Lesson video

Hello and welcome back to your Oak Academy history lesson with me, Ms. Goult.

This is lesson three of a four lesson inquiry into why did the League of Nations fail? In other words, why did war break out in 1939? If you've not done the first two lessons, go back and do those first, and then join in on this one.

For this lesson, you will need a pen, so if you are ready, pause the video now and write the title, how did appeasement pave the way to war? This is Europe in 1941, the middle of World War II, everything in dark red was either German land or had been taken over by Germany, or was a country of the German nation.

How did this happen? In 1919, the League of Nations, as we know, had been created to promote the freedom of nations, democracy, and the rights of citizens.

In a few short years, this ideal had gone to be replaced by war and dictatorship across Europe, so how? Now most people would blame this man, Adolf Hitler, for his policies of German expansion, for his thirst for a German empire, for his desire for power, but that answer is too simple, the League of Nations had been designed to stop people like Hitler and the Nazis from being able to create war, so what went wrong? In other words, why did war break out in 1939? Why did the League of Nations fail? Last lesson, we looked at how Japan and Italy and their aggressive dictators were flexing their political muscles and not being stopped by the League, or indeed, France and Britain, the democracies who were supposedly the strongest powers in Europe, but who failed to take effective action and also followed the policy of appeasement we're going to look at this lesson.

This was further hindered by the structure of the League of Nations and the economic collapse of 1929, which meant that countries had very little in the way of money, resources, and energy to deal with the aggressive dictators, and caused the dictators to behave in a much more aggressive way, and the democracies to behave in a weaker way.

So how did the the League continue to fail in the 1930s? We're going to look at the events which paved the way to war, and this policy of appeasement, which was followed by Britain and France, but before we start that, a quick reminder of the aims of the League of Nations, and there will be a quiz on this afterwards.

So aims of the League, three main aims, stop war, disarmament, so reduce the armies and the amount of weapons in countries, and uphold and enforce the Treaty of Versailles.

Okay, I'm going to zoom in now on the Treaty of Versailles, so they had to enforce this treaty, so let's just have a look at some of the key terms. If you've looked at the inquiry, what kind of peace this made in 1919, you will know these already, it's always worth a bit of a refresh.

So Germany lost land, had to give up all of their colonies, Germany was only allowed 100,000 men in the army and no air force, Germany was not allowed to unite with Austria, and Germany was not allowed to make secret treaties.

There were lots of terms of the treaty of Versailles, but these are the ones that are relevant for today.

Hello again, so now we're going to see how well you've been listening.

Four statements will pop up on the screen, I'll read them one at a time, pause your video and then decide whether you think they are true or false.

You can also give a reason as well to try and explain why, just to show that you really understand what's going on here.

Statement number one, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was allowed to re-arm, so they were allowed to rebuild their army.

B, one of the aims of the League of Nations was to uphold and to enforce the Treaty of Versailles.

C, Germany was allowed to unite with Austria, and D, one of the aims of the League of Nations was to help nations to build up the strength of their armies.

Pause there and write down true or false for each, and if you want, you can give a reason as well.

Right, number one, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was allowed to re-arm.

That is false, Germany's army was reduced to 100,000 men, they were only allowed six battleships, and no air force.

B, one of the aims of the League of Nations was to uphold and enforce the Treaty of Versailles, that is true, that was one of the aims of the League of Nations.

C, Germany was allowed to unite with Austria.

No, false, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Anschluss, or the union with Austria was not allowed, and D, one of the aims of the League of Nations was to help nations to build the strength of their armies, true or false? It is false, one of the aims was disarmament.

So with all of this in mind, let's have a look at some of the events of the 1930s and how the League of Nations and Britain and France reacted, and then we can start to think about why the League of Nations failed in this.

So the first thing is rearmament, that means increasing the size of the armed forces, so army, battleships, air force.

In March 1935, Hitler announced that Germany had a military air force called the Luftwaffe, and that he was expanding the army to half a million men, this was a clear rejection of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, they were allowed 100,000 in the army and no air force.

So Britain, France, and Italy condemned it, they said it was a bad thing, they didn't like it, but they actually did nothing to stop it there, and eventually, Britain actually signed an agreement with Germany to say that they were allowed to build up their navy to 35% of the size of Britain's, so they were actively undermining the Treaty of Versailles and the agreements in it, because Britain initiated, Britain started this agreement.

