The Path to European War, 1930-39 The Path to European War, 1930-39
Multiple Choice Questions
Exam Questions
Discussion Questions
Were the foreign policies of the Germany & Italy driven more by anger at the Versailles settlement or by the Great Depression?
Why was appeasement a reasonable policy for Britain and France?
How did American isolationism influence European diplomacy in the 1930s?
What were Russia’s interests in dealing with Nazi Germany, 1933-1939?
Why did Britain reach a deal with Germany at Munich in 1938?
How did estimation of military strength influence allied diplomacy, 1935-1939?
How did the experience of the First World War shape Anglo-French policies in the 1930s?
How did domestic politics in France influence French policies towards Germany in the 1930s?
To what extent were European statesmen driven by ideology in the 1930s?
How did Italian Fascist foreign policy differ from that of Nazi Germany?
Exam Questions
The Second World War was made inevitable by the Great Depression. Discuss.
Why were the western allies (Britain and France) unable to deter German expansion 1938-1939?
Was there a real chance of Russia working alongside Britain and France to halt Germany in the 1930s?
Weblinks
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/munich1.asp – text of the Munich Pact of October 1938
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1939pact.asp – text of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 1939
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1938PEACE.asp – text of Chamberlain “Peace in Our Time” speech 1938
http://www.emersonkent.com/speeches/international_morality.htm – text and audio of Haile Selassie speech at the League of Nations 1936
http://www.emersonkent.com/speeches/quarantine_the_aggressor.htm – text and audio of FDR’s Quarantine Speech in 1937
https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=4057 – text of US neutrality legislation in 1935
http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/The-War-Years-1931-1941-Clipreel-Part-4/1fba603c65821eb2941af00d7b9b6a3d?searchfilter=Compilations%2fUniversal+Newsreels%2fThe+War+Years+1931-1941+Clipreel%3a+Part+4%2f19621 – AP newsreel clips of Italian invasion of Ethiopia 1935
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/tri1.asp – text of 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact
http://spartacus-educational.com/2WWanschluss.htm – statements by Schuschnigg and others on the Austrian-German Anschluss in 1938
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/blbk07.asp – Hitler speech on German-Polish relations, 1938
Bibliography
Baranowski, Shelley, “Authoritarianism and Fascism in Interwar Europe: Approaches and Legacies”, Journal of Modern History 94:3 (2022) 648-672.
Blower, Brooke L., “From Isolationism to Neutrality: A New Framework for Understanding American Political Culture, 1919-1941,” Diplomatic History 38:2 (2014) 345-376.
Carley, Michael Jabara, “Fiasco: The Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance that Never Was and the Unpublished British White Paper, 1939-1940”, International History Review 41:4 (2019) 701-728.
Cooper, Chris, “‘We have to cut our coat according to our cloth’: Hailsham, Chamberlain, and the Struggle for Rearmament, 1933-4,” International History Review 36:4 (2014) 653-672.
Gilchrist, Jessi A. J., “‘Clouds of Mutual Suspicion:’ Neville Chamberlain and Appeasement in the Mediterranean”, International History Review 44:2 (2022) 300-317.
McKercher, B. J. C., “Anschluss: The Chamberlain Government and the First Test of Appeasement, February-March 1938,” International History Review 39:2 (2017) 274-294.
Peden, G. C., Churchill, Chamberlain and Appeasement, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Ramsay, Scott, “Ensuring Benevolent Neutrality: The British Government’s Appeasement of General Franco during the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939”, International History Review 41:3 (2019) 604-623.
Rothermund, Dietmar, “War-Depression-War: The Fatal Sequence in a Global Perspective,” Diplomatic History 38:4 (2014) 840-851.
Taliaferro, Jeffrey W., Ripsman, Norrin M., & Steven E. Lobell, eds., The Challenge of Grand Strategy: The Great Powers and the Broken Balance between the World Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013).