The History Buff's Guide to World War II (4 page)

Kellogg knew that a French-American eternal alliance would insult Germany and the Soviet Union. But to decline would imply the United States was not interested in denouncing war. The secretary was trapped.

In a clever maneuver, Kellogg recommended extending the invitation to all countries in the spirit of “universal brotherhood.” The move paid off handsomely. In Paris on August 27, 1928, fifteen countries—including the United States, France, Germany, Belgium, and Britain—signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Eventually, forty-three of the world’s then existing sixty-seven independent states joined the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy.

Citizens everywhere praised the accord as a milestone in human enlightenment, whereas their dignitaries knew the text had no teeth. Most of the pact’s five hundred words were congratulatory. The document made no stipulations concerning arms reduction, penalties against warring states, or obligations of mutual assistance in case of attack. Kellogg himself viewed the treaty as little more than a diffused bomb.
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Secretary of state from 1925 to 1929, Frank Kellogg set a record in U.S. diplomatic history by signing eighty international treaties.

5
. THE THIRD GENEVA CONVENTION (1929)

In 1864, the first Geneva Convention declared the neutrality of hospitals in wartime. A second meeting in 1906 safeguarded hospital ships and shipwrecked persons. The sheer volume and violence of World War I revealed the need for another summit to protect prisoners of war.

Held in 1929, the third convention produced a document remarkably humane for its day, outlining better treatment for wartime captives than many conventioneers afforded their own citizens. Prisoners were to be removed from battle zones. Enlisted soldiers could be asked to perform manual labor, but none of it was to be dangerous or related to military operations. Per mutual agreements of involved governments, soldiers and officers were to be paid. Prisoners could send and receive personal mail. Forbidden was any resort to reprisal or torture.

Though progressive, many of the ninety-seven articles were dangerously ambiguous, particularly concerning prisoner health. As for hydration: “Sufficient drinking water shall be supplied.” Food and shelter were to be “equivalent in quantity and quality to that of the depot troops.” Medical inspections were to be carried out monthly, yet there was no stipulation whether qualified doctors should conduct them.

Ominously, the forty-seven signatories did not include the Soviet Union or the Empire of Japan.

Geneva conventions tended to set standards after the fact. The 1949 convention addressed civilian safety in wartime—after the Second World War resulted in more than thirty million civilian deaths.

6
. LONDON NAVAL CONFERENCE (1930)

Though the Washington Naval Conference of 1922 restricted battleship and aircraft carrier construction, the development of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines flourished. To subdue the growing armadas, seagoing powers convened in London to discuss possible limitations.

Owning the world’s largest merchant fleets, the United States and Britain called for the complete abolishment of submarines. France and Japan, viewing submarines as vital defensive weapons, refused. On the matter of destroyers, Britain and the United States were to remain ahead of all others, with Japan permitted a fleet 70 percent as large. On cruisers, the United States and Britain would again be equal, with Japan allowed 60 percent as much tonnage and others no more than 35 percent.
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The conference fostered harsh debate within the House of Lords, the U.S. Senate, and the Imperial Privy Council, but all three eventually accepted ratification of the treaty in the interest of international peace. Naval officers, on the other hand, were infuriated, many of them viewing the restrictions as arbitrary and unbearable. Scores of senior officers from the U.S. Navy and His Majesty’s Service openly criticized the measures as defeatist, while the reaction in Japan bordered on open rebellion. The chief of staff of the Imperial Navy resigned, another officer committed suicide, and an assassin mortally wounded Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi.
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The London Naval Conference of 1930 was the first and last treaty in history to set universal limitations on all types of warships.

7
. GENERAL DISARMAMENT CONFERENCE (1932–34)

The League of Nations tried for years to assemble a conference for universal arms limitation. Not until February 1932 in Geneva did such a meeting take place. Despite, or perhaps because of, the participation of nearly every country on earth, the discussion devolved almost immediately into lengthy bickering.

The only serious proposals came from France, the Soviet Union, and the United States. All three suggested cutting weapons collections by half. The American delegation even proposed abolishing all bomber aircraft, assumed at the time to be the superweapon of the future. No major power appeared willing to submit to the proposals or to international inspections. Nor was there any consensus on the proper response to violators of disarmament.
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Contrary to the principle of the conference, one country repeatedly argued for the right to rearm. Militarily emasculated Germany insisted on weapons parity with France, a particularly sensitive issue, because the Weimar government was building prototype aircraft and submarines in direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Germany’s requests escalated to demands after Adolf Hitler became chancellor in January 1933. The Nazi government withdrew from the conference nine months later.
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In response to the growing German threat, other nations began rebuilding their own military programs. The conference dissolved in failure in May 1934.
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During the conference, Hitler guaranteed to only build six-ton tanks, which unfortunately were large enough to conquer Poland. The invasion involved the Panzer I, which met the weight limit.

8
. THE WORLD MONETARY AND ECONOMIC CONFERENCE (1933)

Mired in global depression, sixty-six countries gathered in London to negotiate an end to gold hoarding, roller-coaster currencies, and tariff wars. All eyes were on the United States. As the world’s largest creditor nation and the largest importer-exporter—in spite of its crippling recession—the United States was the obvious choice to take the lead.