So let's have a look then, in terms of the aims of the League of Nations, these are three main ones that we've gone through before, stop war, disarmament, and uphold the Treaty of Versailles.

For rearmament, which ones are not being met? You could point at them or you can note them down, just jot them down, which ones are not being met for rearmament? Pause your video now so that you can jot that down.

Okay, so the aims that are not being met are stop war.

Hitler is choosing to build up his army, that doesn't mean that he's not going to go to war, it means that he's likely to go to war.

Disarmament, so the reduction of armed forces, of course that's not being met, Hitler is building up his army and air force, and finally, uphold the Treaty of Versailles is not being met, we know that the terms of the Treaty of Versailles is that Hitler is allowed 100,000 men in the army and not allowed an air force, yet he's deliberately going against that, so that is the term of the Treaty of Versailles that he's gone against, Germany was only allowed 100,000 men in the army and no air force, nothing is done to stop this, the League of Nations allows this to happen, and Britain even signs an agreement to allow Germany to build up their fighting ships, so that's number one, rearmament.

Right, number two, Austria, Anschluss.

There's Austria, and it's german in land and culture, and generally, the Austrians liked Hitler, Hitler was actually Austrian, and he said he was going to solve their economic problems, he was a strong leader and he had solved lots of economic problems in Germany.

So in March 1938, Germany invaded Austria and was met with celebration, there was no bloodshed, so this is an example of Germany expanding and taking over Austria.

Nothing was done by the League of Nations or by the great powers, Germany swallowed up Austria into her territory, so the same thing again, we've got these three aims of the League of Nations, which aims are not being met here? So pause your video now, and just jot down, or you can point to them, just have a think about which aims are not being met.

Okay, so let's have a look.

So here, you could have put a cross next to stop war, because Hitler invaded Austria and nothing was done to stop him, there wasn't a war but there could have been, and it's not really relevant to disarmament, but it's very clear that the Treaty of Versailles has not been upheld.

It's not been upheld because which term has not been met? The term that's not been met was that Germany was not allowed to unite with Austria, yet this happened and nothing was done to stop it at all.

Okay, let's look at a final example, so our final example here is Czechoslovakia, so we can see it there, and as you can see, it thrusts deep into German territory and would be a threat if there was a problem, if Czechoslovakia wants to invade.

So if we look a bit closer here, so that's an arrow from the northern part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, just showing you a zoomed-in map, and this map shows us the percentage of German speakers in Czechoslovakia, and you can see in this northern part, 75% of people in the North speak German, so Czechoslovakia knew that their main defence against Germany was this area, right? But most of the people in that area speak German.

If Germany was given the Sudetenland, so if they had it, it would be really easy for them to invade the rest of Czechoslovakia, and also, those are the borders that had been drawn in the Treaty of Versailles.

Now it was known that if war broke out between Germany and Czechoslovakia, France and Britain would probably help Czechoslovakia, but Britain didn't want a war, so Chamberlain, the British prime minister and Daladier, the French prime minister, and Mussolini of Italy met with Hitler in Munich and agreed that he could have that northern part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, but that Britain, France, and Italy would protect the rest of Czechoslovakia.

They didn't ask the people who lived in Czechoslovakia, they just had to accept, and again, they were undermining the Treaty of Versailles, so these borders that had been drawn in the Treaty of Versailles were not being listened to.

So here's Chamberlain, he came back to Britain claiming that he secured peace in our time, but in March 1939, Hitler took over the rest of Czechoslovakia, including the parts that Britain, France, and Italy had agreed to protect, and they still did nothing, although it became very clear to Britain and France that the policy was not working, this policy of appeasement, it was too late by this time, they'd given Hitler lots of what he's wanted.

So let's have a look at the aims of the League of Nations, again just jot down, pause the video, which of these aims are not being met? So pause your video now, which of these aims are not being met? Right, so let's have a look.

Stop war is not being met, because Hitler is invading country after country, they're not stopping him from doing that and it is likely that war will break out because of this, and not upholding the Treaty of Versailles, the borders that were drawn as a result of the Treaty of Versailles are not being upheld.

I've left out disarmament because it's just not relevant for this example.

