WW2 Test

• World War II had its beginnings in the ideas of Adolf Hitler, who believed that only so-called Aryans were capable of building a great civilization
• To Hitler, Germany needed more land to support a larger population and be a great power
• In the second volume of Mein Kampf, Hitler had indicated that a National Socialist Regime would find this land to the east - in Russia

  
• Hitler announced the creation of an air force and one week later the introduction of a military draft that would expand Germany's army from 100,000 to 550,000 troops


  March 9th, 1935
• Hitler's rejection of the Versailles treaty brought a swift reaction as France, Great Britain, and Italy condemned Germany's action and warned against future aggressive steps

  
• In October 1935, Benito Mussolini had committed Fascist Italy to imperial expansion by invading Ethiopia
• Mussolini welcomed Hitler's support and began to draw closer to the German dictator
• Hitler and Mussolini concluded an agreement that recognized their common interests, and one month later, Mussolini referred publicly to the new Rome-Berlin Axis


  October 1936
• Germany and Japan (the rising military power in the Far East) concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact and agreed to maintain a common front against Communism


  November 1936

  
• By 1937, Germany was once more a "world power" as Hitler proclaimed

  
• Hitler was convinced that neither the French nor the British would provide much opposition to his plans and decided in 1938 to move to achieve one of his longtime goals - union with Austria
• By threatening Austria with invasion, Hitler coerced the Austrian chancellor into putting Austrian Nazis in charge of the government
• After his triumphal return to his native land, Hitler formally annexed Austria to Germany


  March 13th, 1938
• Hitler's next objective was the destruction of Czechoslovakia, and he believed that France and Britain would not use force to defend that nation
• Hitler demanded the cession of the Sudetenland (an area in northwestern Czechoslovakia inhabited largely by ethnic Germans) to Germany and expressed his willingness to risk "world war" if he was refused


  September 15th, 1938

  
• Instead of objecting, the British, French, and Italians - at a hastily arranged conference in Munich - reached an agreement that met all of Hitler's demands
• This would be known as the Munich Agreement
• German troops were allowed to occupy the Sudetenland

  
• In March 1939, Hitler occupied all the Czech lands while the Slovaks, with Hitler's encouragement, declared their independence of the Czechs and became a puppet state of Nazi Germany
• When Hitler began to demand the return of Danzig (a seaport for Poland) to Germany, Britain offered to protect Poland in the event of war

  
• At the same time, both France and Britain realized that only the Soviet Union was powerful enough to help contain Nazi aggression and began political and military negotiations with Stalin and the Soviets
• To prevent an alliance between the West and the Soviet Union, which would open the danger of a two-front war, Hitler negotiated his own nonaggression pact with Stalin and shocked the world with its announcement on August 23rd, 1939

  
• The treaty with the Soviet Union gave Hitler the freedom to attack Poland
• German forces invaded Poland


  September 1st, 1939

  
• Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany

  
• In September 1931, Japanese military officers stationed in the area launched a coup to bring about a complete Japanese takeover of Manchuria
• Despite worldwide protests from the League of Nations, which eventually condemned the seizure, Japan steadily strengthened its control over Manchuria, renaming it Manchukuo, and then began to expand into northern China
• When clashes between Chinese and Japanese troops broke out, Chiang Kai-shek sought to appease the Japanese by granting them the authority to administer areas in North China

  
• But as the Japanese moved steadily southward, popular protests in Chinese cities against Japanese aggression intensified
• Chiang ended his military efforts against the Communists in Yan'an and formed a new united front against the Japanese


  December 1936
• When Chinese and Japanese forces clashed at the Marco Polo bridge, south of Beijing, China refused to apologize, and hostilities spread


  July 1937
• Japan had not planned to declare war on China, but neither side would compromise, and the 1937 incident eventually turned into a major conflict
• The Japanese advanced up to the Yangtze River valley and seized the Chinese capital of Nanjing in December, but Chiang Kai-Shek refused to surrender
• Japanese strategists had hoped to force Chiang to join a Japanese-dominated New Order in East Asia, comprising Japan, Manchuria, and China

  
• This was part of a larger Japanese plan to seized Soviet Siberia, with its rich resources, and create a new "Monroe Doctrine for Asia", under which Japan would guide its Asian neighbors on the path to development and prosperity
• When Germany surprised the world by signing a nonaggression pact with the Soviets in August 1939, Japanese strategists were compelled to re-evaluate their long-term objectives

  
• The Japanese were not strong enough to defeat the Soviet Union alone and so began to shift their eyes southward, to the vast resources of Southeast Asia - the oil of the Dutch East Indies, the rubber and tin of Malaya, and the rice of Burma and Indochina
• When Japan demanded the right to occupy airfields and exploit economic resources in French Indochina in the summer of 1940, the US warned the Japanese that it would cut off the sale of oil and scrap iron unless Japan withdrew from the area and returned to its borders in 1931

  
• The Japanese viewed the American threat of retaliation as an obstacle to their long-term objectives
• Japan badly needed oil and scrap iron from the US. Being cut off meant finding those elsewhere