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00:28The
01:05By the mid-1930s, new strident forces were on the march.
01:16These were putting increasing pressure on the attempts to ensure that the world lived in relative peace and harmony,
01:22and that there would be no repeat of the awful carnage of 1914-18.
01:28The League of Nations was still in place.
01:34But the Japanese had walked out of it after their overrunning of Manchuria in 1931.
01:39Hitler's Germany followed suit in 1933, and new challenges to the League now appeared.
01:48Benito Mussolini's Italy was a different country to that at the end of the Great War.
01:52It had a strong government, and, on the surface at least, its infrastructure was organised as never before.
01:58The Mafia had been crushed in the south, and Mussolini had made much effort to overhaul the country's economy.
02:03But Mussolini wanted Italy to be a great power.
02:17Resentful that Italy had not been allowed to enlarge her African empire at the expense of Germany at the end
02:22of the Great War,
02:23Mussolini was determined to make good the omission.
02:28He had his eye on Abyssinia, now Ethiopia, which Italy had tried to seize in 1896,
02:34but had met with a bloody reverse near the village of Adoa.
02:42Italy already had neighbouring colonies in Eritrea, on Abyssinia's northern border, and Italian Somaliland,
02:49and Mussolini's initial plan was to use friendly approaches to bring Abyssinia under Italian sway.
02:55Thus, he supported Abyssinia's application to join the League of Nations,
02:58and, in 1928, signed a treaty of friendship with Haile Selassie, the Abyssinian emperor.
03:04He, however, wanted to open up his country to other nations, as well as Italy,
03:08which was not what Mussolini intended.
03:12Increasingly, he saw war as the only answer.
03:20In December 1934, his forces provoked a clash with Abyssinian troops at an oasis in the Ogadem region,
03:27well inside Abyssinian territory.
03:30Italy demanded an indemnity, and began to reinforce her troops in Eritrea and Italian Somaliland.
03:37Emperor Haile Selassie appealed in person to the League of Nations,
03:41which took little notice, since it was much more concerned with German rearmament.
03:48This encouraged Mussolini still further in his plan to invade.
03:51The more so when British Foreign Secretary Antony Eden, fearful that Italy might leave the League,
03:57visited Rome in June 1935, and tried to make a deal with Mussolini,
04:01in which, in return for the Ogadem, Italy would allow Abyssinia a Red Sea port.
04:09Mussolini was not to be fobbed off, and in early October 1935,
04:14after the end of the rainy season, invaded from Eritrea and Italian Somaliland.
04:33In spite of the difficulties of the terrain,
04:36the ill-equipped Abyssinian stood little chance against the well-armed Italian army.
04:42They faced not only modern artillery and tanks,
04:45but an air force which constantly harried them,
04:48even on occasion using gas bombs.
05:02The reaction of the League of Nations demonstrated its weakness only too clearly.
05:07Neither Britain nor France were prepared to militarily challenge Mussolini,
05:11their forces being far too weak.
05:13True, economic sanctions were imposed,
05:16but these did not include coal or oil,
05:19both vital to waging modern war.
05:21In any event, non-members like the United States and Germany were not bound by them.
05:27The sanctions therefore had minimal effect.
05:40After a six-month campaign, Abyssinia was entirely overrun.
05:45Mussolini proclaimed it another Italian colony.
05:53Haile Selassie's pleas to the League of Nations had been in vain,
05:56and he and his family fled into exile in Britain.
05:59The League had been found gravely wanting in its efforts to prevent aggression,
06:03and not for the first time.
06:07Attention now turned to Spain,
06:09where civil war erupted in July 1936,
06:11just two months after Mussolini's conquest of Abyssinia.
06:16In 1923, General Primo de Rivera had established a dictatorship
06:20in the wake of a series of weak governments.
06:23His rule lasted for seven years,
06:25and was brought to an end by the Depression.
06:28In 1931, a left-wing government came to power.
06:31Its first target was the centuries-old Spanish monarchy.
06:39King Alfonso was forced into exile, and a republic created.
