HIST1302---Chapter 10
Chapter 10---Versailles to Pearl Harbor
"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." -- Leo Tolstoy
London Bombing 1940
After the 1919 Versailles Treaty ended World War I, there was an understandable push to prevent
a major war from ever happening again. In hindsight, though, this Long Armistice was just a
break from fighting before World War II, which in the United States’ case started with Japan’s
bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in 1941. The conflict started earlier in Asia (1937) and Europe
(1939). How did the armistice come unraveled? For one, the dedication to peace among most of
the countries allowed aggressive ones like Japan and Germany to get away with more than they
otherwise would have. That appeasement is a typical starting point in many accounts of the inter-
war crisis. More fundamentally, the non-aggressor nations weren't able to provide an effective
international framework of their own between the wars. England served as economic leader prior
to World War I, and the U.S. after World War II, but no one country stepped up between the wars.
Once the world economy started to crumble in the late 1920s, nations reverted
to protectionism instead of re-affirming open trade agreements. That economic turn inward
matched their diplomatic isolationism. Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations was never very
strong. The U.S. didn’t join or support global trade after 1930, and the League didn’t grant itself
authority to intervene militarily or economically. American opponents of the League weren't
mere reactionaries; they made a solid isolationist case that membership over-committed the U.S.
to intervening all over the world in conflicts that didn't really concern Americans. That being
said, the American boycott weakened the League and prevented it from being able to counter
Japan or Germany. As we’ll see, a multitude of factors were to blame for World War II, and they
unfolded in two distinct regions. Japanese and German militarization created two simultaneous
threats in Asia and Europe. While the two theaters overlapped and influenced each other, we’ll
divide our discussion of the run-up to WWII geographically.
Japan
In Asia, the U.S. and England were leery of Japan’s rapid industrial and military buildup. The
Japanese took advantage of Europe’s pre-occupation to expand their holdings in the Pacific
during WWI, especially at the expense of Germany. At the Washington Naval Conference after
the war, Japan agreed to freeze the proportion of their battleships in relation to England and the
U.S. at a 3-5-5 ratio. However, nobody anticipated the advent of aircraft carriers (aka flat-tops),
which weren’t included in the agreement. Restrictions on traditional capital ships only motivated
the U.S. and Japan to put more money and research into carriers. Likewise, the Versailles
Treaty’s restrictions on traditional armaments only motivated Germany to research rocketry. The
U.S. also started a special Air Corps within the Army that would branch off into the Air Force
after World War II, and trained pilots in the Navy/Marines. While planes didn’t have a huge
impact on the outcome of WWI, they evolved to the point that everyone could see future wars
would be won or lost in the air. After WWI, the U.S. also scrapped over half its aging naval fleet
and shrunk its standing army down to 136k.
Regardless of how many carriers or planes they built, Japan was slamming shut the Open
Door Policy that had kept China’s spoils evenly divided amongst Japan and the West since the
late 19th century. Just as the U.S. claimed all of the Western Hemisphere as its sphere of
influence starting in the 1820s, Japan now countered the American Monroe
1
, HIST1302---Chapter 10
Doctrine and Roosevelt Corollary with what it euphemistically called theGreater East Asia Co-
Prosperity Sphere. Translation: Japan was taking over Asia. They were following the same
logic Alfred T. Mahan had laid out for the U.S. in the 1890s, in terms of acquiring overseas
territories (markets) and building a strong navy to fuel domestic industry. Mahan based his
theories on England’s rise to maritime and naval prominence and their model, not America’s, fit
Japan best. Like England, Japan was a small island country and had even fewer natural
resources, but they hoped to dominate the western Pacific economically with a superior navy.
They fed themselves the usual gibberish about God liking them better than everyone else. What
else could explain their racial superiority over other Asians? In Japan’s case, Emperor
Hirohito (left) lent credence to their version of Manifest Destiny, but its Parliament (National
Diet) and generals, led by Hideki Tōjō (prime minister starting in 1941), pursued military
expansion most aggressively. Religious chauvinism and racism were mainly just an ideological
frosting on the cake, with the main goal being economic growth.