Half the world had gone off the gold standard and wanted the dollar to act as a surrogate. Britain and France wanted their massive debts to the Americans forgiven. Nearly every delegation wanted the United States to remove its protective tariffs first.
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But newly inaugurated Franklin D. Roosevelt announced he was in no mood to play “Santa Claus,” to bear the cost of stabilizing the world’s economy while the rest reaped all the benefits. He refused to remove tariffs unilaterally or lock the dollar in artificial boundaries. He also flatly rejected Britain and France’s request to forgive their debts, the bulk of which were racked up during the European fiasco of the First World War.
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Not surprisingly, what became known as the “Roosevelt bombshell” was not well received. Delegates accused him of being isolationist and shortsighted, of single-handedly demolishing the conference. Ultimately nothing was resolved, and countries remained economically disunited until war necessitated a change in policies.
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If the attending parties wanted to rid themselves of archaic thinking, they picked a strange venue. The World Monetary and Economic Conference took place in the London Museum of Natural History—a building filled with dinosaurs.

9
. THE ABYSSINIAN COMPROMISE (1935)

In the spring of 1935, dictator Benito Mussolini prepared for war against Abyssinia, stockpiling troops and weapons to the east in Italian Somaliland. He amassed ten thousand vehicles, fifty thousand pack animals, and two hundred thousand soldiers. In the eleventh hour, Britain sent to Rome the young and charismatic Anthony Eden to try and talk il Duce down.
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Eden offered to arbitrate a settlement between Abyssinia and Italy whereby the Italian Somaliland would receive access to a port and a rail right-of-way in British Somaliland. In exchange, Abyssinia would relinquish an area bordering Italian Somaliland consisting mostly of arid wasteland. “I am not a collector of deserts,” fumed Mussolini. “If I go to war, the name of Abyssinia will be wiped off the map.”
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The dictator proceeded with war plans, angered not only by a personal hatred for the dapper and educated Eden but also by Britain’s hypocrisy in suppressing the imperial designs of others while holding a global empire of its own. Predictably, Eden’s effort failed, and Italy invaded. But this setback did not prevent Britain from trying the “land for peace” tactic in 1938 with Hitler.
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Il Duce had another reason to distrust London. When Nazi insurgents assassinated Austrian chancellor and Mussolini’s friend Engelbert Dollfuss, Germany maneuvered to enter Vienna to “restore order.” Only Italian troops mobilized to stop the coup, despite Mussolini’s request to Britain and others for help.

10
. THE MUNICH CONFERENCE (1938)

After this meeting, the word
Munich
became synonymous with foolish concessions. Especially infamous was Neville Chamberlain’s premature declaration of “peace in our time” after conceding western Czechoslovakia to Hitler. Less well known, the Munich Conference prevented an early outbreak of a European war.

Since 1937 Hitler intended to invade Czechoslovakia. Partially carved from Austria after the First World War, one of the most productive and prosperous states in Central Europe, and containing nearly a million German-speaking people, the country would either be a brick wall or a stepping-stone to the expansion of the Third Reich. In May 1938, using pugnacious if unoriginal language, der Führer announced to senior officers of the Wehrmacht, “It is my unshakable will that Czechoslovakia shall be wiped off the map.” He set the target date as October 1, 1938.
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By September, unguarded communications, overt troop movements, and a string of unrealistic demands illustrated Hitler’s intentions. At one point he gave all Czechs in the Sudetenland forty-eight hours to evacuate the region. In a frightening replay of World War I, German, French, Russian, and Czech armies started to mobilize. On September 25, France and Britain threatened Hitler to negotiate or fight.

But as with Abyssinia, Britain asked the Czechs to trade land for peace. Some suggested it would be to Prague’s advantage. Although it would lose the natural and man-made defensive perimeter of its mountainous western border, plus the mineral resources and industry in the area, the multinational Czech land would become more “homogenous” after shedding ethnic enclaves to Germany, Poland, and Hungary.

On September 28, Hitler agreed to a meeting in Munich, where, the following day, the prime ministers of Britain, France, and Italy permitted Germany to seize areas where Germans were in the majority. Czech president Edvard Benes allowed the seizure, fearing annihilation of his country if he resisted. A week later he resigned, wondering for the rest of his life if he had made the correct choice.
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Six months after Munich, Hitler ordered German troops into Prague, declared a Bohemian-Moravia Protectorate (the western two-thirds of the country), and once again claimed it was the final territorial adjustment he would ever make.

CAUSES OF THE WAR

A war is not unlike a bomb. It is of human construct and requires a multitude of conditions and proceedings for detonation. World War II was in effect several bombs assembled over time in Europe and Asia. Each of them contained a host of volatile components that were ancient and new, great and small, intangible and physical.

By the 1930s, these elements of instability grew, intensified, and began to overlap, creating a global environment of hostility in which diffusion of any particular conflict became less and less possible. Franklin D. Roosevelt summarized the situation best when he lamented to Henry Stimson, “These are not normal times; people are jumpy and very ready to jump after strange gods.”
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