WWII

The Road to WWII1919-1941

Vladimir Lenin-USSR

Treaty of Versailles

Hall of Mirrors

• Go over Europe After WWII/TOV, Reaction to TOV Overhead

Treaty of Versailles• Territorial• The following land was taken away from Germany :• Alsace-Lorraine (given to France)• Eupen and Malmedy (given to Belgium)• Northern Schleswig (given to Denmark)• Hultschin (given to Czechoslovakia)• West Prussia, Posen and Upper Silesia (given to Poland)• The Saar, Danzig and Memel were put under the control of the

League of Nations and the people of these regions would be allowed to vote to stay in Germany or not in a future referendum.

• The League of Nations also took control of Germany's overseas colonies.

• Germany had to return to Russia land taken in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Some of this land was made into new states : Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. An enlarged Poland also received some of this land

Treaty of Versailles

• Military• Germany’s army was reduced to 100,000 men; the

army was not allowed tanks• Germany was not allowed an airforce• Germany was allowed only 6 capital naval ships and

no submarines • The west of the Rhineland and 50 kms east of the

River Rhine was made into a demilitarized zone (DMZ). No German soldier or weapon was allowed into this zone. The Allies were to keep an army of occupation on the west bank of the Rhine for 15 years.

Treaty of Versailles

• Financial• The loss of vital industrial territory would be

a severe blow to Germany’s economy. Coal from the Saar and Upper Silesia in particular was a vital economic loss.

• Combined with the financial penalties linked to reparations($33 billion), it seemed clear to Germany that the Allies wanted nothing else but to bankrupt them.

• Germany was also forbidden to unite with Austria to form one superstate.

Treaty of Versailles• General• 1. Germany had to admit full responsibility for starting the war.

This was Clause 231 - the infamous "War Guilt Clause".

• 2. Germany, as it was responsible for starting the war as stated in clause 231, was therefore responsible for all the war damage caused by the First World War. Therefore, they had to pay reparations, the bulk of which would go to France and Belgium to pay for the damage done to both countries by the war. The figure was eventually put at $33 billion .

• 3. A League of Nations was set up to keep world peace. 

The German reaction to the Treaty of Versailles

• There was anger throughout Germany when the terms were made public.

• The Treaty became known as a Diktat - as it was being forced on them and the Germans had no choice but to sign it.

• Many in Germany did not want the Treaty signed, but the representatives there knew that they had no choice as Germany was incapable of restarting the war again.

The Consequences of Versailles

• the Treaty seemed to satisfy the "Big Three" as in their eyes it was a just peace as it kept Germany weak yet strong enough to stop the spread of communism; kept the French border with Germany safe from another German attack and created the League of Nations that would end warfare throughout the world.

• left a mood of anger throughout Germany as it was felt that as a nation Germany had been unfairly treated. 

• Above all else, Germany hated the clause blaming them for the cause of the war and the war reparations the treaty forced on them. Those who signed it became known as the "November Criminals".

• Many German citizens felt that they were being punished for the mistakes of the German government in August 1914 as it was the government that had declared war not the people.

Were the terms of the Treaty of Versailles actually carried out ?

• The League of Nations was to be created. This did happen even if Germany was initially excluded from it.

• Land had to be handed over the Poland, France, Belgium and Denmark. This did happen - all the land Germany was required to hand over, was handed over. Territory put under League of Nations control was handed over to the League.

• All overseas colonies were to be handed over to the League. This did happen.

• All land taken from Russia had to be handed back to Russia. This did happen though land in the western area became Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in keeping with the belief in national self-determination.

• Germany’s army had to be reduced to 100,000 men. On paper this happened. The fact that Germany side-stepped the rule did not mean that they broke it. German soldiers in the 1920’s were signed on for a short contract of service and then put in the reserves once their time had finished. Therefore, Germany never had more than 100,000 soldiers serving at any one time though it certainly had substantial reserve soldiers which boosted Hitler when he renounced the clauses of Versailles.

Were the terms of the Treaty of Versailles actually carried out ?

• Germany’s navy was reduced to 6 battleships with no submarines. This happened. Germany could not afford battleships in the aftermath of the war and most navies were now moving to smaller, faster ships that could also carry weapons that carried a punch - such as cruisers. Aircraft carriers were also being developed with greater commitment.