06:45Left and right-wing governments now alternated,
06:48polarising political opinion.
06:50In the February 1936 elections,
06:53the parties of the left, combining in a popular front,
06:56narrowly overcame the right,
06:57which included the extremist phalange,
06:59founded by Primo de Rivera's son.
07:02This was banned,
07:03provoking street violence between left and right.
07:07Otherwise, the Popular Front's reform programme was modest,
07:10but strikes and unofficial land seizures
07:12caused the right to fear that a communist takeover was imminent.
07:22Elements of the Spanish army became very concerned,
07:25and believed that only armed revolt
07:27could ward off the communist threat.
07:29This was especially so in Spanish Morocco,
07:32where the troops had been campaigning for many years
07:34against the indigenous rifts.
07:40General Francisco Franco, the commander,
07:43raised the flag of revolt on the 17th of July, 1936.
07:47Mainland garrisons also rose,
07:49and the government responded by calling for volunteers
07:52to defend the republic.
08:05Military uprisings in Madrid and Barcelona
08:08were quickly crushed.
08:09This left the nationalist rebels in control of the northwest,
08:12apart from coastal enclaves and part of the extreme south,
08:17leaving the republicans with the eastern half,
08:19including Madrid.
08:23Full-scale civil war now erupted,
08:26with all the ghastly atrocities that such a conflict brings.
08:42Franco still had to get his men across the straits of Gibraltar
08:45to the mainland and ask the Germans for help.
08:48Before July was out,
08:50Juncker's Ju-52 transports from Hitler
08:52were landing in Spanish Morocco.
08:55Mussolini also sent aircraft.
09:04Soon, Italian and German troops were also being sent to Spain.
09:11At the same time, Comintern, in Moscow,
09:14the organisation dedicated to exporting communism abroad,
09:18agreed to send volunteers and money
09:20to support the republican cause.
09:23Britain and France became deeply concerned
09:25that the conflagration was about to spread
09:27and erupt into a European war.
09:30They declared a policy of non-intervention,
09:32although the left-wing French government of the day
09:34was deeply divided over this.
09:36They approached Italy, Germany,
09:39and Spain's next-door neighbour, Portugal,
09:40and obtained agreement from them
09:42that they would not intervene.
09:46An international non-intervention committee was set up
09:49and held its first meeting in London in early September.
09:53Hitler and Mussolini, however,
09:55in spite of agreeing with non-intervention,
09:57continued to send arms and men in increasing numbers.
10:01As a result, Russia warned
10:03that she would only be bound by non-intervention
10:05to the same extent as Germany and Italy.
10:09In Spain itself,
10:10the nationalists, increasingly supported
10:12by German and Italian aircraft,
10:14opened two fronts.
10:16In the north, they set out to clear the enclaves
10:18on the northwest coast.
10:20Simultaneously, Franco himself
10:22was thrusting north towards Madrid.
10:32The republicans hastily constructed defences
10:35to cover the capital.
10:40By the end of 1936,
10:42Madrid was enveloped on three sides
10:44and virtually in a state of siege.
10:47The republican government had withdrawn to Valencia,
10:50and Germany and Italy
10:51had formally recognised Franco
10:53as the new head of state.
10:58Hitler saw the conflict
10:59as a weapons-testing laboratory.
11:05This was especially
11:06for the new tank force he was developing.
11:10And for the Luftwaffe's latest models,
11:13especially the Messerschmitt Me-109 fighter
11:16and Junker's Ju-87 Stuka dive bomb.
11:30Mussolini, fresh from the conquest of Abyssinia,
11:33was keen to show off Italy's military prowess
11:35in his pursuit of wanting Italy
11:37to be seen as a major power.
11:39He sent a large number of troops
11:41and over 700 aircraft
11:42to fly alongside Germany's Condor Legion.
12:06Newsreel scenes like these in Madrid shocked the world.
12:09And the air attack on the Basque town of Guernica
12:12in April 1937
12:14was especially horrific,
12:15with 6,000 being killed.
