UNIT 13Part 2: Totalitarian

Aggression and U.S. Policy

Japan and Asia• Japanese lack natural resources…• 1931: Create an “incident” in

Manchuria • Take military action and set up the

puppet state of Manchukuo• 1937: Japan attacks China

– Japanese brutalities v. Chinese…the “Rape of Nanking”

Headed towards WWII

• Hitler suspended reparation payments

• 1935 Germany begins to rearm

• 1936 German troops move into the Rhineland

• 1936 Rome-Berlin Axis

• 1936 Spanish Civil War- Germany and Italy support Spanish right under General Franco

• “rehearsal for war”

General Francisco Franco

• 1938 “Anschluss”- union of Germany and Austria

• 1938 Hitler demanded the Sudetenland

• 1938 Munich Conference- “APPEASEMENT”

Chamberlain and Hitler

Headed towards WWII

Chamberlain

HitlerMussolini

German Troops in the Sudetenland

Signs reads “One People, One Reich, One Fuhrer”

A beaming Neville Chamberlain proudly proclaimed to have achieved “peace in our time…”

Headed towards WWII

• March 1939 German troops invade Czechoslovakia…

• August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact• September 1939: “blitzkreig” Poland attacked by Germany and Russia-

war begins in Europe• Russia also takes the Baltic states and

attacks Finland

WWII

• Starts with Nazi invasion of Poland Sept. 1939

• The “Phony War”• Nazis overrun Norway, Denmark• The Fall of France (1940)

Battle of Britain

• Gr. Britain ONLY democracy remaining in Europe not under Nazi control

• “Operation Sea Lion”• The battle in the skies (RAF v. Luftwaffe)• Hitler gives up…turns to the East…USSR!

U.S. foreign policy

• An isolationist mood in America:1. Senate’s rejection of the League of

Nations

2. Our own problems: Great Depression

U.S. Isolationism (con’t.)

3. Nye Committee (1935):A. U.S. banks and munitions makers

made HUGE profits during WWI…they pushed us into the war…called “merchants of death”

Isolationism (con’t.)

Neutrality Acts (1935-37)Congress passed series of laws to keep us out of future conflictsTerms:• embargo on the shipment of all munitions, arms and

implements of war to belligerents• all indirect war materials (steel, cotton, food, etc.)

must be handled on a “cash and carry” basis – they must be taken from the United States on the ships of a belligerent and paid for in cash

U.S. Isolationism (con’t.)

FDR’s “Quarantine Speech” (1937)FDR compared aggression around the world to a disease…

Said the world’s democracies should quarantine (isolate) aggressive nations as we would a diseased patient

Europe 1941

Hitler in Paris, June 1940

Gr. Britain needs more!

• American neutrality in the 1930s• By 1941, Europe under Nazi control…

situation desperate• Congress passes Lend-Lease Act

Lend-Lease Act• FDR authority to sell, lend, exchange or

transfer weapons and other materials to help defend nations vital to U.S. security

• Example: –FDR traded 50 American destroyers

to Gr. Britain for naval bases in the Caribbean