The major points in Greg 's work and tenet can be described as follows

The role of the British colonies as significantly changed. Instead of yielding profit they became detrimental to Britain 's treasury (yielding a loss of more than? 2 million per year and being `the most expensive jewels in the Royal Crown

Because of the fact that colonies live at Britain 's expense , the population of Britain is subject to heavy taxation

The British colonies are no longer fertile land storehouses and distant prisons

The colonies are breeding grounds for disputes and discord, which makes them susceptibilities in case of war

On the ground that population of the colonies is not homogenous, there is a hazard of discrimination of white people who have been ruling before

Whether independent or not colonies would always have recourse to Britain for assistance and defense

Independence of colonies will directly result in higher tariff on all import that would incur even greater losses than those Britain suffers at the moment

Benjamin Disraeli expounded his attitude toward the empire and segregation of the colonies in the course of his Crystal Palace speech (1872 , known under the title The Maintenance of Empire

The main points in his vision of Britain 's future are the following: Self-government should be conducted within the scope of policy of political consolidation

Institutions of representatives should be introduced in to delegate power

At last , the issue of the empire comes to such statement

It is whether you will be content to be a comfortable England , modeled and molded upon continental principles and meeting in due cours.

Gallipoli

Gallipoli was one of the Allies great disasters in World War One. Gallipoli was the plan thought up by Winston Churchill to end the war early by creating a new war front that the Central Powers could not cope with.

On November 25th 1914, Winston Churchill suggested his plan for a new war front in the Dardanelles to the British governments War Council. On January 15th 1915, the War Council gave its agreement and British troops in Egypt were put on alert. The Central Powers were fighting primarily on two fronts the Western and Eastern Fronts. Fighting against such he armies as the Russian and French armies put a great deal of strain on the German military. The input of the smaller Austrian army into the major battles had been small when compared to the German armys input. Churchills idea was simple. Creating another front would force the Germans to split their army still further as they would need to support the badly rated Turkish army. When the Germans went to assist the Turks, that would leave their lines weakened in the west or east and lead to greater mobility there as the Allies would have a weakened army to fight against.

The Turks had joined the Central Powers in November 1914 and they were seen by Churchill as being the weak underbelly of those who fought against the Allies.

Churchill had contacted Admiral Carden head of the British fleet anchored off of the Dardanelles for his thoughts on a naval assault on Turkish positions in the Dardanelles. Carden was cautious about this and replied to Churchill that a gradual attack might be more appropriate and had a greater chance of success. Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, pushed Carden to produce a plan which he, Churchill, could submit to the War Office. Senior commanders in the navy were concerned at the speed with which Churchill seemed to be pushing an attack on the Dardanelles. They believed that long term planning was necessary and that Churchills desire for a speedy plan, and therefore, execution was risky. However, such was Churchills enthusiasm, the War Council approved his plan and targeted February as the month the campaign should start.

There is confusion as to what was decided at this meeting of the War Council. Churchill believed that he had been given the goahead; Asquith believed that what was decided was merely provisional to prepare, but nothing more. A naval member of the Council, Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson, stated:

It was not my business. I was not in any way connected with the question, and it had never in any way officially been put before me." Churchills secretary considered that the members of the Navy who were present only agreed to a purely naval operation on the understanding that we could always draw back that there should be no question of what is known as forcing the Dardanelles.

With such apprehension and seeming confusion as to what the War Office did believe, Churchills plan was pushed through. It would appear that there was a belief that the Turks would be an easy target and that minimal force would be needed for success. Carden was given the go ahead to prepare an assault.

Ironically in 1911, Churchill had written: It should be remembered that it is no longer possible to force the Dardanelles, and nobody would expose a modern fleet to such peril.

However, he had been greatly impressed with the power and destructive ability of German artillery in the attack on Belgium forts in 1914. Churchill believed that the Turkish forts in the Dardanelles were even more exposed and open to British naval gunfire.

On February 19th 1915, Cardin opened up the attack on Turkish positions in the Dardanelles. British and ANZAC troops were put on standby in Egypt.

The battleship "Cornwallis" bombarding the Gallipoli peninsula

Cardens initial attacks went well. The outer forts at Sedd-el-Bahr and Kum Kale fell. However, more stern opposition was found in the Straits. Here, the Turks had heavily mined the water and mine sweeping trawlers had proved ineffective at clearing them. The ships under Cardens command were old (with the exception of the Queen Elizabeth) and the resistance of the Turks was greater than had been anticipated. The attack ground to a halt. Carden collapsed through ill health and was replaced by RearAdmiral Robeck.

By now, there was a military input into Britains plan. LieutenantGeneral Birdwood, who had been a former military secretary to Lord Kitchener, commanded the ANZACs based in Egypt. He reported that a military support for the navy was imperative and General Sir Ian Hamilton was appointed commander of the newly created Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. It contained 70,000 men from Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand along with troops from France. Hamilton left for the Dardanelles on February 13th along with a hastily gathered staff. He had little information on Turkish strength and he arrived on March 18th knowing little

about the military situation there. It is probable that he had the same opinion as many as to the ability of the Turks in battle and this was to prove very costly to the force under his command.

Also on March 18th, the Allies suffered a chronically embarrassing naval disaster. Three British battleships were sunk, three were crippled (but not sunk). At a stroke, the British had lost 2/3rds of their battleships in the Dardanelles. Robeck had little idea of what to do next. The mine clearing trawlers were ineffective, the Turks held the higher ground which was of great strategic importance and the idea of using destroyers to clear the minefields would have taken time to organise. The army suggested that it should take over.

On March 22nd, Hamilton and Robeck decided that the naval fleet would sail to Alexandria to give it time to reorganise itself while Hamilton prepared his force for a land battle. According to Winston Churchill, this decision was taken without the knowledge of the government: No formal decision to make a land attack was even noted in the records of the Cabinet or the War Council. This silent plunge into this vast military venture must be regarded as extraordinary. (Churchill)

While this was going on, the War Council did not meet and was not to meet for another two months!

The armys input into the Gallipoli campaign was a disaster. It would appear that the senior commanders on the ground believed that their opposition simply was not up to the standards of the British and ANZAC troops.

The Secretary to the War Council, Sir Maurice Hankey, called the whole affair a gamble based on the belief that the Turks would be an inferior force. Even the General Officer commanding Egypt, Sir John Maxwell, wrote Who is co-coordinating and directing this great combine? Maxwells comment was apt. Hamilton commanded the army on the ground; Robeck the navy while Maxwell was GOC Egypt where the troops were based. No one was given overall charge.

Hamilton decided on a landing at Gallipoli. The landing place was barely a secret as security at Hamiltons headquarters was regarded as weak at best. Hamiltons plan was that:

The 29th Division would land on five small beaches at the southern end of the peninsula

The ANZACs would land further north just by a jutting promontory called Gaba Tepe.

The French would launch a feint a landing at Besika Bay. The French were to make a proper landing at Kum Kale to protect the 29th Division

It is generally assumed that one major failing of the Allied forces in the Dardanelles was that they underestimated the ability of the Turks. In fact, the Turkish Army was weak in the region and it was poorly led. On March 24th, the command of the Turks was passed to General Liman von Sanders. He had to defend a coastline of 150 miles with just 84,000 men. However, its fighting capacity was just 62,000 men. The troops that were there were poorly equipped and supplies were poor. Sanders could not call on one plane to assist him. However, he placed his men away from the beaches much to the consternation of the Turkish officers there. They argued that there were so few beaches that the Allies could land on, that Turkish troops were better being placed on the beaches or immediately above them.

The landings started on April 25th. The British landed unopposed on three beaches at Cape Helles. Another landing was resisted but the Turks were defeated. But the landing at Sedd-el-Bahr was a disaster. The British were caught in the fire of well dug-in Turkish

machine gunners. Many British troops could not get ashore and were killed at sea.

The ANZACs landed at Anzac Cove. Here they were faced with steep cliffs which they had to climb to get off the beach. To make matter worse, Anzac Cove was a tiny beach and quickly became very congested. The Turks pushed back the initial ANZAC move inland. The fighting was bloody and costly. The Turks in this area were led by the unknown Colonel Mustapha Kemel. LieutenantGeneral Birdwood asked Hamilton for permission to withdraw his troops. Hamilton refused.

Some months later Birdwood wrote: He (Hamilton) should have taken much more personal charge and insisted on things being done and really take command, which he has never yet done.

By May in Helles, the British had lost 20,000 men out of 70,000. Six thousand had been killed. The medical facilities were completely overwhelmed by the casualties. Trench warfare occurred along with the fear of dysentery and the impact of the heat. One British soldier wrote that Helles:

looked like a midden and smelt like an open cemetery.

The next phase of the battle started in August. Hamilton ordered an attack on Sulva Bay that was not heavily defended. The landing took place on August 6th and involved the landing of 63,000 Allied troops. This time the secrecy behind the operation was so complete that senior officers were unaware of what others were doing. These 63,000 men were meant to take the area around Sulva Bay and then link up with the ANZACs at Anzac Cove. The plan very nearly worked but the ANZACs could not break out of Anzac Cove. The British at Sulva were pushed back by a frantic attack led by Mustapha Kemal and by August 10th, the Turks had retaken Sulva Bay.

However, the opponents of the campaign in London had become louder and more numerous. Hamilton was recalled and he was replaced by Sir Charles Monro. He recommended evacuation and the task was given to Birdwood. The evacuation of Sulva Bay and Anzac Cove was a brilliant success. It was accomplished on December 19th to December 20th. Not one casualty occurred.

The evacuation of Helles occurred on January 8th to January 9th, again with no loss of life. Thus the campaign ended with two successes.

However, the overall campaign was a disaster of the first order. Over 200,000 Allied casualties occurred with many deaths coming from disease. The number of Turkish deaths is not clear but it is generally accepted that they were over 200,000.

Before the Gallipoli campaign even got started, Lloyd George had prophetically written: Expeditions which are decided upon and organised with insufficient care generally end disastrously.

After the end of the campaign, opinions were divided. Sir Edward Grey and Lord Slim (who fought at Gallipoli) were scathing in their criticism. Slim called those who had been in command at the campaign the worst in the British Army since the Crimean War. Despite the losses, Churchill remained a defender of what had gone on as was Hamilton. Causes of World War One

The causes of World War One are complicated and unlike the causes of World War Two, where the guilty party was plain to all, there is no such clarity. Germany has been blamed because she invaded Belgium in August 1914 when Britain had promised to protect Belgium. However, the street celebrations that accompanied the British and French declaration of war gives

historians the impression that the move was popular and politicians tend to go with the popular mood.

Was much done to avoid the start of the war?

By 1914, Europe had divided into two camps.

The Triple Alliance was Germany, Italy and Austria-Hungary.

The Triple Entente was Britain, France and Russia.

The alliance between Germany and Austria was natural. Both spoke the same language - German - and had a similar culture. In previous centuries, they had both been part of the same empire the Holy Roman Empire.

Austria was in political trouble in the south-east of Europe - the Balkans. She needed the might of Germany to back her up if trouble got worse. Italy had joined these countries as she feared their power on her northern border. Germany was mainland Europe's most powerful country - so from Italy's point of view, being an ally of Germany was an obvious move. Each member of

the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria and Italy) promised to help the others if they were attacked by another country.

The Triple Entente was less structured than the Triple Alliance. "Entente" means understanding and the members of the Entente (Britain, France and Russia) did not have to promise to help the other two if they got attacked by other countries but the understanding was that each member would support the others but it was not fixed.

France was suspicious of Germany. She had a huge army but a poor navy. Britain had the world's most powerful navy and a small army. France and Britain joining together in an understanding was natural.

Britain was also concerned about Germany because she was building up a new and powerful navy. The inclusion of Russia seemed odd when Russia was so far from France and Britain. However, Russia's royal family, the Romanovs, was related to the British Royal Family. Russia also had a huge army and with France on the west of Europe and Russia on the east, the 'message' sent to Germany was that she was confronted by two huge armies on either side of her borders. Therefore, it was not a good move by Germany to provoke trouble in Europe - that was the hoped for message sent out by the Triple Entente.

Certain specific problems also helped to create suspicion throughout Europe. The first was Germany's fear of the huge British Empire.

By 1900, Britain owned a quarter of the world. Countries such as Canada, India, South Africa, Egypt, Australia and New Zealand were owned by Britain as part of the British Empire. Queen Victoria had been crowned Empress of India. Huge amounts of money were made from these colonies and Britain had a powerful military presence in all parts of the world. The Empire was seen as the status symbol of a country that was the most powerful in the world. Hence Britain's title "Great Britain".

Germany clearly believed that a sign of a great power was possession of overseas colonies. The 'best' had already been taken by Britain but Germany resolved to gain as much colonial territory as possible.

Her main target was Africa. She colonised territory in southern Africa (now Namibia) which no-one really wanted as it was useless desert but it did create much anger in London as Germany's new territories were near South Africa with its huge diamond and gold reserves. In reality, Germany's African colonies were of little economic importance but it gave her the opportunity to

demonstrate to the German people that she had Great Power status even if this did make relations with Britain more fragile than was perhaps necessary for the economic returns Germany got from her colonies.

A second issue that caused much friction between Britain and Germany was Germany's desire to increase the size of her navy. Britain accepted that Germany, as a large land-based country, needed a large army. But Germany had a very small coastline and Britain could not accept that Germany needed a large navy.

Postcard from 1912 of the Spithead review of Britain's Navy

Britain concluded that Germany's desire to increase the size of her navy was to threaten Britain's naval might in the North Sea. The British government concluded that as an island we needed a large navy and they could not accept any challenges from Germany. As a result, a naval race took place. Both countries spent vast sums of money building new warships and the cost soared when Britain launched a new type of battleship - the Dreadnought. Germany immediately responded by building her equivalent. Such a move did little to improve relations between Britain and Germany. All it did was to increase tension between the two nations.

HMS Dreadnought 17,900 tons; 526 feet in length; ten 12 inch guns, eighteen 4 inch guns, five torpedo tubes; maximum belt armor 11 inches; top speed 21.6 knots. With Europe so divided, it only needed one incident to spark off a potential disaster. This incident occurred at Sarajevo in July 1914. The Bosnian Crisi The Bosnian Crisis of 1908-09 was very much the precursor of the events in the Balkans that spilled over into the assassination of Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo in June 1914. In this sense the Bosnian Crisis needs to be analyzed within the same context as the assassination that was to trigger World War One. The Bosnian Crisis was a very complicated issue that involved nine nations. In 1878, Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia-Herzegovina with the agreement of the rest of Europe (Treaty of Berlin). Bosnia-Herzegovina were the two most northwesterly provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Austria-Hungary signed an agreement that the Sultans sovereignty over the area would be upheld but few expected Austria-Hungary to adhere to this. In fact, AustriaHungary quickly made plans to annex the provinces. However, annexation had not been agreed at the Berlin meeting of Europes powers and the whole question remained dormant until after 1900.

If Austria-Hungary wanted to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina, she would have needed the full agreement of other European powers, especially Russia. In 1906, Austria-Hungary was generally experiencing problems among the people in the Balkans that it ruled over. The Austro-Hungarian Empire principally contained Croats, Slovenes, Serbians, Albanians and Macedonians and the whole issue of independence for these peoples reared its head.

Russia had lost a great amount of international prestige when she was defeated by Japan in the 1905 war in the Far East. The destruction of the Russian Navy at Tsuhima Bay was seen as a humiliating defeat. Russia, therefore, needed to restore her standing in Europe and in Foreign Minister Alexander Izvolsky they had a man who was determined to do just this. The AustroHungarian Foreign Minister, Baron Lexa von Aehrenthal, also wanted to show that his nation was more than a mere satellite of Germany. He was willing to negotiate with Russia on their issues and the two men met in September 1908. Austria-Hungary wanted Russian support for the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina while Russia wanted Austrian support for the ending of the 1841 convention that banned men-of-wars from using the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, effectively trapping the Russian Navy in the Black Sea. If Russia had broken this convention with no support it would have provoked Britain who had a major naval presence in the Mediterranean; however, with support from Austria-Hungary,

this would have been less of an issue for the Russians, though still provocative to Europes major naval power.

When both men met they put forward each nations aspirations. What actually happened at the meeting is open to dispute, as the Russians never released their official minutes of the meeting. The Austrians did and claim that an agreement was reached that each would support the other. Later the Russians did not dispute this but Izvolsky did claim that Austria gave no hint that the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina would be imminent and he interpreted what was said as meaning that annexation would take place but that it would be sometime in the future. Bosnia-Herzegovina was annexed on October 6th 1908. This occurred before Izvolsky had sounded out Britain and France with regards to Russias desire to fully use the Bosphorus/Bosphorus. Izvolsky believed that Aehrenthal had tricked him Russia had declared her support for the annexation but got nothing in return. Ironically, Britain had been willing to discuss the naval use of the Straits in 1907, including Russian capital ships using it. However, in 1908, Sir Edward Grey decided that the annexation had made the whole region too volatile (Bulgaria had also announced her independence from Turk rule in October 1908) for any further changes.

