Dan Snow's History Hit - Lockdown Learning: Interwar Europe

Episode Date: February 5, 2021

For this episode of Lockdown Learning Professor Richard Toye joined me on the podcast to talk about the interwar period and answer the key questions of what caused the Second World War. We spoke about why the Treaty of Versailles was so harsh on Germany, why the League of Nations failed and the impact of the Wall Street Crash on global politics and how all these combined to help bring about the World War Two. Many thanks again to Simon Beale for creating this downloadable worksheet for students: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cpEzgAYEOgleTRvh-J-tyz2k4MLUCTc8/view?usp=sharing

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Hello everyone, welcome to this episode of Dan Snow's History Hit. It's another Friday during a lockdown in the UK and lots of other places in the world. And you have asked us at Team History Hit to produce some material that will help parents and students through these challenging homeschooling times. And over the

last few weeks, we've had Anna Whitelock talking about the Tudors. We've had Mark Morris on the Middle Ages. We have Helen Rappaport talking about the Russian Revolution. And this week, as requested, we have got Professor Richard Toy talking about interwar Europe, the rise of fascism, and the outbreak of the Second World War. We hope this episode is of use for all our general listeners. I hope you enjoyed. It's hope this episode is of use. Well, for all our general listeners, I hope you enjoyed. It's a fascinating topic, of course.

And we hope it's useful to either students studying the subject or parents who are trying to give their kids a hand, as I am trying to give my daughter a hand. She's nine. Her ability in mathematics has already superseded mine, which is another thing to add to that

list of things to be worried about as one approaches the middle years of one's life. Nine-year-old daughters being much better than you at maths. Anyway, Richard Toy is head of history at Exeter University, one of the great universities of England for the study of history. He has recently published a book in the last few days on the Munich crisis. It's edited by Julie Gottlieb, Daniel Hucker and Richard Toy, talking all about Munich, different perspectives on that great moment in the 1930s when Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, thought he'd achieved peace in our time, appeasement if you will, allowing Hitler to take over portions of Czechoslovakia where there were German speakers,

allowing them to be incorporated into the Third Reich. So Richard and his colleagues have produced a brilliant book. Please go and check that out. But he was very generous. He came on the podcast to talk more generally about the whole of this period from the end of the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles, right up to the outbreak of the Second World War. I've got to say, we've got a ton of content on this particular period on History Hit TV. We've got lots of podcasts, got lots of TV shows. We had a really,

really good TV show last year interviewing some fantastic historians, including Frank Madonna, about the rise of Hitler in Germany, how the Nazis seized power, just chilling stuff, some slightly disturbing modern resonances. That's all there on History Hit TV. It's like Netflix for history, a history channel for people that love the subject. No aliens, no people that drive trucks on roads made from ice. Anyway, so head over there, please, historyhit.tv and check it out. In the meantime, everyone, enjoy this podcast with the wonderful Professor Rich Toy. As ever, many thanks to the fantastic Simon Beale,

a British teacher. He's created a downloadable worksheet for students. It's available both on my Twitter feed, but also on the description of this podcast. You can download that, you can share it with your students and they can fill it in as they listen to this. So thank you as ever to Simon Beale. What a hero he is, a great member of the History It community. Thank you very much. So thanks to Simon. Thanks to Richard Toy for coming on this. Enjoy. Richard, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast. Great pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. So we are going to take people through from the end of the First World War to the Munich crisis.