12:20These operations also served to confirm popular belief
12:23that the bomber would dominate future war.
12:54Stalin's interest in Spain
12:55was more obscure. While it might have been in Comintern's interest to give active support to
13:00a left-wing government, Stalin was more concerned by the rise of fascism in Italy and Nazism in
13:05Germany. He was looking to the Western democracies to help contain them and did not want to offend
13:11them too much. Rather, he saw the Spanish Civil War as a means of keeping Germany and Italy
13:16occupied while he continued to build and improve his own armed forces. Even so, the Russians deployed
13:23some 700 tanks and 1,500 aircraft.
13:34The other foreign element on the Republican side was the international brigades. While their
13:40governments were determined to keep out of the war, many left-wing Americans, British, French,
13:45and others, including Germans, volunteered to fight in Spain, often being sent out under the
13:50auspices of their domestic Communist parties. The international brigades played a gallant
13:56part in the fighting around Madrid, many of them being killed. Foreign volunteers, including
14:02a Roman Catholic Irish brigade, also fought for the nationalists, but their numbers were
14:07not as large. As the war ground on, so did the area held by the Republicans grow smaller
14:16and smaller. Their troops fought with great bravery and dedication, but their overall
14:21command and control system was not as efficient as that of the nationalists. This was even
14:26though some elements of the Spanish army had remained loyal to the government. This meant
14:31that when it came to pitched battle, and the Republicans launched an attack, they were
14:35seldom successful. They were better in defence, and this was why the war dragged on for so long. This
14:42was especially so in the fighting around Madrid, whose defence became the symbol of the left
14:47struggle against the forces of the right. Political differences within the Republican
14:52camp also did not help. While the communists and socialists aimed for a straightforward
14:57military defeat of the revolt, the more extreme anarchists and syndicalists saw the war in terms
15:03of a mass revolution by the proletariat. The speeches of Dolores Ibaruri, La Pasionaria, may have served
15:11to inspire those defending Madrid and elsewhere, but the cracks in the alliance became so wide
15:16that in May 1937, fighting broke out between the anarchists and communists in Barcelona. This
15:23did little for the overall Republican cause. The other main reason was that the nationalists
15:42were increasingly better supplied than their opponents. The non-intervention committee tried
15:53to blockade the Spanish coasts, with the Italian and German navies covering the East Coast, the
15:58British the South, and the British and French the North. It was not effective, especially
16:03since the nationalists were able to pass supplies through a sympathetic Portugal, and the blockade
16:08did not apply to aircraft. Furthermore, from the end of November 1937, Franco was strong
16:15enough to impose his own maritime blockade. By the end of 1938, the Republicans were penned
16:24into two areas. A small one in the extreme North East, based on Barcelona, and another stretching
16:29eastwards to the coast from Madrid, which continued to hold out. By this time, the foreign contingents,
16:36including the international brigades, had left Spain under a scheme drawn up by the non-intervention
16:41committee. More and more nations were recognising Franco's government, as his forces closed in
16:47for the final offensive against Madrid. An increasing number of refugees were fleeing north towards
16:53France, and in February 1939, the Republican government also crossed the Pyrenees.
17:09At the end of March, its defenders exhausted after nearly three years of fighting, Madrid
17:14finally surrendered to Franco. A month later, he declared the civil war at an end.
17:25The scars of Spain's civil war would take a long time to heal. More immediately, the French
17:31and British failure to take more positive action to stop external involvement merely served to
17:36make Hitler and Mussolini more strident, and Stalin distrustful of their will to combat fascism
17:41and Nazism. The League of Nations played little part in the Spanish Civil War, but it was more
17:49directly concerned in another simultaneous crisis in the Far East.
17:54Japan has no territorial ambition in Manchuria, nor has she any intention of entering into war with China.
18:09Despite this assurance, the Japanese had seized Manchuria, and now had designs on China itself.
