April 2013 Exam, St. George
1) Essay
This
passage is from British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's speech
to parliament in defence of his decision to sign the Munich agreement
in October of 1938. The events were as follows: In March of that
year, Hitler executed the Anschluss, in which he claimed Austria as
part of Germany. This was forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles to
limit German power; overturning measures such as these won Hitler
popular German nationalist support. It went over relatively smoothly,
as the population of Austria was majority German speaking, and the
Nazi party had wide support therein. In contrast, his desire to annex
Czechoslovakia met fierce resistance, both in that country and
internationally. The Sudetenland, the northern region of
Czechoslovakia, was a thriving industrial region, and was very
important for the strategic defence of Czechoslovakia. For months
before this speech, Hitler and the Nazi party had been purposefully
inciting incidents through the Nazi party in the Sudetenland, riots,
run-ins with Czech police. The region was majority ethnic German.
Hitler
first made a set of more reasonable demands, known as the Karlsbader
Programm, for the peaceful transition of the region to autonomy and
then German control. He alleged that the Czechoslovak government was
abusing Sudeten Germans. These were agreed to by the British, French,
and Czechs in the summer. Subsequently, having seen that he would
meet little resistance, Hitler made a series of more extreme demands
at Bad Godesberg in mid-September, threatening forcible takeover of
the area if they were not met. At the Munich conference, Britain and
France accepted Hitler's Godesberg demands on September 30. This is
the agreement to which the speech refere.
France
and Britain were the key players because France had a defence treaty
with Czechoslovakia, and would be obliged to go to war with Germany
if Hitler attacked Czechoslovakia. The French, however, were cautious
about standing up to Germany because they were not certain of British
support in the event of war. Also, the French overestimated the
strength of the German military (as shown by their allowing Germany
to break the Treaty of Versailles and occupy the Rhineland), and were
generally indecisive due to the quibbling of a weak parliament (the
third republic, whose inefficacy de Gaulle asserts and is shown by
their capitulation early in WW2). Moreover, France and Britain both
had disarmed in the interwar period, hoping for peace in accordance
with the Treaty of Locarno (1925) and Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928), as
they focused on economic reconstruction and dealt with the great
depression.
Chamberlain's
doctrine of appeasement, allowing concessions to dictators like
Hitler and Mussolini in the hope of avoiding war, came under harsh
criticism in retrospect, as it proved ineffective in ultimately
preventing the outbreak of World War II. However, at the time, it was
not so easy to foresee appeasement's disastrous effects, and it
enjoyed plentiful popular support. Chamberlain saw Munich as a
triumph of the European international system's ability to resolve
conflicts without American or Soviet intervention, as shown by the
textrl. The people of Europe were war-weary from the first World War,
which was still very vivid in people's memories. Indeed, even the
people of Germany did not want a war, there is strong historical
evidence that this was only the goal of Hitler, who had the unique
goal of enslaving the world due to ideology of racial supremacy (Race
and Space, Lebensraum). Chamberlain believed the benefits of possibly
avoiding World War were greater than the risks of yielding the
Sudetenland to Hitler; hindsight itself cannot disprove this. No one
knew at the time how committed Hitler was to war.
Furthermore,
the above-mentioned demilitarization means that it would have been
extremely disadvantageous for France and Britain to go to war in
October 1938. Hitler had been fervently rearming since his accession
in 1934, and the German Army was by far the most technologically
advanced in the continent; the Soviets had them outmanned. Even
though the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was not signed until August of
1939, the USSR would likely not have entered a war between the UK,
France, Czechoslovakia, and Germany. The Soviets would have seized
the opportunity to let their enemies, all western capitalist nations,
weaken themselves and each other over Czechoslovakia, which they
viewed as insignificant. The allies would probably have been swiftly
crushed. France was defeated quickly anyway when war did break out,
by June 1940, even though it had more than a year after Munich to
prepare its army. Hitler was obsessed throughout his life with
timing, thinking that he had missed his chance to rise to power in
the early 1930s when the NSDAP vote share fell from one year to the
next, and wondered afterwards whether he ought have gone to war in
1938 when his foes were less ready. Chamberlain's policies may have
been the reason for allied victory, also allowing the British army to
build itself up enough to hold out long enough for the Soviets and
the Americans to enter the war.
