I want to talk about the two other revisionist
powers here, and I’m only going to require
you to know a few people from these two countries.
First, is Italy, Benito Mussolini, the head
of state in Italy.
You see a picture of Mussolini and Hitler
here.
Oddly enough, this is one of the few people
that Hitler seems to genuinely like and admire.
He will borrow certain regalia and symbols
from the Fascist in Italy for his own Nazi
party in Germany.
In 1938, Hitler and Mussolini will become
military allies.
This Pact of Steel is sometimes referred to
as the Axis, and Mussolini, I think it’s
fair to say, is not a very ally for Nazi Germany;
he tends to stick Italy’s nose where it
doesn’t belong, forcing Hitler to sort of
bail him out on more than one occasion.
Nevertheless, Hitler has genuine admiration
for Mussolini, even extracts him from jail
on at least one occasion.
In this last picture here, you can see Mussolini
and his mistress.
Upon trying to escape Italy at the end of
the War, they are captured, and massacred
by Italians.
I think the Italian people here are taking
out their anger on Mussolini for dragging
them into this disastrous war.
The other revisionist power, of course, is
Imperial Japan, only 2 figures here that I
want you to know.
This is Tojo, Hideki Tojo; you can see he’s
a high-level army officer.
You see the fruit salad on his chest.
Tojo is in charge when the attack on Pearl
Harbor, and the massive assault of December
1941 and January 1942 is carried out by the
Japanese forces.
You see Tojo here, just like the surviving
Nazi leaders who were tried at Nuremburg,
surviving Japanese leaders are tried in Tokyo.
You see Tojo here with the headphones on;
he’s listening to the translation of the
American prosecutor’s charges against him.
Tojo is found guilty of war crimes, and as
you can see here, he is hung for his troubles.
You see the 2 American officers behind him
as the trapdoor is about to be sprung.
The other Japanese leader that I’m going
to mention, of course, is Yamamoto.
Yamamoto is chief of the Imperial navy, and
he is Japan’s greatest strategist.
This is the gentleman who carries out the
attack on Pearl Harbor, and he is killed – I
think in 1943.
American Intelligence had broken the Japanese
code, so we could eavesdrop on the Japanese
leadership.
We discovered that Yamamoto was flying from
one island to another – I don’t know which
one and it’s not important – and we sent
fighter planes after his plane and shot him
down.
So Yamamoto rapidly became shark food.
It is a big blow to Japan.
He is easily the best Japanese strategist,
and he is lost in 1943.
Now we’re going to look at the allied powers.
I’m just going to talk about a few figures,
briefly, from each country.
We’ll start with the UK.
You see a picture here of Neville Chamberlain;
he is the Prime Minister of Great Britain
at the beginning of the War.
There are 2 words that I want you to associate
with Chamberlain.
The first is ‘appeasement’.
Chamberlain follows a policy of appeasement
in Europe in the late 30s.
This is designed to avoid a second world war.
Chamberlain believes that another war with
Germany would be ruinous for his country.
He certainly doesn’t want to fight Germany
over some obscure territories in central Europe,
or Eastern Europe.
So he follows a policy of appeasement to avoid
this.
The idea being that if we appease Hitler,
if we give in to his demands to some degree,
we can avoid war, and that seems like the
noble thing to do.
The other word I want you to associate with
Chamberlain is ‘Munich’, the Munich Crisis,
or the Munich Conference.
You see Hitler and Chamberlain; you see them
shaking hands.
This takes place at Munich.
Munich is important because it’s where the
policy of appeasement reaches its apex.
We’ll talk about this in a little more detail
when we talk about Hitler’s diplomacy, but
essentially the British and the French force
Czechoslovakia to give up territory to Nazi
Germany to avoid war.
The other figure from Great Britain, of course,
probably the most famous figure of the War,
this is Winston Churchill.
He will become Prime Minister of the UK following
Chamberlain’s resignation in the spring
of 1940.
Churchill embodies that determination to prevail,
to survive this War, to defeat Hitler.
I want you to remember that there’s a solid
year of the War in which Great Britain is
the ONLY country fighting Nazi Germany, and
Churchill is given a great deal of credit
for the moral courage and strength of character
to get the British through this ordeal, and
he’ll come up again as we go forward.
Here you see Churchill and President Roosevelt
and Joseph Stalin at Yalta, often referred
to as the Big Three, the leaders of the big
3 countries that together, were able to defeat
the Japanese and the Germans.
This last figure from the UK – I’m just
going to mention him.
He’s a military figure.
This is General Montgomery; he is the foremost
British General during the War, and probably
his most famous campaign took place in Northern
Africa in 1942-43 at Alamein, in Egypt.
This stopped the drive eastward of Rommel’s
Afrika Korps, thereby saving the petroleum
of the Middle East from capture by the Nazis,
and we’ll talk about Montgomery more as
we go forward.
A couple of figures from France – This picture
you see here, is taken at Munich, the Munich
Conference, when the policy of appeasement
is put into action.
You see Chamberlain on the far left.
You see Hitler in the center with Mussolini,
to our right.
