# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Instituted in the hope of avoiding war, appeasement was the name given to Britain's policy in the 1930s of allowing Hitler to expand German territory unchecked. Most closely associated with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, it is now widely discredited as a policy of weakness. Yet at the time, it was a popular and seemingly pragmatic policy.

Hitler's expansionist aims became clear in 1936 when his forces entered the Rhineland. Two years later, in March 1938, he annexed Austria. At the Munich Conference that September, Neville Chamberlain seemed to have averted war by agreeing that Germany could occupy the Sudetenland, the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia - this became known as the Munich Agreement.

In Britain, the Munich Agreement was greeted with jubilation. However, Winston Churchill, then estranged from government and one of the few to oppose appeasement of Hitler, described it as 'an unmitigated disaster'.

Appeasement was popular for several reasons. Chamberlain - and the British people - were desperate to avoid the slaughter of another world war. Britain was overstretched policing its empire and could not afford major rearmament. Its main ally, France, was seriously weakened and, unlike in the First World War, Commonwealth support was not a certainty. Many Britons also sympathised with Germany, which they felt had been treated unfairly following its defeat in 1918.

But, despite his promise of 'no more territorial demands in Europe', Hitler was undeterred by appeasement. In March 1939, he violated the Munich Agreement by occupying the rest of Czechoslovakia. Six months later, in September 1939, Germany invaded Poland and Britain was at war.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Britain Hoped To Avoid War With Germany In The 1930s

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Instituted in the hope of avoiding war, appeasement was the name given to Britain's policy in the 1930s of allowing Hitler to expand German territory unchecked. Most closely associated with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, it is now widely discredited as a policy of weakness.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Background: The Impact of World War I

World War I was one of the most destructive wars in modern history. The opposing sides in World War I were the Entente Powers and the Central Powers.

Nearly ten million soldiers died. The enormous losses on all sides resulted in part from the introduction of new weapons like the machine gun and gas warfare. Military leaders failed to adjust their tactics to the increasingly mechanized nature of warfare. A policy of attrition, particularly on the Western Front, cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

No official agencies kept careful track of civilian losses during the war years. Scholars suggest that as many as thirteen million non-combatants died as a direct or indirect result of the war. The conflict uprooted or displaced millions of persons from their homes in Europe and Asia Minor.

Property and industry losses were catastrophic, especially in France, Belgium, Poland, and Serbia, where fighting had been heaviest.

Background: The "Fourteen Points"

In January 1918, some ten months before the end of World War I, US President Woodrow Wilson had written a list of proposed war aims which he called the " Fourteen Points ."

Eight of these points dealt specifically with territorial and political settlements to accompany a victory of the Entente Powers (Great Britain, France, and Russia). One important point was the idea of national self-determination for ethnic populations in Europe. Other points focused on preventing war in the future. The last principle proposed a League of Nations to arbitrate international disputes. Wilson hoped his proposal would bring about a just and lasting peace: a "peace without victory."

German leaders signed the armistice (an agreement to stop fighting) in the Compiègne Forest on November 11, 1918. Many of them believed then that the Fourteen Points would form the basis of the future peace treaty. But when the heads of the governments of the United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy met in Paris to discuss treaty terms, the European countries of the "Big Four" rejected this approach.

After the devastation of World War I, the victorious Western powers (Great Britain, the United States, France, and Italy, known as the "Big Four") imposed a series of treaties upon the defeated Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey).

Viewing Germany as the chief instigator of the conflict, the European Allied powers decided instead to impose harsh treaty terms upon defeated Germany. The treaty was presented to the German delegation for signature on May 7, 1919, at the Palace of Versailles near Paris. The Treaty of Versailles held Germany responsible for starting the war and liable for massive material damages.

Provisions of the Versailles Treaty

Germany lost 13 percent of its territory, including 10 percent of its population. The Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to:

concede Eupen-Malmédy to Belgium

concede the Hultschin district to Czechoslovakia

concede Poznan, West Prussia, and Upper Silesia to Poland

return Alsace and Lorraine, annexed in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War, to France.

