I want to talk about Hitler’s diplomacy
for a moment.
We can sort of track how the war in Europe
begins, and again, consult your maps and other
images that I have provided for you.
Let me say, first of all, that Hitler’s
overarching aim – there’s a couple.
One is to destroy the Versailles settlement,
the settlement that ended the First World
War; redistributed territory at the end of
the War; created the new, small, weak countries.
Hitler’s overarching aim is to destroy that
settlement to put Germany at the head of nations,
and to reverse the outcome of the First World
War.
His second aim, I believe, would be to colonize
what we think of today as Russia.
He wants to destroy the Soviet Union, destroy
the Communists – whom he loathes – and
he wants to colonize Ukraine, parts of Western
Russia, Poland – with German farmer, and
this leads to the notion of lebensraum or
living space.
Hitler believes Germany, geographically, is
too small for Germans, and that Germany has
to expand to accommodate its population.
Hitler’s other overarching goal, of course,
is the destruction of the Jews of Europe,
which we’ll talk about later.
Hitler began to rearm Germany against the
dictates of the Versailles Treaty.
So this would probably be the first step towards
war.
The second occurs in 1936, in March, when
Hitler remilitarizes the Rhineland.
Now we talked about the Rhineland when we
discussed Versailles, and you’ll remember
that the French insisted that the Rhineland
be demilitarized.
The purpose of this, of course, is to back
Germany up a few hundred miles eastward.
Now Hitler, in violation of the Versailles
Treaty, is going to march the Germany army
back into the Rhineland, in March of 1936.
Why is this significant?
Well, he gets away with it.
The British and the French don’t like it,
and they protest, but they don’t do anything
about it.
This increases Hitler’s confidence in himself.
It also increases his generals’ confidence
in Hitler’s judgment.
The generals are terrified that the French
would smash them if they did this, if they
brought armed forces into the Rhineland.
The French did NOT.
Hitler assured his generals that he knew the
character of their enemies, and net effect
of this is that Hitler’s confidence is increased
and his generals’ confidence in his judgment
is increased.
You can see photographs here of the crowds
very happy to see the German army reentering
the Rhineland.
The next step on the road to war, of course,
is the alliance, the military alliance between
Hitler and Mussolini.
I just mentioned this in our last lecture.
The Axis, or the Pact of Steel, as it’s
called, the alliance between Nazi Germany
and Fascist Italy.
The next step takes place in 1938, this is
the Anschluss, or the union between Germany
and Austria.
You’ll recall that Austria is Hitler’s
birthplace, a German-speaking country, and
Hitler had long had ambitions to join the
two.
He carries this out in 1938, through a plebiscite,
whereby the Austrian people are allowed to
vote on whether to join the Third Reich or
not.
The vote is overwhelmingly in favor of the
Anschluss, and Austria becomes part of greater
Germany.
This, of course, violates the Versailles Treaty
again.
But again, the British and the French do nothing
about it.
Now the next crisis, or the next step towards
war, would be the Czechoslovakian Crisis.
This is going to result in the Munich Conference
that I mentioned in our last session.
You can look at the map here and see that
around the very edge of western Czechoslovakia
is an area called the Sudetenland.
The Sudetenland is populated by Germans.
Now Hitler is going to use Woodrow Wilson’s
old idea about self-determination, whereby
ethnic and language groups should be able
to self-determine their own future.
Hitler says that the Germans living in the
Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia would much prefer
to be part of the Third Reich, and he agitates
against Czechoslovakia, immobilizes German
forces against their country.
The Czechs, of course, have a military alliance
with France.
Well, the French have no heart for fighting
Germany over such an issue, nor do the British.
Again, France will hitch its wagon to Chamberlain’s
policy of appeasement, and this dark purple
area that you see here, the Sudetenland, will
be forcibly taken from Czechoslovakia, not
by Hitler, but by the British and the French,
who are protectors, and given to Germany to
avoid World War II.
You see Chamberlain here, after the Munich
crisis has ended in his triumph.
You see him; he’s on the tarmac in London;
he’s just gotten off the plane.
You see the world press has gathered.
Chamberlain makes a triumphant speech.
You see him waving a piece of paper here;
this is the treaty that he’s just signed.
I don’t know if I’d call it a treaty,
but Hitler gave him a guarantee that this
was Hitler’s last territorial demand in
Europe.
In other words, his shopping list is over.
And Chamberlain, of course, is rightfully
proud that he’s been able to secure peace,
and indeed, he tells the world press that
he has achieved – what did he say – peace
for our time, and that was a headline all
around the world.
This, of course, takes place in September
0f 1938.
The Second World War will begin in September
1939, one year later.
At the Munich conference, Hitler assured Chamberlain
that this was his last aggressive, diplomatic
move in Europe, and then, six months later,
he breaks his word.
In March of 1939, Hitler bites off the rest
of Czechoslovakia.
Now this is key for a couple of reasons.
One, it convinces Chamberlain that the policy
of appeasement is not going to work.