To spite Austria-Hungary, Izvolsky then suggested that Serbia should receive territorial compensation from Austria-Hungary to balance up the land annexed from Bosnia-Herzegovina. This Austria refused to even consider. Germany, though irked by the annexation, supported Austria-Hungary and Russia had to climb down. By the end of 1908, Russia had achieved nothing no concessions for the use of the Straits and a powerful neighbour expanding her territory. It had also bonded Germany and AustriaHungary even more and to all intents Russia appeared alarmingly isolated. The only thing Izvolsky achieved was to push Russia and Serbia together. Serbia had been against the annexation, as she wanted Bosnia-Herzegovina for herself. In late 1908, there was even talk of Serbia declaring war on Austria-Hungary and the press in Belgrade stirred up a great deal of public anger not that it had to try too hard. While Serbia received no support from West European states, Nicholas II of Russia met with the Serbian Foreign Minister, Milovanovich, and while the tsar did not offer Serbia his full support in terms of military aid, he made it clear that he supported what the Serbs hoped to achieve but advised a patient approach. Secretly and this only became known in 1918 Austria-Hungary and Germanys chiefs-of-staff were in contact with regards to the declining situation in the Balkans. In January 1909, Conrad von Htzendorf wrote to Helmuth von Moltke, the German chief-ofstaff, that The possibility must be reckoned with that in the event of an Austro-Hungarian war in the Balkans (that is, against Serbia)

Russia will enter upon warlike action in favor of the opponents of the monarchy. Htzendorf asked Moltke what military support Germany would offer to Austria-Hungary in the event of a war in the Balkans. Moltke replied and stated very clearly that what he wrote was fully supported by Wilhelm II that At the moment Russia mobilises, Germany will also mobilise and mobilise its entire army. When Aehrenthal knew about the contents of this letter he safely assumed that he did not have to make any concessions to Izvolsky or Serbia. The matter was further complicated when Turkey demanded to be compensated for the loss of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Their demand was supported by Britain. After much haggling, the Austrians agreed to pay the Turks a sum of about 2 million, which the Turks accepted and recognized the annexation. However, a matter that had initially involved Austria-Hungary and Russia had now dragged in Germany, Serbia (though Serbia was always going to be involved), Turkey and Britain.

In January 1909, the Serbian Foreign Minister Milovanovich made such an inflammatory speech against the Austrians in the Serbian Parliament that he was forced to write an apology to Aehrenthal. It was symptomatic of how the situation was degenerating.

In an attempt to pacify what was emerging in the Balkans, Sir Edward Grey asked Aehrenthal bluntly via telegram what Austrias intentions were with regards to Serbia. He had first gained approval from Paris and Moscow about the contents of this telegram. Grey also asked Germany to support his quest to pacify the region but with no luck. Germany put the emphasis on Serbia to appear to be more peaceful rather than condemn AustriaHungary. Grey decided to ask Izvolsky to put pressure on Serbia to be more willing to come to an agreement with Vienna. To complement this, he asked Aehrenthal to offer Serbia aid to stimulate Serbias economic growth. Grey also got France to support his move and Paris made it clear to Izvolsky that he had to inform Belgrade that Serbia had to start being more conciliatory and less provocative. On February 27th 1909, Izvolsky telegraphed Belgrade that they had to be more open to conciliation and that Russia did not support their desire for territorial compensation and that Serbia must not insist on this. Given the circumstances of what had emerged in the previous twelve months, it would appear strange that Serbia agreed to this. However, a newly appointed coalition government appeared to hint at the desire for a fresh start. In a letter sent to Belgrade, the Serbian government stated that it had neither desire for war nor any intention of starting one and that Serbias relation with Austria-Hungary remained normal. Izvolsky was very influential in drafting this letter, which finished with a stated desire for the great powers of Europe to restore order in the Balkans.

The letter was not well received in Vienna. What irked Aehrenthal was the comment made by Serbia that she was content for the great powers of Europe to resolve the Balkan issue. Aehrenthal believed that only Austria-Hungary had a right to be involved in a dispute between neighbours and that the great powers had no right to be involved. Vienna informed Berlin that she was prepared to invade Serbia if the government in Belgrade failed to make an unequivocal declaration towards peaceful intentions. Germany rejected the letter because it failed to mention anything about Serbian disarmament. Aehrenthal, probably buoyed by Germanys stance, declared the letter unacceptable because it was addressed to Europes great powers and not directly to Austria-Hungary. A date was set March 16th 1909 for Serbia to have addressed all of the concerns expressed by Vienna. On March 14th, the Serbian government sent a note to Austrias representative in Belgrade. The note was primarily concerned with commerce between Serbia and Austria-Hungary. It was quickly rejected.

However, on the previous day a conference took place in Russia that effectively meant that Serbia would be isolated if war occurred. On March 13th Russian army and naval senior officers met at Tsarskyoe Selo. They all agreed, along with the Minister of War, that Russia could not go to war and that military support for Serbia was out of the question. This decision was reaffirmed on

March 20th. There were those in Berlin was believed that this decision was a clear indication that Russias military might was not as great as some thought. To what extent the decision at Tsarskyoe Selo made politicians in Berlin more hawkish is difficult to know, but historians have assumed that this was the case. It may well have had the same impact on Aehrenthal. Grey did what he could to rein in the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister but with little success. Aehrenthal planned to announce his desire that the ruler of Serbia should be the King of Croatia (Emperor Franz Josef) who should take over from the dynasty that ruled Serbia in March 1909 the Karageorges. Grey cautioned Aehrenthal that Serbia would not accept this and that what he was doing was bound to lead to friction. However, Aehrenthal had gauged the situation correctly. He believed that there was no desire for war among the Triple Entente (Russia, France and the United Kingdom). Russia had clearly expressed her position while Britains naval might would have had little impact in the area. Frances large army would have had little direct impact on Austria and would have had to attack via Germany to get to the region. This was not going to happen in 1909. On March 29th 1909, Germany reaffirmed its support for Austria and condemned Serbia for its warlike attitude. Two days later, Serbia accepted Austrias demand that she recognise Austrias annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Serbia also announced that she would be a good neighbour to AustriaHungary.

In Vienna and Berlin there was a universal belief that Aehrenthal had been successful. There was also a shared belief that both Britain and Russia had shown a very clear desire to avoid war, almost at all costs. It was also assumed that France would be unwilling to go to war over Serbia without the support of the other two members of the Triple Entente. What had the Bosnian Crisis solved? Arguably nothing. AustriaHungary had developed an inflated opinion as to her relative strength in Europe. Hawks in Berlin had witnessed what they deemed to be the weakness of Russia. In Russia itself, many believed that Izvolsky had humiliated the country and resolved that it would never happen again. Serbia was also in a position whereby she wanted revenge. Timeline of World War One

1914 June 28th Francis Ferdinand assassinated at Sarajevo July 5th Kaiser William II promised German support for Austria against Serbia July 28th

Austria declared war on Serbia August 1st Germany declared war on Russia August 3rd Germany declared war on France and invaded Belgium. Germany had to implement the Schlieffen Plan. August 4th Britain declared war on Germany August 23rd The BEF started its retreat from Mons. Germany invaded France. August 26th Russian army defeated at Tannenburg and Masurian Lakes. September 6th Battle of the Marne started October 18th First Battle of Ypres October 29th Turkey entered the war on Germanys side. Trench warfare started to dominate the Western Front. 1915

January 19th The first Zeppelin raid on Britain took place February 19th Britain bombarded Turkish forts in the Dardanelles May 7th A German U-boat sank the Lusitania May 23rd Italy declared war on Germany and Austria August 5th The Germans captured Warsaw from the Russians September 25th December 19th The Allies started the evacuation of Gallipoli 4 January 27th Conscription introduced in Britain February 21st Start of the Battle of Verdun April 29th British forces surrendered to Turkish forces at Kut in Mesopotamia Start of the Battle of

May 31st Battle of Jutland June 4th Start of the Brusilov Offensive

July 1st

Start of the Battle of the Somme August 10th End of the Brusilov Offensive

September 15th

First use en masse of tanks at the Somme

December 7th

Lloyd George becomes British Prime Minister

1917

February 1st

Germanys unrestricted submarine warfare campaign started

April 6th

USA declared war on Germany

April 16th

France launched an unsuccessful offensive on the Western Front

July 31st

Start of the Third Battle at Ypres

October 24th

Battle of Caporetto the Italian Army was heavily defeated

November 6th

Britain launched a major offensive on the Western Front

November 20th

British tanks won a victory at Cambrai

December 5th

Armistice between Germany and Russia signed

December 9th

Britain captured Jerusalem from the Turks

1918

March 3rd

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed between Russia and Germany.

March 21st

Germany broke through on the Somme

March 29th

Marshall Foch was appointed Allied Commander on the Western Front April 9th Germany started an offensive in Flanders July 15th Second Battle of the Marne started. The start of the collapse of the German army August 8th

The advance of the Allies was successful September 19th Turkish forces collapsed at Megiddo October 4th Germany asked the Allies for an armistice October 29th Germanys navy mutinied October 30th Turkey made peace November 3rd Austria made peace November 9th Kaiser William II abdicated November 11th Germany signed an armistice with the Allies the official date of the end of World War One. Post-war 1919 January 4th Peace conference met at Paris June 21st

The surrendered German naval fleet at Scapa Flow was scuttled. June 28th The Treaty of Versailles was signed by the Germans. 1914 and World War One 1914 witnessed the start of World War One after the build up of international tension throughout Europe that had occurred during 1914. June 28th: Franz Ferdinand assassinated at Sarajevo.

July 5th: Wilhelm II of Germany promised Austria-Hungary support if they took action against Serbia. July 25th: Austria-Hungary severed diplomatic ties with Serbia. July 26th: Austria-Hungary ordered a partial mobilisation against Serbia. Britain suggested a conference to settle the Serbian Question. July 27th: Germany refused the idea of a conference while Russia accepted it. July 28th: Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. July 29th: Germany refused to confirm adherence to Belgiums neutrality. Russia asked Germany to put pressure on Austria-

Hungary to show restraint while ordering a partial mobilisation herself. July 30th: Germany warned Russia to stop her partial mobilisation. Austro-Hungarian War Production Law introduced. July 31st: Russia ordered a full general mobilisation. August 1st: Germany declared war of Russia. Great Britain and France order a general mobilisation. August 2nd: Germany attacked Luxemburg and demanded a right of transit through Belgium. August 3rd: Germany declared war on France and having implemented the Schlieffen Plan, invaded Belgium.

August 4th: Great Britain declared war on Germany. Germany declared war on Belgium. German troops attacked Liege. August 6th: Serbia declared war on Germany. Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia. Liege surrendered to the Germans. The British light cruiser HMS Amphion was sunk by a mine in the Thames estuary. August 7th: First British troops landed in France. August 8th: Defence of the Realm Act introduced in Great Britain. France captured Mulhouse in Alsace. Department of War Raw Materials was established in Germany. August 11th: Germany recaptured Mulhouse and drove the French out of Alsace.

August 12th: Great Britain and France declared war on AustriaHungary. August 17th: The Russian 1st and 2nd armies advanced on East Prussia. August 19th: Serbian forces defeated the Austrians at Jadar River. August 20th: Brussels surrendered. Zeppelins flew over London and nearby ports. August 21st: Germany attacked Namur. Serbian troops forced Austrian troops out of Serbia.

August 22nd: A French offensive in the Ardennes was defeated. Hindenburg and Luderndorff arrived Marienburg to take command of the Germany army on the Eastern Front. August 23rd: The British Expeditionary Force started its retreat from Mons. Germany invaded France. The Austrian 1st Army engaged the Russian 4t Army at Krasnik. August 25th: The city of Lille was abandoned by the French. The Russian 4th Army was forced to retreat from Krasnik. August 26th: Start of the Battle of Tannenburg. The Russian 5th Army was defeated at Komarov

August 28th: First German attack on Verdun took place but was unsuccessful. The Battle of Heligoland Bight fought. The German Navy lost the cruisers Mainz, Kln and Ariadne all three were sunk by the Royal Navy.

August 29th: First checks to the German advance were made at St. Quentin and Guise. The Russian commander at Tannenburg, Samsonov, committed suicide. The Russian 3rd and 8th armies defeated the Austrians near Lemberg. August 30th: Paris bombed by aircraft of the German Air Service.

August 31st: Battle of Tannenburg ended 125,000 Russian troops were taken prisoner. September 2nd: The French government secretly moved to Bordeaux. September 3rd: Lemberg was occupied by the Russians. French aerial reconnaissance spotted gaps in the German advance towards the Marne and informed ground force commanders accordingly September 5th: Start of the Battle of Ourcq between the French 6th Army and the German 1st. September 6th: First Battle of the Marne started.

September 7th: German troops advanced on the Masurian Lakes. September 8th: Austria-Hungary invaded Serbia for the second time. State of War regulations introduced across the whole of France. September 9th: The advance of the French 5th Army and the BEF resulted in the Germans retreating. September 12th: The Germans re-crossed the River Aisne and set up well-defended positions September 14th: Moltke was dismissed his command and replaced by Falkenhayn. This date marks the first time a radio was used in an aeroplane to direct artillery fire. September 15th: The first use of aerial photography by the Royal Flying Corps to assist ground forces.

September 22nd: Start of the Battle of Picardy. U-9 sunk three British cruisers off the Dutch coast. The Royal Flying Corps bombed Zeppelin sheds at Cologne and Dsseldorf. September 26th: Indian troops arrived at Marsailles. September 27th: Start of the Battle of Artois. September 28th: German artillery started to attack forts around Antwerp.

October 1st: The French stopped a German breakthrough just to the east of Arras. October 3rd: Belgium started to withdraw her forces from Antwerp.October 4th: German forces reached the Belgian coast. Start of the first combined German/Austrian operation in Poland. October 10th: Antwerp surrendered. October 12th: Lille occupied by German forces. October 15th: Battle for Warsaw started. October 17th: Russian forces saved Warsaw from capture.

October 18th: First Battle of Ypres started. October 20th: First recorded sinking of a merchant ship by a Uboat when the Glitra was sunk by U-17 off Norway. October 29th: Turkey entered the war on the side of Germany. November 1st: Start of the 3rd Austrian invasion of Serbia. The Battle of Coronel in the Pacific Ocean took place. HMS Monmouth and HMS good Hope were lost with no survivors. November 4th: Austrians defeated at Jaroslau. November 11th: Start of the second combined German/Austrian advance into Poland.

November 18th: fierce fighting halted Start of the Battle of Lodz the German advance into Poland. November 22nd: First Battle of Ypres ended. November 24th: The German XXV Reserve Corps fought their way out of Lodz. December 2nd: Austrians captured Belgrade. December 6th: Serbia defeated an Austria force at Kolubra River. Russian forces withdrew from Lodz.

December 8th: Austria suffered a heavy defeat at a battle to the south of Belgrade. Battle of the Falkland Island took place the German Navy suffered heavy losses with over 1,800 men killed. December 9th: Warsaw bombed by the German Air Service.

December 12th: Start of a major Austrian counter-offensive against Serbia December 15th: Serbia regained Belgrade. Austrian forces withdrew across their border. December 16th:

the German Navy bombarded Whitby, Scarborough and Hartlepool. December 24th/25th: Xmas truce on the frontline. 1915 and World War One 1915 witnessed a number of major battles in World War One, not least at Gallipoli, Ypres and Loos. 1915 was also the year when poison gas (chlorine) was used for the first time. January 8th: Battle of Soissons started January 14th: Battle of Soissons ended after the Germans launched a successful counter-attack against the French. January 15th: The War Council authorized a naval attack on the Dardanell

January 19th: The first Zeppelin raid on Great Britain took place at Great Yarmouth.

January 24th: Battle of Dogger Bank between Royal Navy and the German Navy.

January 31st: The first recognised use of poison gas took place at Bolimov on the Vistula Front.

February 3rd: Unsuccessful attacks on the Suez Canal by the Turks.

February 4th: Germany declared the waters around Great Britain to be a war zone.

February 19th: British troops bombarded Turkish forts in the Dardanelles. Small number of Marines landed.

February 24th: A decision was taken that if the Navy could not defeat the defenders at the Dardanelles, then the task would be finished by the Army.

March 10th: The British Army launched an offensive at Neuve Chapelle.

March 13th: Mediterranean Expeditionary Force sailed from Egypt. Battle of Neuve Chapelle was ended.

March 18th: An Anglo-French force that involved 16 battleships attacked the Dardanelles but suffered heavy losses.

March 22nd: Army and Navy commanders agreed on a joint offensive. Two Zeppelins attacked Paris.

April 11th: British forces led by Sir John Nixon repel a Turkish attack on Basra.

April 22nd: First use of chlorine gas at the start of the Second Battle of Ypres.

April 25th: Allied troops landed at five beaches at Gallipoli and gained a small beachhead at Anzac Cove.

April 26th: A secret treaty between the Triple Entente and Italy brought Italy into the war on the side of the Allies.

May 1st: First American merchant ship sunk by Germans, the Gulflight, a tanker, off the Scilly Islands.

May 3rd: Italy denounced the Triple Alliance.

May 7th: The Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat; 1,201 lives were lost including 128 Americans.

May 9th: France launched a Spring Offensive in Artois and advanced towards Vimy Ridge.

May 19th: The Turks launched a major attack to force the Allies out of Gallipoli. They suffered heavy casualties.

May 23rd: Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary.

May 24th: A ceasefire was ordered for Anzac Cove to allow for the dead to be buried. The Austrian Navy bombarded Italian coastal towns and sunk the Italian destroyer Turbine.

May 25th: HMS Triumph sunk by U-21 off the Dardanelles. Second Battle of Ypres ended.

May 26th: Italy announced that they would blockade Austria.

May 27th: HMS Majestic sunk by U-21 off the Dardanelles.

May 30th: The Italians bombed the Austrians fleet base at Pula.

May 31st: The first Zeppelin raid on London took place killing 28 and wounding 60.

June 18th: The French Spring Offensive in Artois was ended.

June 20th: The Germans launched an offensive in the MeuseArgonne area.

June 23rd: First Battle of Isonzo.

July 1st: Central War Industries Committee introduced to Germany and Austria-Hungary to co-ordinate war production.

July 7th: First Battle of Isonzo ended with minor Italian victories.

July 12th: German coal industry placed under state control.

July 13th: The German offensive in Meuse-Argonne came to an end.

July 18th: Second Battle of Isonzo started.

August 1st: The start of the Fokker Scourge with the Fokker monoplane dominant over the Western Front.

August 3rd: Second Battle of Isonzo ended with a total of 90,000 casualties but with minimal territorial gains for the Italians.

August 5th: Germany captured Warsaw from the Russians

August 6th: Attempted breakout from Anzac Cove to capture nearby heights.

August 10th: The Turks recapture lost land and forced the Allies back to Anzac Cove.

August 20th: Italy started a sustained bombing campaign against Austrian military targets.

