Outline 31.1

Aggression, Appeasement, and War

Vocabulary
Sanction – penalties
Pacifism – opposition to all war
Appeasement – giving in to demands of an aggressor to keep the peace
Anschuss – union of Austria

Dictators Challenge World Peace
Japan on the Move
i. One of the earliest tests had been posed by Japan. ii. Japanese military leaders and ultranationalists thought that Japan should have an empire equal to those of the western powers. iii. In pursuit of this goal, Japan seized Manchuria in 1931. iv. Japan’s easy successes strengthen the militarists. In 1937, Japanese armies overran much of eastern China.
v. Once again, western protests had no effect on the conqueror.
Italy Invades Ethiopia
i. In Italy, Mussolini used his new, modern military to pursue his own imperialist ambitions. ii. He looked first to Ethiopia, in northeastern Africa. In 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia. iii. The Ethiopian king Haile Selassie appealed to League of Nations for help. iv. The League voted sanction against Italy for having violated international law.
v. But the League had no power to enforce the sanction, and by early
1936, Italy had conquered Ethiopia.
Hitler’s Challenge
i. By then, Hitler, too, had tested the will of the western democracies and found it weak. ii. First, he built up the German military in defiance of the Versailles Treaty. iii. Then, in 1936, he sent troops into the “demilitarized” Rhineland bordering France – another treaty violation iv. Western democracies denounced his moves but took no real action.
v. Instead, they adopted a policy of appeasement
Appeasement and Neutrality
i. The western policy of appeasement developed for a number of reasons. ii. France was demoralized, suffering from political divisions at home iii. The British, however, had no desire to confront the German dictator. Some even thought that Hitler’s actions constituted a justifiable response to the terms of the Versailles treaty, which they believed had been too harsh against Germany iv. In bother Britain and France, many saw Hitler and fascism as defense against a worst evil- the spread of Soviet communism.
v. Finally widespread pacifism and disgust with the destruction during the previous war pushed many governments to seek peace at any price. vi. As war clouds gathered Europe in the mid 1930s, the United States
Congressed passed a series of Neutrality Acts. vii. One law forbade the sale of arms to any other nation at war. Others outlawed loans to warring nations and prohibited Americans to travel on ships of warring powers.
Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis
i. In the face of the democracies’ apparent weakness, Germany, Italy, and Japan formed what became known as the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo
Axis
ii. The Axis powers agreed to fight Soviet communism. iii. They also agreed to not interfere with one another’s plans for expansion. iv. The agreement cleared the way for these anti-democratic, aggressor powers to take even bolder steps.

The Spanish Civil War
From Monarchy to Republic
i. In the 1920’s, Spain was a monarchy denominated by a landowning upper class, the Catholic Church, and the military. ii. Most Spaniards were poor peasants or urban workers. iii. In 1931, popular unrest against the old order forced the king to leave Spain. A republic was set up with a new, more liberal constitution iv. The republican government passed a series of controversial reforms.
v. It took over some Church lands and ended Church control of education. vi. It redistributed some land to peasants, gave women to the vote, an ended some privileges of the old ruling class. vii. Spanish public opinion was divided. Leftists demanded more radical reforms. Conservatives, who were backed by the military, rejected change.
Nationalists Against Loyalists
i. In 1936, a conservative general named Francisco Franco led a that touched off a bloody civil war. ii. Fascists and supporters of right wing-policies rallied to the banner of Franco’s forces, communist, socialists, and supporters of democracy. iii. Hitler and Mussolini sent arms and forces to help Franco. iv. Close to 37,000 volunteers from Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union, and the western democracies joined the International Brigades and fought alongside the Loyalist against fascism.
v. The governments Britain, France, and the United States, however remained neutral.
A Dress Rehearsal
i. Both sides committed horrible atrocities. ii. The ruinous struggle took almost 1 million lives. One of the worst horrors was a German raid on Guernica, a small Spanish Market town that lacked any military value. iii. On April morning in 1937, German bombers streaked over the market square. They dropped their load of bombs and then swooped low to machine-gun anyone in the streets who had survived the first attack iv. To Nazi leaders, the attack on Guernica was an “experiment” to identify what their new planes could do. To the world, it was a grim warning of the destructive power of modern warfare.
v. By 1939, Franco had triumphed. Once in power, he created a fascist dictatorship like those of Hitler and Mussolini.

German Aggression Continues
Austria Annexed
i. From the beginning, Nazi propaganda had found fertile ground in
Austria.
ii. By 1938, Hitler was ready to engineer the Anshluss. iii. Early that year, he forced the Austrian chancellor to appoint Nazis to key cabinet posts. When the Austrian leader balked to other demands, Hitler sent in the German army “to preserve order” iv. The Anschluss violated the Versailles treaty and created a brief war scare
v. But Hitler quickly silenced any Austrians who opposed him. And since the western democracies took no action, Hitler easily had his way.
The Czech Crisis
i. Germany’s next victim was Czechoslovakia. At first, Hitler insisted that the three million Germans in the Sudetenland- a region of western Czechoslovakia- be given autonomy, ii. Czechoslovakia was one of only two remaining democracies in Eastern Europe. iii. Still, Britain and France were not willing to go to war to save it. As
British and French leaders searched for a peaceful solution, Hitler increased his demands. iv. As the Munich Conference in September 1938, British and French leaders again chose appeasement.
v. They caved in to Hitler’s demands and then persuaded the Czechs to surrender the Sudetenland without a fight.
Peace for Our Time
i. Returning from Munich, British prime minister Neville
Chamberlain told cheering crowds that he had achieved “peace for out time” ii. To Parliament, he declared that the Munich Pact had “saved
Czechoslovakia from destruction and Europe from Armageddon” iii. French leader Edouard Daladier had different reaction to the joyous crowds that greeted him in Paris. iv. British politician Winston Churchill, who had long warned of the
Nazi threat, judged the diplomats harshly.

Europe Plunges Toward War
Nazi-Soviet Pact
i. In August 1939, Hitler stunned the world by announcing a nonaggression pact with his great enemy-Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator. ii. Publicly, the Nazi-Soviet Pact bound Hitler and Stalin to peaceful relations. iii. Secretly, the two agreed not to fight if the other went to war and to divide up Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe iv. The pact was based not on Friendship or respect but on mutual need.
Invasion of Poland
i. On September 1, 1939, a week after the Nazi-Soviet Pact, German forces invaded Poland. ii. Two days later, Britain and France honored their commitment to
Poland and declared war on Germany. iii. World War II begun.