POSSIBLE RESPONSES BY FRANCE AND GREAT BRITAIN TO THE BEGINNING OF GERMAN

REARMAMENT

1. Strict enforcement of all provisions of the Versailles Treaty, if necessary through armed force. (But the Treaty appeared largely bankrupt by 1933.)

2. Forge a common front with Italy to deter German expansion.

3. Seek an understanding with Hitler by redressing Germany’s legitimate grievances (“appeasement”).

In September 1931 rogue officers planted a bomb near a railway in Mukden to justify a Japanese

invasion of Manchuria

Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in

February 1933 because it would not recognize

Manchukuo

In the 1920s France developed alliances with Belgium, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia

Ethnic groups in the

“Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, & Slovenes”

(1921):Serbs: 44%Croats: 23%

Slovenes: 8.5%

Muslims: 6.3%The

constitution of 1921

centralized power in Belgrade.

King Alexander I imposed dictatorship in 1929 and was assassinated by a

Macedonian separatist in October 1934

(with French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou in

Marseilles)

Internal division made Yugoslavia appear less valuable as a French ally.

The Maginot Line (built 1930-34)

reflected declining interest in Eastern European alliances

The original plan was adopted jointly with Belgium, but that country soon reverted to neutrality.

After signing the “Ten-Year Polish-German Nonaggression Pact” in January 1934, Marshal

Pilsudski received Joseph Goebbels in June, who lectured on “Germany’s Peace Policy.”

Hitler blundered in July 1934 by

approving a Nazi Putsch in Austria

The murdered Austrian Chancellor,

Engelbert Dollfuss.Mussolini mobilized to prevent

German intervention.

Government troops surround the biggest radio station in Vienna, seized by Austrian Nazis

In the Saar plebiscite of January 13, 1935, 91% of the people voted Yes

for reunification with Germany.BELOW: League of Nations

peacekeepers monitor the vote.

“German Mother, Home to You”

The new Wehrmacht created in 1935 was

dedicated to the doctrine of Blitzkrieg with highly mobile armored and mechanized

divisions(Nuremberg

Party Congress, September

1935)

“The Stresa Front”Pierre Laval, Mussolini, Ramsay MacDonald, and Premier Pierre Flandin pledge to resist German

expansionism,April 11, 1935

“CRUISERS THAT ONLY SHOOT EASTWARD”

(John Heartfield).Great Britain

undermined the Stresa Front with the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of June

1935, in which Germany pledged to build no more than 35% of British naval

tonnage.What does the

Communist sympathizer

Heartfield imply about this agreement?

In October 1935 Italian armies converged on Addis Ababa

from Eritrea in the north and

Italian Somalia in the south

Italian troops prepare an assault on Makale, Ethiopia,

November 1935

Emperor Haile Selasse visits the

front after an Italian air raid

Sir Samuel Hoare & Pierre Laval provoked outragein public opinion when they proposed the partition

of Ethiopia in December 1935(see Bell, pp. 117-18)

German troops cross the Rhine on March

7, 1936

“Against the Lackeys of Stalin. Vote Nationalist” (1934)

“The Parliamentary Regime is Collapsing!

Amend the Constitution”

(rightist commentary on the Stavisky Affair,

1934)

The French Popular Front won a great victory in June 1936:

Leon Blum and PCF leader Maurice Thorez at a mass rally in July (they had agreed to disarm the “fascist leagues” in

Franceand resist any further spread of fascism in Europe)

THE OUTBREAK OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WARAND THE POLICY OF “NONINTERVENTION”

February 1936: Popular Front wins 4.8 million votes to 4 million for National Front; the new government amnesties all leftists convicted of political violence.

July 17/18, 1936: Assassination of a monarchist politician provokes rebellion by the army & rightist parties.

1936/37: Italy and Germany assist the Spanish army; Great Britain and France adopt a policy of nonintervention.

Feb-March 1939: Nationalists capture Madrid & Barcelona.

The initial army uprising of July 1936succeeded only in the dark red zone

Anarchist militiamen with a cannon captured from the Army in Barcelona, July 1936

Soldiers from the Montana barracks in Madrid proclaim their

loyalty to the Republic, July 1936

German transport planes arrive in Morocco to airlift Francisco Franco and the Army of Africa to Spain, July 1936

Franco lifts the siege of Toledo, 29 September 1936

Luis Companys (President of Catalonia) greets the captain of the Soviet supply ship RION in Barcelona, September 1936:

Only the USSR provided arms to the Republic

Joan Miro,“Help Spain”

(1937):“In this struggle I see nothing but obsolete

and discredited forces on the fascist

side, and on the other side the people,

whose immense creative resources

will give Spain a spirit that will astonish the

world.”

“The Generalissimo”(Socialist Labor Federation caricature of Franco, 1937)

George Orwell towers over his comrades as a Republican volunteer, Huesca, 1937

Luftwaffe pilots of the Condor Legion dine in style beside a Heinkel He-45 fighter-bomber

Pablo Picasso,“Guernica”

(1937)

Hitler & Mussolini celebrate their

“Axis” in Rome, May 1938

Charlie Chaplin as Adenoid

Hinkel and Jack Oakie as Benzino

Napoloni: The Great Dictator

Republican refugees stream across the French border in 1938: According to Bell, Spain “relegitimized” war for the European Left

The Spanish Earth premiered in New York in August 1937 with narration by Ernest Hemingway; 2,800 Americans fought

for the Spanish Republic, and 1,000 died.

Picasso, “Cat and Bird” (1939)