The early 1930s, marked by the Great Depression and failing international cooperation, created a window of opportunity for revisionist powers like Germany, Italy, and Japan to pursue imperial ambitions, setting the stage for future global conflict.
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1931,
the world's leading powers
are reeling from the impact of the Great
Depression. [music]
Global trade has collapsed by 2/3.
Unemployment is soaring.
Economies around the world are in turmoil.
turmoil.
In the United States, the world's
largest [music] economy, President
Herbert Hoover, struggles to provide an
effective response. [music]
[music]
Great Britain, ruling the world's
largest empire, is in financial and
political crisis.
[music] France, ruling the second
largest empire, is slightly better
protected, but will soon face economic
challenges of her own. [music]
The Soviet Union, the world's only major
socialist state, remains an
international pariah. It is therefore
largely insulated from the global crisis
and is about to complete Stalin's first
5-year plan, a program intended to
[music] rapidly boost Soviet industrial
and agricultural output.
In Asia, China escapes [music] the worst
of the depression, but faces crises of
its own. That year, devastating floods
claim an estimated [music] 2 million lives.
lives.
while Chiang Kaishek's nationalist
government fights a brutal civil war
against Chinese communist rebels.
In 10 years, these five states, the USA,
Britain, [music] France, the Soviet
Union, and China will [music] constitute
the major allied powers in the largest
conflict in human history,
However, in 1931,
there is little to indicate that such a
catastrophe is looming or inevitable.
But that year, these same world events
are shaping the paths of three other
nations. [music]
Germany, humbled and humiliated by
defeat in World [music] War I, is now a
fragile democratic republic.
No nation is hit harder by the Great
Depression than Germany thanks to its
reliance [music] on US loans which have
now ended abruptly. [music]
[music]
Banks and businesses collapse.
Unemployment leaps to 24%
and will peak the following year at 40%. [music]
In July, President Hoover offers some relief.
relief.
Germany's war reparations, the money she
must pay to the victors of [music] World
War I, will be suspended.
But the hardship experienced by ordinary
Germans is reshaping German politics as
support drifts to the far left
and far right.
Italy is now a one party fascist state
ruled by dictator Benito Mussolini who's
Italy is also hit hard by the depression
though massive state intervention
and in East Asia,
the Empire of Japan.
Here the impact of the depression is not
as [music] severe, but within this mixed
democracy, there are alarming signs of
political extremism and militarism. [music]
In 9 years, these three states, Germany,
Italy, and Japan, will form a military
alliance commonly known as the Axis.
All have something in common. Germany
unified in 1871.
Italy unified in 1861.
Japan, an ancient state reinvented by
the Maji restoration of 1868. [music]
[music]
In historic terms, all are young nations,
nations,
and all feel unjustly treated by the
World War I peace [music] settlement.
In all, there are now growing demands
for what older established powers
already have and what they have been denied,
denied, empire.
empire.
It is empire that is seen to confer
status, security and prosperity.
A panacea to troubles at home.
The 1930s,
a decade of economic turmoil and failing
international cooperation,
will offer a window of opportunity to
these three powers. An opportunity to
avenge past humiliations
and seize the empires they believe are
rightfully theirs.
It is a path that will put Germany,
Italy, and Japan on a collision course
with the established great powers
[music] with disastrous consequences
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>> The first major international crisis of
the 1930s is in Manuria, northeastern China.
China.
Japanese nationalists see China as the
natural arena for their imperial expansion
expansion
and Japan has been extending its
influence here over many years.
There is already a large Japanese
military force based in Dalian known as
the Quanong army.
Now nationalist officers from this army
decide to force the hand of their own government
government
acting on their own initiative. They
blow up a section of Japanese-owned railway,
railway,
a false flag operation that becomes
known as the Makden incident.
The Guantan army uses it as a pretext to
invade Manuria.
Local Chinese troops are no match for
modernized Japanese armed forces.
and Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek is
more focused on fighting his internal
communist enemies in the south.
In three months, the Japanese overrun
most of Manuria and turn it into their
The Japanese people are jubilant. The
country has been gripped by war fever,
but Western powers are outraged.
Japan's attack is a flagrant breach of
the Kellogg Bion pact. This treaty, just
3 years old, committed all signitaries,
including Japan, to giving up war as a
The League of Nations, the international
organization that is [music] supposed to
safeguard world peace, meets urgently in Geneva.
Geneva.
But Japan is one of the League Council's
four permanent members. And rather than
condemn the attack, the League decides
to send a commission to investigate.
A few weeks later, further fighting
But it is clear that Western powers
distracted by the economic crisis will
not go to war for the sake of China.
Their inaction is noted by observers
1932
begins with an Italian victory in Libya
where General Badullio declares the end
of a 9-year campaign to crush local
resistance to Italian rule.
Italy's armed forces have used chemical
weapons, concentration camps, and mass
executions against the Libyan people.
Their successful pacification
allows Mussolini to plan fresh conquests
as he dreams of a new Roman Empire.
In Western Europe, the site of bloody
trench warfare just 14 years earlier.
