HIST 100: Part 12

World War I, the Interwar Years, the Rise of Totalinarism and World War II: 1914-1945

Dr. Marion Deshmukh

Introduction

Man's inhumanity towards man.  The First World War.  The nature of World War I, the numbers of casualties, and the effects the war had on civilian populations profoundly affected the coming decades which led to an even more horrible conflict a generation later: World War II and the Holocaust.    Here are a pile of corpses which Allied soldiers discovered upon liberating concentration camps at the end of World War II, in 1945.  Welcome to George Mason University's Western Civilization. I'm Marion Deshmukh. During the course of this semester, we have been studying the development of European society through the centuries. We have noted that  Europeans often yearned for a united continent and saw themselves as a distinct civilization.  The Greeks, you will recall, called non-Greeks, "barbarians." The Romans tried to unify diverse groups around the Mediterranean Sea and the European continent.  Charlemagne wanted to re-create the Roman Empire with the additional spiritual umbrella of Christianity in the early middle ages.  The French kings Louis XIV in the 1600s and Napoleon in the early 1800s wished to bring various lands under French control.  But during the first half of the 20th century, Europe was at war with itself.  And thus a critical question must now be asked:  why, during the first half of  the 20th century, did Europeans kill each other in enormous numbers?   These terrible events occurred even though Europe appeared to value human rights and freedoms, appeared to value economic and scientific progress,appeared to value spirituality as embodied in Judeo-Christianity, and appeared to have a historic sense of belonging to a distinct civilization-- despite real regional, religious, cultural, and language differences.  What were the causes and consequences of this bloody half-century?  The questions we will be asking revolve around several themes.  The first is how, after a century of relative peace and prosperity, did Europe plunge into a horrific war in 1914 which killed over 20 million people?  The second question raised from the first is: why did this war in turn cause governments, democratic, authoritarian and totalitarian alike, to become much more involved in the day-to-day activities of their citizens in the coming decades?   From the introduction of food rationing and daylight savings time, to the attempts to re-write history through propaganda and censorship, Europeans found themselves observed and more directly led by their governments in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s than ever before.  War itself has historically accelerated governments' influence over their populations.  World War I and World War II are examples of this trend. Third,  the difficulties of the interwar decades resulted in a second major world war from 1939 to 1945, which was even bloodier than the first. We will examine why Europeans unenthusiastically entered combat less than a generation after the first World War and killed even more innocent men, women, and children.    The legacy of the destructive first half of the century remains with us to this day. Europeans are quite aware of the havoc these wars  wrought. That is partially why the European Union, a regional institution designed to ensure political and economic cooperation and composed of most European states, is so significant.

Three Historical Periods

First I will describe the First World War, its causes and consequences.  Then we will examine the inter-war years of the 1920s and 30s, often called an "armed truce" by historians.  The last part of this lecture will be equally depressing--a discussion of the indescribable violence and slaughter of World War II and the Holocaust.

World War I

 About 11:30 AM on Sunday, June 28, 1914, a young Serbian nationalist by the name of Gavrilo Princip working with a terrorist organization, fired two shots point blank Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia.  Franz Ferdinand was to inherit the Austrian imperial crown.  The assassination took place  in the capital of one of the empire's recently-acquired provinces, Sarajevo, Bosnia located in the southeast part of Europe, the location of repeated diplomatic crises in the decades before 1914.  You probably know that Bosnia has been the location of bloody wars in the 1990s also.  The assassins succeeded in their deed.    One bullet traveled through the neck of the Archduke, Franz Ferdinand, seen here on your left with his uncle, the Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Joseph.  The other bullet fired entered the stomach of Ferdinand’s wife,  Sophia.  As the chauffeured limousine sped away, the Archduke's last words to his wife were "Sophie, Sophie, do not die.  Live for our children."   At the trial of the assassins in October, 1914, one of the defendants declared that:  "Franz-Ferdinand was a man of action, and there…existed a clique, the so-called war-party, which wanted to conquer Serbia.  At its head stood the Heir apparent.  I believed that I should take vengeance on them all in taking vengeance on him."  And Princip, the young man who fired the fatal shots, exclaimed, "I am not at all sorry that I cleared an obstacle out of our path.  He was a German and an enemy of the South Slavs" What began as a terrorist killing in a remote part of southeast Europe, would in the coming months, escalate and spread into the bloodiest war Europe had ever experienced.

 Alliance System

European countries scrambled to salvage the crisis, yet ultimately became more and more enmeshed in difficulties leading to the declaration of war in early August. Why were European countries tangled up in each other’s problems?  One of the major reasons was the alliance system.  Groupings of countries banded together for mutual protection in case of war.  And various alliances created  in the 19th century and after the turn of the century had locked the great powers into obligations that resulted in a lack of freedom.

Even 40 years before the war, tensions rose in Europe.    In the French political cartoonist Hadol's comic map of Europe created in 1871 as you see here, various countries seem as though they are ready to grab territories from their neighbors.   By 1914, the Germans, Austrians and Italians (who later withdrew after the war began) were part of the Central Powers, seen here on the map in blue.     Worried Germans  gave their ally Austria what historians have dubbed a "blank check," telling the Austrians to do what they believed necessary to eliminate terrorist activity.  Thus,  emboldened, the Austrians felt free to issue an ultimatum to Serbia, requesting the Serbs give up the terrorists so they could be put up to trial in Austria..  The Austrians were convinced that the Serbian government was behind the Archduke's assassination. The Serbs rejected the Austrian ultimatum.   Why?  They dismissed the Austrian demand since they were assured of Russian support.  Russia then, like now in the recent wars in the former Yugoslavia, wanted to defend their Slavic brothers. 