• No air force was allowed. This happened but potential pilots were trained abroad or used gliders in Germany to educate them in the theory of flying. This did not break Versailles.

• Western Germany was to be demilitarized. This happened.

• Germany was forbidden to unite with Austria. This happened.

• Germany had to accept the "War Guilt Clause" and pay reparations. The former happened because Germany signed the Treaty which meant that it accepted this term on paper. Germany did try and pay reparations when it could do so. Germany simply could not produce enough to keep up. In the 1920’s it was the Allies who took the decision to reduce reparations and eased Germany’s struggle in so doing. The first instance of refusal to pay reparations came in 1933 when Hitler announced that Germany would not pay - and the Allies did nothing.

Treaty of Versailles Questions• The Germans had hoped to be consulted on the terms of

Versailles. This did not  happen. Is this why the Germans were so angry about the Treaty of Versailles?

• Article 231 is referred to as the "War Guilt Clause". Why were the Germans particularly angered by this Article?

• There were 5 peace settlements in 1919. Why was Versailles more important than others?

• Why was there so much opposition in Germany to the Treaty of Versailles?

Weimar Republic

Weimer Republic

• Why did it fail in Germany?

League of Nations

League of Nations

• What is it?

• What were it’s weaknesses?

Benito Mussolini

Washington Naval Conference

Hitler as a baby in Austria

Mussolini and Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Mein Kampf

Mein Kampf “My Struggle”Excerpts

• “If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity and this planet will, as it did thousands of years ago, move through the ether devoid of men.”

• “Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.”

• “Here he stops at nothing, and in his vileness he becomes so gigantic that no one need be surprised if among our people the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.”

• “With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people. With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate. Just as he himself systematically ruins women and girls, he does not shrink back from pulling down the blood barriers for others, even on a large scale. It was and it is Jews who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily resulting bastardization, throwing it down from its cultural and political height, and himself rising to be its master.”

Nazi Propaganda

• "All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those toward whom it is directed will understand it...  Through clever  and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."

• -- Adolf Hitler

More Posters

• Nazi Posters: 1933-1945

Iosif Jughashvili/Joseph Stalin

Kellogg-Briand Pact

• Afghanistan, Finland, Peru, Albania,• Guatemala, Portugal, Austria, Hungary,• Rumania, Bulgaria, Iceland, Russia, China

Latvia, Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Denmark, Lithuania, Siam,

• Dominican Republic, Netherlands, Spain, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sweden, Estonia,

• Norway, Turkey, Ethiopia, Panama, Cuba, Liberia

Japanese Invasion of Manchuria

Japanese Invasion of Manchuria• What did this affair prove ?

1.The League could not enforce its authority. 2.A major power could get away with using force 3.An issue so far from Europe was not likely to attract the whole-hearted support of the major European powers in the League - Britain and France. 4. Great Britain was more concerned with it’s territories in the Far East than in the maintenance of law and order. 5. Other powers would see this as a sign that they too could get away with the use of force 6. The League also lost its most powerful member in the Far East and ultimately Japan was to unite with the two other nations that broke League rules - Germany and Italy.

Franklin Roosevelt vs Herbert Hoover

1932 Election

Good Neighbor Policy

Nuremburg Laws 1935

1. Made Jews second class citizens and removed their basic civil rights.

2. established membership in the Jewish race as being anyone who either considered themselves Jewish or had three or four Jewish grandparents. People with one or two Jewish grandparents were considered to be mixed race.

- eventually anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent was at risk in Nazi Germany -Jews could only marry Jews

Who was inferior according to Hitler?

1. Jews2. Gypsies3. mentally/physically handicapped people4. Slavic people5. homosexuals6. communists/socialists7. dark skinned people8. mixed races9. twins10. Jehovah’s Witnesses

Nazi Science Experiments

• Nazi Science in the Camps

• Mengele's Children - The Twins of Auschwitz Page 2

• Josef Mengele was the chief physician at Auschwitz

What is the Aryan Race?

• misused by the Nazis to mean a so-called master race that originated around Germany

• perfect Aryan was blonde, blue-eyed, tall and muscular.

• The original term refers to a people speaking a Indo-European dialect.

