InNo+hyejijun94+1.10.11

= Roads To War Part 1 =

//Found Awesomeness//
This photo illustrates the unrest among people during the Great Depression in 1929. The unrest resulted in mass unemployment. In the photo, unemployed workers are marching in the streets.

This is a photo of Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party. He became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933 and be began the re-armament in order to achieve his foreign policy aims.

**//Original Awesomeness//**

**  **
This chart shows the significant event that happened in 1931. To get out of the Depression, Japanese army officers began to talk about conquering foreign land and their target was Manchuria.

**Hopes For Peace in 1929**
__Locarno and the 'New Era':__
 * Hopes for lasting world peace first raised in 1925 during the conference in the Swiss town of Locarno
 * There was a number of problems that had not been resolved at the end of the Great War
 * Most difficult problem: Germany and France were still on bad terms after the Great War
 * Result of conference at Locarno: a group of agreements - **Locarno Treaties**
 * France, Germany and Belgium agreed to respect each other's borders
 * The treaties removed many of the suspicions between Germany and her neighbors

__Friendship between nations:__
 * By 1929, all but two of the world's nations were at peace
 * Many countries signed agreements of peace with each other in 1929
 * Most important of these was the **Kellogg-Briand Pact** (an agreement came up in order to not use war as a way of settling disputes)
 * July 1929, sixty-five countries had signed Kellogg-Briand Pact
 * USSR signed an **Eastern Pact** with six of its neighboring states to have peace

__The League of Nations:__
 * 1929 was the tenth anniversary of the League of Nations
 * The League of Nations was created in 1919
 * They had two aims: to keep peace between nations and to make the world a better place for all people
 * In order to achieve the aim of keeping world peace, countries that joined the League had to sign a promise not to go to war with any other member of the League
 * They also agreed that if any member did attack another, the other members would join forces to defend the country which was under attack
 * This idea for keeping peace was known as **collective security**
 * There were three peace-keeping actions that the League could consider taking:
 * Deal with a dispute by legal means
 * Impose economic **sanctions** on an attacker
 * Impose military sanctions against the attacker
 * League also had a number of special departments to improve international relations
 * **Disarmament Commission** tried to persuade member nations to reduce their weapon stocks and to rely on collective security for their defense

__The Limitations of the League:__
 * The League had some limitations
 * Not every nation belonged to the League
 * Two major powers (US and USSR) did not belong to the League
 * Some members lacked enthusiasm for the League
 * League's ability to keep the peace had never been fully tested by 1929

**The Great Depression**
__The Great Depression:__
 * 1929, the Great Depression occurred
 * The Great Depression began in the USA and later spread to other countries
 * Trade dwindled, profits fell, factories and businesses closed down and millions of people lost their jobs
 * The governments of the countries tried to protect their people with new economic policies
 * USA and Britain raised the customs duties on foreign goods coming into their countries - this was called **protectionism**
 * Its aim was to boost the demand for goods made in their own countries by keeping out foreign goods
 * Italy tried to keep out foreign good entirely
 * Protectionism harmed international relations, the more countries acted selfishly, the more they forgot the ideas of world co-operation
 * The Depression caused unrest among the people of many countries
 * This led to mass unemployment

__The Problem of Empires:__
 * The division of the world into powers which owned large empires and those which did not was a threat to world peace
 * Britain and France owned the largest empires
 * Some countries envied the French and British empires (ex. Italy and Japan)
 * Germany angered by the loss of their entire empire
 * The Great Depression made Italy, Japan, and Germany more angry
 * Owning large empires, Britain and France also had problems
 * Native people that lived in their colonies wanted independence

**Japan, Manchuria and the League**

 * Japan (leading member of the League of Nations) invaded Manchuria (part of China's territory)
 * This was the first of a series of attacks that brought most of South-East Asia under Japanese control