Unlike Europeans, Japan wasn’t haunted by memories of the Great War. In fact, they’d
profited from WWI, and their last major war was a happy memory: victory over Russia in the
northwest Pacific in 1905. They acquired the Korean Peninsula then and Formosa (Taiwan) in
1895. In 1931, Japan took a larger area northwest of Korea known as Manchuria in northeastern
China, a mineral and coal-rich area with good soil for soy and barley. Roundly condemned by
foreign statesmen for this act of naked aggression, the Japanese walked out on the League of
Nations, but the League didn't act to stop them. Smaller skirmishes with China ensued from
1932-37, and while the U.S. sold them oil, scrap metal and steel, Japan conquered most of China
in 1937 in the 2nd Sino-Japanese War, kicking off World War II in the Pacific with attacks on
Peking (Beijing) and Shanghai.
The Japanese raped, poisoned and brutalized Chinese civilians on a massive scale, just as
they later did throughout Asia. At Nanjing, they slaughtered so many in six weeks that they faced
logistical challenges dealing with the corpses, and eventually had to force Chinese survivors to
bury the body parts themselves or to walk into their own graves to be buried alive (right). Fifteen
million Chinese died in the eight-year war against Japan, but they never capitulated. The U.S.
feigned some disapproval over the 1937 Japanese invasion, but weren’t put off enough to
discontinue feeding the war machine. America was in a depression and needed the money. Over
the course of the next few years, Japan slowly encroached further and further across Asia, taking
over French-held Indochina (Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia) in 1940. At that point, the U.S. got
concerned for its own oil interests in Indonesia and cut Japan off from oil, scrap metal and steel,
demanding that they retreat out of Indochina. We’ll revisit Asia after examining Europe between
the wars.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.
-- Martin Niemöller, German Protestant Pastor
2
, HIST1302---Chapter 10
Germany
History is full of mistakes that leaders and nations would correct if only they could rewind the
clock. The punitivetreatment of Germany at the end of WWI is an obvious example -- one we’ll
see the U.S. learned from and corrected after WWII. Of course, we don’t know for sure that
Germany wouldn’t have caused problems for the rest of Europe even if they’d been dealt more
generous terms at the Versailles Peace Conference, but martyrdomand vengeance fueled the
Nazis' rise in the 1930s.
While Germany's invasion of Belgium in 1914 was rightfully condemned as worsening an
already volatile situation, it was unfair that Germany was singled out and blamed for the Great
War. Austria, for one, could've dealt with the Archduke's assassination without punishing the
entire Serbian population for the actions of the Black Hand terrorist group, and England could've
stayed out of the war altogether. As we saw in the Great War chapter, American diplomats
inserted the so-called War Guilt Clause regarding Germany, despite President Woodrow Wilson's
initial promise of lenient terms. Others have argued that the clause mentioned no such thing, and
Germans played up the guilt factor to illicit international sympathy. The text reads: "The Allied
and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her
allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and
their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the
aggression of Germany and her allies."
It was all the losers, technically, not just Germany that got the blame. Either way, it was
unrealistic and unfair to expect Germany to pay the victors’ debts. Adding insult to injury, the
Allies embargoed Germany for another year-and-a-half, ostracizing them just when Western
Allies should’ve been propping up the struggling democracy that ruled the country in the 1920s.
The Weimar Republic (or Deutsches Reich), named for the city in Germany where it was
headquartered, practiced a form of government that England and the U.S. should’ve been
supporting since they had a stake in displacing other options. Instead, the Weimar Republic
struggled to get out from under the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty, and sank into a
depression that exacerbated the worldwide slowdown of the 1930s. French and Belgian troops
occupied the Ruhr Valley, Germany's industrial heartland, demanding payments in coal and steel
to pay off Germany's debt. The U.S. restructured Germany's debt under the 1924 Dawes Plan,
that staggered their payments and extended the reparation deadline, also calling for the
withdrawal of Allied troops. That temporarily resolved Germany's economic crisis and led to a
brief rebound. But, ultimately, the reparations just cycled back to the Allies and Germany's
economy was increasingly tied to the Western countries as they experienced their own downturns
starting in 1929. The Dawes Plan gave way to the Young Plan that reduced the amount owed to
122 billion Gold Marks (around $8 billion 1929 dollars), with final installment due in 1988.
The Weimar Republic had political problems as well. Its constitution muddled the
relationship between the chancellors, presidents and Reichstag (parliament). It allowed the
leaders to rule without parliament's consent in an emergency, but didn't clearly define emergency.
By the early 1930s the chancellors, culminating in Chancellor Hitler, were overriding
the Reichstag. Germany had a multi-party democracy, with each party winning sits in
theReichstag proportional to their percentage of votes. No one party was able to establish clear
rule, and the far left and far right challenged the existence of the Republic. The public yearned
for order amidst chaos and runaway inflation.
