WW2Europe

well today we get to start talking about world war ii world war ii was a cataclysmic event it killed tens of millions of people it was total war it involved entire societies the average civilians life was actually not that strongly affected by World War one you could be sitting there in Paris or London and as long as you weren't at the front you didn't know anybody was at the front which was unlikely but your life really would not be affected very much at all in World War two that was not true entire populations got heavily involved within the United States which some wasn't attacked in any way after Pearl Harbor nevertheless everybody really felt their life impacted significantly by the war it was much stronger in European countries civilians became targets for the first time in warfare the war ended in fact with two uses of the atomic bomb against civilian populations now even if you were not directly bombed your life would be affected in pretty dramatic ways Wilfred sellers who we read right at the beginning of course was in graduate school at Oxford when the war broke out he ended up working for the naval office throughout the war and never finished his ph.d he got hired in anyway such as it was in the late 40s you could get hired without finishing your degree but part of the reason for that was that so many people and their lives interrupted faces were no longer doing what they had been doing they'd been part of the war message and so it was a dramatic transition by the end to go back to civilian life people had to pick up their lives more or less where they had left off but the disruption of the average person's life was immense now we've talked about the set up throughout the 1930s that load to saw this decade up through the fall of 1938 the Munich Agreement what Churchill referred to as an unmitigated defeat 1939 saw events accelerate in march around mid month the Germans occupied Prague Hungary also invaded Czechoslovakia and took parts of the regions that it wanted Slovakia declared its independence from what was now the Czech Republic this was something that had a tremendous impact on Western opinion up to this point you could argue that what Hitler was doing was either reversing the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and so taking back to the Tsar taking back our reign remilitarization island doing things of this sort basically setting things right and reclaiming what Germany had had before World War one or you could say as for example the uniting Germany in Austria well really this was just following out President Wilson's vision of uniting ethnic groups linguistic groups within national boundaries so if there really was no significant ethnic difference between Austria and Germany well maybe it's not a big deal to have Germany annex Austria and so on so all of that could really be defended as trying to either set things back to the way they had been before the Treaty of Versailles or could be described as following out President Wilson's vision of self-determination however this couldn't be when is Prague ever been part of children the answer is never who lives in Prague checks right not Germans what language do they speak they speak Czech they don't speak German ok so there was no plausible claim to this this hadn't been part of Germany in the past it was not something that could be described as uniting the German people under one flag no this was outright aggression so all the things that Western leaders like Chamberlain and Boy George and a variety of others have been telling themselves throughout well don't worry Hitler is just realizing the terms of the treaty run trust and you know we know that hold boy of course they were unfair yes you can just ignore them okay that was the idea up to this point and suddenly Chamberlain realized wait this is naked aggression this can't be justified by anything that we thought might be flying behind these German actions so Chamberlain recognized a deep betrayal remember Hitler's words this is the last territorial claim I will make in Europe well within a few months yeah utterly betrayed that said no I want the rest of Chuck machia - not just the Sudetenland so Chamberlain came before Parliament and gave this speech today I share the disappointment that indignation that those hopes have been so warmly shattered how can these events this week to be reconciled with those assurances which I dread it is this vast attack upon a small state what is it to be followed by another is this in fact a step in the direction of an attempt to dominate the world by force now notice it's a rather large step from the city glad the last territorial plane uniting Germans under Germany - ah trying to take over the world but he realized at least for the first time wait a minute Hitler is actually taking seriously those things he's been saying maybe that wasn't just for home consumption maybe he's serious that he actually wants to dominate the world by force it didn't take long one week later Germany invaded Lithuania then by the end of the month Chamberlain said I now have to inform the house that in the event of any action which clearly certain Polish independence oh it's the Polish government accordingly considered afraid to resist for their national forces his majesty's government would feel the night founded once telling the Polish government all supporting that power they have given the Polish government an assurance to disinfect now notice what do you say he is saying listen I'm drawing a line in the sand don't attack port if you attack Poland Britain will enter the war to defend Paul now why is he draw the line there after all keep in mind at the end of World War 1 that hold ends in corridor a lot of eastern farmland a huge chunk of Germany was taken and made part of home so actually if Hitler had gone into Poland first what would Chamberlain have done probably would have said well he's just reclaiming the things that were taken away by the Treaty of Versailles