August 21st: The 29th Division was ordered to attack Hill 60 and Scimitar Hill. The attack failed with heavy casualties.

September 1st: Germany pledged that neutral ships would not be targeted in the sea war.

September 5th: Nicholas II of Russia took full control of the Russian Army.

September 25th: The British Army used poison gas for the first time at the Battle of Loos.

September 26th: Start of Battle of Kut al-Amara.

September 28th: End of Battle of Kut al-Amara; British forces defeated the Turks.

October 11th: Bulgarian troops attacked Serbia.

October 14th: The Battle of Loos came to an end.

October 18th: Third Battle of Isonzo started.

November 4th: Third Battle of Isonzo ended with no obvious gains for either side.

November 10th: Lord Kitchener visited the Gallipoli front and decided to withdraw ANZAC forces there. Fourth Battle of Isonzo started.

November 25th: The Serbian Army was ordered to retreat through Albania with the German Army in pursuit.

November 27th: Very poor weather led to 15,000 troops being evacuated from Anzac Cove for frostbite, trench foot and exposure.

December 3rd: Fourth Battle of Isonzo ended with minimal territorial gains for Italy.

December 19th: The Allies started the evacuation of Gallipoli. Douglas Haig replaced Sir John French as commander of the BEF. 1916 and World War One

1916 witnessed two of the most decisive battles of World War One - at Verdun and the Somme. 1916 is seen as the year when the armies of Britain, France and Germany were bled to death.

January 1st: Riots in Austria-Hungary forced down the price of grain and flour as set by the government.

February 21st: Start of the Battle of Verdun; Germany bombarded French positions for 9 hours and then occupied the first line of French trenches.

February 25th: Fort Douaumont, Verdun, was captured by the Germans. Ptain was put in charge of the defence of Verdun.

February 21st: Germany informed America that armed merchant ships would be treated in the same manner as cruisers.

February 26th: Germany ended her first offensive against Verdun.

March 18th: Russia started an offensive against German positions in Vilna. Made limited territorial gains but suffered very heavy casualties.

March 24th: British cross-channel steamer Sussex was torpedoed with Americans among those lost.

April 9th: The Germans launched a major offensive against Le Mort Homme at Verdun but failed to capture it.

April 25th: The German Navy bombarded Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft.

April 29th: British forces surrendered to Turkish forces at Kut in Mesopotamia.

May 1st: British Summer Time introduced as a daylight saving measure. Nivelle appointed commander of the French 2nd Army.

May 25th: Universal conscription introduced to Great Britain.

May 31st: Battle of Jutland.

June 4th: The Brusilov Offensive started.

June 7th: French defenders at Fort Vaux, Verdun, surrendered to the Germans.

June 8th: The fortification at Thiaumont is taken by the Germans but immediately retaken by the French. During the Battle of Verdun, the fortification changed hands 16 times.

July 10th: Start of the cruise by U-35, which proved the most destructive of the war with 54 ships sunk totalling 90,000 tons.

June 22nd: Phosgene gas used at Verdun by the Germans.

June 24th: The Allies opened up an artillery barrage along a 25mile front against German trenches on the Somme.

July 1st: Start of the Battle of the Somme. Allied air supremacy was confirmed with 386 Allied fighters pitted against 129 German aircraft.

July 7th: British troops made an unsuccessful attempt to capture Mametz Wood, Somme.

July 10th: Start of the final German offensive at Verdun.

July 19th: Battle of Fromelles started

July 20th: The British attacked High Wood, but it was not captured until September 15th.

August 27th: Romania declared war on Austria-Hungary.

August 28th: Falkenhayn was dismissed from his post as commander-in-chief and replaced by Hindenburg. Italy declared war on Germany.

August 29th: Under the Hindenburg Programme, Germany was organised for a war economy.

September 15th: First en masse use of tanks at the Somme the Battle of Flers-Courcelette.

September 20th: The Brusilov Offensive ended.

September 26th: The British captured Thiepval in the Somme.

October 8th: The German Air Force was created, amalgamating the various units of the German Air Service.

October 15th: Mata Hari executed.

October 24th: A French offensive captured Fort Douaumont.

October 28th: Oswald Boelke was killed in action. Boelke was credited with introducing new tactics that gave the German Air Force greater aerial dominance.

November 2nd: Fort Vaux recaptured by the French.

November 13th: Beaumont Hamel in the Somme was captured.

November 18th: Battle of the Somme ended.

December 7th: David Lloyd George became British Prime Minister. The new War Cabinet organised Great Britain for total war.

December 15th: Final French offensive in the Battle of Verdun.

December 16th: End of the Battle of Verdun

1917 and World War One

1917 saw the entry of America into World War One, the result of Germanys use of unrestricted submarine warfare. 1917 also saw the start of the Battle of Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres.

January 11th: Saboteurs destroyed an ammunition plant in New Jersey.

January 19th: The Zimmerman telegram was sent, intercepted by the British and passed on to the Americans.

January 22nd: Woodrow Wilson made his peace without victory speech to the Senate.

January 31st: Germany informed America and other neutrals that she would resume unrestricted submarine warfare

February 1st: Germany resumed its unrestricted submarine warfare campaign.

February 3rd: The US grain ship Housatonic was sunk by a Uboat and Wilson severed diplomatic ties with Germany.

February 10th: The first use of the convoy system for British merchant ships taking coal to France.

February 25th: The Cunard liner Laconia was sunk by a U-boat and four US citizens died. Wilson referred to this as an overt act.

March 12th: President Wilson ordered the arming of US merchant ships. Russian troops mutinied and joined demonstrators in Petrograd.

March 14th: Provisional Government, headed by Prince Lvov, proclaimed in Russia.

March 15th: Tsar Nicholas II abdicated.

March 20th: Preliminary bombardment for the Arras assault started.

April 6th: America declared war on Germany.

April 16th: France launched the unsuccessful Nivelle Offensive. Lenin returned to Russia from Switzerland.

April 17th: First signs of a mutiny in the French Army witnessed at Aisne.

April 20th: Nivelle admitted that his offensive had failed in its object but the attacks continued until May 9th.

May 2nd: The first US destroyer flotilla arrived at Queenstown, Ireland.

May 10th: First use of the convoy system for an Atlantic crossing.

May 15th: Ptain replaced Nivelle as French commander-in-chief.

May 18th: The Compulsory Service Act was introduced in America.

May 19th: Russias Provisional Government stated that it would not seek a separate peace settlement with Germany and Austria.

May 27th: French troops refused to obey orders as the mutiny spread.

June 1st: A whole regiment mutinied at Missy-aux-Bois.

June 17th: Gotha bombers bombed London. 158 were killed with 425 wounded. the worst British civilian casualties of the war.

June 25th: The first contingent of US troops landed in France.

June 27th: General Edmund Allenby was appointed commander of British forces in Palestine.

July 31st: Start of the Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres).

August 21st: A Sopwith Pup, launched from the light cruiser Yarmouth shot down Zeppelin L23 over the North Sea.

September 20th: British 2nd army launched an attacked along the Menin Road.

September 26th: British troops launched an attack on Polygon Wood.

October 12th: ANZAC forces made limited progress at Passchendaele.

October 24th: Start of the Battle of Caporetto, which ended on October 30th.

November 6th: Britain launched a major offensive on the Western Front and captured Passchendaele. Lenin took power in Russia with the Bolsheviks in charge of Moscow and Petrograd but not much else.

November 20th: Start of the Battle of Cambrai; British used tanks en masse and made significant gains.

November 21st: The hospital ship Britannic was sunk by a mine in the Eastern Mediterranean; at 47,000 tons the Britannic was the largest ship to be sunk by a mine.

November 26th: Russia requested an armistice with the Germans.

November 30th: A German counter-offensive took back much of the land captured by the Allies.

December 4th: Battle of Cambrai ended.

December 5th: An armistice was signed between Germany and Russia.

December 7th: A squadron of US battleships arrived at Scapa Flow.

December 9th: Britain captured Jerusalem from the Turks.

December 11th: General Allenby, commander of British forces in Palestine, entered Jerusalem.

December 15th: Russia and Germany signed an armistice.

December 22nd: Peace talks between Germany and Russia started at Brest-Litovsk.

1918 and World War One

World War One ended in November 1918. During 1918, two major offensives took place on the Western Front, both based on movement as opposed to the trench mentality of the previous years.

January 14th: Great Yarmouth bombarded by the German Navy.

January 24th: Russia rejected Lenins peace at all costs for Trotskys no war, no peace.

February 1st: Mutiny in the Austrian Navy at Cattaro.

February 18th: Germany resumed her war against Russia after the failure to secure a peace settlement.

February 24th: Russia accepted Germanys peace terms.

March 3rd: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed between Germany and Russia.

March 21st: Germany broke through in the Somme at the start of its Spring Offensive. 65 divisions attacked along a 60-mile front. The German Air Service launched a major campaign against the Royal Flying Corps but it failed.

March 23rd: The Germans made major advances using Storm Troops. Paris was hit with long-range artillery. The British 5th Army suffered major losses.

March 28th: First signs seen that Germanys offensive was losing its impetus with the failed attack on Arras.

March 29th: Marshal Foch was appointed Allied Commander on the Western Front.

April 1st: The Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Navy Air Service combined to form the Royal Air Force (RAF)

April 4th: The German Spring Offensive (the Michael Offensive) petered out and the line stabilised.

April 9th: Germany started an offensive in Flanders.

April 21st: The German fighter ace, Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron, was killed.

April 23rd: An Allied attack on the harbours of Zeebruge and Ostend (to block their use as bases for U-boats) took place but was only partially successful.

May 13th: The RAF formed a specific strategic bombing force.

May 24th: A British squadron landed at Murmansk.

May 30th: German troops reached the River Marne.

June 3rd: American forces at Chateau Thierry helped to end the German advance.

June 6th: American troops counter-attacked German forces at Belleau Wood.

June 25th: Last German troops forced out of Belleau Wood by the Americans.

July 9th: Flying ace James McCudden killed in a flying accident.

July 15th: Last major German offensive of the war when 52 divisions attacked in the Marne-Reims Offensive.

July 31st: British forces took Archangelsk in northern Russia.

July 15th: Second Battle of the Marne started, which saw the collapse of the German army on the Western Front.

July 26th: Flying ace Edward Mick Mannock was killed in action.

August 1st: French forces occupied Soissons.

August 3rd: Germany completed her withdrawal from the Marne salient.

August 8th: The Allies continued their advance against the Germans. The RAF dropped 1,563 bombs and fired 122,150 rounds of ammunition in support of ground forces. This day is known as the Black Day of the German Army.

August 18th: A British offensive in Flanders began. A French offensive captured Aisne Heights.

August 21st: The British renewed their offensive on the Somme.

August 22nd: British forces captured Albert.

August 28th: Canadian troops broke through the Hindenburg Line.

August 29th: New Zealand troops occupied Baupanne.

September 2nd: Australian forces occupied Pronne. Canadian troops continued their advance past the Hindenburg Line.

September 12th: 1,476 Allied aircraft supported an US attack at St. Mihiel.

September 16th: US forces occupy St. Mihiel.

September 19th: Turkish forces collapsed at Megiddo.

September 26th: French and American forces started an offensive against German positions at Argonne.

September 27th: New British offensive started.

September 28th: Fourth Battle of Ypres started.

September 29th: Luderndorff asked for an immediate armistice.

October 1st: Damascus taken by Australian and Arab forces.

October 4th: Germany asked the Allies for an armistice based on Woodrow Wilsons Fourteen Points.

October 9th: British troops advanced to the last line of trenches in the Hindenburg Line.

October 13th: French troops occupied Laon.

October 14th: German troops started to abandon the Belgian coastline.

October 17th: British troops occupied Lille. Belgian troops reoccupied Ostend.

October 19th: Zeebruge occupied by the British.

October 24th: Start of the Battle of Vittorio Veneto.

October 26th: Luderndorff dismissed by Wilhelm II.

October 29th: The German Army experienced mutinies in certain sectors.

October 30th: Turkey made peace with the Allies. The Italians captured Vittorio Veneto.

November 1st: A major French-US offensive started in the AisneMeuse sector.

November 3rd: Austria-Hungary signed an armistice with Italy. A mutiny occurred within the High Seas Fleet based at Kiel generally seen as the spark that caused the German Revolution.

November 4th: The poet Wilfred Owen was killed. Start of the final Allied offensive on the Western Front.

November 5th: General retreat of German forces along the Meuse started.

November 8th: German representatives arrived at Compigne and are handed the terms of an armistice.

November 9th: Wilhelm II of Germany abdicated. Belgian forces occupied Ghent.

November 10th: Wilhelm II crossed into the Netherlands after it became clear that the German Army and Navy no longer supported him.

November 11th: Germany signed an armistice with the Allies, which came into force at 11.00. World War One ended. Causes of WW2

In the main, the causes of any war, let alone one so huge as World War Two, are many and varied. For convenience, the causes of World War Two can be divided into two sections : long term causes and short term causes. However, both are inter-linked and all the causes need to be studied together to get a full picture as to why this war broke out in September 1939.

Long term causes of World War Two Manchuria 1931 Abyssinia 1935 Haile Selassie and the League of Nations Germany and rearmament Rhineland 1936 Italy and Germany 1936 to 1940 The Hossbach Conference of 1937 The Hossbach Memorandum Austria and 1938 The Czech Crisis of 1938 Scrap of Paper 1939

The British Declaration of War Germany 1939 Public Opinion and Appeasement in 1938 Long term causes of World War Two World War Two was not caused solely by short term events in the 1930's such as Austria and Czechoslovakia. The anger and resentment that built up in Nazi Germany - and which was played on by Hitler during his rise to power and when he became Chancellor in January 1933 - also had long term causes that went back to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. Patriotic Germans had never forgotten their nation's treatment in Paris in that year.

The League had some successes in this decade (the Aaland Islands, as an example) but the weaknesses of the League had also been cruelly exposed on a number of occasions when an aggressor nation successfully used force to get what it wanted and the League could do nothing. This process set the mould for the 1930s and any would-be dictator would have been very well aware that the League did not have the ability to enforce its decisions as it lacked an army. Those nations that were best equipped to provide the League with a military force (Britain and France) were also not prepared to do so for domestic reasons and the aftermath of the Great War in which so many were killed or wounded. From a political point of view, the British and French publics would not have tolerated a military involvement in an area of Europe that no-one had heard of. Politicians were responsive

to the attitudes of the voters and neither Britain nor France were prepared to militarily support the League in the 1920s - despite being the strongest nations in the League.

However, the apparent stability in Europe after 1925 and its apparent prosperity, meant that conflicts rarely occurred from 1925 to 1929.

In fact, Europe could have been confident in assuming peace would last as two treaties were signed that seemed to indicate that a new era of peace and toleration had been ushered in.

The Locarno Treaties were signed in December 1925. The major politicians of Europe met in neutral Switzerland. The following was agreed to :

France, Germany and Belgium agreed to accept their borders as were stated in the Treaty of Versailles. France and Belgium would never repeat an invasion of the Ruhr and Germany would never attack Belgium or France again. Britain and Italy agreed to police this part of the treaties. Germany also accepted that the Rhineland must remain demilitarised. In other treaties, France promised to protect Belgium, Poland and Czechoslovakia if Germany attacked any one of them. Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Poland and Czechoslovakia all agreed that they

would never fight if they had an argument between themselves they would allow the League to sort out the problem.

However, nationalists in Germany were furious with their government for signing these treaties. By signing, the German government effectively agreed that it accepted the terms of the Versailles Treaty of 1919. This to the nationalists bordered on treason and was totally unacceptable. Their claims of treason went unheard as Weimar Germany was experiencing an economic growth and the hard times of 1919 to 1924 were forgotten. Moderate politicians were the order of the day in Germany and the extreme nationalists such as the Nazi Party faded into the background. The success of these moderate politicians was emphasised when France backed Germanys right to join the League of Nations which Germany duly did in 1926.

The other major treaty which seemed to herald in an era of world peace was the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928.

This pact was signed by 65 countries. All 65 nations agreed never to use war again as a way of solving disputes.

Therefore, Europe was effectively lulled into a false sense of security by 1929 as the politicians of Europe had made it plain that war was no longer an option in solving disputes and that

previous enemies were now friends. This new Europe relied on nations being at peace and harmony with one another. The stability of Germany was shattered by the Wall Street Crash of October 1929 and the nationalists who had spent 1925 to 1929 in relative obscurity, rose to the political surface once again. They had no intention of accepting either Versailles or the Locarno treaties and the Leagues weaknesses in this decade had also become apparent. The League could only function successfully, if the politicians of Europe allowed it to do so. Hitler and the Nazis were never going to give the League a chance once they had gained power. Military Commanders of World War Two Harold Alexander Juergen von Arnim Claude Auchinleck Feder von Bock Omar Bradley Wilhelm Canaris General Dietrich von Choltitz General Mark Clark Admiral Darlan Sholto Douglas Dwight Eisenhower

Vice Admiral Frank Fletcher Admiral William Frederick Halsey Air Marshal Arthur Harris Erich Hoepner Lord John Gort Heinz Guderian Wilhelm Keitel Ewald von Kleist Gunther Kluge Wilhelm von Leeb Curtis LeMay Douglas MacArthur Erich von Manstein Erhard Milch Walther Model Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery Lord Louis Mountbatten Chester Nimitz Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa George Patton

Arthur Percival Charles Portal Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay Neil Ritchie Erwin Rommel Gerd von Rundstedt General William 'Bill' Slim Admiral Raymond Spruance General Kurt Student General Alexander Vandegrift General Archibald Wavell Orde Wingate Isoroku Yamamoto General Tomoyuki Yamashita Georgy Zhukov World War Two in Western Europe The Phoney War The Attack on Western Europe Operation Cerberus Operation Catapult

Operation Sealion Britain's Home Front in World War Two Battle of Britain France during World War Two D-Day Index The Normandy Campaign The Battle for Brittany Operation Anvil Operation Dragoon The V Revenge Weapons Operation Crossbow Arnhem The Battle of the Bulge Antwerp and World War Two Operation Unthinkable VE Day Code Breaking at Bletchley Park VE Day Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) was on May 8th 1945. VE Day officially announced the end of World War Two in Europe. On

Monday May 7th at 02.41. German General Jodl signed the unconditional surrender document that formally ended war in Europe. Winston Churchill was informed of this event at 07.00. While no public announcements had been made, large crowds gathered outside of Buckingham Palace and shouted: We want the King. The Home Office issued a circular (before any official announcement) instructing the nation on how they could celebrate. Bonfires will be allowed, but the government trusts that only material with no salvage value will be used.