 However the Russians did fear the German military machine and began mobilizing before an actual declaration of war.  By mobilizing troops before war was declared was tantamount to starting hostilities and this obviously upset and threatened the Germans. This was especially the case because France and Russia were allies.  To prevent a two-front war with Germany squeezed in the middle, the Germans  crossed into neutral Belgium on their way to France on August 4, 1914.  They used a version of the army's Schleiffen Plan.  This plan, conceived before the war,  was based on the fact that  Russia and France would be fighting on the same side and against Germany and her allies.  Thus the Schlieffen Plan  was based on the fact that should a two front war break out, with Germany in the middle, France would be the obvious power to defeat first, because  her military strength  was greater than the Russians.  But there was a major problem for the Germans. Since the French-German border was heavily fortified, the Schlieffen Plan called for invading France through the less-fortified but neutral Belgium. In other words, the Germans needed to swing  west and invade France from the north rather than the west.

 The German invasion of neutral Belgium outraged many.  The Belgian king knew the tiny country did not have a chance against the mighty Germans, but he said if needed, he would be defeated “gloriously.”  The invasion also angered the British. They now entered the war to defend the strategically located nation.  This French poster, expressing outrage at the German invasion, is typical of  the propaganda which would poison the atmosphere and make attempts at peace impossible for 4 years.  The first battle of the Marne, ended an era and determined the course of war.   The Germans quickly advanced through northern France but were stopped within 40 miles of Paris.   One historian observed that "the machine gun and the spade [for digging trenches] had changed the course of European history."  By October, 1914, 300 miles of trenches ran along a line stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss border.  On the eastern front the battles were more fluid. Here you see the German emperor, Wilhelm, in the center, with his commanders Hindenburg and Ludendorff.   Several victories in the east over two larger Russian groups, gave the Germans a temporary victory there and hero status for the generals.    But the war continued year after year, depleting all of resources and requiring all of them to mobilize the civilian population to keep going.  Just to cite one example:  The French expected to use about 13,000 shells a day--they used 120,000 shells instead.  To give you another example: in April of 1917, in preparation for a campaign against the Germans, the French fired 6 million shells on a 20 mile front.  But not only shells were expended;  the battles of the Somme, Champagne and Verdun became synonymous with mass slaughter.  Here are some more grim statistics:  In the battle of Verdun alone, nearly 700,000 men on both sides lost their lives.  The British lost 400,000 men in the battle of the Somme

 The Russians are estimated to have lost through death, capture, and injury between 6 and 8 million men. The Germans lost approximately 500,000 men for every year of the war--2 million total. This photograph, one of thousands taken, shows the  level of utter distruction, with the dead often not even being able to be buried.    The British lost its "best and its brightest" as military and private school students rushed to volunteer, as did virtually all of Europe's young men.    Here you see young Englishmen enthusiastically volunteering to serve.  In August of 1914, 5 million men were called to arms.  The total estimates of losses will never be accurately known, but they hover at 20 million.

For 4 bloody years, soldiers from virtually all the major European countries confronted each other with the latest in military technology--ranging from machine guns to tanks, to airplanes,  an infant technology, not yet always reliable to submarines.  The German novelist, Ernst Junger wrote a graphic retrospective of his experiences in his first book,  Storms of Steel.  Let me quote from his description of the conflict.  "I heard a monotonous tale of crouching all day in shell holes with no one on either flank and no trenches communicating with the rear, of unceasing attacks, of dead bodies littering the ground, of maddening thirst, of wounded and dying, and of a lot besides.  'Where you fall, there you lie.'   

Domestic Consequences of Total War

In addition to the enormous casualties, the war left no aspect of European civilization untouched. Every country had to marshal its resources.  Total war meant that huge quantities of supplies were required to feed, clothe, house, and arm the soldiers and war machine.  Total war, and that is what it was called,  meant that politicians required great sacrifices of the population at home. Here you see a French poster calling for the French to conserve wine and wine drinking, a real sacrifice for the civilian population!   Propaganda, , such as this British poster calling for recruits,  or calls for food rationing, calls for price controls, for daylight savings time to save electricity, were among the methods used by governments to husband precious resources.   Labor shortages meant that the war affected the very old and the very young, men and women everywhere. Women were enlisted to work at armaments factories as you see here. The role of women in the war forever changed women’s status thereafter.  We know that four years is a long time.  Governments needed to continue the enthusiasm for war which all belligerents expressed in the opening days.  With government censorship, war posters and patriotic songs sung by School children sang patriotic songs, governments controlled the news from the battlefields and censored negative stories., Propaganda postersall fanned nationalistic flames fanned and hatred against the enemies.  Here are  two wartime posters, one asking British men to enlist in the army and the other sarcastically portraying the German emperor as a coward