Ethiopia invaded by Mussolini 1936

• Italy lost its Ethiopia colony in Africa at the 1896 Battle of Adua

• one of the worst colonial disasters of modern history

• Feb. 23, 1935, Italy sends large forces into Ethiopia

• Oct. 7, 1935, League declared Italy the aggressor

Italy/Ethiopia Invasion

• Nov. 18 , 1935, Leagues sanctions begin

-arms embargo, financial embargo, non-importation of Italian goods

• Feb. 1936 - League could not agree on critical oil sanctions mainly because FDR refused - U.S. controlled 50% world oil trade

• Feb. 29, 1936, FDR signed the 1936 Neutrality Act

1. mandatory arms embargo with warring nations 2. mandatory ban on loans to warring nations

• May 5 - Italy occupied Addis Ababa - annexed all Ethiopia May 9

Generalisimo Francisco Franco

FDR vs. Alf Landon 1936

Election of 1936

Rome-Berlin Axis

China Incident

Quarantine Speech

Panay Incident

Anschluss with Austria

Sudetenland/Munich Conference

Munich Conference

• Neville Chamberlain-Great Britain• Adolf Hitler-Germany• Benito Mussolini-Italy• Edouard Daladier-France

Munich ConferenceChamberlain: “Peace for our time”

Winston Churchill

Kristallnacht“Night of the Broken Glass”

• On the nights of November 9 and 10, 1938, gangs of Nazi youth roamed through Jewish neighborhoods breaking windows of Jewish businesses and homes, burning synagogues and looting.

• In all, 101 synagogues were destroyed and almost 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed. 26,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

• Jews were physically attacked and beaten and 91 died in the attack.

Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht

Soviet-German non-aggression Pact

German ambassador von Ribbentrop and Soviet dictator Stalin laugh as Molotov signs the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact on August 23, 1939.

Nazi-Soviet Non-aggression Pact

• Russia gave raw materials to Germany in exchange for money and weapons

• Both agreed to stay neutral if the other entered the war

• Secretly agreed to invade and split Poland. Germany would get the western half and USSR the eastern half

• Russia would get Finland, Estonia and Latvia and Germany would get Lithuania

How did the world react to this pact?

• Shock

• Poland was scared

• Hitler thought it would force Great Britain and France to back out of their promise to help Poland if attacked

German invasion of Poland

William LuksenburgDescribes the first night of the German invasion of

Poland • “Things began to change right the first night. The first night

there were blackouts all over town. They would have a curfew. After dark, nobody's supposed to leave the house. The first memorable night is, was, when I...when some of our neighbors tried to...a young man tried to cross the street and he didn't realize just crossing the street, uh, would...would break, breach the curfew and a German soldier said, "Halt," and he kept on running. And he got machine-gunned all the way across, and he fell right in front of our house. So the Germans started yelling, all the men "'Raus" [Get out], all the men out to help carry the body in and made me carry the body with four other persons. And because, the way he was machine-gunned, he was completely like cut in half. When I got home I was completely covered with blood, and I remember when I got into the house, my mother looked at me completely covered.There was something...such an awful thing to see first time. I was just absolutely covered with blood, and I always remember my mother's, uh, expression and my mother's fear and my mother's cry out when she saw me completely covered with blood and that was the first night, the first expression what was...We didn't know what's coming and it was a horrible thing, that first night.”

Blitzkrieg-Lightning WarThe Concept of Blitzkrieg.

1. Airforce attacks enemy front-line and rear positions, main roads, airfields and communication centers. At the same time, infantry attacks on the entire frontline and engages enemy.

2. Tank(panzer) units breakthrough main lines of defense and advance deeper into enemy territory. While following, mechanized units pursue and engage defenders preventing them from establishing defensive positions. Infantry continues to engage enemy for the same reason.

3. Infantry attacks enemy flanks in order to link up with other groups to complete the attack and eventually encircle the enemy and/or capture strategic position.

4. Mechanized groups go deeper into the enemy territory outflanking the enemy positions and preventing withdrawing troops and defenders from establishing effective defensive positions.

