The political origins of the Second World War

Below is what I feel to be the most accurate interpretation of the political origins of the Second World War:


The appeasement policies pursued by UK under the Chamberlain regime in the period 1937-1939 was basically a policy designed to increase the strength of Nazi Germany and to let it expand eastwards.

This was so that Nazi Germany could have a common frontier with the Soviet Union. UK strategists who were anti-bolshevik had calculated that Hitler would attack the Soviet Union once he was within striking distance of the Soviet. This policy was already formulated by 1936 and implemented as policy in 1937 under Chamberlain.

Why Hitler could rearm in 1935 and remilitarise the rhineland in defiance of the Versailles treaty in 1936 and faced no opposition from UK was also because UK's policy was to increase the strength of Germany as a counter-balance to Soviet influence on the continent. Hitler himself had already assigned Germany this task to destroy bolshevism. UK and Germany shared this common interest--the destruction of bolshevism.

The fateful decision to support Hitler was made by UK, despite the nature of the Nazi regime. This decision was to prove disastrous to UK, Europe, the World and the British empire.

Nazi Germany under Hitler had ambitious plans to expand east. That ambition could be used.

Chamberlain sent Halifax to inform Hitler in November 1937 that UK would not oppose his moves to expand eastwards if he could do so by peaceful means. The countries and areas assigned for liquidation were Austria, Czechoslovakia, Danzig and perhaps the Polish corridor.

UK had one condition: Hitler could not make war to take these areas. Because if he did, UK would be forced to do something to stop him. UK at the time had presented itself as a country that upheld international law and order and if Hitler used force against these countries, UK would be forced to do something to maintain that image.

Hitler did not understand this. This was the fatal misunderstanding between Nazi Germany and UK. Hitler thought that UK had given him a freehand in the east and that included war as well.

3 months after Halifax's visit to Hitler, Hitler made his first moves to expand eastwards, after being assured by Halifax that he had UK's tacit backing.

Hitler annexed Austria in March 1938. UK did nothing. The plan was going smoothly.

Hitler however was impatient to make war to show off German military power and by the summer of 1938 had reached a plan, "operation green" to annihilate Czechoslovakia by means of a quick war. Italy had made war on Ethiopia in 1935 and Japan was already invading China at the time. Italy and Japan already had their war, Germany would do too.

The pretext for Hitler's war on Czechoslovakia was supposed to be the issue of the German minority in the Sudetenland region. It must be made clear that Hitler's plans in 1938 was to destroy Czechoslovakia, not annex the Sudetenland.

This idea of Germany taking the Sudetenland was Chamberlain's idea. He had smelled out Hitler's desire for war and had no choice but to intervene to stop Hitler. This led to the infamous Munich agreement.

There is much fraud and propaganda regarding this event in the west. To cut the long story short, Chamberlain sold out Czechoslovakia to Hitler so as to prevent him from making war. War at the time would upset Chamberlain's plans to instigate a larger war between Germany and Russia. A fake war crisis was also orchestrated by UK so as to appear that UK had no choice but to "appease" Hitler.

Various excuses such as german military power, hopes for peace etc were made to justify this sell out. In fact, if UK had the sincere desire to stop Hitler, UK could had arranged a coalition of British, French, Czech and Soviet forces to attack Germany.

So a war in 1938 was prevented.

But Hitler was not satisfied, after his plans for war had been frustrated by UK, he began more determined to make war. He had also interpreted the Munich aggreement as a sign of weakness that UK would not fight.

He was wrong. UK would be forced to fight under pressure of public opinion.

In March 1939, Hitler moved to liquidate Czechoslovakia entirely. Chamberlain at first was quite okay with this betrayal of the Munich agreement. But british public opinion was not. To add to this, 1939 was the year of the british general elections. Chamberlain couldn't afford to upset the public, so he reversed his position in public and condemned Hitler.

After the Czechoslovakia event, Hitler issued demands to Poland on Danzig in March. Discussions between Poland on these issues had already taken place the previous October, but Hitler now took a harder position.

When UK heard about these demands, they issued a "guarantee" to Poland, that UK would not stand by idely if Hitler attacked Poland. The guarantee was designed to warn Hitler not to use force, but to use negotiations to take Danzig.

It was in any case, not a sincere guarantee to Poland. UK's had hoped that Hitler could reach a settlement with Poland and take Danzig without war. A "polish munich" so to speak. If Hitler could take Danzig and perhaps the polish corridor, UK had calculated that Hitler's next target would be the Soviet Union. And to see the Germans and the Soviets battle it out was the british policy all along.

UK while publicly talking about resisting Hitler, was secretly reaching out for a deal with Hitler in July-August 1939. This was a last ditch effort to offer concessions to Hitler to convince him not to make war.

Under such hopes of a british deal with Hitler and a peaceful resolution of the Danzig issue, the Anglo-French-Soviet talks to stop Hitler were not pursued seriously or sincerely.

Hitler, however was determined to attack Poland and have his "little european war" and paid no attention to these british overtures.

He instead, made gestures to the Soviet Union to settle their differences. UK had not anticipated this move. The Soviet Union was already suspicious of Chamberlain's intentions and seeing that they were foot-dragging on the Anglo-French-Soviet talks, they decided to strike a bargain with Hitler.

UK had by this time talked so much in public about helping Poland if Hitler attacked it, that if they did not declare war on Germany, they would have a serious loss of face and be made a laughing stock in front of the whole world.

On 1 September 1939, Germany attacked Poland. Two days later on 3 September 1939, UK had no choice but to declare war on Germany. Chamberlain didn't want to fight Germany, his original plan was to see Germany fight the Soviet. Hitler also did not expect it. He had thought that UK's previous appeasement of him was a sign of weakness.