Nazi Ascent
3
Chapter 10---Versailles to Pearl Harbor
"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." -- Leo Tolstoy
London Bombing 1940
After the 1919 Versailles Treaty ended World War I, there was an understandable push to prevent
a major war from ever happening again. In hindsight, though, this Long Armistice was just a
break from fighting before World War II, which in the United States’ case started with Japan’s
bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in 1941. The conflict started earlier in Asia (1937) and Europe
(1939). How did the armistice come unraveled? For one, the dedication to peace among most of
the countries allowed aggressive ones like Japan and Germany to get away with more than they
otherwise would have. That appeasement is a typical starting point in many accounts of the inter-
war crisis. More fundamentally, the non-aggressor nations weren't able to provide an effective
international framework of their own between the wars. England served as economic leader prior
to World War I, and the U.S. after World War II, but no one country stepped up between the wars.
Once the world economy started to crumble in the late 1920s, nations reverted
to protectionism instead of re-affirming open trade agreements. That economic turn inward
matched their diplomatic isolationism. Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations was never very
strong. The U.S. didn’t join or support global trade after 1930, and the League didn’t grant itself
authority to intervene militarily or economically. American opponents of the League weren't
mere reactionaries; they made a solid isolationist case that membership over-committed the U.S.
to intervening all over the world in conflicts that didn't really concern Americans. That being
said, the American boycott weakened the League and prevented it from being able to counter
Japan or Germany. As we’ll see, a multitude of factors were to blame for World War II, and they
unfolded in two distinct regions. Japanese and German militarization created two simultaneous
threats in Asia and Europe. While the two theaters overlapped and influenced each other, we’ll
divide our discussion of the run-up to WWII geographically.
Japan
In Asia, the U.S. and England were leery of Japan’s rapid industrial and military buildup. The
Japanese took advantage of Europe’s pre-occupation to expand their holdings in the Pacific
during WWI, especially at the expense of Germany. At the Washington Naval Conference after
the war, Japan agreed to freeze the proportion of their battleships in relation to England and the
U.S. at a 3-5-5 ratio. However, nobody anticipated the advent of aircraft carriers (aka flat-tops),
which weren’t included in the agreement. Restrictions on traditional capital ships only motivated
the U.S. and Japan to put more money and research into carriers. Likewise, the Versailles
Treaty’s restrictions on traditional armaments only motivated Germany to research rocketry. The
U.S. also started a special Air Corps within the Army that would branch off into the Air Force
after World War II, and trained pilots in the Navy/Marines. While planes didn’t have a huge
impact on the outcome of WWI, they evolved to the point that everyone could see future wars
would be won or lost in the air. After WWI, the U.S. also scrapped over half its aging naval fleet
and shrunk its standing army down to 136k.
Regardless of how many carriers or planes they built, Japan was slamming shut the Open
Door Policy that had kept China’s spoils evenly divided amongst Japan and the West since the
late 19th century. Just as the U.S. claimed all of the Western Hemisphere as its sphere of
influence starting in the 1820s, Japan now countered the American Monroe
1
, HIST1302---Chapter 10
Doctrine and Roosevelt Corollary with what it euphemistically called theGreater East Asia Co-
Prosperity Sphere. Translation: Japan was taking over Asia. They were following the same
logic Alfred T. Mahan had laid out for the U.S. in the 1890s, in terms of acquiring overseas
territories (markets) and building a strong navy to fuel domestic industry. Mahan based his
theories on England’s rise to maritime and naval prominence and their model, not America’s, fit
Japan best. Like England, Japan was a small island country and had even fewer natural
resources, but they hoped to dominate the western Pacific economically with a superior navy.
They fed themselves the usual gibberish about God liking them better than everyone else. What
else could explain their racial superiority over other Asians? In Japan’s case, Emperor
Hirohito (left) lent credence to their version of Manifest Destiny, but its Parliament (National
Diet) and generals, led by Hideki Tōjō (prime minister starting in 1941), pursued military
expansion most aggressively. Religious chauvinism and racism were mainly just an ideological
frosting on the cake, with the main goal being economic growth.