The treaty called for:

demilitarization and occupation of the Rhineland

special status for the Saarland under French control

referendums to determine the future of areas in northern Schleswig on the Danish-German frontier and parts of Upper Silesia on the border with Poland.

Further, all German overseas colonies were taken away from Germany and became League of Nation Mandates. The city of Danzig (today Gdansk), with its large ethnically German population, became a Free City.

Perhaps the most humiliating portion of the treaty for defeated Germany was Article 231, commonly known as the "War Guilt Clause." This clause forced the German nation to accept complete responsibility for starting World War I. As such, Germany was to be held liable for all material damages.

France's premier, Georges Clemenceau, in particular, insisted on imposing enormous reparation payments. While aware that Germany would probably not be able to pay such a towering debt, Clemenceau and the French still greatly feared rapid German recovery and a new war against France.

The French sought to limit Germany's potential to regain its economic superiority and also to rearm. The German army was to be limited to 100,000 men. Conscription was forbidden. The treaty restricted the Navy to vessels under 10,000 tons, with a ban on the acquisition or maintenance of a submarine fleet. Germany was forbidden to maintain an air force.

Finally, Germany was required to conduct war crimes proceedings against the Kaiser and other leaders for waging aggressive war. The subsequent Leipzig Trials, without the Kaiser or other significant national leaders in the dock, resulted largely in acquittals. They were widely perceived as a sham, even in Germany.

Impact of the Treaty

The harsh terms of the peace treaty did not ultimately help to settle the international disputes which had initiated World War I. On the contrary, the treaty got in the way of inter-European cooperation and intensified the underlying issues which had caused the war in the first place.

For the populations of the defeated powers-Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria-the peace treaties came across as unfair punishment. Their governments quickly resorted to violating the military and financial terms of the treaties. This was the case whether the governments were democratic as in Germany or Austria, or authoritarian in the case of Hungary and Bulgaria. Efforts to revise and defy provisions of the peace became a key element in their foreign policies and became a destabilizing factor in international politics.

A "dictated peace?"

The newly formed German democratic government saw the Versailles Treaty as a "dictated peace" ( Diktat ). The war guilt clause, huge reparation payments, and limitations on the German military seemed particularly oppressive to most Germans. To many Germans, the treaty seemed to contradict the the very first of Wilson's Fourteen Points, which called for transparency in peace negotiations and diplomacy. Revision of the Versailles Treaty was one of the platforms that gave radical right-wing parties in Germany such credibility to mainstream voters in the 1920s and early 1930s. Among these parties was Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party.

Promises to rearm, reclaim German territory, remilitarize the Rhineland, and regain European and world prominence after the humiliating defeat and peace appealed to ultranationalist sentiment. These promises helped some average voters to overlook the more radical tenets of Nazi ideology.

The reparations and a general inflationary period in Europe in the 1920s caused spiraling hyperinflation of the German Reichsmark by 1923. This hyperinflationary period combined with the effects of the Great Depression (beginning in 1929) to undermine the stability of the German economy. These conditions wiped out the personal savings of the middle class and led to massive unemployment. Such economic chaos contributed to social unrest and the instability of the fragile Weimar Republic .

Stab-in-the-Back Legend

Finally, the efforts of the Western European powers to marginalize Germany through the Versailles Treaty undermined and isolated German democratic leaders.

Some in the general population believed that Germany had been "stabbed in the back" by the "November criminals"-those who had helped to form the new Weimar government and negotiate the peace. Many Germans "forgot" that they had applauded the fall of Germany's emperor, initially welcomed parliamentary democratic reform, and celebrated the armistice. They recalled only that the German Left-commonly seen as Socialists, Communists, and Jews-had surrendered German honor to a shameful peace.

This Dolchstosslegende (stab-in-the-back legend) helped to discredit the German socialist and liberal circles who were most committed to Germany's fragile democratic experiment. The difficulties caused by social and economic unrest in the aftermath of World War I and its peace undermined democratic solutions in Weimar Germany.