 The End of the Conflict

 After four years of bloodletting, the Russians pulled out of the war and signed a separate peace with the Germans several months after the Russian Revolution that you have learned about in the previous lecture. The same year the Russian Revolution occurred the United States entered the war in 1917.  The US was able to supply fresh troops to help the allied effort.  Finally, in the fall of 1918, war-weary Germany and her allies were forced to sue for peace.  Here you see jubilant crowds deliriously happy about the end of war.  Three empires collapsed in defeat: the German, Austrian, and Russian.  On November 9 the  German emperor abdicated and a republic was declared.  When the Austro-Hungarian regime asked for an armistice, the  Czechs, Poles, and south Slavs declared their independence in the controlled areas where they were the ethnic majority.  In Russia, as you know, the pressures of war produced a Communist revolution and a radical Soviet regime.  Thus, for the losing states of Germany, Austria-Hungary,  the war proved fatal for the survival of their states.   Here you see how the empires of central and eastern Europe changed as a result of the conflict. We will be coming to this point again.  Even winning states, such as Italy, who, in 1915, switched alliances and sided with the allies, faced revolutionary change by the early 1920s when the fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, whom you see here, overthrew the state.  But it seems that relatively homogeneous societies in industrially advanced states (Britain and France) were able to withstand the battering blows of war better than the more autocratic, less industrialized or more ethnically diverse states, such as Russia, Germany or Austria.  The Germans were forced to sign a humiliating peace, called the Treaty of Versailles. and named for the palace the treaty was signed.  The ceremony took place  in the hall of Mirrors, in the spectacular Palace of Versailles, seen here,  outside of  Paris.

The Germans were accused of starting the war.  Their army was reduced to a limit of 100,000.  The treaty required that Germany give back Alsace-Lorraine, a resource-rich, industrialized part of north-east France, which the Germans seized from France during the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War.  The postwar changes are seen in this map in various colors.   Germany lost parts of her eastern territories to the newly-created state of Poland. She lost her overseas colonies. In addition, the allies forced Germany to pay war damages of $33 billion dollars.   The interest payments stemming from these fines and later loans continue to be paid to this day!  The Treaty of Versailles, which the Germans signed under pressure, was seen as unduly harsh, creating lasting resentments among all segments of the German population.  The treaty has been blamed for the rise of radical right-wing movements in that country during the 1920s and 30s.

A generation of shell-shocked young men of 18, 19, or 20 years old, took away a myriad of lifetime memories from their combat service.  Some became profoundly disillusioned with their elders who had sent them off to be slaughtered and wounded by the millions. Here you see men whose arms and legs had been amputated during the war doing exercises for physical rehabilitation in a Berlin hospital.   But many were not only disabled, but were profoundly disillusioned with their leaders.  After the war many rejected the political ideologies that leaders had used as the clarion call to arms in 1914.   Benito Mussolini, the future fascist leader of Italy whom you see here on your left,  remembered that: "when I returned from the war--just like so many others--I hated politics and politicians, who, in my opinion, had betrayed the hopes of soldiers, reducing Italy to a shameful peace and to a systematic humiliation."   Others, however,  remembered with pride the camaraderie which developed in the trenches and in the barracks.   Junger was one of those who saw the war as a positive experience.  As he recalled, "I was filled with pride at commanding this handful of men that might very likely be pounded into the earth but could not be conquered.  It is to such moments that the human spirit triumphs over the mightiest demonstrations of material force.  The fragile body, steeled by the will, stands up to the most terrific punishment." Let us now review the significance of the first World War.

REVIEW:

1. World War I was the bloodiest conflict in European history

2. Three empires collapsed as a result of the war: Germany, Austria and Russia.

3. The Russian Revolution was partly caused by dissatisfaction over the Czarist's was efforts.

Let us now turn to the twenty years following the great conflict.

 A cultural critic exclaimed that European conditions in the 1920s and 1930s "…differed as much from the world of our grandparents as that [world] differed from their ancestors 6,000 years ago.  We are living, he wrote, in the midst of the greatest social revolution that history has ever known.  There is an Old World that is passing away and a New World that is being born."  What was this New World which writers, artists, and intellectuals both admired and feared?  For one thing, the map of Europe had profoundly changed with the collapse of empires and the rise of nationalistic states. Secondly, Europeans reacted with both fear and admiration to the Communist Revolution in Russia.  Some joined communist parties in their own countries while others joined parties and organizations to fight what was perceived to be the communist menace.  The war had also changed the economic landscape, creating uncertainty in the value of currencies, in trading and in industrial production.  The war also gave women new political power in the vote.  Fashions of the 1920s and 1930s reflected what was called “the new women.”  One of the most profound consequences of the war was the great depression of 1929, affecting virtually the entire world.

 Thus the inter-war years were really just that, a period of  twenty years between conflicts.  Many unresolved issues led to the next, the Second World War.  New governments were formed in those states which had been defeated or underwent revolution (Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, now the Soviet Union).  Victor countries, such as France and England, goaded the Germans to pay the war damages so they themselves, could get back on their feet economically. The new nations of Eastern Europe, such as  Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, all struggled to establish themselves as viable states.  But it seemed that in the 1920s, democracy had triumphed.  New democratic states were established in Eastern and central Europe, including Germany.  Yet these very same countries experienced unsettled economic problems. Germany suffered especially since it had been defeated in war.  By 1923, she experienced  hyperinflation rate of 11% per day. The German mark  had been valued at 4.2 marks to one US dollar in 1914 plummeted to over 4 trillion marks to one US dollar in 1923, that's right trillion marks!  Here is an example of worthless German money from the early 1920s.  The bill says 20 million marks but it was not even worth the paper it was printed on!   People were often required to bring wheelbarrows to haul their worthless money because its value was virtually zero.  Unsettling conditions led to the rise of extremist, anti-democratic political parties in Europe, such as the Communists  and the fascists.

The radical left communists wanted to overthrow liberal states through protest demonstrations and strikes, along with setting up workers' councils.  They believed in the power of the working classes to effect change.  They also wanted to nationalize what traditionally belonged to private individuals, such as factories, banks, and land. Here is a German Communist party poster from 1924.  It proclaims : "Women, smash the chains of capitalism, free yourselves."