right and so in fact that's all Hitler ends up doing when he does invade Poland however because he went to Prague first Chamberlain's well to put smugly the scales fell from his eyes and he saw what Hitler was ultimately up to and so basically said no more of this I've been thinking you're trying to reclaim what was rightfully Germany's now I realize that's not the plan at all so I'm drawing a line I sense that the next place you're going to attack his Poland that had been these regions of it had been part of Germany but I'm telling you you can't have it don't do it no he put the full faith of the British government behind us it took a while in April Mussolini invaded Albania he sensed that look if you're not going to defend Czechoslovakia you're surely not going to defend Albania and he was looking for something that the Italian army could actually conquer death so he picked up a baby yet at this point the USSR offered a mutual assistance pact with Britain and France okay saying listen would you like to be an ally of ours after all may be right about this Hitler guy well Hitler announced his head for the non-aggression pact at home he renounces it so this is always a bad time to remember I said it's a bad sign if Hitler says he's not interested in you that means you're in deep trouble but if he's already said I won't attack you I won't attack you and then he says you know what I take that back but now you're really in deep trouble okay you know things are heading toward a very bad place anyway here is actually an amazing story between April 16th and May 4th it looks like just simple bullet points here but in fact something quite dramatic was going on Stalin was offering to help Churchill well at the assertion Chamberlain and the French government against Hitler Stalin was offering an alliance with Britain and with Franks no what did the British and French adieu after all he would have been putting Hitler in a very difficult position right Chamberlain has already announced if you attack Poland Britain will come to Poland's defense and fight against Germany Russia was basically saying look we'll go back to that Alliance we have in the First World War the Alliance that forced Germany to fight on two fronts a Western Front and an Eastern Front so what do you say how about if we be allies against Hitler if you were Prime Minister of Britain what would you have said yes right what do you have to lose this is an ally and you see this heading in the direction that seems to be heading you'd say of course what if you were the president of France what would you up say yes again what do you have to lose however what did they say actually they said nothing the diplomatic cables sat there in the bureaucracy no one responded no one answered so for three weeks the Russians had this offer up we offer you an alliance against Hitler we'll have a mutual defense pact if he attacks you or if you get involved in this polish more will join you they do nothing in the French bureaucracy oh do we do right they do nothing nobody does anything nobody makes any decision in Britain nobody does anything nobody responds nobody makes any decisions the British and the French never discussed this what a nice interpretation is that it somehow falls into the depths of the bureaucracy and nobody really knows what's going on but in any case nobody responds well lip it off was the Russian Foreign Minister who would put this initiative together when in three weeks the British have not responded the French have not responded lifting off gets fired Stalin says your food you offer an alliance these people show contempt for us they don't even respond fine your mother go to gulag these are places with politics now Molotov what do you know about moat yeah the Molotov cocktail right oh no it's not a shaken not stirred thing it's you put gasoline in a bottle with a rag on top you light it and then you throw it okay that's named after Malta gives you some idea of his character so he replaces little office for in commissar the soviet offers withdraw basically Molotov says yeah yeah be a lot going to cooperate with those people so that opportunity for an alliance is lost well on May 22nd the pact of Steel between Hitler and Mussolini they agree that they will fight together so any attack on Germany will be construed as an attack on Italy and vice versa and then in August in secret the molotov-ribbentrop pact where Stalin and Hitler form a formal alliance and agreed to cover each other's backs so what happens is we've got an offer of an alliance name we have two Pratt's put out to Britain there's no response the Russians are peeves they say well then we'll go to this Hitler guy after all we've been learning a lot from him yeah we learned the night of the Long Knives heroic strength to play these psychological games with your opponents you just shoot him he's kind of a kindred spirit and so they get together and they make a pact and there it is we have photographs obviously the thought was secret at the time they were quite proud of it and so there you have Stalin laughing there you have mom subduing moving trough you have the top brass of Germany and Russia meeting and formalizing dis alliance well notice that happens August 22nd one week later basically Germany decides to invade home now they're covered they're thinking wait a bit remember Chamberlain said oh yes there's faraway people in Prague whom we know nothing right um well guess what's further than trucks from London home and so they think look the British aren't gonna do anything it's going to be another of those cases where we're you know they're cool they're in effect bluffing they're not gonna do anything about it so Germany invades Poland right away huh this was really despite you know in retrospect all the indications that pact for example was secret and so people were not thank you this the first cables from the front in Poland their polish officers saying we're going to attack we're under attack and headquarters