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00:00Thank you for listening.
00:30To be continued...
01:00...their forefathers had also been on the march...
01:10...but back into their homeland as a defeated army.
01:14In November 1918, after four years of World War I, Germany's emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, had been forced to abdicate.
01:24His armies were being ground down by a remorseless offensive by British, French and US troops.
01:34His people faced Snarvation.
01:39But already, a dangerous myth was taken on it.
01:44The German generals and troops claimed that they hadn't been defeated in battle, but betrayed by their own cowardly politicians.
01:56Even so, at eleven in the morning on November the 11th, 1918...
02:00...the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of World War I came to an end.
02:08The following month, President Woodrow Wilson of the United States arrived in Europe promising to create a new world order.
02:20He persuaded the world's leaders to sign up to a new League of Nations.
02:28At the Treaty of Versailles, they agreed that from now on...
02:34...disputes between countries would be resolved not by fighting, but by debate in the League.
02:44The peoples of Europe were set free.
02:47Germany's ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was dismembered.
02:51Out of it, new nations were created.
02:54Austria, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
03:03Germany itself was greatly reduced in size.
03:09But this process contained a time bomb.
03:12Not everyone celebrated the birth of countries like Czechoslovakia.
03:17Several of them contained substantial German minorities.
03:22One day, the desire to reunite the German peoples would come to haunt Europe.
03:28The war-torn German people also had one final indignity inflicted on them.
03:36They were forced to pay a massive 6.6 billion pounds in reparations to France and Britain.
03:43Something they could ill afford.
03:45And when he returned to America, Wilson's new world order immediately fell apart.
03:53The US Congress decided it could not risk being sucked into another war in Europe.
03:59It refused to join his league, and the US withdrew into isolationism.
04:07Germany was now a very different nation.
04:10It was still Europe's biggest country, but its militaristic monarchy had gone.
04:15It had become a democracy.
04:18But its government, the so-called Weimar Republic, was soon struck by a series of hammer burns.
04:24Street battles erupted between extreme right-wing nationalists and communists trying to start a revolution.
04:33Then, in 1923, the country was devastated by hyperinflation, which reached hundreds of percent a month.
04:48Ordinary people's savings were wiped out.
04:53This was fertile ground for a new breed of rabble-rousing right-wing politicians.
05:02Among them, Adolf Hitler.
05:06Hitler had been born in Austria.
05:09He had fought bravely as a soldier in World War I and been awarded the Iron Cross.
05:16On returning to Germany, he settled in Munich.
05:19And his fiery oratory soon enabled him to seize control of the small National Socialist or Nazi party.
05:32In October 1923, Hitler and his henchmen attempted an armed coup against the Weimar government.
05:39It failed, and he was sentenced to nine months.
05:42In prison, he wrote a book, Mein Kampf, My Struggle, in which he blamed Germany's ills on the Jews and demanded that it rebuild its strength and seek new territories in the East.
05:57On his release, he set about building the Nazis into a proper, disciplined political party.
06:06From now on, he would use the democratic system to achieve power.
06:11To achieve power.
06:15But for the next five years, Weimar Germany prospered.
06:18Support for extremist parties, left and right, dwindled.
06:23Then suddenly, Hitler's opportunity arrived.
06:26In October 1929, the US stock market crashed.
06:38Billions of dollars were lost, and an economic depression swept across the world.
06:45Unemployment in Germany soared to over six million.
06:49Only extremist politicians seemed to offer a solution.
06:52Politicians like Hitler.
06:57By 1931, his Nazis were a true mass movement.
07:03And they had their own brown-shirted thugs, the SA storm troops, who numbered almost three million.
07:13In the 1932 elections, the Nazis became the largest party in Germany's parliament, the Reichstag.
07:20But Hitler refused to join a coalition, leaving parliament paralysed.
07:25To break the en pass, President Hindenburg made him Chancellor in January 1933, head of the government.
07:38To break the en pass, President Hindenburg.
07:43Within a month, the Reichstag burned down.
07:46Hitler accused the communists and demanded emergency powers.
07:50He then used them to ban all other political parties.
07:53In August 1934, President Hindenburg died.