In
many ways this occurrence highlights the influence that the first
World War had on the second. The strategy of appeasement would have
been inconceivable in the 19th century, when tensions ran
so hot that world empires would go to war over the assassination of a
minor member of the Austrian royal family (Franz Ferdinand), and the
UK would enter the war over Germany's violation of the Belgian
neutrality. The great force of the Great War in modern memory
accounts for why Britain would not go to war over Germany's violation
of Czechoslovakia's neutrality.
Further,
the Paris Peace Conference of 1920 was allegedly drawn up in
accordance with the principle of national self-determination. This
was the official view expounded by American President Woodrow
Wilson's 14 points of peace, which played a key part in the
discussion. Due to this, Germany felt excluded from the just desserts
of the War. Many large ethnic German minorities were locked up, in
the Danzig, Austria, and the Sudetenland. Further, large parts of
Hungary with large Hungarian majorities were given to Romania to
reward her for fighting on the allied side. The treatment of
Germany's colonies was not different, the victorious allies did not
give these nations independent status, but instead distributed them
among the existing colonial empires. Defeated central powers rightly
felt that self-determination was meaningless rhetoric that the
Entente used to divide up the lands of the defeated central powers as
spoils of war. On the basis of this hypocrisy, Hitler had reasonable
grounds for claiming the Sudetenland; the Sudeten Germans nationally
determined that they wanted to be a part of Germany. Hitler
self-consciously titled one set of his demands the fourteen points
after Woodrow Wilson's. Hitler's goal was not honest, because in
March of the next year, he invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia and set
up a Czech protectorate (The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia) and
a Slovakian puppet state (the Slovak Republic), ruling over other
ethnicities for the benefit of Germans, not granting national
self-determination to any people but his own. Thus it was only a
convenient excuse, afforded by hypocritical actions of the allies
after WW1.
Mussolini
was perhaps also appeased, when we waged war against Empress Haile
Selassie's Ethiopia (then Abyssinia) as revenge for Italy's
humiliation in the Battle of Aduwa in the previous decade. The League
of Nations did not intervene, effectively letting Mussolini have
Ethipia in hopes that he might not make trouble in Europe. This
failed as well, as Mussolini joined the Axis. The inefficacy of the
League of Nations in this instance was one of the factors that
contributed to its dissolution after WW2 in 1946. There was then
pressure on the United Nations that would inform their decisions to
intervene in the Vietnam War, the Bosnian and Croation Wars of
Independence (bombing Serbia), and the war in Kosovo (also bombing
Serbia).
Also,
the example of the failed attempt to appease Hitler and Mussolini
informed the doctrine of containment that the US took toward the USSR
as part of the interventionist Truman Doctrine. The US viewed the
USSR as a hostile entity that could not be reasoned with, and the
only prudent course of action was to try and prevent them from
gaining any countries beyond what they got during the War (Poland,
Hungary, Czechoslovakia, GDR, Romania, Albania, Bulgaria). The fear
was that once one country fell, the rest would fall like dominos.
This is an intentionally stark break with Chamberlain's appeasement,
as the US and Western European countries were unwilling to grant the
USSR any territorial gain at all, for fear that this would embolden
them to take actions similar to Hitlers. Thus, the US and NATO found
themselves involved in many seemingly insignificant countries (that
they would otherwise not interfere with) like Greece (1946-9), Korea
(1950-3), Vietnam (1945-54, 1956-45), Afghanistan (1979-89), propping
up any anticommunist regime – no matter how fascistic – just to
not be seen as appeasing Soviets.
