World War II, Reflections On The Start Of The Greatest War The World Has Ever Known; Sept. 1, 1939
"Re-Reflections on the Start of World War II." It is worth our while to try to disentangle some of the realities of the war from the mythologies we so love to worship. Robert Freeman, Common Dreams, Sept. 1, 2019.
Sunday, Sept. 1, marks the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II. On that day in 1939, German troops crossed the border into Poland, setting off the greatest war the world has ever known. No war—and maybe no event of any kind—has been so thoroughly chronicled, both at the time it occurred and after the fact. But, like so many of the iconic events in America's past, the rendering that endures in the culture is a stew of fact, fiction, and fairy tale.
It is worth our while to try to disentangle some of the realities of the war from the mythologies we so love to worship. One episode, in particular, deserves better understanding. It is the cause of the war itself. The conventional narrative has it that the war, at least in Europe, was the result of Adolf Hitler's aggression, and the failed "appeasement" of that aggression by Neville Chamberlain, Britain's prime minister.
In fact, it was the West, and especially Britain, that nurtured and encouraged Hitler, in the hope that he would use Germany's military might to destroy the Soviet Union, much as Germany had destroyed Russia in the first World War. Time and again, the British assisted Hitler in his acquisition of military power while deterring France, its putative ally, from challenging him.
- British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (L) and German Chancellor Adolf Hitler (R), leave their meeting at Bad Godesberg, on Sept. 23, 1938.
But the Rottweiler slipped its leash, and turned on its master. It was one of the greatest strategic miscalculations of all time, almost costing the West its civilization. Understanding how and why this occurred is profoundly important. During World War I, the Russian Revolution had placed a communist government in power. The capitalist states were livid. The U.S., Britain, France, Italy, and Japan mounted an invasion of Russia to try to overthrow the Bolsheviks. But the White Counter-Revolution failed. The invasion poisoned relations between Russia and the West for the rest of the century. Its toxic residue lingers still.
Then, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, economies of the capitalist world collapsed. Worldwide industrial production fell by over one third. Agricultural prices declined by one half. International commerce dropped by 60 percent. In Germany, unemployment reached 45 percent. Over the decade between 1928 and 1938, industrial production in the U.K. grew by 18 percent. But in Russia, the economy grew by over 600 percent.
- Bank run in Berlin, Germany during the Great Depression of the 1930s; mass unemployment and misery.
The contrast with capitalism was startling, and inescapable. The communist system was burying the West, and the West was acutely aware of it, and threatened by it. In 1932, 80 percent of the German communist party was made up of unemployed people. They were coming after the capitalists, and the capitalists had no answer for them. Enter Adolph Hitler. Hitler was an enterprising political opportunist, the Donald Trump of his day if you will, except that he had actually authored his own book. He promised the industrialists and bankers who ran the country that he would deal with the communists. So, even though he had never won a popular vote, they appointed him chancellor in January 1933.
By this time, fascism already had a warm reception in the halls of British power. Winston Churchill swooned over Italy: "Their triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism renders a service to the whole world." The effusion would continue and increase as Hitler proved his anti-communist bonafides. In October 1933, in his first diplomatic move, Hitler quit the League of Nations and the disarmament convention Germany had signed in the Treaty of Versailles. He announced a massive expansion in the military and that a German air force, forbidden by Versailles, already existed, in Russia. It was a naked affront to the integrity of the international order and the common instrument (Versailles) that had been devised to maintain it. Britain issued bland reprovals but did nothing else.
- Hitler receives an ovation from the crowd on the night of his inauguration as Chancellor of Germany, Jan. 30, 1933.
Then, in 1935, Britain signed its own naval treaty with Germany, gutting the limitations written into Versailles. Worse, in dealing with Germany directly, Britain undercut its main ally, France, destroying the collective security regime that had given Versailles its teeth. From there, it would be every nation for itself. In March 1936, Hitler marched 150,000 men into the Rhineland, the area quarantined by Versailles to separate Germany and France. The move directly destroyed the Versailles framework. But just as when Germany re-armed in 1935, the Western democracies did nothing. The British actually told the French that they would not back any French action to roll back the invasion. France was not strong enough to act alone, so the aggression stood.
The Rhineland invasion marked a critical turning point on the path to World War II. It was the first German territorial expansion outside the boundaries laid down at Versailles. It greatly elevated Hitler's prestige within Germany. And it was the last time Hitler could have been stopped short of actual military hostilities. He told his generals afterwards that if France had resisted, "We would have had to withdraw with our tail between our legs." But nobody resisted.
From that point on, Western complicity with Hitler's aggression fed on itself...
More, https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/09/01/re-reflections-start-world-war-ii
~ Robert Freeman is the author of The Best One Hour History series, which includes World War I, The French Revolution, The Vietnam War, and other titles. He is the founder of One Dollar For Life, a nonprofit that builds infrastructure projects in the developing world from donations as small as one dollar.
- German forces march unopposed into the Rhineland to remilitarize it in violation of the Versailles Treaty, March 7, 1936.
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Period film footage, British report.
Nazi Germany invades Poland, September 1, 1939.