September 1st 1939 German troops thrust deep into Poland to win a swift and absolute victory. Barely 20 years earlier, their forefathers had also been on a march, but back into their homeland as a defeated army. In November 1918, after four years of World War I, Germany's Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II had been forced to abdicate. His armies were being ground down by a remorseless offensive by British, French and US troops. His people faced snarvish. But already, a dangerous myth was taking root. The German generals and troops claimed that they hadn't been defeated in battle, but betrayed by their own cowardly politicians. Even so, at 11 in the morning on November 11, 1918, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, World War I came to an end. The following month, President Woodrow Wilson of the United States arrived in Europe, promising to create a new world order. He persuaded the world's leaders to sign up to a new League of Nations. At the Treaty of Versailles, they agreed that from now on, disputes between countries would be resolved not by fighting, but by debate in the League. The peoples of Europe were set free. Germany's ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was dismembered. Out of it, new nations were created. Austria, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Germany itself was greatly reduced in size. But this process contained a time bomb. Not everyone celebrated the birth of countries like Czechoslovakia. Several of them contained substantial German minorities. One day, the desire to reunite the German peoples would come to haunt Europe. The war-torn German people also had one final indignity inflicted on them. They were forced to pay a massive billion in reparations to France and Britain, something they could ill afford. And when he returned to America, Wilson's new world order immediately fell apart. The US Congress decided it could not risk being sucked into another war in Europe. It refused to join his league, and the US withdrew into isolationism. Germany was now a very different nation. It was still Europe's biggest country, but its militaristic monarchy had gone. It had become a democracy. But its government, the so-called Weimar Republic, was soon struck by a series of hammerments. Street battles erupted between extreme right-wing nationalists and communists trying to start a revolution. Then in 1923, the country was devastated by hyperinflation, which reached hundreds of percent a month. Ordinary people's savings were wiped out. This was fertile ground for a new breed of rabble-rousing right-wing politicians. Adolf Hitler Hitler had been born in Austria. He had fought bravely as a soldier in World War I and been awarded the Iron Cross. On returning to Germany, he settled in Munich, and his fiery oratory soon enabled him to seize control of the small National Socialist or Nazi Party. The German army was defeated by the In October 1923, Hitler and his henchmen attempted an armed coup against the Weimar government. It failed, and he was sentenced to nine months. In prison, he wrote a book, Mein Kampf, My Struggle, in which he blamed Germany's ills on the Jews and demanded that it rebuild its strength and seek new territories in the East. On his release he set about building the Nazis into a proper, disciplined political party. From now on he would use the democratic system to achieve power. But for the next five years Weimar Germany prospered. Support for extremist parties left and right dwindled. Then suddenly, Hitler's opportunity arrived. In October 1929, the US stock market crashed. Billions of dollars were lost, and an economic depression swept across the world. Unemployment in Germany soared to over 6 million. Only extremist politicians seemed to offer a solution. The US government was forced to give up its support for the US economy. By 1931 his Nazis were a true mass movement, and they had their own brown-shirted thugs who numbered almost three million. In the 1932 elections the Nazis became the largest party in Germany's parliament, the Reichstag. But Hitler refused to join a coalition, leaving parliament paralyzed. To break the arm pass, President Hindenburg made him Chancellor in January 1933, head of the government. Within a month, the Reichstag burned down. Hitler accused the communists and demanded emergency powers. He then used them to ban all other political parties. In August 1934 President Hindenburg died. Hitler declared himself President. He was now absolutely the Führer of Germany. At first it was little sign of what was to come. The next three years the Fuhrer concentrated on rebuilding Germany's economy. He spent millions on public works, including the 5,000 mile autobahn cistern, to soak up the onion. But in secret Hitler was also spending lavishly on a huge rearmament. Under the Versailles Treaty, the German army had been limited to 100,000 men. The country was forbidden to have an air force, tanks or submarines. This small army was prevalent