It was a "strange" war to both sides. This "phoney" war was to last for 8 months.

Sources:

Falsifiers of History, Reprinted from the Communiqu� of the Soviet Information Bureau 1948
http://www.shunpiking.com/ol0207/0207-Non-agres-USSR-ger.htm

Stalin, appeasement, and the Second World War by Mark Jones
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mark_jones/appeasement.htm

Stalin's assessment of the international situation in March, 1939
http://www.shunpiking.com/ol0207/0207-JS-rep2cong.htm

The Germano-Soviet Pact by Alexander Zinoviev
http://www.plp.org/books/Stalin/node131.html

The Origins of World War Two by Michael Parenti
http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/barparent.htm


Summary of Carroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope, on origins of the second world war
http://how-the-world-really-works.prosperi...rID=39&BookID=5

Carroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope: The Policy of Appeasement 1931-1936
http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel/quig09.htm
http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel/quig13.htm
http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel/quig00.htm

Carroll Quigley's The Anglo-American Establishment, Chapter 12: Foreign Policy, 1919-1940
http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/cikkek/anglo_12b.html
http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/cikkek/anglo_01.html


Halford MacKinder's Necessary War by William Engdahl
http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Hist.../mackinder.html

A Century Of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order; Deterding, Montagu Norman, and Schacht's Hitler Project by William Engdahl
http://billtotten.blogspot.com/2005/01/man...-and-adolf.html


Clement Leibovitz, In Our Time: The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/085345999...glance&n=283155
http://cleibovi.shawbiz.ca/chd/index.html
http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages///H...ry/Appease.html
http://www.etext.org/Politics/Progressive....eal/chapter_one

Interview with Tony Benn, former Labour MP and British Cabinet Minister
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/stories/s1087072.htm


Interviews with Mao Zedong on the international situation in September 1939
http://marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/...-2/mswv2_17.htm
http://marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/...-2/mswv2_19.htm

Mao Zedong's talk with former British PM Edward Heath
http://english.pladaily.com.cn/special/mao/txt/w24.htm


Michael Jabara Carley, The Early Cold War, 1917 - 1939
http://gozips.uakron.edu/~mcarley/COLDWAR.html

British PM Stanley Baldwin's views on Nazi Germany:
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/....cfm?pageid=746
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/...x.cfm?pageid=79

Lord Aberconway kept Goering talks secret
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/12/1044927661990.html

The Coming of the War and Eastern Europe in WWII, Anna M. Cienciala, Lecture Notes
http://web.ku.edu/~eceurope/hist557/lect16.htm

Excerpts of German Foreign Ministry Memorandum of Hitler and Halifax, Discussion, 19 November 1937
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newsp.../no05/coben.htm
http://www2.bc.edu/~heineman/roadi.html
http://www2.bc.edu/~heineman/origins.html

Miscellaneous works:

Patrick R. Osborn, Operation Pike: Britain Versus the Soviet Union, 1939-1941
http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/GM1368.aspx
http://stonebooks.com/archives/000902.shtml
http://www.questia.com/library/book/operat...ck-r-osborn.jsp

Valentin Falin articles on WWII:

Russia would had faced WWIII had it not stormed Berlin
http://en.rian.ru/onlinenews/20050328/39700657.html

Potsdam: Farewell to the Allies
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20050630/40824482.html

Russia's Baltic policy before World War II
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20050530/40441754.html

Conversation on history
http://www.agitprop.org.au/nowar/20050322_..._on_history.php

Crimean Conference: A chance the world missed
http://en.rian.ru/onlinenews/20050202/39701121-print.html

Operation Unthinkable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable
http://www.history.neu.edu/PRO2/

Articles commenting on the international situation in 1938-1939:

Hitler Will March Again � And Soon
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newsp...no04/hitler.htm

International Crossroads
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newsp.../crossroads.htm

Danzig and the Coming War
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newsp...no07/danzig.htm

Diplomacy Hides War Plans
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newsp...08/warplans.htm

France Before the Hitlerite Danger
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/...rite-danger.htm

The Popular Front�s Guilt
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/write...11/popfront.htm

New International, October 1938, The Editor�s Comments
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newsp...o10/editors.htm

Profit and Loss
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newsp.../profitloss.htm

New Fronts
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newsp...4/newfronts.htm

40 Fighting Years
http://www.marxists.org/archive/campbell-j...hting_years.htm



Edited by Bankotsu - 21-Mar-2007 at 00:20

Originally posted by Bankotsu He instead, made gestures to the Soviet Union to settle their differences. UK had not anticipated this move. The Soviet Union was already suspicious of Chamberlain's intentions and seeing that they were foot-dragging on the Anglo-French-Soviet talks, they decided to strike a bargain with Hitler.

...i am not sure if i have the time necessary to pick these statements apart but i will add something that i wrote up in my own thread concerning Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement....

 

�.Chamberlain was looking for �The Appeasement of Europe�, to bring �total peace� to the continent�and it is quite possible that  thought was given to the policy as a way of countering the believed threat of Communism and maybe to drive Hitler east into the Soviet Union�.. as all good polticians should consider all possible alternatives and options, this option may have been thought but there is not a scrap of evidence to show this was planned��

 

�..In addition, Chamberlain firmly believed that if war did come to Europe, the advantage would go to the Soviet Union�..and he was proved correct in his assessment�Chamberlain, if forced to choose between two evils as it were, might have opted for a Fascist authority over a Communist one, but in the end, he wanted neither and chose his actions accordingly�.