We're going to get to the start of the Second World War. And we're going to tell everyone listening, including the students who are listening to this lockdown learning, exactly why the Second World War started. It's an easy task. Are you ready for it? We're going to nail it. We're going to finally nail it. We're going to finally nail it. At the end of the First World War, Britain, France, victorious, Germany defeated. And yet, we hear a lot about the Treaty of Versailles that officially ended the First World War was very harsh on Germany. What were the terms of the Treaty of Versailles

and was it harsh on the defeated Germans? Well, let's say that this was something which the Germans were afterwards easily able to portray as being very harsh. They could find provisions within the treaty which they thought were unreasonable, specifically the so-called war guilt cause, which said that they had been responsible for the war. Now, that was contested. We needn't go into the causes of the First World War here. But of course, there are different views about the degree to which Germany was solely responsible or to which this was a product of the so-called alliance system and great power rivalries. So, you know, some people would say Christopher Clarke's book,

Sleepwalkers, for example, would be sort of more taking the line. It wasn't just the Germans that were to blame. It was kind of a whole system which was to blame. Now, there was that. And also, crucially, there were reparations, that is to say, the Germans were to pay the cost of the war back to the victors. And in a sense, this was perhaps one of the most problematic aspects of the treaty, because these reparations were going to be crippling. And how could the Germans pay them back unless they had a thriving economy? So you've got a problem by imposing these very crippling reparations, you're actually making it very difficult for the Germans to pay them back. And of course, later on, there's sort of continuous new plans to try and get the

Germans to at least pay something back because it's unrealistic they can't pay all of it. And this is one of the key grievances, of course, that the Nazis, but not only the Nazis, it has to be said within Germany, German nationalists feel extremely hard done by. Of course, also the restriction of German territory and the fact that there are groups like the so-called Sudeten Germans who are then within other states. So one of the key principles of the Treaty of Versailles was supposed to be that it was carving up Europe into countries where the boundaries coincided with kind of ethnic or national groups. And this idea was this would make everything more stable. But of course, there were then some ethnic groups which in fact ended

up within the boundaries of other countries, which was kind of an almost inevitable thing to happen because actually the boundaries, national boundaries and ethnic boundaries are never neatly tied up together. So I would say those were the three key factors which made the Treaty of Versailles, which is only one of a number of post-war treaties, it should be said, but the most famous one, which made the treaty appear very, very harsh. And so there's a famous book published by the economist John Maynard Keynes, which is called The Economic Consequences of the Peace. He was a member of the British delegation, the Treasury delegation, and he argued that the economic terms of the treaty would in fact end up being self-defeating.

Do you think it was harsh because the First World War had been such a monumental disaster? Hundreds of thousands of Brits, but millions of French killed and wounded, and other nations, of course. Did the victorious nations just need someone to blame? Because they couldn't win the war and then say, oh, well, everyone, let's sort of get back to normal. Fair enough, and help the other nation get back on its feet. Do you think it was the scale of the fighting that made the harshness of the treaty inevitable? Yes. I mean, I wouldn't quite say it was inevitable because there were other voices who were saying, hang on a minute, and even Lloyd George, towards the conclusion of the treaty, starts to have second thoughts, although he

doesn't sort of act on those second thoughts. But I think clearly, in particular, you know, the French had a perhaps understandable desire for revenge. There had been a very harsh peace imposed on them in 1870 after the Franco-Prussian War. And in Britain as well, Lloyd George had won the general election of 1918 on the promise that the Germans were going to be made to pay. And politicians had used phrases like squeezing the Germans until the pips squeak. So although actually, if you look at Lloyd George's precise language at an election, he was actually quite cautious about what had been achieved. He didn't promise the world. But of course, the way that this was perceived popularly by the voters, by the press, was that the Germans were

going to bear the whole cost of the war and then sort of, you know, everything would be all right and sorted out, which of course was bound to lead to disillusion later on. What attempts were made after the First World War to stop wars like that happening ever again, particularly the League of Nations? What was the idea there? Well, of course, going back into the 19th century, there had been various attempts at international cooperation, ranging from things like the coordination of posts and telegraph communications to Geneva Convention, for example, on the laws of war. So the League of Nations didn't come out of a totally clear blue sky. There had been ideas floating around. But World War I certainly accelerated these ideas. And this was the key part of President Woodrow Wilson's so-called

