The Path to War

1
The Path to War

• Hitlers Germany and its path towards World War II

2
The Ascension of Hitler

• Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf The army was never
  defeated in 1918. Germany was stabbed in the
  back by traitors at home and betrayed by the
  Allies. Most of the woes of Germany were caused
  by the Jews, who had manipulated finances to the
  ruin of Germany and who could never be loyal to
  Germany or to any other government. Germany had
  to become strong again. The country must be
  cleansed of traitors, and the Versailles Treaty
  must be scrapped!

3
The Ascension of Hitler

• Nazi rallies were masterpieces of political
  display.
• Hitler mesmerized crowds with his frenzied
  tirades.
• Hitler viewed the masses merely as tools, and he
  was actually contemptuous of them.
• In Mein Kampf Hitler wrote
• the intelligence of the great masses is small.
  As a result, all effective propaganda must be
  limited to a few points
• Many believe that most political campaigns since
  the 1930s have been influenced by this Nazi
  style.

4
The Ascension of Hitler

• Hitler became German chancellor in January 1933.
  With that, the Third Reich was born. (The First
  Reich, or empire, was begun by Charlemagne in 800
  and abolished by Napoleon in 1806, the Second
  Reich began in 1871 with German unification and
  ended in 1918).
• Hitler claimed the Third Reich would last 1000
  years.

5
The Ascension of Hitler

• Through the Enabling Act (March, 1933), Hitler
  became dictator. He stripped the Reichstag of
  any real power.
• He dissolved opposition parties outlawed labor
  unions censored the press suspended civil
  liberties.
• He threw out laws not beneficial to Nazism.

6
The Ascension of Hitler

• In 1933, the Nazis established labor camps and
  concentration camps.
• The first camp was at Dachau, near Munich.
• These camps were initially for political enemies
  (like Socialists/Communists, and later for Jews
  and homosexuals, etc.)

7
The Ascension of Hitler

• Hitler proclaimed himself der Fuhrer (the leader)
  and immediately required all members of the armed
  forces to take an oath of loyalty (the Blood
  Oath), not to Germany or the German Constitution,
  but to Hitler himself.
• The Nazis hired over 100,000 informers to report
  anyone (even parents) suspected of disloyalty.

8
The Ascension of Hitler
9
Hitlers (and Germanys) Anti-Semitism

• According to Hitler, Germans were Aryans (which
  means noble in Sanskrit) and were the master
  race or super race. All others, particularly
  Jews and Slavs, were inferior. Jews were to be
  eliminated and Slavs were to be made into slaves.
  
• Hitler said Nature is cruelso we may be cruel,
  tooI have a right to remove millions of an
  inferior race that breeds like vermin.

10
Hitlers (and Germanys) Anti-Semitism

• Looking for scapegoats to blame for Germanys
  problems, Hitler consistently blamed the Jews.
• In the mid-1930s, Germanys Jewish population
  represented less than 1 of the total population
  (about 500,000 people).
• In 1935, Hitler began to eliminate Jews from
  German national life with the Nuremberg Laws.

11
The Nuremberg Race Laws

• Known as the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law
  for the Protection of German Blood and Honor.
• These deprived Jews of most civil liberties. It
  was the beginning of the German tactic of
  isolating them from the rest of the population.
• There was a national boycott of Jewish
  businesses.
• Jewish doctors were forbidden to treat non-Jews
  and Jewish lawyers were not allowed to advise
  clients.

12
The Nuremberg Race Laws

• Jewish children were barred from German schools.
• Books written by Jewish authors were banned
  and/or burned.
• Intermarriage was prohibited.

13
Kristallnacht

• In October, 1938 a 17 year-old shot and killed a
  German embassy official in Paris.
• The teenager was reacting to his parents
  harassment and humiliation from the Nuremberg
  Laws.
• The Nazis retaliated on the night of November 9,
  1938, when violence against Jews (a pogrom) broke
  out across Germany and Austria. This was called
  Kristallnacht, (the night of the broken glass).

14
Kristallnacht

• Over 1,000 synagogues were burned or destroyed,
  7,000 Jewish business were trashed and looted,
  over 350 Jewish people were killed and several
  hundred wounded, and Jewish cemeteries,
  hospitals, schools, and homes were looted.
• The next day, 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and
  sent to concentration camps.