responding by saying are you insane why aren't your messages in code answer is there's no time to fool with codes were being shot at and indeed within a very short time Poland was overrun now it didn't take long Chamberlain was a Madam's word even if Hitler wasn't and so the very next day France and Britain both declared war on Germany and promised to come to Poland's defense but now what can they do what country is in between France and Poland Germany right so there was really no easy way for them to do anything to defend Poland that indeed they didn't know within two weeks Soviet troops attacked Poland from the other direction this was really part of the pact the decision was made yes will form an alliance but also we will divide Pauling between us lots of rich farmland there we'll take the western part you guys take the eastern part they split Poland in half and so the Germans attacked first two weeks later the Russians attack and indeed by the end of the month they've split pull enough there's a Soviet German frontier and friendship treaty where they agree on the division it doesn't take long at that point for the Soviets to say well that worked out well so they made the Baltic statement they take over Estonia Latvia Lithuania they also well at least the part of Lithuania the Germans hadn't already seized they take finding now there's only one good thing to come out of any of this part of the war really that is that the poles manage to capture and smuggle out of the country an Enigma machine what is the Enigma machine well it's that it looks like a tank right but it's in fact a very complicated code machine the poles manage to get it out of the country and get it to England where Alan Turing and a variety of other top people studied it and were able to break the German code for the rest of the war the British were able to actually read German communications now this created all sorts of interesting moral dilemmas at one point for example Churchill was eight got a message that the Germans were about to bomb coming ah there was a lot of historical significance in Coventry there were a lot of people there in fact his own son lived in Coventry what do you do do you try to evacuate the city do you try to rescue or hide some of those things that are valuable in the city of three historical significance if you do it the Germans will know you've broken the code so there's a real dilemma there what would you do Church will let the bomb Coventry okay he did nothing to defend Coventry not even to get his own son out there and so he thought it was vital because he wanted to be able to continue reading the communications now of course you might think we'll wait if you read the communications but you're never able to act on them because then that will tell them you're reading their communications what good is it you know what's gonna happen but that might not help you well in some cases it might not help you in other cases it will in any case it turned out to be actually a crucial addition to the warrant the German code they were convinced it was unbreakable they weren't actually not worried about losing one of the machines cuz they said yeah no one then ever they get it out well actually the Germans huh German code was broken very quickly by Turing in the rest of the British team now Churchill at this point recounts the lost advantages of the Allies he basically says well Germany had been disarmed justly or unjustly by the Treaty of Versailles Germany then rearmed itself in violation of treaty but with the winking approval of British politicians like Baldwin and MacDonald air superiority and then air parity was cast away as the British a lot of the Germans to build an Air Force and then actually an Air Force even larger than Britain's the right land was forcibly occupied they sent troops into that region of Germany dear friends it was supposed to be demilitarized they allowed Germany to build the ziegfried line of Defense's along the French border that was also a violation of treaty no defensive fortifications were to be built by the Germans the Berlin Rome axis was established when in fact Mussolini was eager to become an ally of the French in the British Austria was annexed and they did nothing then Czechoslovakia its armies and its munitions factories were seized the British and French not only did nothing to prevent that but actually agreed to it at Munich and then potential US and Russia publish one just like Italy the Russians offered an alliance with Britain and France in this case they were concerned down over the Ethiopian war they were just ignored and so they ended up in alliance with Hitler as Mussolini did the same thing by the way was true of the United States though not a nearly as dramatic away the United States had been offering various forms of assistance listen you probably need money so you can get to a Polish group to help defend the title etc all of this was ignored as well so the u.s. wasn't offering troops and there was already in all violence but nevertheless various financial aid efforts or diplomatic efforts were really ignored so Churchill says history which we have told is mainly the recommend relaxed mmm-hmm history which we are told is mainly the record with the cries for knees miseries my lady Stalin ransom to find a pair up to this summit complete with us a five or six years policy of easygoing type Dorothea and its transformation almost overnight into a readiness to accept an obviously imminent war on followers conditions in all the greatest stick that was a terrible imitation attrition and does not be alerted today but anyway here's the moral he draws he says looks still if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival there may even be a worst case you may have to fight when there's no hope of victory because it's better to perish to live as slaves so he's pointing out that look good we had an opportunity from 1933 on really at any point and almost every year there was at least one opportunity