Unlike Europeans, Japan wasn’t haunted by memories of the Great War. In fact, they’d
profited from WWI, and their last major war was a happy memory: victory over Russia in the
northwest Pacific in 1905. They acquired the Korean Peninsula then and Formosa (Taiwan) in
1895. In 1931, Japan took a larger area northwest of Korea known as Manchuria in northeastern
China, a mineral and coal-rich area with good soil for soy and barley. Roundly condemned by
foreign statesmen for this act of naked aggression, the Japanese walked out on the League of
Nations, but the League didn't act to stop them. Smaller skirmishes with China ensued from
1932-37, and while the U.S. sold them oil, scrap metal and steel, Japan conquered most of China
in 1937 in the 2nd Sino-Japanese War, kicking off World War II in the Pacific with attacks on
Peking (Beijing) and Shanghai.
The Japanese raped, poisoned and brutalized Chinese civilians on a massive scale, just as
they later did throughout Asia. At Nanjing, they slaughtered so many in six weeks that they faced
logistical challenges dealing with the corpses, and eventually had to force Chinese survivors to
bury the body parts themselves or to walk into their own graves to be buried alive (right). Fifteen
million Chinese died in the eight-year war against Japan, but they never capitulated. The U.S.
feigned some disapproval over the 1937 Japanese invasion, but weren’t put off enough to
discontinue feeding the war machine. America was in a depression and needed the money. Over
the course of the next few years, Japan slowly encroached further and further across Asia, taking
over French-held Indochina (Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia) in 1940. At that point, the U.S. got
concerned for its own oil interests in Indonesia and cut Japan off from oil, scrap metal and steel,
demanding that they retreat out of Indochina. We’ll revisit Asia after examining Europe between
the wars.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.
-- Martin Niemöller, German Protestant Pastor
2
, HIST1302---Chapter 10
Germany
History is full of mistakes that leaders and nations would correct if only they could rewind the
clock. The punitivetreatment of Germany at the end of WWI is an obvious example -- one we’ll
see the U.S. learned from and corrected after WWII. Of course, we don’t know for sure that
Germany wouldn’t have caused problems for the rest of Europe even if they’d been dealt more
generous terms at the Versailles Peace Conference, but martyrdomand vengeance fueled the
Nazis' rise in the 1930s.
While Germany's invasion of Belgium in 1914 was rightfully condemned as worsening an
already volatile situation, it was unfair that Germany was singled out and blamed for the Great
War. Austria, for one, could've dealt with the Archduke's assassination without punishing the
entire Serbian population for the actions of the Black Hand terrorist group, and England could've
stayed out of the war altogether. As we saw in the Great War chapter, American diplomats
inserted the so-called War Guilt Clause regarding Germany, despite President Woodrow Wilson's
initial promise of lenient terms. Others have argued that the clause mentioned no such thing, and
Germans played up the guilt factor to illicit international sympathy. The text reads: "The Allied
and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her
allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and
their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the
aggression of Germany and her allies."
It was all the losers, technically, not just Germany that got the blame. Either way, it was
unrealistic and unfair to expect Germany to pay the victors’ debts. Adding insult to injury, the
Allies embargoed Germany for another year-and-a-half, ostracizing them just when Western
Allies should’ve been propping up the struggling democracy that ruled the country in the 1920s.
The Weimar Republic (or Deutsches Reich), named for the city in Germany where it was
headquartered, practiced a form of government that England and the U.S. should’ve been
supporting since they had a stake in displacing other options. Instead, the Weimar Republic
struggled to get out from under the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty, and sank into a
depression that exacerbated the worldwide slowdown of the 1930s. French and Belgian troops
occupied the Ruhr Valley, Germany's industrial heartland, demanding payments in coal and steel
to pay off Germany's debt. The U.S. restructured Germany's debt under the 1924 Dawes Plan,
that staggered their payments and extended the reparation deadline, also calling for the
withdrawal of Allied troops. That temporarily resolved Germany's economic crisis and led to a
brief rebound. But, ultimately, the reparations just cycled back to the Allies and Germany's
economy was increasingly tied to the Western countries as they experienced their own downturns
starting in 1929. The Dawes Plan gave way to the Young Plan that reduced the amount owed to
122 billion Gold Marks (around $8 billion 1929 dollars), with final installment due in 1988.
The Weimar Republic had political problems as well. Its constitution muddled the
relationship between the chancellors, presidents and Reichstag (parliament). It allowed the
leaders to rule without parliament's consent in an emergency, but didn't clearly define emergency.
By the early 1930s the chancellors, culminating in Chancellor Hitler, were overriding
the Reichstag. Germany had a multi-party democracy, with each party winning sits in
theReichstag proportional to their percentage of votes. No one party was able to establish clear
rule, and the far left and far right challenged the existence of the Republic. The public yearned
for order amidst chaos and runaway inflation.
Nazi Ascent
3
