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Events Leading to World War II

Page history last edited by Robert W. Maloy 2 years, 3 months ago

 

 

Topics on the Page

 

Germany 

  • Instability of the Weimar Republic 
  • Rise of the Nazis 

 

The Stalin- Hitler Pact 

 

Overview of Drives for Empire

  • Italy's Invasion of Ethiopia 
  • Japanese Invasion of China and Rape of Nanking  

 

Fascism in Germany and Italy

  • Treaty of Versailles

 
German rearmament and militarization of the Rhineland

 
Germany’s seizure of Austria and Czechoslovakia and Germany’s invasion of Poland

 
Japan’s invasion of China and the Rape of Nanking

 

 

 

World History Cross-Links

 

 

 

 

 

 

Focus Question 1: How did German and Japanese aggression contribute to the start of World War II ?

 

 

Germany

 

Instability of the Weimar Republic 

 

The Weimar Republic was founded in 1919, and lasted until 1933 when the Nazis took over Germany and Hitler became Chancellor. The Weimar Republic faced two weighty burdens: the Treaty of Versailles and political instability.

 

  • The Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to disarm its military, make territorial concessions, and also pay reparations. The treaty's punishments toward Germany left the Weimar scrambling to not only deal with the reparations, but to stabilize Germany after the war as well. 

Q&A: What Does the Versailles Treaty Teach Us About the Aftermath ...

 

    • One direct result was the German inflation of 1919- 1922. This was the period where Germany was politically or economically infeasible to raise taxes.

 

    • There were two causes to this inflation. The first was Germany trying to pay for the war itself. Furthermore, German states borrowed and printed money and also issued war bonds to support Germany after the war. It got out of hand and basically led to hyperinflation.  

 

    • Germany's hyperinflation was in 1923. Germany failed to pay France an installment of reparations on time, and France responded by sending troops to occupy the Ruhr. Workers were told to do nothing to help the invaders in any way. What this meant in practice was a general strike.

 

    • But all the workers on strike had to be given financial support. The German government paid its way by printing more banknotes, and soon the country was awash with paper money. The group that suffered a great deal – proportional to their income – was the middle class. Their hard earned savings disappeared overnight. They did not have the wealth or land to fall back on as the rich had. It is not surprising that many of those middle class who suffered in 1923, were to turn to Hitler and the Nazi Party. 

 

    •  In 1924, the Dawes Plan was announced to combat the economic crisis. It set realistic targets for German reparation payments. This one action stabilized Weimar Germany and over the next five years, 25 million gold marks was invested in Germany. The economy quickly got back to strength, new factories were built, employment returned and things appeared to be returning to normal. 1924 to 1929 is known as the Golden Age of the Weimar. 

 

  • Another reason why the Republic was set up to fail was the harsh opposition from Right and Left wing parties. The Left wing was made up of Communists. It was this party that felt the most resentment to the main party in the coalition government, the Social Democrats. Two prominent leaders of the Communists, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg (These figures were part of the Spartacist League, a breakaway communist group of the SPD) were murdered by the Freikorps men, and the Communists blamed the Social Democrats. Therefore, once the Social Democrats came to power the Communists tried to fight against them as much as possible.

 

The Wall Street Crash of October 1929 also helped speed up the demise of the Weimar Republic. German banks had been large investors in US companies and suffered huge losses as the share prices of these companies fell. This in turn created a banking crisis in Germany as savers began to fear for their savings. Several banks went bust as savers attempted to recover their savings. To avoid also going out of business, German banks started to recall loans from businesses which in turn lead to many businesses failing, triggering a sharp rise in unemployment.

 

Overall, the Weimar Republic lacked popular support. With high inflation and huge debts resulting in mass unemployment and a very low standard of living, German people were not happy. There was also fury at the signatories of the Treaty of Versailles, and unease about the helplessness of the Weimar government during the occupation of the Ruhr by France and the economic crisis of unemployment and inflation. 