Hitler’s word is obviously worthless.
So Chamberlain is going to switch from a policy
of appeasing Hitler to a policy of resisting
Hitler, and will offer, unilaterally, a defense
guarantee of Poland’s frontiers.
Chamberlain can read a map as well as you
can, and he knows that Hitler’s next move
is probably going to be against Poland, so
he ties Britain to Polish security.
The other reason that Hitler’s taking of
the rest of Czechoslovakia is important is
because he can no longer use self-determination
to justify this aggression.
He’s not incorporating Germans into the
Third Reich when he bites off the rest of
Czechoslovakia, he is now taking in Slavs,
people who are not Germanic, people who do
not choose to cast their fate with the Third
Reich.
The British defense guarantee of Poland’s
frontier is very troubling to Hitler.
He intends to reclaim not only the Polish
Corridor that was taken from Germany at Versailles
and given to the new country of Poland back
in 1919.
He not only intends to recapture that old
German territory, but he intends to wipe Poland
off the map.
He intends to colonize Poland with German
farmers.
But he’s now faced with the possibility
of war with England if he attacks Poland.
So what does Hitler do?
Well, he looks around Europe and he finds
that indeed there is one other head of state
that would like to see Poland disappear also,
and that of course, is Joseph Stalin.
I mentioned in one of our earlier lectures
that Stalin, though not openly looking for
war, is looking for opportunities to reacquire
those territories taken from Russia at the
end of World War I.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the hatred
that Stalin and Hitler have for each other.
Hitler has made it very plain that he intends
to destroy the Soviet Union, and that he intends
to shoot the Communists in the head, and hang
Stalin by the nearest lamp post, when he gets
the opportunity.
Nevertheless, these two tyrants have something
in common here, and that is the destruction
of Poland.
So in August 1939, in what has to be the biggest
surprise, diplomatically, of the 20th century,
Hitler and Stalin sign a non-aggression pact.
A secret protocol to this non-aggression pact
divides Eastern Europe between the two.
And you can look at this map to see what happens
to those new, small, weak countries created
by Versailles.
You see parts of Finland, and then of course,
the Baltic countries Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
are taken back by the Russians.
You can see Russia acquires a large chunk
of Poland, and of course, Germany acquires
the other, Western portion, of Poland.
The treaty, or rather the non-aggression pact,
the Stalin-Hitler pact, is significant for
these reasons.
First, it eliminates the second front; Hitler
does not have to worry about the Soviet Red
Army.
Second, it eliminates Poland.
Poland would be defeated by the two larger
powers, Germany and Russia, in about a month.
Third, it gives Stalin breathing time to rebuild
his army after his purges of the Red Army
in the late 30s.
Fourth, it allows Hitler to turn his attention
to Western Europe and to overrun the low countries
Norway and France in the spring and summer
of 1940.
Here you see another photograph, a famous
photograph, of the signing of the non-aggression
pact.
You see Molotov seated at the desk signing
this infamous document that will allow the
Second World War to begin.
You see Stalin in the white tunic, behind
him and to the right.
And then, just to the left of Stalin, you
see Joachim von Ribbentrop; this is Hitler’s
foreign minister who has travelled to Moscow
to bring about this diplomatic coup.
Some interesting editorial cartoons published
in the wake of this surprising treaty.
Here you see Hitler and Stalin as bride and
groom at the wedding.
What does the caption say?
Wonder how long the honeymoon will last?
Indeed.
The honeymoon will end on the 22nd of June,
1941, when Hitler invades the Soviet Union.
It just occurred to me that the cartoonist
here has portrayed Hitler as the groom and
Stalin as the bride.
I wonder if the cartoonist survived the war.
I can’t imagine Stalin being pleased at
being feminized in this editorial cartoon.
Here you see another cartoon depicting the
same absurdities.
You see the dead body of Poland lying on the
ground; you see Hitler to the left and Stalin
to the right, congratulating each other on
the destruction of this smaller country.
And then, within a week of the signing of
the non-aggression pact, you have the invasion
of Poland.
You see the Nazi army invading from the North,
the South, and the West on September 1, 1939.
On September 3, the Second World War begins
when Britain and France declare war on Germany
for this invasion of Poland.
Now I want you to look to the East, or to
the right – September 17th.
A few weeks after the Nazi invasion of Poland,
Stalin and the Red Army invade Poland from
the East.
We don’t talk about this very much in the
West.
We tend to concentrate on the Nazi invasion
because, of course, Stalin will – within
a couple of years – become our ally, and
it’s embarrassing and it’s awkward to
admit that your future ally was playing, or
was acting in a very friendly manner, in a
cooperative manner, with Hitler at the beginning
of the Second World War.
So that’s a short lecture on Hitler’s
diplomacy.
Our next lecture we’ll talk about 10 decisive
decisions in the Second World War.
We’ll look at some decisive campaigns.
We’ll look at the Holocaust and Hiroshima,
the final American campaign against the Japanese.
Thanks.
