Word: hitlers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...deep, and nobody was eager for more bloodshed. Both Britain and France were concerned with their own serious economic troubles. But particularly in Britain, there was a widespread view that Versailles had indeed been unfair, that the Germans had a strong case. George Bernard Shaw, for example, spoke of Hitler's "triumphant rescue of his country from the yoke the Allies imposed...
With hindsight it is clear that the Allies should and easily could have stopped Hitler by force, and their failure has long been condemned as "appeasement." But to the leaders of Britain and France, appeasement was a proudly proclaimed policy, meaning simply negotiating rather than fighting. "Appeasement between the wars was always a self-confident creed," Churchill biographer Martin Gilbert wrote in The Roots of Appeasement. "It was both utopian and practical. Its aim was peace for all time, or at least for as long as wise men could devise...
Unlike the Allied leaders, though, Hitler was fully prepared to back up his policies by force, even if only obliquely or by proxy. When General Francisco Franco launched a military revolt against the Republican government of Spain in 1936, Hitler saw a chance not only to acquire a new ally but also to discomfit the neighboring French. He sent bombers, tanks and "volunteers." Goring used Spain as a training ground for "my young Luftwaffe." Its most notorious action, one that other nations would soon experience, was the aerial destruction of the Basque town of Guernica...
...Allied leaders also did not understand that Hitler repeatedly lied about his plans and intentions. In a speech justifying rearmament in 1935, he declared, "Germany neither intends nor wishes to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria, to annex Austria or to conclude an Anschluss ((unification))." He even signed a treaty with Austria in 1936 promising not to interfere in its internal affairs. But he was an Austrian, after all, and the idea of uniting the two Germanic nations can never have been far from his mind. By 1937, when he called in his generals and told them to prepare...
...into the Chancellery in Vienna and shot down Conservative Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. That was supposed to be the start of a Nazi coup, but Justice Minister Kurt von Schuschnigg rallied the police and had the assassins arrested. Italy, which had guaranteed Austrian independence, mobilized four divisions on the frontier. Hitler backed down. By 1938, however, he had built a threatening army and had won the support of Italy's Mussolini (they had signed a secret protocol in 1936 creating what Mussolini called the Rome-Berlin axis). It was time to try again...