and technicians started to come in great numbers and started to build mines and factories. The Japanese attack on Manchuria was the first direct challenge on the League of Nations. When all this happened many league members strongly protested. Japan just ignored these protests and withdrew themselves from the League in 1933. Another reason for WWII was Mussolini's attack on Ethiopia. Ethiopia was one of Africa's three independent nations. The Ethiopians had already resisted an attempt at conquest during the 1890's. To get even Mussolini ordered a massive invasion of Ethiopia on October 1935. Ethiopia had to no chance at defending themselves from this attack. One more thing that was a big cause of WWII was when Hitler defied the Versailles Treaty. Hitler for a long time had threatened to undo the Versailles Treaty. Among many things this treaty limited the size of Germany's army. On March 1935, the Futhrer announced that Germany would no longer obey these restrictions. The League only issued a mild condemnation. The league's failure to stop Germany from making their army bigger convinced Hitler that he should start to make greater risks. The Treaty forbids Germany from entering on either side on the Rhine River; this area is known as Rhineland. On March 7, 1936, German troops moved into Rhineland. (Doc 3) This marked a turning point in the path to war. The French were very surprised that Germany did this but did not want to risk War. The British went into appeasement and just gave the aggressor what it wanted to keep peace. There were many different options on whether appeasement or collective security was the most effective response to aggression.
I think the most effective response is with out a doubt collective security. (Doc 4) In 1938 Britain, France, and Italy met with Hitler to discuss his demand for the Sudetenland. Hitler got what he wanted from this meeting because of appeasement. Europe was happy from this because it avoided war. This did not benefit the Czechs at all though. For some reason Neville Chamberlain favored appeasement. (Doc 5) He thinks appeasement is the best way because he believes war is a "fearful thing." He thinks that appeasement will benefit Europe. Winston Churchill disagreed with Chamberlain's policy of appeasement. (Doc 6) He believed that keeping peace depends on holding back the aggressor. He also thinks we lost many opportunities in the quest for peace. He believes it was the people in control of our political affairs fault. Another view on appeasement was also put out there by A.J.P. Taylor. It stated that since the majority of German people put Hitler into power they were the only ones that could turn him out. Also he said some "appeasers" feared that the defeat of Germany would be followed by Russian domination over most of Europe. In another excerpt an author named Keith Eubank states that stopping Hitler prior to 1939 was not an issue. (Doc 9) He says that Hitler had too massive of a force and that nothing he had done had been considered that dangerous at that point in time. All this options but still if the rest of the country didn't do something besides just keeping appeasement Hitler was going to just keep demanding more and more. This would have left Europe ten times worse off. They made the right choice on going into Collective Security. They should have done this from the beginning instead of wasting so much time and losing so much, to just end up going into war anyways, just later in time. Collective Security
is more effective response to aggression because it doesn't let the aggressor get what he wants and to gain too much power over everyone. WWII happened for many reasons there is most likely no way anyone could have stopped it from eventually happening. By using appeasement in the beginning we were just giving Hitler exactly what he wanted which was not good at all. By Collective Security Europe finally did what was needed to be done to gain back the power that they had just given away. We were plunged into WWII because of betrayal to the League of Nations and Both Appeasement and Collective Security and more. I believe that Collective Security was the best response to this aggression even so.