Lesson video

Welcome to History, we're learning all about 20th century conflict.

My name is Mr Hutchinson and this is lesson six.

If this is your first time with us, log off now, go onto the website and look at lesson one, two, three, four and five, because we are already in 1939.

We've learned all about the conditions of Europe in the 19th century and the early 20th century.

We've learned all about the First World War, we've had a major treaty, we've had a dictator rise to power and the outbreak of the Second World War is about to take place which is what we're going to be focused on today.

It's been a fascinating ride so far and it's about to get more interesting.

Before we get started make sure that you've done the quiz.

They are very important to do, get through it and it will give you more, it'll make sure that the knowledge is much quicker to come to your head and your able to think better.

Make sure that you've got a pen to write with and then an old notebook or a piece of paper is fine, because I will be telling you to stop, pause and write down.

And it's important that you do pause and write down, don't just watch the video, make sure you pause it and write, 'cause that gives your brain prudent time to process, to think, to remember, to make connections, and that's what we need to be doing.

So today's lesson, today's lesson we're going to be asking this question here, was World War Two inevitable? So inevitable means that it had to happen, there was nothing else that, there was nothing that could have stopped it.

So was World War Two inevitable? That's the question that we're going to be asking today.

And in order for us to do that, we are going to first of all look at Hitler's foreign policy aims. What Hitler wanted to do in terms of other countries.

Well then look at a place called the Rhineland and what Hitler did with the Rhineland in 1936.

Then the policy of appeasement, how other countries treated Hitler, and they took this thing called the policy of appeasement that we'll look at.

Didn't last forever and by 1939 World War Two had broken out.

We'll look at how exactly how that happened and then your end of lesson quiz.

I want you to cache your mind way back to the First World War and you'll remember H.

G.

Wells.

What can you remember what H.

G.

Wells said, writing about the First World War? That's right, he said, "This is the war to end all war." It's so horrible, so devastating, so many people have being killed or injured, so much death and destruction, it lasted so long, it was so grim.

This is going to end war forever.

We're never going to get another war again.

Nobody's going to want to do it.

And yet, 20 years later, the world is at war again, even bigger war than the First World War.

Why? Well first of all let's look at Hitler's foreign policy aims. So in the last lesson, Nazi Germany, we knew that there were three different kinds of factors, things that we can look at in terms of history, social, economic and political.

And we looked at the social and the economic in the last lesson.

Sort of Germany socially and economically.

Today we're going to focus mostly on just the politics.

So politicians lead countries, make laws, make rules, decide how to deal with other countries.

And we're going to look at the political situation in Germany led by Adolf Hitler.

Before we do that, I want you to remember, I want you to see if you can try and remember the Treaty of Versailles, because this is going to influence any political decisions in Germany, 'cause hanging over Germany is a huge embarrassment, it very expensive, it restricts- well, actually I won't say that, kind of giving it away.

What were the aims of the Treaty of Versailles? Let's pause the video and list them down, go.

Great, so hopefully you remembered that the aims the Treaty of Versailles was to weaken Germany, especially militarily, to provide a lasting peace, that was Woodrow Wilson's hope, establishing the League of Nations which did get established, the League of Nations did get established but it wasn't effective, it wasn't powerful, it didn't have an army, nobody really paid any attention to it.

They wanted to punish Germany with the Treaty of Versailles, especially in terms of the reparations but just generally punishing Germany.

And those huge reparations were also levied on Germany.

And specifically what restrictions, what was taken away from Germany, what was Germany told that they couldn't have? See if you can remember as many as you can, the restrictions placed on Germany.

Pause the video and write those down.

Great, so hopefully you remembered that Germany lost that area near France called Alsace-Lorraine, which was rich in raw materials, very important.

Germany took it from France in the Franco-Prussian War, the war that helped to unify Germany, and now in the Treaty of Versailles Germany it back, sorry, France got it back.

And so that was taken away from Germany.

That wasn't the only restriction, there's also the Rhineland, which is an area of land between Germany and France, was demilitarised.

So Germany were told you're not allowed any military troops in this area between France and Germany 'cause we don't trust you.

If you've got soldiers in there, you're too close to us, so that's completely free of soldiers.

And of course there were huge military restrictions.

So U-boats, the submarines they're gone, they're not allowed those.

The air force gone, not allowed that.

The army is hugely restricted in terms of how many soldiers they're allowed.

The Navy is basically wiped, only a couple of battle ships allowed.

So Germany's military restrictions are huge.

Hitler then comes into power in 1933.

We were looking at that in the last lesson.

Hitler, pretty much immediately, starts to ignore the Treaty of Versailles, he hates it.

He called it the diktat of Versailles, he hates it.

