Transcript Japan`s Challenges to the League of Nations

Hansen
World War II
Unit III Appeasement and the 1st Half of the War
Name _____________________
Period _________
Lecture #1 Totalitarian aggression and Appeasement
Note-Taking Guide
Quarter Question- If a kid at school who was about your size
and strength pushed you at lunch and said they would fight
you unless you gave them a quarter and you had one, would
you give it to them? Why or why not?
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Part I- Totalitarian Aggression
►1a) Japan’s Turns Against the West
Review- Anger Over the Treaty of Versailles
League Response
► 1c) German Challenges to the League of Nations
Background
Review - Weimar Republic , Great Depression Helps the Nazis ,
Hitler’s Election
Hitler is a Challenge to the League by Definition
Japan Challenges the League of Nations
Germany Challenges the League- Baby Steps
Japanese Justfication?
Germany Challenges the League- More Daring
Japanese Brutality in China
►1d) An Unholy Alliance- The Axis
► 1b) Italian Aggression
Review- Anger of the Treaty of Versailles
Italian Challenges to the League
Italian Brutality
►1e) A dry run- The Spanish Civil War
►Part II. The Failure of the Liberal Democratic Nations/
League of Nations aka ________
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► Review 2a) Liberal Democratic Nations have their
own problems, The Great Depression, Pacifism ,
Sympathy for Germany, League of Nations is
Powerless
Appeasement
Chamberlain V. Churchill
2b) Each Liberal Democratic Nation Finds its Own Passive
Way to Deal with the Totalitarians
U.S.
A Battle of Wills
France
►Part III. A Line in the Sand
Britain and Appeasement
Munich Meeting
►Part III. A Great Shock
Totalitarian Aggression and the
Liberal Democratic Response
Part I. Totalitarian Aggression
1a) Japan Turned Against
The West
Anger over the
Treaty of Versailles
 Japan had been on the side of Britain
and the U.S. and France in WWI- now
they’d turned against them…
 Why?
 No racial equality clause in Treaty of Versailles
 Racist discrimination in Western nations
 Japanese turned to their military
to gain honor and respect
 Totalitarianism
Japan’s Challenges
to the League of Nations
 In 1931 the Japanese invaded Manchuria,
… Why???
 Japanese couldn’t be a world power as
long as they were dependent on the limited
resources of an island
Japanese Justification
 Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere
 Asia free of European Imperialism! Asia
for Asians!
 We’ll Kick start Asian economies under
Japanese leadership
 But the reality…
 Japan was more interested in replacing the
European imperialists with…
 …themselves…
Brutal Japanese
invasion of China
 Racism between the
Japanese and the Chinese…
 Social Darwinism
 Rape of Nanking…
 Japanese massacred Chinese
Civilians after the Chinese army
abandoned the city of Nanking
 China was in the middle of a
Civil War, so it was vulnerable
 China begged the League for
help, but…
1b) Italian Aggression
Italian Challenges to the
League
 Italy Was Bitter At the Lack of Land Earned in
Treaty of Versailles
 Hey, if they won’t give us land…
 …we’ll take it.
 In 1935, Mussolini decided to invade Ethiopia
 Mussolini hoped to increase his own popularity
with an easy conquest
 Battle of Adowa Story
 Ethiopians begged the League for help, but…
 League places petty sanctions on Italy
 Doesn’t block sale of petroleum products to Italy
Italian Brutality
Use of Poison Gas
1c) German Challenges to
the League of Nations…
Challenges to the League
of Nations- Baby Steps
 In 1935 …rearmament and
draft- in violation of the T of V
 1936 remilitarization of the
Rhineland
 a German piece of land next to
France
 forbidden to have German troops
as part of the T of V
 It was a bluff – Hitler later
called it the greatest risk he
ever took
 German officers had orders to
retreat if any shooting
occurred
Challenges to the LeagueMore Daring
 Anschluss = union
 Why this name?
1d) An Unholy Alliance
Realizing their
Common Goals
(expansion and
totalitarianism), Italy,
Germany, and Japan
signed an alliance
They agreed not to
get in each other’s
way.
They called
themselves the Axis
1e) A dry run- The Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War
 In Spain- a civil war broke out between a
democratic government and a Totalitarian One
(Franco)
 Hitler and Mussolini saw this as a good
chance to test their new militaries
 They sent in their new air forces and bombed
Spain, including the civilian populations
 The allies sent no military forces
 Do we remember why not?
Guernica by Pablo Picasso
Guernica = A City Bombed by the Nazi
Air Force
Part II. The Failure of the Liberal
Democracies to Confront
Totalitarian Governments
 Or Why didn’t
Britain,
France, the
U.S., or the
League of
Nations) do
anything?
2a) Liberal Democratic Nations
(Britain, France, and the U.S.) Had
Their Own Problems
•The Great Depression
• No interest in building up a great standing army or going to
war when there is no money
=
Pacifism
People
Remembered
the Horrors of
World War I
Sympathy for Germany
The League had no
‘teeth’
 When Japan attacked China, China (a
member of the League) complained




League warns Japan to leave
Japan won’t… drops out of the League
League does… nothing!