to say no we will not allow Germany to do this and to have Hitler removed in fact they were within a few hours of accomplish in September of 1938 without doing a thing because the German generals were already primed to do it and instead they put themselves in a situation where they were now weaker than Germany in fact ad Germany to Russia and to Italy and they were significantly weaker they really did not any longer have military superiority in fact they were quite inferior moreover what were they going to do to defend Poland to defend Lithuania to defend any of these countries there was really nothing the British could do so it would have been easy to repel German troops from the Rhineland for example it would have been easy to move in and do something about the city land but in this case no it's not easy for them to do anything even if they want to now I think Churchill is raising a disturbing thought here and I've called it democracy's dilemma is this inevitable for democracies it's well known the democracies aren't reluctant to fight wars democracy's very rarely fight other democracies for example and so you could think well that's a good thing right democracies don't like war wars a bad thing this is a positive thing for democracy but he says well yes except for the following thing when there really is a tyrant when there really is someone bent on aggression it means that democracies put off the fight until the conditions are stacked heavily against them and so his worry is look at what happened during the 1930s foolishness unwisdom yes low dishonesty yes on the other hand what is it about democracy that actually puts in positions of power leaders who are going to do that we're going to appease who are going to decline the fight at times when it would be easy to fight until finally the odds are stacked against them and fighting as it is this something that is just to be chalked up to the foolishness of certain leaders like Neville Chamberlain Stanley Baldwin or for that matter David Lloyd George the people like George Lansbury who in the Labour Party even when they were out of power were exerting strong pressure against war and aggress against even keeping mouth Parliament is it just the foolishness of those people or is this something that is a tendency of democracies itself themselves what do you think is this a matter of those individual leaders being foolish or perhaps just too shaped by the experience of the first world war to respond any other way or is this really something that is inevitable democracies Church oh by the way doesn't give you an answer he simply raises the question and then basically moves on and says well now I'll go back to events then but I think it is a puzzling question is there a tendency on the part of democracies to postpone Wars until they become actually much worse much bloodier much more difficult okay some people are saying yes well okay if we think about the United States I mean we engaged in military action many times since the end of World War two but notice we tend to describe it as something else right it's a police section or it's part of an alliance right it's not just us in Korea it was really the United Nations in Iraq it was the Coalition of the Willing something like 40 countries that george w bush cobbled together as allies to take part in the war and so we've done things that did involve military action partly consciously because people were worried about democracy's dilemma and worried about a tendency to not resist aggression on the other hand have felt the need to do that haven't simply said in many occasions aha look something's happen we're going to intervene at a time unilaterally and directly in the way that Britain and France would have had to do with that time on the other hand the fact that there have been things like Korea Vietnam the Dominican Republic were else Beirut that force Iraq Afghanistan oh I'm forgetting Kosovo Grenada oh yeah Somalia and yeah I mean you're though they think well gosh it's not like we've been just sitting there saying yes we won't fight alright yeah well anyway never mind I can now try to do an imitation of Lyndon Baines Johnson ball I'll save that for my fellow Americans yeah we'll have to really think about this as we go on Churchill doesn't propose an answer and then a certain sense it's a very large historical question now partly because of the experience of the 1930s I think Western leaders since the Second World War of antenna tending to thank you know he's right that there is this tendency and so it's important that we not look the other way but it remains a big issue that divides for example the political parties that has divided coalitions of what would otherwise be natural allies across international boundaries they have different attitudes about this to what extent is there really this tendency as the United States gone too far and there are sort of counteracting it or have we maybe not gone far enough of we've tended to postpone fighting until it becomes difficult as in Vietnam rather than take care of things what it would have been easy in any case I think it remains a question for us today and it remains a question really throughout every decade of this course that was studied but his concern is to say look if the circumstances are substance awards if force may be used and if this be so it should be used under the conditions which are most favorable there is no merit in putting off a war for a year when it comes it's a far worse war or one much harder to win and indeed Churchill was somebody who throughout the 1930s had been saying we must not permit this remember I told you about gurbles briefing where he says look it's unbelievable if I had been the French Foreign Minister I would have said Hitler is the guy who wrote this in my concept this and that you know he's gone or we March and Churchill was the only person virtually in Britain who was saying that's what we've got to say Hitler has these designs he's got these