14.1 From Appeasement to War

Read the Following section and answer the questions that follow solely using the text provided in the section.
From Appeasement to War
Terms, People, and Places (vovab)
appeasement
pacifism
Neutrality Acts
Axis powers
Francisco Franco
Anschluss
Sudetenland
Nazi-Soviet Pact

After the horrors of World War I, Western democracies desperately tried to preserve peace during the 1930s while ignoring signs that the rulers of Germany, Italy, and Japan were preparing to build
new empires. Despite the best efforts of Neville Chamberlain and other Western leaders, the world was headed to war again.

Aggression Goes Unchecked

Throughout the 1930s, challenges to peace followed a pattern. Dictators took aggressive action but met only verbal protests and pleas for peace from the democracies. Mussolini, Hitler, and the
leaders of Japan viewed that desire for peace as a weakness and responded with new acts of aggression. With hindsight, we can see the shortcomings of the democracies’ policies. These policies, however, were the product of long and careful deliberation. At the

time, some people believed they would work. Japan Overruns Manchuria and Eastern China One of the earliest tests had been posed by Japan. Japanese military leaders and ultranationalists thought that Japan should have an empire equal to those of the Western powers. In pursuit of this goal, Japan
seized Manchuria in 1931. When the League of Nations condemned the aggression, Japan simply withdrew from the organization. Japan’s easy success strengthened the militarist faction in
Japan. In 1937, Japanese armies overran much of eastern China, starting the Second Sino-Japanese War. Once again, Western protests did not stop Japan.

Italy Invades Ethiopia
 In Italy, Mussolini decided to act on his own imperialist ambitions. Italy’s defeat by the Ethiopians at the battle of Adowa in 1896 still rankled. In 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia, located in northeastern Africa. Although the Ethiopians resisted bravely, their outdated weapons were no match for Mussolini’s tanks, machine guns, poison gas, and airplanes. The Ethiopian king Haile Selassie (HY luh suh lah SEE) appealed to the League of Nations for help. The League voted sanctions against Italy for violating international law. But the League had no power to enforce the sanctions, and by early 1936, Italy had conquered Ethiopia.

Hitler Goes Against the Treaty of Versailles 
By then, Hitler, too, had tested the will of the Western democracies and found it weak. First,
he built up the German military in defiance of the treaty that had ended World War I. Then, in 1936, he sent troops into the “demilitarized” Rhineland bordering France—another treaty violation.
Germans hated the Versailles treaty, and Hitler’s successful challenge made him more popular at home. The Western democracies denounced his moves but took no real action. Instead, they adopted a policy of appeasement, or giving in to the demands of an aggressor in order to keep the peace.
Keeping the Peace 
The Western policy of appeasement developed for a number of reasons. France was demoralized, suffering from political divisions at home. It could not take on Hitler without British support. 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 Treaty of Versailles, which they believed had been too harsh on Germany.
In both Britain and France, many saw Hitler and fascism as a defense against a worse evil—the spread of Soviet communism. Additionally, the Great Depression sapped the energies of the Western democracies. Finally, widespread pacifism, or opposition to all war, and disgust with
the destruction from the previous war pushed many governments to seek peace at any price.

As war clouds gathered in Europe in the mid-1930s, the United States Congress passed a series of Neutrality Acts. One law forbade the sale of arms to any nation at war. Others outlawed loans to warring nations and prohibited Americans from traveling on ships of warring powers. The
fundamental goal of American policy, however, was to avoid involvement in a European war, not to prevent such a conflict.

Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis 
In the face of the apparent weakness of Britain, France, and the United States, Germany, Italy, and Japan formed what became known as the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis. Known as the Axis powers, the three nations agreed to fight Soviet communism. They also agreed not to interfere with one another’s plans for territorial expansion. The agreement cleared the way for these anti-democratic,
aggressor powers to take even bolder steps.


Spain Collapses Into Civil War
In 1936, a local struggle in Spain polarized public opinion throughout Europe. Trouble in Spain started in 1931, when popular unrest against the old order forced the king to leave Spain. A republic was set up with a new, more liberal constitution. The government passed a series of controversial reforms, taking land and privileges away from the Church and old ruling classes. Still, leftists demanded more radical reforms. Conservatives, backed by the military, rejected change.
In 1936, a conservative general named Francisco Franco led a revolt that touched off a bloody civil war. Fascists and supporters of right-wing policies, called Nationalists, rallied to back Franco. Supporters of the republic, known as Loyalists, included Communists, Socialists, and those
who wanted democracy.
People from other nations soon jumped in to support both sides. Hitler and Mussolini sent arms and forces to help Franco. The Soviet Union sent soldiers to fight against fascism alongside the Spanish Loyalists. Although the governments of Britain, France, and the United States remained neutral, individuals from those countries, as well as other countries, also fought with the Loyalists. Anti-Nazi Germans and anti-Fascist Italians joined the Loyalist cause as well.

Both sides committed horrible atrocities. The ruinous struggle took more than 500,000 lives. One of the worst horrors was a German air raid on Guernica, a small Spanish market town, in April 1937. German planes dropped their load of bombs, and then swooped low to machinegun anyone who had survived the bombs. Nearly 1,000 innocent civilians were killed. To Nazi leaders, the attack on Guernica was an experiment to identify what their new planes could do. To the rest of the world, it was a grim warning of the destructive power of modern warfare.
By 1939, Franco had triumphed. Once in power, he created a fascist dictatorship similar to the dictatorships of Hitler and Mussolini. He rolled back earlier reforms, killed or jailed enemies, and used terror to promote order.