U.S. in particular is pissed at Japan
 Sphere of Influence
 When Italy attacks Ethiopia…
 More angry letters
 Hitler… you guessed it.
Source E
This cartoon of 1933 shows the
Japanese actions destroying
international agreements such as
the Kellogg Pact and the League
of Nations Covenant. What is
the cartoonist suggesting about
Japan?
 If the nations want peace, the
League gives them the way by
which peace can be kept. League
or no League, a country which is
determined to have a war can
always have it.
 H.A.L.Fisher, A History of Europe
(1938)
 “If the nations want peace, the
League gives them the way by
which peace can be
kept. League or no League, a
country which is determined to
have a war can always have it.”
H.A.L.Fisher, A History of Europe (1938)
2b) Each Liberal Democratic
Country Found A Passive Way
to ‘Deal’ With the Totalitarians
 U.S. signed the
Neutrality Act
 We won’t get involved
in any European
problems
 basically a way of
gearing up for another
round of
 …Isolationism
France’s Reaction
 The U.S., Britain, and the
League are doing squat to
protect us… and who is
Hitler going to come for
first?
 France!
 Maginot Line
 Kinda like the best trench
system ever built
 Makes a lot of sense after
WWI
Fort Eben
The Problem with the
Maginot Line?
 Warfare has changed. Offenses have
regained dominance.
 France just spent almost their entire
military budget for a decade on a
defensive line that will basically be
bypassed without any fighting
Britain’s ReactionAppeasement
Munich Meeting
•After Germany took the Rhineland and
Austria, the British Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain- went to meet with Hitler in
Munich
•Neville Chamberlain-- Decided to Have a
Meeting With Hitler at Munich
-Hitler’s Promise
•There is only one more piece of land that
Germany wants- a part of Czechoslovakia
called the Sudetenland
•Give us that and we will never take another
piece of land
•Chamberlain Agreed
•Appeasement- Giving in to a bully to avoid a fight
Sudetenland
Chamberlain versus
Churchill
 Chamberlain returned to England to
adoring crowds– “I have guaranteed peace
for our time”
 Bad career move?
 Hitler was clever
 The Sudetenland was behind the key Czech
defensive line
 Which means, if Hitler wants to take the
rest…?
Winston Churchill
 British Member of Parliament
 critic of Appeasement
 Said that if Britain had acted quickly,
Hitler could have been stopped with
little bloodshed because he was so
outmatched in terms of military…
 If he is given time, he will become too
strong
 Referring to the Munich deal reached by
Chamberlain– “Britain’s leaders had a choice
between dishonor and war. They chose
dishonor. They shall have war.”
A Battle of Wills…
 Britain, France, and Russia all publicly stated that they would
stand by Czechoslovakia if it were attacked…
 Hitler wavered… his generals were telling him ‘no’.. There is
even evidence that they planned to remove Hitler to save
Germany from a two front war…
 The German nation was overwhelmingly anti-war
 The German ‘West Wall’ (Siegfried Line), However only 13
German divisions can remain on the Western Front if there was
an attack on Czechoslovakia to hold off 100 French divisions if
the French were to attack…
“Hitler did not object to the League of Nations simply
because it defended the Versailles settlement. If that
had been so, he would simply have negotiated at Geneva
to change in the settlement...
Hitler saw world politics as a racial struggle - in Darwinian
terms, a battle for survival. The fundamental problem,
therefore, with the League was - in Nazi eyes - it
embodied a wholly mistaken philosophy of international
affairs. There could be no equality among states, for
some 'are not worthy of existence'... There was no
longer a cohesive value-system or an international
society in the old sense; and it was a 'fiction' to talk about
international 'rules'.
 Written by the historian Mark Mazower (1998)
Churchill Quote
“ The strain upon this one man and upon
his astounding will power must at this
moment have been most severe.
Evidently he had brought himself to the
brink of a general war. Could he take
the plunge in the face of an
unfavorable public opinion and of the
solemn warning of the chiefs of his
army, navy, and air force? Could he, on
the other hand, afford to retreat after
living so long on prestige?”
Part III. A Line in the Sand
 A Few Weeks After the Munich Meeting, Hitler’s
Troops Took the Rest of Czechoslovakia
 None of the Western Nations backed up their
threats
 Hitler’s nature was now clear to everyone, even
Chamberlain
 Hitler now believed that the Western
Democracies would never go to war over central
European countries
Britain and France Drew a
Line in the Sand
 Belief that Hitler’s next
target was Poland
 Britain and France
declared that they would
fight for Poland…
 But then… an earth
shattering event…
Nazi/Soviet NonAggression Pact
 Why was this a shock?
 Nazis and Communists were both Totalitarians, but they also
hated each other.
 Why would the Nazis do it?
 Avoid two front war…
 Why would the Soviets do it?
 Aim Hitler’s army at the West
 Gain time to prepare (remember purges???)
 On Sept. 1st, 1939, Poland was invaded from the East
and the West simultaneously. Britain and France
declared war on Germany. WWII has begun.