German voters ultimately found this kind of leadership in Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party.

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn about the provisions and impact of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, including the "War Guilt Clause" which held Germany responsible for starting World War I.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Treaty of Versailles | Definition, Summary, Terms, & Facts | Britannica

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Treaty of Versailles, peace document signed at the end of World War I by the Allied powers and Germany in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, France, on June 28, 1919; it took force on January 10, 1920. Learn more about the Treaty of Versailles here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Photograph of Phot Phahonyothin (far left) with Hideki Tojo (center) in Tokyo 1942)
On this day in 1941, Thailand allied with Japan. Thailand was valuable for the Axis powers, as their airfields, ports, and railways would be instrumental in planned invasions of Malaya and Burma. The partnership was not necessarily an equal one; their alliance was the result of the December 8 Japanese invasion of Thailand after failed negotiations, the Thai resistance lasting only hours before a ceasefire was declared. Like many countries, Thailand joined the Axis powers because of military pressure.

Why countries joined the Axis or the Allies was complex, often rooted in many different factors, such as how much military power that country held, what political system they followed, and where they were located geographically. When trying to understand the complicated course of WWII, it is helpful to know the main players and their goals. So, who were the Axis powers and who were the Allies?
Who Were the Allies:
The main Allied powers were Great Britain, The United States, China, and the Soviet Union. The leaders of the Allies were Franklin Roosevelt (the United States), Winston Churchill (Great Britain), and Joseph Stalin (the Soviet Union).

The common purpose of the Allies was to defeat the Axis powers and create a peaceful post-war world. Its creation was a response to the aggression and unprovoked war the Axis had unleashed upon the world. Each country had different ideas about what this post war world would look like. Churchill and Britain wanted to create a post-war Europe that would prevent Germany from rising again. Roosevelt and the United States wanted a permanent end to the fascist regimes of Germany, Italy and Japan and to foster democracy throughout the world. Stalin and the Soviet Union wanted to both crush Germany and gain influence over Europe. The United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union coordinated their foreign and military policies and created institutions in common to support these policies and win the war.
Who Were the Axis Powers:
The main Axis powers were Germany, Japan and Italy. The Axis leaders were Adolf Hitler (Germany), Benito Mussolini (Italy), and Emperor Hirohito (Japan).

The Axis alliance began with Germany partnering with Japan and Italy and was cemented in September 1940 with the Tripartite Pact, also known as the Three-Power Pact, which had the "prime purpose to establish and maintain a new order of things... to promote the mutual prosperity and welfare of the peoples concerned." They supported each other's goal for territorial expansion, wanted the destruction of the Soviet Union and acknowledged each other's supremacy in their respective geographic areas.
Can you identify the major locations in the Pacific? From our Lesson Plan, "Where in the World War?"
Related Lesson Plans:
Where in the World War: Mapping the War in the Pacific Hitler's Fatal Gamble: Comparing Totalitarianism and Democracy
Posted by Gemma Birnbaum and Laura Sparaco, educators at The National WWII Museum.

Posted :

Post Category :

Follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Photograph of Phot Phahonyothin (far left) with Hideki Tojo (center) in Tokyo 1942) On this day in 1941, Thailand allied with Japan. Thailand was valuable for the Axis powers, as their airfields, ports, and railways would be instrumental in planned invasions of Malaya and Burma.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Imperialism during World War II – May We Speak?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Today, we are all historians, some are professional and many studied history to a smaller extent. And as everyday historians, we immediately recognize the Hakenkruez, or more widely known as the “Swastika.” We understand that the Swastika contains the pain and sufferings that the victims of the German Holocaust had to endure.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Regarding the Great Depression, ... we did it. We're very sorry. ... We won't do it again."
-Ben Bernanke, November 8, 2002, in a speech given at "A Conference to Honor Milton Friedman ... On the Occasion of His 90th Birthday."

In 2002, Ben Bernanke, then a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, acknowledged publicly what economists have long believed. The Federal Reserve's mistakes contributed to the "worst economic disaster in American history" (Bernanke 2002).