The Board of Trade did the same:

Until the end of May you may buy cotton bunting without coupons, as long as it is red, white or blue, and does not cost more than one shilling and three pence a square yard. However, even by the afternoon there was no official notification even though bell ringers had been put on standby for a nationwide victory peal. Ironically the Germans had been told by their government that the war was officially over. Joseph Stalin, who had differing views on how the surrender should be announced, caused the delay. By early evening, Churchill announced that he was not going to give Stalin the satisfaction of

holding up what everybody knew. At 19.40 the Ministry of Information made a short announcement:

In accordance with arrangements between the three great powers, tomorrow, Tuesday, will be treated as Victory in Europe Day and will be regarded as a holiday. Within minutes of this announcement, tens of thousands of people gathered on the streets of Central London to celebrate. People gathered in Parliament Square, Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus and boats along the Thames sounded their horns in celebration.The celebrations only ended when a thunderstorm and heavy rain drenched those still celebrating just before midnight.

May 8th, Victory in Europe Day, saw the celebrations continue. Street parties were organised across the land; neighbours pooled food, some of which was still rationed. At 13.00, Churchill went to Buckingham Palace to have a celebratory lunch with George VI. At 15.00, Churchill spoke to the nation from the Cabinet Room in 10, Downing Street. He reminded the nation that Japan had still to be defeated but that the people of Great Britain: May allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing. Advance Britannia. Long live the cause of freedom! God save the King!

Three Lancaster bombers flew over London and dropped red and green flares. 50,000 people gathered between Trafalgar Square and Big Ben.

After addressing the nation, Churchill went to Parliament to address the Commons. After this he led some MPs to a thanksgiving service.

In the late afternoon, the Royal Family came out onto a balcony at Buckingham Palace. In front of them were 20,000 people. George VI wore his Royal Navy uniform while Princess Elizabeth wore her ATS uniform. They were joined by Churchill. He later spoke to those gathered outside the Ministry of Health. At the end of the speech, the crowd sang For Hes A Jolly Good Fellow.

The last official event of VE Day was a broadcast to the nation by George VI at 21.00. Buckingham Palace was lit up by floodlights for the first time since 1939 and two searchlights made a giant V above St. Pauls Cathedral. It was a highly symbolic gesture for a city that had spent years in blackout. People built street fires out

of whatever flammable materials they could find. Witnesses reported that London had the same red glow to it as during the Blitz but this time it was in celebration. Some fires got out of hand and the London Fire Brigade had to be called to put out the blaze something they were very experienced in doing. People got hold of fireworks prohibited during the war to give the celebrations more colour.

The police reported that there was barely any criminal activity throughout the day despite the boisterous behaviour of tens of thousands. In the early hours of May 9th, the celebratory illuminations in London were turned off. The war in Japan was still being fought and austerity became the norm for very many people. But for one short day people could afford to let their hair down. World War Two and Eastern Europe Blitzkrieg The Attack on Poland The Winter War 1939 Russia Operation Barbarossa Memories of Operation Barbarossa The Siege of Leningrad The Battle for Moscow

Operation Blue The Kharkov Offensive 1942 Siege of Sebastopol Not One Step Back - Order 227 The Battle of Stalingrad The Battle of Kursk Lidice 1942 The Katyn Wood Massacre The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 The July Bomb Plot Operation Caesar Berlin April 1945 The Battle for Berlin The Death of Adolf Hitler The Will of Adolf Hitler The Final Political Testament of Adolf Hitler Operation Eclipse Major Tony Hibbert The Surrender of Nazi Germany The Act of Military Surrender

Operation Eclipse

Operation Eclipse was the name given to an Allied military operation in early May 1945. Operation Eclipse occurred very near to the end of World War Two in Europe as a result of creditable Swedish intelligence reports that stated that Stalins Red Army would go beyond the territorial terms agreed at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. In fact their target was Denmark to give the Soviet Navy greater freedom of access to the Atlantic Ocean. The Soviet Unions Atlantic fleet primarily used Murmansk in northern Russia and this was ice-bound for many months in any given year. For the Soviet Union, occupation of Denmark would have brought huge military rewards as long as the Allies were unwilling to challenge them. Operation Eclipse was specifically the challenge to this threat.

Operation Eclipse had three parts to it. The first was the occupation of Denmark to act as a clear sign to the Soviet authorities that the Allies were there to stay as agreed at Yalta. The second part of Operation Eclipse was the taking of Kiel, a major base for the German Navy, and the securing of important scientific bases between the Danish border and Kiel. The third part was the taking of Wismar, which the Red Army had the right to take as part of the Yalta Agreement.

The occupation of Denmark was relatively straight forward as the Germans stationed there were not in a mood to continue the fight. On May 4th, the German High Command signed the terms of unconditional surrender at Lneberg Heath. German troops in Denmark acted in accordance with that surrender even if a few SS units continued the fight. The power of the Allies was shown on May 4th when a flotilla of British naval ships commanded by Captain Andy Palmer, DSC, (two British cruisers, HMS Dido and HMS Birmingham, accompanied by four Z class destroyers) entered Copenhagen Harbour after protecting a number of mine sweepers that had cleared the waters around Denmark of mines. At the same time as these Royal Navy ships entered Copenhagen Harbour, a squadron of RAF Typhoons landed at a nearby air base that had been secured by paratroopers. Two days later another squadron of Typhoons landed. Any desire by the Germans to continue the fight would have been futile faced with such a force. On May 9th, Brigadier Lathbury landed at Copenhagen Airport to organise and oversee the surrender of German forces in Denmark. The taking of Kiel was fraught with danger. The British created T Force commanded by Major Tony Hibbert. He had at his command 500 men from the 5 Kings Regiment and 30 Assault Unit, Royal Navy. Hibbert also had to take with him 50 scientists who would examine Nazi scientific bases. The problem Hibbert faced was this: When the order to proceed with the taking of Kiel was given, May 1st, Kiel was 50 miles behind enemy lines as they stood on that day and there were still very many armed German soldiers in that area. Hibbert was told that there were about 50,000 German troops in the vicinity. In his favour was the sheer

chaos in the area as tens of thousands of German refugees fled west from the advancing Red Army. While these refuges may well have hindered Hibberts advance, they also served to effectively camouflage his men as they moved east. What Hibbert and his men achieved was quite remarkable. With just 500 men, Hibbert took Kiel and all the required scientific bases between Denmark and the city. He then set about establishing his authority in the city. All German soldiers had to return to their barracks and hand in their rifles. All keys held by German military officials had to be handed in and no documents were allowed to be destroyed by them. What Hibbert found was that the German troops in Kiel had no wish to fight and that they feared the approaching Red Army far more than Hibberts men. Hibbert allowed German police to keep their pistols as many forced labourers were released and Hibbert needed law and order in the city if he was to achieve what he set out to do not a city under mob rule as the former slave labourers tried to seek revenge against those who had abused them. Hibbert succeeded in all that he did. Kiel was in the hands of the Allies and a clear message was sent to Moscow. His only problem came when he was arrested for disobeying an order by the British! The corps commander in the area, General Barker, where Hibberts 500 men had gathered before leaving for Kiel had ordered that Hibbert could only move out at 08.00. Hibbert wanted to move under cover of darkness and left at 03.00. Hibbert was held in custody until May 9th when he had to have an interview with Barker. The interview ended with Barker telling Hibbert that he was not a bloody commando and then promptly

recommended that he be Mentioned in Dispatches for what he had achieved. The taking of Wismar was even more dangerous as the British there had to play a game of bluff. Wismar was a legitimate Soviet target as had been agreed at Yalta. However, the British wanted to send out a warning to the Red Army, which was effectively no further. At the least it was hoped to buy enough time to secure Denmarks borders. However, there was always a danger that fighting would break out between the Red Army and British forces in Wismar. Wismar was taken by men from the 3rd Parachute Brigade commanded by Brigadier James Hill. Tanks from the Royal Scots Greys covered their advance. Hills men reached Wismar on May 2nd the same day that an advance guard from the Red Armys 3rd Guards Tank Corps reached the city. Hills men immediately built defences on the citys eastern side that faced the advancing Red Army. Some Soviet tanks did breach this defensive wall as it was too thinly manned by British troops. Lightly armed when compared to the Soviet tank corps facing them, the British and Canadian paratroopers in Wismar were asked by senior Red Army commanders to leave the city. Hill told his Soviet counterpart that he had at his full disposal the might of Allied bomber fleets and the firepower of the 6th Airborne Divisional Artillery that had been informed of the 3rd Guards Tank Corps positions. The threat worked and men and machines from

the Red Army pulled back the tanks that had breached the defensive wall were recalled. It gave the Allies sufficient time to ensure the safety of Denmark from an occupying Soviet force and it also ensured that the demarcation line in Europe as agreed at Yalta was kept. It was left to the highest ranks in the Allied command to sort out the issues raised at Wismar. Field Marshal Montgomery met senior Red Army General Rokossovki on May 8th in Wismar. However, by that time diplomacy was to count and not military action. Operation Eclipse was a huge success, especially as the planning for it had only started in late March 1945. In recognition of the part he played in saving Kiel from Soviet occupation, Hibbert was awarded the Great Seal of Kiel in May 2010 65 years nearly to the day after Operation Eclipse.

Memories of Operation Barbarossa The belief that Operation Barbarossa (1941) was a massive military success in its initial stages tends to be the accepted norm amongst many military historians. However, though Operation Barbarossa made huge inroads into the Soviet Union the warning signs of major problems ahead were never heeded by the senior military command who were basking in the success of the Nazi war machine as Barbarossa drove back the Red Army and captured millions of men and destroyed vast amounts of Soviet military machinery.

What were the problems that were overshadowed by the success of Barbarossa? Even the average infantry man was aware that there would be trouble ahead as the letters home to loved ones indicated. A twenty-year old infantryman called Harald Henry identified two main issues. He believed that the tanks of the Wehrmacht were moving too far ahead of the infantry and that the pace of their advance would lead to major problems in supply later on in the campaign against the Red Army. He also noted the sheer exhaustion he and his fellow infantrymen suffered as a result of this as they were required to march as far as was humanly possible to keep near to the tank units. Endless hours of marching ahead, 25 or 30 kilometres. No one can tell me that a non-infantryman can have the remotest idea of what we are going through here. Imagine the very worst extreme exhaustion that youve ever experienced, the burning pain of open, inflamed foot wounds and thats the condition I was in not by the end, but at the beginning of a 45-kilometre march. Another infantryman, Bernhard Ritter, wrote: There just dont seem to be days off, although our people are in sore need of them after strenuous fighting that is now behind us at last. Hitlers decision to move tanks from Army Group Centre and move them to support the attacks on Leningrad in the north and the Ukraine in the south meant that the infantry in the central attack on Moscow had to do so with little of the armoured support that had benefited them in the early weeks of Barbarossa.

They were soon to suffer from the appalling weather that was to become so decisive in the whole campaign. We were in a blizzard. It penetrated our coats, our clothing gradually got soaked through, freezing stiff against our bodies. We were feeling unbelievably ill in the stomach and bowel. Lice! Frost gripped my pus-infected fingers. I wrapped a towel round my ravaged hands. My face was contorted with tears. Torment without end. I am shattered in every fibre of my being Harald Henry. We were all wet through from rolling around in the snow (during a battle). There was of course no chance of getting anything to eat. It is impossible to describe how frozen cold we were. We huddled together in our foxholes and tried to warm up. (Lieutenant Will Thomas) In October 1942 Operation Typhoon was launched. This was the Nazis main attempt to capture Moscow. Stalin put the defence of Moscow in the hands of Georgy Zhukov. Though some German advance troops got to the outskirts of the city, Zhukovs work ensured that Moscow did not fall. The German attackers had to endure temperatures as low as 35 degrees during the winter nights. On November 15th, the Germans launched their main offensive but it came to nothing. On December 15th, Zhukov launched his counter-offensive using fresh troops brought in from Siberia who were used to the freezing temperatures. Within ten days of the attack, the German army had been pushed back 100 miles and had lost half-a-million men. Operation Barbarossa had failed in its objective but it had also been responsible for the

deaths of tens of thousands of trained men a loss the Wehrmacht was never going to recover from. The Winter War 1939 Causes of the war The war Timeline of event Carl Gustaf Mannerheim Juho Paasikivi The Winter War The Winter War 1939 Timeline of the Winter War Carl Gustaf Mannerheim Juho Paasikivi The Winter War 1939

The war between Russia and Finland, generally referred to as the Winter War, lasted from November 30th 1939 to March 13th, 1940. The Winter War was a direct result of the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of August 1939. The public face of this treaty was a ten-year period of non-aggression between Nazi Germany and Stalins Russia. There was a secret side to it however, which stated that Russia would attack Poland in September 1939 and would

have more rights to determine its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Carl Gustaf Mannerheim - c-inc Finnish forces

After the fall of Poland in September 1939, Russia sought to extend its influence over the Baltic and between September and October 1939, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia were all made to sign treaties of mutual assistance that allowed Russia to establish military bases in each of the three Baltic states. Many people assumed that Finland would be Russias next target.

On October 5th, 1939, Russia invited Finnish representatives to Moscow to discuss political questions. Finland sent to the meeting J K Paasikivi who met Stalin and Molotov to discuss land questions on the Finnish/Russian border. The meeting started on October 12th.

To defend the approach to Leningrad, Stalin wanted Finnish islands in the Gulf of Finland, including Suursaari Island, handed over to Russia; he wanted to lease Hanko as a military base and to establish a garrison of 5,000 men there and he demanded more Finnish land on the Russian border to be ceded to Russia. In return, Stalin offered Finland land in Soviet Karelia and the right for Finland to fortify the Aaland Islands. Stalin couched all his land

requirements in terms of defending parts of Russia, be it Leningrad or Murmansk, from attack. We cannot do anything about geography, nor can you. Since Leningrad cannot be moved away, the frontier must be further off. Stalin

Paasikivi returned to Helsinki to discuss with the Finnish government Stalins demands.

Finland was highly suspicious of anything required by Stalin. Relations between Russia and Finland had been fraught for many decades and nearly everyone in Finland saw Stalins demands as an attempt by Russia to re-establish her authority over Finland once again. Historically, Finland had been part of the Russian Empire; from 1809 to 1917, Finland had the status of a selfgoverning duchy. It was the Bolsheviks under Lenin that had recognised the full independence of Finland in December 1917. Therefore, anything regarding land and Finland done by Russia in the era of Stalin was understandably seen as suspicious within Finland. However, Stalin was himself suspicious of Finland. He believed that Finland would welcome the defeat of communist Russia after all, Finland had helped anti-communist groups in the Russian Civil War and Stalin believed that Finland would allow her land to be used as a base by invading forces for an attack on Russia.

After discussions in Helsinki, Stalins proposals were rejected. Ironically, two people did show some support for them Paasikivi and Marshall Mannerheim, c-in-c of designate of Finlands military in time of war. Both felt that some islands in the Gulf of Finland should be ceded to buy off Russia as both feared that if war did occur, Finland would have to fight Russia by itself with no help from any other country. However, their beliefs were rejected by the Finnish government, even though Germany urged Finland to accept Russias demands. By the end of November 1939, was between Finland and Russia seemed unavoidable.

When war broke out, the Finnish army was small. The country only had a population of 4 million and as a result of this any army could only have been small. Finland could muster a small army of professionals. The country also had a peacetime army of conscripts which was boosted each year by an annual intake of new men. There was also a reserve which all conscripts passed into after a years service. Compared to the vast potential resources of the Red Army, the Finnish Army was dwarfed.

In time of war, it was planned by Mannerheim that the peacetime army should act as a covering force to delay any attack until the reservists got to the front. The army was also short of equipment including uniforms and modern artillery pieces the army only had 112 decent anti-tank guns in November 1939. The means of

producing modern weaponry was also short of the standards of Western European countries. Basic things such as ammunition could not be produced in large quantities and the armys communication system was basic, relying in part on runners. From whatever angle the Finnish army was looked at, it seemed an easy victim for the Russians.

However, in one sense the Finnish Army was in an excellent position to defend its nation. Finnish troops were trained to use their own terrain to their advantage. Finnish troops were well suited to the forests and snow-covered regions of Finland and they knew the lay of the land. Finnish ski troops were highly mobile and well trained. However, these men were used to working in small units and large scale manoeuvres were alien not only to them but to the officers in command of them. Money simply had not been spent in Finland prior to 1939 for many largescale military training exercises. However, as it became more and more obvious that a conflict with the Russians was likely, patriotism took a firm hold and no-one was prepared to tolerate a Russian invasion of his homeland. To go with the army, the Finnish Navy was small and the Finnish air force only had 100 planes but some of these were incapable of being flown in battle.

The Russian army was completely different. However, in September 1939, Russia had committed a number of men to the

Polish campaign. But with 1,250,000 men in the regular army, there were many more Stalin could call on. For the Winter War, Russia used 45 divisions each division had 18,000 men; so by that reckoning Russia used 810,000 men; nearly 25% of the whole of Finlands population. In fact, for the whole duration of the war, the Russians used 1,200,000 men in total in some form of military capacity. The Russians also used 1,500 tanks and 3,000 planes. Whereas the Finns had difficulty supplying her troops with ammunition, the Russians had an unlimited supply and a vastly superior system of communication. But the Russian army had two major weaknesses.

It was used to war games on large expanses of open ground. The snow covered forests of Finland were a different matter and the Russians were to find that they were frequently confined to the area around roads as many of their men were unused to Finlands terrain and the majority of their vehicles were unable to go off road. Their tactics developed during training did not include such terrain.