07:58Hitler declared himself president.
08:02He was now absolute leader.
08:05The Führer of Germany.
08:06Hitler!
08:07Hitler!
08:08Hitler!
08:09Hitler!
08:10Hitler!
08:11Hitler!
08:12Hitler!
08:13Hitler!
08:15Hitler!
08:17At first, there was little sign of what was to come.
08:20For the next three years, the Führer concentrated on rebuilding Germany's economy.
08:25He spent millions on public works, including the 5,000-mile autobahn system, to soak up the unemployed.
08:38But in secret, Hitler was also spending lavishly on a huge rearmament program.
08:45Under the Versailles Treaty, the German army had been limited to 100,000 men.
08:51The country was forbidden to have an air force, tanks or submarines.
08:58This small army was trebled in size.
09:02Then, in 1935, Hitler came out into the open.
09:07He unveiled a brand new air force, the Luftwaffe.
09:11It had 2,500 planes, far more than Britain or France.
09:19Unemployment plunged, and the Nazis became enormously popular.
09:26Now emboldened, the Führer made his first expansionist move.
09:31In 1935, he reoccupied the Saarland district on the French border,
09:36after it voted to return from League of Nations to German rule.
09:43A year later, he sent German troops into the Rhineland,
09:47part of Germany which had been demilitarized at Versailles.
09:54At the time, many felt that Hitler was only claiming back what was rightfully German's.
10:00Neither Britain nor France objected.
10:02When Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympic Games, the Nazis were seen by many as firm but fair.
10:15A government which was restoring the nation's pride, and which didn't threaten anyone.
10:20Of course, there were signs.
10:25The 1935 Nuremberg laws forbade Jews to marry true Aryan Germans,
10:31and deprive them of their citizenship.
10:35But when the first threats came to world peace,
10:39they didn't come from Hitler at all.
10:40But from somewhere else entirely.
10:43Japan, at the start of the 20th century, was already a military power.
10:59It had defeated Russia in a war in 1905, and it had fought alongside the Allies in World War I.
11:09After the war, Japan was an acknowledged world power.
11:14And it signed up to the League of Nations.
11:21But politically, it was a mess of contradictions.
11:25Nominally a democracy, the feudal tradition was still strong.
11:30Most Japanese revered their emperor as a living god, and regarded him as their true leader.
11:38And the country faced major economic problems.
11:42Its population was exploding.
11:45And it had no natural resources to fuel its rapidly expanding industries.
11:50Its leaders needed solutions, and they saw them in Chinese Manchuria.
12:01Manchuria was a land of rich grain fields, with plenty of coal and minerals.
12:07It was a perfect target.
12:10Japanese troops were already stationed there.
12:15Other possible targets were the colonies ruled by the European powers.
12:18Burma, Malaya, and Hong Kong, controlled by Britain.
12:23Indochina, ruled by France, and the Dutch East Indies.
12:29But at this stage, Japan had to be cautious.
12:33They didn't want to rouse the other great power in the Pacific.
12:37The United States.
12:40For all its anti-imperialist slogans, the US actually ran an unofficial empire in the Pacific.
12:48The Philippines, Guam, and several islands were under its direct rule.
12:55It undoubtedly had the strength to take on Japan, but since the end of World War I, it had had other distractions.
13:02This was America's jazz age.
13:12Throughout the 1920s, a nation concentrated on exploiting its vast resources.
13:18There was an economic boom that seemed without end.
13:24Fortunes were made both in industry and the stock markets.
13:28America seemed lost to the increasing pursuit of pleasure.
13:32With distractions like these, Japan's growing pains in the Pacific seemed very far away.
13:46America had slashed its army after World War I and agreed a naval reduction treaty with Britain, France, and Japan.
13:58This, in effect, handed naval superiority in the Pacific to the Japanese.
14:05And then came the Great Depression.
14:11As the economic devastation spread, a quarter of the population lost their jobs.
14:26Tens of thousands were made homeless, living in shanty towns.
14:29Whereas before, it had been distracted by pleasure, now America was distracted by pain.
14:38It was time for Japan to make her move.
14:41In 1931, without even informing their own elected government, the Japanese forces in Manchuria seized the capital Mukbe,
14:58and then overran the rest of the territory.