The fascists, on the far right, hated the communists, but they, too, wanted to overthrow the liberal states. It was at the height of the hyperinflation of 1923 that Hitler, launched his unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government, which he blamed for the humiliating peace treaty after the war.  This attempted coup is  known as the Beer Hall putsch.   Arrested and jailed, he spent a short time in prison, seen here, writing his memoirs, known as Mein Kampf, or "My Struggle."  Mussolini in Italy, believing the country entitled to more spoils of war, was the one country in the early 1920s which introduced a new form of government called fascism in an otherwise democratic Europe.

Fascism

What is fascism?  When asked to define fascism, the Italian leader, Benito Mussolini proclaimed, "I am Fascism."  The word derives from the word, "bundle," in politics, to denote a close knit group.  The band of ex-mobilized soldiers, a very tiny group initially, entered the spotlight when they helped landowners and factory owners to break up strikes and demonstrations by workers and peasants. They hated the communists and socialist left wing parties,  They were extremely nationalistic, believing the highest power to be  the state. Fascists were anti-liberal and anti-democratic, believing in the power of a strong leader.  By the end of 1922, the numbers of fascists in Italy had grown to 300,000, ten times its number in 1920. Unable to form a national government, fascists took matters into their own hands by taking over local governments throughout Italy.  After Mussolini marched on Rome he was asked to form a government. Within two years, Italy went from a parliamentary regime to a one-party dictatorship.  Controls were imposed on the press and all political parties except the fascists were outlawed.  Even though this photograph looks as though it is a democratic parliament, it is actually a parliament consisting of only one party, the Italian fascists.  This trend towards one-party rule swamped democratic countries by the late 1930s.

Let us take a moment to briefly look at the rise of authoritarian states during the inter-war years.  We tend to use the terms right and far right, left and far left.  As you may recall, these terms were first used to describe politics during the French Revolution.  Like the socialist and communist left, fascism was a mass movement.  Fascists marched in identically colored shirts, such as the black shirts of Italy or  the brown shirts of  the German Nazis, seen here marching with their swastika flags in formation.  Fascists wanted to sweep away the politics and economics of pre-1914 Europe, and replace them with  new forms of  government and economic planning.  By violently cracking down on political opponents, Mussolini was able to become the ruler of a one-party state.  His example influenced an even more sinister opportunist and racist leader who emerged in the wake of the 1929 depression in Germany, Adolf Hitler.

Depression

Let us now turn to examine the depression.  Although there was a brief period of peace and prosperity which lasted from the middle 1920s to 1929, the Wall Street stock market crash of October, 1929 plunged Europe, America, and the world into economic despair.

 What does economic depression mean?  It is usually defined as a prolonged slowdown in buying and selling agricultural and industrial products.  The inventories increase even though prices for these products fall.  Companies fire their workers or go out of business.  Banks cannot repay those who deposited money in their banks.  Depressions had occurred in Europe before. But the 1929 depression lasted much longer than previous ones.  In fact, 1932 was the worst year: 25% of all Englishmen were unemployed; Here you see free food served to unemployed Londoners.   In parts of Germany,  40% had no work.   Industrial production fell between 35 and 45% between 1929 and 1932.  Here Parisian women try to keep up spirits through song. Unfortunately the song they are singing is titled “All Paris is Out of Work.  19th century liberal values, such as the government staying out of economic regulation, all were questioned by the 1930s.   In the US, the 1930s brought Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.  In Europe, many critics offered new ideas so that the economic downturn could be reversed.  Some claimed that by balancing the budget and spending less, governments would remain solvent. Others saw the depression as a source of overproduction of goods the poor, in particular, could not buy.  Socialists and communists called for either modifying or eliminating the capitalist system entirely. Others sought a "middle way" between the liberal hands-off approach and deflation and the socialist interventionist approach. The most famous "middle way" thinker was the British economist John Maynard Keynes, whose photograph you see here.   In 1936, he published General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, Keynes believed the major problem of the depression was unemployment. By stimulating the economy through public works and other forms of  government intervention, he hoped the economy would improve.  His ideas remained popular in Europe and the US through the 1980s and beyond.

The political effects of the depression strained liberal and democratic governments, though both Britain and France stumbled along with a number of makeshift policies.  But in many European countries, the shift towards authoritarian rule became the norm.  For example, after a bloody civil war lasting three years, Francisco Franco an army general, became a autocratic dictator in Spain, whom you see here. In Portugal, the leader Antonio Salazar took over.  In Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania, authoritarian rulers created either one-party or fascist states.  One fascist slogan exclaimed:  "Make way for the new man, the fascist man, the man of the 20th century."  In Germany, the National Socialist Party, known as the Nazis  won almost 44% of the popular vote in the last free election in March, 1933.   In January of that year, Hitler was asked to become chancellor. The Nazis very effectively used propaganda to suggest that fascism was the wave of the future.  This recruiting poster suggests that the brown shirts, or storm troopers, as they were known, had enthusiasm and dynamism which would lead Germany into a glorious future.

Spread of Totalitarian Movements

 Thus the appeal of authoritarian and totalitarian movements on the far right and far left attempted to make sense of what was perceived to be a senseless age in the wake of World War I.  Causes included the rise of nationalism and imperialism in the 19th century with their appeals to racial and cultural superiority.  They included the incredible mechanized violence of trench warfare between 1914 and 1918. They included the economic dislocations in the war's aftermath, changed the political and social landscape in the 1920s and 1930s.  Under communism and fascism, every aspect of one's life, private and public, would be regulated.  Ideas were not simply censored by the press or the government controlled radio, but ideas would be manufactured to suit the needs of the likes Lenin or Stalin or Hitler. Here, for example,  is a painting, glorifiying the deeds of the communists under Lenin’s leadership. Women were encouraged to bear many children for the good of the state,and children were taught to worship their government leaders; this German poster proclaims:"The German Student Fights for the Fûhrer and the People,"  The communists blamed many of the world's problems on capitalism and conflicts between rich and poor.  The fascists, on the other hand,  denied that classes were in conflict  They  emphasized the power of the state bringing all classes together in harmony. To nationalists, fascism offered glory; to the jobless, jobs and security. Group solidarity also psychologically appealed to many during the uncertain times of the postwar years. 