German Aggression Continues

In the meantime, Hitler pursued his goal of bringing all German-speaking people into the Third Reich. He also took steps to gain “living space” for Germans in Eastern Europe. Hitler, who believed in the superiority of the German people, thought that Germany had a right to conquer the inferior Slavs to the east. Hitler claimed, “I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin.”
Hitler’s aggressive plans also served economic purposes. Production of military equipment would benefit German industry, which would also gain new raw materials and markets in the east.

Austria Annexed 
By March, 1938, Hitler was ready to engineer the Anschluss (AHN shloos), or union of Austria and Germany. When Austria’s chancellor refused to agree to Hitler’s demands, Hitler sent in the German army to “preserve order.” To indicate his new role as ruler of Austria, Hitler made a speech from the Hofburg Palace, the former residence of the Hapsburg emperors.
The Anschluss violated the Versailles treaty and created a brief war scare. Some Austrians favored annexation. Hitler quickly silenced any Austrians who opposed it. And since the Western democracies took no action, Hitler easily had his way. 

The Czech Crisis 
Germany turned next to Czechoslovakia. At first, Hitler insisted that the three million Germans in the Sudetenland (soo DAY tun land)—a region of western Czechoslovakia—be given autonomy. Czechoslovakia was one of only two remaining democracies in Eastern Europe. (Finland was the other.) 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. The Sudetenland, he said, must be annexed to Germany.
At the Munich Conference in September 1938, British and French leaders again chose appeasement. They caved in to Hitler’s demands and then persuaded the Czechs to surrender the Sudetenland without a fight. In exchange, Hitler assured Britain and France that he had no further
plans to expand his territory.

“Peace for Our Time” 
Returning from Munich, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told cheering crowds that he had achieved “peace for our time.” He told Parliament that the Munich Pact had “saved
Czechoslovakia from destruction and Europe from Armageddon.” French leader Edouard Daladier (dah lahd yay) reacted differently to the joyous crowds that greeted him in Paris. “The fools, why are they cheering?” he asked. British politician Winston Churchill, who had long warned of the Nazi threat, judged the diplomats harshly: “They had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor; they will have war.”

Aryan or Not?
 Nineteenth-century Europeans believed that around 1500 B.C., a group called Aryans had swept into South Asia, conquered the people already living there, and imposed their culture upon them. The Aryans were thought to have been behind civilization’s most brilliant advances. One theory held
the Aryans were descended from northern Europeans, and that Germanic or Nordic peoples were the purest and most advanced of all the Aryans, and therefore superior to people of other origins. In recent years, most scholars have rejected the idea that the Aryans originated in Europe or invaded South Asia. Instead, they believe that the group known as Aryans developed in South Asia and drew heavily on the existing culture of that region. Thus, the theories that Hitler based his government upon were not only morally wrong but untrue as well.

Europe Plunges Toward War
Just as Churchill predicted, Europe plunged rapidly toward war. In March 1939, Hitler broke his promises and gobbled up the rest of Czechoslovakia. The democracies finally accepted the fact that appeasement had failed. At last thoroughly alarmed, they promised to protect Poland, most
likely the next target of Hitler’s expansion.

Nazi-Soviet Pact 
In August 1939, Hitler stunned the world by announcing a nonaggression pact with his great
enemy—Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator. Publicly, the Nazi-Soviet Pact bound Hitler and Stalin to peaceful relations. Secretly, the two agreed not to fight if the other went to war and to divide up Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe between them.
The pact was based not on friendship or respect but on mutual need. Hitler feared communism as Stalin feared fascism. But Hitler wanted a free hand in Poland. Also, he did not want to fight a war with the Western democracies and the Soviet Union at the same time. For his part, Stalin had sought allies among the Western democracies against the Nazi menace. Mutual suspicions, however, kept them apart. By joining with Hitler, Stalin tried to protect the Soviet Union from the threat of war with Germany and grabbed a chance to gain land in Eastern Europe.

Invasion of Poland 
On September 1, 1939, a week after the Nazi-Soviet Pact, German forces invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. World War II had begun.
The devastation of World War I and the awareness of the destructive power of modern technology made the idea of more fighting unbearable. Unfortunately, the war proved to be even more horrendous than anyone had imagined.

(vocab) appeasement

(vocab) pacifism

(vocab) Neutrality Acts

(vocab) Axis powers

(vocab) Francisco Franco

(vocab) Anschluss

(vocab) Sudetenland

(vocab) Nazi-Soviet Pact

( checkpoint ) How did the Spanish Civil War involve combatants from other countries?

( checkpoint )  Why did Hitler feel justified in taking over Austria and the Sudetenland?

( checkpoint ) What convinced Britain and France to end their policy of appeasement? Why?

( assessment ) How did the Western democracies respond to the aggression of the Axis powers during
the 1930s?

( assessment ) Why did Germany and Italy become involved in the Spanish Civil War?

( assessment ) How was the Munich Conference a turning point in the road toward world war?

( assessment ) Why do you think some historians call the period between 1919 and 1939 the 20-year
truce?

( objectives ) Analyze the threat to world peace posed by dictators in the 1930s and how the Western
democracies responded.

( objectives ) Describe how the Spanish Civil War was a “dress rehearsal” for World War II.

( objectives ) Summarize the ways in which continuing Nazi aggression led Europe to war.