The True Story of How WW2 Began | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1939 Part 3 of 3 I SEASON FINALE - YouTube (1)
Is the world ready for war in 1939?
Is it ready for war at any time?
Is it even something we can be ready for?
Some people think so, and they make it into a plan, a path forward based on careful consideration
and calculation.
But as Journalist Rebecca West said in 1937 to WWI veteran and Military Historian, Captain
Lidell Hart: "Before a war military science seems a real science—like astronomy; but
after a war it seems more like astrology."
To which Hart replied: "Perhaps that conclusion is rather hard on astrology.”
Welcome to the final episode of Season one of Between-2-Wars, a chronological summary
of the interwar years, covering all facets of life, the uncertainty, hedonism, and euphoria,
and ultimately humanity's descent into the darkness of the Second World War.
I'm Indy Neidell.
So, here we are on August 31,1939, almost 21 years after the end of the Great War.
Far gone is the optimism and hope that armistice brought in November 1918, the golden future
promised by the economic boom of the second half of the 1920s, the elation at the emancipation
of nationalities, ethnicities, and women across the world, the promise of progress by inventions
like airplanes, ubiquitous telephony, toasters, a car for everyman, radio, and even the beginnings
of TV that will make life easier, more fun, and bring us closer together.
These dreams of a brave new world now seem like distant fever hallucinations.
What is eft is just the fever of war itself, that has never really gone away: The heightened
temperature from the Russian Civil War and the Bolshevik attempt to subjugate the nascent
nations in Eastern Europe, the raging fires of civil war in China, Japanese violent colonial
expansion, and the hot heat of the European colonial Empires pressing down on their indigenous
subjects, the incessant beat of the pulse that drums a threat of Communist revolution.
The aches and pains of coups, and the collapse of one after the other of the new democracies,
the rise of Naziism, Fascism, Communism, and Socialism- as it was originally defined- with
their absolute disdain for the sanctity of human life.
The delirious chauvinism and outrage at perceived injustices by German neo-Imperialists with
renewed Teutonic blustering, threats, and finally occupation.
A world tearing itself apart into a multitude of ‘us and them' states, a world organism
whose cells fight against each other for the future, while its temperature grows ever hotter.
A world infected by suspicion, greed, self-righteousness, hatred, and bloodlust.
And to us here in 2020, it might look like tomorrow- September 1st is a shocking, sudden
collapse that takes the world by surprise.
But that is far from the truth.
The whispers of a coming war have been circulating for months, even years by now.
It's more like a giant storm gathering on the horizon than the unpredicted devastation
of an earthquake.
Perhaps a more timely comparison in 2020, is a long series of epidemics that are now
about to explode into a virulent pandemic of destruction.
Five regimes, their leaders and their followers, have been the main ones seeding this infection
for years now.
They are Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Zedong in the ideologically divided China, Emperor Hirohito
and his generals in Imperial Japan, Joseph Stalin in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,
Benito Mussolini in Fascist Italy, and Adolf Hitler in the Nazi German Reich.
Chiang and Mao have torn China, the most populous country in the world, apart, repeatedly throwing
the nation into ideologically driven civil wars- an opportunity that the Japanese Emperor
and his warlords, hellbent on domination over all of East Asia, have seized upon to occupy
Manchuria and then to invade China and conquer further territory.
After the failures of the Russian Bolsheviks to reestablish the borders of the Russian
empire for the Soviet Union, Stalin has consolidated his personal power and is now the de facto
totalitarian dictator of one of the resource richest countries, with the largest landmass
on the planet.
He is in ruthless, murderous control of a federation of states that he has violently
turned from an agrarian, 19th century economy into an inhumane juggernaut of Industry, designed
to turn out endless war machinery.
Today on August 31, 1939 his eyes are once again set on his old goal of recreating a
Socialist version of the Czarist Empire, and perhaps even striking further westward toward
the Atlantic.
Mussolini has bullied and blustered his way into dominion over the central portion of
the Mediterranean Sea, awakening the old colonial strife in Africa.
Events that have once and for all defeated the attempts of world leaders to establish
international checks and balances to prevent another world war after the war to end all
wars.
Hitler, now totalitarian dictator of one of the richest, most advanced countries in the
world, has based his whole ideology on murderous racial and political violence, and a war of
conquest to create Lebensraum for the German people.
He has meticulously and systematically rearmed the Reich, priming its population for war,
while lying that he wants peace, stoking the fires of hatred, and crying… no, screaming
his unfounded outrage from the Nazi bully pulpit.
He has by now driven the German economy into a frenzy of overspending that leaves them
with no option other than conquest to keep from going off a cliff.
And what do the old mighty Western powers, who could offer real opposition to all of
this, do while the tyrants whip the dogs of war into a frenzy?
The simple answer is that they're busy staring into their own navels.
The more complex answer is that even if they want to, they are facing fantastic hurdles
to do anything.
In less than twenty years, the US, Great Britain, France, many of the Commonwealth countries,
several Latin American nations.
Scandinavia, Benelux, and Czechoslovakia have emerged from proto-democratic, patriarchic
societies and begun establishing themselves as modern, universal democracies.
Led by the effort to disarm by the US, they have chosen a path towards peace, a path that
most of their democratic constituents wants them to stay on.
And the economic roller coaster, ending in the 1929 Wall Street crash and the worldwide
depression that followed, has pummeled them into a recovery effort that keeps them busy
with their own problems.
Now, inside these nascent universal democracies there is still a great deal of injustice.
Emancipation, fiscal parity, and equal treatment and opportunity for minorities and women are
still far away.
But they have taken giant leaps to promote modernity, equality, and democracy in their
own lands.
At the same time, however, they have failed to let go of their dominion over a gigantic
majority of the people who still live under the yoke of exploitation and subservience
in their colonies.
In Africa, the Middle East, South East Asia, the Pacific, and India, Great Britain, France,
the Netherlands and the US have been reluctant, or even refused to allow these peoples entry
to the modern world and sovereignty over their own lives.
It's for economic reasons, because of lingering chauvinism and racism, and perhaps to hold
on to one last straw of military dominance in a world of ever-increasing threats.
And these threats have not just come from outside, but from ideological forces within.
On the extreme left, Socialists and Communists, and on the extreme right, Reactionaries and
Fascists have repeatedly threatened to topple the fragile state of increasing democracy,
order, lawfulness, and equality.
Some of the countries that came into the fold of democracy in the years after WWI have fallen
to these forces, Germany perhaps chief among them.
In South America many countries are vacillating between democracy, and left wing and right
wing autocracy.
In Europe Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece, and
Bulgaria are also by now autocracies that are ripe to become pawns or prey in the game
of the great new tyrants.
So in the end it is up to the democratic nations to provide a real bulwark against renewed
expansionist wars in Europe.
But with aspirations to peace, global opposition to foreign involvement, and war in general
by ordinary people, these democracies have failed to build adequate protections in case
of renewed armed conflict, at least at first they did.
But gradually the events in China, and Hitler's vocal rise have raised alarms and caused at
least a debate about rearming.
Before that debate turns into action it is already too late, however.
It is only when the efforts to appease Hitler become a clear failure as he invades and annexes
all of Czechia earlier this year that a defensive rearmament effort really picks up speed.
As does the awareness that war is coming, like it or not.
From the moment that the Wehrmacht moves in across the Czech border in March 1939, the
news across the world is dominated by speculation of a new European war, even a new world war.
The June 12 issue of TIME Magazine in the US becomes the first to use the terms World
War I and World War II with roman numerals.
So already before the war arrives it carries the ominous moniker of a Second World War.
It addresses the fears now driving rearmament specifically.
“The only reason that so much of the world's hard-earned wealth is poured down an uneconomic
rathole is that men expect and fear the coming of a Second World War.
That expectation and fear is the greatest political force in the world today.
Horror of the war itself makes mankind recoil towards peace, but the probable nature of
the war and the fear of its outcome drive men to prepare for it.”
The TIME article, “Europe: War Machines” is a military analysis of how ready the armies
of the world are for a war.
It opens with a dire analysis;
“In 1933, the last effective year of the Versailles-League of Nations system, the world's
armies numbered 7,000,000 men, its navies totalled 3,000,000 tons, its military planes
were 14,000, and $4,000,000,000 was spent to keep the men and machines of war.
Pacifists considered these figures pretty horrible.
As it turns out they were small potatoes.
In 1938, the year of Munich, armies had increased to 10,000,000 men, naval tonnage had jumped
to 8,000,000, military planes had possibly trebled in number and $17,000,000,000 went
slithering down the gullet of the hungry god of war-to-be.
This year, with Russia leading the Big Parade (U.S.S.R. war budget for 1939 is $8,000,000,000),
these figures are again skyrocketing.”
The article then goes into a deep analysis of how prepared the forces of the world are.
A force and capacity count indicates that the Axis already have a significant advantage
in Europe, both in force and equipment.
The only way for Britain and France to avoid initial defeat and have time to even that
out, is if the Soviet Union, or the US join the Allies.
A war involving the East with Japan and China pulled in as well would require both the US
and the Soviets as Allies to create an even fight.
But with the ideological enmity between the Soviets and the Nazis that should be in the
cards, right?
After all, the tyrants have formed two blocks in stark opposition to each other, with the
outright purpose of seeking a resolution through conflict.
In the past three years, Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini have formed the anti-Comintern
pact, an ideological alliance aimed to oppose Stalin, Mao, and their followers' attempts
at establishing Socialism and Communism as an international ideology of rule.
Hungary and Fascist Spain have joined the pact this year.
Chiang is caught in the middle, dependent on Mao's cooperation and Stalin's support
to fight off the Japanese aggression.
Ideologically opposed to both of them he also courts and gains German support for his war
against Germany's own ally.
This is not the only conflict that these powers support, In fact they make an effort to seed