Let us now review what we have learned about these turbulent two decades.

Review:

1. Role of Totalitarianism and Authoritarianism in 1930s

2. Global Depression.

3. Communists wanted to nationalize; Fascists glorified the nation-state. Both controlled many aspects of citizens lives.

We discussed some of the political and economic changes, now let us look at changes in diplomacy and international relations.

In addition to the swing from democracy to authoritarian rule by the 1930s, we must note another development leading to World War II: the peace treaties signed in 1919.  were still in effect ten years later.  In fact, Germany entered the League of Nations and   many countries signed a treaty in the late 1920s condemning war as a solution to solving problems. But twenty years later, in 1939; these treaties had been swept into the dustbin of history.  What happened?  Two major factors caused the unraveling of the peace treaties:  increasing German and Italian militancy,  and the uncertain responses of the allies to fascist and Nazi demands.

In many speeches before and after Hitler took office as chancellor, he brutally condemned the Versailles Peace settlement--calling it shameful and a "dictated peace."  In 1935, after two years in power, Hitler announced that Germany would create an air force, the Luftwaffe.  This violated  treaty obligations. Germany also believed that she had been unfairly discriminated by not being allowed to have a military force as large as the countries who had won World War I and took steps to increase its army.  The government took steps to revise the Versailles treaty year-by-year, slowly but surely wearing down the opposition of the English, French and even Italy, otherwise a friend of the Nazis.

For example, in 1936, Hitler sent a division of 10,000 men into Rhineland, located in western Germany.  It had declared a demilitarized zone after World War I.  Here you see a French soldier in this demilitarized area of Germany.    In 1936, the allies allowed the Germans to let their troops enter what had been part of Germany before 1918. Yet, the Versailles treaty had firmly declared that any violation of the Treaty would be a hostile act.  The remilitarization of the Rhineland, a seemingly obscure crises in 1936, raises a number of questions which historians have debated ever since.  One question is:  Can allied forces maintain a treaty system over long periods of time? Second, are they willing to use force if need be, to maintain the treaty obligations?  History has not satisfactorily answered the question of how one confronts aggression on the part of a country, in this case, Germany during the 1930s?    In a moment, I will be outlining the other diplomatic confrontations Hitler made in places like Austria, Czechoslovakia and finally Poland, in which the allies were confused and uncertain in their response.  In retrospect, we know that Hitler was clearly an opportunist.  Should the allies have fought back and risked war earlier than when it actually broke out?    Hitler and Germany's initial testing of allied resolve in the Rhineland crisis unfortunately does not give us a definitive answer.

Here is a list of key diplomatic and military events beginning with the re-entry of German soldiers into the Rhineland to the start of World War II in September, 1939.   Europe faced repeated diplomatic incidents, crises, and near outbreaks of  war. The reasons for these crises were that the two fascist countries, Italy and Germany, while occasionally differing in foreign policy aims, pursued common dynamic goals--to expand their influence and their territory.  Mussolini's invasion of the African kingdom of Ethiopia in 1936, for example,  outraged the world. The League of Nations imposed sanctions on Italy.  But Germany backed the Italian conquest, leading to an alliance, known as the Rome-Berlin Axis, beginning in 1936.  The consequences of this new Italian-German configuration continued with the two countries helping their fellow nationalist, the Spanish general, Francisco Franco, during the Civil War.

 Between late 1936 and the spring of 1937, the Italians sent 100,000 troops to Spain while the Germans tested their growing air force, the Luftwaffe.  6,000 men manned the infamous Condor Legion, which rained down bombs on Spanish cities and civilian targets. Here you see the the damage done to civilian targets—a bombed streetcar in the Spanish city of Barcelona.   Because of German and Italian military help, Franco's could proclaim victory over the Spanish republican forces, who had some support from  the Russians and sympathetic leftists.  The Spanish Civil War caught the imagination of the political right and the political left because both groups were fighting each other.  In its destruction, the war was a prelude to World War II.  The Spanish were cursed with incredible brutality--about 13% of the clergy were murdered .   Returning soldiers from the colonies, the Spanish Legionnaires,  were known for their strange slogan "Long Live Death." The famous Spanish painter, Pablo Picasso, whom you see here, was living in France.  He painted a magisterial work dedicated to those who died in the conflict, Guernica--named after the town where Germans dropped bombs This painting has served ever since as a symbol of  the 20th century’s inhumanity.

The Italians and Germans supported each other again in 1938 when, after Hitler's troops occupied Austria, Mussolini assured Hitler that he did not object to the invasion.  A grateful Hitler exclaimed to his representative in Rome that "Please tell Mussolini I will never forget him for this…Never, never, never, whatever happens.  As soon as the Austrian affair is settled, I shall be ready to go with him, through thick and thin, no matter what happens." In fact, Hitler, now the senior partner in the fascist alliance, would support Mussolini throughout the war and even when the tide turned against both in 1943.  The Austrians appeared grateful for union with Germany as well.  Two images demonstrate this gratitude. Here Happy Austrians greet Hitler with a sign, "Victory to the Chief" upon his arrival in Vienna and here is a ballot for Hitler's plebiscite asking the Austrians whether they approved union with Germany.  In Germany the approval rate was 99.08%. In Austria, it was even higher, 99.75%.

