Chapter 16 World War Looms
Section 1 Dictators Threaten World Peace
Nationalism Grips Europe and Asia
After WWI, there was struggle among countries. Powerful dictators who believed in nationalism wanted to expand their countries and make them bigger.
Instead of keeping peace in the world, many countries were angry. Germany was angry because they had to give up land after WWI.
In Russia, people wanted democracy and it caused a civil war. Russia became a communist state. Russia was officially called the Soviet Union in 1922. When Lenin died in 1924, Joseph Stalin took control of the country. He took farms away from families. He put them together and made giant farms that were owned by the Soviet Union on which many families lived and worked. Stalin had many five-year plans to become a great industrial power. All businesses were taken over by the government and people were made to work for the government. As Stalin worked out his plan, many people died in the Soviet Union. Because of communism, people had no money. The government took over everything. People had no rights. Money from the government was not going to the people, it was going back into the government. By 1939, Stalin had made a totalitarian government. This meant that the government had complete control over the people. People had no rights, nor could they vote or make any decisions in regard to the government.
While Stalin was gaining power in the Soviet Union, Benito Mussolini was making a totalitarian government in Italy. People believed in Mussolini and thought he was good for Italy. By 1921, Italy became a fascist state. Fascism is when there is one leader and he makes all of the decisions. Mussolini wanted to make Italy a powerful country.
In Germany, Adolf Hitler followed the same path as Mussolini. In 1919, after being a soldier in WWI, Hitler did not have a job. He roamed around the country and joined a small party called the Nazi Party. Hitler was a good speaker and a good leader and because of this, he became the leader of the Nazi Party. He wrote a book called Mein Kampf (My Struggle). In this book, Hilter wrote what would become the plan for the Nazi Party. Hitler was born in Austria and wanted to unite all German-speaking people and make a giant German empire. Hitler also believed that there was a “master race” made up only of German, blond- haired and blue-eyed people called Aryans that were meant to rule the world. He believed that other races like Slavs, Jews and all non-white people were “inferior races” and were meant to serve the Aryans. Hitler wanted to expand Germany and take over other countries.
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By 1932, the Nazi’s had become the strongest party in Germany. In 1933, Hitler became Chancellor (prime minister) of Germany and ended the Democratic Party in Germany so that the Nazi Party would take over. Hitler established the Third Reich or Third German Empire. He said that the Third German Empire was going to last one thousand years.
Halfway around the world, Japan was planning to take over countries in order to get more space for their people to live. High ranking military leaders were taking over Japan. In 1931, Japan made a surprise attack and took control of the Chinese province of Manchuria. The League of Nations told Japan that this was a bad thing to do so Japan quit the League of Nations.
Soon after, in 1933 Hitler pulled Germany out of the League of Nations. In 1936, Hitler took control of Rhineland.
In May of 1936 Mussolini took control of Ethiopia. The League of Nations had no power to stop any of the fighting.
In 1936 a group of Spanish Officers led by General Francisco Franco rebelled against the Spanish Republic. This was the beginning of a civil war in Spain.
As the European countries were preparing for war, leaders were beginning to communicate. Italy and Germany made an alliance called the Rome-Berlin Axis. This meant that Italy and Germany were going to work together and on the same side in the war.
In 1928, the United States tried to keep peace. When the fighting began in Europe the United States tried to stay neutral. It did not want to take sides and worked to keep peace with the Soviet Union and other countries. Even though the United States wanted to stay neutral, it was impossible. Japan continued to attack China. Under the leadership of Roosevelt, the United States sent weapons and other supplies to China so they could fight the Japanese invaders. Roosevelt talked about stopping invaders of other countries in his “Quarantine Speech” in Chicago in October, 1937. Americans were not ready to go into another war and many did not believe the U. S. should get involved.
Section 2 War in Europe
In November, 1937, Hitler met with his top military advisors and they made a plan to take over Austria and Czechoslovakia and bring them into the Third Reich. On March 12, 1938, German troops marched into Austria and took over. Austria did not put up a fight.
Hitler then moved to Czechoslovakia. He wanted to take the small area where German-speaking people lived called Sudetenland. He was able to take Sudetenland away from Czechoslovakia by saying that he was not going to try to take any more countries. Hitler was not telling the truth. But the people believed him and did not want war, so they signed Sudetenland over to Germany without violence. This was called the Munich Agreement. The British prime minister named Neville Chamberlain helped the Czechoslovakian government sign Sudetenland over to Germany.