15:03A puppet state, Manchu quo, was proclaimed under a puppet rule.
15:08Henry Puyi, the last emperor of China, who had been deposed in 1911, was dragged out of retirement.
15:22At its headquarters in Geneva, the League of Nations now faced its first great test.
15:28Japan was universally condemned.
15:32But her response was blunt.
15:34Japan, however, find it impossible to accept the report adopted by the Assembly.
15:45The Japanese then just walked out.
15:48And the League suddenly realised there was nothing it could do about Manchuria.
15:52Japan was declared an international pariah, but it didn't care.
16:02Its leaders had turned their eyes to further conquests in China.
16:06In China.
16:09These were easy pickings.
16:12China was in a state of chaos.
16:14The government of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek was locked in conflict with the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong.
16:20There was civil war.
16:23In 1936, as a precursor to invasion, the Japanese signed a pact with Hitler.
16:38The aim was to guard against any attack by Soviet Russia were it to move on China.
16:42Then in July 1937, the Japanese provoked an incident with Chinese troops and invaded.
16:53At first the Chinese were taken by surprise.
17:08But they soon fought back fiercely.
17:13The Communists even joining the Kuomintang in a united front.
17:17The Japanese responded with amphibious landings.
17:23By the end of 1937, they had overrun much of northern China and the coast.
17:37The Japanese fought this war with exceptional brutality.
17:41Bombing cities indiscriminately.
17:42Westerners living in the commercial centre, the port of Shanghai, were now evacuated.
17:46The city was then besieged for three months.
17:48It suffered widespread damage.
17:49The Japanese forces showing no pity or concern for the nation.
17:51The Japanese were now evacuated.
17:52The city was then besieged for three months.
17:53It suffered widespread damage.
17:54The Japanese forces showing no pity or concern for the native population.
17:56It suffered widespread damage.
18:14The Japanese forces showing no pity or concern for the native population.
18:19But it was after the capture of Nanking, then the Chinese capital, on December the 17th, 1937, that the Japanese forces really ran along.
18:33Over 300,000 civilians are estimated to have been massacred during a six week orgy of rape and indiscriminate killing.
18:41The Japanese even attacked British and US warships, which had been sent to protect their shipping and trade.
18:55The worst incident came on December the 12th, 1937.
18:59The American gunboat Panay was sunk by Japanese bombers.
19:03Fifty crewmen died.
19:08Despite this, the Western powers refused to intervene.
19:13So the League of Nations could do nothing.
19:19In the United States, President Roosevelt wanted to impose a naval blockade of Japan.
19:24It has become clear that acts and policies of nations in other parts of the world have far-reaching effects on us.
19:38But the British would have none of it, fearing that it might provoke a war.
19:42So all Roosevelt could offer was a $25 million loan to Chiang Kai-shek to buy arms.
19:48Even though the Communists were now fighting alongside the Kuomintang, the Soviet Union did little to help either.
19:58Its only involvement was a series of clashes along its own border with Manchuria.
20:07But China itself received nothing.
20:09Instead, it had to fight on alone.
20:11During 1938, the Japanese overran Canton and pushed the Chinese forces deeper into the west of the country.
20:24All the rhetoric of the League of Nations, all those promises to stop international aggression, had come to nothing.
20:31And by now, the Western powers were facing aggression much closer to Hull.
20:36It has to crystallize a position of impotent justice.
20:41Today, it is easy to laugh at Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy.
21:02All that posturing seems faintly ridiculous now, but it didn't seem that way in 1922.
21:09Back then, Italy had seemed to be on the edge of anarchy.
21:17The country was riven by strikes and land seizes.
21:22The democratic government, just as in Germany, seemed powerless in the face of such unrest.
21:28So Benito Mussolini, a war veteran and a journalist, decided to take a stand.
21:33He organized a right-wing nationalist party, the fascists.
21:41With a country paralyzed by a general strike in August 1922, Mussolini ordered his followers to march on roof.
21:48Fearing a civil war, Italy's king, Victor Emmanuel, asked him to form a government.
21:54Mussolini swiftly stamped out any political opposition and assumed dictatorial powers.