After the Nazis took over Austria, other east European countries were vulnerable, especially Czechoslovakia.  Its western mountainous area was predominantly ethnic German and the Nazis encouraged the Germans living in the Sudentenland, as the German area was called, to "Demand so much that we can never be satisfied."  The French and English response to Hitler's demands over the Czech Sudentenland has been known ever since as the policy of appeasement.   In the late 1930s, the British felt, under their Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, that by "removing the danger spots one by one," and bowing to German demands, war would be averted.  The French accepted this notion.  Before World War II, the verb "to appease" simply meant "to lessen conflict." It had a positive spin.  After the horrors of World War II, it turned into a negative term.  What is very interesting when looking at more recent history is that those political leaders who came of age in the late 1930s, reacted during the 1950s and 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s in the opposite way--to stand firmly against crises. A whole generation of western leaders, from Britain's Anthony Eden to Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush, the current president’s father,  remembered the appeasement policies before World War II (often summarized as "peace at any price") as the most important negative lesson of that era..

But by the end of September, 1938, the Czech crisis escalated after rioting broke out in the Sudentenland. British Prime Minister Chamberlain wanted to make sure that war did not break out.  Though fearful of flying, he flew to Germany three times to discuss the situation with Hitler. Here you seem him arriving by plane from Germany., declaring falsely that he achieved “peace in our time.”   By the end of the month, after frantic negotiations and hostilities were about to break out because Hitler's refused to compromise, the British, French, Italians and Germans forced the Czechs to surrender the Sudentenland and comply with the four power Munich Agreement.  Thus in the short run, war was averted.   In the long run, the Munich agreement was a failure, because war broke out one year later.  Two important countries were not even represented at the Munich conference: the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia! 

A few short months after the Munich agreement, the Germans marched into Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia.    That is when the western allies realized the game was up.  Hitler no longer appeared to be the rational statesman, demanding what seemed legitimately to be his and the Germans.  It was increasingly obvious that he wanted "Lebensraum," or living space for a greater Germany and would get it only by annexing more land.  This expansionist German policy also worried the Russians who, to the total shock of the world, signed a treaty with Germany just days before the outbreak of World War II, called the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Here you see the Germans and the Soviets signing the treaty in August, 1939

But the Soviet Union was vulnerable, especially after the turmoil of the 1930s in the USSR which included purges of the military, throwing peasant farmers off their land, and  the killing or imprisoning of millions.  That is partly why it made sense for Stalin, despite his hatred for fascism, to make an agreement with the Nazis and prevent a German invasion.   

War broke out a little over one week later, the ink barely dry, in September, 1939.    By the time Hitler declared war on Poland on September 1, the Germans had, in the space of less than five years, totally revised the Versailles Treaty of World War I. Let us recap that point:

Dynamic foreign policies of nazis and fascists in 1930s led to diplomatic crises.

And let us now look at a map which shows these  changes.  As you will recall, within a few short years, less than five in all, Hitler upset the status quo by reclaiming the Rhineland, in 1936, invading and occupying Austria and the Sudenten area of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and the remainder of Czechoslovakia in 1939.

World War II

Most Europeans, including Germans were not enthusiastic to fight another war so soon after the bloodbath of 1914-1918, but fight they did.  Germans launched what was called the "Blitzkrieg," or lightening warfare in September, 1939 in order to avoid the problems of trench warfare.  Here you see one of the important pieces of lightening war—German bombers supporting ground troops and scaring the living daylights out of  Polish citizens. The planes had loud horns attached.  Since the Germans had made a deal with the Soviet Union, when the Germans invaded Poland, the Soviet Union did the same—and actually occupied more Polish territory than the Germans.

From the beginning of the Blitzkrieg in 1939, until the German invasion of the USSR in June, 1941, two years later, it seemed as though the Nazis were invincible.  After a lull in the fighting during the winter of 1939-40, the Germans resumed their relentless attack, this time in the west, conquering Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and finally France, with its fall in June 1940.  Recalling the bloodbath of World War I, the French quickly signed an armistice with the Nazis to avoid more slaughter. Conservative and liberal France was divided, but no Frenchman wanted to relive the disasters of the first war.  Hitler gleefully took revenge for Versailles when the French surrendered.  That swift surrender left Britain utterly alone to face the Nazis.

And a few months later, the Germans attacked Britain which you see here.  While London was bombed repeatedly during the autumn of 1940, as were other English cities. The British held out—their Prime Minister Winston Churchill calling the time, England’s “finest hour.” Britain did not surrender to the Germans as so many countries had before.   But Hitler decided to abandon conquering England and turned his sights to his real desire, the Soviet Union.  As you recall, he had made an agreement with the Russians, the Nazi Soviet Pact.  He had no intention of honoring the agreement.  Hitler thought the Germans were far superior to the Russians and decided that by invading their country, Russia would fall like a house of cards and be part of a greater German empire for his master race.