2) Terms ID and Significance
Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact:
This
was the non-aggression pact signed between Hitler's Germany and
Soviet Russia in August of 1939, roughly one week before the
beginning of the war. In it, both parties agreed not to attack each
other if the other party should go to war. In the secret appendix,
they agreed to partition Poland between Nazi and Soviet spheres of
influence. It was signed in Moscow by German Foreign Minister
Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov. It also announced the
Soviet intent to invade Finland in the Winter War.
It was
significant because with this in hand, the Germans could safely
pursue an attack on France, and by the Anglo-French Alliance Britain,
which they did a week later. The Soviets were the most powerful
military force on the continent, and they could have been a major
problem for Hitler if they had intervened early. This is shown by the
fact that once Hitler did violate the Pact in 1941, Operation
Barbarossa directly led to 95% of German casualties and the Axis
defeat.
Further,
it was in Poland that many of the practices that came to define the
Holocaust were first implemented. Ghettoization, liquidation, putting
Jews in charge of administrating their own imprisonment. All this
would be implemented as the Germans marched into east Europe after
1941.
Also,
this began the tradition of Soviet domination of Poland, and many
other eastern European nations, that would continue until the
collapse of communism in 1991 (Poland was liberated by Solidarity in
Sept 1989). The Soviet Union wanted to dominate Poland so that they
could rule it as a communist puppet state. Indeed, in 1944, when the
Polish Home Army (The third largest allied military force) rose
against the occupying Wehrmacht, the Soviet Army stood across the
banks of the Vistula and watched. A Soviet air base 5 minutes away
sent no aid. They wanted Poland weak so that they could dominate it
after the war, as they did with Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the GDR.
The Pact gave Stalin freedom to pursue this course of action.
Stalin
was also able to pursue a war against Finland in the North. Though
this proved unsuccessful, the Soviet inability to crush the Finnish
was seen as weakness by Hitler, and informed his decision to invade
Russia, which ultimately lost him the war.
Marshall
Plan:
The
Marshall Plan was the system of financial aid that the US gave to
help rebuild Europe after WW2. Much of the money went to food. The
recipients were most western European countries.
The
significance was that it deepened the divide between western and
eastern European nations that already existed in the ideological
difference between capitalism and communism. The USSR was offered
money under the plan, but they refused because t hey did not want to
allow the concomitant American control of their economy. They also
prohibited any of the Eastern Bloc countries from accepting. The
Russians had already been excluded from the Lend-Lease Act, even
though the Americans promised to include them. This further
exclusion, blamed on the Americans because of their “unreasonable”
terms further damaged American-Soviet relations.
It
also marks a shift in world power. The first world war weakend Europe
to the extent that its countries had some economic trouble. The
second World War decimated Europe to the extent that it was extremely
reliant on America to rebuild it.
Further,
the Marshall Plan led to the creation of the Organization for
European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) in 1948 to administer its funds.
This was the first pan-European (partially) decision making body, and
paved the way for the ECSC (1952), the EEC (1957), and eventually the
EU (2009). This organization showed that European countries were
capable of working together, and as a result they opted for tight
integration to prevent further wars. Organizations were formed of old
enemies, such as France and Germany, also France and Italy, in the
ECSC.
Francisco
Franco:
Francisco
Franco was the right-wing dictator of Spain from the end of the
Spanish Civil War (1936-9) to his death in 1975. He began as Spain's
youngest general, and came to command the Nationalist army against
the Republicans, led by the Popular front.
The
Spanish Civil War was an ideological battleground for the forces of
liberal democracy that dominated France, Britain, and Czechoslovakia,
and the new political ideology of fascism that rose to power in all
other European nations (except in the USSR) in the interwar period.
The republicans received material support from the Soviet Union, and
had many British volunteers. The Nationalists received military
support from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. This helped make the two
sides more hostile towards each other, and led to the war.
