HISTORY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR
A renewal of hostilities?
It is a commonplace that the war beginning in 1939 is a continuation of the one which ended in 1918, much as European conflicts of the 18th century (such as the Seven Years’ War) were often a return to unfinished business. In many respects the commonplace is true, and it is reflected in everyday vocabulary. No other wars are numbered I and II, like kings in a line of succession or blockbuster films in a series.
The idea of a progression from World War I to World War II is unavoidable, and several factors make it so.
The same nation, Germany, is the participant most actively responsible for each of the two wars. In 1914 this was a panic reaction, through fear of losing advantage if not moving first. In 1939 it is the deliberate result of the policy of one man, Adolf Hitler.
That policy can in many respects be traced back to the after-effects of World War I. Hitler, in his vengeful and expansionist plans for Germany, is able to play on German resentment of the terms imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. He is helped also by another undercurrent from 1918 – the feeling that Germany was not really defeated at the end of that war. Her politicians capitulated before a single foreign soldier had trodden on German soil. If the match were replayed, the result could be different.
This sense of aggrieved military self-confidence is to a large extent supported by a striking fact. For eight years of the 20th century (1914-18, 1941-5) Germany almost single-handedly holds at bay the three other great European powers, Russia, France and Britain, united against her and for much of the time aided by the USA.
Yet within the broad pattern of continuity there are differences. The most profound of these lies in the reasons for the two wars. The causes of World War I are notoriously hard to discern, shrouded in the posturing of imperial powers. It has come to seem the most pointless of conflicts, and until that time the most wasteful of human life.
By contrast World War II, even more costly in terms of lives lost, is the war with the clearest moral purpose – to curtail the apparently boundless aggression of Hitler, and to destroy the most successful of the extremist creeds of the 1930s, Fascism.
This relates to another distinction. Germany and Austria (linked from 1938 by the Anschluss) have very different partners the second time round, in Italy and Japan. Italy and Germany share the creed of Fascism, and distant Japan is like Germany in being an aggressive and authoritarian military society. Even so, the three make strange bedfellows in the group which is formed in 1936 and becomes known as the Axis.
The Axis Powers: AD 1936
In October 1936 an agreement between Germany and Italy establishes much common ground in foreign policy. The arrangement is described by Hitler (in conversation with Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law and foreign secretary) as an alliance between the two most vigorous European nations, rearming faster than any others and capable together of defeating Great Britain if necessary.
Mussolini has, this very summer, overwhelmed Ethiopia and proclaimed a new Italian empire. Hitler has been the first head of state to recognize this dubious enterprise. Mussolini now accidentally gives the new alliance its familiar name, describing it as an axis ’round which all those European states which are animated by a desire for collaboration and peace may work together’.
Before the end of the year the group has a new adherent, animated as much as Italy and Germany by a desire for peace. Japan has recently seized much of northern China and has set up the puppet state of Manchoukuo (the recognition of which is one of the clauses in the ‘axis’ agreement).
In this region Japan has a hostile neighbour in a nation which is also geographically close to Germany and is profoundly loathed by Hitler. Germany in the extreme west and Japan in the extreme east share a hatred and fear of the USSR. This is the basis for the agreement reached between the two nations in November 1936. It is called the Anti-Comintern Pact, to present it as an alliance against international communism rather than a single country.
Hitler sees this as the beginning of a military alliance between anti-Communist nations, and it is German policy to tie the knot tighter (culminating in the Tripartite Pact with Italy signed in September 1940). The collaboration within the trio is never very close. Hitler rarely takes Mussolini into his confidence on strategic matters, and Japan operates in a world of its own. Germany enters World War II without the involvement of either of its Axis partners, and ends it with only one of them as an ally.
But in the years after the establishment of the Axis, in the late 1930s, it is convenient for Hitler to have such an alliance while he pushes to the limit the patience of the other European powers – benefiting greatly from their instinct that aggression may be calmed by appeasement.
Expansion and appeasement: AD 1935-1939
The policy which becomes known as appeasement (the belief that compromise with Europe’s fascist dictators will provide the best chance for peace) is associated particularly with the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain. But it already characterizes the foreign policy up to 1937 of his predecessor, Stanley Baldwin. And it is, to a lesser extent, the policy also of the government in France.
As the two major European powers in the League of Nations, Britain and France inevitably have to play the leading role in trying to keep Hitler and Mussolini in check.