  The Holocaust

Why did Hitler want to invade Russia and expand his empire?  The question brings us to a very important issue concerning the Nazi state and its ideas. We will now discuss a horrific set of events, collectively known as the Holocaust.  The Nazis believed in racial inequality.   That is, they believed that there were superior and inferior races and that the Germans belonged to the most superior of all races, which they called the Aryan race. At the bottom of the racial ladder were the Jews. Not far above them in this twisted racial ladder were the Russians. This anti-Jewish propaganda poster implies that the Jew is preying on the world and conspiring with communists to take over the world, though the Jewish population in Germany was less than 1%.    He believed that the Germans and so-called Nordic, or Scandinavians were superior and the Slavs, that is, those living in the Soviet Union, inferior. Here you see Germans taking Russians as prisoners. Let us now examine how Hitler and the Nazi’s ideas of racism and anti-Semitism, or prejudice against the Jewish people first took hold in Germany and drove many of their domestic policies from 1933 onwards.  Racism also drove  their foreign policies after 1939 to their military defeat in 1945.

How did the Nazis convert their terrible ideas of racism into policy?  Almost immediately after Hitler took power in 1933, the Nazis ordered a boycott against businesses owned by Jews.  Jews were immediately fired from government positions.  Two years later, in 1935, the Germans passed the Nuremberg Laws, which defined who was a German citizen. Jews were defined as those having 3 grandparents who were Jewish and denied citizenship.  In 1938, a massive attack on Jewish synagogues, shops, and people was orchestrated after a German diplomat was shot to death by a Jewish young man upset with German policies.  After 1938, it was very difficult for Jews to leave Germany. 

After the outbreak of  the Second World War, the Germans implemented policies that culminated in a series of events known as the Holocaust.  When the Nazis invaded Poland, they put Jews into ghettos, or special segregated quarters. Here you see Jews of the Polish capital city of Warsaw being herded into a ghetto. At the time of the invasion of the USSR, the Nazis implemented the so-called “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” which called for the Jews’  total destruction and extermination.  Here you see  aJew about to be murdered point blank.  Concentration and extermination camps were built, mainly in Poland, to collect Jews from various parts of conquered Europe and the Soviet Union and kill them in gas chambers and their remains burned in ovens, seen here. By 1945, the end of World War II, the Germans had annihilated approximately 6 million Jews and killed hundreds of thousands other groups of people deemed “undesirable,” such as the gypsies, Russians, Poles, religious dissidents, and other unfortunate people caught in the horrible web of Nazi policies.

Because the Germans had to commit many resources to setting up concentration and extermination camps in eastern Europe, it meant that many resources which they would have committed to the war effort were used elsewhere.

And even though the Germans captured millions of  prisoners and forced them into slave labor so that war could continue, there were constant labor shortages in Germany. Only one million out of 5 million Russians prisoners survived the war., there were constant labor shortages in Germany.  The Germans brutalized hundreds of thousands of prisoners they captured from all over Europe.  Today, the German government is paying compensation for slave labor policies of World War II.

  Nazi Occupation Policies

The Nazi racial policies also dictated their attitudes and their treatment of people in the countries they occupied. The Danes and Norwegians were treated the best because the Germans believed them to be fellow members of the Nordic races.  The Poles and Russians were treated very badly, scorned as sub-human by the Germans. It was under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler, that the paramilitary organization, the SS, security units, set up a network of concentration and extermination camps throughout Europe, but mainly in Poland.    Here are two horrific images, one showing Germans forced to view victims of Nazi slaughter . The other image shows prisoners in a German camp, Dachau, which was the first concentration camp to be built in Germany. 

Turning Point of World War II

By 1942,  the Germans were overextended militarily in large part because they pursued the racial policy of annihilation against millions.  Soon, trains transporting prisoners from all over Europe diverted military transportation.  Construction of camps and the manufacture of camp equipment diverted resources from the battlefields.

The Nazis had not intended World War II to be long and drawn out like the first World War.  By striking quickly through their lightening warfare tactics, the Germans thought that they would seize conquered countries' raw materials and supplies.  That way, the Germans would not have to ration food or raw materials.  But two events in late 1941 changed these plans—the Russian winter and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  The Germans, after advancing steadily during the summer of that year into Russia, got bogged down because of an early and terribly cold winter. They had to commit more resources into the eastern front effort.  Secondly, the US entered the war after the Japanese bombed the military installation in Hawaii, Pearl Harbor and Hitler declared war on the United States in support of Japan, Germany’s ally.   By this time, the German army had thousands of men in Russia, in North Africa, and in Western Europe.

Once  in the war and together with the British, the US began strategic bombing of German cities.  These bombing raids began in 1942 and lasted until the end of the war Here you can see the results of this bombing  of Hitler’s 3rd Reich.

The turning point in the war came in 1943 when the supposed "sub-human" Russians defeated the Germans at Stalingrad, seen here in these two images of fierce fighting, sometimes house-to-house and hand-to-hand.    After the Soviets captured an entire German division and forced the commanding general to surrender, the Germans were no longer regarded as invincible.  The Russians then began their long assault against the Nazis by moving westward.

Likewise, the Americans, together with the British and Canadians and French exiles planned for an invasion into France.   On June 6, 1944, D-Day,  the world largest amphibious attack in the history of the world began on the Normandy coast of France.  4,000 ships carried over 150,000 troops along 60 miles of coastline, seen here.

During the course of the war, allied leaders, Winston Churchill of England, Franklin Roosevelt of the United States, and Joseph Stalin of the USSR met periodically to map out war strategy and postwar plans for Europe.  Sharp disagreements over both war strategy and the future of Europe contributed to later misunderstandings, leading to the Cold War after 1945. Yet at the time, the leaders were preoccupied with defeating Hitler and not worrying about a postwar world.   The Russians worried that they were bearing the brunt of the war.  The Germans, after all, mounted their fiercest attacks on the Soviet Union.  The Russians wanted the British and Americans to open fronts against the Germans  in Western or Southern Europe.  The first of many major conferences was  held in Casablanca, Morocco in early 1943, at the time of the Stalingrad battle. At this conference leaders called for Germany's unconditional surrender.   A critical conference was held in early 1945 in Yalta, a seaside resort on Russia's Black Sea. Here you see the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, the US President Franklin Roosevelt, and the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin at Yalta.   At this conference, when Russian troops were less than 50 miles from Berlin, the allies agreed to divide Germany into 4 military zones of occupation.