So one of the things that had happen from the Treaty of Versailles, those reparations, that money, do you think the Hitler paid those? No, no, no.

Soon as he comes into power, Hitler says we're not paying the reparations to the Treaty of Versailles, what are they going to do? They're not going to go back to war with us, we know how horrible that is.

And so he stops paying it.

And he systematically starts to break the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

He starts building his army up again in secret.

He uses that money, the different kind of money that we looked at in the last lesson with the economics, he used a different kind of money to build up his army in secret throughout the 1930s.

And he had three very specific aims, Hitler.

Three foreign policy aims. The way that you want to treat other countries.

I'm going to play the first few minutes of this video.

I'd like you to write down the three foreign policy aims. So in the video the three things that Hitler wanted to achieve in terms of other countries are listed.

So see if you can listen really carefully and write them down.

So get one, two, three ready now, so that you can listen out and write down the three foreign policy aims of Hitler.

So, hopefully you listed down the major policy aims here.

The first was that he wanted to make Germany great again, a great nation.

They'd been embarrassed by the Treaty of Versailles, they'd lost this major war, he wants to make them a great nation again.

And he wanted to be in charge, not just of the Germany that was left after the First World War, Hitler wanted to be in charge of all German speaking people.

The leader der Führer, he wanted to bring all German speaking people across Europe, wherever they were, under his rule.

And the final thing that Hitler wanted to do is he wanted what he called Lebensraum or living space, living room for Germans.

So really what that means was, he wanted more territory, more land, and he thought getting it from the East near sort of like Russia and the Balkans and Poland, especially, that's where he would get the extra land.

And so those were the major policy aims of Hitler.

That's what you wanted to achieve.

And the first thing that he did, the first way that he went about achieving that was the Rhineland, and the Rhineland is, so I'll show you a picture of the Rhineland, here it is here.

So you can see the Rhineland's between, it's that yellow bit between Germany and France.

So here's the Rhineland just here.

This is the river Rhine, I'm tracing it now.

And this area here was the Rhineland and that was demilitarised, so France said you're not allowed any soldiers in there because they wanted that buffer.

They'd already been attacked twice in the last 50 years by Germany.

They're a bit too close for comfort, so they said, let's have this buffer zone of the Rhineland.

So the area's called the Rhineland and it's demilitarised under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

But France is still a little bit nervy, especially because Hitler's building up it's army and Hitler is building the German army.

And so in 1935, France, Franco, Franco just means France, France makes a pact with Russia, an agreement, an alliance.

And they say, hey, let's make a deal that if Germany attacks either of us, we will both attack them.

Now this might remind you of something.

France and Russia making a deal, Germany feeding in the middle, encircled, alliance is starting to build, it's similar to war.

Yeah, similar to the conditions that led to the First World War, they're starting to come back again.

So that Franco-Russian pact makes Hitler especially nervy, he does something really against the terms Versailles and he sends soldiers into the Rhineland.

He's not attacking it, he's just sending soldiers and tanks and armies into the Rhineland in 1936.

So, guess what France does? Nothing.

Guess what Britain does? Nothing.

Russia? Nothing.

There are no real consequences to this.

And so Hitler thinks, I can get away with what I like here.

They're not going to attack me or do anything.

Everybody's trying to avoid war.

The First World War was so horrible, they're trying to avoid war.

And so I'm marching now, broke the Treaty of Versailles and nothing happened.

What else can I get away with? So here's another map here of the Rhineland.

So you can just start to see what Germany started to do.

So the Rhineland here is under, so it's just this sort of like bit here that, and this is where Germany starts to re-militarize, put soldiers back in.

So now they're really close to France again.

There's this area here called the Saarland, that was actually run by the League of Nations.

That new league that Woodrow Wilson wanted to, that new league that Woodrow Wilson wanted to set up, and they did set up but they couldn't defend that small bit of land that they had.

And so they looked very, very weak to Hitler.

So how do the nations like Britain and France, the victors of World War and how were we reacting to Hitler's increasingly aggressive actions here? Well they take a policy called appeasement, say it, appeasement, appeasement.

This is a policy they take, it's an important term.

And appeasement happened throughout the 1930s, but it's mostly associated with the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain.

So Neville Chamberlain became prime minister in the later 1930s and continued this policy of appeasement, he believed it was the best way to deal with Germany.

So what does appeasement mean? Appeasement is when you have an enemy and to try and stop them going to war, to try to stop them from fighting, you negotiate with them, you compromise, you make deals, you do everything you can to avoid war, even if that means giving them what they want or giving them a bit of what they want.

Now, people debate all the time about whether that's the right thing to do.

Some people say, if there's an aggressive nation you need to be a aggressive against as quickly as possible, don't let them get strong.

The only thing that bodies understand is violence and force.

And other people say, well no, the Treaty of Versailles requires just to give us an idea of how we might use it.

So, one sentence is, I could write, that Britain followed a policy of appeasement towards Hitler's Germany throughout the 1930s.

That could be one of my sentences, that's appeasement in a sentence.

Britain followed the policy of appeasement.

Let's look at another sentence, get an idea of how we use it.

Appeasement was the wrong policy to follow, that's an opinion.

You might be able to back that up with reasons and say, yeah, I think that that's correct, but it's an example of it being used in a sentence, you could say appeasement was the correct policy to follow.

Let's turn and take a look at that now.

Let's look at some of the arguments for and against.

So there's arguments for appeasement.

We have Hitler building up he's army, acting erratically, acting aggressively, Neville Chamberlain, British prime minister says, we need to appease him, we need to make deals, we need to give him a bit of what he wants.

Why? Well, one of the reasons, here are some of the reasons for and against appeasement.

I'm going to put the reasons up.

I want you to organise them into whether you think these are arguments for appeasement, for giving Hitler what he wants or arguments against appeasement.

So in total they're going to be eight arguments, are they for appeasement or against appeasement? This will help us to make a judgement.

So first, it couldn't work because Hitler couldn't be trusted.

Second, it allowed Hitler time to increase Germany's strength and power.

Third, many people feared communist Russia more than Hitler.

So in Russia, communism had taken control of the country and lots of people were very scared of the communist and communism.

Maybe people were more scared of communism than Hitler.

There was a feeling that the German grievances, so a grievance is when you're upset.

And there was a feeling that the German grievances were legitimate.

They weren't being unreasonable and they could be solved.

So they were very cross and upset still by the Treaty of Versailles and the way they were treated, and so we could solve some of those grievances.

Appeasement could be seen as betraying the Treaty of Versailles.

Is that an argument for or against it? So it is saying that Hitler doesn't have to follow the Treaty of Versailles.

For example, the Treaty of Versailles says, the Rhineland needs to be demilitarised, under appeasement you say, you shouldn't really be doing it, but okay, we'll let you get away with it.

So that's breaking the Treaty of Versailles.

People in Britain wanted to avoid war at all costs.

It's only 20 years later.

If people fought in the war when they were 20 years old, then there'll be 40 at this point, still young enough to go and fight a war.

People wanted to avoid war, they remember just how horrible that was.

It made Britain look weak.

Appeasing Hitler, letting him get what you wanted makes Britain look weak.

And Britain was also recovering economically from the war.

So Britain did not have much money because we spent so much money in the war.

So Hitler militarises the Rhineland but he doesn't stop there.

He gets away with that, he gets this appeasement in 1936 and in 1938 the next thing he does is Anschluss just like he said that he would.

Anschluss is joining up all of the different German speaking people.

So in 1938 he joins up Germany and Austria and parts of the old Eastern Prussia.

All those people spoke German and he didn't go and attack them, but he did put the politicians that he wanted in place, he put in.

He did send military in there but Prussia have referendums and said to those people, do you want me to be your leader? And those referendums said, yes, he would.

There's debate about how much pressure people were under, whether they legitimately wanted to be led by a new, strong Germany.

But he betrayed the Treaty of Versailles again, broke the Treaty of Versailles again by joining together Germany and Austria.

You can see here he is being met in the street with his military and the new Nazi flags in Austria after Anschluss.

So, Neville Chamberlain's getting worried here.

So he goes and has a meeting with Hitler.

He sits down and he says, look, you're breaking the Treaty of Versailles.

I need you to promise that it's going to stop now, okay.

I need you to promise that you're not going to do anything else.

And Hitler says, okay, yeah, I've achieved my aim I've united all of the German speaking people.

There are a few people around Czechoslovakia, around the edges of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland, they're German, I want those to be under my rule, but then I'll stop and that's it, it's over.

And so Neville Chamberlain went and he got that deal in writing and that's what he's holding.

He got a deal from Hitler.

He's just come off the plane there, he's just come off a plane.

And he holds it up and he says something, a really famous quote.

He says, "this piece of paper is peace for our times." He thinks this is going to give peace.

He's proud of the fact he's given Hitler lots of chances, but we know that it doesn't work.

The Second World War breaks out because Hitler does not stop there.

You can see Czechoslovakia there, just in between Germany and Austria.

So this is no longer a country.

There's now the Czech Republic near there, but they used to be called Czechoslovakia.

And Germany, to begin with, just takes over the outside because those people spoke German.

But then Hitler says, actually I'm taking the whole country and he takes the whole of Czechoslovakia over and he says that he's in charge of the whole of Czechoslovakia and starts putting his army in Czechoslovakia again.