Edited by Act of Oblivion - 21-Mar-2007 at 13:07

Originally posted by Bankotsu Originally posted by DukeC And the Soviets just happened to anex the Baltic states and half of Poland as an after-thought? Let's stick to the original question over the motive of UK's "appeasement" policies towards Germany. They was designed to instigate a German-Soviet war, by encouraging Hitler to expand eastwards, in the hope that it would lead to war between Germany and the Soviet. Mao Zedong's talk with former british PM Edward Heath, Heath doesn't disagree with Mao's views. Heath: I think the Soviet Union has a lot of troubles. They are facing domestic economic difficulties and agricultural predicament, and there are also differences within the leadership, over questions of tactics and timing, not over long-term strategy. Mao: I think the Soviet Union is busy with its own affairs and unable to deal with Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, China and the Pacific. I think it will lose. Heath: However, its military strength is continually augmented. Although the Soviet Union has encountered troubles at many places in the world, its strength is continuing to grow. Therefore, we deem this to be the principal threat. Does the Chairman think the Soviet Union constitutes a menace to China? Mao: We are prepared for it to come, but it will collapse if it comes. It has only a handful of troops, and you Europeans are so frightened of it! Some people in the West are always trying to direct this calamity toward China. Your senior, Chamberlain, and also Daladier of France were the ones who pushed Germany eastward. Heath: I opposed Mr. Chamberlain then. http://english.pladaily.com.cn/special/mao/txt/w24.htm

Excerpts from Carroll Quigley's "Tragedy and Hope", discussing the origins and political background to WWII:


CHAPTER XII: THE POLICY OF APPEASEMENT 1931-1936

The structure of collective security was destroyed completely under the assaults of Japan, Italy and Germany who were attacking the whole nineteenth century way of life and some of the most fundamental attributes of Western Civilization itself. They were in revolt against democracy, against the parliamentary system, against laissez-faire and the liberal outlook, against nationalism (although in the name of nationalism), against humanitarianism, against science and against all respect for human dignity and human decency. It was recruited from the dregs of society.

During the nineteenth century, goals were completely lost or were reduced to the most primitive level of obtaining more power and more wealth. But the constant acquisition of power or wealth, like a narcotic for which the need grows as its use increases without in any way satisfying the user, left man's "higher" nature unsatisfied.

Germany could have made no aggression without the acquiescence and even in some cases the actual encouragement of the "satisfied" Powers, especially Britain.

THE JAPANESE ASSAULT, 1931-1941

The similarity between Germany and Japan was striking: each had a completely cartelized industry, a militaristic tradition, a hard-working population which respected authority and loved order, a facade of parliamentary constitutionalism which barely concealed the reality of power wielded by an alliance of army, landlords, and industry.

The steady rise in tariffs against Japanese manufactured goods after 1897 led by America served to increase the difficulties of Japan's position. The world depression and the financial crisis hit Japan a terrible blow. Under this impact, the reactionary and aggressive forces were able to solidify their control and embark on that adventure of aggression and destruction that ultimately led to the disasters of 1945.

Separate from the armed forces were the forces of monopoly capitalism, the eight great economic complexes controlled as family units knows as "zaibatsu" which controlled 75% of the nation's wealth. By 1930, the militarists and zaibatsu came together in their last fateful alliance.

Japan's unfavorable balance of trade was reflected in a heavy outflow of gold in 1937-1938. It was clear that Japan was losing its financial and commercial ability to buy necessary materials of foreign origin. The steps taken by America, Australia, and others to restrict export of strategic or military materials to Japan made this problem even more acute. The attack on China had been intended to remedy this situation by removing the Chinese boycott on Japanese goods.

Under the pressure of the growing reluctance of neutral countries to supply Japan with necessary strategic goods, the most vital being petroleum products and rubber, it seemed that the occupation of the Dutch Indies and Malaya could do much to alleviate these shortages but which would lead to an American war on Japan. They decided to attack the United States first.

THE ITALIAN ASSAULT, 1934-1936

In 1922, the Fascists came to power in a parliamentary system; in 1925 it was replaced by a political dictatorship while the economic system remained that of orthodox financial capitalism; in 1927 an orthodox and restrictive stabilization of the lira on the international gold standard led to such depressed economic conditions that Mussolini adopted a much more active foreign policy; in 1934 Italy replaced orthodox economic measures by a totalitarian economy functioning beneath a fraudulent corporate facade.

Italy was dissatisfied over its lack of colonial gains at Versailles and the refusal of the League to accede to Tittoni's request for a redistribution of the world's resources in accordance with population needs made in 1920.

In a series of agreements with Austria and Hungary known as the "Rome Protocols," the Austrian government under Engelbert Dollfuss destroyed the democratic institutions of Austria, wiped out all Socialist and working-class organizations, and established a one-party dictatorial corporate state at Mussolini's behest in 1934. Hitler took advantage of this to attempt a Nazi coup in Austria, murdering Dollfuss in July 1934 but he was prevented by the quick mobilization of Italian troops on the Brenner frontier and a stern warning from Mussolini.

Hitler's ascension to office in Germany in 1933 found French foreign policy paralyzed by British opposition to any efforts to support collective security or to enforce German observation of its treaty obligations by force. As a result, a suggestion from Poland in 1933 for joint armed intervention in Germany to remove Hitler from office was rejected by France. Poland at once made an non-aggression pact with Germany and extended a previous one with the Soviet Union.

In 1934, France under Jean Louis Bathou, began to adopt a more active policy against Hitler seeking to encircle Germany by bringing the Soviet Union and Italy into a revived alignment of France, Poland, the Little Entente, Greece and Turkey.