18:19China, in the mid-1930s, was in the grip of a civil war. Its origins lay in the 1920s, when
18:26a Chinese army officer,
18:28Chiang Kai-shek, began a movement to purge China of the anarchy of the warlords, which had steadily grown
18:34since China became a republic in 1911 under Sun Yat-sen, seen here. He had died in 1925, leaving a
18:42power vacuum.
18:44Chiang Kai-shek allied himself to the Russian-sponsored Chinese Communist Party. In 1926, he began to advance
18:51from southern China towards Shanghai, the main so-called Treaty Port, with its large Western communities, whom he wanted to
18:59evict.
18:59The West hurriedly sent reinforcements to its small garrisons in Shanghai.
19:10On reaching the city, splits began to appear in Chiang's government, the Kuomintang, and he turned against the Communists.
19:18This served to aggravate the conflicts within China.
19:25The Japanese now overran Manchuria, partly because they felt that Chiang was a threat to their settlements there.
19:32They turned it into a colony, renaming it Manchu Kuo, and installed Henry Puyi, last of the Chinese Manchu dynasty
19:40of emperors, as regent.
19:45Meanwhile, Chiang Kai-shek, now backed by Western commercial interests in China, continued his battle with the Communists.
19:57They were now led by Mao Zedong, but so successful was Chiang that in October 1934,
20:03their numbers drastically reduced by his pressure on them, the Communists began an epic journey, later called the Long March.
20:11This was to take them some 5,000 miles west, and then north, into the fastnesses of the Shensi province
20:18in the northwest of the country.
20:23Here they established a safe haven, but were still determined to carry on the fight.
20:34Japanese governments, increasingly under the influence of nationalist army officers,
20:38became ever more forceful in their policy towards China.
20:42Communism, Russian and Chinese, prompted Japan to sign the Anti-Comintern Pact with Hitler's Germany in November 1936,
20:50with Italy joining it a year later.
20:54Tension in China increased, and in July 1937, there was a clash between Japanese troops,
21:00with the Japanese legation in Peking, and Chinese forces.
21:04Elements of the Japanese Kuantung army crossed from Manchukuo into northern China,
21:09and a full-scale war erupted.
21:30The Chinese were largely taken by surprise, but once they had overcome their initial shock, they fought back fiercely.
21:47Further troops from mainland Japan were landed at Chinese ports,
21:51and by the end of the year, much of northern China and the coastal region were under Japanese control.
22:09The ruthlessness which the Japanese used to secure cities like Shanghai,
22:13and especially Nanking, whose inhabitants suffered six weeks of indescribable atrocities after its fall,
22:20shocked the world at large.
22:23As in the Spanish Civil War, it was the Japanese bombing of these cities which had most impact on the
22:28outside world.
22:30Nanking, seat of Chang's government, and Shanghai especially, suffered heavy damage, and many civilian casualties.
22:37The battle for Shanghai was particularly bloody.
22:41This was since Chang believed that the longer he held out,
22:43the more likely that the Western democracies with their settlements there would give him active help.
22:49But while the scenes of slaughter plucked at Western heartstrings, Chang was to be disappointed,
22:54and Shanghai eventually fell in November 1937.
22:58No one knows how many Chinese perished during its three-month siege.
23:04Not even Japanese attacks on British and American warships persuaded the West to act.
23:09The most notorious of these was the sinking of the American gunboat Panay on the 12th of December 1937.
23:23President Roosevelt, angered especially by the 50 casualties, including two killed, proposed a naval blockade of Japan.
23:31But the British were fearful that this would lead to war.
23:34The Japanese, however, apologised.
23:42Thus, Chiang Kai-shek was left to fight on his own,
23:45though he did sign a non-aggression pact with Russia,
23:48which brought Mao Zedong's communists onto his side.
23:57Even so, the Japanese continued their remorseless drive.
24:00By autumn 1938, they had overrun Canton
24:03and were pressing the Chinese ever further westwards into the interior of their country.
24:28Chiang Kai-shek himself had been forced to withdraw his seat of government to Chungking,
24:32deep in the Chinese interior.
24:35Britain and France merely sent protest notes to Tokyo, which were ignored.