15
Kristallnacht

• Jewish businesses could not reopen unless they
  were managed by non-Jews.
• New curfews were placed on Jews.
• Any person identified as being Jewish now had to
  wear the yellow Star of David.

16
Kristallnacht
17
Kristallnacht
18
The Third Reich was organizing for War

• The Nazis molded the minds of German citizens
  through a program that glorified war. Textbooks
  were rewritten.
• Hitler began massive preparations for the
  expansion of Germany (lebensraum), which
  included food rationing laws (designed to make
  Germany self-sufficient in the event of war).
• These laws regulated the amount of food each
  person could have and where they could buy it.

19
The Third Reich was organizing for War

• Germany was also short of raw materials so laws
  were set up so nothing was wasted.
• Shopkeepers were allowed a specified amount of
  wrapping paper households were to save empty
  toothpaste tubes, waste animal fats, and paper
  (to be recycled into useful items for warfare).

20
The Third Reich was organizing for War

• Economic revival through pump priming
  (stimulating the economy through public works
  programs) built popular support for the Nazis.
• From building tanks and airplanes (thus violating
  the ToV) to farm production and the Autobahn,
  unemployment went from over 6M in 1932 to 1.6M in
  1936 (nearly a 75 decrease).

21
The Third Reich was organizing for War

• The Autobahn highway system was built to permit
  the rapid movement of troops around the country
  (but built under the guise of getting thousands
  of unemployed men working).

22
The Third Reich was organizing for War
23
Germany and Geopolitics

• Geopolitics is the study of government and its
  policies as affected by physical geography.
• Created in Germany in the 1920s, geopolitics
  initially stated that the country that controlled
  eastern Europe would be able to control the
  Heartland, the area extending from southwestern
  Russia to Mongolia. Command of the Heartland
  would lead to control of the World-Island,
  consisting of Europe, Africa, and Asia (roughly
  2/3s of Earth).

24
Germany and Geopolitics

• Picture of World Island

25
Germany and Geopolitics

• Hitler believed that under German control,
  eastern Europe, with its vast mineral and
  agricultural resources, would become a great
  industrial region.
• This would enable Germany to control the
  Heartland. By controlling the Heartland, vital
  industries could be moved to remote regions,
  beyond the range of attack. The result would be
  world domination by Germany.
• Geopolitics was a major factor leading Hitler
  into Eastern Europe and then Russia.

26
Germany Defied the Democracies

• Hitler had Germany withdraw from the League of
  Nations in 1933.
• In March 1935, Hitler denounced the Treaty of
  Versailles and announced he was rearming Germany
  (on the grounds that other nations had failed to
  disarm in accordance with the Treaty). He
  quickly took the army from 100,000 troops to
  nearly 600,000.

27
Germany Defied the Democracies

• Having correctly assessed the spinelessness of
  Britain and France, in March 1936 Hitler sent
  German troops into the demilitarized Rhineland,
  totally violating the Treaty of Versailles.

28
Germany Defied the Democracies

• Only a token force of three German battalions (a
  battalion is between 300-1200 soldiers) actually
  entered the Rhineland, and they were under strict
  orders from their nervous generals to withdraw at
  once if the French responded to this breach of
  the treaty with military force.
• The German generals knew that the much larger
  French army could crush their army at this time,
  and believed that Hitler was taking a dangerous
  gamble.

29
Germany Defied the Democracies

• The British were obliged under the Treaty of
  Locarno (1925) to provide France with military
  support in such a situation, but when asked by
  France for that support, the British government
  refused to honor its treaty obligation.
• Despite having thirty army divisions at the
  border in readiness to cross and disperse the
  three German battalions, the French lost their
  nerve in the absence of support from Britain.

30
Germany Defied the Democracies

• Hitlers successful challenge of the hated Treaty
  of Versailles increased his popularity in
  Germany.
• The western democracies denounced his moves but
  took no real action.
• France and Britain did not want a war with
  Hitler.