Bernanke, like other economic historians, characterized the Great Depression as a disaster because of its length, depth, and consequences. The Depression lasted a decade, beginning in 1929 and ending during World War II. Industrial production plummeted. Unemployment soared. Families suffered. Marriage rates fell. The contraction began in the United States and spread around the globe. The Depression was the longest and deepest downturn in the history of the United States and the modern industrial economy.

The Great Depression began in August 1929, when the economic expansion of the Roaring Twenties came to an end. A series of financial crises punctuated the contraction. These crises included a stock market crash in 1929, a series of regional banking panics in 1930 and 1931, and a series of national and international financial crises from 1931 through 1933. The downturn hit bottom in March 1933, when the commercial banking system collapsed and President Roosevelt declared a national banking holiday.Sweeping reforms of the financial system accompanied the economic recovery, which was interrupted by a double-dip recession in 1937. Return to full output and employment occurred during the Second World War.

To understand Bernanke's statement, one needs to know what he meant by "we," "did it," and "won't do it again."

By "we," Bernanke meant the leaders of the Federal Reserve System. At the start of the Depression, the Federal Reserve's decision-making structure was decentralized and often ineffective. Each district had a governor who set policies for his district, although some decisions required approval of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC. The Board lacked the authority and tools to act on its own and struggled to coordinate policies across districts. The governors and the Board understood the need for coordination; frequently corresponded concerning important issues; and established procedures and programs, such as the Open Market Investment Committee, to institutionalize cooperation. When these efforts yielded consensus, monetary policy could be swift and effective. But when the governors disagreed, districts could and sometimes did pursue independent and occasionally contradictory courses of action.

The governors disagreed on many issues, because at the time and for decades thereafter, experts disagreed about the best course of action and even about the correct conceptual framework for determining optimal policy. Information about the economy became available with long and variable lags. Experts within the Federal Reserve, in the business community, and among policymakers in Washington, DC, had different perceptions of events and advocated different solutions to problems. Researchers debated these issues for decades. Consensus emerged gradually. The views in this essay reflect conclusions expressed in the writings of three recent chairmen, Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan, and Ben Bernanke.

By "did it," Bernanke meant that the leaders of the Federal Reserve implemented policies that they thought were in the public interest. Unintentionally, some of their decisions hurt the economy. Other policies that would have helped were not adopted.

An example of the former is the Fed's decision to raise interest rates in 1928 and 1929. The Fed did this in an attempt to limit speculation in securities markets. This action slowed economic activity in the United States. Because the international gold standard linked interest rates and monetary policies among participating nations, the Fed's actions triggered recessions in nations around the globe. The Fed repeated this mistake when responding to the international financial crisis in the fall of 1931. This website explores these issues in greater depth in our entries on the stock market crash of 1929 and the financial crises of 1931 through 1933.

An example of the latter is the Fed's failure to act as a lender of last resort during the banking panics that began in the fall of 1930 and ended with the banking holiday in the winter of 1933. This website explores this issue in essays on the banking panics of 1930 to 1931, the banking acts of 1932, and the banking holiday of 1933.

Men study the announcement of jobs at an employment agency during the Great Depression. (Photo: Bettmann/Bettmann/Getty Images)

One reason that Congress created the Federal Reserve, of course, was to act as a lender of last resort. Why did the Federal Reserve fail in this fundamental task? The Federal Reserve's leaders disagreed about the best response to banking crises. Some governors subscribed to a doctrine similar to Bagehot's dictum, which says that during financial panics, central banks should loan funds to solvent financial institutions beset by runs. Other governors subscribed to a doctrine known as real bills. This doctrine indicated that central banks should supply more funds to commercial banks during economic expansions, when individuals and firms demanded additional credit to finance production and commerce, and less during economic contractions, when demand for credit contracted. The real bills doctrine did not definitively describe what to do during banking panics, but many of its adherents considered panics to be symptoms of contractions, when central bank lending should contract. A few governors subscribed to an extreme version of the real bills doctrine labeled "liquidationist." This doctrine indicated that during financial panics, central banks should stand aside so that troubled financial institutions would fail. This pruning of weak institutions would accelerate the evolution of a healthier economic system. Herbert Hoover's secretary of treasury, Andrew Mellon, who served on the Federal Reserve Board, advocated this approach. These intellectual tensions and the Federal Reserve's ineffective decision-making structure made it difficult, and at times impossible, for the Fed's leaders to take effective action.