 

 

Primary documents about Treaty of Versailles: https://www.firstworldwar.com/source/versailles.htm

 

 

Rise of the Nazis

 

Adolf Hitler was ecstatic about the outbreak of WWI because not only did it affirm that his national enthusiasm was not an empty delusion, but it also gave Germany a chance to fight for her existence (Hitler, Mein Kampf). However, the defeat of Germany during WWI came as a rather shock to people like Hitler. He basically pushed his anger about the war and its disastrous effects on Germany on "traitors" on the home front like Social Democrats, Jews, and those that were not active in supporting the war efforts. Due to being tired of the uncertainty of things and lack of progress, Hitler led the Nazi Party to obtain what he thought Germany deserved and needed to do in order to achieve the things they lost from WWI. German aggression came from a need for resources, a desire to expand or gain back former land, and extreme nationalism. Additionally, Germany under the rule of Hitler and the Nazis believed in an ideology of racial superiority, that the Aryan race was destined to rule and flourish. This meant the presence of other races in nearby provinces posed a threat to their expansion and empire. The German invasion of Poland and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by Britain and France is considered the beginning of World War II. After the Germans attacked from the west, the Soviets attacked from the east as per their agreement. Poland lost 20% of its population and 90% of its Jewish population during German occupation.Rise and fall in the Third Reich: Nazi party members and social ...

 

  • Putschist Strategy= 1919- 1924
    • A sudden attempt by a group to overthrow a government. 
    • Failed because of the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Hitler and his associates had concocted a plot to seize power of the Bavarian state government. Police blocked the march on Munich, shots were fired, and the Putsch was suppressed resulting in Hitler being tried for treason.  

 

  • Legal Strategy= 1924- 1928
    • Meetings and rallies, targeted propaganda
    • emphasis on youthful image
    • Student, doctor, worker, women, lawyer, youth, and other subsidiary Nazi organizations

 

  • Middle Class Strategy= 1928- 1933
    • ignored working class voters
    • capitalized on fear of Communism during the economic crisis
    • mobilized SA (a place for unemployed men)
    • Destroy democracy, persecute Social Democrats/ Communists/ Jews/ liberal dissidents
    • Revise Versailles Treaty and recover economically  

 

In 1935, with very nationalistic principles, Hitler began to build Germany's empire. The Treaty of Versailles demilitarized an area of Germany known as the Rhineland, which was the heart of Germany's industry, in order to place a buffer between it and France. In 1936, German troops crossed the border and militarized the Rhineland, movement which was generally ignored by Britain and France in a policy known as "appeasement."

 

In 1938, again in direct defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler annexed Austria, a German-speaking nation rich in natural resources. Known as the Anschluss, the union was generally welcomed by the Austrians, and again ignored by the rest of Britain and the rest of Europe.

Empowered by this movement, Hitler then sought a takeover of Sudetenland, a region in Czechoslovakia dominated by Germans. Hitler claimed that that Germans were being suppressed by the Czechs, and demanded annexation of the region.

In another act of appeasement, Hitler was granted his request through the Munich Agreement, an agreement in which the Czech government had little say. Shortly thereafter, Hitler annexed the rest of Czechoslovakia.

 

 

Documentary On the Rise of the Third Reich by the History Channel

 

Hitler's Mein Kampf

 

Biography on Hitler: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/adolf-hitler

 

Nazi Ideological Theory: http://www.nazism.net/about/ideological_theory/

 

 

 

 

 

The Stalin-Hitler Pact

 
The Stalin-Hitler Pact of 1939 (aka the treaty of non-aggression, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) consisted of an agreement that the two countries would not be aggressive with each other. It also included a secret protocol that divided several countries -- Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania -- into Nazi/Soviet territories.

The Stalin-Hitler Pact directly led to World War II, as it allowed Hitler to launch an attack on Poland without having to fight the Soviets. The pact remained in effect until Hitler broke the agreement by invading the Soviet Union in 1941.

 


Full text of the Stalin-Hitler Pact of 1939

 

Lesson plan based on the Stalin-Hitler Pact

 

For a detailed video of a time lapse of Europe and territorial expansion during WWII, Click here.

 

For more background, see The Munich Agreement, a video from the History Lessons series of the Council on Foreign Relations

 

 

 

 

 

 Overview of Drives for Empire


Italy had both experienced national embarrassment and economic depression in the aftermath of World War I and during the Great Depression.

 

  • Both these nations were controlled by charismatic leaders with visions of empire: 

 

    • for Mussolini, the goal was a rebirth of the Roman Empire. 

 

    • Japan too was experiencing the fallout of the Great Depression, and it needed natural resources to maintain its new modern status as an industrialized manufacturing nation. Japan envisioned a unified bloc of Asian countries with which to control the Asian markets and keep out the Western powers, and sought empire for this reason.