The Russian Army also had another fundamental weakness: its command structure was so rigid that commanders in the field would not make a decision without the approval of a higher officer who usually had to get permission from a political commissar that his tactics were correct. Such a set-up created important delays in decision-making. Therefore the leviathan that was the Russian Army, was frequently a slow moving dinosaur

hindered by both the geography of Finland and its rigidity in terms of decision making. Whereas Blitzkrieg had been designed to incorporate all aspects of Germanys army and air force, each part of the Russian army acted as separate entities. Whether this was a result of the purges in the military which decimated its officer corps or the result of a fear of taking a decision that was unacceptable to higher political authorities is difficult to know: probably it was a combination of both.

The Red Army was ill-equipped for a winter war. Whereas the army was well supplied with standard military equipment, it had little that was required for the snow-covered forests of Finland. White camouflage clothing was not issued and vehicles simply could not cope with the cold. The winter of 1939-40 was particularly severe.

The Russians were also forced to fight on a small front despite the sheer size of the Russian-Finnish border. Many parts of the 600 miles border were simply impassable, so the Finns had a good idea as to the route any Russian force might take in the initial stages of an invasion. The Russian air force was also limited in the amount of time it could help the army because the days were so short during the winter months. When they did fly, the Russians took heavy casualties, losing 800 planes over 25% of their planes used in the war.

The Finnish High Command, led by Mannerheim, believed that the only weak spot they had was in the Karelian Isthmus, southwest of Lake Ladoga. This area was fortified with the Mannerheim Line a complex of trenches, wire, obstacles and mine fields. Concrete emplacements were built but they were few and far between with each emplacement having little ability to give any other covering fire. In no way could the Mannerheim Line compare to the Maginot Line. However, the Karelian Isthmus had to be held as its loss would have given Russia a direct line to Helsinki, less than 200 miles to the west.

War broke out on November 30th 1939. David Chamberlan He gained national fame by his vehement opposition to the Second Boer War. He based his attack firstly on what were supposed to be the war aims remedying the grievances of the Uitlanders and in particular the claim that they were wrongly denied the right to vote, saying "I do not believe the war has any connection with the franchise. It is a question of 45% dividends" and that England (which did not then have universal male suffrage) was more in need of franchise reform than the Boer republics. His second attack was on the cost of the war, which, he argued, prevented overdue social reform in England, such as old age pensions and workmen's cottages. As the war progressed, he moved his attack to its conduct by the generals, who, he said (basing his words on reports by William Burdett-Coutts in The Times), were not providing for the sick or wounded soldiers and

were starving Boer women and children in concentration camps. He reserved his major thrusts for Chamberlain, accusing him of war profiteering through the Chamberlain family company Kynoch Ltd, of which Chamberlain's brother was Chairman and which had won tenders to the War Office though its prices were higher than some of its competitors. After speaking at a meeting in Chamberlain's political base at Birmingham. Lloyd George had to be smuggled out disguised as a policeman, as his life was in danger from the mob. At this time the Liberal Party was badly split as Herbert Henry Asquith, Richard Burdon Haldane and others were supporters of the war and formed the Liberal Imperial League.

His attacks on the government's Education Act, which provided that County Councils would fund church schools, helped reunite the Liberals. His successful amendment that the County need only fund those schools where the buildings were in good repair served to make the Act a dead letter in Wales, where the Counties were able to show that most Church of England schools were in poor repair. Having already gained national recognition for his anti-Boer War campaigns, his leadership of the attacks on the Education Act gave him a strong parliamentary reputation and marked him as a likely future cabinet member. In 1885 General Election Chamberlain was seen as the leader of the Radicals with his calls for land reform, housing reform and higher taxes on the rich. However, he was also a strong supporter of Imperialism, and resigned from Gladstone's cabinet over the

issue of Irish Home Rule. This action helped to bring down the Liberal government. Chamberlain now became leader of the Liberal Unionists and in 1886 he formed an alliance with the Conservative Party. As a result, Marquess of Salisbury, gave him the post of Colonial Secretary in his government. Chamberlain was therefore primarily responsible for British policy during the Boer War.

In September 1903, Joseph Chamberlain resigned from office so that he would be free to advocate his scheme of tariff reform. Chamberlain wanted to transform the British Empire into a united trading block. According to Chamberlain, preferential treatment should be given to colonial imports and British companies producing goods for the home market should be given protection from cheap foreign goods. The issue split the Conservative Party and in the 1906 General Election the Liberal Party, who supported free trade, had a landslide victory.

Chamberlain was struck down by a stroke in 1906 and took no further part in politics. Joseph Chamberlain, whose son Neville Chamberlain also became a leading figure in politics, died in 1914.

Lloyd George joined the local Liberal Party and became an alderman on the Caernarvon County Council. He also took part in several political campaigns including one that attempted to bring an end to church tithes. Lloyd George was also a strong supporter

of land reform. As a young man he had read books by Thomas Spence, John Stuart Mill and Henry George on the need to tackle this issue. He had also been impressed by pamphlets written by George Bernard Shaw and Sidney Webb of the Fabian Society on the need to tackle the issue of land ownership.

In 1890 Lloyd George was selected as the Liberal candidate for the Caernarvon Borough constituency. A by-election took place later that year when the sitting Conservative MP died. Lloyd George fought the election on a programme which called for religious equality in Wales, land reform, the local veto in granting licenses for the sale of alcohol, graduated taxation and free trade. Lloyd George won the seat by 18 votes and at twenty-seven became the youngest member of the House of Commons.

Lloyd George's dramatic oratory soon brought him to the attention of the leaders of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons. However, it was felt he was too radical and they suspected that he would lose his seat in the 1900 General Election because of his opposition to the Boer War. However, in Caernarvon he was seen as the most important figure in Parliament defending Welsh rights and was re-elected.

The leadership of the Liberal Party also disapproved of Lloyd George's role in the campaign against the 1902 Education Act. In his speeches on this issue he appeared to be encouraging people

to break the law by supporting John Clifford and his National Passive Resistance Committee. As a result of Clifford's campaign, over 170 Nonconformists went to prison for refusing to pay their school taxes.

After the 1906 General Election, the leader of the Liberal Party, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, became the new Prime-Minister. Lloyd George was given the post of President of the Board of Trade. In 1908 the new prime minister, Henry Asquith, promoted him to the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lloyd George now had the opportunity to introduce reforms that he had been campaigning for since he first arrived in the House of Commons.

Lloyd George had been a long opponent of the Poor Law in Britain. He was determined to take action that in his words would "lift the shadow of the workhouse from the homes of the poor". He believed the best way of doing this was to guarantee an income to people who were to old to work. Based on the ideas of Tom Paine that first appeared in his book Rights of Man in 1791, Lloyd George's measure, the Old Age Pensions Act, provided between 1s. and 5s. a week to people over seventy.

To pay for these pensions Lloyd George had to raise government revenues by an additional 16 million a year. In 1909 Lloyd George announced what became known as the People's Budget. This included increases in taxation. Whereas people on lower

incomes were to pay 9d. in the pound, those on annual incomes of over 3,000 had to pay 1s. 2d. in the pound. Lloyd George also introduced a new supertax of 6d. in the pound for those earning 5000 a year. Other measures included an increase in death duties on the estates of the rich and heavy taxes on profits gained from the ownership and sale of property. Other innovations in Lloyd George's budget included labour exchanges and a children's allowance on income tax.

Ramsay MacDonald argued that the Labour Party should fully support the budget. "Mr. Lloyd George's Budget, classified property into individual and social, incomes into earned and unearned, and followers more closely the theorical contentions of Socialism and sound economics than any previous Budget has done."

The Conservatives, who had a large majority in the House of Lords, objected to this attempt to redistribute wealth, and made it clear that they intended to block these proposals. Lloyd George reacted by touring the country making speeches in working-class areas on behalf of the budget and portraying the nobility as men who were using their privileged position to stop the poor from receiving their old age pensions. After a long struggle with the House of Lords Lloyd George finally got his budget through parliament.

Bernard Partridge (August, 1908)

With the House of Lords extremely unpopular with the British people, the Liberal government decided to take action to reduce its powers. The 1911 Parliament Act drastically cut the powers of the Lords. They were no longer allowed to prevent the passage of 'money bills' and it also restricted their ability to delay other legislation to three sessions of parliament.

When the House of Lords attempted to stop this bill's passage, the Prime Minister, Henry Asquith, appealed to George V for help. Asquith, who had just obtained a victory in the 1910 General Election, was in a strong position, and the king agreed that if necessary he would create 250 new Liberal peers to remove the Conservative majority in the Lords. Faced with the prospect of a House of Lords with a permanent Liberal majority, the Conservatives agreed to let the 1911 Parliament Act to become law.

Lloyd George's next reform was the 1911 National Insurance Act. This gave the British working classes the first contributory system of insurance against illness and unemployment. All wage-earners between sixteen and seventy had to join the health scheme. Each worker paid 4d a week and the employer added 3d. and the state 2d. In return for these payments, free medical attention, including medicine was given. Those workers who contributed were also

guaranteed 7s. a week for fifteen weeks in any one year, when they were unemployed.

Lloyd George's reforms were strongly criticised and some Conservatives accused him of being a socialist. There was no doubt that he had been heavily influenced by Fabian Society pamphlets on social reform that had been written by Beatrice Webb, Sidney Webb and George Bernard Shaw in the early 1900s. However, he had also been influenced by non-socialist writers such Seebohm Rowntree and Charles Booth.

Although most Labour Party members of the House of Commons had welcomed Lloyd George's reforms, politicians such as James Keir Hardie, Fred Jowett and George Lansbury argued that the level of benefits were far too low. They also complained that the pensions should be universal and disliked what was later to be called the Means Test aspect of these reforms.

In 1912 Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton of the political weekly, The Eye-Witness, accused Loyd George, along with Herbert Samuel and Rufus Isaacs of corruption. It was suggested that the men had profited by buying shares based on knowledge of a government contract granted to the Marconi Company to build a chain of wireless stations.

In January 1913 a parliamentary inquiry was held into the claims made by The Eye Witness. It was discovered that Rufus Isaacs had purchased 10,000 2 shares in Marconi and immediately resold 1,000 of these to Lloyd George. Although the parliamentary inquiry revealled that Lloyd George, Herbert Samuel and Sir Rufus Isaacs had profited directly from the policies of the government, it was decided the men had not been guilty of corruption.

When in opposition, Lloyd George had always been a supporter of women's rights, however, when in power, he did little to help the cause. This upsets members of both the NUWSS and the WSPU and resulted in many activists leaving the Liberal Party. In July 1912, Christabel Pankhurst began organizing a secret arson campaign. One of their first targets was Lloyd George and they successful burnt down a house that was being built for him.

At the end of July, 1914, it became clear to the British government that the country was on the verge of war with Germany. Four senior members of the government, Lloyd George, Charles Trevelyan, John Burns, and John Morley, were opposed to the country becoming involved in a European war. They informed the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, they intended to resign over the issue. When war was declared on 4th August, three of the men, Trevelyan, Burns and Morley, resigned, but Asquith managed to persuade Lloyd George, to change his mind.

The progressive wing of the Liberal Party, was disappointed with Lloyd George's unwillingness to oppose Britain's involvement in the First World War. In fact, he soon emerged as one of the main figures in the government willing to escalate the war in an effort to bring a quick victory. When the war appeared to be going badly in 1915, Lloyd George was asked to become Minister of Munitions. The coalition government was impressed with Lloyd George's abilities as a war minister and began to question Asquith's leadership of the country during this crisis.

The consequences of the Battle of the Somme put further pressure on Asquith. Colin Matthew has commented: "The huge casualties of the Somme implied a further drain on manpower and further problems for an economy now struggling to meet the demands made of it... Shipping losses from the U-boats had begun to be significant... Early in November 1916 he called for all departments to write memoranda on how they saw the pattern of 1917, the prologue to a general reconsideration of the allies' position."

It has been suggested that Herbert Asquith and the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) was never able to get total control of the war effort. It has been argued by John F. Naylor: "Neither this flawed body - partly advisory, partly executive - nor its two successors, the Dardanelles committee (June - October 1915), and the war committee (November 1915 - November 1916) enabled

the Asquith coalition to prevail over the military authorities in planning what remained an ineffective war effort."

At a meeting in Paris on 4th November, 1916, David Lloyd George came to the conclusion that the present structure of command and direction of policy could not win the war and might well lose it. Lloyd George agreed with Maurice Hankey, secretary of the Imperial War Cabinet, that he should talk to Andrew Bonar Law, the leader of the Conservative Party, about the situation. Bonar Law remained loyal to Asquith and so Lloyd George contacted Max Aitken instead and told him about his suggested reforms.

On 18th November, Aitken lunched with Bonar Law and put Lloyd George's case for reform. He also put forward the arguments for Lloyd George becoming the leader of the coalition. Aitken later recalled in his book, Politicians and the War (1928): "Once he had taken up war as his metier he seemed to breathe its true spirit; all other thoughts and schemes were abandoned, and he lived for, thought of and talked of nothing but the war. Ruthless to inefficiency and muddle-headedness in his conduct, sometimes devious, if you like, in the means employed when indirect methods would serve him in his aim, he yet exhibited in his country's death-grapple a kind of splendid sincerity."

Together, Lloyd George, Max Aitken, Andrew Bonar Law and Edward Carson, drafted a statement addressed to Asquith,

proposing a war council triumvirate and the Prime Minister as overlord. On 25th November, Bonar Law took the proposal to Asquith, who agreed to think it over. The next day he rejected it. Further negotiations took place and on 2nd December Asquith agreed to the setting up of "a small War Committee to handle the day to day conduct of the war, with full powers", independent of the cabinet. This information was leaked to the press by Carson. On 4th December The Times used these details of the War Committee to make a strong attack on Asquith. The following day he resigned from office.

On 7th December George V asked Lloyd George to form a second coalition government. Max Aitken later recalled that it was the most important thing that he had done in politics: "The destruction of the Asquith Government which was brought about by an honest intrigue. If the Asquith government had gone on, the country would have gone down."

Virginia Woolf dined with the Asquiths "two nights after their downfall; though Asquith himself was quite unmoved, Margot started to cry into the soup." His biographer, Colin Matthew, believes he was pleased that he was out of power: "He was not a great war leader, and he never attempted to portray himself as such. But he was not a bad one, either. Wartime to him was an aberration, not a fulfilment. In terms of the political style of Britain's conduct of the war, that was an important virtue, but it led Asquith to underestimate the extent to which twentieth-

century warfare was an all-embracing experience, and his sometimes almost perverse personal reluctance to appear constantly busy and unceasingly active told against him in the political and press world generally."

Lloyd George decided to establish what he described as "virtually a new system of government in this country". John F. Naylor has explained: "Hankey headed the operation - the secretary himself drew up the procedural rules - with these responsibilities, among others: (1) to record the proceedings of the War Cabinet; (2) to transmit relevant extracts from the minutes to departments concerned with implementing them or otherwise interested; (3) to prepare the agenda paper, and to arrange the attendance of ministers not in the War Cabinet and others required to be present for discussion of particular items on the agenda; (4) to receive papers from departments and circulate them to the War Cabinet or others as necessary. Thus Hankey established the precepts for a co-ordinating and record-keeping organization which the cabinet secretariat and its seamless successor, the Cabinet Office (from 1920), subsequently followed. The creation of the cabinet secretariat was his greatest achievement."

A.J.P. Taylor has argued in English History 1914-1945 (1965): "Where the old cabinet had met once a week or so and had kept no record of its proceedings, the war cabinet met practically every day - 300 times in 1917 - and Hankey, brought over from the Committee of Imperial Defence and its successors, organized an

efficient secretariat. He prepared agenda; kept minutes; and ensured afterwards that the decisions were operated by the department concerned. Hankey was also tempted to exceed his functions and to initiate proposals, particularly on strategy, instead of merely recording decisions."

Lloyd George, who had upset the radicals in his party by not opposing conscription in 1916, was now in overall charge of the war effort. However, Lloyd George found it difficult to control the tactics used by his generals on the Western Front but he had more success with the navy when he persuaded them to use the convoy system to ensure adequate imports of food and military supplies. At various stages advocated a campaign on the Italian front and sought to divert military resources to the Turkish theatre.

The military situation became worse after Germany concluded a separate peace with Russia. The War Cabinet, in a panic, talked of pulling back to the Channel ports and evacuating all British troops to England.

According to the historian, Michael Kettle, a group of military leaders became involved in a plot to overthrow David Lloyd George. Those involved in the conspiracy included General William Robertson, Chief of Staff and the prime ministers main political adviser, Maurice Hankey, the secretary of the Committee

of Imperial Defence (CID), General Frederick Maurice, director of military operations at the War Office and Colonel Charles Repington, the military correspondent of the Morning Post. Kettle argues that: "What Maurice had in mind was a small War Cabinet, dominated by Robertson, assisted by a brilliant British Ludendorff, and with a subservient Prime Minister. It is unclear who Maurice had in mind for this Ludendorff figure; but it is very clear that the intention was to get rid of Lloyd George - and quickly."

On 24th January, 1918, Repington wrote an article where he described what he called "the procrastination and cowardice of the Cabinet". Later that day Repington heard on good authority that Lloyd George had strongly urged the War Cabinet to imprison both him and his editor, Howell Arthur Gwynne. That evening Repington was invited to have dinner with Lord Chief Justice Charles Darling, where he received a polite judicial rebuke.

General William Robertson disagreed with Lloyd George's proposal to create an executive war board, chaired by Ferdinand Foch, with broad powers over allied reserves. Robertson expressed his opposition to General Herbert Plumer in a letter on 4th February, 1918: "It is impossible to have Chiefs of the General Staffs dealing with operations in all respects except reserves and to have people with no other responsibilities dealing with reserves and nothing else. In fact the decision is unsound, and neither do I see how it is to be worked either legally or constitutionally."