France's Laval was convinced that Italy could be brought into the anti-German front only if its long-standing grievances and unfulfilled ambitions in Africa could be met. Accordingly, he gave Mussolini 7% of the stock in the Djibouti-Addis Ababa Railway, a stretch of desert 114,000 square miles in extent but containing only a few hundred persons (sixty-two according to Mussolini) on the border of Libya, a small wedge of territory between French Somaliland and Italian Eritrea, and the right to ask for concessions throughout Ethiopia.

While Laval insisted that he had made no agreement which jeopardized Ethiopia's independence or territorial integrity, he made it equally clear that Italian support against Germany was more important than the integrity of Ethiopia in his eyes. France had been Ethiopia's only friend and had brought it into the League of Nations. Italy had been prevented from conquering Ethiopia in 1896 only by a decisive defeat of her invading forces at the hands of the Ethiopians themselves, while in 1925, Britain and Italy had cut her up into economic spheres by an agreement which was annulled by a French appeal to the League. Laval's renunciation of France's traditional support of Ethiopian independence brought Italy, Britain and France into agreement on this issue.

This point of view was not shared by public opinion in these three countries. Stanley Baldwin (party leader and prime minister) erected one of the most astonishing examples of British "dual" policy in the appeasement period. While publicly supporting collective security and sanctions against Italian aggression, the government privately negotiated to destroy the League and to yield Ethiopia to Italy. They were completely successful in this secret policy.

The Italian invaders had no real fear of British military sanctions when they put a major part of their forces in the Red Sea separated from home by the British-controlled Suez canal. The British government's position was clearly stated in a secret report by Sir John Maffey which declared that Italian control of Ethiopia would be a "matter of indifference" to Britain. This opinion was shared by the French government too. Unfortunately, public opinion was insisting on collective sanctions against the aggressor. To meet this demand, both governments engaged in a public policy of unenforced or partially enforced sanctions at wide variance with their real intentions.

Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare delivered a smashing speech to support sanctions against Italy. The day previously he and Anthony Eden had secretly agreed with Pierre Laval to impose only partial economic sanctions avoiding all actions such as blockade of the Suez canal.

A number of governments including Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France and Britain had stopped all exports of munitions to Ethiopia as early as May 1935 although Ethiopia's appeal to the League for help had been made on March 17th while the Italian attack did not come until October. The net result was that Ethiopia was left defenceless and her appeal to the US for support was at once rejected. Hoare's speech evoked such applause from the British public that Baldwin decided to hold a general election on that issue. Accordingly, with ringing pledge to support collective security, the National government won an amazing victory and stayed in power until the next general election ten years later (1945).

Although Article 16 of the League Covenant bound the signers to break off all trade with an aggressor, France and Britain combined to keep their economic sanctions partial and ineffective. The imposition of oil sanctions was put off again and again until the conquest of Ethiopia was complete. The refusal to establish this sanction resulted from a joint British-French refusal on the grounds that an oil sanction would be so effective that Italy would be compelled to break of its was with Ethiopia and would, in desperation, make war on Britain and France. This, at least, was the amazing logic offered by the British government later.

Hoare and Laval worked out a secret deal which would have given Italy outright about one-sixth of Ethiopia. When news of this deal was broken to the public, there was a roar of protest on the grounds that this violated the election pledge made but a month previously. To save his government, Baldwin had to sacrifice Hoare who resigned on December 19 but returned to Cabinet on June 5 as soon as Ethiopia was decently buried. Laval fell from office and was succeeded by Pierre Flandin who pursued the same policy.

Ethiopia was conquered on May 2 1936. Sanctions were removed in the next two months just as they were beginning to take effect. The consequences of the Ethiopian fiasco were of the greatest importance.

The Conservative Party in England was entrenched in office for a decade during which it carried out its policy of appeasement and waged the resulting war. The US passed a "Neutrality Act" which encouraged aggression, at the outbreak of war, by cutting off supplies to both sides, to the aggressor who had armed at his leisure and to the victim as yet unarmed. Above all, it destroyed French efforts to encircle Germany.

CIRCLES AND COUNTERCIRCLES, 1935-1939

The remilitarization of the Rhineland in violation of the Versailles Treaty was the most important result of the Ethiopian crisis.

In order to destroy the French and Soviet alliances with Czechoslovakia, Britain and Germany sought to encircle France and the Soviet Union in order to dissuade France from honoring its alliances with either Czechoslovakia or the Soviet Union and France, finding itself encircled, dishonored its alliance with Czechoslovakia when it came due in 1938.

The British attitude towards eastern Europe was made perfectly clear when Sir John Simon demanded arms equality for Germany. Adding to the encirclement of France was the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of June 1935.

Parallel with the encirclement of France went the encirclement of the Soviet Union known as the anti-Comintern Pact, the union of Germany and Japan against Communism. The last encirclement was that against Czechoslovakia. Hungary and Germany were both opposed to Czechoslovakia as an "artificial" creation of the Versailles Conference. The Polish-German agreement of 1934 opened a campaign until the Polish invasion in 1938.

An analysis of the motivations of Britain in 1938-1939 is bound to be difficult because the motives of government were clearly not the same as the motives of the people and in no country has secrecy and anonymity been carried so has been been so well preserved as in Britain. In general, motives become vaguer and less secret as we move our attention from the innermost circles of the government outward. As if we were looking at the layers of an onion, we may discern four points of view:

1) the anti-Bolsheviks at the center;
2) the "three-bloc-world" supporters close to the center;
3) the supporters of "appeasement" and
4) the "peace at any price" group in peripheral position.

The chief figures in the anti-Bolshevik group were Lord Curzon, Lord D'Abernon and General Smuts. They did what they could to destroy reparations and permit German re-armament.