Which term of the Treaty of Versailles was not met? Germany lost land, the borders which had been drawn by the Treaty of Versailles were not being upheld, yet nothing was happening to Germany.

Although at this point, Britain and France realised that their policy was not working and something needed to change.

So why did the League of Nations fail? This isn't an easy question to answer.

So we've got our aggressive dictators, we saw the actions of Italy and Japan last lesson, and then looking at the actions of Hitler, they were watching each other and seeing that different people were getting away with different things and the League of Nations was not punishing them.

This goes alongside the weak democracies of Britain and France, who were not taking the action they needed to take to send a message that actually, the behaviour of the dictators was not acceptable.

The structure of the League of Nations made it difficult to make decisions, and the fact that the USA was not a member meant that it lacked in power, and on top of that, the economic collapse of 1929 added to the aggression of the actions of the dictators, and added to the weakness of the weak democracies.

The weak democracies were following this policy of appeasement, but would they have followed it if it hadn't been for the economic collapse of 1929? When we ask a question about why something happened, as historians, we have to recognise there are multiple factors which play together, so these aggressive dictators and weak democracies were underpinned by the difficulties caused by the structure of the League of Nations and the economic collapse of 1929.

So well done for making your way through this lesson, pause the video here, escape, and go forwards onto the slides on the next page, answer the comprehension questions, and we will go through the answers together.

So here are your five comprehension questions, we'll go through them one at a time.

Question number one, what was the policy followed by Britain and France in the 1930s? Now we all know that the correct answer is appeasement, but we can go into more detail than that.

Good answer would be Britain and France followed a policy of appeasement in the 1930s.

Right, so we've got the timeframe, we're now going to explain what it is.

This meant giving in to what Germany wanted to avoid war in the short-term.

We know, as historians, it caused war in the long-term.

For example, when Hitler took over Austria, even though it was against the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Britain and France did nothing as they did not want to go to war with Germany.

And that's particularly good because it's a specific example of that policy.

Question two, what did Hitler do to re-arm in the early 1930s? An acceptable answer would be that he increased the size of his army, a good answer is more specific.

So Hitler rearmed against the terms of the Treaty of Versailles by increasing the size of his army to half a million men.

He also built up the German air force, Luftwaffe, and that's really good showing off the German name of their air force, always good to do.

Right, number three, why was it easy for Hitler to invade Austria? Acceptable answer that is correct is the Austrians liked and supported Hitler.

A good answer would be lots of Austrians spoke German and felt that they were ethnically German.

They saw Hitler as a strong leader who had improved the situation in Germany following the economic crisis and they hoped that he would do the same for Austria.

That's just much more specific and it gives an explanation of why the Austrians liked Hitler, not just that they did like him.

Okay.

Question number four, this one's quite a difficult one, what did Britain, France, and Italy do that allowed Hitler to invade Czechoslovakia? So acceptable answer which is true, they let him have the Sudetenland in northern Czechoslovakia, but it's the explanation of that that's going to make it much better.

So at the 1938 Munich conference, Britain, France, and Italy agreed that Hitler could take over the northern part of Czechoslovakia, known as the Sudetenland, where lots of German speakers lived.

They said that they would protect the rest of Czechoslovakia and believed that Hitler would be satisfied.

However, by March 1939, Hitler had taken the whole of Czechoslovakia.

So it's that idea of adding those specifics, so talking about the specifics of the Munich conference, and also what happened as a result of them giving the Sudetenland to Hitler.

Okay, finally question number five, explain why the policy of appeasement contributed to the outbreak of war in 1939.

This is quite hard at this stage because we've not done the actual outbreak of war, but you can work out why it would have led to war breaking out.

One reason was, another reason was, you've got those sentence starters there, you've got appeasement, self-interest, economy, underestimate, rearmament, Anschluss, Czechoslovakia.

What we've not discussed in the lesson and we will go on to discuss next lesson is this idea that Hitler just thought he could keep taking, and actually eventually Britain and France had to do something to stop him, so that is something to consider while you are answering this question.

Well done for completing your third lesson of the inquiry into why the League of Nations failed, and indeed, why war broke out in 1939.

Next lesson we'll look at that crunch point, why war actually did break out when it did.

We'd love to see your work, so if you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak, and we will look forward to seeing it.

I also look forward to seeing you for our final lesson on why war broke out.

Have an excellent rest of your day.