22:12He must crystallize a position of injustice.
22:19By 1928, his position seemed secure.
22:22Parliament was appointed rather than elected, and all power was firmly in the hands of the fascist Grand Council.
22:29Like Hitler, Mussolini's first acts made him immensely popular.
22:40Massive programs of public works provided employment and transformed Italy's infrastructure.
22:46Corruption was rooted out, and the Mafia more or less eliminated.
22:57Italy's armed forces were built up, including an advanced modern air force.
23:05In the Mediterranean, Mussolini launched a powerful navy, bigger than the combined might of the British and French Mediterranean fleets.
23:16When the Great Depression came, Italy seemed to weather it better than most.
23:25Mussolini became a source of worldwide inspiration.
23:29Political leaders, not least Adolf Hitler in Germany, saw the fascist system as a role model.
23:36Strong and purposeful, in contrast to the weakness of the democracies in Britain and France.
23:41But Mussolini wanted more than adulation.
23:46He wanted to recreate the Roman Empire.
23:50And he already had a target in mind for his first imperial land ground.
24:01His target was Abyssinia, today's Ethiopia.
24:05Italy already had colonies on its borders in Eritrea and Italian Somaliland.
24:14In December 1934, Italian forces provoked a clash with Abyssinian troops at an oasis in the Ogaden region, well inside Abyssinian territory.
24:25Mussolini then sent reinforcements to Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, demanding that Abyssinia pay reparations.
24:38The Emperor of Abyssinia, Haile Selassie, appealed in person to the League of Nations.
24:46He called on it to live up to its ideals.
24:53Here was a small nation under threat from another member of the League.
24:58This was the supreme test.
25:01But the League did nothing.
25:03Britain's foreign minister, Anthony Eden, at least tried to broker a peace deal, but Mussolini would have none of it.
25:10In early October 1935, the Italian army invaded from Eritrea and Italian Somalia.
25:25The primitive Abyssinian forces stood little chance against a modern army equipped with artillery and tanks.
25:31The Italian Air Force had total command of the air and harried the Abyssinians.
25:50On occasions dropping gas bombs, even though gas had been outlawed at Versailles as a crime against humanity.
25:58After six months, Abyssinia was completely overrun.
26:05The Emperor Haile Selassie fled into exile in Britain.
26:13From its headquarters in Switzerland, the League of Nations wrung its hands.
26:19It did impose economic sanctions, but they had little effect.
26:22Mussolini's aggression had revealed two things.
26:30The League of Nations, that great hope for peace, was impotent.
26:35And both Europe's supposed major powers, the democracies Britain and France, no longer had the stomach for a fight.
26:42Both Britain and France had been shattered by World War One, and their economies had never really recovered.
26:59Both had witnessed waves of strikes and unrest.
27:02Both had suffered mass unemployment, even before the Great Depression.
27:09Both also faced the cost of controlling empires, now swollen by taking on Germany's former colonies, and the Middle Eastern territories once run by the Turkish Ottoman Empire.
27:24And above all, both had been traumatised by the horrific casualties of World War One.
27:35A succession of British leaders, Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald, and above all, Stanley Baldwin, all resolved to keep Britain out of future conflicts.
27:44Despite horrific casualties on the Western Front, Britain had ended World War One with a large and very effective conscript army.
27:57This was immediately run down to a small professional force designed to police its sprawling empire.
28:06And when the Great Depression struck, any ideas of modernising the army were abandoned.
28:10It meant that Britain went into the run-up to war, economically and militarily weak.
28:22French losses during World War One had been even worse than the British.
28:29Ever mistrustful of the Germans, a large conscript army was maintained.
28:34But throughout the 1920s, France's birth rate had declined.
28:37It became clear that there would be a manpower shortage by the mid to late 1930s.
28:44France realised it could never compete with Germany on the size of its army alone.
28:55The solution was to adopt an entirely defensive mentality.
28:59The Maginot Line, a series of fortifications, was begun in 1930 along the frontier with Germany, and ran as far as the Belgian border.
29:14There, it theoretically linked up with fortifications planned planned by the Belgians.
