3rd, he told his top commanders that his ultimate aim was to conquer territory in the east and ruthlessly Germanize it They were instructed to prepare for a massive expansion Although Germany had been forbidden tanks, a secret treaty with the Soviet Union in 1923 had allowed the development of tank designs and experimentation with new mobile armored tanks Energetic young German officers like Heinz Guderian read the theories of British thinkers like Basil Liddell Hart and Colonel John Fulham They even watched exercises being carried out by the British during the 1920s on Salisbury Plain It was from these that they came up with the idea of fast-moving units Combining tanks, artillery and infantry that could thrust fast and deep into enemy territory Hitler adopted their ideas with enthusiasm. The new army was to have three panzer divisions Similarly the new Air Force, the Luftwaffe, under former World War One fighter ace Hermann Goering had had a framework to build on Throughout the years in which its Air Force was officially banned Germany had kept up its design skills by building civilian machines and gliding and flying clubs provided a reserve of potential air Hitler revealed the existence of the Luftwaffe in March 1935 He then announced that the army was to be increased to 300,000 men and conscription was reintroduced Britain and France protested feebly at this flagrant breach of the Versailles Treaty But soon they reluctantly and slowly began to re-arm Until this point Hitler had been modest in his goals. He had only taken back what was his, the Rhineland and Saarland But now he had a grander target in mind his homeland Austria In 1934 Austrian Nazis had attempted to seize power and unify the country with Germany Austrians after all spoke German even if they had never been part of a German state In February 1938 another Nazi plot was discovered Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg protested the Hitler Hitler responded by demanding that Austria stop mistreating the Austrian Nazis and unite with Germany Schuschnigg promptly called a referendum so that the Austrians could vote on whether to remain independent but on March the 12th 1938 the eve of the referendum Hitler fearing that it might produce the wrong result sent in his troops Complete surprise and an enthusiastic welcome by Nazi sympathizers made it a bloodless invasion within hours Hitler announced Austria's incorporation into the Third Reich The sovereign nation had for the first time been subsumed into a greater Germany once again Western democracies failed to react In the summer of 1938 he turned on his next prey Czechoslovakia a substantial German minority lived in the northwest of the country an area known as the Sudetenland These Sudeten Germans had been part of the old Austrian Empire, but had been cut off when Czechoslovakia was created in 1990 This was the time bomb that had started ticking at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles Hitler encouraged Sudeten German demands for autonomy and then threatened the Czech government with force if it refused to agree Undaunted the Czech government ordered general mobilization and prepared to resist The Czechoslovak army was large and well equipped with formidable fortifications on its frontier with Germany Hitler backed off But then at the beginning of September Concerned that war might be imminent the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain decided to act as a peacemaker He flew to meet Hitler twice The Nazi dictator assured him that if he could have the Sudetenland, he would make no further territorial demands in you in Munich on September the 29th 1938 with Mussolini acting as mediator France and Britain signed an agreement giving the Sudetenland to Germany in return for a formal declaration by Hitler that he had no more territorial ambitions Chamberlain flew back to Britain waving the piece of paper, which he claimed guarantees peace in our time So October the 1st German troops occupied the Sudetenland and seized the Czech frontier fortifications Hitler now began sizing up his next target Poland Again the nominal cause was a German minority marooned as a result of the Versailles Treaty Hitler demanded the return of the port of Danzig to German control So that East Prussia could be linked up with the rest of Germany the Poles refused and Hitler hesitated He was not quite ready for all-out war and he had unfinished business with Czechoslovakia In March 1939 the eastern part of the country Slovakia, which was ethnically different to the Czech lands Appealed to Hitler for help in achieving greater independence Hitler summoned the Czechoslovak Prime Minister Emil Hatcher to Berlin and Browbeat him into putting his country under German protection German troops now marched into the rest of Czechoslovakia unopposed Most of the country was annexed into the right Slovakia was declared a protector For the first time Hitler had seized non-german speaking territory But again, there was only a feeble protest from Britain and France At the end of March he again repeated his demand of Poland give up Danzig This time France and Britain declared unequivocally that they would declare war if he attacked Poland But by now Hitler cared little whether they did or not He was sure that they would be weak and indecisive opponents In Russia Stalin had also become increasingly concerned by Hitler's aggression In April Stalin proposed an alliance with Britain and France but negotiations made little progress and finally Stalin despaired Deciding that there was another solution to the German threat On August the 23rd the Soviet Union and the Third Reich who everyone had believed were sworn enemies announced a non-aggression pact The agreement secretly specified that Poland would be split between the two countries and Stalin would have a free hand to take over Estonia Latvia and Lithuania Now free from any Russian threat Hitler ordered his armed forces to prepare for an immediate invasion On the evening of August the 31st the German Wehrmacht prepared for the assault Its Fuhrer had made the decision which would plunge the world into war