24:40Chiang Kai-shek's stand against aggression did, however,
24:42catch the imagination of the American people.
24:51At the end of 1938, President Roosevelt did advance Chiang a $25 million loan
24:57to encourage him to continue the fight.
25:01Russian support for Chiang Kai-shek was largely passive,
25:04but there were a number of clashes with the Japanese on the northern Manchurian border,
25:08culminating in a major battle at Nomonchan in August 1939.
25:13Led by one Georgi Zhukov, who would become well known within a few years,
25:19the Russians gained a decisive victory.
25:25China fought on in the face of continuing Japanese aggression
25:29and the destruction of her towns and cities.
25:31Yet, apart from some American money,
25:34her plight had brought merely words of sympathy from the West.
26:04The truth was that matters nearer her
26:07their home was seen as more pressing than the suffering of the Chinese people.
26:15When Hitler came to power in Germany in January 1933
26:18and began to impose his iron grip on the country,
26:22the general international view was that Germany had been punished enough.
26:26Ignoring the ruthlessness with which Hitler was eradicating all opposition to his policies,
26:31outside observers were especially impressed by the way
26:34in which Hitler was organizing the German people back to work
26:37and transforming the economy.
26:40Among the impressive construction projects that he set up
26:43was a network of super highways, the Autobahns.
27:02Hitler, however, remained wedded not only to the aim of writing what he saw
27:07as the injustices inflicted on Germany by the 1919 peace settlement,
27:11but also to the policy of providing the German people with Lebensraum,
27:15or living room, which meant expanding Germany's 1919 borders.
27:22The first indication of this
27:24was Germany's departure from the League of Nations in October 1933
27:28in protest of not being permitted armed forces
27:31of equivalent strength to her neighbours, especially France.
27:38Hitler now embarked on a secret expansion of military strength,
27:41which included the creation of an air force, the Luftwaffe.
27:54This would soon be unveiled to the world at large.
28:12Hitler saw it as imperative to build up sufficient armaments
28:16in order to challenge Poland over the corridor which separated East Prussia
28:19from the rest of Germany.
28:25In the meantime, he looked south to the country of his birth, Austria,
28:29whose people also spoke the German language.
28:38Chancellor Engelbert Dolphus had, because of constant threats from both left and right,
28:43ruled the country without a parliament since 1932.
28:46In early 1934, growing unrest culminated in a workers' uprising in Vienna.
29:02Dolphus crushed this with great severity, bringing in the army.
29:06This served to increase his unpopularity, and Hitler tried to stage a coup.
29:17Although Austrian Nazis assassinated Dolphus, they failed,
29:21with the Austrian army once more regaining control.
29:32Furthermore, Mussolini displayed his opposition to the coup,
29:35by deploying troops to the Brenner Pass on Italy's alpine border with Austria.
29:40Consequently, Hitler was forced to back down.
29:44He was, however, encouraged by the results of a League of Nations-sponsored plebiscite,
29:48held in the coal-rich Sireland in January 1935.
29:56Situated on the French border, and coveted by France,
30:00it had been under League control since 1919.
30:03Now the population voted overwhelmingly to return to German rule,
30:08and a delighted Hitler sent his forces in to welcome Sireland back into the German fold.
30:13It was to be the first of a series of territorial acquisitions carried out by Hitler over the next few
30:18years.
30:43At the same time, Hitler made public Germany's rearmament.
30:46The army was to be doubled in strength.
30:49with conscription being reintroduced.
31:01Pride of place was to go to the creation of three panzer divisions,
31:05the fruits of much thought and study,
31:08besides experimentation in Russia during the Weimar years.
31:20More sensational, although it had been suspected for some months,
31:24was the unveiling of the Luftwaffe.
31:26In quantity at least, this seemed to rival the air forces of Britain and France,
31:31although Hitler used bluff to make it initially appear larger than it really was.
31:36Britain was not much concerned by the increase in German army strength,
31:40but was worried about the Luftwaffe, which could directly threaten her.
31:45France, with the Maginot Line still under construction, took the opposite view.