The End of the War, 1945

Two months later, in April, 1945, American and Russian troops jubilantly meet at the Elbe River. A few weeks later, Hitler committed suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin as bombs rained on the German capital. The 3rd Reich, which Hitler claimed would last 1000 years, was gone in twelve. Not only Hitler, but many of his loyal supporters and government officials also committed suicide rather than surrender.  Here is a photograph of the Mayor of the east German city of Leipzig, who, along with his wife and daughter, committed suicide using poison.

The ragtag remnants of the German army surrendered on May 8, 1945.  Here is one among several generals signing the unconditional surrender document.

This is what Germany looked like after the war.  The total numbers killed worldwide, both soldiers and civilians, topped 50 million.  The Soviet Union suffered the highest casualty rate, about 7 million civilians and 11 million soldiers.  All told, approximately 18 million European civilians died from bombing, shelling, disease, malnutrition, overwork, and genocide between 1939 and 1945.  Virtually every major city in Germany was bombed.  Dresden lost 135,000 inhabitants during the bombing raids in February 1945.  Cities in Poland, Russia, France, and other parts of Europe, all suffered tremendous losses.  Towns were reduced to little more than rubble.  Bombs fell in Asia, too. Especially devastating was the dropping of the atomic bomb by the United States against Japan in the summer of 1945.  Millions were displaced and criss-crossed through Europe in search of a place to live, since so many towns were uninhabitable.

Here is a map of Europe after the War.  In addition to having to surrender, the German state ceased to exist.  From 1945 to 1949, there was no Germany, but simply four territories occupied by the countries that had defeated the Nazis--the British, the Russians, the Americans, and the French.  Likewise the capital of Berlin, seen here,  was also occupied. While this sign calls for a free and united city,  Berlin would not be united until 1990. In addition to dividing Germany into 4 zones, the allies also decided to put high Nazi officials on trial for their crimes against humanity.  Here is a picture of these men at the trial proceedings in Nuremberg, Germany. The world learned the depths to which the Nazi regime stooped to implement its horrific racial policies.  While war trials had taken place before, the Nuremberg trials symbolized the attempt to come to grips with what had happened. War crimes trials would be held and continue to be held to this day; the latest over genocidal behavior  in Rwanda, Africa,  Bosnia, ironically the place where World War I began.

What Have We Learned?

Let's step back a minute and review what we have described thus far.  We discussed the reasons for the outbreak of World War I.  Through a system of alliances and growing nationalism and militarism, several European countries decided that waging war was better than waging peace.  After four bloody years, the victors and vanquished both had lost millions of soldiers and civilians and had disrupted the European continent's growing prosperity.  The interwar years between 1919 and 1939, saw each country trying to repair itself economically and politically.  Three empires, the Russian, the German, and the Austrian,  had vanished in the wake of military defeat.  New countries were established in east Europe.  For a time, it seemed as though democratic values predominated.  But the world-wide depression of 1929 after the Wall Street crash diminished the hopes for world stability.  New types of governments, believing in the total control of their subject populations, both communist and fascist, dominated the European horizon during the 1930s.  Diplomatic crisis after diplomatic crisis ensured that war was near.  Hitler's fanatical quest for a master race and living space to house them also meant that war was near.  Between 1939 and 1945, less then a generation after the Austrian archduke's assassination in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, Europeans killed each other in record numbers, causing the bloodiest civil war in their entire history.  If one were to survey the European landscape in the summer of 1945, one would be hard-pressed to believe that Europe could ever recover.  Yet, within a few years, the continent would be on the road to recovery and renewal, but sobered by what had happened.  Like a recovering drug addict or reformed convict, Europeans vowed never to allow a civil war to take place on their soil.  In your next and last episode of  this course, you will be hearing about how the Europeans went about working towards peace and prosperity. 

While I have been painting a rather dismal portrait of Europe and Europeans in the first half of the 20th century, there were some positive developments nonetheless.  The next few illustrations  are such examples of  progress in transportation, such as this lavish salon in a British dirigible,  or this French ocean liner, the Normandie, on her maiden voyage in 1935  Or this great photograph of the  BMW 328, which has been called the first modern sports car, and was manufactured between 1936-40.  The interwar years also witnessed the growth of popular culture, reaching the masses and not just select upper and middle classes.  The growth of vaudeville, movies, both silent and talking, the widening use of radio all gave a sense that modern life was affecting millions in positive ways.  That is why the horrors of two world wars and the unbelievable destruction and wanton cruelty of the Holocaust appears even more senseless to us.    But what we have learned is that while humankind can be incredibly inventive and progressive, humankind can also be incredibly cruel, heartless, and uncivilized--at the same time.  Writers, philosophers, and intellectuals all pondered the heights to which humanity had climbed but also the depths to which humanity fell in these decades. 

One can certainly say that since 1945, Europe has not had the confidence, the continent had in 1914.  Its people realized how fragile and thin the veneer or surface of civilization can really be.  It is a sobering lesson we all must remember. Thanks for joining me in this discussion of World War I, the Interwar Years, the Rise of Totalitarianism & World War II.  For George Mason University, I'm Marion Deshmukh.