29:26This new French military approach meant that France was only capable of waging a defensive war.
29:31It just did not have the ability to launch an attack on Italy, even if the British had had the troops to help.
29:42And of course, both countries knew that their navies in the Mediterranean were outnumbered by Mussolini's new fleet.
29:49So when Italy conquered Abyssinia, it made sense for both powers to do nothing.
30:00It just seemed too remote. Too much someone else's problem.
30:04By now, they both had to deal with all the traumas of the Great Depression.
30:15That seemed so much more pressing.
30:18And above all, they were now faced with a military threat far closer to home.
30:27A resurgent and rearming Germany.
30:30And Germany's power, and that of Italy too, was soon about to be demonstrated.
30:38In supporting the rise of another dictator.
30:43In Spain.
30:55In 1936, civil war erupted in Spain.
30:58It was exceptionally vicious.
31:01Setting family against family.
31:03Communist against fascist.
31:05Believers against atheists.
31:11In 1931, a left-wing government had come to power determined to get rid of the centuries-old Spanish monarchy.
31:19The king was forced into exile, and a republic was declared.
31:24In February 1936, the parties of the left combined in a popular front to take on the forces of the right in a general election.
31:38The popular front won narrowly.
31:40Even though its reform program was modest, a wave of strikes and land seizes led the right to fear that a communist takeover was inevitable.
31:54Within the Spanish army, long a bastion of conservative and Catholic thinking, senior officers began to consider the possibility of a coup.
32:08Among them was General Francisco Franco, the former chief of staff who had been effectively exiled to command Spain's forces in the Canary Islands.
32:19On July 17th, 1936, the units of the army fighting guerrillas in Spain's colony in Morocco mutated.
32:32The next day, Franco flew to join them, proclaiming a new nationalist movement which would save Spain from communism.
32:43Mainland garrisons now joined this revolt.
32:47The popular front responded by calling for volunteers to defend the republic.
32:52Battle lines had been drawn.
33:00At first, Franco faced problems.
33:03He and his army were in North Africa, and he had to get across the Straits of Gibraltar back to Spain.
33:09So he turned to the one person he thought might help.
33:13Adolf Hitler.
33:14Within a month, transport aircraft from Hitler's new Luftwaffe had begun an airlift, taking Franco's battle-hardened veterans over to southern Spain.
33:29At this stage, the republic still seemed to have the advantage.
33:44The pro-Franco military uprisings in Madrid and Barcelona were quickly crushed, leaving it in control of most of the east of the country.
33:52Franco's nationalists were confined largely to the north-west and part of the south.
34:07But the nationalist situation was transformed when Hitler and Mussolini started to pour in troops and weapons.
34:14The German dictator seized the opportunity to test his new equipment and expanding armed forces.
34:27The first panzer tanks were sent, along with some 12,000 troops.
34:33And the Luftwaffe deployed its Condor legion with its ultra-modern new bombers and fighters.
34:44Mussolini sent a so-called volunteer corps of 50,000 men and more than 700 aircraft.
34:59In vain did the republicans appeal to Britain, France and the Soviet Union for help.
35:05But London and Paris were scared of setting off a European war.
35:12They declared a policy of non-intervention.
35:19Cynically, both Germany and Italy signed up to this.
35:23But when it became obvious that they were still sending arms to the nationalists,
35:28Josef Stalin, the Soviet leader, announced that he would help the republic.
35:32Stalin's worry was the rise of fascism in Germany.
35:39Hitler had made it abundantly clear that he believed communism to be Nazism's ultimate enemy.
35:50Stalin saw the Spanish Convict as a way of keeping Germany and Italy occupied
35:56while building up the Soviet Union's military strength.
35:58About 700 military advisers were sent, along with tanks and fighter aircraft.
36:07It was something, but no match for the support Franco had received.
36:11In fact, the largest source of outside help for the republic didn't come from a country at all, but from volunteers, the international brigades.
36:25About 30,000 left-wing Americans, British, French and Germans signed up to fight in Spain.
36:31With their new fascist support, the nationalists were able to open two fronts.
36:41One advancing towards Barcelona from the north, the other led by Franco pushing up towards Madrid from the south.