31
Entering the Rhineland
32
Germany Defied the Democracies

• Many in Britain thought Hitlers moves were
  justified since they thought Versailles was too
  harsh on Germany. Why should not Hitler have the
  right to fortify his own territory? If this
  demand can be satisfied, Germany will likely
  become a good neighbor.
• What do think might have happened if Britain
  honored its obligation to France and France
  forced the Germans out of the Rhineland?

33
Germany Defied the Democracies

• If France had acted firmly in what would have
  been little more than a police action, and
  Britain had fulfilled its treaty obligations to
  France, the German troops would certainly have
  been instantly withdrawn, and Hitler's prestige
  would have been dealt a deadly blow from which it
  might never have recovered.
• The last opportunity to bring Hitler into
  compliance, and halt the rise of a militarized,
  aggressive Germany without risk of a serious war,
  had been thrown away by weak politicians.

34
Germany Defied the Democracies

• The western democracies adopted the policy of
  appeasement, giving into the demands of an
  aggressor in order to keep the peace.
• In both Britain and France, many saw Hitler as a
  defense against a more insidious evil--the spread
  of Soviet Communism.

35
Germany Defied the Democracies

• The Great Depression also sapped the energies of
  the democracies.
• Finally, widespread pacifism and lasting disgust
  from World War I pushed many governments to seek
  peace at any price.

36
Germany Defied the Democracies

• In 1936, Hitler and Mussolini sent in troops and
  supplies to help the Fascists take over Spain.
• This brought Mussolini and Hitler closer together
  and in October 1936, the Rome-Berlin Axis was
  announced.

37
Germany Defied the Democracies

• One month later, Japan was added to the Axis as
  the three signed the Anti-Comintern Pact
  (promising to unite against Communism).
• By the end of 1936, Hitler was convinced that no
  one would stand up to his aggression.

38
Germany Defied the Democracies

• In 1938, Hitler annexed Austria (the Anschluss)
  creating a union between the two largest German
  speaking countries.
• Hitler forced the Austrian chancellor to appoint
  Nazis to key government posts and when the
  chancellor refused other demands, Hitler sent in
  the German army to preserve order, essentially
  taking over the country.
• The western democracies again took no action.

39
German Troops enter Austria
40
Germany Defied the Democracies

• Hitlers next victim was Czechoslovakia. In
  1938, Czechoslovakia was one of the two remaining
  democracies in eastern Europe (the other was
  Finland). About three million Germans lived in
  the western Czechoslovakian region known as
  Sudetenland, and Hitler claimed that area.

41
Germany Defied the Democracies

• In September 1938 at the Munich Conference,
  Britain and France again chose appeasement.
  Hitler assured Britain and France that if the
  Sudetenland was given to him without a fight, he
  had no future plans for expansion.

42
Germany Defied the Democracies

• Returning from the Munich Conference, the British
  PM, Neville Chamberlain, told the crowd in London
  he had achieved peace for our time. In the
  House of Commons, he declared that the Munich
  Pact had saved Czechoslovakia from destruction
  and Europe from Armageddon.

43
Germany Defied the Democracies

• In response to Chamberlain, Winston Churchill
  said They had to choose between war and
  dishonor. They chose dishonor they will have
  war.

44
Germany Defied the Democracies

• As Churchill predicted, Munich did not bring
  peace. Less than six months later (March 1939),
  Hitler had gobbled up the rest of Czechoslovakia.
  The western democracies finally realized that
  appeasement failed.
• Britain and France now promised to protect
  Poland, the next likely target of Hitlers
  expansion.
• Britain and France also finally began programs of
  preparedness, but it was too little too late.

45
Hitler and Stalin

• In August 1939, Hitler stunned the world by
  announcing a non-aggression pact with his great
  enemyJosef Stalin.
• Publicly the Nazi-Soviet Pact bound Hitler and
  Stalin to peaceful relations.

46
Hitler and Stalin

• Secretly the two agreed 1) not to fight if the
  other went to war, and 2) to divide up Poland and
  other parts of Eastern Europe between them.
• The Pact was not based on friendship or respect
  but need. Hitler wanted to protect his eastern
  flank from a Russian attack when Germany would be
  at war with Poland. It gave Stalin some time to
  build up Soviet military strength.
• Soon Germany would betray the agreement.

47
Hitler and Stalin