PRE WWII AGGRESSORS Fascism in Spain/Italy/Germany

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PRE WWII AGGRESSORS Fascism in
Spain/Italy/Germany

• Totalitarian govt system
• Loyalty to state obedience to leader
• Extreme nationalism (nations must struggle
  against weaker nations) flags, parades
• Authoritarian leader military uniform, salutes,
  mass rallies evidence of national strength
  Some were meant to rule, others to be ruled
  (Nietzsche)
• No political opposition one-party rule
• Emphasis on social hierarchy in society
  Germany/Italy/Spain keep social hierarchy USSR
  destroy social hierarchy
• Use of terror Secret Police labor/prison camps

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Spanish Civil War 1936-39

• Hitler and Mussolini supported Francosent
  airforce, troops, weapons and money
• Used as a test case for airforce, chemical
  weapons, and fascism in general
• USSR only country that supported the elected
  Republican govt
• International brigades US/GB/France/Canada
  volunteer troops who fought against Franco -
  Lincoln Brigade (US)
• 1939 Franco became totalitarian dictator
  mixture of fascism/conservative Catholic
  resurgence
• Franco did not assist Axis powers during WWII
• Franco died in Nov 1975. King of Spain returned
  from exile and restored the Republic
  Constitution

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Italy

• Il Duce

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ITALY

• 1935 Mussolini invaded Ethiopiawanted to expand
  Italian colonies in Africa
• League of Nations did nothing appeasement
• Significance - Mussolini Hitler inspired to
  continue their plans for expansion

Italian empire in 1940 Mussolini addressing
troops
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Nazi Germany Hitlers Third Reich Third
Empire to last 1000 yrs (only lasted 12 years)
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Pro-Nazi propaganda posters
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Mussolini Hitler in Yugoslavia
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Appeasement

• Hoping to avoid war, France and Britain used the
  policy of appeasement
• Giving in to demands to keep peace
• In 1935, Hitler announced that Germany would not
  follow the Treaty of Versailles withdrew from
  League of Nations
• 1936Nazi Troops Enter Rhineland (Border between
  France/Germ)
• French did not want warneither did Britain

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AXIS POWERS

• Nov 1936 Axis Powers created - military alliance
  Germany, Italy, Japan
• Hitler knew that Japan was strong and had
  grievances w/ West
• Japan did not want to stand alone against the
  U.S. desired military alliance
• March 1936ANSCHLUSS - Nazis troops occupy
  Austria many Austrians cheered as Nazi troops
  marched into Vienna

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Munich Conference 1938

• Hitler asked Allied leaders for one last
  territorial demand - piece of Czechoslovakia
  (Sudetenland)
• Czech people asked the French for help
• British French agreed to give the land to
  Hitler as his FINAL demand - APPEASEMENT
• Six months later March 1939 Hitlers troops
  march in take over the rest of Czech and
  Albania

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Hitler/Stalin Pact

• 1939Non Aggression Pact
• Germany promised not to invade the USSR
• USSR would assist Germany in conquering Poland
• Poland would be shared

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Japan in the 1920s

• Japan democratic, growing industrialization
  prosperity
• Control of Manchuria raw materials for
  industrialization
• Japan controlled Pacific trade, had gained
  prestige national honor member of League of
  Nations
• Japanese society emphasized loyalty to state
  factory
• Great Depression - exports fell unemployment
  soared conservative/military forces gain
  popularity in Japan w/ promises to fix the
  economy

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Military controls Japan

• Need for more natural resources
• Japanese nationalism spills over into Pan-Asian
  effort Asia for Asians Japan promises
  Indonesia islands help in attaining independence
  from Western imperialists Japanese treated
  other Asian peoples worse in most cases
• 1937Used the Manchurian Incident (explosion
  along Manchurian Railway) to justify invasion

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Rape of Nanking - 1937

• Japanese soldiers allowed to torture, loot,
  pillage, rape, and murder Chinese civilians
• Nationalist forces had fled the capital
• Between 200,000-350,000 killed, many more
  wounded/tortured/raped
• Women and children were not spared of the horrors
  of the massacres. Witnesses recall Japanese
  soldiers throwing babies into the air and
  catching them with their bayonets. Pregnant women
  were often the target of murder, as they would
  often be bayoneted in the belly, sometimes after
  rape. Many women were first brutally raped then
  killed.

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Eyewitness Accounts from Nanking

• There are even stories of Japanese troops forcing
  families to commit acts of incest sons were
  forced to rape their mothers, fathers were forced
  to rape daughters. One pregnant woman who was
  gang-raped by Japanese soldiers gave birth only a
  few hours later miraculously, the baby was
  perfectly healthy. Monks who had declared a life
  of celibacy were forced to rape women for the
  amusement of the Japanese. Instances of Chinese
  men forced to commit sex with corpses were heard
  of during the occupation. Any resistance would be
  met with instant shootings. (Robert B. Edgerton,
  Warriors of the Rising Sun)

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Confession of Japanese officer

• To begin with, it is our policy not to take
  prisoners, so we decided to get them out of the
  way...
• Surviving Japanese veterans claim that the army
  had officially outlawed the rape of enemy women.
  But the military policy forbidding rape only
  encouraged soldiers to kill their victims
  afterwards.
• One soldier's recollection "It would be all
  right if we only raped them. I shouldn't say all
  right. But we always stabbed and killed them.
  Because dead bodies don't talk ... Perhaps when
  we were raping her, we looked at her as a woman,
  but when we killed her, we just thought of her as
  something like a pig." (Iris Chang, The Rape of
  Nanking)

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Rape of Nanking

• I saw various prisoners, from younger ones to
  really old ones.... There were 20,000 of them. We
  took them out to the bank of the Yangtze River
  and machine-gunned them. It took us two nights to
  finish it off. We threw the bodies into the river
  later on, but the stream was so slow that many of
  them didn't float right away.

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• Pregnant with her first child, this 19-year-old
  woman was bayoneted when she sought to resist
  raping at the hands of a Japanese soldier. When
  admitted to a refugee hospital, she was found to
  have no less than 23 wounds," noted an American
  Missionary

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Japan/U.S. Hostility

• Japans actions were condemned by U.S. and L.O.N.
• China was U.S. ally and important for U.S. trade
• Japan hoped to remove US influence in Pacific
  Hawaiian Naval Base