36:48By the end of 1936, Madrid was enveloped on three sides and virtually under siege.
36:57The fighting was intense and often accompanied by appalling atrocities against civilians.
37:06The republicans hunted down and murdered Roman Catholic priests.
37:13The nationalists slaughtered anyone accused of being communist.
37:17German and Italian air power was used indiscriminately against civilian targets.
37:25Madrid was heavily bombed, but the worst incident came in April 1937, when the Basque town of Guernica was virtually obliterated with 6,000 civilian deaths.
37:41The area controlled by the republic was steadily ground down.
37:49Its forces fought with great gallantry, but under-trained and under-equipped amateurs were no match for the professional soldiers led by Franco,
37:59or for the combined modern weaponry of Italy and Germany.
38:03As the war dragged on, the fighting around Madrid became a symbol of the left's determination not to be crushed by a fascist dictatorship.
38:18But behind the scenes, the republican alliance was falling apart.
38:23The communists and socialists wanted to concentrate on winning a military victory.
38:27But the more idealistic anarchists and syndicalists saw the war as an opportunity for a mass revolution by the workers.
38:41These disagreements burst out into the open in May 1937.
38:46Fighting broke out in Barcelona between the anarchists and communists.
38:50It was a fatal weakening of the republican courts.
38:53By the end of 1938, the nationalists had penned their enemy into a small enclave around Barcelona,
39:04and another stretching eastward from Madrid to the coast.
39:14Madrid continued to hold out, but the international brigades were withdrawn.
39:19More and more nations began to recognize Franco's government as his forces closed in for the final assault on Madrid.
39:28At the end of March 1939, his defenders, exhausted after nearly three years of fighting, the capital finally surrendered.
39:43A month later, Franco formally declared hostilities at an end.
40:00The scars of Spain's civil war took years to heal, and in some ways, they never have.
40:06And internationally, Franco's victory over the republic proved a disaster.
40:15Hitler and Mussolini were confirmed in their belief that the democracies of Britain and France were impotent to resist any real pressure.
40:24While Stalin despaired of their willingness to confront fascism.
40:34Hitler, in particular, saw his way open to begin the aggressive policies outlined in Mein Kampf.
40:40Even before the Spanish Civil War ended, his armies were on the march.
40:54From the moment he became Chancellor of Germany on January 30th, 1933, Hitler had begun to put his long-term ambitions into action.
41:03On February the third, he told his top commanders that his ultimate aim was to conquer territory in the east and ruthlessly Germanize it.
41:18They were instructed to prepare for a massive expansion.
41:21Although Germany had been forbidden tanks, a secret treaty with the Soviet Union in 1923 had allowed the development of tank designs and experimentation with new mobile armoured tanks.
41:40Energetic young German officers like Heinz Guderian read the theories of British thinkers like Basil Liddle Hart and Colonel John Fuller.
41:48They even watched exercises being carried out by the British during the 1920s on Salisbury Plain.
41:55It was from these that they came up with the idea of fast-moving units combining tanks, artillery and infantry that could thrust fast and deep into enemy territory.
42:11Hitler adopted their ideas with enthusiasm.
42:14The new army was to have three panzer divisions.
42:21Similarly, the new air force, the Luftwaffe, under former World War I fighter ace Hermann Göring, had had a framework to build on.
42:29Throughout the years in which its air force was officially banned, Germany had kept up its design skills by building civilian machines.
42:42And gliding and flying clubs provided a reserve of potential air.
42:47Hitler revealed the existence of the Luftwaffe in March 1935.
42:58He then announced that the army was to be increased to 300,000 men and conscription was reintroduced.
43:06Britain and France protested feebly at this flagrant breach of the Versailles Treaty.
43:14But soon, they reluctantly and slowly began to rearm.
43:25Until this point, Hitler had been modest in his goals.
43:31He had only taken back what was his, the Rhineland and Sala.
43:35But now he had a grander target in mind.
43:40His homeland, Austria.
43:44In 1934, Austrian Nazis had attempted to seize power and unify the country with Germany.
43:51The Austrians, after all, spoke German, even if they had never been part of a German state.
43:58In February 1938, another Nazi plot was discovered.