31:54France was further angered by the Anglo-German naval agreement of June 1935,
31:59by which Germany agreed to restrict her surface fleet to one-third of the Royal Navy,
32:04with parity in submarines.
32:06While this showed clear British acceptance that Versailles was dead,
32:11it suited the British government,
32:12which feared another naval race like that before 1914.
32:25Lack of concern over submarines reflected the Royal Navy's belief
32:29that developments in sonar and the depth charge
32:32meant that the submarine was no longer the same threat as during 1914-18,
32:37a view which it would have caused a regret in a few years' time.
32:44German rearmament did, however, prompt Britain and France to begin to do the same.
32:48This marked the end of the world's attempts to ensure peace through disarmament.
32:53Even so, their rearmament was hesitant at first,
32:57Britain concentrating on expanding her air force,
32:59with the emphasis on bombers,
33:01in the belief that this weapon would be decisive in future war.
33:14Russia, too, was another nation which had been steadily army,
33:18as part of Stalin's policy of having strong modern armed forces
33:21in order to guard the communist state against external threat.
33:25By 1935, she had impressive armoured forces,
33:30and a large air force.
33:46Stalin had, however, developed a paranoia that his own personal position was becoming threatened.
33:51He thus began to eliminate those whom he saw as most likely to topple him,
33:56men like Grigory Zinofiev and Lev Kamenev, long part of Stalin's inner circle,
34:04were accused of being part of an international conspiracy
34:07led by exiled Leon Trotsky and sentenced to death.
34:12Others, like Army Chief of Staff Mikhail Tukachevsky,
34:15were also eradicated, as were many leading military commanders.
34:19Soon the purges spread to every corner of Russian society.
34:23Fear now drove the Russian people to revere Stalin almost as a god,
34:27in what became known as the Cult of Personality.
34:37Back in Western Europe, Hitler made his next move in March 1936.
34:42Taking advantage of British and French preoccupation with Abyssinia,
34:46he mobilised some of his troops and sent them into the demilitarised Rhineland.
34:54This again was indirect contravention of Versailles,
34:57and involved a good deal of bluff.
35:00For Germany's armed forces were in the midst of the turmoil of rapid expansion,
35:04and in no way ready for war should the British and French have chosen to oppose Hitler over this move.
35:23As it was, Britain did nothing,
35:26while France merely deployed some troops to the German border,
35:29and then withdrew them, rather than risk war.
35:40Hitler now ordered the construction of defences on the French border,
35:44similar to the Maginot Line.
35:46So the West Wall, or Siegfried Line, was created.
36:03He further consolidated his position by signing a pact, the Berlin-Rome axis,
36:08with Mussolini on the 1st of November 1936.
36:19Hitler continued to dazzle.
36:21In 1936, it was Berlin's turn to host the Olympic Games,
36:25and he seized on this to put on a propaganda show par excellence
36:28to extol national socialism and the Aryan ideal.
36:52This was matched by the party rallies held at Nuremberg in southern Germany every September.
36:57Millions paraded to demonstrate the power of mass Nazi discipline.
37:10Underneath all this glitter, another sinister development was taking place.
37:16Hitler had never relinquished his loathing of the Jews,
37:18and his belief that they were largely behind the 1918 stab in the back.
37:24As early as April 1933, he had instituted a boycott of Jewish shops,
37:29and banned Jews from holding public office.
37:32Two years later, through the Nuremberg laws,
37:35they were deprived of full citizenship and forbidden to marry Aryans.
37:40Propaganda against them became ever more strident,
37:42and Jews were banned from the medical and legal professions.
37:57A growing number of Jews were interned in concentration camps,
38:01and endured forced labour.
38:04Many fled Germany, among them Albert Einstein,
38:08the great mathematician and physicist who settled in America.
38:15The climax came in November 1938,
38:18in what became known as Crystal Night.
38:21As a result of the murder of a German diplomat by a Polish Jew in Paris,
38:25there was an officially sanctioned looting of Jewish shops,
38:29burning of synagogues, and even murder.