plans we've got to do something and yet nobody did anything so the war came at a time when Britain and France were very weak and conditions were fair well by the end of September the Germans and the Russians had divided Poland between in October of the Nazis began the extermination of the sick and disabled up to this point Hitler had jailed and in many cases murder to his political opponents but his genocide Holdings his aim of getting ready rid of everyone who's not an ideal archetype of the Aryan race that had not yet commenced it began in 1939 and it started with the sick and with the disabled November 30th USSR attacked Finland then this whole area of the war this whole time is called the Twilight war by Churchill simply because Britain and France hadn't yet started you do much of anything they declared war but no actual action had started by the beginning of 1940 rationing began in the UK it was something that extended to the United States as soon as we entered the war a sugar flour butter meat gasoline all sorts of the basic necessities of life were rationed and indeed there are ration coupons we both had and so it wasn't enough to pay the money at the store for bread or for flour sugar or butter or whatever it was you had that the coupons to show that that was part of your fair share in March the Nazis bomb scapa flow the largest British naval base in Scotland April they invaded Norway in Denmark they took over yeah two days later Denmark surrendered Denmark wasn't very tough Oh Norway that took the much longer actually that was a much tougher spider may tenth the Nazis invaded the Netherlands Belgium Luxembourg and France and so they basically replicated what they had done in World War one pushing determine columns through not going through the defensive lines further to the south but instead going through the long countries through the Netherlands and Belgium into France no that was May 10th and so you can see what's going on here Russia has taken the the adjoining countries Estonia Latvia Lithuania Finland Poland has been divided Czechoslovakia is already basic anyway in addition to Austria and now we get an assault through the Low Countries here and into France the objective Paris launched on may 10th the berry day that Churchill became prime minister Grimm gave a famous speech in which he said I have nothing to offer but blood toil tears and sweat okay and it's also great he writes in the book I knew the government was now in my hands and that I could actually put into action what I wanted he said I slept well that night I didn't dream facts are better than dreams and indeed that becomes his theme he's the only one in who in his view has actually been paying attention to the facts so there's a dad's like photograph okay May 10th the attack starts five days later the Netherlands surrenders eighteen days after the initial attack Belgium surrenders and then June 4th the British Army is trapped at the coast near dunkirk the Germans have been driving toward Paris the British go on the northern side thinking that they're going to repel the attack in that way in fact the German call him sweep around and trap them right there on the shore of the English Channel Churchill puts out the call for anyone in Britain who has a boat to go and bring soldiers back from Dunkirk he manages to evacuate three hundred and thirty-eight thousand soldiers who are on the beach there at Dunkirk and bring them back to England safely now this is one of the key moments of the war Hitler had an Air Force that was larger than the British Air Force he had the British Army trapped on a small Peninsula he could have wiped them out why didn't he do it he could really have ended the war against Britain right there destroyed the British Army why didn't do hey bye yeah yeah I mean I suppose he might have been afraid that that would bring the Americans into the war though the Americans hadn't done anything yet and it would be sort of surprising in a way I mean Pearl Harbor happened because American territory was attacked Dunkirk wouldn't have had the same impact on the American psyche well it could be you would yes like how can they be that foolish there's got to be a trap who's then yeah it's a trap I mean it might be but actually it wasn't the trap huh who are the British all right let's go back English English is what kind of language what language family are we hardening the Germanic languages right who are the English people really the angles and the Saxons of course also some Celtic blood some Norman blood but basically Angles and Saxons ie Germans Hitler thinks of everything through the eyes of race and he looks at the British and he says those people are areas they are really Germans they don't know it okay but they are really turbans they're speaking of Germanic language they are ethnically term they deserve to be part of Greater Germany so do I want to smash them why do I want to destroy them no the British are my natural allies if I can only make them see reason and really he thought he was going to trap them in a position where they would have to allow now the Churchill was the leader he realized how that's an obstacle but all I have to do is convince them that was a mistake at Churchill we can come to some accommodation and we'll have an alliance between London and Berlin so he thinks here I'll show that I'm not a bad guy I will show them they should get rid of that idiot Churchill huh and go back to negotiations and no alliance I'll show them I will detect it at Dunkirk noblesse oblige I'll show them I can be a nice guy to you you be a nice guys it did not work but that was his idea well my June 10th Norway surrender the Germans entered Paris on June 14th so it took them about five weeks to defeat threads and take Paris and indeed just a week later France surrendered so there is the French army on the beach at Dunkirk waiting for the evacuation and by the way think about that thirty three hundred thirty-eight thousand people evacuated by some