Further,
Hitler took advantage of the opportunity to test the Luftwaffe, his
air forces, especially in the bombing of Guernica – a civilian
town. This showed that Germany's army, especially the air force, was
the most advanced in Europe at the time, and intimidated France and
Britain into policies of appeasement; they did not want to directly
challenge Hitler, and handed him Austria, the Rhineland, the
Sudetenland, and the lifting of military restrictions, without a
fight. This also convinced the British of the need to modernize the
RAF, which they did in time to do well enough in the Battle of
Britain to prevent an amphibious invasion.
This
war solidified the ties between the fascist leaders Hitler and
Mussolini, though Francisco refused to fight in WW2, citing his
nation's poverty.
Existentialism:
Existentialism
was a philosophy of life that emerged with the writings of French
philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir after WW2, and
had its foundations in late 19th century Danish
philosopher Soren Kierkegaarde and German Friedrich Nietzsche. It put
an emphasis on absolute human freedom of choice to create identity,
and the tremendous responsibility arising from that choice.
It was
significant because it gave people a way of dealing with the
aftermath of the war. People needed to forget parts of the past, the
war, and a philosophy where you can choose to redefine your past at
any moment renders the past insignificant. Further, the emphasis on
anguish and difficulty meshed well with the feelings of people after
the war. People in the war had to make difficult choices.
One
concrete example is from Sartre's life, the French had to choose
whether to collaborate with Petain's Vichy Regime or to join de
Gaulle's Free French Army and resist. Sartre himself resisted.
Existentialism provided a basis for indicting collaborators, they
cannot use the excuse that they had no choice because whatever they
did, they made a deliberate free choice to do. They could have joined
the resistance. Thus, existentialism informed punishment of
collaborators in France and abroad, where Sartre's writings found a
place.
Existentialism
also meshed nicely with de Beauvoir's creation of the second wave
feminist women. By emphasizing free choice, existentialism minimized
the biological aspects of personality. Thus, “woman” was a social
construct, and all the concomitant behaviour was the result of
choices that women made. It liberated them by telling them they could
simply choose to do different things, empowering women to do what
they want, and encouraging feminist's to campaign for a world where
women have equal opportunity to choose their lives.
Vaclav
Havel:
Vaclav
Havel was a playwright who published Charter 77 (1977), a document
demanding basic human rights in Soviet dominated communist
Czechoslovakia. He was also a leading figure in the Velvet Revolution
(1989), where Czechoslovakia gained independence non-violently as
part of the collapse of communism, and the Velvet Divorce, where
Slovakia separated from the Czech Republic. He was the first
president of the Czech Republic, and the last of Czechoslovakia.
He was
significant because he showed how fragile Communism had become.
Collapse must have been in the air, for Czechoslovakia to receive
independence without firing a shot in only 10 days (roughly). The
previous attempt at liberalizing reforms, the Prague Spring (1968),
met with Soviet military intervention. Soviet Communist Party
Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost (openness) and perestroika
(restructuring) had real effects, the USSR was committed to
non-intervention in eastern bloc countries in a way that it was not
only 20 years ago. He inspired Bulgaria and Romania to throw off
communist regimes later in that year.
His
human rights campaigns revealed problems with communism. If communism
was working in the eastern bloc, there would not have been need to
militarily repress protests. Official “apparatchiks” received
luxury goods while non-party members suffered shortages of basic
necessity. Discontent led to the collapse of communism.
The
velvet divorce may have been the result of Hitler's division of the
federation into two protectorates during WW2.
3) Put in
Chronological Order.
Warsaw
Ghetto Uprising
Death
of Adolf Hitler
VE Day
(Victory in Europe Day)
Death
of Josef Stalin
Potsdam Conference
Cuban Missile Crisis
Gorbachev named
General Secretary of Communist Party in USSR
German Reunification
Russo-Japanese War
German Loss of
Colonies in West Africa
Suez Canal Crisis
1956
Official End of
Algerian War of Independence 1963
- Matching
Simone
de Beauvoir
Frank
Caplan
Andrey
Sakharov
Warsaw
Pact
T-4
- Multiple Choice
- f
- a
- b
- c
- e
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