Hopes for a lasting peace are based on
the 1925 Lano Pact.
This guarantees Germany's western
borders and requires Germany and its
neighbors to submit all disputes to the
League of Nations for mediation.
There is a mood of optimism among
European diplomats known as the spirit
of Lano.
a hope that war in Europe may have been
consigned to the past.
In February, a world disarmament
conference opens in Geneva, attended by
61 states.
In June, the Loausanne conference cuts
German war reparations by 90%.
In Germany that year, federal elections
are dominated by Adolf Hitler's Nazi party.
His attitude to disarmament will soon
Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, dictator
Joseph Stalin continues his drive to
make the state more resilient against
first 5-year plan focuses on expanding
heavy industry, almost doubling the
Soviet industrial workforce, and
dramatically increasing output of steel,
iron, and coal. It's impossible to be
sure by how much, as official figures
are constantly manipulated and inflated
by communist officials.
It's clear, however, that tank and
aircraft production are expanding massively.
massively.
While in Ukraine, the completion of the
Nepra Dam, the largest in Europe, gives
a major boost to Soviet electricity generation.
But in the countryside, the policy of
forcing peasants into large state
controlled farms, collectivization
has proved disastrous.
A catastrophic collapse in the harvest
has resulted in famine on a terrifying
scale. The total death toll over 4 years
is estimated at between 6 and 9 million.
Around half these deaths are in Ukraine
where the disaster will be remembered as
Soviet authorities do everything they
can to cover up the horrifying truth of
what's happening
[music] in Spain where a new republic
has been proclaimed the previous year.
Prime Minister Manuel Azana enacts
sweeping reforms aiming to modernize the
country and curtail the influence of the
Catholic Church. Such moves are bitterly
In neighboring Portugal that summer,
Antonio Salazar is appointed prime
minister. He goes on to establish an
authoritarian regime, Estadon Novo, that
In the Middle East, the Kingdom of Iraq
gains full independence from British
rule and is admitted to the League of Nations.
[music]
In Japan, the nationalist militarist
assault on the country's democracy steps
up a gear. In February, a conspiracy to
wipe out the country's leading liberal
figures fails.
But in May, a group of young naval
officers shoot dead Prime Minister
Inuket Sioshi. [music]
[music]
In the United States of America,
the 1932 presidential election is won by
Franklin D. Roosevelt [music] of the
Democratic Party. To combat the effects
of the Great Depression, he [music]
promises a new deal for the American people.
people.
Only a foolish optimist [music] can deny
the dark realities of the moment. He
will declare at his inauguration.
This nation asks for action and action now.
Germany is in political deadlock. The
previous year, federal elections had
filled the Reich with Nazis, Social
Democrats, and [music] Communists, all
In January, to break [music] the impass,
President Hindenburg appoints a new
chancellor of Germany, the leader of the
Nazi party, Adolf Hitler.
It's predicted that more moderate and
experienced politicians will be able to
curb Hitler's more extreme views,
of which there are many.
Adolf Hitler, born in Austria, had
served as a senior private in the German
army in World War I. After the war, he
became leader of a fringe nationalist
party based in Munich, the German
Workers Party. He renames it the
National Socialist German Workers Party,
Nazi Party for short.
Its policies combine extreme ethnationalism
ethnationalism
with total rejection of the Versailles
peace settlement, hostility to
capitalism and big business, and a rabid
hatred of Jews who are blamed for all
Germany's wos. Above all, its stab in
the back defeat in World War I, which is
itself a nationalist myth.
Many of Hitler's own deepest beliefs on
Germany's need for an empire and living
space at the expense of lesser [music]
races in the east are available for
anyone to read in volume two of his
political [music] manifesto mine camp
Many Germans are disillusioned with
centrist politicians and their failure
to tackle the [music] economic crisis.
Hitler's powerful oratory and promise of
radical solutions has strong appeal.
Many middleclass Germans see the Nazis
as the best way to keep the communists
out of power.
Now with Hitler in charge, events begin
In February 1933, a Dutch communist,
Marinus Vanderuba, sets fire to the
Reichag building [music] in Berlin. He
is acting alone, but the Nazis accused
the German Communist [music] Party of
Civil and political rights are quickly
suspended by emergency [music] decree.
Communists are jailed, their newspapers
shut down.
In March, Germany holds new elections
during which the Nazis political [music]
rivals are harassed and terrorized by
their paramilitary thugs, the SA and SS.
[music] The Nazi party wins 44% of the
vote and takes effective control of the Reichag.
Reichag. [music]
[music]
At the end of the month, it passes the
enabling act. This frees Hitler from all
constitutional checks and balances. He
can now pass new laws without consulting
[music] the Reichag or President Hindenburg.
Hindenburg.
On the 1st of April, the Nazis organize
a one-day nationwide boycott of all
Jewish businesses.
By the end of the summer, Nazi
concentration camps have opened at Oranberg
Oranberg
and Dhau,
and all political parties in Germany
have been banned except the Nazi party. [music]
[music]
Hitler's next target is the despised
Versailles treaty that ended World War I.