This point of view was supported by the second group, the Round Table Group, and came later to be called the Clivenden Set which included Lord Milner, Lord Brand (managing director of Lazard Brothers, international bankers). This group wielded great influence because it controlled the Rhodes Trust and dominated the Royal Institute of International Affairs. They sought to contain the Soviet Union rather than destroy it as the anti-Bolsheviks wanted. They advocated a secret alliance of Britain with the German military leaders against the Soviet.

Abandoning Austria, Czechoslovakia and the Polish Corridor to Germany was the aim of both the anti-Bolsheviks and the "three-bloc" people.

From August 1935 to March 1939, the government built upon the fears of the "peace at any price" group by steadily exaggerating Germany's armed might and belittling their own, by calculated indiscretions like the statement that there were no real anti-aircraft guns in London, by constant hammering at the danger of air attack without warning, by building ostentatious and quite useless air-raid trenches in the streets and parks of London, and by insisting through daily warnings that everyone must be fitted with a gas mask immediately (although the danger of a gas attack was nil).

In this way, the government put London into a panic in 1938 and by this panic, Chamberlain was able to get the people to accept the destruction of Czechoslovakia. Since he could not openly appeal on the anti-Bolshevik basis, he had to adopt the expedient of pretending to resist (in order to satisfy the British public) while really continuing to make every possible concession to Hitler which would bring Germany to a common frontier with the Soviet Union.

Chamberlain's motives were not really bad ones; he wanted peace so he could devote Britain's limited resources to social welfare; but he was narrow and totally ignorant of the realities of power, convinced that international politics could be conducted in terms of secret deals, as business was, and he was quite ruthless in carrying out his aims, especially in his readiness to sacrifice non-English persons who, in his eyes, did not count.

CHAPTER XIII: THE DISRUPTION OF EUROPE, 1937-1939

AUSTRIA INFELIX, 1933-1938

The Austria which was left after the Treaty of St. Germain consisted of little more than the great city of Vienna surrounded by a huge but inadequate suburb whose population had been reduced from 52 to 6.6 million.

The Social Democrats were unable to reconcile their desire for union with Germany (called Anschluss) with the need for financial aid from the Entente Powers who opposed this. The Social Democrats embarked on an amazing program of social welfare by a system of direct taxes which bore heavily on the well-to-do.

Before 1914, the living conditions of the poor had been maintained by a very undemocratic political system under which only 83,000 persons, on a property basis, were allowed to vote and 5,500 of the richest were allowed to choose one-third of all seats on city council. By 1933, the Social Democrats had built almost 60,000 dwellings so efficiently that the average cost per apartment was only about $1,650 each with average rent of $2 per month. Thus the poor of Vienna had all kinds of free or cheap medical care, dental care, education, libraries, amusements, sports, school lunches and maternity care provided by the city.

While this was going on in Vienna, the Christian Socialist-Pan-German federal government of Catholic priest Monsignor Ignaz Seipel was sinking deeper into corruption. The diversion of public funds to banks and industries controlled by Seipel's supporters was revealed by parliamentary investigations in spite of the government's efforts to conceal the facts.

Seipel formed a "Unity List" of all the anti-Socialist parties he could muster but the election gave his party only 73 seats compared to 71 for the Social Democrats, 12 for the pan-Germans, 9 for the Agrarian League. He sought to change the Austrian constitution into a presidential dictatorship which required a two-thirds vote. It became necessary to use illegal methods.

The secret documents published since 1945 make it quite clear that Germany had no carefully laid plans to annex Austria and was not encouraging violence by the Nazis in Austria. Instead, every effort was made to restrict the Austrian Nazis to propaganda in order to win a gradual peaceful extension of Nazi influence.

The invasion of Austria in 1938 was a pleasant surprise even for the Nazi leaders and arose from several unexpected favorable circumstances. Secret documents now make it clear that in 1937 the German and British governments made secret decisions which sealed the fate of Austria and Czechoslovakia. It is evident from some of Hitler's statements that he had already received certain information about the secret decisions being made by Chamberlain on the British side.

The British government group controlling foreign policy had reached a seven point decision regarding Germany:

1) Hitler's Germany was the front-line bulwark against the spread of Communism in Europe.
2) The aim was a four power pact including Britain, France, Italy and Germany to exclude all Russian influence from Europe.
3) Britain had no objection to German acquisition of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Danzig.
4) Germany must not use force to achieve its aims as this would precipitate a war in which Britain would have to intervene.
5) An agreement with Germany restricting the number and use of bombing planes was desired.
6) Britain would give Germany certain (Portuguese and Belgian) African colonies, given German cooperation with the above.
7) Britain would pressure Czechoslovakia and Poland to negotiate with Germany on its desires.

For years before June 1938, the government insisted that British rearming was progressing in a satisfactory fashion. Churchill questioned this and produced figures on German rearmament to prove that Britain's own progress in this field was inadequate. These figures (which were not correct) were denied by the government. As late as March 1938, Chamberlain said that British rearmament were such as to make Britain an "almost terrifying power." But as the year went on, the government adopted a quite different attitude. In order to persuade public opinion that it was necessary to yield to Germany, the government pretended that its armaments were quite inadequate.

We now know that this was a gross exaggeration. Britain produced almost 3000 "military" planes in 1938 and about 8,000 in 1939 compared to 3350 "combat" planes produced in Germany in 1938 and 4,733 in 1939.

It is quite clear that Britain did not yield to superior force in 1938, as was stated at the time and has been stated since by many writers including Churchill. We have evidence that Chamberlain knew these facts but consistently gave a contrary impression and that Lord Halifax went so far as to call forth protests from the British military attaches in Prague and Paris.