in size. Then in 1935, Hitler came out into the open. He unveiled a brand new air force, the Luftwaffe. It had two and a half thousand players, far more than Britain or France. Unemployment plunged and the Nazis became enormously popular. Now emboldened, the Führer made his first expansionist move. In 1935 he reoccupied the Saarland district on the French border, after it voted to return from League of Nations to Germany. A year later he sent German troops into the Rhineland, part of Germany which had been demilitarized at Versailles. At the time, many felt that Hitler was only claiming back what was rightfully German's. Neither Britain nor France object. When Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympic Games, the Nazis were seen by many as firm but fair, a government which was restoring the nation's pride, and which didn't threaten anyone. Of course, there were signs. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws forbade Jews to marry true Aryan Germans and deprive them of their citizenship. When the first threats came to world peace, they didn't come from Hitler at all, but from somewhere else entirely. Japan, at the start of the 20th century, was already a militant country. It defeated Russia in a war in 1905 and it had fought alongside the Allies in World War I. After the war, Japan was an acknowledged world power and it signed up to the League of Nations. But politically, it was a mess of contradictions. Nominally a democracy, the feudal tradition was still strong. Most Japanese revered their emperor as a living god and regarded him as their true leader. And the country faced major economic problems. Its population was exploding. And it had no natural resources to fuel its rapidly expanding industries. Its leaders needed solutions. They saw them in Chinese Manchuria. Manchuria was a land of rich grain fields, with plenty of coal and minerals. It was a perfect target. Japanese troops were already stationed there. Other possible targets were the colonies ruled by the European powers. Burma, Malaya and Hong Kong controlled by Britain. Indochina ruled by France and the Dutch East Indies. But at this stage Japan had to be cautious. They didn't want to rouse the other great power in the Pacific. The United States. For all its anti-imperialist slogans, the US actually ran an unofficial empire in the Pacific. The Philippines, Guam, and several islands were under its direct rule. It undoubtedly had the strength to take on Japan, but since the end of World War I, it had had other distractions. This was America's jazzing. Throughout the 1920s, the nation concentrated on exploiting its vast resources. It was an economic boom that seemed without end. Fortunes were made both in industry and the stock markets. America seemed lost to the increasing pursuit of pleasure. With distractions like these, Japan's growing pains in the Pacific seemed very far away. America had slashed its army after World War I and agreed a naval reduction treaty with Britain, France, and Japan. This, in effect, handed naval superiority in the Pacific to the Japanese. And then came the Great Depression. As the economic devastation spread, a quarter of the population lost their jobs. Tens of thousands were made homeless, living in shantytowns. Whereas before it had been distracted by pleasure, now America was distracted by pain. It was time for Japan to make home. In 1931, without even informing their own elected government, the Japanese forces in Manchuria seized the capital Mukde and then overran the rest of the territory. The puppet state, Manchu Quo, was proclaimed under a puppet rule. Henry Puyi, the last emperor of China, had been deposed in 1911, was dragged out of retirement. At its headquarters in Geneva, the League of Nations now faced its first great test. Japan was universally condemned. But her response was blunt. Japan, however, finds it impossible to accept the report adopted by the Assembly. The Japanese then just walked out, and the League suddenly realized there was nothing it could do about Manchuria. Japan was declared an international pariah, but it didn't care. Its leaders had turned their eyes to further conquests in China. These were easy victories. China was in a state of chaos. The government of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek was locked in conflict with the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong. There was civil war. In 1936, as a precursor to invasion, the Japanese signed a pact with Hitler. The aim was to guard against any attack by Soviet Russia, were it to move on China. Then in July 1937, Japanese provoked an incident with Chinese troops, and invaded Japan. At first the Chinese were taken by surprise, but they soon fought back fiercely, the communists even joining the Kuomintang in a united. The Japanese responded with amphibious land. By the end of 1937 they had overrun much of northern China and the coast. The Japanese fought this war with exceptional brutality, bombing cities