The man between Chamberlain and Hitler is
Edouard Daladier; he is the Prime Minister
of France.
The only thing I want you to know about Daladier
is that he hitches his wagon to Chamberlain’s
policy of appeasement.
So what England does, France follows.
The other figure from France is Charles de
Gaulle; this is General de Gaulle.
He, in some ways, plays the same role for
France that Churchill plays for England, in
that he embodies sort of the grandeur of France,
the will of France to return to great power
status, to survive and indeed, prevail, in
the Second World War.
There are two figures from the Soviet Union
that I want you to know, and you can see them
both in this picture.
The gentleman seated with the glasses, signing
a treaty, that is the Soviet Foreign Minister,
Vyacheslav Molotov, and you can simply know
him as Molotov.
You’ve heard of Molotov cocktails, named
for this gentleman.
And then the boss is directly behind him,
that’s Joseph Stalin, the head of the Communist
party of the Soviet Union, and much like Hitler
in Nazi Germany, Stalin, of course, is the
ultimate authority in the Soviet Union.
And then China – China is a very complicated
situation in the Second World War, so I’m
going to simplify it for you.
The two gentlemen you see here, Chiang Kai-shek,
on the left, and Mao Zedong, on the right.
Chiang Kai-shek is the Nationalist leader
of China.
He is allied with the United States.
We supply him with money and war material.
Mao Zedong, of course, is the leader of the
Red Chinese Communist army.
Now beware that China is fighting two wars
at the same time.
With one hand they’re trying to hold off
the Japanese, who have invaded their country,
and biting off big chunks of Chinese territory
along the Pacific coast.
With the other hand, these two men that you
see here, are fighting each other.
Again, Chiang, allied with the United States,
and Mao Zedong, leader of the Communist, obviously
enemy of the United States.
So there is an external war against the Japanese,
and an internal war, Chiang Kai-shek versus
Mao Zedong.
Of course, Mao will win this war and establish
Red China, that obviously we still enjoy today.
And then finally, the last allied country
I’m going to talk about is the United States,
and when we talk about the United States,
we have to begin with President Roosevelt.
If you ever wake up in the morning feeling
sorry for yourself, I want you to consider
what Roosevelt faced every morning the last
few years of his life.
First of all, he still had the Great Depression
to deal with here at home; he had a war against
Hitler in Europe; he had a war in the Pacific
against the Japanese; and he had 10 pounds
of steel braces on his legs because of his
polio.
So whenever you feel a little self-pity, just
think about President Roosevelt.
You can see him here in this photograph; this
perfectly illuminates his character, with
his cigarette holder and his martini in his
evening dress.
I think it’s fair to say that Roosevelt
genuinely loved his job, and still remains
a very fertile ground for historians.
Roosevelt didn’t commit much to paper.
The archives are thin, and we still have some
doubt as to Roosevelt’s motives in all instances.
Now the second figure that I want you to know
from the United States, of course, is General
Marshall.
General George Marshall was chief-of-staff
for the United States Army.
I’ll mention a couple of things about him.
He proposed the Germany First policy.
Of course, we have an enemy is Japan, and
we have one in Germany.
Marshall said Germany is by far the more dangerous
of the two, and that we should eliminate Germany
first.
He is Roosevelt’s most trusted advisor.
He also, of course, fought in World War I,
and through the 20s and 30s he kept a little
black book in which he would make notes of
promising young officers that might be useful
to the United States in the future, should
we ever go to war again.
And indeed, he promoted and protected officers
that he favored – Dwight Eisenhower, of
course; George Patton would be another example.
Eisenhower was elevated over probably more
than a hundred senior officers to command
the D-Day invasion in 1944.
Marshall was an essential military advisor
for Roosevelt during the War.
The leader of the allied naval forces in the
Pacific, Admiral Nimitz; you see a picture
of him here.
Our secretary of war, during the Second World
War, Henry Stimson; you see a picture of him
here on the cover of Time.
This is a good photograph of General Eisenhower.
Ike was commander-in-chief of allied forces
in Europe, and led the D-Day invasion.
You see Ike here, the evening before the invasion.
He’s exhorting the troops.
I believe this is the 101st Airborne or the
82nd Airborne that are going to be dropped
in behind German lines just before the invasion.
If Ike is the commander-in-chief of allied
forces in Europe, you see here General Douglas
MacArthur, commander-in-chief of allied forces,
ground forces, in the Pacific.
MacArthur would lead the Marines and the army
from Indonesia, all the way to the Philippines,
and then to the Japanese islands.
And in fact, MacArthur will accept the surrender
of the Japanese forces at the end of the war.
The last American I’m going to mention is
General George Patton, and I mention him because
of his theorizing about how to fight another
war, should it emerge.
Like Guderian, in Germany; like Charles de
Gaulle, General de Gaulle in France; Patton
is going to experiment with the use of armor,
close air support – blitzkrieg, in other
words.
And of course, blitzkrieg, it will be how
the Second World War is fought – quite opposite
from the trench warfare, the static warfare
of World War I.
In our next lecture, we’re going to just
take a brief look at Hitler’s diplomacy
to see how war in Europe began.
Thank you.