5. Main force links up with other units encircling and cutting off the enemy.

6. Goal was to achieve victory as quickly as possible

Sitzkrieg-The Phony War

Tripartite Pact is signedAxis Powers

Axis Powers

• Main Powers: Germany, Italy Japan

• Other Powers: Albania, Bulgaria, Finland, Romania, Thailand, Hungary

Allied Powers

• Main Powers: Great Britain, Soviet Union, United States, China, France

• Latin America: Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Paraguay, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ecuador, Guatamala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Venezueala

Allied Powers

• Europe: Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Greece, Norway, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Poland, San Marino, Turkey, Yugoslavia

• Africa: Egypt, Ethiopia, Liberia, South Africa

• Asia/Other: China, India, Iran, Iraq, Mongolia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, New Zealand, Australia, Canada

German Invasion of Denmark and Norway

Winston Churchill

French and German Plans forthe Battle of France 1940

Maginot Line

Maginot Line

• Maginot line - visual visit - thionville fortification system

Miracle of Dunkirk

German Advances until the Armistice-Battle of France: June 4-22, 1940

Vichy Goverment

• Led by Marshal Henri Petain

Free French Underground

• Led by Charles de Gaulle

Europe prior to the Battle of Britain-July, 1940

Nazi Goals1. Destroy the Royal Air Force(before

invasion was possible-hopefully by 9-15)

2. Attack and destroy the British Navy

3. Attack British troops

**Germany never succeeded in achieving #1

**German bombers did so poorly against the RAF that they started bombing at night only

**Great Britain was aided heavily by the radar and Ultra

Stages

1. Preliminary raids on GB ships

2. Stage 1: Attack the Royal Air Force

3. Stage 2: Intensified raids on RAF

4. Stage 3: Started attacking London and other cities

"What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us now. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, "This was their finest hour."

Winston Churchill

Battle of Britain

Royal Air Force

Luftwaffe

• Messerschmitt Bf 109 • Herman Goering

British PropagandaBattle of Britain

Bases for Destroyers

• Great Britain gave us 99 year leases on the following bases:

• Antigua - Naval Air Station, Sea Plane BaseBritish Guiana - Naval Air Station, Sea Plane BaseJamaica - Naval Air Station, Sea Plane BaseSt. Lucia - Naval Air Station, Sea Plane BaseBermuda - Naval Air Station, Sea Plane BaseNewfoundland - Three Army Air Force Bases (Pepperell, Goose Bay and Stephenville), Naval Operating Base Argentia and numerous Marine and Army Bases and Detachments,

88 in totalTrinidad - Naval Operating Base, Naval Air Station, Sea Plane Base, Lighter Than Air (Blimp) Base and Radio Station

• US gave Great Britain old destroyers:

1940 Election

• FDR • Wendell Wilkie

1940 Election

Auschwitz

Nazi Death Camps

FDR Signs the Lend-Lease Act

German U-boat Warfare• 1939 : 222 ships sunk (114 by

submarine)• 1940 : 1059 ships sunk (471 by

submarine)• 1941 : 1328 ships sunk (432 by

submarine)• 1942 : 1661 ships sunk (1159 by

submarine)• 1943 : 597 ships sunk (463 by

submarine)• 1944 : 247 ships sunk (132 by

submarine)• 1945 : 105 ships sunk (56 by

submarine)

Atlantic Charter

• THE ATLANTIC CHARTER

• The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, being met together, deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world.

• First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other;• Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely

expressed wishes of the peoples concerned;• Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which

they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them;

• Fourth, they will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all States, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity;

• Fifth, they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement and social security;

• Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want;

• Seventh, such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance;

• Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments.

• Franklin D. Roosevelt• Winston S. Churchill

German Invasion of USSR

• Final Plan for Operation Barbarossa

Scorched Earth Policy

• Stalin demanded this of the Soviet troops as they retreated

• What is this?

Operation Typhoon:

Battle of MoscowSeptember 30 - December 5, 1941

• The Soviet Winter CounteroffensiveDecember 6, 1941 - April 30, 1942

Japan Invades French Indochina 1941

Convoy System

Japanese Leaders

• Hideki Tojo • Emperor Hirohito

Admiral Yamamoto

Pearl Harbor-December 7, 1941

Pearl Harbor

December 8, 1941

FDR’s War Speech

• http://www.umkc.edu/lib/spec-col/ww2/PearlHarbor/fdr-speech.htm