[Music] Heat.
September. Nomber the 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 the march,
but back into their homeland as a
defeated army.
In November 1918, after 4 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.
But already a dangerous myth was taking root.
root.
The German generals and troops claimed
that they hadn't been defeated in
battle, but betrayed by their own
Even so, at 11:00 in the morning on
November the 11th, 1918, the 11th hour
of the 11th day of the 11th month, World
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
At the Treaty of Versailles, they agreed
that from now on, disputes between
countries would be resolved not by
The peoples of Europe were set free and
Germany's ally, the Austrohungarian
Empire, was dismembered. Out of it, new
nations were created. Austria, Poland,
Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia,
Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Germany
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
The wartorrn German people also had one
final indignity inflicted on them. They
were forced to pay a massive 6.6 billion
pounds in reparations to France and
Britain, something they could ill afford.
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 VHimar
Republic, was soon struck by a series of
hammer bones. [Music]
[Music]
Street battles erupted between extreme
right-wing nationalists and communists
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 rabbel rousing right-wing politicians.
politicians. [Music]
[Music] Among
Among
them, 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. [Music]
[Music]
In October 1923, Hitler and his henchmen
attempted an armed coup against the
VHimar government. It failed and he was
in prison. He wrote a book, Mine Camp,
My Struggle, in which he blamed
Germany's ills on the Jews and demanded
that it rebuild its strength and seek
On his release, he set about building
the Nazis into a proper disciplined
political party.
From now on, he would use the democratic
But for the next 5 years, Vhimar Germany
prospered. Support for extremist parties
left and right dwindled.
Then suddenly Hitler's opportunity arrived.
In October 1929, the US stock market crashed.
crashed.
Billions of dollars were lost and an
economic depression swept across the world.
world.
Unemployment in Germany soared to over 6
million. Only extremist politicians
Politicians like Hitler. By 1931, his
Nazis were a true mass movement.
and they had their own brownshirted
thugs, the SA storm troops, who numbered
almost 3 million.
In the 1932 elections, the Nazis became
the largest party in Germany's
But Hitler refused to join a coalition,
leaving Parliament paralyzed. to break
the armpass. President Hindenburg made
him chancellor in January 1933 head of
[Music]
Within a month, the Reichd 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 absolute leader, the furer of Germany.
Germany. [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
[Music]
At first, there was little sign of what
was to come.
For the next 3 years, the Furer
concentrated on rebuilding Germany's economy.
economy.
He spent millions on public works,
including the 5,000mi autob barn system
But in secret, Hitler was also spending
Under the Versailles treaty, the German
army had been limited to a 100,000 men.
The country was forbidden to have an air
force, tanks, or submarines. [Music]
[Music]
This small army was trebled in size.
Then in 1935, Hitler came out into the
open. He unveiled a brand new air force,
the Luftvaf. It had 2 and a half
thousand planes, far more than Britain
Unemployment plunged and the Nazis
Now emboldened, Nefura made his first
expansionist move. In 1935, he
reoccupied the Sland district on the
French border after it voted to return
A year later he sent German troops into
the Rhineland part of Germany which had
At the time many felt that Hitler was
only claiming back what was rightfully
Germany's. Neither Britain nor France objected.
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
Of course, there were signs. The 1935
Nuremberg laws forbad Jews to marry true
Aryan Germans and deprived them of their citizenship.
citizenship. [Music]
[Music]
But when the first threats came to world
peace, they didn't come from Hitler at all,
all,
[Music]
Japan at the start of the 20th century
was already a military park.
It had defeated Russia in a war in 1905
and it had fought alongside the allies
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.
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, and they
Manuria 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, Indo-China 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. [Music]
[Music]
It undoubtedly had the strength to take
on Japan, but since the end of World War
Throughout the 1920s, a nation
concentrated on exploiting its vast resources.
resources.
There 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.
pleasure. [Music]
[Music]
With distractions like these, Japan's
growing pains in the Pacific seemed very
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
As the economic devastation spread, a
quarter of the population lost their
jobs. Tens of thousands were made
homeless, living in shanty towns.