On 11th February, Repington, revealed in the Morning Post details of the coming offensive on the Western Front. Lloyd George later recorded: "The conspirators decided to publish the war plans of the Allies for the coming German offensive. Repington's betrayal might and ought to have decided the war." Repington and his editor, Howell Arthur Gwynne, were fined 100 each, plus costs, for a breach of Defence of the Realm regulations when he disclosed secret information in the newspaper.

General William Robertson wrote to Repington suggesting that he had been the one who had leaked him the information: "Like yourself, I did what I thought was best in the general interests of the country. I feel that your sacrifice has been great and that you have a difficult time in front of you. But the great thing is to keep on a straight course". General Frederick Maurice also sent a letter to Repington: "I have the greatest admiration for your courage and determination and am quite clear that you have been the victim of political persecution such as I did not think was possible in England."

Robertson put up a fight in the war cabinet against the proposed executive war board, but when it was clear that Lloyd George was unwilling to back down, he resigned his post. He was now replaced with General Henry Wilson. General Douglas Haig rejected the idea that Robertson should become one of his

commanders in France and he was given the eastern command instead.

On 9th April, 1918, Lloyd George, told the House of Commons that despite heavy casualties in 1917, the British Army in France was considerably stronger than it had been on January 1917. He also gave details of the number of British troops in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Palestine. Frederick Maurice, whose job it was to keep accurate statistics of British military strength, knew that Lloyd George had been guilty of misleading Parliament about the number of men in the British Army. Maurice believed that Lloyd George was deliberately holding back men from the Western Front in an attempt to undermine the position of Sir Douglas Haig.

On 6th May, 1918, Frederick Maurice wrote a letter to the press stating that ministerial statements were false. The letter appeared on the following morning in the The Morning Post, The Times, The Daily Chronicle and The Daily News. The letter accused David Lloyd George of giving the House of Commons inaccurate information. The letter created a sensation. Maurice was immediately suspended from duty and supporters of Herbert Henry Asquith called for a debate on the issue.

Maurice's biographer, Trevor Wilson: "Despite containing some errors of detail, the charges contained in Maurice's letter were well founded. Haig had certainly been obliged against his wishes

to take over from the French the area of front where his army suffered setback on 21 March. The numbers of infantrymen available to Haig were fewer, not greater, than a year before. And there were several more white divisions stationed in Egypt and Palestine at the time of the German offensive than the government had claimed."

The debate took place on 9th May and the motion put forward amounted to a vote of censure. If the government lost the vote, the prime minister would have been forced to resign. As A.J.P. Taylor has pointed out: "Lloyd George developed an unexpectedly good case. With miraculous sleight of hand, he showed that the figures of manpower which Maurice impuhned, had been supplied from the war office by Maurice's department." Although many MPs suspected that Lloyd George had mislead Parliament, there was no desire to lose his dynamic leadership during this crucial stage of the war. The government won the vote with a clear majority.

Frederick Maurice, by writing the letter, had committed a grave breach of discipline. He was retired from the British Army and was refused a court martial or inquiry where he would have been able to show that David Lloyd George had mislead the House of Commons on both the 9th April and 7th May, 1918.

According to Trevor Wilson: "And although Lloyd George subsequently claimed that the government had been supplied with its figures concerning troop strengths on the western front by Maurice's own department (figures which happened to be inaccurate), these had only been provided after the statements by Lloyd George to which Maurice took exception, and had been corrected by the time Lloyd George made his rebuttal to Maurice in the parliamentary debate of 9 May. Whether, even so, a serving officer should have taken issue with his political masters in the public way Maurice did must remain a matter of opinion. Haig, for one, certainly thought not, as he recorded in his diary. Maurice himself took the view that, as a concerned citizen, he was obliged to rebut misleading statements by ministers which served to divert responsibility for setbacks on the battlefield from the political authorities, where it belonged, to the military. To this end he was prepared to sacrifice his career in the army."

Lloyd George's decision to join the Conservatives in removing Herbert Asquith in 1916 split the Liberal Party. In the 1918 General Election, many Liberals supported candidates who remained loyal to Asquith. Despite this, Lloyd George's Coalition group won 459 seats and had a large majority over the Labour Party and members of the Liberal Party who had supported Asquith.

Herbert Asquith lost his seat in East Fife in 1918 and William Wedgwood Benn led the groups opposed to Lloyd George's

government. John Benn, who was also opposed to Lloyd George, gave the group the name, Wee Frees, after a small group of Free Church of Scotland members who refused to accept the union of their church with the United Presbyterian Church.

At the Versailles Peace Conference Lloyd George clashed with Georges Clemenceau about how the defeated powers should be treated. Lloyd George told Clemenceau that his proposals were too harsh and would "plunge Germany and the greater part of Europe into Bolshevism." Clemenceau replied that Lloyd George's alternative proposals would lead to Bolshevism in France.

At the end of the negotiations Clemenceau managed to restore Alsace-Lorraine to France but some of his other demands were resisted by the other delegates. Clemenceau, like most people in France, thought that Germany had been treated too leniently at Versailles.

During the 1918 General Election campaign, Lloyd George promised comprehensive reforms to deal with education, housing, health and transport. However, he was now a prisoner of the Conservative Party who had no desire to introduce these reforms. Lloyd George endured three years of frustration before he was ousted from power by the Conservative members of his cabinet.

For the next twenty years Lloyd George continued to campaign for progressive causes, but without a political party to support him, he was never to hold power again. During the 1920s Lloyd George produced several reports on how Britain could be improved. This included Coal and Power (1924), Towns and the Land (1925), Britain's Industrial Future (1928) and We Can Conquer Unemployment (1929).

On 22nd September 22, 1933, Lloyd George declared in a speech at Barmouth: If the Powers succeed in overthrowing Nazism in Germany, what would follow? Not a Conservative, Socialist or Liberal regime, but extreme Communism. Surely that could not be their objective. A Communist Germany would be infinitely more formidable than a Communist Russia.

In September 1936 Lloyd George visited Adolf Hitler in an attempt to persuade him not to stop taking military action in Europe. After his arrival back in Britain he wrote in the Daily Express : "I have now seen the famous German leader and also something of the great change he has effected. Whatever one may think of his methods - and they are certainly not those of a Parliamentary country - there can be no doubt that he has achieved a marvellous transformation in the spirit of the people, in their attitude towards each other, and in their social and economic outlook. One man has accomplished this miracle. He is a born leader of men. A magnetic dynamic personality with a single-minded purpose, a resolute will, and a dauntless heart."

Modern History Sourcebook: John Hobson: Imperialism, 1902 John A. Hobson (1858-1940), an English economist, wrote one the most famous critiques of the economic bases of imperialism in 1902. Amid the welter of vague political abstractions to lay one's finger accurately upon any "ism" so as to pin it down and mark it out by definition seems impossible. Where meanings shift so quickly and so subtly, not only following changes of thought, but often manipulated artificially by political practitioners so as to obscure, expand, or distort, it is idle to demand the same rigour as is expected in the exact sciences. A certain broad consistency in its relations to other kindred terms is the nearest approach to definition which such a term as Imperialism admits. Nationalism, internationalism, colonialism, its three closest congeners, are equally elusive, equally shifty, and the changeful overlapping of all four demands the closest vigilance of students of modern politics. During the nineteenth century the struggle towards nationalism, or establishment of political union on a basis of nationality, was a dominant factor alike in dynastic movements and as an inner motive in the life of masses of population. That struggle, in external politics, sometimes took a disruptive form, as in the case of Greece, Servia, Roumania, and Bulgaria breaking from Ottoman rule, and the detachment of North Italy from her unnatural alliance with the Austrian Empire. In other cases it was a unifying or a centralising force, enlarging the area of nationality, as in the case of Italy and the Pan-Slavist movement in Russia. Sometimes

nationality was taken as a basis of federation of States, as in United Germany and in North America. It is true that the forces making for political union sometimes went further, making for federal union of diverse nationalities, as in the cases of Austria-Hungary, Norway and Sweden, and the Swiss Federation. But the general tendency was towards welding into large strong national unities the loosely related States and provinces with shifting attachments and alliances which covered large areas of Europe since the break-up of the Empire. This was the most definite achievement of the nineteenth century. The force of nationality, operating in this work, is quite as visible in the failures to achieve political freedom as in the successes; and the struggles of Irish, Poles, Finns, Hungarians, and Czechs to resist the forcible subjection to or alliance with stronger neighbours brought out in its full vigour the powerful sentiment of nationality. The middle of the century was especially distinguished by a series of definitely "nationalist" revivals, some of which found important interpretation in dynastic changes, while others were crushed or collapsed. Holland, Poland, Belgium, Norway, the Balkans, formed a vast arena for these struggles of national forces. The close of the third quarter of the century saw Europe fairly settled into large national States or federations of States, though in the nature of the case there can be no finality, and Italy continued to look to Trieste, as Germany still looks to Austria, for the fulfilment of her manifest destiny. This passion and the dynastic forms it helped to mould and animate are largely attributable to the fierce prolonged resistance which peoples, both great and small, were called on to maintain against the imperial designs of Napoleon.

The national spirit of England was roused by the tenseness of the struggle to a self-consciousness it had never experienced since "the spacious days of great Elizabeth." Jena made Prussia into a great nation; the Moscow campaign brought Russia into the field of European nationalities as a factor in politics, opening her for the first time to the full tide of Western ideas and influences. Turning from this territorial and dynastic nationalism to the spirit of racial, linguistic, and economic solidarity which has been the underlying motive, we find a still more remarkable movement. Local particularism on the one hand, vague cosmopolitanism upon the other, yielded to a ferment of nationalist sentiment, manifesting itself among the weaker peoples not merely in a sturdy and heroic resistance against political absorption or territorial nationalism, but in a passionate revival of decaying customs, language, literature and art; while it bred in more dominant peoples strange ambitions of national "destiny" and an attendant spirit of Chauvinism. . No mere array of facts and figures adduced to illustrate the economic nature of the new Imperialism will suffice to dispel the popular delusion that the use of national force to secure new markets by annexing fresh tracts of territory is a sound and a necessary policy for an advanced industrial country like Great Britain.... - But these arguments are not conclusive. It is open to Imperialists to argue thus: "We must have markets for our growing manufactures, we must have new outlets for the investment of our surplus capital and for the energies of the adventurous surplus of our population: such expansion is a necessity of life to a nation with our great and growing powers of production. An ever larger share of our

population is devoted to the manufactures and commerce of towns, and is thus dependent for life and work upon food and raw materials from foreign lands. In order to buy and pay for these things we must sell our goods abroad. During the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century we could do so without difficulty by a natural expansion of commerce with continental nations and our colonies, all of which were far behind us in the main arts of manufacture and the carrying trades. So long as England held a virtual monopoly of the world markets for certain important classes of manufactured goods, Imperialism was unnecessary. After 1870 this manufacturing and trading supremacy was greatly impaired: other nations, especially Germany, the United States, and Belgium, advanced with great rapidity, and while they have not crushed or even stayed the increase of our external trade, their competition made it more and more difficult to dispose of the full surplus of our manufactures at a profit. The encroachments made by these nations upon our old markets, even in our own possessions, made it most urgent that we should take energetic means to secure new markets. These new markets had to lie in hitherto undeveloped countries, chiefly in the tropics, where vast populations lived capable of growing economic needs which our manufacturers and merchants could supply. Our rivals were seizing and annexing territories for similar purposes, and when they had annexed them closed them to our trade The diplomacy and the arms of Great Britain had to be used in order to compel the owners of the new markets to deal with us: and experience showed that the safest means of securing and developing such markets is by establishing

'protectorates' or by annexation.... It was this sudden demand for foreign markets for manufactures and for investments which was avowedly responsible for the adoption of Imperialism as a political policy.... They needed Imperialism because they desired to use the public resources of their country to find profitable employment for their capital which otherwise would be superfluous.... Every improvement of methods of production, every concentration of ownership and control, seems to accentuate the tendency. As one nation after another enters the machine economy and adopts advanced industrial methods, it becomes more difficult for its manufacturers, merchants, and financiers to dispose profitably of their economic resources, and they are tempted more and more to use their Governments in order to secure for their particular use some distant undeveloped country by annexation and protection. The process, we may be told, is inevitable, and so it seems upon a superficial inspection. Everywhere appear excessive powers of production, excessive capital in search of investment. It is admitted by all business men that the growth of the powers of production in their country exceeds the growth in consumption, that more goods can be produced than can be sold at a profit, and that more capital exists than can find remunerative investment. It is this economic condition of affairs that forms the taproot of Imperialism. If the consuming public in this country raised its standard of consumption to keep pace with every rise of productive powers, there could be no excess of goods or capital clamorous to use Imperialism in order to find markets: foreign trade would indeed exist.... Everywhere the issue of quantitative versus qualitative

growth comes up. This is the entire issue of empire. A people limited in number and energy and in the land they occupy have the choice of improving to the utmost the political and economic management of their own land, confining themselves to such accessions of territory as are justified by the most economical disposition of a growing population; or they may proceed, like the slovenly farmer, to spread their power and energy over the whole earth, tempted by the speculative value or the quick profits of some new market, or else by mere greed of territorial acquisition, and ignoring the political and economic wastes and risks involved by this imperial career. It must be clearly understood that this is essentially a choice of alternatives; a full simultaneous application of intensive and extensive cultivation is impossible. A nation may either, following the example of Denmark or Switzerland, put brains into agriculture, develop a finely varied system of public education, general and technical, apply the ripest science to its special manufacturing industries, and so support in progressive comfort and character a considerable population upon a strictly limited area; or it may, like Great r Britain, neglect its agriculture, allowing its lands to go out of cultivation and its population to grow up in towns, fall behind other nations in its methods of education and in the capacity of adapting to its uses the latest scientific knowledge, in order that it may squander its pecuniary and military resources in forcing bad markets and finding speculative fields of investment in distant corners of the earth, adding millions of square miles and of unassimilable population to the area of the Empire. The driving forces of class interest which stimulate and support this false economy we have explained. No

remedy will serve which permits the future operation of these forces. It is idle to attack Imperialism or Militarism as political expedients or policies unless the axe is laid at the economic root of the tree, and the classes for whose interest Imperialism works are shorn of the surplus revenues which seek this outlet. From John A. Hobson, Imperialism (London: Allen and Unwin, 1948),pp.3-5 71-72,77-78,80-81,92-93. This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history. Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use of the Sourcebook. (c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997 halsall@murray.fordham.edu Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism By Dr. Lawrence Britt Source Free Inquiry.co 5-28-3

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread

domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections. communism

Definition Economic and social system in which all (or nearly all) property and resources are collectively owned by a classless society and not by individual citizens. Based on the 1848 publication 'Communist Manifesto' by two German political philosophers, Karl Marx (1818-1883) and his close associate Friedrich Engels (18201895), it envisaged common ownership of all land and capital and withering away of the coercive power of the state. In such a society, social relations were to be regulated on the fairest of all

principles: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Differences between manual and intellectual labor and between rural and urban life were to disappear, opening up the way for unlimited development of human potential. In view of the above, there has never been a truly communist state although the Soviet Union of the past and China, Cuba, and North Korea of today stake their claims. See also Marxism and Socialism.

Decline of the Liberal Party 1900 to 1918

The decline of the Liberal Party was dramatic and was never reversed. In 1906, the Liberal Party achieved its greatest electoral victory. By the end of both elections in 1910, the Liberals had to rely on the support of the Labour Party and the Irish Nationalists. Why was this decline in fortunes so sudden?

It is probable that the 1906 election victory disguised one simple fact that the Liberals could not have fought against. After the 1867 Reform Act, far more working class men could vote. This number was further increased after the introduction of the 1884 Reform Act. For years, the only party that seemingly represented the best interests of the working class man was the Liberal Party. The creation of the Independent Labour Party ended this and gave

the working class their own political voice. When the ILP stood at their first general election in 1895 they made little impact as would be expected from a novice party. However, by the 1900 election and the elections held in 1906 and twice in 1910, the Labour Party was starting make an impact in terms of MPs elected and votes gained. In 1900, the Labour Party got 62,698 votes. By 1910 this had grown to 505,675 an eight-fold increase in just ten years. This was also matched with the growth of Labour MPs in Parliament 2 in 1900 to 40 in 1910.

The First World War interrupted any further electoral advance for the Labour Party until 1918 when in the Coupon Election the party got 2,245,777 votes just under 21% of the total cast with 57 MPs elected. This growth in support was invariably at the expense of the Liberal Party. Conservative supporters stayed tolerably solid during this time and were not likely to change their support to the Labour Party. The Liberal Party had little that they could offer the working class that was not offered by the Labour Party.

However, the growth of support for Labour was not the only reason for the Liberal Partys decline. The party itself was a split force the result of World War One. On August 1st and 2nd, Liberal Associations across the UK met and voted that the government should pass a resolution of neutrality. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Grey, believed that war with Germany was inevitable. The news of atrocities committed by the Germans in Belgium served to rally the people behind the government and there was general support for the Liberals when war was declared on August 4th. However, the split in the party was merely disguised as opposed to being repaired.

The Liberals had been the traditional anti-war party. The Liberals had even been split over the Boer War. Now they led the country during the worlds greatest war. While the war remained popular and jingoism ruled, those in the party who felt that war was a necessary evil imposed on the government by the Germans could feel safe.

The government of Asquith was rocked by a shell scandal of 1915 and as a result formed a war coalition with the

Conservatives. To some the shell scandal was a clear indication that the Liberals were not up to the job of governing the country in its hour of need. The failure of the Dardanelles campaign was also blamed on the government and many viewed the resignation of First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher as a sign of his frustration of working with the government.

To bolster the whole government of the country, the Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law demanded a coalition. In this demand he found an ally in David Lloyd George a Liberal. The internal manoeuvrings within the Liberal Party were already showing. In May 1915, Asquith agreed to Bonar Laws demand for a coalition. The Conservatives got few cabinet posts of any importance Bonar Law himself only got the Colonial Office but the Conservative media portrayed the whole issue as one in which the Liberals could not be trusted to run the country and to do so, they had to bring on board the Conservatives. The creation of a coalition, the shell scandal and the failure of the Dardanelles campaign did not bode well for the future of the Liberal Party.