 

Major motivations for empire building in Italy and Japan were:

 

  • Improvement of economic conditions and positioning

 

  • Territorial expansion

 

  • Military strengthening

 

  • Possession of natural resources

 

  • National pride

 

 

 

Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935

 

The dictator of Italy, Benito Mussolini wanted to expand his empire. Italy had lagged behind in the Industrial Revolution and lacked its own natural resources, while Ethiopia had an abundance.Ethiopia: 3rd October 1935 – the Italian invasion begins – martinplaut

 

  • The invasion of Ethiopia was also a matter of national pride. Italy had experienced an embarrassing defeat at the hands of the Ethiopians in the First Italo- Abyssian War, which left Ethiopia as one of only two African nations to resist European colonization and remain independent.

 

  • On October 3, 1935, Italian forces invaded poorly-armed Ethiopia without a declaration of war. By October 15, the Italians had taken the holy capital, Axum. In the brief war that followed, known as the Second Italo- Abyssian War (Oct 1935-May 1936), the Italians poisoned the water supply and used mustard gas, prohibited by the Geneva Protocol.. 

 

  • By June 1936, Italy developed a constitution claiming Ethiopia as part of an administrative unit linked with its two neighboring colonies: Italian East Africa.

 

  • The invasion of Ethiopia was pivotal in demonstrating the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations. After the invasion, the League declared Italy the aggressor but did not take any real steps to control Italy or protect Ethiopia. Mild sanctions were imposed, but they were largely ineffective and ignored by Mussolini.


This link  is a newsreel of the Ethiopian invasion from when it occurred.

Click here for more information about the Ethiopian invasion.

Click here for a brief educational video on the Italian Army.

 

Click here for a 7 minutes video on the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. It tells the history of the invasion in Africa from 1935 to 1936. 

report about women's role in the Ethiopian military. Look at page 21 for specific information about the conflict with Italy.

 

 

 

 

The Japanese Invasion of China and the Rape of Nanking

 

 

Dating back to the Meiji restoration and modernization, Japan wanted to expand their empire and be recognized as a power in the Western World.

 

  • In the First Sino-Japanese War against China, Japan defeated China with Western military tactics and ships to gain control of Korea. 

 

  • They later defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese war strengthening the military's resolve and showing that they could beat a Western power. 

 

  • After World War I ended, Japan used the weakness of some European nations to grab resources from countries they had previously colonized. 

 

  • With the Great Depression, over-populated Japan experienced a severe shortage of natural resources, and looked to China.

 

 

Japan first invaded Manchuria (a large region in Northeast China) in 1931, feeling that it needed raw materials and more space for its increasing population.

Japan would justify its expansion with the idea of a united Asian continent, called the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.

It continued conquest into the Jehol province of China until it ultimately launched a full-scale occupation in July 1937, an offensive also known as the Second Sino-Japanese War.

China's most important port, Shanghai, fell in November of the same year. Then in December, Nanjing (Nanking), Chiang-Kai-shek's capital, fell to the Japanese. During the taking of the city, Chinese Citizens were brutally raped and murdered by Japanese Soldiers in what would become know as the Rape of Nanking. For more on the brutal events of the invasion click here.

 

Click Here for a short 8 minute documentary about the event of the Rape of Nanking (Highly Graphical Images are shown about the event)

 

Click here to hear the voices of the survivors from the Rape of Nanking, these are primary sources/testimonies of survivors of the event

 

  • This can be used as a lesson plan, students are given 3 testimonies and they could learn from these survivors' testimonies how it was like during these devastating event. It can also be used to compare to Nazi Germany's atrocity of the Holocaust.

 

 


Additional Resource Links

 

 

How did the 1919 Treaty of Versailles contribute to the start of WWII?

  1. It created immense financial burdens in the Weimar Republic, leading to distaste of the German government by the German people and the rise of the Nazis

  2. The Treaty of Versailles did not contribute to WWII because Germany paid their reparation payments on time. However, Germany losing money through the reparations created financial hardships within the country, leading to massive inflation.

  3. The Treaty decreased Germany’s landholdings to a minor extent. This regardless led to resentment and aggressive territorial policies.

 

Answer: A, because answers B and C have ambiguous wording. B is incorrect because Germany did not pay their reparations correctly. C is wrong because land concessions were major.

 

 

Lesson plan on the lead-up to World War II


Materials and lesson plans for a World War II Jeopardy! game

 

This is A lesson plan on the rise of dictators made by a history teacher in a Tennessee Public School

  • Includes power points slides on government of dictatorships
  • Focus on Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin 

 

For more background on the beginning of World War II, see this YouTube video

 

For comprehensive information, videos, and photos of World War II, see the Encyclopedia Brittanica entry.