Whereas before it had been distracted by
pleasure, now America was distracted by
pain. It was time for Japan to make her move.
In 1931, without even informing their
own elected government, the Japanese
forces in Manuria seized the capital
Mukde and then overran the rest of the territory.
territory. [Music]
[Music]
A puppet state, Manchu Ko, was
proclaimed under a puppet ruler. Henry
Pui, the last emperor of China, who 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.
condemned.
But her response was blunt. Japan, however,
however,
find it impossible to accept the report
adopted by the assembly.
The Japanese then just walked out and
the league suddenly realized there was
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 pickings. China was in a
state of chaos. The government of
General Isimo Chang Kaishek was locked
in conflict with the Chinese Communist
[Music]
In 1936, as a precursor to invasion, the
Japanese signed a pact with Hitler. The
aim was to guard against any attack by
Then in July 1937, the Japanese provoked
an incident with Chinese troops and invaded.
At first, the Chinese were taken by surprise,
but they soon fought back fiercely. The
communists even joining the Quintang in
The Japanese responded with amphibious
landings. By the end of 1937, they had
overrun much of northern China and the coast.
coast. [Music]
[Music]
The Japanese fought this war with
exceptional brutality, bombing cities indiscriminately.
indiscriminately.
Westerners living in the commercial
center, the port of Shanghai, were now
evacuated. The city was then besieged
for 3 months. [Music]
It suffered widespread damage. The
Japanese forces showing no pity or
But it was after the capture of Nank
King, then the Chinese capital on
December the 17th, 1937, that the
Japanese forces really ran along. Over
300,000 civilians are estimated to have
been massacred during a 6-w week orgy of
The Japanese even attacked British and
US warships which had been sent to
protect their shipping and trade.
The worst incident came on December the
12th, 1937. The American gunboat Pane
was sunk by Japanese bombers. 50 crewmen died.
Despite this, the Western powers refused
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 farreaching effects on us.
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 Kaishek to buy arms.
Even though the communists were now
fighting alongside the Quintang, the
Soviet Union did little to help either.
Its only involvement was a series of
clashes along its own border with Manuria.
But China itself received nothing.
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. And by
now, the Western powers were facing
Today it is easy to laugh at Bonito
Mussolini, the fascist dictator of
Italy. All that posturing seems faintly
ridiculous now, but it didn't seem that
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, Bonito Mussolini, a war
veteran and a journalist, decided to
take a stand. He organized a right-wing
With a country paralyzed by a general
strike in August 1922, Mussolini ordered
his followers to march on Rome. [Music]
[Music]
Fearing a civil war, Italy's king,
Victor Emanuel, asked him to form a government.
Mussolini swiftly stamped out any
political opposition and assumed
government was appointed rather than
elected and all power was firmly in the
Like Hitler, Mussolini's first acts made
him immensely popular.
Massive programs of public works
provided employment and transformed
Corruption was rooted out and the mafia
Italy's armed forces were built up,
In the Mediterranean, Mussolini launched
a powerful navy bigger than the combined
might of the British and French
When the Great Depression came, Italy
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
His target was Abbiscinia, today's Ethiopia.
Ethiopia.
Italy already had colonies on its
borders in Eritraa and Italian Somaliand.
In December 1934, Italian forces
provoked a clash with Abbiscinian troops
at an oasis in the Augaden region, well
inside Abbiscinian territory. [Music]
[Music]
Mussolini then sent reinforcements to
Eritraa and Italian Somali. demanding
The emperor of Abbiscinia, Haley
Salassie, appealed in person to the
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 Eritraa and Italian Somalia.
Somalia. [Music]
The primitive Abbiscinian forces stood
little chance against a modern army
[Music]
The Italian air force had total command
of the air and harried the abbberinians
on occasions dropping gas bombs even
though gas had been outlawed at
After 6 months, Abiscinia was completely overrun.
overrun.
