Age of Total War

Handout Nine

Topic: The Failure to Stop Aggression 

OUTLINE: 

IX. The Failure to Stop Aggression

A.Introduction.

B.Abyssinia and the Rhineland

C.The Spanish Civil War and the Axis

D.The Anschluss

E.Munich and After.

F.The Final Days of Peace 

QUESTIONS: 

  1. AJP Taylor argues in his controversial account of the origins of World War II that Hitler was just a traditional German statesman and the causation of the Second World War is much more complicated than previously believed. His book was attacked at the time of publication. Why did that happen? Was Taylor correct? Explain.
  2. The late Lawrence Stone of Princeton University came up with an ingenious model to explain armed conflicts. The first involves preconditions, those long-term tensions that make war possible. The second centers upon the idea of precipitants, the near-term tensions that make war highly likely. The final category is the trigger, the event that sparks the outbreak of war. How does this apply to World War II?
  3. The Spanish Civil War has lead to many different interpretations. How would you evaluate the Spanish Civil War? Was it a testing ground for World War II or was it an internal conflict involving the future of Spain?

  4. Jan Huizinga, a well-respected medieval historian, was deeply disturbed by the world situation in the 1930s. He watched as the world moved closer to war. He was so concerned that he wrote the following In the Shadow of Tomorrow:  “We are living in a demented world. And we know it. It would not come as a surprise to anyone if tomorrow the madness gave way to a frenzy which would leave our poor Europe in a state of distracted stupor, with engines still turning and flags streaming in the breeze, but with spirits gone.” He even went much further, by noting, “Everywhere there are doubts as to the solidity of our social structure, vague fears of the imminent future, a feeling that our civilization is on the way to ruin. They are not merely the shapeless anxieties, which beset us in the small hours of the night when the flame of life burns low. They are considered expectations founded on observation and judgment of an overwhelming multitude of facts. How to avoid the recognition that almost all things which once seemed sacred and immutable have now become unsettled, truth and humanity, justice and reason? We see forms of government no longer capable of functioning, production systems on the verge of collapse, social forces gone wild with power. The roaring engine of this tremendous time seems to be heading for a breakdown.”  From what we studied since mid-semester, what do you believe accounted for Huizinga’s pessimism? What was he writing about? Was his prognosis correct? Explain.   

TERMS:  

Konrad Henlein

Kurt von Schuschnigg

Neville Chamberlain

Hoare-Laval Agreement

Adowa

Caudillo

Edouard Benes

Sudetenland

Munich Conference

Lord Runciman

Emil Hacha

William Strang

The Strang Mission