The Roots of War

Treaty of Versailles, 1918

• Created a set of small new nations in Eastern Europe = vulnerable to aggression from larger neighbors (Germany & Soviet Union)

• Italy & Japan = failed to recognize their stature as world powers

• Germany = betrayed (Stab in the back myth) rather than defeated (this leads to the unconditional surrender demand), harsh war reparations and loss of lands

1920’s & 30’s

• Economic crisis and political instability fueled the rise of right-wing dictatorships that offered territorial expansion by military conquest as way to redress old rivalries, dominate trade, and gain access to raw materials (Hitler, Germany; Mussolini, Italy; Franco, Spain; Stalin, Russia; Emperor Hirohito, Japan)

Japanese Nationalism • Wanted to expel Europeans and Americans from Asia and

create a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (Asia controlled by Japanese)

• Japanese ambition in Asia was to create a Pan-Asian empire with Japan at the center as an imperial power and a defensive ring of 500 miles to protect the homeland.

• Most of Japanese territorial gains would be in China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands

• Earliest national aggression in WWII was when Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931

• In 1937 Japan launched a brutal invasion of China

European Nationalism• Expansion of territories through military aggression• Italy: conquest of Ethiopia in 1935 & intervention in

Spain in support of Gen. Franco • Germany: Hitler made himself the German Fuhrer,

1934 (absolute leader)• Thousand Year Reich – combined historic German

interest in eastward expansion with tradition of German racial superiority

• Lebensraum (living space) created by taking land from the Russian Slavic peoples

European Nationalism• Genocide (systematic murder) of the Jewish people of

Europe• Nuremburg Laws, 1935 denied civil rights to Jews• NAZI government took Jewish property and excluded Jews

from most jobs• Concentration Camps were prisons created by the Nazis

to punish political dissidents, Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and other ethnic groups considered undesirable

• The camps evolved into harsh labor camps and finally into extermination camps

Rome-Berlin Axis, 1936

• Alliance between Germany & Italy• Grew into the Tripartite Act, 1940 which

included Japan• Alliance of Germany, Italy, and Japan became

known as the Axis Powers (aggressor nations)

Hitler’s War in Europe

Pre-War territorial expansion

• 1936 – re-occupied the German Rhineland, violated terms of Versailles by re-militarizing Germany

• 1938 – annexed (added) Austria• Sept. 1938 – Munich Agreement = forced

Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland to Germany

• March 1939 – Germany occupied the majority of Czechoslovakia

German invasion of Poland

• Sept. 1, 1939 triggered start of WWII in Europe• Blitzkrieg invasion “lightening war” included

armored divisions with tanks and motorized infantry rapidly seized control of territory (new form of warfare which made trench warfare of WWI obsolete)

• Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, 1939 – cleared the way for Hitler’s invasion of Poland with Germany & Russia splitting the country between them

War in Europe: 1939-1941• May 1940 -German invasion of Denmark & Norway to the

North• May & June 1940 – German invasion of Netherlands,

Belgium, and France to the West• Defeat of France led to the narrow escape of British soldiers

from the beach at Dunkirk back to England• Vichy French (Pro-Nazi) government established under

French Gen. Marshall Petain to govern southern France during the war

• General Charles de Gaul – continued to lead the French forces

War in Europe: 1939-1941• Summer of 1940 –German aerial attack of Great Britain (Battle

of Britain)• Failed to subdue Great Britain who would continue the war

against Germany• May 1941 –Germany enlisted Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria as

allies and conquered Yugoslavia and Greece to the South in the Balkans

• June 1941 = unable to knock Great Britain out of the war, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in the East

• Invasion caught Soviets off-guard due to the non-aggression pact• Heavy losses by the Soviets coupled with deep penetration of

German, Italian, and Rumanian forces into the Soviet Union led to the near capture of Moscow and other strategic cities