14 points, some kind of organization which would preserve peace post-war. Another phrase for this which students may come across a lot is the idea of collective security. And one of the things which had caused a lot of anger was revelations during the war that there had been sort of secret treaties, there had been secret agreements between different countries which were blamed in part for the outbreak of the war. So the idea that you would have a new form of kind of transparent, cooperative international diplomacy, and you would have an organization which would enforce rules, which would, if there was an aggressor, the other countries would act to restrain that aggressor, it seemed to make a lot of sense. And of course, we have a successor

organisation now in the form of the United Nations. Again, not a perfect organisation, but one which seems very necessary. So the League is sort of popularly perceived as having been a failure. Of course, it didn't prevent the Second World War. And there were various problems with the League of Nations, so that it required unanimity, required everybody to agree before it could act against an aggressor. That was a problem. It was also a big problem that although President Wilson had been one of the key moving forces behind the League, he wasn't able to persuade the United States Senate to agree and ratify it. So the United States, becoming one of the most powerful countries in the world, never became a member. So it wasn't really a global organisation. It was very much a European-based organisation.

So it had all sorts of limits, but scholars now tend to emphasise things like its activities in the field of economic policy, of health policy, that in many ways it actually was the forerunner or precursor of many things which the United Nations did later on and in fact continues to do. But it didn't manage to restrain countries from doing things like invading places. That's the problem, isn't it? That's what people have criticised it for. In particular, would you say it's Italy's ambitions in Africa? Well, this is sort of the key example, really. There have been some early successes in terms of reaching negotiated settlements between countries.

The League had kind of, again, failed, one could really say, with respect to Japanese aggression in China. But it is Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 where, at one particular moment, it looks like the League will act. moment, it looks like the league will act. There's kind of a lot of tough talk. But in fact, basically Britain and France, who are really the kind of the key dominating powers within the league, aren't really very interested in acting. And they're actually quite happy for Abyssinia to be carved up. So the British and the French come up with an idea that Mussolini should essentially get a bit of Abyssinia. And when this leaks out, it's a scandal. And that plan is then withdrawn. But Mussolini goes on and conquers the rest of Abyssinia. And so from this point on, really, the League looks very much like a dead letter. And that is something which clearly

strengthens Hitler's hand or strengthens Hitler's own convictions that he can get away with taking chunks of other people's country without any serious threat that he's going to be militarily opposed. land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's cre. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of

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Even with a League of Nations doesn't quite work, even with a harsh Treaty of Versailles, towards the late 1920s, things were looking okay. There was no particular terrible Second World War on the horizon. Is economics the key here? Is it the Wall Street crash of 1929? Is that what tips the world towards conflict? Well, yes. It's true that the Nazis were not very successful before 1929. But of course, you need to remember, on the one hand, Mussolini had come to power in Italy in 1922. So you see the first part of the rise of fascism there. We often tend to focus very much on Germany and the Nazis for what seem like obvious reasons, but Mussolini shouldn't be neglected either. And then I suppose I would also say that although certainly you're right that the Wall Street crash, which unleashes

economic havoc in the United States and Europe, is clearly very, very important. Things wouldn't have played out the same way had that not happened. But also, there is this German nationalist resentment that has been building up. The Nazis have been organizing, they have been agitating, they have positioned themselves, if you like, in a place to benefit when you arrive at this huge crisis. Now, there's always kind of a what if. There was this character, Gustav Stresemann, who was briefly chancellor, but also foreign minister of the Weimar Republic. And he appeared to have achieved some kind of stability by the late 20s, but then dies rather young. So there's always this what if question. But essentially, at the point where the economic