__The Attraction of Manchuria:__
 * Japan wanted Manchuria more than any other country
 * 1931, Japan controlled most of Manchuria's economy and owned its important mines, railways, factories, and ports
 * Japan kept a large army in Kwantung in South Manchuria in order to protect their possessions
 * Japan's army officers thought that conquering foreign land is a way out of the Depression

__Japan Invades Manchuria:__
 * Against the orders of the Japanese gov., army officers planned to attack Manchuria
 * 18 September 1931, Japanese soldiers blew up a Ssection of the South Manchuria Railway at Shenyang
 * They then blamed the explosion on local Chinese people, which was an excuse for them to occupy Shenyang
 * China immediately asked the League of Nations for help
 * The League of Nations ordered the Japanese gov. to withdraw their troops
 * Japanese gov. agreed to the League's demands
 * However, the Kwantung army continued to advance into Manchuria
 * By the end of 1931, they occupied the entire province and named it Manzhouguo
 * Japanese gov. had lost control of the Kwantung army

__The League and Manchuria:__
 * No member of the League wanted to use sanctions (economic sanction or military sanction) against Japan
 * The Great Depression already damaged trade between nations
 * Members of the League doubted whether they could enforce sanctions
 * The League therefore tried to persuade them
 * A Commission of Enquiry (led by Britain's Lord Lytton) was sent to Manchuria to investigate the crisis
 * The Lytton Commission produced a report, trying to satisfy both China and Japan
 * The report suggested that Japanese should leave Manchuria but that the province should continue to be a semi-independent country
 * Japan resigned from the League
 * The League's supporters started to doubt about its ability to maintain world peace

**The Revival of Germany**

 * There were other problems that threatened world peace
 * 1933, Adolf Hitler (leader of the Nazi Party) became Chancellor of Germany

__Hitler's Foreign Policy Aims:__
 * The Nazi Party was set up in 1919 shortly after Germany's defeat in the Great War
 * The Nazis refused to believe that the German army had been beaten
 * They were even angrier when the Allies forced Germany to sign the **Treaty of Versailles**
 * Many Germans felt that the treaty was unfair
 * Hitler had three aims in his foreign policy
 * He aimed to tear up the Treaty of Versailles
 * He wanted to unite all German-speaking people in one country
 * He aimed to give Germans '**lebensraum**' or 'living space'
 * Hitler thought that he could only achieve his aims by conquering much of Europe

__Re-armament:__
 * Hitler needed armed forces in order to achieve his aims
 * However, the armed forces were weak when Hitler became Chancellor
 * The Treaty of Versailles had limited the army, abolished the air force, etc
 * Hitler had to build up the armed forces in defiance of the treaty
 * 16 March 1935, Hitler announced in public that there would be compulsory military service for all men and that the army has increased to 550,000

__Reactions to German Re-armament:__


 * Because of the Great Depression, the major powers could not halt Germany's re-armament
 * The French were not willing to halt Germany's re-armament by for but instead they defended France with the **Maginot Line** (a series of armed concrete forts built along the French border with Germany)
 * 1934, Nazis tried to overthrow the Austrian gov., but the Italian leader Mussolini placed army units on the border between Italy and Austria
 * Hitler than gave up his plan of overthrowing Austria
 * Prime Ministers of France, Britain and Italy met at Stresa in Italy to form the **Stresa Front**
 * They issued a protest against Hitler's re-armament plans

**Summary**
In 1929, many people had hopes for a long period of peace. The Locarno treaties, signing of the peace pacts, and the League of Nations were all signs of hope for a long peace. However, people saw the start of a breakdown in the world economy in 1929, which is known as the Great Depression. The Depression caused unrest among the people of many countries and this led to mass unemployment. There were also some problems in Japan and Germany that disrupted the new era of peace.

**Questions**
1. What are the three major aims in Hitler's foreign policy? 2. Why couldn't the major powers stop Germany's re-armament? 3. Why was Italy's reaction to Germany's re-armament different from other major powers 4. Why did the Japanese army officers plan to attack Manchuria? 5. What is collective security?