indiscriminately. Westerners living in the commercial center, port of Shanghai, were now evacuated. The city was then besieged for three months. It suffered widespread damage. Japanese forces showing no pity or concern for the native population. But it was after the capture of Nanking, then the Chinese capital, on December 17, 1937, that the Japanese forces really ran along. Over 300,000 civilians are estimated to have been massacred during a six-week orgy of rape and indiscriminate killing. The Japanese even attacked British and US warships which had been sent to protect their shipping and trade. The worst incident came on December 12, 1937. The American gunboat Panay was sunk by Japanese bombers. Fifty crewmen died. Despite this, the Western powers refused to intervene. So the League of Nations could do nothing. In the United States, President Roosevelt wanted to impose a naval blockade of Japan. It has become clear that acts and policies of nations in other parts of the world have far-reaching effects on us. But the British would have none of it, fearing that it might provoke a war. So all Roosevelt could offer was a $25 million loan to Chiang Kai-shek to buy arms. Even though the Communists were now fighting alongside the Kuomintang, the Soviet Union did a little to help out. Its only involvement was a series of clashes along its own border with Manchuria. But China itself received nothing. Instead, it had to fight on alone. During 1938, the Japanese overran Canton and pushed the Chinese forces deeper into the west of the country. All the rhetoric of the League of Nations, all those promises to stop international aggression, had come to nothing. By now the Western powers were facing aggression much closer to home. Today it is easy to laugh at Benito Muschi, the fascist dictator of Italy. All that posturing seems faintly ridiculous now, but it didn't seem that way in 1952. Back then, Italy had seemed to be on the edge of anarchy. The country was riven by strikes and land seizures. The democratic government, just as in Germany, seemed powerless in the face of such unrest. So Benito Mussolini, war veteran and a journalist, decided to take a stand. He organized a right-wing nationalist group, the fascists. With the country paralyzed by a general strike in August 1922, Mussolini ordered his followers to march en route. Fearing a civil war, Italy's king, Victor Emmanuel, asked him to form a government. Mussolini swiftly stamped out any political opposition and assumed dictatorial power. By 1928 his position seemed secure. Parliament was appointed rather than elected, and all power was firmly in the hands of the fascist Grand Council. Like Hitler, Mussolini's first acts made him immensely popular. Massive programs of public works provided employment and transformed Italy's infrastructure. Corruption was rooted out and the Mafia more or less eliminated. Italy's armed forces were built up, including an advanced modern air force. In the Mediterranean, Mussolini launched a powerful navy, bigger than the combined might of the British and French Mediterranean fleets. When the Great Depression came, Italy seemed to weather it better than most. Mussolini became a source of worldwide inspiration. Political leaders, not least Adolf Hitler in Germany, saw the fascist system as a role model, strong and purposeful, in contrast to the weakness of the democracies in Britain and France. But Mussolini wanted more than adulation. He wanted to recreate the Roman Empire. And he already had a target in mind for his first imperial land grant. His target was Abyssinia, today's E.P.O. Italy already had colonies on its borders in Eritrea and Italian Somalia. In December 1934, Italian forces provoked a clash with Abyssinian troops at an oasis in the Oba Den region, well inside Abyssinian Territory. Mussolini then sent reinforcements to Eritrea and Italian Somalia, demanding that Abyssinia pay reparations. The Emperor of Abyssinia, Haile Selassie, appealed in person to the League of Nations. He called on it to live up to its ideals. Here was a small nation under threat from another member of the League. This was the supreme test. But the League did nothing. Britain's Foreign Minister Anthony Eden at least tried to broker a peace deal, but Mussolini would have none of it. In early October 1935, the Italian army invaded from Eritrea and Italian Somalia. The primitive Abyssinian forces stood little chance against a modern army equipped with artillery and tanks. The Italian Air Force had total command of the air and harried the Abyssinians, on occasions dropping gas bombs, even though gas had been outlawed at Versailles, as a crime against humanity. After six months, Abyssinia was completely overrun. The emperor Haile Selassie fled into exile in Britain. From its headquarters in Switzerland, the League of Nations wrung its hands. It did impose economic sanctions, but they had little effect. Mussolini's aggression had revealed two things. League of Nations that great hope for peace