Quick questions on Collapse of collective security and the path to WWII 1931-1939 (VCE Modern History Unit 3)

Collective security under the League of Nations Covenant (in force 10 January 1920) committed member states to treat an attack on any one as a threat to all and to respond with economic sanctions or, if necessary, military force. The Treaty of Locarno (16 October 1925) extended the principle by guaranteeing the German-French and German-Belgian borders.

The Japanese Kwantung Army staged the Mukden Incident on 18 September 1931, blaming Chinese forces for a bombing of the South Manchuria Railway and seizing Manchurian cities in response. By February 1932, Japan had established the puppet state of Manchukuo under the last Qing emperor Puyi.

Italy invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia) on 3 October 1935. Mussolini sought colonial prestige and revenge for the Italian defeat at Adwa in 1896. The League declared Italy the aggressor on 7 October 1935 and imposed limited sanctions on 18 November 1935: arms embargoes, financial restrictions, and bans on certain exports. Oil and coal, the goods Italy most needed, were excluded.

The Treaty of Versailles (1919) and the Treaty of Locarno (1925) had demilitarised the Rhineland. On 7 March 1936, German troops crossed the bridges into the demilitarised zone. The force was small (around 22,000 troops with limited equipment) and would have retreated if challenged.

The Nationalist generals' rising against the Spanish Republican government began on 17 July 1936. The Non-Intervention Committee (August 1936), endorsed by Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the USSR, was meant to seal off the war from the great powers.

The 1934 Austrian Nazi attempt to seize Vienna (with the murder of Chancellor Dollfuss on 25 July 1934) had failed when Mussolini moved Italian troops to the Brenner Pass. By 1938, Mussolini was aligned with Berlin (the Rome-Berlin Axis, October 1936; the Anti-Comintern Pact, November 1937) and the Italian veto was gone.

Hitler turned to Czechoslovakia, demanding self-determination for the three million ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland. The crisis built through summer 1938 with Sudeten Nazi protests and German troop movements.

The British government issued the Polish Guarantee on 31 March 1939, pledging to defend Polish independence. The guarantee was strategic: Poland was the next likely target and the line had to be drawn somewhere. Italy invaded Albania on 7 April 1939 and Britain extended guarantees to Greece and Romania.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939, was a non-aggression treaty between Nazi Germany and the USSR. A secret protocol divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence: Germany would take western Poland; the USSR would take eastern Poland, the Baltic states, and Bessarabia.

Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 without a declaration of war, using the staged Gleiwitz Incident (a fake Polish attack on a German radio station, 31 August 1939) as pretext. Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939. The USSR invaded eastern Poland on 17 September 1939. Polish resistance ended by 6 October 1939.

A.J.P. Taylor (The Origins of the Second World War, 1961) argues Hitler was an opportunist who exploited Allied weakness rather than a master planner working to a 1939 timetable. The book was controversial because it shifted blame from Hitler towards Allied passivity.

Chamberlain knew the British military was unready (the Inskip Report 1937 had warned of weakness) and that public opinion was set against another European war. Appeasement was a calculated policy, not an illusion.

The Neutrality Acts (1935, 1936, 1937) restricted American intervention. Roosevelt's October 1937 "Quarantine Speech" was retracted under political pressure. American absence from collective security was a permanent fixture of the 1930s.

Munich was a milestone, but WWII began on 1 September 1939 (Britain and France declared war on 3 September). Pin the date carefully.