44:05Austrian Chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, protested to Hitler.
44:13Hitler responded by demanding that Austria stop mistreating the Austrian Nazis and unite with Germany.
44:19The youth is undeniable.
44:22The youth is undeniable.
44:24The youth is undeniable.
44:28The youth is undeniable.
44:30Schuschnigg promptly called a referendum so that the Austrians could vote on whether to remain independent.
44:37But on March the 12th, 1938, the eve of the referendum, Hitler, fearing that it might produce the wrong result, sent in his troops.
44:46Complete surprise and an enthusiastic welcome by Nazi sympathisers made it a bloodless invasion.
44:58Within hours, Hitler announced Austria's incorporation into the Third Reich.
45:03A sovereign nation had for the first time been subsumed into a greater Germany.
45:10Once again, the Western democracies failed to react.
45:14In the summer of 1938, he turned on his next prey, Czechoslovakia.
45:21A substantial German minority lived in the northwest of the country, an area known as the Sudetenland.
45:30These Sudeten Germans had been part of the old Austrian Empire, but had been cut off when Czechoslovakia was created in 1919.
45:40This was the time bomb that had started ticking at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.
45:49Hitler encouraged Sudeten German demands for autonomy and then threatened the Czech government with force if it refused to agree.
46:00Undaunted, the Czech government ordered general mobilization and prepared to resist.
46:10The Czechoslovak army was large and well equipped with formidable fortifications on its frontier with Germany.
46:17Hitler backed off.
46:23But then at the beginning of September, concerned that war might be imminent, the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain decided to act as a peacemaker.
46:31He flew to meet Hitler twice.
46:35The Nazi dictator assured him that if he could have the Sudetenland, he would make no further territorial demands in Europe.
46:44In Munich, on September 29th, 1938, with Mussolini acting as mediator, France and Britain signed an agreement giving the Sudetenland to Germany in return for a formal declaration by Hitler that he had no more territorial ambitions.
47:08Chamberlain flew back to Britain waving the piece of paper, which he claimed guarantees peace in our time.
47:21And so, on October the 1st, German troops occupied the Sudetenland and seized the Czech frontier fortifications.
47:33Hitler now began sizing up his next target, Poland.
47:46Again, the nominal cause was a German minority marooned as a result of the Versailles Treaty.
47:52Hitler demanded the return of the port of Danzig to German control, so that East Prussia could be linked up with the rest of Germany.
48:06The Poles refused, and Hitler hesitated.
48:10He was not quite ready for all-out war, and he had unfinished business with Czechoslovakia.
48:15In March 1939, the eastern part of the country, Slovakia, which was ethnically different to the Czech lands, appealed to Hitler for help in achieving greater independence.
48:29Hitler summoned the Czechoslovak Prime Minister, Emil Hacha, to Berlin, and browbeat him into putting his country under German protection.
48:42German troops now marched into the rest of Czechoslovakia, unopposed.
48:52Most of the country was annexed into the Reich.
48:55Slovakia was declared a protectorate.
48:59For the first time, Hitler had seized non-German-speaking territory.
49:04But again, there was only a feeble protest from Britain and France.
49:08At the end of March, he again repeated his demand that Poland give up Danzig.
49:15This time, France and Britain declared unequivocally that they would declare war if he attacked Poland.
49:25But by now, Hitler cared little whether they did or not.
49:29He was sure that they would be weak and indecisive opponents.
49:32In Russia, Stalin had also become increasingly concerned by Hitler's aggression.
49:42In April, Stalin proposed an alliance with Britain and France.
49:47But negotiations made little progress.
49:51And finally, Stalin despaired, deciding that there was another solution to the German threat.
49:56On August the 23rd, the Soviet Union and the Third Reich, who everyone had believed were sworn enemies, announced a non-aggression pact.
50:10The agreement secretly specified that Poland would be split between the two countries.
50:16And Stalin would have a free hand to take over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
50:26Now free from any Russian threat, Hitler ordered his armed forces to prepare for an immediate invasion.
50:33On the evening of August the 31st, the German Wehrmacht prepared for the assault.
50:42Its Fuhrer had made the decision, which would plunge the world into war.
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