Among leaders of the Federal Reserve, differences of opinion also existed about whether to help and how much assistance to extend to financial institutions that did not belong to the Federal Reserve. Some leaders thought aid should only be extended to commercial banks that were members of the Federal Reserve System. Others thought member banks should receive assistance substantial enough to enable them to help their customers, including financial institutions that did not belong to the Federal Reserve, but the advisability and legality of this pass-through assistance was the subject of debate. Only a handful of leaders thought the Federal Reserve (or federal government) should directly aid commercial banks (or other financial institutions) that did not belong to the Federal Reserve. One advocate of widespread direct assistance was Eugene Meyer, governor of the Federal Reserve Board, who was instrumental in the creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

These differences of opinion contributed to the Federal Reserve's most serious sin of omission: failure to stem the decline in the supply of money. From the fall of 1930 through the winter of 1933, the money supply fell by nearly 30 percent. The declining supply of funds reduced average prices by an equivalent amount. This deflation increased debt burdens; distorted economic decision-making; reduced consumption; increased unemployment; and forced banks, firms, and individuals into bankruptcy. The deflation stemmed from the collapse of the banking system, as explained in the essay on the banking panics of 1930 and 1931.

The Federal Reserve could have prevented deflation by preventing the collapse of the banking system or by counteracting the collapse with an expansion of the monetary base, but it failed to do so for several reasons. The economic collapse was unforeseen and unprecedented. Decision makers lacked effective mechanisms for determining what went wrong and lacked the authority to take actions sufficient to cure the economy. Some decision makers misinterpreted signals about the state of the economy, such as the nominal interest rate, because of their adherence to the real bills philosophy. Others deemed defending the gold standard by raising interests and reducing the supply of money and credit to be better for the economy than aiding ailing banks with the opposite actions.

On several occasions, the Federal Reserve did implement policies that modern monetary scholars believe could have stemmed the contraction. In the spring of 1931, the Federal Reserve began to expand the monetary base, but the expansion was insufficient to offset the deflationary effects of the banking crises. In the spring of 1932, after Congress provided the Federal Reserve with the necessary authority, the Federal Reserve expanded the monetary base aggressively. The policy appeared effective initially, but after a few months the Federal Reserve changed course. A series of political and international shocks hit the economy, and the contraction resumed. Overall, the Fed's efforts to end the deflation and resuscitate the financial system, while well intentioned and based on the best available information, appear to have been too little and too late.

The flaws in the Federal Reserve's structure became apparent during the initial years of the Great Depression. Congress responded by reforming the Federal Reserve and the entire financial system. Under the Hoover administration, congressional reforms culminated in the Reconstruction Finance Corporation Act and the Banking Act of 1932. Under the Roosevelt administration, reforms culminated in the Emergency Banking Act of 1933, the Banking Act of 1933 (commonly called Glass-Steagall), the Gold Reserve Act of 1934, and the Banking Act of 1935. This legislation shifted some of the Federal Reserve's responsibilities to the Treasury Department and to new federal agencies such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. These agencies dominated monetary and banking policy until the 1950s.

The reforms of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s turned the Federal Reserve into a modern central bank. The creation of the modern intellectual framework underlying economic policy took longer and continues today. The Fed's combination of a well-designed central bank and an effective conceptual framework enabled Bernanke to state confidently that "we won't do it again."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
                      by 
Gary Richardson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The longest and deepest downturn in the history of the United States and the modern industrial economy lasted more than a decade, beginning in 1929 and ending during World War II in 1941.