Winston Churchill was also a political leader at this time in Great Britain. He did not agree with Chamberlain and he did not believe that countries should give up to Germany. This is called appeasement. Appeasement is giving in to aggressive countries and not fighting for your own beliefs.
Churchill warned the British and French government that this was bad and that Hitler was not finished taking over other countries.
Churchill warned the people that Hitler was not going to stop taking over countries and he was right. On March 15, 1939, Hitler took over Czechoslovakia. At this time, Germany was starting to think about taking over Poland. The Soviet Union was afraid that Germany was going to attack them so they signed something called a nonagression pact. This was an agreement that said that Germany and the Soviet Union were not going to fight each other during the war.
As the day started on September 1, 1939 the German air force flew over Poland and began to bomb and take over Poland. This was called a blitzkrieg or a lightening war. On September 3, two days after the attack on Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany. By the end of the month, World War II had begun.
In 1940, Germany took control of France and in the summer 1940 Germany began planning to attack Britain. The Battle of Britain went on all through the summer. German planes bombed Britain. The royal Air Force fought back hard and after six weeks of bombing, Germany stopped bombing Britain.
Section 3 The Holocaust
On April 7, 1933, Hitler ordered all “non-aryan” people to stop working if they had government jobs. He wanted to remove anyone who was not white. This was the beginning of the Holocaust. Although Jews were not the only group of people that were targeted by the Nazi’s, they were affected the most. November 9-10, 1938 became Kristallnacht or the “Night of Broken Glass”. This was a time when the Nazi’s went through the streets and broke all of the windows of Jewish-owned stores and glass in synagogues. Many Jews were killed and many more were injured by the violence.
After this violence, Jews tried to leave Nazi Germany and there was no place for them to go.
In 1939, Hitler wanted to make all the Jews leave Europe. This was called the Final Solution. This was Hitler’s plan to kill all of the Jews.
Jews were made to move away from their homes. They were moved to places called ghettos. These were places that only Jews lived. They lived in very small places and were not treated well. Jews were also forced to work in German factories.
Finally, Jews were taken to concentration camps. These were very terrible places where families were separated and some people never saw their family member again. People were starving and cold. They were made to work every day and the Nazi’s killed them if they were too weak to work.
During the Final Stage of the Final Solution, Hitler killed Jews in gas chambers in concentration camps. People were killed every day and once they were killed, the people were buried in big holes in the ground. In order to cover up that the Nazi’s were killing people, they put their bodies in giant oven and burned their bodies.
Although millions of Jews died, some survived. Some were saved by people who took care of them and other lived through the terrible life in the concentration camps.
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Section 4 America Moves Toward War
Roosevelt knew that it was going to be difficult for the United States to be neutral. At this time the United States learned that Germany, Italy and Japan had signed an agreement that they were going to be on the same side. These three countries were known as the Axis Powers.
At this time, Roosevelt began getting money from the government to start building the military force in the United States. He began preparing people for the draft.
In the same year, Roosevelt ran for a third term as president and he won. He told Americans that Hitler was not going to make peace with the United States and that war would probably happen.
In 1941, Hitler broke his promise to the Soviet Union and invaded that country. The United States did not want to work with the Soviet Union but they had to in order to stop Hitler.
FDR Plans for War
In 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill met aboard the USS Augusta and signed an agreement that stated that the United States and Britain were going to be on the same side and work together in the war. The countries that were against the axis were called the Allies. Other countries that were on the side of the allies signed the agreement. This agreement was called the Atlantic Charter.
Japan Attacks the United States
Germany gave Japan ideas for taking over other countries. Japan continued to take over Asian, French-owned islands. Once the United States learned this information, the United States stopped trading with Japan and stopped sending them oil. Japan needed oil for war and when this happened, Japan became angry at the U.S.
Although the United States tried to have peace talks with Japan, but those attempts failed. On December 7, 1941, Japan began bombing Pearl Harbor. Many Americans died and the United States lost many ships and materials.
Because of this, the United States Declared war on Japan and the United States went into the war.