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The peace of 1919 carried the seeds of the next war: how resentment, appeasement, and ambition burned the world a second time.
The peace of 1919 carried the seeds of the next war: how resentment, appeasement, and ambition burned the world a second time.
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The story begins where the last war ended: a treaty that humiliated Germany without breaking her power. Fourteen years later, a veteran of the trenches rode that resentment into office.
also in Hinges of history, How the First World War unfolded, Making peace: the great settlements
The peace treaty assigns Germany responsibility for the war, imposes reparations, and redraws the map of Europe. Signed five years to the day after the assassination.
Rearmament followed, then one gamble after another, each unanswered.
President Hindenburg appoints Hitler Chancellor of Germany; within eighteen months the republic is a dictatorship.
Each unpunished breach taught the same lesson: the victors of 1918 would not fight.
German troops re-enter the demilitarized Rhineland in open breach of Versailles; Britain and France do nothing.
With the western powers appeased, Hitler needed only to secure his eastern flank.
also in Making peace: the great settlements
Britain and France cede the Sudetenland to Germany without consulting Czechoslovakia; Chamberlain promises "peace for our time".
Nine days later, the tanks rolled.
also in Russia, the USSR, and Ukraine, Secret bargains: the hidden treaties
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression pact with a secret protocol dividing eastern Europe between them.
After a winter of quiet, the storm turned west.
Germany invades Poland; Britain and France declare war two days later. The Second World War begins in Europe.
Britain stood alone, and the war moved to the air.
Germany conquers the Low Countries and France in six weeks; the British army escapes at Dunkirk without its equipment.
Balked in the west, Hitler turned on the ally he had bought in 1939.
also in Air forces, marines, and the palace guards
The RAF denies the Luftwaffe air superiority; the planned invasion of Britain is shelved.
Six months later, on the other side of the world, the war became truly global.
also in Russia, the USSR, and Ukraine
Germany invades the Soviet Union along a 2,900-kilometre front, the largest invasion in history.
The tide turned in the ruins of a city on the Volga.
Japan strikes the US Pacific Fleet; the United States enters the war, and Germany declares war on America four days later.
While the Red Army ground west, the Allies opened the second front.
also in Russia, the USSR, and Ukraine
The German Sixth Army is encircled and destroyed; the strategic initiative in the east passes to the Soviet Union for good.
Squeezed from east and west, the Reich collapsed in eleven months.
The largest seaborne invasion in history opens the western front; Paris is liberated within three months.
The war in the Pacific ended three months later, under a new kind of cloud.
Germany surrenders unconditionally a week after Hitler kills himself in the ruins of Berlin.
also in Air forces, marines, and the palace guards
Two atomic bombs destroy two cities; the nuclear age begins.
Japan signs the instrument of surrender aboard USS Missouri. The Second World War is over; some sixty million people are dead.
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