The British government made it clear to Germany both publicly and privately that they would not oppose Germany's projects. Dirksen wrote to Ribbentrop on June 3 1938 "Anything which could be got without firing a shot can count upon the agreement of the British."

THE CZECHOSLOVAK CRISIS, 1937-1938

The economic discontent became stronger after the onset of the world depression in 1929 and especially after Hitler demonstrated that his policies could bring prosperity to Germany.

Within two weeks of Hitler's annexation of Austria, Britain put pressure on the Czechs to make concessions to the Germans; to encourage France and Germany to do the same. All this was justified by the argument that Germany would be satisfied if it obtained the Sudetenland and the Polish Corridor. All these assumptions were dubious.

Czechoslovakia was eliminated with the help of German aggression, French indecision and war-weariness, and British public appeasement and merciless secret pressure.

Five days after Anschluss, the Soviet government call for collective actions to stop aggression and to eliminate the increased danger of a new world slaughter was rejected by Lord Halifax.

It was necessary to impose the plan for Czechoslovakia on public opinion of the world by means of the slowly mounting war scare which reached the level of absolute panic on September 28th. The mounting horror of the relentless German mobilization was built up day by day while Britain and France ordered the Czechs not to mobilize in order "not to provoke Germany."

We now know that all these statements and rumors were not true and that the British government knew that they were not true at the time.

The Chamberlain government knew these facts but consistently gave a contrary impression. Lord Halifax particularly distorted the facts. Just as the crisis was reaching the boiling point in September 1938, the British ambassador in Paris reported to London that Colonel Lindbergh had just emerged from Germany with a report that Germany had 8,000 military planes and could manufacture 1,500 a month. We now know that Germany had about 1,500 planes, manufactured 280 a month.

Lindbergh repeated his tale of woe daily both in Paris and in London during the crisis. The British government began to fit the people of London with gas masks, the prime minister and the king called on the people to dig trenches in the parks, schoolchildren began to be evacuated. In general, every report or rumor which could add to the panic and defeatism was played up, and everything that might contribute to a strong or a united resistance to Germany was played down.

The Anglo-French decision was presented to the Czechoslovak government at 2a.m. on September 19 to be accepted at once. The Czechoslovak government accepted at 5p.m. on September 21st. Lord Halifax at once ordered the Czech police to be withdrawn from the Sudeten districts, and expressed the wish that the German troops move in at once.

At Munich, Hitler, Chamberlain, Mussolini and Daladier carved up Czechoslovakia without consulting anyone, least of all the Czechs. Germany was supreme in Europe. Since this was exactly what Chamberlain and his friends had wanted, they should have been satisfied.

THE YEAR OF DUPES, 1939

Concessions to Germany continued but now parallel with concessions went a real effort to build up a strong front against Hitler.

The anti-Bolshevik and "three-bloc-world" groups had expected Hitler would get the Sudetenland, Danzig, and perhaps the Polish Corridor and that he would then be stabilized between the "oceanic bloc" and the Soviet Union.

As a result of these hidden and conflicting forces, the history of international relations from September 1938 and September 1939 or even later is neither simple nor consistent.

In general, the key to everything was the position of Britain. As a result of Lord Halifax's "dyarchic" policy, there were not only two policies but two groups carrying them out. Lord Halifax tried to satisfy the public demand for an end to appeasement; while Chamberlain, Wilson, Simon and Hoare sought to make secret concessions to Hitler in order to achieve a general Anglo-German settlement.

The one policy was public; the other was secret. Since the Foreign Office knew of both, it tried to build up the "peace front" against Germany so that it would look sufficiently imposing to satisfy public opinion and to drive Hitler to seek his desires by negotiation rather than by force so that public opinion in England would not force the government to declare a war that they did not want in order to remain in office.

This complex plan broke down because Hitler was determined to have a war merely for the personal emotional thrill of wielding great power, while the effort to make a "peace front" sufficiently collapsible so that it could be case aside if Hitler either obtained his goals by negotiation or made a general settlement with Chamberlain merely resulted in making a "peace front" which was so weak it could neither maintain peace by threat of force nor win a war when peace was lost.

On March 15th, Chamberlain told the Commons that he accepted the seizure of Czechoslovakia and refused to accuse Hitler of bad faith. But two days later, when the howls of rage from the British public showed that he had misjudged the electorate, he denounced the seizure.

However, nothing was done other than to recall Henderson from Berlin for consultations and cancel a visit to Berlin by the president of the Board of Trade. The seizure was declared illegal but was recognized in fact at once. Moreover, #6 million in Czech gold reserves in London were turned over to Germany with the puny and untrue excuse that the British government could not give orders to the Bank of England.

Germany opened its negotiations with Poland in a fairly friendly way on October 24, 1938. It asked for Danzig and a strip a kilometer wide across the Polish Corridor to provide a highway and four-track railroad under German sovereignty. Poland's economic and harbor rights in Danzig were to be guaranteed and the "corridor across the Corridor" was to be isolated from Polish communications facilities by bridging or tunneling. Germany also wanted Poland to join an anti-Russian bloc. Germany was prepared to guarantee the country's existing frontiers, to extend the Non-aggression Pact of 1934 for 25 years, to guarantee the independence of Slovakia and to dispose of Ruthenia as Poland wished. These suggestions were rejected by Poland. About the same time, the Germans were using pressure on Romania to obtain an economic agreement which was signed on March 23rd.

On March 17, London received a false report of a German ultimatum to Romania. Lord Halifax lost his head and, without checking his information, sent telegrams to Greece, Turkey, Poland, Bulgaria, Soviet Union asking what each country was prepared to do in the event of a German aggression against Romania. Four replied by asking London what it was prepared to do but Moscow suggested and immediate conference which Halifax rebuffed, wanting nothing more than an agreement to consult in a crisis. Poland was reluctant to sign any agreement involving Russia. However, when news reached London of Hitler's demands on Poland, Britain suddenly issued a unilateral guarantee of the latter state (March 31st).