The first coalition did have its successes. Lloyd George was made Minister of Munitions and there was a significant improvement in the supply of ammunition to the war front. Lloyd George was also a leading member of the Liberal Party, so this reflected well on both. But it was also Lloyd George who had wanted a coalition government at the expense of Asquiths Liberal government.

1916 also presented the government with the Somme offensive. This had been billed as the campaign that would end the war. Instead the Somme became famous for the sheer number of casualties on all sides. The failure of the Somme to achieve its stated aim also led to calls for conscription. A further split between Lloyd George and Asquith occurred over the issue of married men and conscription. Lloyd George threatened to resign if married men were not included in conscription. Rather than face such a situation given Lloyd Georges status within the country, Asquith agreed to his demand.

During the Easter of 1916, Lloyd George, supported by the Conservative Party and the Conservative media, pushed for total conscription. Many in the Liberal Party were not keen on this but

the Easter Uprising in Dublin gave Asquith the opportunity to introduce total conscription without losing too much face to the man who was quickly becoming an obvious rival for the partys leadership.

In December 1916, Lloyd George felt sufficiently powerful to call for the creation of a War Council that he would be in charge of. This would have taken control of the war away from Asquith who, as Prime Minister, would have taken charge of domestic affairs. Bonar Law supported Lloyd George in this but crucially a number of leading Conservatives did not follow his line Lord Curzon, Lord Cecil and Chamberlain among them. Buoyed by this, Asquith refused to accept Lloyd Georges call and Lloyd George resigned from the coalition to be followed by Bonar Law. For his part, to stamp his authority on both his party and the coalition government, Asquith also resigned fully expecting to be called back by both the Liberals and Conservatives. This did not happen. The king called on Lloyd George to form a new coalition government.

World War One effectively split the Liberal Party in two those who supported Lloyd George and those who supported Asquith. The Squiffites sat on the Opposition benches but they did not act in opposition. However, despite this situation, the party ostensibly maintained a single whip system even if a different man represented each side. For Lloyd George, the Chief Whip was Captain Freddie Guest. For Asquith, it was John Galland. Both men were allowed to canvass the other side, so the party saw this as a single whip system. However, nothing could disguise the fact that the party was on the verge of a major split.

Lloyd Georges cabinet was mainly made up of Conservatives (the likes of Curzon and Bonar Law) while Arthur Henderson was the sole Labour representative. Lloyd George wanted Winston Churchill in the cabinet but the Conservatives vetoed this.

Lloyd George did not get things his own way. In early 1918, Major General Sir Frederick Maurice resigned as Director of Military Operations and attacked Lloyd George for not sending enough men to the Western Front and then misleading the House of Commons over the whole affair. Asquith saw an opportunity to

attack Lloyd George and demanded a parliamentary enquiry. His motion was easily defeated (298 votes to 106) but only because the Conservatives supported Lloyd George. However, when the figures were analysed, 98 Liberal MPs voted for Asquith and only 72 for Lloyd George.

Some historians view this event as the one that effectively split the party. Officially, there was only one party with one party leader (Asquith) but Lloyd George had set up his own headquarters for his own staff.

When the war ended, Lloyd George tried to build bridges with Asquith by offering him the position of Lord Chancellor. However, Asquith wanted nothing less than the position of Prime Minister. As there was a clear split, Lloyd George decided to use the euphoria over the end of the war to call for an election.

Lloyd George decided to maintain the coalition into peacetime. All those who fought the 1918 general election and who supported the coalition were given a letter of support from Lloyd George and Bonar Law the so-called coupon. 159 Liberals were given the coupon those who had consistently supported Lloyd George. A Conservative candidate did not oppose a Liberal candidate who had been given the coupon. Conservative candidates opposed Liberal candidates who had not been given the coupon. All 159 Lloyd George Liberals won their seats. Only 26 Squiffite Liberals won a place in the Commons and Asquith lost his seat. Though the Liberal Party was not officially split, to all intents it may have well been.

Popularity: Neville Chamberlain popularity 8/10 I Like this quote I dislike this quoteHow horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing!

Neville Chamberlain quote Add to Chapter...

I Like this quote I dislike this quoteIt has always seemed to me that in dealing with foreign countries we do not give ourselves a chance of success unless we try to understand their mentality, which is not always the same as our own, and it really is astonishing to contemplate how the i

Neville Chamberlain quote About: Relationships quotes, Country quotes. Add to Chapter...

I Like this quote I dislike this quoteWe should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analyzing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will. I cannot believe that such a program would be rejected by the people of this country, even if it does mean the establishment of personal contact with the dictators.

Neville Chamberlain quote Add to Chapter...

I Like this quote I dislike this quoteI believe it is peace for our time . . . peace with honour.

Neville Chamberlain quote Add to Chapter...

I Like this quote I dislike this quoteWhatever the reason -whether Hitler thought he might get away with what he had got without fighting for it, or whether it was that after all the preparations were not sufficiently complete -- however, one thing is certain, he missed the bus.

Neville Chamberlain quote Add to Chapter...

I Like this quote I dislike this quoteIn war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.

Neville Chamberlain quote Add to Chapter...

I Like this quote I dislike this quoteThis morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that, unless we heard from them by eleven o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.

Neville Chamberlain quote Add to Chapter...

I Like this quote I dislike this quoteWe would fight not for the political future of a distant city, rather for principles whose destruction would ruin the possibility of peace and security for the peoples of the earth.

Neville Chamberlain quote Neville Chamberlain

Neville Chamberlain was Prime Minister of Great Britain in September 1939 as Europe descended into World War Two after the failure of appeasement in the late 1930's. Chamberlain paid a

political price for the failure of Britain in Norway in the spring of 1940 and resigned as Prime Minister to be succeeded by Winston Churchill. He died shortly afterwards.

Neville Chamberlain was born into a famous political family. He was the son of Joseph Chamberlain and his half-brother was Austen. All three were to make their mark in politics, one way or another.

Neville Chamberlain was born in 1869. He was educated at Rugby School and after this, he managed his father's sisal plantation in the Bahamas for seven years. On his return to Britain in 1897, Chamberlain became involved in local politics and in 1915 he was elected Lord Mayor of Birmingham, arguably England's second city. In 1916, he was appointed director-general of National Service but was dismissed from this position by David LloydGeorge in 1917 who did not understand or appreciate Chamberlain's method of working - this involved a detailed understanding of the problem at hand which usually led to a solution occurring later than Lloyd-George was used to.

In 1918, Chamberlain became the Member of Parliament for Ladywood in Birmingham. He held this constituency until 1929 when he was elected MP for Edgbaston - also in Birmingham. Chamberlain was MP for Edgbaston until his death in 1940.

Chamberlain gained a reputation for thoroughness in his duties as a MP and from 1924 to 1929, he served as Minister for Health under Stanley Baldwin and and he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in the National Government of Ramsey Macdonald. Chamberlain held this position from November 1931 to May 1937. In this position, he enhanced his reputation as an efficient administrator and it surprised very few when he became Prime Minister on May 28th, 1937.

Chamberlain was suddenly thrust into a position which required him to be involved in European politics. He had no experience in foreign affairs and frequently took the advice of one of his advisors, Sir Horace Wilson, as opposed to the advice of the Foreign Office.

In the late 1930's, Chamberlain is most associated with the policy of appeasement. Polls from the time show that many people in Britain supported what Chamberlain was trying to achieve. It was only after the failure of appeasement that Chamberlain's decisions and career acquired a more negative image.

Two schools of thought exist as to why Chamberlain pursued appeasement.

One is that he honestly thought that he could address the grievances that he believed Germany rightly held after the Treaty of Versailles. Chamberlain believed that if was seen as being fair to German concerns, then he could achieve success and stop Europe from declining into war.

Another theory is that Chamberlain believed that appeasement was worth trying but that war was inevitable. He also realised that Britain was not well prepared for war and that he needed to buy time to improve Britain's military position. In particular, it is said that Chamberlain knew that our air defences were weak and that the more time he could gain, the stronger they would become.

It is possible that a combination of the two - a desire for peace matched with a desire to ensure Britain was able to defend itself determined what Chamberlain attempted to do.

In March 1939, Germany's army swallowed up the rest of Czechoslovakia and destroyed whatever meaning the Munich Agreement ever had. Chamberlain swiftly offered a guarantee to Poland and when Poland was attacked in September 1939, Chamberlain had little choice but to declare war on Germany.

Perceived wisdom would have people believe that Chamberlain let down the British people when war was declared. In fact, in

September 1939, his popularity rating was 55% and by Christmas 1939 in the era of the Phoney War, this had increased to 68%.

It was the abject failure of the British military in Norway that ended Chamberlain's time as Prime Minister. Many in Parliament saw that he would not be an inspirational war leader and many politicians refused to serve in his proposed National Government. "It is not a question of who are the Prime Minister's friends. It is a far bigger issue. He has appealed for sacrifice. The nation is prepared for every sacrifice as long as it has leadership, so long as the government show clearly what they are aiming at, and so long as the nation is confident that those who are leading it are doing their best. I say solemnly that the Prime Minister should give an example of sacrifice, because there is nothing which can contribute more to victory than that he should sacrifice the seals of office."

David Lloyd George

He resigned on May 10th 1940 and was replaced as Prime Minister by Winston Churchill. Chamberlain served as Lord President of the Council in Churchill's government. In October 1940, ill health forced him to resign this position and on November 9th, 1940, Neville Chamberlain died. Oswald Mosley - Briton, Fascist, European

Sir Oswald Mosley"No rising star in the political firmament ever shone more brightly than Sir Oswald Mosley. Since by general assent he could have become the leader of either the Labour or the Conservative Party. What Mosley so valiantly stood for could have saved this country from the Hungry Thirties and the Second World War". - Michael Foot, M.P.

"The greatest comet of British politics in the twentieth century . . . an orator of the highest rank. He produced, almost unaided, a programme of economic reconstruction which surpassed anything offered by Lloyd George or, in the United States, by F. D. Roosevelt... He has continued fertile in ideas.. These ideas came to him by inspiration . . . Interned quite absurdly under Regulation 18B during the Second World War. . . He was never anti-Semitic only opposed to a Second World War for the sake of Jews elsewhere. He was never unpatriotic - only indifferent to German conquests in eastern Europe... A superb political thinker, the best of our age". - A.J.P.Taylor

"A man who had aimed throughout his life at what he might describe as a Greek idea of excellence . He is anxious to synthesise the impulses of religion and science ... In the field of ideas he was a creative force... His tremendous talents as a platform speaker and parliamentary debater were available to give maximum effect. If events had so decided and awarded him the supreme office he

would not have lacked the dedication nor the courage" - Earl of Longford

"He had an impeccable record in the First World War . . It was silly to intern Mosley during the Second World War. He was not in the least unpatriotic, any more than he was anti-Semitic or in favour of revolution by force.. . He had, I think, greater natural political talent than any survivor of his generation from the First World War" - Sir Colin Coote

"Attentive, considerate and infinitely courteous. . . he talks like a statesman who may be in the wilderness but who knows he is not finished yet... Sir Oswald believes in a consensus government, with people from the parties, the universities, public life and the army.. . Would go to the stake for Britain and her people" Geoffrey Moorhouse

"A man of powerful will and bold intelligence, self-disciplined, by no means lacking in shrewdness or even humour, a spell-binding speaker, a truly formidable figure". - Colin Welch

"In his extraordinary career as soldier, politician, socialite, international sportsman, he had known most of the prominent people of his time.., a spectacular career". - George Murray

"He might have been able to lead either the Conservative or the Labour Party and in either case . . . I should have joined him. I discerned in him . . . this kind of quality of leadership that I discerned in only two other men during all my period of political life. One is Lloyd George and the other is Churchill". - Lord Boothby

"The stuff of greatness - more than a spark of genius". - John Blake

Diana Mosley - Loved Ones Diana MosleyIT may be considered inappropriate to include a short memoir of Oswald Mosley in a book about friends. We were married for forty-four years, my knowledge of him and my love for him can obviously not be compared with the affection I bore the other characters I have tried to describe. As I shall never write his biography, which on the political side has been adequately done by Robert Skidelsky and is certain to be done again, and as his autobiographyMy Life was a highly-praised bestseller when it was published in 1968, all that seems necessary is a short account of the man himself in private life, and perhaps to clear up one or two mysteries. Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was born on 20th April, 1889, in the small Austrian town of Braunau near the German border. Both Hitler's parents had come from poor peasant families. His father Alois Hitler, the illegitimate son of a housemaid, was an intelligent and ambitious man and later became a senior customs official.

Klara Hitler was Alois' third wife. Alois was twenty-three years older than Klara and already had two children from his previous marriages. Klara and Alois had five children but only Adolf and a younger sister, Paula, survived to become adults.

Alois, who was fifty-one when Adolf was born, was extremely keen for his son to do well in life. Alois did have another son by an earlier marriage but he had been a big disappointment to him and eventually ended up in prison for theft. Alois was a strict father and savagely beat his son if he did not do as he was told.

Hitler did extremely well at primary school and it appeared he had a bright academic future in front of him. He was also popular with other pupils and was much admired for his leadership qualities. He was also a deeply religious child and for a while considered the possibility of becoming a monk.

Competition was much tougher in the larger secondary school and his reaction to not being top of the class was to stop trying. His

father was furious as he had high hopes that Hitler would follow his example and join the Austrian civil service when he left school. However, Hitler was a stubborn child and attempts by his parents and teachers to change his attitude towards his studies were unsuccessful.

Hitler also lost his popularity with his fellow pupils. They were no longer willing to accept him as one of their leaders. As Hitler liked giving orders he spent his time with younger pupils. He enjoyed games that involved fighting and he loved re-enacting battles from the Boer War. His favourite game was playing the role of a commando rescuing Boers from English concentration camps.

The only teacher Hitler appeared to like at secondary school was Leopold Potsch, his history master. Potsch, like many people living in Upper Austria, was a German Nationalist. Potsch told Hitler and his fellow pupils of the German victories over France in 1870 and 1871 and attacked the Austrians for not becoming involved in these triumphs. Otto von Bismarck, the first chancellor of the German Empire, was one of Hitler's early historical heroes.

Hitler's other main interest at school was art. His father was incensed when Hitler told him that instead of joining the civil service he was going to become an artist. The relationship between Hitler and his father deteriorated and the conflict only ended with the death of Alois Hitler in 1903.

Hitler was thirteen when his father died. His death did not cause the family financial hardships. The Hitler family owned their own home and they also received a lump sum and a generous civil service pension.

Klara Hitler, a kind and gentle woman, tended to spoil her son. Like her husband she was keen for Adolf to do well at school. Her attempts at persuasion achieved no more success than her husband's threats and he continued to obtain poor grades.

At the age of fifteen he did so badly in his examinations that he was told he would have to repeat the whole year's work again. Hitler hated the idea and managed to persuade his mother to allow him to leave school without a secondary education qualification. He celebrated by getting drunk. However, he found it an humiliating experience and vowed never to get drunk again. He kept his promise and by the time he reached his thirties he had given up alcohol completely.

When he was eighteen Hitler received an inheritance from his father's will. With the money he moved to Vienna where he planned to become an art student. Hitler had a high opinion of his artistic abilities and was shattered when the Vienna Academy of Art rejected his application. He also applied to the Vienna School

of Architecture but was not admitted because he did not have a school leaving certificate.

Hitler was humiliated by these two rejections and could not bring himself to tell his mother what had happened. Instead he continued to live in Vienna pretending he was an art student.

In 1907 Klara Hitler died from cancer. Her death affected him far more deeply than the death of his father. He had fond memories of his mother, carried her photograph wherever he went and, it is claimed, had it in his hand when he died in 1945.

As the eldest child, Hitler now received his father's civil service pension. It was more money than many people received in wages and meant that Hitler did not have to find employment. He spent most of the morning in bed reading and in the afternoon he walked around Vienna studying buildings, visiting museums, and making sketches.

In 1909 Hitler should have registered for military service. He was unwilling to serve Austria, which he despised, so he ignored his call-up papers. It took four years for the authorities to catch up with him. When he had his medical for the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1914 he was rejected as being: "Unfit for combatant and auxiliary duty - too weak. Unable to bear arms."

The outbreak of the First World War provided him with an opportunity for a fresh start. It was a chance for him to become involved in proving that Germany was superior to other European countries. Hitler claimed that when he heard the news of war: "I was overcome with impetuous enthusiasm, and falling on my knees, wholeheartedly thanked Heaven that I had been granted the happiness to live live at this time. Rejecting the idea of fighting for Austria, Hitler volunteered for the German Army. In times of war medical examinations are not so rigorous.

Hitler liked being in the army. For the first time he was part of a group that was fighting for a common goal. Hitler also liked the excitement of fighting in a war. Although fairly cautious in his actions, he did not mind risking his life and impressed his commanding officers for volunteering for dangerous missions.

His fellow soldiers described him as "odd" and "peculiar". One soldier from his regiment, Hans Mend, claimed that Hitler was an isolated figure who spent long periods of time sitting in the corner holding his head in silence. Then all of a sudden, Mend claimed, he would jump up and make a speech. These outbursts were usually attacks on Jews and Marxists who Hitler claimed were undermining the war effort.

Hitler was given the job of despatch-runner. It was a dangerous job as it involved carrying messages from regimental headquarters to the front-line. On one day alone, three out of eight of the regiment's despatch-runners were killed. For the first time since he was at primary school Hitler was a success.

Hitler won five medals including the prestigious Iron Cross during the First World War. His commanding officer wrote: "As a dispatch-runner, he has shown cold-blooded courage and exemplary boldness. Under conditions of great peril, when all the communication lines were cut, the untiring and fearless activity of Hitler made it possible for important messages to go through".

Although much decorated in the war, Hitler only reached the rank of corporal. This was probably due to his eccentric behaviour and the fear that the other soldiers might not obey the man they considered so strange.