38:33Thereafter, Jews were forced to wear a yellow star,
38:35and often had their property forcibly seized.
38:38Outcry from other countries was muted.
38:41This was partly because of the traditional distrust of the Jews,
38:44of which every European country had been guilty,
38:46but also because of the Western democracy's fear of provoking Hitler into war.
38:59Hitler also imprinted his stamp on the arts.
39:02This included public burning of books, disliked by the regime.
39:08This was a big one.
39:12This was a big one.
39:13This was a big one.
39:15That was a big one.
39:16Apart from giving Franco active support in the Spanish Civil War,
39:20Hitler made no further external move for two years after the Rhineland.
39:24He wanted to further build up his armed forces before embarking on fresh
39:28adventures.
39:36By 1938 Hitler considered them strong enough for him to turn once again to
39:41Austria. Kurt von Schuschnigg had ruled Austria since the abortive 1934 Nazi coup.
39:47He was like Dolphus before him determined to keep his country out of Hitler's
39:52clutches. In February 1938 von Schuschnigg discovered another internal
39:59Nazi plot and remonstrated with Hitler over it. Hitler merely accused him of
40:04ill-treating the Austrian Nazis and tension mounted.
40:20To reduce the tension von Schuschnigg announced a plebiscite to determine whether the Austrian
40:26people wished to remain independent of Germany.
40:41On the 12th of March, as last-minute preparations were being made on the eve of the referendum,
40:47Hitler, fearful that it might produce the wrong result, acted. He sent troops across the border.
41:03They advanced on Vienna. Complete surprise and the welcome given by Nazi sympathisers made
41:10it a bloodless invasion.
41:17On the same day, Hitler was able to announce Anschluss, or union, between Austria and Germany.
41:23Again, the Western democracies remained silent. Arguing to themselves that such a union between
41:29neighbouring states speaking the same language was natural.
41:34Once more, Hitler had got away with it.
41:38He moved quickly to secure his next prey, Sudetenland, the most westerly province of
41:43Czechoslovakia, and which contained a sizeable German minority.
41:49Hitler encouraged the indigenous Nazis to demand full autonomy, and then threatened the Czech government
41:54with force if it refused to comply.
42:01The Czechs were not to be cowed by this, and were determined to resist Hitler's demands.
42:14This was especially since the Czech armed forces were large.
42:18A general mobilisation was therefore ordered, and troops deployed to the borders with Germany.
42:29Hitler, impressed by this, paused, but tension remained high throughout the summer of 1938.
42:39At the beginning of September, fearful that war was becoming imminent, British Prime Minister
42:44Neville Chamberlain flew to Germany to see Hitler.
43:00He met the German leader at Bad Gottesberg, on the Rhine.
43:04Hitler assured him that if he could have Sudetenland, he would make no further territorial demands
43:09in Europe.
43:15Chamberlain reported this to the French government, and persuaded it to accept Hitler's assurance.
43:25Even so, both countries took precautionary measures, although they consisted of little more than digging
43:30air raid shelters in public parks, and deploying anti-aircraft batteries in London and Paris.
43:42Chamberlain then returned to Germany.
43:44On the 29th of September, in Munich, and with Mussolini as mediator, Britain, France, Germany and Italy
43:51signed an agreement that Hitler could have Sudetenland in return for a formal declaration
43:57that he had no further territorial ambitions.
43:59The checks were not consulted.
44:06On the 1st of October, German troops entered Sudetenland in another bloodless victory.
44:13Chamberlain, on the other hand, flew back to London to declare,
44:16We regard the agreement signed last night, and the Anglo-German naval agreement,
44:22as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.
44:30To the cheers of the assembled crowd, he triumphantly brandished the agreement.
44:34His name upon it, as well as mine.
44:41Hitler, also flushed with success, immediately turned east to Poland, the main thorn in his flesh.
44:49He demanded the port of Danzig, now Gdansk, at the head of the Polish corridor,
44:54and links through this to East Prussia.