 

 

 

 

 


See also AP United States History Second World War

external image Red_apple.jpg Lesson Plans for Teaching about World War II from Ken Burns' series The War.

Summary Outline of Key Events from BBC History.

 


Click here for a lesson plan on the political Dr. Seuss

 

Visit the "World War II Propaganda" website for a large collection of movies, music, speeches and photos from all sides of the war. 

 


Here is a brief powerpoint formatted review on both sides of the war, when they entered and why.


This lesson plan includes a map for students to color in along with other reading and information based exercises!

 

 

AFascism in Germany and Italy


Fascism is a form of government in which the needs of the individual and other interests are subjugated to the needs of the state and in which an authoritarian leader or ruling body seeks to advance a nationalistic agenda based on the ethnic and cultural values of the ascendant segment of the population.

 

This is a video that describes what the political philosophy of Fascism is. In order to better understand how people actually adopted such an abhorrent ideology, it is necessary to actually know what the building blocks of fascism are. This is as shown by Giovanni Gentile (The creator of Fascism) and Benito Mussolini (The reviser of Gentile’s Fascism).

https://youtu.be/ki8Hib735Cs 

 

  • In Italy, where the word was coined from the Latin word fasces (an ancient Roman symbol of power), fascism was introduced by Giovanni Gentile and il Duce (“the leader”), Benito Mussolini .

 

  • Mussolini and the fascists came to power in 1921-22 by first winning 35 seats in the Italian parliament then having thousands of followers in black shirts march on Rome, causing the Italian king to let them form a new government.
    • In 1926, all anti-Fascist parties were outlawed. In addition to a strictly-ordered society, Mussolini promised the Italian people a new Roman Empire and launched an invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.

 

  • In Germany, Adolf Hitler, having written the rambling, racist Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”) in prison for his part in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, exploited a 1932 National Socialist Party (Nazi) election victory and the ailing health of President von Hindenburg to achieve appointment as chancellor in January 1933.
    • Seeking racial supremacy and lebensraum (“living space”) for the German people, Hitler (calling himself the Fuhrer, or ‘leader’) and the Nazis embarked on a campaign which would directly controvert many of the central provisions of the Treaty of Versailles.


Click here to read the article "Rise of Fascism"

Article on Mein Kampf in contemporary Germany

Learning Plans

 

  • Click here for a lesson plan on the differences between fascism and democracy

 

  • Click here for a lesson plan on the differences between fascism and communism


Click here for quizlet flash cards on Fascism in Italy and Germany

Here are videos from the Smithsonian Channel, talking about the rise of Mussolini and the Black Shirt Movement in Italy.

B. German rearmament and militarization of the Rhineland


This article does a great job of summing up the rearmament and militarization of the Rhineland and why it was important for Hitler. The following sums up the points mentioned in the article.

 

  • German's military was severely weakened by the Treaty of Versailles, it limited Germany to a small navy (1/3 the size of Britain's), a 100,000 man army and no air force. 
    • For Hitler to achieve his dream of conquering Europe he would need a revitalized military.

 

  • Going against the Treaty of Versailles he started training reserve troops that would not be officially counted as part of his 100,000 man army, there by giving Germany a reserve group of trained man to call on.
    • He also secretly started rebuilding Germany's Navy and Air Force (The Luftwaffe)

 

  • On 16 March 1935 Hitler finally publicly acknowledged his rearmament plans, denounced the Treaty of Versailles and one year later he re-militarized the Rhineland in western germany, this was suppose to be a buffer zone for France so they would not fear a German invasion so close to their border.
    • The rearmament of the German military would take many years before the out break of the war.

 

  • Hitler spent a lot of time and resources on rebuilding, increasing the size of the army, navy and air force. Also modernizing each branch with better ships, planes, vehicles and technology to create a better equipped and trained fighting force.
    • This force would eventually steam roll over most of Europe in the first years of the war

 

Treaty of Versailles

 

Factors in the peace settlement (primarily the Treaty of Versailles ) after WWI left Germany and Japan in turmoil and the rest of the world susceptible to the actions of an aggressive power that did not want to resolve disputes agreeably.

 

  • The creation of the League of Nations, a bold step towards international cooperation, was left incomplete since the organization had no power to enforce any decision militarily or to compel any of its members to act.