disaster hits, the German state is very poorly equipped to cope with it. And you see a succession of governments, a succession of political crises. So in a sense, yes, it's a kind of a tidal wave, but it's a tidal wave which is hitting a state which is not in good condition to withstand this deluge. And what's the effect of the Great Depression on countries? Just very general top line. I mean, it's people unemployed, it's businesses closing, it's hunger, I guess. Absolutely. And you can see, not least in the United States itself, the so-called Hoovervilles, that is to say, named after President Hoover, these kind of shanty towns which sprang up in Germany, hunger and large scale unemployment, a great deal of anger and a great deal of paramilitary organization and street fighting between communists and the Nazi brown shirts. So it becomes a pretty scary place to be,

at least in kind of urban centres. And why does this help extreme parties? Well, I suppose because they're offering simple solutions. They're telling you who to blame. They're telling you to blame the foreigners who imposed the hated Treaty of Versailles. They're telling you to hate bourgeois politicians who have presided since the end of the war. There's a lot of pent-up anger there, a lot of former soldiers and servicemen who are absolutely ready to get into uniform, to march again, to beat people up. And it's not such an unusual thing that desperate people can be mobilised by simple and conspiratorial ideas. Of course, the Jews were blamed by the Nazis. And when people were looking for people to blame, then it was easy for many people to accept those lies.

So we've got the Nazi party on the rise in Germany spewing out its lies. And what are the other causes of the Second World War? Was it just Hitler's ambition to make a large German state, to have a German empire, to reincorporate the bits of Germany that had been lost after the First World War, to add other bits to it? Is that the main cause of the Second World War? Yes, certainly Germany's ambitions are an absolutely critical cause. But you do have to remember what's going on elsewhere in the world. You've got to remember the rise of Japan, another militaristic power with ambitions in the region. And that is a threat to the British Empire, as becomes very clear during World War II, when you have, for example, the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. example, the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. And that helps explain some of the dilemmas which the British actually have. One is always saying, well, why didn't they rearm faster? Or why didn't they take a stand? Well, partly because Germany isn't the only threat that they're worrying about.

And their forces are stretched across the whole world. And so sort of thinking about this overall context, you need to remember also, this is a period in which the Soviet Union is establishing itself. And there are politicians who are very suspicious in Britain of the Soviet Union and of the Bolsheviks. And therefore, whatever we may say in retrospect, and in some ways, things should have been clear at the time that Germany was the main enemy. Actually, there were a wide range of different forces in operation, which meant that the European situation was very unstable and very unpredictable. if you were going to succeed in defeating Germany in the end or facing down Germany, you were probably going to have to ally yourself with one or other power, which itself was also quite violent and unpleasant. So if you try and think about, well, why didn't the British take a tougher stand against Mussolini in 1935? Well, it's because at this stage, they see Mussolini as a potential restraining factor on Hitler as another power. They don't necessarily see Hitler and Mussolini as being we want to be harsh on Mussolini, when actually it's the Nazis who were

the main threat. So what may look like simple decisions actually turn out to be quite morally complex and strategically complex. So we've got the Munich crisis of 1938. That's when the British Prime Minister... Well, give everyone the sort of background to the Munich crisis you've just produced this wonderful book about. I think the Munich crisis has to be seen, of course, in the light of what has happened over the previous five years since Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933. And it is kind of the latest of a series of crises. Germany had pulled out of the League of Nations, for example. It had then reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936. There had then been the so-called Anschluss with Austria in March

1938. And that was something which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. And there was a tendency at that point to say, well, Hitler is taking over areas which are full of Germans, were originally German, and it is Hitler's own backyard. Why should we object when the principles of the Treaty of Versailles were supposed to be about ethnic homogeneity within national boundaries? The assumption of appeasement, if you like, we sort of use this as a very sort of negative loaded term, but the idea behind appeasement, which now does of course look very misconceived, is not simply appeasing powerful states, but rather it is that accepting that the Treaty of Versailles was in various ways unsatisfactory, you try and reach a new arrangement which appeases not just Germany, but the appeasement of Europe as a whole.