"In the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence and which the Polish government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty's Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power."

This was an extraordinary assurance. The British government since 1918 had resolutely refused any bilateral agreement guaranteeing any state in western Europe. Now they were making a "unilateral" declaration in "eastern" Europe and they were giving that state the responsibility of deciding when that guarantee would take effect, something quite unprecedented. If Germany used force in Poland, public opinion in Britain would force Britain to declare war whether there was a guarantee or not.

If the chief purpose of the unilateral guarantee to Poland was to frighten Germany, it had precisely the opposite effect.

Hitler announced that the terms he had offered Poland had been rejected, negotiations broken off. The crisis was intensified by provocative acts on both sides.

In 1939, there was talk of a British loan to Poland of #100 million in May; on August 1 Poland finally got a credit for $8 million at a time when all London was buzzing about a secret loan of #1 billion from Britain to Germany.

In 1936, Poland was given 2 billion francs as a rearmament loan and on May 19, 1939, an agreement was signed by which France promised full air support to Poland on the first day of war, local skirmishing by the third day, and a full-scale offensive on the sixteenth day.

On Aug. 23, General Gamelin informed his government that no military support could be given to Poland until the spring of 1940 and that a full-scale offensive could not be made before 1941-1942. Poland was never informed of this change and seems to have entered the war on September 1st in the belief that a full-scale offensive would be made against Germany during September.

The failure to support Poland was probably deliberate in the hope that this would force Poland to negotiate with Hitler. If so, it was a complete failure. Poland was so encouraged by the British guarantee that it not only refused to make concessions but also prevented the reopening of negotiations by one excuse after another until the last day of peace.

In light of these facts, the British efforts to reach a settlement with Hitler and their reluctance to make an alliance with Russia, were very unrealistic. Nevertheless, they continued to exhort the Poles to reopen negotiations with Hitler, and continued to inform the German government that the justice of their claims to Danzig and the Corridor were recognized but that these claims must be fulfilled by peaceful means and that force would inevitably be met with force.

The British continued to emphasize that the controversy was over Danzig when everyone else knew that Danzig was merely a detail, and an almost indefensible detail. Danzig was no issue on which to fight a world war, but it was an issue on which negotiation was almost mandatory. This may have been why Britain insisted that it was the chief issue. But because it was not the chief issue, Poland refused to negotiate because it feared it would lead to partition of Poland.

Danzig was a free city under supervision of the League of Nations and while it was within the Polish customs and under Polish economic control, it was already controlled politically under a German Gauleiter and would at any moment vote to join Germany if Hitler consented.

Lord Halifax's report reads: "Herr Hitler asked whether England would be willing to accept an alliance with Germany. I said I did not exclude such a possibility provided the development of events justified it."

The theory that Russia learned of these British approaches to Germany in July 1939 is supported by the fact that the obstacles and delays in the path of a British-Russian agreement were made by Britain from the middle of April to the second week of July but were made by Russia from the second week in July to the end on August 21st.

The Russians probably regarded the first British suggestion that the Soviet Union should give unilateral guarantees to Poland similar to those of Britain as a trap to get them into a war with Germany in which Britain would do little or nothing or even give aid to Germany. That this last possibility was not completely beyond reality is clear from the fact that Britain did prepare an expeditionary force to attack Russia in March 1940 when Britain was technically at war with Germany but was doing nothing to fight her.

Russia offered the guarantee if it were extended to all states on their western frontier including Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania. This offer meant that Russia was guaranteeing its renunciation of all the territory in these six states which it had lost to them since 1917.

Instead of accepting the offer, the British began to quibble. They refused to guarantee the Baltic States on the ground that these states did not want to be guaranteed although they had guaranteed Poland on March 31st when Jozef Beck did not want it and had just asked the Soviet Union to guarantee Poland and Romania, neither of whom wanted a Soviet guarantee. When the Russians insisted, the British countered by insisting that Greece, Turkey, Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland must also be guaranteed.

France and Russia were both pushing Britain to form a Triple Alliance but Britain was reluctant and delayed the discussions to the great irritation of the Soviet leaders. To show its displeasure, the Soviet Union on May 3rd replaced Litvinov with Molotov as foreign minister. This would have been a warning, Litvinov knew the West and was favorable to democracy and to the Western Powers. As a Jew, he was anti-Hitler. Molotov was a contrast from every point of view.

On May 19th, Chamberlain refused an alliance and pointed with satisfaction to "that great virile nation on the borders of Germany which under this agreement (of April 6th) is bound to give us all the aid and assistance it can." He was talking about Poland!

The members of the military mission took a slow ship (speed thirteen knots) and did not reach Moscow until August 11th. They were again negotiators of second rank. In London, according to rumor, neither side wanted an agreement. Considering Chamberlain's secret efforts to make a settlement with Germany, there is no reason to believe that he wanted an agreement with Russia.

The Russians demanded an exact military commitment as to what forces would be used against Germany; they wanted guarantees whether the states concerned accepted or not; they wanted specific permission to fight across a territory such as Poland. These demands were flatly rejected by Poland on August 19th. On the same day, Russia signed a commercial treaty with Germany. Two days later, France ordered its negotiators to sign the right to cross Poland but Russia refused to accept this until Poland consented as well.

On Aug. 23, Ribbentrop and Molotov signed an agreement which provided that neither signer would take any aggressive action against the other signer or give any support to a third Power in such action. The secret protocol delimited spheres of interest in eastern Europe. The line followed the northern boundary of Lithuania and the Narew, Vistula, and San rivers in Poland and Germany gave Russia a free hand in Bessarabia. This agreement was greeted as a stunning surprise in the Entente countries. There was no reason why it should have been.

The British begged the Poles and the Germans to negotiate; the Italians tried to arrange another four-Power conference; various outsiders issued public and private appeals for peace; secret emissaries flew back and forth between London and Germany.

All this was in vain because Hitler was determined on war and his attention was devoted to manufacturing incidents to justify his approaching attack. Political prisoners were taken from concentration camps, dressed in German uniforms, and killed on the Polish frontier as "evidence" of Polish aggression. A fraudulent ultimatum with sixteen superficially reasonable demands on Poland was presented to the British ambassador when the time limit had elapsed. It was not presented to the Poles because the Polish ambassador in Berlin had been ordered by Beck not to accept any document from the Germans.

The German invasion of Poland at 4:45a.m. on September 1, 1939, did not end the negotiations to make peace, nor did the complete collapse of Polish resistance on September 16. Since these efforts were futile, little need be said of them except that France and Britain did not declare war on Germany until more than two days had elapsed. During this time, no ultimatums were sent to Germany. On September 3 at 9a.m., Britain presented an ultimatum which expired at 11a.m. In a similar fashion, France entered the war at 6p.m. on September 3.


Source:
http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel/quig00.htm


Then in July 1936 the Spanish civil war began. Tory ideological dread was brought to a fine edge. The Spanish civil war could lead to a European conflict between ideological blocs; and war could provoke the spread of communist revolution or Soviet influence. It was better, a lot of Tories thought, to turn Germany eastward against the USSR. "Let gallant little Germany glut her fill of reds in the East...," suggested one Tory M.P. (Henry Channon, September 1936).

Even the British prime minister, Stanley Baldwin was attracted by the idea.

http://gozips.uakron.edu/~mcarley/COLDWAR.html

Baldwin took the view that Germany planned to strike east not west; that a showdown between the Nazis and Bolsheviks wouldn't be a bad thing...

http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=746

Baldwin reveals with equal clarity that he is ambivalent about what sort of foreign policy to follow. He is suspicious of an alliance with Russia, and also with France, which he feared was connected to Russia: "If there is any fighting in Europe to be done, I should like to see the Bolshies and the Nazis doing it."

Churchill himself was presented with this same idea by Stanley Baldwin, who hoped to wait in prosperity, peace, and relative weakness while the "Bolshies and the Nazis fought it out."

http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=79

And by this date, certain members of the Milner Group and of the British Conservative government had reached the fantastic idea that they could kill two birds with one stone by setting Germany and Russia against one another in Eastern Europe.

In this way they felt that the two enemies would stalemate one another, or that Germany would become satisfied with the oil of Rumania and the wheat of the Ukraine.

It never occurred to anyone in a responsible position that Germany and Russia might make common cause, even temporarily, against the West.  Even less did it occur to them that Russia might beat Germany and thus open all Central Europe to Bolshevism.

http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/cikkek/anglo_12b.html

...egging on the Germans to march farther east, promising them easy pickings, and prompting them: "Just start war on the Bolsheviks, and everything will be all right." It must be admitted that this too looks very much like egging on and encouraging the aggressor...

-- Stalin's assessment of the international situation in March, 1939.

http://www.shunpiking.com/ol0207/0207-JS-rep2cong.htm

...Their purpose is to connive at wars of aggression and to profit by them... Then they wanted to sacrifice the Soviet Union. This plot was clearly revealed in the recent Anglo-French-Soviet talks.

..."The inevitable result of Chamberlain's policy will be like 'lifting a rock only to drop it on one's own toes'." Chamberlain started with the aim of injuring others only to end up by ruining himself. This is the law of development which governs all reactionary policies...

-- Mao Zedong's views on the international situation in September 1939.

http://marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_17.htm

...(England) kept hoping against hope that she could embroil Russia and Germany with each other and thus escape scot-free herself.'

-- Harold L. Ickes, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), p. 705.

http://www.plp.org/books/Stalin/node131.html

Edited by Bankotsu - 22-Mar-2007 at 00:05

I agree. All anti-Brit conspiracy theorems and motives aside the obvious remains just that.  The obvious.

Edited by Lord Ranulf - 23-Mar-2007 at 15:05

I'm sure you believe this Bankotsu, just as most revisionists believe their version, counter to the record and scholarship of decades, is correct. But this unfortunately, doesn't make it so. It merely highlights what's already been said. And while i'll now agree that my use of the term 'anti-brit' was premature, that also remains to be seen. But by all means, please proceed. I haven't had this much fun in reading speculative nonsense such as this, imo, in years. I shall refrain from interrupting or respondiing to you further.

Edited by Lord Ranulf - 24-Mar-2007 at 00:19

Originally posted by Ovidius Having read this on the SMQ forum, Yasis, this argument is really pointless. You have already seen how no one agrees with this ideas and there have been at least 5people who have proved many of yours and the assertions within the links, to be false. Conspiracies do not make good history. They are based on theories that remained unproved.

What I believed is that Britain encouraged Nazi Germany to become stronger because of the new threat from Communist USSR. Britain did not want to confront Stalin's army, so they tried to use Hitler as a shield. After all, Germany proved to be a strong military nation.

Originally posted by DukeC On the other hand the Soviets vulnerability was mostly of it's own doing. If Stalin hadn't killed off most of his officier corps in the late 1930s the Soviet Union wouldn't have been in the terrible straights it was in 1941-42. Stalins' pact with Hitler in 1939 made him an ally of Germany and made Britains position even more precarious.