44:57The Poles refused to play ball.
45:03Hitler was, however, deterred by the large Polish armed forces,
45:07under Marshal Edward Smigliaritz.
45:11He therefore turned back to Czechoslovakia, whose polyglot races had become unsettled by the seizure of Sudetenland.
45:24The Czech mobilization of May 1938 had failed to prevent Hitler from achieving his aim,
45:30and there was discontent with the government in Prague.
45:33As a result, the leaders of two provinces demanded greater autonomy, and were sacked.
45:39The leader of another province, Slovakia, complained to Hitler,
45:43but was browbeaten into agreeing that his region should become a German protectorate.
45:52Disagreed, it was easy for Hitler to dismember the remainder of Czechoslovakia.
46:12On the 15th of March, 1939, Hitler formally annexed Bohemia and Moravia.
46:21He declared Slovakia a protectorate,
46:25and handed over Ruthenia to Hungary.
46:34Right-wing dictator Admiral Miklos Horty's Hungarian troops immediately occupied Ruthenia,
46:41while the Germans took over the remainder of Czechoslovakia,
46:43with only a small protest from Britain.
46:56Memel, now Kleipeda, and just north of the East Prussian-Lithuanian border,
47:02was Hitler's next annexation.
47:04Again on the pretext of protecting a German minority.
47:07He did this in March, 1939.
47:10But Britain and France, realising that appeasement had failed,
47:14warned him that they would stand by Poland.
47:24Mussolini had become increasingly jealous of his allies' successes,
47:27and in April, 1939, sent troops into Albania,
47:31which had been under Italian influence since the mid-1920s.
47:52This provoked a move by President Roosevelt,
47:55who now sought assurances from both Berlin and Rome
47:58that they would not launch attacks on other European countries.
48:07Both Hitler and Mussolini knew, however,
48:10that America was bound by her Neutrality Acts,
48:13passed in the mid-30s,
48:14which forbade her from giving help to either side.
48:17They therefore ignored Roosevelt's plea.
48:20They further cemented their alliance in May 1939,
48:23by signing the Pact of Steel,
48:26guaranteeing each other's support in time of war.
48:34Mussolini, as would very shortly become obvious,
48:37did not realise that Hitler was intent on resorting to war
48:40sooner rather than later.
48:44Throughout the summer of 1939,
48:46the British and French had, in desperation,
48:49been wooing Moscow to help contain Hitler.
48:51The sticking point was Poland's refusal
48:54to allow Russian troops on her soil.
48:56Suddenly, in August 1939,
48:58and to the surprise of the world,
49:01German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop
49:03flew to Moscow
49:04and signed a non-aggression pact
49:06with his counterpart,
49:08Vyacheslav Molotov,
49:09on the basis of Poland being split
49:11between the two countries.
49:13This removed the traditional German fear
49:15of a two-front war,
49:16and Hitler could now mobilise his forces.
49:19The Poles, too, began to prepare for war.
49:26The German forces moved close to the Polish border
49:29under a plan drawn up in the early summer.
49:36The Luftwaffe also deployed to forward airfields.
49:48Crews were briefed on their initial targets in Poland.
49:55But on the evening of the 25th of August,
49:58as the German forces deployed to their jump-off positions,
50:01Mussolini declared that he was not yet ready for war.
50:04Hitler sent out a postponement order,
50:07which reached some of his forward units
50:09just as they were about to cross the border.
50:11This gave the Western allies a small glimmer of hope
50:14that war might yet be averted.
50:17They looked to the Italians,
50:18who wanted to buy more time to broker a peace settlement.
50:22It was, however, all in vain.
50:25Hitler's mind was made up.
50:27On the evening of the 31st of August,
50:29he summoned the Polish ambassador for a brief orders.
50:32Next day, at dawn,
50:34the German army crossed the Polish border.
50:47For the second time in 25 years,
50:50Europe was engulfed in war.
51:02It was to grow into a conflict
51:04many times larger and more terrifying than the Great War.
51:08said two days later,
51:38And if the angry people were always
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