 

    • When Japan's invasion of Manchuria was challenged by the League, Japan simply withdrew from the organization.

 

  • The Great Depression caused global economic hardship which was most acute in countries like Germany, where inflation rose at a staggering pace. Germans suffering extreme economic hardship often saw Hitler and Nazism as a last chance.

 

    • The Treaty of Versailles also established World War I reparations that bankrupted Germany in the 1920s and gave the fledgling Nazi party great public resentment to use in its drive for power.

 

  • The allied countries of Great Britain, France, USSR, and the United States were still reeling from their losses in WWI and had little interest in military action.


German and Japanese aggression exploited these weaknesses in their own countries and the world by creating an alluring alternative in global conquest.

Here is a timeline with some photos that details events after the Treaty of Versailles up until the Nuremberg trials begin.

 

On October 3, 2010, Germany made its final payment of World War I reparations. This represented interest on foreign bonds it issued in 1924 and 1930; the sum was initially set at 269 billion gold marks, around 96,000 tons of gold, before being reduced to 112 billion gold marks by 1929, payable over a period of 59 years.

Crash Course video on World War II.

 

 

 

C. Germany’s seizure of Austria and Czechoslovakia and Germany’s invasion of Poland

 

The Treaty of Versailles (Articles 42 and 43) expressly stipulated that the Rhineland (the region of Western Germany which surrounds the Rhine River) would be demilitarized and act as an unarmed buffer “guaranteeing” French security from her traditional adversary, Germany, and allow France an avenue through which to aid her allies Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania in the event of German aggression. On March 7, 1936, Hitler sent a contingent of 20,000 troops to begin rearming the region with more to follow. French and British public opinion did not favor a military response and an opportunity to keep Hitler in check was lost. 

 

 

  • Hitler sought to unite German-speaking people into one nation. 

 

  • In February 1938, he invited Austrian chancellor von Schuschnigg to meet with him at his Berchtesgaden villa in Bavaria. Hitler intimidated him into signing an agreement to bring Austrian Nazis into his government.

 

  • When the chancellor later reneged, Hitler’s troops marched into Austria, forced von Schluschnigg’s resignation, and declared the Anschluss, or union, of Austria and Germany.

 

  • Annexation of a mountainous region in Western Czechoslovakia inhabited in part by German-speakers known as the Sudetenland, was Hitler’s next aim.


Though the French had a mutual aid agreement with the Czechs, the prime ministers of France and Britain, Daladier and Chamberlain, met with Hitler in 1938 and signed the Munich Pact, handing over the Sudetenland (Sudetenland Seizure) in exchange for (in Chamberlain’s infamous words) “peace in our time.”

 

  • On March 15, 1939, German troops advanced against the remainder of Czechoslovakia. On September 1 of that same year, Hitler unleashed his blitzkrieg, or ‘lightning war’ on Poland for the first time.

 

  • Although this blatant aggression did finally provoke Britain and France to declare war against Germany, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler, took a portion of Poland for themselves, and the battle for Poland was over before the allies could even mobilize.


Click here to watch video coverage and explanation of the invasion of Poland.

D. Japan’s invasion of China and the Rape of Nanking

 

  • After the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, Japan had become the dominant foreign power in the Manchurian industrial region of northern China.

 

  • On September 18, 1931, junior officers in the Japanese army blew up a section of railway (owned by Japan) nearby a Chinese army outpost and then used this ‘Mukden Incident’ and the need to protect Japanese business interests as a pretext for invading.

 

  • Manchuria was soon under Japanese control, but open war did not begin between the two nations until 1937.

 

  • Japanese advances around Shanghai in the summer of 1937 met stiff Chinese resistance, which upset Japanese plans. After finally achieving victory at Shanghai, 50,000 Japanese soldiers marched on Nanking.

 

  • Taking the capital in only four days, the Japanese had orders to “kill all captives” and what happened over the following six weeks is sometimes regarded as the worst single atrocity in the World War II era. 

 

    • The Rape of Nanking consisted of “citywide burnings, drownings, strangulations, rapes, thefts and massive property damage” and took the lives of 600,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians.

 

  • An Eyewitness account of the Nanking Massacre from a New York Times reporter, December 18, 1937

 



The Nanjing Massacre: Scenes from a Slaughter 75 Years Ago


Meanwhile, Japan and Russia signed a five year nonaggression pact with each other.

 

 

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