The emperor Hilis Salassie fled into
From its headquarters in Switzerland,
the League of Nations rung its hands. It
did impose economic sanctions, but they
Mussolini's aggression had revealed two
things. The League of Nations, that
great hope for peace, was impotent, and
both Europe's supposed major powers, the
democracies Britain and France, no
[Music]
Both Britain and France had been
shattered by World War I, and their
Both had witnessed waves of strikes and
unrest. Both had suffered mass
unemployment even before the Great Depression.
Depression. [Music]
[Music]
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
And above all, both had been traumatized
by the horrific casualties of World War
I. A succession of British leaders, Roy
George, Ramsey Macdonald, and above all,
Stanley Baldwin, all resolved to keep
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
And when the Great Depression struck,
any ideas of modernizing the army were
abandoned. It meant that Britain went
into the runup to war economically and
French losses during World War I had
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
[Music]
The Majino line, a series of
fortifications, was begun in 1930 along
the frontier with Germany and ran as far
as the Belgian border. [Music]
[Music]
There it theoretically linked up with
This new French military approach meant
that France was only capable of waging a
defensive war.
It just did not have the ability to
launch an attack on Italy, even if the
And of course, both countries knew that
their navies in the Mediterranean were
So when Italy conquered Abiscinia, it
made sense for both powers to do
nothing. It just seemed too remote, too
much someone else's problem. [Applause]
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. [Music]
[Music]
And Germany's power and that of Italy
too was soon about to be demonstrated in
supporting the rise of another dictator
In 1936, civil war erupted in Spain. It
was exceptionally vicious, setting
family against family, communist against
fascist, believers against atheists. [Music]
[Music]
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
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 narrowly.
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. [Music]
[Music]
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
On July the 17th, 1936, the units of the
army fighting guerrillas in Spain's
The next day, Franco flew to join them,
proclaiming a new nationalist movement
which would save Spain from communism.
Mainland garrisons now join this revolt.
The Popular Front responded by calling
for volunteers to defend the republic.
[Music]
At first, Franco faced problems. He and
his army were in North Africa and he had
to get across the streets 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 Luftvafer had begun an
airlift, taking Franco's battleh
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.
Franco's nationalists were confined
largely to the northwest and part of the south.
But the nationalist situation was
transformed when Hitler and Mussolini
The German dictator seized the
opportunity to test his new equipment
and expanding armed forces.
The first Panza tanks were sent along
with some 12,000 troops.
And the Luftwuffer deployed its Condor
Legion with its ultramodern new bombers
Mussolini sent a so-called volunteer
corps of 50,000 men and more than 700 aircraft.
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. [Music]
[Music]
Cynically, both Germany and Italy signed
up to this. But when it became obvious
that they were still sending arms to the
nationalists, Ysef Stalin, 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
Stalin saw the Spanish conflict as a way
of keeping Germany and Italy occupied
while building up the Soviet Union's
About 700 military advisers were sent
along with tanks and fighter aircraft.
It was something, but no match for the
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,
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.
south.
By the end of 1936, Madrid was enveloped
on three sides and virtually under siege.
The fighting was intense and often
accompanied by appalling atrocities
The Republicans hunted down and murdered
Roman Catholic priests. The nationalists
slaughtered anyone accused of being communist.
communist. [Music]
[Music]
German and Italian air power was used
indiscriminately against civilian targets.
targets.
Madrid was heavily bombed.
But the worst incident came in April
1937 when the Basque town of Ganeka was
virtually obliterated with 6,000
The area controlled by the Republic was
steadily grounded down. Its forces
fought with great gallantry, but
undertrained and underequipped 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, the fighting
around Madrid became a symbol of the
left's determination not to be crushed
But behind the scenes, the Republican
alliance was falling apart. The
communists and socialists wanted to
concentrate on winning a military victory.
victory. [Music]
[Music]
But the more idealistic anarchists and
syndicicalists 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
By the end of 1938, the nationalists had
penned their enemy into a small enclave
around Barcelona and another stretching
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
[Music]
At the end of March 1939, its defenders
exhausted after nearly 3 years of
fighting, the capital finally surrendered.
surrendered. [Music]
A month later, Franco formally declared
hostilities at an end. [Music]
[Music]
The scars of Spain's civil war took
years to heal, and in some ways they
And internationally, 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
While Stalin despared of their
Hitler in particular saw his way open to
begin the aggressive policies outlined
in mine.
