The True Story of How WW2 Began | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1939 Part 3 of 3 I SEASON FINALE - YouTube (2)
conflict all over the world.
Stalin supports and aids Socialist and Communist revolutionaries in nations around the globe.
Fascist parties seek and get Hitler's and Mussolini's support, both ideologically
and practically.
In Spain the forces supplied on one side by Stalin, and the other by Hitler and Mussolini
escalate that conflict into a more violent, bloodier, deadlier, and longer conflict than
it would have been.
In this microcosm, the world looks on with horror as modern war is put on display in
all its foul glory.
Based on the apparently clear delimitations between left wing and right wing forces in
the proxy war that is the Spanish Civil War, it it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking
that a coming conflagration will be first and foremost ideological.
But it is the pragmatic alliance between Mao and Chiang, and Hitler's support of an enemy
of Japan, that are the true signs of the times.
First and foremost comes the goals of domination and expansion, and only second comes the ideological
war.
This was clearer than ever a few days ago when Stalin and Hitler shocked the world by
entering into a non-aggression pact, and a secret alliance to carve up central and Eastern
Europe, despite their oft repeated, propagandized hatred for each other and their opposed ideologies.
Like with Mao and Chiang, there is no doubt that this is a temporary solution.
An unholy alliance, that must eventually collapse under a final showdown between the two parties.
Nonetheless, there it is - two of the world's mightiest war machineries can proceed with
territorial expansionism without fear of each other, at least for now.
But before that can happen, Stalin needs to settle some unfinished business in Eastern
Asia, and that he does today.
The Soviets and Mongolia are allied there in a de-facto, undeclared border war with
the Japanese Kwantung Army in occupied Manchuria, now Manchukuo.
The conflict has been brewing since 1932 and in the last four years it has steadily escalated
into outright war.
In July the Kwantung Army tries to break the stalemate by attacking across the River Kalkh,
Khalkin Gol in Mongolian.
Here they encounter the defenses led by the newly appointed Red Army commander Georgy
Zhukov.
He has been holding back the Japanese for almost two months, requesting reinforcements
to strike back.
Now that Stalin has signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the forces engaged there are a ball
and chain that he needs to free himself of to concentrate on Europe.
Zhukov gets his reinforcements and in the first application of Red Army Deep Operations,
Soviet Blitzkrieg, he achieves a decisive victory today on August 31, just in time for
Stalin.
Today is also the culmination of a massive buildup of German forces on the borders of
Poland, supported by Slovakian auxiliary divisions on the Southern end.
In the West, Wehrmacht reserves have taken up defensive positions on the French, Swiss,
and Benelux borders.
For weeks the German state-controlled press has been full of fake news about Polish mass
murder of ethnic Germans, border incursions, and violations of sovereignty.
The German people believe it is they who are under attack.
At 2000 hours in Hotel Haus Oberschlesien in the small town of Gleiwitz on the German-Polish
border, German SS-Sturmbannführer Alfred Naujocks gets a phone call.
The voice on the other end says only one thing: “Grandmother is dead.”
It is the codeword that sends Naujocks into the night to orchestrate the beginning of
World War Two.
He and his accomplices take over the Gleiwitz radio relay station and repeatedly broadcast
the following message in German and in Polish: „Achtung!
Achtung!
This is Gleiwitz.
The station is under Polish control […] The hour of freedom has arrived!“
For four minutes they then call for Polish militants to rise up against Germany and end
with “Long live Poland!“
And with these lies, these cynical words, the German war machinery is finally set in
motion.
Twenty one years after the tide turned on Germany in The Great War, the Germans will
have their revenge.
For the world it has been a roller coaster ride of boom and bust, love and hate, rebirth
and death.
The map of the world has been redrawn over and over again in attempts to placate desires
for national sovereignty, ethnic rights, and fair economic opportunity, to shift the forces
of mankind away from destruction toward development.
In 1918, much of humanity emerged out of the fog of global war into a dawn of new promises
for democracy, equal opportunity, technological development, prosperity, and freedom . By
now in 1939, that hope has faded under the pressure of the ideologies of chauvinism,
demagoguery, division, and death.
Two decades in a world of paranoia, conspiracy theories, self righteousness, and jingoism.
Twenty years when the rhetoric of hatred has fanned the flames of war.
And now, that fire will be the only guiding light for humanity as the world descends into
the darkness of the Second World War.
I am Thanos