A conciliatory attitude, partly made necessary by the lack of readiness in each nation for another war, is evident as early as 1935. In this year Samuel Hoare and Pierre Laval, foreign ministers of the two countries, concoct a peace plan which would allow Italy to annexe large slices of Ethiopia (an independent state, recently invaded by Italian armies).
The plan is rejected, but its very existence encourages Mussolini to complete his conquest of Ethiopia. And this de facto state of affairs is soon accepted by an increasingly enfeebled League of Nations.
Earlier in the same year there has been another affront to the League’s authority. In March 1935 Hitler informs Britain and France that he is creating an air force, is launching a major programme of military and naval rearmament, and is introducing conscription.
These plans directly convene the terms of the treaty of Versailles. But in June, to the outrage this time of France, Hoare establishes an Anglo-German Naval Agreement, tacitly accepting the naval aspect of Hitler’s plans in return for a pact that German strength at sea will not exceed 35% of the combined fleets of Britain and the Commonwealth.
In March 1936 Hitler makes his first military move in defiance of existing treaties. He marches his troops into the Rhineland, a region permanently demilitarized under the terms agreed at Versailles. At the same time he declares (in what is to become a recurring pattern) that this is his last territorial claim.
The Spanish Civil War, beginning in July 1936, absorbs much of Europe’s attention over the next two years (and provides Hitler’s new forces with their first unofficial outing). But from 1938 the German dictator’s provocative moves come at an ever increasing pace, each of them taking to the brink the good faith of the appeasers.
On March 12 he marches into Austria to reunite the ancient German Reich, an event known as the Anschluss (literally ‘joining on’). On the previous day he assures the world that he has no designs on Czechoslovakia.
The very next month, in April, he develops a secret plan to annexe the western part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland. He is considerably helped in this ambition by the principles of Versailles, for the region has a predominantly German population. Many of these Germans are already Nazi sympathisers. It is easy to argue, against Czech interests, that the principle of self-determination gives these people the right to merge with Germany. During the summer of 1938 Hitler threatens the Czech government at the diplomatic level, while massing troops on the border.
Chamberlain flies from London to confer with Hitler, on September 15 and 22, but by September 27 it seems certain that Hitler’s forces will cross the Czech border. France has a defensive treaty with Czechoslavakia. Britain would have to support France. The result would be war.
On September 27 Chamberlain broadcasts to the British people, expressing his appalled dismay at being dragged into the affairs of such a ‘Faraway country’. The next day he sends a telegram to Hitler, offering to fly again to Germany to discuss the peaceful transfer of the Sudetenland. Hitler postpones the invasion, planned for September 28, and invites Chamberlain, Daladier (the French premier since April) and Mussolini to an immediate meeting in Munich.
Munich and after: AD 1938-1939
The discussion in Munich between Hitler, Chamberlain, Daladier and Mussolini lasts a little over twelve hours, beginning in the middle of the day on September 29 and ending with the signing of an agreed document at 1.30 a.m. on September 30. Though the dismantling of their country is under discussion, Hitler refuses to allow any Czech representative to take part. Two Czech diplomats sit in a nearby hotel, effectively waiting to be told what has been decided.
The conclusion is all that Hitler would wish. The Sudeten areas are to be ceded to Germany during the next ten days. Thereafter plebiscites, organized by the four Munich powers and Czechoslovakia, will reveal exactly where the new border should run.
Before boarding his plane, later on September 30, Chamberlain has another meeting with Hitler in which he asks him to sign a joint declaration. This is the document which Chamberlain waves in the air for the cameras on his return to Britain, stating that he has brought back from Germany ‘peace for our time… peace with honour’.
The text above Hitler’s signature, on which Chamberlain bases his optimism, declares a determination to remove possible sources of difference between countries ‘and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe’. Chamberlain’s hope is that the sacrifice of the Sudetenland has preserved not only peace but the rest of Czechoslovakia.
The occupation of Sudetenland brings some 3.5 million people within Nazi Germany, 75% of them German and 25% Czech. But in the event these Czechs are no more unfortunate than their compatriots elsewhere. Three weeks after signing Chamberlain’s document, Hitler orders the German army to prepare for a move into the rest of Czechoslovakia. The invasion comes in March 1939. Hitler, in Prague, declares that Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia are now under the protection of the German Reich.
But such a brutal betrayal of the Munich agreement transforms the appeasers. When it becomes evident that Poland is the next likely victim, Britain and France are suddenly resolute.