naval service but mostly by just small pleasure boats by people sailing boats by you know fishing boats and things like that it was an amazing achievement don't lie tenth the Battle of Britain begins the Germans begin to fall on British cities and bomb airfields initially factories in Britain trying to shut down British industry and the ground the Royal Air Force their thought is look to destroy all the planes through aerial dogfights and so on very difficult job however Hitler and his generals think and it's really a brilliant thought if we destroy the airfields they won't be able to land they won't be able to take off we can drown the Royal Air Force without destroying it just by bombing the airfields so for several weeks they do them after about two weeks Hitler decides it's not working the Royal Air Force is still flying he gives up on it actually Churchill writes we were within a few days of having to admit that the Royal Air Force have nowhere to take off no word land if they had kept up that strategy for one more week the British Air Force would have been grounded we would have been sitting ducks but Hitler gave up and we'll see that pattern throughout the war as brilliant as he is in calling everything correctly throughout the 1930s he starts making mistake after mistake in the actual conduct of the war and this is one of the first he doesn't give the strategy time to work he bombs British factories but gosh they're still producing airplanes ok I guess that's not working we'll bomb the airfields after two weeks they're still flying yes that's not working when in fact it was working extremely well and one more week Minh would probably have succeeded August 15 they start the daylight bombing of cities up to this point the bombing had been at night but this stage they begin daylight bombing on August 23rd for the first times bomb London the British in retaliation two days later bombed Berlin but they were not able to sustain the bombing campaign in the way that the Germans did here are scenes of London from Britain here you can see art wire put around Big Ben and the houses of parliament expecting an invasion here you see soldiers lined up to go off to war at the same time the families were sending their children out of the city how many of you have ever read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe it starts this way right the kids are being sent out from London why because London is being bombed and this was happening all over Britain people were getting their children out of the cities sending them off to the countryside to try to get them away from these targets of German that air attacks here is the aerial defense there were radar stations on the coast but mostly in the cities it was people like this on rooftops with binoculars so we're defending London this shows you how vulnerable Britain was at this point the Germans had taken Denmark they had taken Norway they had control first of the bases in Germany percent below countries and also at the coast of France so all of those little airplanes are bases from which the German air force the Luftwaffe could attack Britain and all of those lines are lines of attack so you can see the vulnerabilities were incredible here is London with smoke rising above it buildings on fire but double-decker bus bombed out here are firefighters trying to put out the fire and the area of London heavily get by the bombing here are people going to work - next morning after a nighttime bombing were made here are children sitting in front of their house which has been destroying them here are kids in an air-raid ditch as planes go overhead you can see the different reactions right there's some worried worried if you were the bloody almost smiling like oh this is cool in any case there you see the cathedral ringed in smoke no what were Germany in Japan thinking what was this strategy there were really two strategic ideas there was a northern strategy was directed primarily at Russia and there was a Southern Strategy that was directed at the Middle East the Far East in India now one of the puzzles of the war is that Germany proposed to pursue this the northern strategy by attacking Russia Japan decided to pursue the southern strategy and there's something very automatic look at this map of the world the northern spongey would have had both Germany and Japan attacking the Soviet Union from opposite sides now Japan had gotten into a dispute with Russia in 1905 and it had been a bloody war that Japan had not come off that well in there had been discouraged since Japan had tended to lose those they feared an attack on Russia though in this region of Siberia there really wasn't that much if they had overcome initial defenses they could have gone a long way on the other hand seizing what a lot of Siberia that nobody really wanted Germany did end up attacking in this direction and of course space problems will address soon the southern strategy was for Japan to come into Southeast Asia and seize important trade routes as well as important oil fields of other minerals the BRIT the Germans could have attacked to the Middle East most of which would have been friendly and simply allowed the Germans to pass through we're gonna fought in order to take British India the idea would have been to have this pincer movement to meet it up in India carve up the British Empire for themselves and then by the way have Russia surrounded them there are problems with both strategies but the fact that they chose different options Japan going to the south and Germany of going to the north meant that their alliance didn't actually benefit either one of them and one of the strangest aspects of this war is why didn't they talk this out and try to formulate a combined strategy they really never did now there were some reasons there were serious obstacles to both strategies but on the other hand they ended up pursuing things in a way that really made it almost two different wars now there are two approaches in