The Path to a Second World War
I. Six Steps to War
II. Popular Fronts and the Spanish Civil War
II. “Appeasement” of Hitler and the Causes of War

brinksmanship (path to war in 1914)
appeasement (path to war in 1930s)
“Munich” as the symbol of appeasement (September, 1938 Munich conference that made concessions to Hitler)
Neville Chamberlain: “peace for our time” (Conservative Party prime minister)
Winston Churchill (Conservative opponent of appeasement strategy)

to appease = to placate or pacify someone by respoding to their needs/requests/demands
since 1930s: negative connotation of caving in to aggressors
since 1930s, invoked in 1956 Suez crisis; Cold War (by West); U.S. invasion of Iraq
a question: are there "lessons" of history?

Why did some favor “appeasement” of Hitler?
1. the lessons of 1914 (when brinksmanship had led to war)
2. exhaustion in the wake of the first World War
3. revisionist view of Treaty of Versailles (too punitive, unfair limits on national self-determination)
4. the Great Depression
5. preoccupation with other issues: defense of empire (Great Britain), domestic conflict (France)
6. ignorance (or indifference) about East-Central Europe
7. anti-Communism (a strong Germany as a barrier to USSR)

“Hilter-Stalin Pact” (Ribbentrop | Molotov), August 1939
Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact
1. mutual non-agression if war breaks out involving a third party
2. secret clause: division of eastern Europe (Poland, Baltic states) into Nazi/Soviet spheres of influence
Germany avoids another two-front war (until Hitler invades USSR in June 1941)
USSR gets a buffer zone

Six Steps to a Second World War, 1936-1939
1. Scrap the Versailles treaty (reoccupation of Rhineland, 1936)
2. The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)
3. Annexation of Austria (“Anschluss,” 1938)
4. Takeover of Czechoslovakia
     •step one: annex German areas in the Sudeten mountains; Munich conference ratifies changes (September, 1938)
     •step two: invade and dismember the rest of Czechoslovakia (March, 1939)
5. Nazi-Soviet pact (August, 1939)
6. Invasion of Poland (September 1, 1939)

Popular Fronts (France, Spain)
Spanish Civil War
"non-intervention" policy
volunteer brigades
Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1938)
Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1937)
Max Ernst, The Angel of Hearth and Home (1937)

map: democracies and dictatorships in Europe, 1938-1940

The original can be found at:
http://wps.ablongman.com/wps/media/objects/262/268312/art/figures/KISH571.jpg

map: German expansion in the 1930s:

The original can be found at:
http://www.dean.usma.edu/history/web03/atlases/ww2%20europe/ww2%20europe%20%20maps/ww2%20map02.jpg