Chapter 28 - World War II

• For the first time, the League of Nations denounced Italian aggression and voted on economic punishment. It imposed an arms embargo, as well as restrictions on loans and credits to and imports from Italy. To avoid alienating Mussolini, Britain and France declined to impose an oil embargo, the only economic penalty that could have stopped the Italian victory.

• Even more importantly, Britain let Italian troops and ammunition to enter Ethiopia via the Suez Canal. This policy had devastating consequences. The League of Nations and collective security were delegitimized, and Mussolini was isolated. He next shifted his attention to Germany, and by November 1, 1936, he had publicly spoken of a Rome-Berlin Axis.

• The Ethiopian incident also persuaded Hitler that the Western nations were too fearful to resist him strongly. On March 7, 1936, Hitler made his most daring step yet, deploying a small armed force into the demilitarized Rhineland. This was a violation not just of the Versailles Treaty, but also of the Locarno Agreements of 1925, which Germany had agreed to willingly.

• It also eliminated a critical component of French security. France and Britain had every right to resist, and the French, in particular, had a claim to keep the sole element of security available to them after the Allies failed to guarantee France's defense.

• The German army in the Rhineland. "The French covering army would have blasted us to bits," German commander Alfred Jodl (1890–1946) remarked years later. 1

• A quickly rearming Germany with a defensible western border confronted the Western nations with an entirely new challenge. Their reaction was appeasement policy, which assumed that Germany had legitimate grievances and that Hitler's ambitions were restricted and eventually acceptable.

• They went out to bargain and make compromises before a situation erupted into war.

• This strategy was motivated by the widespread fear of another conflict. The atrocities of the last war lingered in people's minds, and the threat of aerial bombardment made the notion of a new conflict even more terrible.

• Furthermore, a tougher approach would have necessitated fast rearmament. Because of the cost and general assumption that the weapons race was a key cause of the last war, British officials were especially hesitant to continue this course. The French gathered behind their freshly constructed defensive wall, the Maginot Line, as Germany armed, and the British prayed for the best. The Spanish Civil War, which erupted in July 1936, clarified the new European alignment between Western democracies on one side and fascist nations on the other.

• The monarchy was deposed in 1931, and Spain became a democratic republic. The new administration implemented a moderate reform agenda that enraged landowners, the Catholic Church, nationalists, and conservatives.

• Elections in February 1936 brought to power a Spanish Popular Front administration comprised of left-wing republicans, communists, and anarchists. The losers, particularly the Falangists, or Spanish fascists, refused to concede loss at the polls. General Francisco Franco (1892–1975) commanded an army of Spanish Morocco against the republic in July.

• Thus started the Spanish Civil War, which lasted nearly three years, claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and served as a training ground for World War II. Germany and Italy provided troops and aircraft to Franco.

• The civil war, which was fought on plainly ideological lines, had a tremendous impact on international politics. It drew Germany and Italy closer together, resulting in the 1936 Rome-Berlin Axis Pact. Japan joined the Axis nations in the Anti-Comintern Pact, which was nominally aimed at the Soviet Union.

• Japan joined the Axis nations in the Anti-Comintern Pact, which was purportedly aimed at worldwide communism but was actually a new and strong diplomatic partnership. Western Europe, particularly France, was keen to keep Spain from slipping into the hands of a fascist dictatorship closely aligned with Germany and Italy. Appeasement ruled supreme.

• The altered diplomatic scenario prompted Hitler to try again in 1938. He may have planned to achieve his aim by propaganda, intimidation, and threats, but Austrian chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg (1897–1977) was unfazed. Schuschnigg called a plebiscite for March 13, in which the Austrian people would be able to vote on whether or not to join Germany. On March 12, Hitler moved his troops into Austria to prevent the referendum.

• Mussolini, to his relief, did not protest, and Hitler rode to Vienna to the acclaim of his Austrian admirers.

• Another blatant breach of Versailles was the Anschluss, or merger of Germany and Austria.

• The pact, on the other hand, was now a dead letter, and the West stayed mute. The Anschluss, on the other hand, had significant strategic implications since Germany now bordered Czechoslovakia, one of the pillars of French security, on three sides.

• Chamberlain returned to England, and France and the United Kingdom prepared for war. Mussolini suggested a conference of Germany, Italy, France, and Britain at the last minute, at the request of Chamberlain. It convened on September 29 in Munich. Hitler got practically everything he asked for.

• The Sudetenland, which was critical to Czech security, was annexed by Germany.

• The Sudetenland, which was crucial to Czech security, was annexed by Germany, depriving the Czechs of any means of self-defense. Hitler pledged to spare the remainder of Czechoslovakia in exchange. "I have no further territorial demands to make in Europe," he promised. Chamberlain returned to England with the Munich accord, telling a jubilant throng that he had delivered "peace with honor." "I believe it is a moment of peace."

• Even in the short run, Hitler's appeasement in Munich was a disaster. Czechoslovakia did not survive the war.

• Soon after, Poland and Hungary ripped additional territory from it, and the Slovaks desired their own state. Finally, on March 15, 1939, Hitler violated his pledge and conquered Prague, bringing the Czech state to an end.