I.
publicly. He rejects its war reparations
and the so-called war guilt clause that
blamed Germany for starting the war. In
secret, he orders largecale German
rearmament in defiance of Versailles
restrictions on the size of German armed forces.
forces.
The existence of an illegal German air
force is already widely known and it's
growing by 60 aircraft a month.
The dramatic revival of nationalism and
militarism in Germany is plain for all
to see. At the Geneva Disarmament
Conference, Germany demands parity
between its armed forces and those of
France. When this is rejected, Germany
quits the conference.
The same month, Hitler withdraws Germany
from the League of Nations.
It is the League's second major [music]
blow of the year.
In February, the League report on
Japan's invasion of Manuria had finally
been presented to the General Assembly.
It had called on Japan to withdraw from Manuria.
Manuria.
>> Japan responds by quitting the League of Nations
Nations
accepted by the assembly. The
international institutions designed to
maintain peace are flailing.
>> Japan subsequently withdrew from the
League of Nations.
>> That body proved itself incapable of
stemming the tide of aggression either
>> A few foreign diplomats take the time to
read Hitler's political manifesto
mine camp.
Some dismiss it as incoherent rambling,
but others feel a deep sense of alarm.
In Britain, Conservative member of
Parliament Winston Churchill warns of
Germany's grim dictatorship and the
return of [music] its militaristic spirit.
But in the early 1930s, there is little
appetite in Britain or France to
confront Germany.
The trauma of World War I is too fresh.
The [music] public mood is one of pacifism.
In Britain, some even wonder if the
Versailles treaty had been too harsh on
Germany. Perhaps some of Hitler's
demands are not so unreasonable.
Besides [music] which, the Great
Depression has led to severe cuts in
military spending, meaning neither
Britain nor France is in any state to
[music] France is in the middle of a
full-blown political and economic crisis.
crisis.
There have been 10 governments in the
last 3 years. National income has fallen
by 30%.
But the French are working on a major
military project which they [music]
believe will ensure national security
In the US, meanwhile,
there is strong support for isolationism
and a desire to avoid all overseas entanglements.
entanglements.
The US is not a member of the League of
Nations and facing 25% unemployment,
Roosevelt is fully preoccupied with
In June, Hitler orders a ruthless purge
of the Nazi party's paramilitary wing,
Brownshard violence and intimidation
[music] have been a crucial part of
Hitler's rise to power,
but they have served their purpose
and are despised by the German army,
whose loyalty Hitler now values more.
In the so-called Knight of the Long
Knives, prominent SA leaders are rounded
Since 1932, Austria has been a
right-wing one party state led by
Chancellor Engelbert Dulus.
He regards the Nazis as dangerous rivals
and has banned the party in Austria.
In July 1934,
Austrian Nazis assassinate Dolphus, part
of an attempted coup that is to pave the
way to unification with Germany.
known as Anstus.
They expect support from Hitler.
But Mussolini has other ideas.
He regards Austria as an important
buffer state between Italy and Hitler's
resurgent Germany. So he sends Italian
troops to the Brener Pass on the
Austrian border, threatening to
intervene if Hitler attempts to annex Austria.
Austria.
Germany's armed forces are still very
weak. Hitler is forced to back down. The
Nazi plot in Austria fails. [music]
In August 1934,
86-year-old German President Hindenburg
dies in office.
As a war hero and statesman, he receives
a lavish state funeral. [music]
[music]
Hindenburg's authority and conservatism
has acted as a limited check on Hitler's actions.
actions.
[music] No longer
Hitler swiftly abolishes the office of
president. He will now wield its powers
in his new role as furer of the German
state and people.
On the 20th of August, a new law
requires all German military officers
and civil servants to swear an oath of
That October, King Alexander of
Yugoslavia makes a state [music] visit
to France.
Alexander is regarded as a crucial
unifying figure for the young Yugoslav
state. But on his arrival in Marseilles,
he is assassinated by a Bulgarian nationalist.
French foreign minister Louis Bartu is
That autumn, Britain learns that the
German army is now [music] 300,000
strong, three times what is permitted
under the Versailles Treaty.
Germany [music] has further plans for
expansion and mechanization. [music]
[music]
Tentative British steps towards
rearmorament begin with a commitment to
expand the Royal Air Force by 40
>> [music]
>> In December, there's a further blow to
attempts to [music] limit global rearmament
rearmament
when Japan announces it will not renew
the Washington Naval Treaty
[music] signed in 1922.
The treaty had fixed the size of
British, American, and Japanese fleets
in the ratio 553. [music]
[music]
This is now seen as an insult to Japan's
status as [music] a major power.
Though one Japanese naval officer has
pointed out that the treaty may have
been to Japan's advantage
given the US's far greater industrial
capacity. [music]
He is Rear Admiral Yamamoto,
the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Thank you to Hearts of Iron 4 for
sponsoring [music]
this video. Don't forget, you can try
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the 24th of November. Just click the
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Thank you to our series consultant,
World War II historian, Professor
Richard Overy of the University of Exit. [music]
And thanks as always to the Patreon
supporters who helped to make this
channel possible.
From builders such as Keith Herbert,
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