So the idea that there should be some kind of revision of the terms of the treaty is not particularly uncontroversial. And what does become controversial, of course, is the way in which Hitler goes about trying to do it. And the crucial thing to understand is that Hitler wanted to achieve all these things. He wanted to achieve things which actually the British and perhaps to a lesser extent the French were willing to grant him, but he didn't want to be granted this. He wanted to take it. He wanted to show his military power. He wanted to assert Germany as a military force and therefore getting agreement over things like the restoration of Germany's colonies, although he sometimes talked in this way that that was what he wanted.

Fundamentally, what he wanted to do was invade and to show that he was more powerful than these other powers. He essentially wanted to show his contempt for these other powers. So the crisis which emerges in 1938, we eventually come to call it the Munich crisis, because that is the place where the conference temporarily resolved the issue was held, was originally the Sudeten crisis. So this area of what was at this point Czechoslovakia, which Hitler is claiming should be an inherent part of the Reich. And to cut a long story short, it looks as though war is going to come over this issue. And Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, flies backwards and forwards a number of times to Germany. Finally, as this four-power conference, Germany, Britain, France, and Italy, which gives the Sudetenland to Germany. So in a weird way,

Hitler has actually been backed into a corner. He gets exactly what he wants or what he said he wanted, which is to have these ethnic Germans within the Reich. And basically, because the British and the French insist on conceding everything that he demands very, very quickly, he's then deprived of the excuse of actually, of course, he does march his troops in, but he kind of marches them in with the sanction of the other powers, which is precisely what he doesn't want. So actually, at the time, this looks like a huge triumph for Chamberlain, who lands back at Heston Airdrome famously saying, I have a piece of paper in my hand, signed by Herr Hitler, etc, etc. Talks about peace in our time. Looks like a wonderful triumph for Chamberlain because he's prevented war and he's achieved it

via diplomacy. And it is being given what he wants, but being granted it by the French and the British is what Hitler in the end finds incredibly unacceptable. How interesting. And the next time he had his eye on some territory, this time in Poland, he wasn't going to ask anyone's permission. He was going to take it by force. Well, indeed. But even before we get to that point, we have to remember March 1939, where he invades the rest of Czechoslovakia. And this is a big moment of disillusion in Britain, because it's very clearly seen that rather than the British having achieved a lasting peace and restrained Hitler, actually he's going to continue whatever he wants to do. And this very quickly leads to

the British giving a guarantee to Poland that if they are invaded, then the British will go to war on their behalf. Now, of course, the problem of that is that it is very difficult for the British or the French to prevent Hitler invading Poland. What can they actually do about it? Well, when he does do it in 1939, the answer turns out to be not much because Poland is very quickly overrun. Nevertheless, giving that guarantee essentially sets the trigger, which means that at the point where Hitler goes further and decides he does want to invade Poland and goes ahead and does it on 1st of September 1939, that means that, having given this guarantee,

it's very, very difficult for the British to wriggle out of it. Now, there's argument about whether or not Chamberlain really did want to wriggle out of it. There's a short delay before Britain actually enters the war on 3rd of September. People dispute, well, was Chamberlain somehow hoping that he wouldn't have to fulfill this? But at any rate, the political pressure is such that it really becomes impossible for the British to avoid joining in what now becomes, well, not quite a world war yet, but certainly a pan-European war. And then the rest is history after 3rd of September once the war begins. Thank you very much, Richard, for coming on this podcast and helping us all out,

telling everyone about the road to war in the 20s and 30s, and also talking a little bit about Munich, which is the subject of your latest book that you've produced. So thank you very much indeed. Thank you. I hope you enjoy our podcast just before you go bit of a favor to ask totally understand if you want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money makes sense but if you could just do me a favorites for free go to itunes or wherever you get your podcast if you give it a five star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review purge yourself give it a glowing review i'd really

appreciate that it's tough weather. The law of the jungle out there. And I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome. But if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you. Douglas Adams, the genius behind

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold.