The History Buff's Guide to World War II Read Online Free PDF Page A

Germany maneuvered to enter Vienna to “restore order.” Only Italian troops mobilized to stop the coup, despite Mussolini’s request to Britain and others for help.
    10 . THE MUNICH CONFERENCE (1938)
    After this meeting, the word Munich became synonymous with foolish concessions. Especially infamous was Neville Chamberlain’s premature declaration of “peace in our time” after conceding western Czechoslovakia to Hitler. Less well known, the Munich Conference prevented an early outbreak of a European war.
    Since 1937 Hitler intended to invade Czechoslovakia. Partially carved from Austria after the First World War, one of the most productive and prosperous states in Central Europe, and containing nearly a million German-speaking people, the country would either be a brick wall or a stepping-stone to the expansion of the Third Reich. In May 1938, using pugnacious if unoriginal language, der Führer announced to senior officers of the Wehrmacht, “It is my unshakable will that Czechoslovakia shall be wiped off the map.” He set the target date as October 1, 1938. 34
    By September, unguarded communications, overt troop movements, and a string of unrealistic demands illustrated Hitler’s intentions. At one point he gave all Czechs in the Sudetenland forty-eight hours to evacuate the region. In a frightening replay of World War I, German, French, Russian, and Czech armies started to mobilize. On September 25, France and Britain threatened Hitler to negotiate or fight.
    But as with Abyssinia, Britain asked the Czechs to trade land for peace. Some suggested it would be to Prague’s advantage. Although it would lose the natural and man-made defensive perimeter of its mountainous western border, plus the mineral resources and industry in the area, the multinational Czech land would become more “homogenous” after shedding ethnic enclaves to Germany, Poland, and Hungary.
    On September 28, Hitler agreed to a meeting in Munich, where, the following day, the prime ministers of Britain, France, and Italy permitted Germany to seize areas where Germans were in the majority. Czech president Edvard Benes allowed the seizure, fearing annihilation of his country if he resisted. A week later he resigned, wondering for the rest of his life if he had made the correct choice. 35
Six months after Munich, Hitler ordered German troops into Prague, declared a Bohemian-Moravia Protectorate (the western two-thirds of the country), and once again claimed it was the final territorial adjustment he would ever make.

    CAUSES OF THE WAR
    A war is not unlike a bomb. It is of human construct and requires a multitude of conditions and proceedings for detonation. World War II was in effect several bombs assembled over time in Europe and Asia. Each of them contained a host of volatile components that were ancient and new, great and small, intangible and physical.
    By the 1930s, these elements of instability grew, intensified, and began to overlap, creating a global environment of hostility in which diffusion of any particular conflict became less and less possible. Franklin D. Roosevelt summarized the situation best when he lamented to Henry Stimson, “These are not normal times; people are jumpy and very ready to jump after strange gods.” 36
    Following are the abnormal times and strange gods of which FDR spoke. In roughly chronological order are the foremost seeds of insecurity leading up to the Second World War.
    1 . THE FIRST WORLD WAR
    Of all the products of the Great War—tanks, poison gas, bombers—missing was any genuine resolution. On paper the Allies appeared to be the defeated party, hosting the majority of battles and suffering the vast majority of fatalities. Britain went from being a creditor to a debtor nation. France lost more than a million young men. Russia collapsed altogether. The Allies failed to capture a foot of German soil.
    In contrast, the former Central Powers were never routed and yet were saddled with a humiliating