history very very broadly speaking and in a way this is a case study for one of them the great man theory says well it's slightly sexist fashion by the title history is largely the record of decisions and actions of leaders okay of great men or in our day great men and women we're actually in a position to make decisions and affect large numbers of people's lives the historical determinist theory of history says no history is largely the play of social forces it doesn't really matter where the leaders are they're big forces that push the leaders in certain directions individual people have little or no free choice they're really just the agents of these larger forces the Marxists tend toward this analysis the 19th century opinion was pretty much the great man theory if there's anything that makes a case for the great man theory or something like it it's this sort of action what Hitler and Stalin ended up doing here or for that matter Mussolini or the Japanese leadership none of these things seemed inevitable was it inevitable that Japan take one strategy in Germany the other I don't think so what were the large social forces if anything these guys were leaders who were ignoring large scale sort of social forces and doing things on their own bill that affected the lives of millions of people and ended the lives of millions but without it being easy to say at all what these large forces really were it looked like they were playing chess with humanity as one historian said neither man represented irresistible or even potent historical forces we have the opposite of historical determinism the apotheosis of the single autocrat the single leader who is able single-handedly to affect large numbers of people's lives well in any case June 22nd 1941 the Germans start Operation Barbarossa they invade the USSR this came as a complete shock to Stalin in fact Stalin head at this point instituted yet another purge of his top officers why because he realized that he should have been fired the screws hold of not anticipating this and being tricked by the Germans and was afraid of a military coup now what was Hitler doing why did he attack Russia he had two goals and they turned out to be incompatible one goal was simple you wanted to get to Moscow take over the Russian note but a second goal was social engineering he sent a special unit of the SS called the Einsatzgruppen in order to go to Russia and wipe out undesirables he thought that the Russian people and in general Slavs were lesser types okay the Arion race the Germans the British they were the natural rulers the Slavs were natural serfs in fact even the name Slav okay means slave so thought was the Russians the poles etc don't really deserve to live so he goes into Russia partly to seize territory but partly to eliminate the swamp race now these goals turned out to be incompatible here I say the Russians he had Stalin that's maybe too broad but there was a huge amount of fear of Stalin really throughout all of Russian society and the areas of the USSR through which Hitler had to pass by low Russia the Ukraine those were the areas that had been starved in the 1930s 30 to 40 million people perhaps killed by Stalin so if Hitler had gone in and said I am your great liberator that stoners been doing all these horrible things to you fight him together with us he would have found wealth to people flocking to his song but instead of enticing people to join him he sent in the Einsatzgruppen they shot a million Russians in 1941 now half of them were Jews eliminated because they were doing the other half were simply Russians eliminated because they were slobs the Russians realized they faced a war of extermination and so began to fight to the death why there was really no alternative it became clear that Hitler's goal wasn't simply to conquer this territory deposed Stalin himself administer it No his goal was racial extermination yeah they did have a pact exactly right the bullets up Rubin trough have Hitler promised we will never attach you now yeah yeah yeah Hitler wasn't a very honorable guy so then Hitler forms a pact with you and says I promise a non-aggression treaty that doesn't mean a whole lot I've said you're in deep trouble if he says I have no interest in you you're in deeper trouble if he says you know that treaty I had I'm tearing it up but in this case he played his hand carefully he didn't do anything to tip the Russians off that he was interested in them or thrusted territory he didn't do anything that said I'm tearing up that trap tract he just violated that's why stolen was so deeply shocked Stalin with somebody who might kill all sorts of internal opponents but nevertheless when he signed a treaty he actually kind of met it I mean he really would have come to the aid of Britain and France if they had signed that treaty before Molotov took over and he really was prepared to help Hitler in fact he thought he had been doing that by his coming in and dividing Poland with him and so on and so forth and so stolen was absolutely stunned at Hitler's immorality now I want you to think about that for Joseph stone how do you stun him through your own immorality what do you have to do what gotta versity up the beat of shock Joseph Stalin but he was shot and so indeed Stalin recognizes pretty quickly not only the betrayals but that this is actually a race war meant to wipe out the Russians headed well not on the Russians the Ukrainians survival Russians everybody else really had Slavic blood and so his response to me is a scorched earth policy destroy everything don't need anything that could help them live it up well we're out of time so next time we will continue this but our main attention will go to the war in the Pacific and we'll look at the US entry into the war and the Japanese paper

Channel: Daniel Bonevac

Views: 15,965

Rating: 4.7846155 out of 5

Keywords: World War II (Event)

Id: oaDHPXsfRsE

Length: 45min 4sec (2704 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 06 2013