was in and both Europe's supposed major powers the democracies Britain and France no longer had the stomach for a fight both Britain and France had been shattered by World War one and their economies have never really recovered Both had witnessed waves of strikes and unrest. Both had suffered mass unemployment, even before the Great Depression. Both also faced the cost of controlling empires, now swollen by taking on Germany's former colonies and the Middle Eastern territories once run by the Turkish Ottoman Empire. And above all, both had been traumatized by the horrific casualties of World War I. A succession of British leaders, Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald, and above all Stanley Baldwin, all resolved to keep Britain out of future conflicts. Despite horrific casualties on the Western Front, Britain had ended World War I with a large and very effective conscript army. This was immediately run down to a small professional force designed to police its sprawling empire. And when the Great Depression struck, any ideas of modernizing the army were abandoned. It meant that Britain went into the run-up to war economically and militarily weak. French losses during World War I have been even worse than the British. Ever mistrustful of the Germans, a large conscript army was maintained. But throughout the 1920s France's birth rate had declined. It became clear that there would be a manpower shortage by the mid to late 1930s. France realized it could never compete with Germany on the size of its army alone. The solution was to adopt an entirely defensive mentality. The Maginot Line, a series of fortifications, was begun in 1930 along the frontier with Germany and ran as far as the Belgian border. There, it theoretically linked up with fortifications planned by the Belgians. This new French military approach meant that France was only capable of waging a defensive. It just did not have the ability to launch an attack on Italy, even if the British had had the troops to help. And of course both countries knew that their navies in the Mediterranean were outnumbered by Mussolini's new fleet. So when Italy conquered Avicenna, it made sense for both powers to do nothing. It just seemed too remote. Too much someone else's problem. By now they both had to deal with all the traumas of the Great Depression. That seemed so much more pressing. And above all, they were now faced with a military threat far closer to home. A resurgent and rearming journey. And Germany's power, and that of Italy too, was soon about to be demonstrated, in supporting the rise of another dictator, in Spain. In 1936 civil war erupted in Spain. It was exceptionally vicious, setting family against family, communist against fascist, believers against atheists. In 1931 a left-wing government had come to power determined to get rid of the centuries old Spanish monarchy. The king was forced into exile and a republic was declared. In February 1936, the parties of the left combined in a popular front to take on the forces of the right in a general election. The popular front won Mara. Even though its reform program was modest, a wave of strikes and land seizes led the right to fear that a communist takeover was inevitable. Within the Spanish army, long a bastion of conservative and Catholic thinking, senior officers began to consider the possibility of a coup. Among them was General Francisco Franco, the former chief of staff who had been effectively exiled to command Spain's forces in the Canary Islands. On July 17, 1936, units of the army fighting guerrillas in Spain's colony in Morocco, The next day Franco flew to join them, proclaiming a new nationalist movement which would save Spain from communism. Mainland garrisons now joined this revolt. The Popular Front responded by calling for volunteers to defend the Republic. Battle lines had been drawn. At first, Franco faced problems. He and his army were in North Africa, and he had to get across the Straits of Gibraltar back to Spain. So he turned to the one person he thought might help. Adolf Hitler. Within a month, transport aircraft from Hitler's new Luftwaffe had begun and erved, taking Franco's battle-hardened veterans over to southern Spain. At this stage, the Republic still seemed to have the advantage. The pro-Franco military uprisings in Madrid and Barcelona were quickly crushed, leaving it in control of most of the east of the country. Those nationalists were confined largely to the northwest and part of the south. But the nationalist situation was transformed when Hitler and Mussolini started to pour in troops and weapons. The German dictator seized the opportunity to test his new equipment and expanding armed forces. The first panzer tanks were sent, along with some 12,000 troops. And the Luftwaffe deployed its Condor Legion with its ultra-modern new bombers and fighters. Mussolini sent a so-called volunteer corps of 50,000 men and more than 700 airmen. In vain did the Republicans appeal to Britain, France, and