31.4 - Aggressors Invade Nations

Japan Seeks an Empire

• Military leaders won control of the country after the Great Depression in 1929

• The militarists kept Emperor Hirohito as a symbol of state power and planned to build a Pacific empire through foreign expansion

• Invasion of Manchuria: the Japanese army seized this successful Chinese province and set up a puppet government — the League of Nations simply protested, and Japan withdrew from the League in 1933

• Invasion of China: Japanese forces swept into northern China and captured many cities

Mussolini Invades Ethiopia

• Ethiopia: an independent African nation that had successfully resisted an attempted Italian conquest in the 1890s

• Mussolini was motivated by the League of Nations’ failure to stop the Japanese and invaded Ethiopia

• The Ethiopians had outdated weapons

• The Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, appealed to the League of Nations for help, but its members did nothing

• Britain allowed Italian troops to go through the Suez Canal to reach Ethiopia (hoped to maintain peace in Europe)

Appeasement

Giving in to an aggressor in order to keep peace

Hitler Defies the Versailles Treaty

• The treaty limited the size of Germany’s army, but Hitler didn’t obey these restrictions and was only met with mild condemnation from the League of Nations

• Rhineland: a demilitarized zone between Germany and France that Hitler remilitarized (reoccupied) by sending German troops into it

Axis Powers

• Hitler’s growing strength convinced Mussolini that he should seek an alliance with Germany

• Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany reached an agreement called the Rome-Berlin Axis

• When Germany made an agreement with Japan, they became the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, Japan)

Spanish Civil War

• Previously a monarchy, Spain became a republic in 1931, led by liberals and Socialists

• Army leaders, favoring a Fascist form of government, joined General Francisco Franco in a revolt — began the civil war

• Hitler and Mussolini sent troops and vehicles to help Franco’s forces, called the Nationalists

• Supporters of Spain’s elected government were known as Republicans, and they received little help from the neutral Western democracies

• After Republican resistance collapsed, Franco became Spain’s Fascist dictator

Isolationism

American foreign policy

• Congress passed 3 Neutrality Acts, laws banning loans and the sale of arms to nations at war

The Third Reich

• Hitler announced his plans to absorb Austria and Czechoslovakia into the Third Reich (German Empire)

• The Treaty of Versailles prohibited Anschluss, meaning a union between Germany and Austria

• In 1938, Hitler sent his army and annexed Austria — France and Britain ignored this, choosing appeasement as they still worked to rebuild their economies

• Sudetenland: western border regions of Czechoslovakia where German-speaking people lived

  • A heavily fortified area that formed the Czechs’ main defense against Germany

  • Hitler demanded that the Sudetenland be given to Germany — the Czechs refused and turned to France for help

• Munich Conference: Britain and France allowed Hitler to take the Sudetenland (Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain believed that he could preserve peace through appeasement), and Hitler promised to respect Czechoslovakia’s new borders

• After the Munich Conference, Hitler took Czechoslovakia

• Hitler demanded that Poland return the former German port of Danzig

Nonaggression Pact (Nazis and Soviets)

• Stalin and Hitler reached an agreement

• Fascist Germany and Communist Russia pledged never to attack one another