Even before the Spanish Civil War ended,
his armies were on the march. [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
[Applause]
From the moment he became Chancellor of
Germany on January the 30th, 1933,
Hitler had begun to put his long-term
On February the 3rd, he told his top
commanders that his ultimate aim was to
conquer territory in the east and
ruthlessly Germanize it. 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 armored tactics.
Energetic young German officers like
Heinserian read the theories of British
thinkers like Basil Little Hart and
Colonel John Fulham.
They even watched exercises being
carried out by the British during the
1920s on Ssbury play. It was from these
that they came up with the idea of fastm
moving units combining tanks, artillery,
and infantry that could thrust fast and
Hitler adopted their ideas with
enthusiasm. The new army was to have
Similarly, the new air force, the
Luftvafer, under former World War I
fighter ace Herman Guring had had a
framework to build on [Music]
[Music]
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 aircraft.
Hitler revealed the existence of the
He then announced that the army was to
be increased to 300,000 men and
Britain and France protested feebly at
this flagrant breach of the Versail treaty.
treaty.
But soon they reluctantly and slowly
Until this point, Hitler had been modest
in his goals. He had only taken back
what was his, the Rhineland and Salah.
But now he had a grander target in mind,
In 1934, Austrian Nazis had attempted to
seize power and unify the country with Germany.
Germany.
The 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
Hitler responded by demanding that
Austria stop mistreating the Austrian
Nazis and unite with Germany. [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
a referendum so that the Austrians could
But on March the 12th, 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. A
sovereign nation had for the first time
been subsumed into a greater Germany.
Once again, the Western democracies
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
These Sudatan Germans had been part of
the old Austrian Empire, but had been
cut off when Czechoslovakia was created
This was the time bomb that had started
ticking at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.
Hitler encouraged Sudatan German demands
for autonomy and then threatened a Czech
government with force if it refused to agree.
Undaunted, the Czech government ordered
general mobilization and prepared to resist.
resist.
The Czechoslovak army was large and well
equipped with formidable fortifications
on its frontier with Germany. Hitler
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 Sudatan land, he would make no
In Munich on September the 29th, 1938,
with Mussolini acting as mediator,
France and Britain signed an agreement
giving the Sudatan land 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
And so on October the 1st, German troops
occupied the Sudatan land and seized the
Hitler now began sizing up his next
target, Poland. Again,
the nominal cause was a German minority
marooned as a result of the Versail treaty.
Hitler demanded the return of the port
of Danik to German control so that East
Prussia could be linked up with the rest
The Poles refused and Hitler hesitated.
He was not quite ready for allout war
and he had unfinished business with Czechoslovakia.
Czechoslovakia. [Applause]
[Applause]
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 Hatcha to Berlin and
browbeat him into putting his country
under German protection. [Applause]
German troops now marched into the rest
of Czechoslovakia unopposed.
Most of the country was annexed into the
Reich. Slovakia was declared a protectorate
protectorate
for the first time. Hitler had seized
non-Germanspeaking territory, but again
there was only a feeble protest from
Britain and France.
At the end of March, he again repeated
his demand of Poland give up dancing.
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
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
and finally Stalin despared, deciding
that there was another solution to the
On August the 23rd, the Soviet Union and
the Third Reich, who everyone had
believed were sworn enemies, announced a
non-aggression pact. [Music]
[Music]
The agreement secretly specified that
Poland would be split between the two
countries and Stalin would have a free
hand to take over Estonia, Latafia, and Lithuania.
Now free from any Russian threat, Hitler
ordered his armed forces to prepare for
On the evening of August the 31st, the
German Fairmarked prepared for the
assault. Its furer had made the decision
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