the Soviet Union for help. But London and Paris were scared of setting off a European war. They declared a policy of non-intervention. Cynically both Germany and Italy signed up to this. But when it became obvious that they were still sending arms to the nationalists, Josef Stal, the Soviet leader, announced that he would help the Republic. Stalin's worry was the rise of fascism in Germany. Hitler had made it abundantly clear that he believed communism to be Nazism's ultimate enemy. Stalin saw the Spanish Conflict as a way of keeping Germany and Italy occupied, while building up the Soviet Union's military strength. About 700 military advisers were sent, along with tanks and fighter aircraft. It was something, but no match for the support Franco had received. In fact, the largest source of outside help for the Republic didn't come from a country at all, but from volunteers, the international brigades. About 30,000 left-wing Americans, British, French and Germans signed up to fight in Spain. With their new fascist support, the Nationalists were able to open two fronts. One advancing towards Barcelona from the north, the other led by Franco, pushing up towards Madrid from the south. By the end of 1936, Madrid was enveloped on three sides, and virtually undersea. The fighting was intense and often accompanied by appalling atrocities against civilians. Republicans hunted down and murdered Roman Catholic priests. The Nationalists slaughtered anyone accused of being communist. German and Italian air power was used indiscriminately against civilian targets. Madrid was heavily bombed. But the worst incident came in April 1937, when the Basque town of Guernica was virtually obliterated with 6,000 civilian deaths. The area controlled by the Republic was steadily grounded. Its forces fought with great gallantry, but under-trained and under-equipped amateurs were no match for the professional soldiers, led by Franco. or for the combined modern weaponry of Italy and Germany. As the war dragged on, fighting around Madrid became a symbol of the left's determination not to be crushed by a fascist dictatorship. But behind the scenes, the Republican alliance was falling apart. The communists and socialists wanted to concentrate on winning a military victory. But the more idealistic anarchists and syndicalists saw the war as an opportunity for a mass revolution by the workers. These disagreements burst out into the open in May 1937. Fighting broke out in Barcelona between the anarchists and communists. It was a fatal weakening of the republican groups. By the end of 1938, the Nationalists had penned their enemy into a small enclave around Barcelona, and another stretching eastward from Madrid to the coast. Madrid continued to hold out, but the international brigades were withdrawn. More and more nations began to recognize Franco's government, as his forces closed in for the final assault on Madrid. At the end of March 1939, his defenders, exhausted after nearly three years of fighting, the capital finally surrendered. A month later, Franco formally declared hostilities at an end. The scars of Spain's civil war took years to heal, and in some ways, They never have. And international, Franco's victory over the Republic proved a disaster. Hitler and Mussolini were confirmed in their belief that the democracies of Britain and France were impotent to resist any real pressure. While Stalin despaired of their willingness to confront fascism. Hitler in particular saw his way open to begin the aggressive policies outlined in Mein Kampf. Even before the Spanish Civil War ended, his armies were on the march. From the moment he became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, Hitler had begun to put his long-term ambitions into action. On February 3rd, he told his top commanders that his ultimate aim was to conquer territory in the East and ruthlessly the Germans. They were instructed to prepare for a massive expansion. Although Germany had been forbidden tanks, a secret treaty with the Soviet Union in 1923 had allowed the development of tank designs and experimentation with new mobile armoured tanks. Energetic young German officers like Heinz Guderian read the theories of British thinkers like Basil Liddell Hart and Colonel John Fuller. They even watched exercises being carried out by the British during the 1920s on Salisbury Plate. It was from these that they came up with the idea of fast-moving units combining tanks, artillery and infantry that could thrust fast and deep into enemy territory. Hitler adopted their ideas with enthusiasm. The new army is to have three panzer divisions. Similarly, the new air force, the Luftwaffe, under former World War I fighter ace Hermann Goering, had had a framework to build on. Throughout the years in which its air force was officially banned, Germany had kept up its design skills by building civilian machines, and gliding and flying clubs provided a reserve of potential air. Hitler revealed the existence of the Luftwaffe in March 1935. He then announced that the army was to be increased to 300,000 men and conscription was reintroduced. Britain and France protested feebly at this flagrant breach of the Versailles Treaty. And soon, they reluctantly and slowly began to re-up. Until this point Hitler had been modest in his goals. He had only taken back what was his, the Rhineland and Saale. But now he had a grander target in mind. His homeland, Austria. In 1934, Austrian Nazis had attempted to seize power and unify the country with Germany. Austrians, after all, spoke German, even if they had never been part of a German state. In February 1938, another Nazi plot was discovered. Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg protested to it. Hitler responded by demanding that Austria stop mistreating the Austrian Nazis and unite with Germany. Schuschnigg promptly called a referendum so that the Austrians could vote on whether to remain independent. On March 12, 1938, the eve of the referendum, Hitler, fearing that it might produce the wrong result, sent in his troops. Complete surprise and an enthusiastic welcome by Nazi sympathizers made it a bloodless invasion. Within hours Hitler announced Austria's incorporation into the Third Reich. The sovereign nation heard for the first time. being subsumed into a greater Germany. Once again, Western democracies failed to react. In the summer of 1938, he turned on his next prey, Czechoslovakia. A substantial German minority lived in the northwest of the country, an area known as the Sudetenland. The Sudeten Germans had been part of the old Austrian Empire, but had been cut off when Czechoslovakia was created in 1990. This was the time bomb that had started ticking at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler encouraged Sudeten German demands for autonomy, and then threatened the Czech government with force if it refused to agree. Undaunted, the Czech government ordered general mobilization and prepared to resist. The Czechoslovak army was large and well equipped, with formidable fortifications on its frontier with Germany. Hitler backed off. But then at the beginning of September, concerned that war might be imminent, the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain decided to act as a peacemaker. He flew to meet Hitler twice. The Nazi dictator assured him that if he could have the Sudetenland, he would make no further territorial demands in Europe. In Munich, on September 29, 1938, with Mussolini acting as mediator, France and Britain signed an agreement giving the Sudetenland to Germany in return for a formal declaration by Hitler that he had no more territorial ambitions. Chamberlain flew back to Britain waving the piece of paper which he claimed guarantees peace in our time. So, on October 1st, German troops occupied the Sudetenland and seized Czech frontier fortifications. Hitler now began sizing up his next doubt, Poland. In the nominal cause was a German minority marooned as a result of the Versailles Treaty. Hitler demanded the return of the port of Danzig to German control, so that East Prussia could be linked up with the rest of Germany. The Poles refused, and Hitler hesitated. He was not quite ready for all-out war, and he had unfinished business with Czechoslovakia. In March 1939, the eastern part of the country, Slovakia, which was ethnically different to the Czech lands, appealed to Hitler for help in achieving greater independence. Hitler summoned the Czechoslovak Prime Minister, Emil Hatcher, to Berlin, and browbeat him into putting his country under German protection. German troops now marched into the rest of Czechoslovakia. On a post. Most of the country was annexed into the right. Slovakia was declared a protent. For the first time Hitler had seized non-German speaking toad. But again, it was only a feeble protest from Britain and the Fats. At the end of March he again repeated his demand of Poland to give up Danzig. This time, France and Britain declared unequivocally that they would declare war if he attacked Poland. But by now Hitler cared little whether they did or not. He was sure that they would be weak and indecisive opponents. In Russia Stalin had also become increasingly concerned by Hitler's aggression. In April, Stalin proposed an alliance with Britain and France. But negotiations made little progress. Finally, Stalin despaired, deciding that there was another solution to the German threat. On August 23, the Soviet Union and the Third Reich, who everyone had believed were sworn enemies, announced a non-aggression pact. The agreement secretly specified that Poland would be split between the two countries, and Stalin would have a free hand to take over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Now free from any Russian threat, Hitler ordered his armed forces to prepare for an immediate invasion. On the evening of August 31st, the German Wehrmacht prepared for the assault. Its Fuhrer had made the decision which would plunge the world into war. Thank you.