And this marks the end of appeasement.

Neville Chamberlain realises is not going to work.

He thought that it was going to be peace in our times but Hitler straight away has broken that deal.

Gone into Czechoslovakia, invades Czechoslovakia and taken over that country with soldiers.

There here is, you can see him in Czechoslovakia.

And this meant a few things.

It meant, first of all there were no German speakers in that part of Czechoslovakia, so it was unjustified.

Hitler couldn't say this was one of my policy aims, I want all German speaking people under my rule, well, no, they're not even German speakers.

Chamberlain realised, I can't trust Hitler.

I sat in a room with him, we made a deal, we signed a piece of paper and he's just ignored it.

I can't trust him.

And you can't do appeasement and make deals with people that you just can't trust.

Britain and France decide, they're not going to do anything about Czechoslovakia.

They're not going to go to war with Hitler.

They're not going to do anything particularly, other than say that it's the wrong thing to do.

But what they do do is, they make a deal and they say, if he goes into Poland, if Hitler goes into Poland and invades Poland, then we'll go to war with Germany.

Then we'll protect Poland.

So that's going to be our red line.

He's got Czechoslovakia, it's done now.

We can't trust him anymore, no more appeasement, if he goes to Poland it's war.

And to help with that, Britain started mobilising it's army.

It started putting conscription in place.

That's when people have to join the army, they don't get a choice.

If you are a certain age, you have to go and join the army.

So Britain's on a war footing now, they realise war might happen.

So Hitler now has taken Czechoslovakia, he's taken Austria, he's gone into the Rhineland, he's taken the Saarland, the Sudetenland, he's expanding massively and you can see that there's this one country here that he wants and it's Poland.

And so Germany in 1939, they make a secret deal, actually.

They make a secret deal with Russia who were of course their enemies, but they make a secret deal and they say, hey, we'll invade Poland together.

You can have half of it and we'll have half of it.

Okay, that's the deal.

And that deal means that Russia, the star of the War is on Germany's side because they were going to, 'cause they're invading Poland together.

So, this is the big start of the First World War because Britain said, if you invade Poland, were at war and that's exactly what Germany does, they invade Poland on the 1st of September, 1939.

And this is a radio broadcast of how Neville Chamberlain broke the news to the nation, listen to this.

So you can just imagine what it would have been like.

Families huddled in their living rooms, listening to the radio broadcast after years of seeing their prime minister trying to appease Hitler, realising that it wasn't going to work.

He'd invaded another country and now we're at war with Germany again.

So I've got a big question for you here.

And it's going to mean that you have to put together all of your knowledge on this subject so far, going right back to previous lessons as well.

So it's a good chance to look back through your notes that you've written.

If you want to go back through previous videos, you can, because we're going to think about, we're going to answer this question here, which factors, which different things, which different events, which different conditions contributed to the Second World War breaking out? So I'll give you a few hints and clues here.

You might write about World War One, World War One can be considered a factor, something that affected, something that caused the Second World War, something that needs to be taken to account.

We know in history that it's very rare, so we look at causation in history, how one thing caused another thing, but it's very rare that it's like that.

It's not like a snooker ball where you hit one and it just hits another and it's as simple as that.

It's complicated, there's lots of moving parts, lots of factors, they're weighted differently.

That's what you need to take into account.

So one of the factors is the First World War.

That contributed to the Second World War.

How and how much, that's what I want you to answer.

You might also write about the Treaty of Versailles, how that contributed to the Second World War.

Hitler's beliefs and aims going right back to Mein Kampf and his general beliefs and aims and his foreign policy beliefs and aims. The policy of appeasement very often blamed by people, though there's debate around that.

Perhaps as Neville Chamberlain was saying there, there was nothing else that he could have done.

He couldn't have done anything differently.

So in the language you can use to show that causation, to show how it contributed to this, this meant that, try and use that in your answer.

This cause, try and use that in your answer.

So pause the video and write as long an answer as you can.

You got plenty to write about, you got loads of knowledge, you're really talented and clever on this subject so you use everything that you've learned, put it together to answer this question, which factors contributed to the Second World War and how? Awesome, well done, well done.

Great piece of work, got all of those different factors down and you are now really mastering this subject.

Really impressed and really proud, amazing work.

Please make sure you do your end of lesson quiz.

I've had a lot of fun, again, thinking about the Second World War, fascinating subject, there's loads we've missed out.

There's loads that we've missed out.

I'm going quickly so that we can cover the whole of the 20th century.

So if you want to read more, watch more, find out more, then you do that because there are lots and lots of fascinating aspects to this subject.

Thank you so much for working so hard.

I will see you next lesson, where we're going to put together everything that we've learned to write an extended essay all about the 20th century conflicts and the first few wars.