In October 1918, Hitler was blinded in a British mustard gas attack. He was sent to a military hospital and gradually recovered his sight. While he was in hospital Germany surrendered. Hitler went into a state of deep depression, and had periods when he could not stop crying. He spent most of his time turned towards the hospital wall refusing to talk to anyone. Once again Hitler's efforts had ended in failure.

After the war Hitler was stationed in Munich, the capital of Bavaria. While Hitler was in Munich, the capital of Bavaria, Kurt Eisner, leader of the Independent Socialist Party, declared Bavaria a Socialist Republic. Hitler was appalled by the revolution. As a German Nationalist he disagreed with the socialist belief in equality.

Hitler saw socialism as part of a Jewish conspiracy. Many of the socialist leaders in Germany, including Kurt Eisner, Rosa Luxemburg, Ernst Toller and Eugen Levine were Jews. So also were many of the leaders of the October Revolution in Russia. This included Leon Trotsky, Gregory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Dimitri Bogrov, Karl Radek, Yakov Sverdlov, Maxim Litvinov, Adolf Joffe, and Moisei Uritsky. It had not escaped Hitler's notice that Karl Marx, the prophet of socialism, had also been a Jew.

It was no coincidence that Jews had joined socialist and communist parties in Europe. Jews had been persecuted for centuries and therefore were attracted to a movement that proclaimed that all men and women deserved to be treated as equals. This message was reinforced when on 10th July, 1918, the Bolshevik government in Russia passed a law that abolished all discrimination between Jews and non-Jews.

It was not until May, 1919 that the German Army entered Munich and overthrew the Bavarian Socialist Republic. Hitler was arrested with other soldiers in Munich and was accused of being a socialist. Hundreds of socialists were executed without trial but Hitler was able to convince them that he had been an opponent of the regime. To prove this he volunteered to help to identify soldiers who had supported the Socialist Republic. The authorities agreed to this proposal and Hitler was transferred to the commission investigating the revolution.

Information supplied by Hitler helped to track down several soldiers involved in the uprising. His officers were impressed by his hostility to left-wing ideas and he was recruited as a political officer. Hitler's new job was to lecture soldiers on politics. The main aim was to promote his political philosophy favoured by the army and help to combat the influence of the Russian Revolution on the German soldiers.

Hitler, who had for years been ignored when he made political speeches, now had a captive audience. The political climate had also changed. Germany was a defeated and disillusioned country. At Versailles the German government had been forced to sign a peace treaty that gave away 13% of her territory. This meant the loss of 6 million people, a large percentage of her raw materials (65% of iron ore reserves, 45% of her coal, 72% of her zinc) and 10% of her factories. Germany also lost all her overseas colonies.

Under the terms of the Versailles Treaty Germany also had to pay for damage caused by the war. These reparations amounted to 38% of her national wealth.

Hitler was no longer isolated. The German soldiers who attended his lectures shared his sense of failure. They found his message that they were not to blame attractive. He told them that Germany had not been beaten on the battlefield but had been betrayed by Jews and Marxists who had preached revolution and undermined the war effort.

The German Army also began using Hitler as a spy. In September 1919, he was instructed to attend a meeting of the German Worker's Party (GWP). The army feared that this new party, led by Anton Drexler, might be advocating communist revolution. Hitler discovered that the party's political ideas were similar to his own. He approved of Drexler's German nationalism and anti-Semitism but was unimpressed with the way the party was organized. Although there as a spy, Hitler could not restrain himself when a member made a point he disagreed with, and he stood up and made a passionate speech on the subject.

Drexler was impressed with Hitler's abilities as an orator and invited him to join the party. At first Hitler was reluctant, but

urged on by his commanding officer, Captain Karl Mayr, he eventually agreed. He was only the fifty-fourth person to join the GWP. Hitler was immediately asked to join the executive committee and was later appointed the party's propaganda manager.

In the next few weeks Hitler brought several members of his army into the party, including one of his commanding officers, Captain Ernst Roehm. The arrival of Roehm was an important development as he had access to the army political fund and was able to transfer some of the money into the GWP.

The German Worker's Party used some of this money to advertise their meetings. Hitler was often the main speaker and it was during this period that he developed the techniques that made him into such a persuasive orator.

Hitler always arrived late which helped to develop tension and a sense of expectation. He took the stage, stood to attention and waited until there was complete silence before he started his speech. For the first few months Hitler appeared nervous and spoke haltingly. Slowly he would begin to relax and his style of delivery would change. He would start to rock from side to side and begin to gesticulate with his hands. His voice would get louder and become more passionate. Sweat poured of him, his face turned white, his eyes bulged and his voice cracked with

emotion. He ranted and raved about the injustices done to Germany and played on his audience's emotions of hatred and envy. By the end of the speech the audience would be in a state of near hysteria and were willing to do whatever Hitler suggested.

As soon as his speech finished Hitler would quickly leave the stage and disappear from view. Refusing to be photographed, Hitler's aim was to create an air of mystery about himself, hoping that it would encourage others to come and hear the man who was now being described as "the new Messiah".

Hitler's reputation as an orator grew and it soon became clear that he was the main reason why people were joining the party. This gave Hitler tremendous power within the organization as they knew they could not afford to lose him. One change suggested by Hitler concerned adding "Socialist" to the name of the party. Hitler had always been hostile to socialist ideas, especially those that involved racial or sexual equality. However, socialism was a popular political philosophy in Germany after the First World War. This was reflected in the growth in the German Social Democrat Party (SDP), the largest political party in Germany.

Hitler, therefore redefined socialism by placing the word 'National' before it. He claimed he was only in favour of equality for those who had "German blood". Jews and other "aliens"

would lose their rights of citizenship, and immigration of nonGermans should be brought to an end.

In February 1920, the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) published its first programme which became known as the "25 Points". In the programme the party refused to accept the terms of the Versailles Treaty and called for the reunification of all German people. To reinforce their ideas on nationalism, equal rights were only to be given to German citizens. "Foreigners" and "aliens" would be denied these rights.

To appeal to the working class and socialists, the programme included several measures that would redistribute income and war profits, profit-sharing in large industries, nationalization of trusts, increases in old-age pensions and free education.

On 24th February, 1920, the NSDAP (later nicknamed the Nazi Party) held a mass rally where it announced its new programme. The rally was attended by over 2,000 people, a great improvement on the 25 people who were at Hitler's first party meeting.

Hitler knew that the growth in the party was mainly due to his skills as an orator and in the autumn of 1921 he challenged Anton Drexler for the leadership of the party. After brief resistance

Drexler accepted the inevitable, and Hitler became the new leader of the Nazi Party.

Hitler's ability to arouse in his supporters emotions of anger and hate often resulted in their committing acts of violence. In September 1921, Hitler was sent to prison for three months for being part of a mob who beat up a rival politician.

When Hitler was released, he formed his own private army called Sturm Abteilung (Storm Section). The SA (also known as stormtroopers or brownshirts) were instructed to disrupt the meetings of political opponents and to protect Hitler from revenge attacks. Captain Ernst Roehm of the Bavarian Army played an important role in recruiting these men, and Hermann Goering, a former air-force pilot, became their leader.

Hitler's stormtroopers were often former members of the Freikorps (right-wing private armies who flourished during the period that followed the First World War) and had considerable experience in using violence against their rivals.

The SA wore grey jackets, brown shirts (khaki shirts originally intended for soldiers in Africa but purchased in bulk from the German Army by the Nazi Party), swastika armbands, ski-caps, knee-breeches, thick woolen socks and combat boots.

Accompanied by bands of musicians and carrying swastika flags, they would parade through the streets of Munich. At the end of the march Hitler would make one of his passionate speeches that encouraged his supporters to carry out acts of violence against Jews and his left-wing political opponents.

As this violence was often directed against Socialists and Communists, the local right-wing Bavarian government did not take action against the Nazi Party. However, the national government in Berlin were concerned and passed a "Law for the Protection of the Republic". Hitler's response was to organize a rally attended by 40,000 people. At the meeting Hitler called for the overthrow of the German government and even suggested that its leaders should be executed.

In 1923 the German Government had to deal with a series of difficult problems. In January the French Army occupied the Ruhr because they claimed Germany was falling behind with her reparations. Workers in the Ruhr responded by going on strike which badly hurt the German economy. One of the consequences of this was rapid inflation. As people found their savings becoming worthless, they turned against their government.

On 13th August, Gustav Stresemann became the new Chancellor of Germany. When Stresemann decided to call off resistance to the French occupation of the Ruhr and to start paying reparations

to the Allies again, Hitler decided it was time for him to become the new leader of Germany.

On 8th November, 1923, the Bavarian government held a meeting of about 3,000 officials. While Gustav von Kahr, the leader of the Bavarian government was making a speech, Hitler and armed stormtroopers entering the building. Hitler jumped onto a table, fired two shots in the air and told the audience that the Munich Putsch was taking place and the National Revolution had began.

Leaving Hermann Goering and the SA to guard the 3,000 officials, Hitler took Gustav von Kahr, Otto von Lossow, the commander of the Bavarian Army and Hans von Seisser, the commandant of the Bavarian State Police into an adjoining room. Hitler told the men that he was to be the new leader of Germany and offered them posts in his new government. Aware that this would be an act of high treason, the three men were initially reluctant to agree to this offer. Hitler was furious and threatened to shoot them and then commit suicide: "I have three bullets for you, gentlemen, and one for me!" After this the three men agreed.

Soon afterwards Eric Ludendorff arrived. Ludendorff had been leader of the German Army at the end of the First World War. He had therefore found Hitler's claim that the war had not been lost by the army but by Jews, Socialists, Communists and the German government, attractive, and was a strong supporter of the Nazi

Party. Ludendorff agreed to become head of the the German Army in Hitler's government.

While Hitler had been appointing government ministers, Ernst Roehm, leading a group of stormtroopers, had seized the War Ministry and Rudolf Hess was arranging the arrest of Jews and left-wing political leaders in Bavaria.

Hitler now planned to march on Berlin and remove the national government. Surprisingly, Hitler had not arranged for the stormtroopers to take control of the radio stations and the telegraph offices. This meant that the national government in Berlin soon heard about Hitler's putsch and gave orders for it to be crushed.

The next day Hitler, Eric Ludendorff, Hermann Goering and 3,000 armed supporters of the Nazi Party marched through Munich in an attempt to join up with Roehm's forces at the War Ministry. At Odensplatz they found the road blocked by the Munich police. As they refused to stop, the police fired into the ground in front of the marchers. The stormtroopers returned the fire and during the next few minutes 21 people were killed and another hundred were wounded, included Goering.

When the firing started Hitler threw himself to the ground dislocating his shoulder. Hitler lost his nerve and ran to a nearby car. Although the police were outnumbered, the Nazis followed their leader's example and ran away. Only Eric Ludendorff and his adjutant continued walking towards the police. Later Nazi historians were to claim that the reason Hitler left the scene so quickly was because he had to rush an injured young boy to the local hospital.

After hiding in a friend's house for several days, Hitler was arrested and put on trial for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch. If found guilty, Hitler faced the death penalty. While in prison Hitler suffered from depression and talked of committing suicide. However, it soon became clear that the Nazi sympathizers in the Bavarian government were going to make sure that Hitler would not be punished severely.

At his trial Hitler was allowed to turn the proceedings into a political rally, and although he was found guilty he only received the minimum sentence of five years. Other members of the Nazi Party also received light sentences and Eric Ludendorff was acquitted.

Hitler was sent to Landsberg Castle in Munich to serve his prison sentence. He was treated well and was allowed to walk in the castle grounds, wear his own clothes and receive gifts. Officially

there were restrictions on visitors but this did not apply to Hitler, and a steady flow of friends, party members and journalists spent long spells with him. He was even allowed to have visits from his pet Alsatian dog.

While in Landsberg he read a lot of books. Most of these dealt with German history and political philosophy. Later he was to describe his spell in prison as a "free education at the state's expense." One writer who influenced Hitler while in prison was Henry Ford, the American car-manufacturer. Hitler read Ford's autobiography, My Life and Work, and a book of his called The International Jew. In the latter Ford claimed that there was a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. Hitler also approved of Ford's hostile views towards communism and trade unions.

Max Amnan, his business manager, proposed that Hitler should spend his time in prison writing his autobiography. Hitler, who had never fully mastered writing, was at first not keen on the idea. However, he agreed when it was suggested that he should dictate his thoughts to a ghostwriter. The prison authorities surprisingly agreed that Hitler's chauffeur, Emil Maurice, could live in the prison to carry out this task.

Maurice, whose main talent was as a street fighter, was a poor writer and the job was eventually taken over by Rudolf Hess, a student at Munich University. Hess made a valiant attempt at

turning Hitler's spoken ideas into prose. However, the book that Hitler wrote in prison was repetitive, confused, turgid and therefore, extremely difficult to read. In his writing, Hitler was unable to use the passionate voice and dramatic bodily gestures which he had used so effectively in his speeches, to convey his message.

The book was originally entitled Four Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice. Hitler's publisher reduced it to My Struggle (Mein Kampf). The book is a mixture of autobiography, political ideas and an explanation of the techniques of propaganda. The autobiographical details in Mein Kampf are often inaccurate, and the main purpose of this part of the book appears to be to provide a positive image of Hitler. For example, when Hitler was living a life of leisure in Vienna he claims he was working hard as a labourer.

In Mein Kampf Hitler outlined his political philosophy. He argued that the German (he wrongly described them as the Aryan race) was superior to all others. "Every manifestation of human culture, every product of art, science and technical skill, which we see before our eyes today, is almost exclusively the product of Aryan creative power."

Hitler warned that the Aryan's superiority was being threatened by intermarriage. If this happened world civilization would

decline: "On this planet of ours human culture and civilization are indissolubly bound up with the presence of the Aryan. If he should be exterminated or subjugated, then the dark shroud of a new barbarian era would enfold the earth."

Although other races would resist this process, the Aryan race had a duty to control the world. This would be difficult and force would have to be used, but it could be done. To support this view he gave the example of how the British Empire had controlled a quarter of the world by being well-organised and having welltimed soldiers and sailors.

Hitler believed that Aryan superiority was being threatened particularly by the Jewish race who, he argued, were lazy and had contributed little to world civilization. (Hitler ignored the fact that some of his favourite composers and musicians were Jewish). He claimed that the "Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end satanically glaring at and spying on the unconscious girl whom he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate."

According to Hitler, Jews were responsible for everything he did not like, including modern art, pornography and prostitution. Hitler also alleged that the Jews had been responsible for losing the First World War. Hitler also claimed that Jews, who were only

about 1% of the population, were slowly taking over the country. They were doing this by controlling the largest political party in Germany, the German Social Democrat Party, many of the leading companies and several of the country's newspapers. The fact that Jews had achieved prominent positions in a democratic society was, according to Hitler, an argument against democracy: "a hundred blockheads do not equal one man in wisdom."

Hitler believed that the Jews were involved with Communists in a joint conspiracy to take over the world. Like Henry Ford, Hitler claimed that 75% of all Communists were Jews. Hitler argued that the combination of Jews and Marxists had already been successful in Russia and now threatened the rest of Europe. He argued that the communist revolution was an act of revenge that attempted to disguise the inferiority of the Jews.

In Mein Kampf Hitler declared that: "The external security of a people in largely determined by the size of its territory. If he won power Hitler promised to occupy Russian land that would provide protection and lebensraum (living space) for the German people. This action would help to destroy the Jewish/Marxist attempt to control the world: "The Russian Empire in the East is ripe for collapse; and the end of the Jewish domination of Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state."

To achieve this expansion in the East and to win back land lost during the First World War, Hitler claimed that it might be necessary to form an alliance with Britain and Italy. An alliance with Britain was vitally important because it would prevent Germany fighting a war in the East and West at the same time.

According to James Douglas-Hamilton (Motive for a Mission) Karl Haushofer provided "Hitler with a formula and certain well-turned phrases which could be adapted, and which at a later stage suited the Nazis perfectly". Haushofer had developed the theory that the state is a biological organism which grows or contracts, and that in the struggle for space the strong countries take land from the weak.

Hitler was released from prison on 20th December, 1924, after serving just over a year of his sentence. The Germany of 1924 was dramatically different from the Germany of 1923. The economic policies of the German government had proved successful. Inflation had been brought under control and the economy began to improve. The German people gradually gained a new faith in their democratic system and began to find the extremist solutions proposed by people such as Hitler unattractive.

Hitler attempted to play down his extremist image, and claimed that he was no longer in favour of revolution but was willing to compete with other parties in democratic elections. This policy

was unsuccessful and in the elections of December 1924 the NSDAP could only win 14 seats compared with the the 131 obtained by the Socialists (German Social Democrat Party) and the 45 of the German Communist Party (KPD).

Georges, Grim Reaper, The Nation (April, 1933)

Hitler went to live in Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps. Later he was to say this was the happiest time of his life. He spent his time reading, walking and being driven fast around the countryside in his new supercharged Mercedes. For the first time in his life he began to take a serious interest in women.

Hitler liked the company of beautiful and frivolous women and avoided women who wanted to discuss political issues. His attitude towards women is reflected in his comment that: "A highly intelligent man should take a primitive and stupid woman." On another occasion he said: "I detest women who dabble in politics."

This was one of the reasons Hitler tended to be attracted to women much younger than himself, and there was a scandal when Maria Reiter, a sixteen-year-old girl he was involved with, tried to commit suicide.

In 1928 Hitler asked his half-sister, Angela Raubal, to be his housekeeper. She agreed and arrived with her twenty-year old daughter, Geli Raubal. Hitler, who had now turned forty, became infatuated with Geli and rumours soon spread that he was having an affair with his young niece. Hitler became extremely possessive and Emil Maurice, his chauffeur, who also showed interest in Geli, was sacked.

The couple lived together for over two years. The relationship with Geli was stormy and they began to accuse each other of being unfaithful. Geli was particularly concerned about Eva Braun, a seventeen-year-old girl who Hitler took for rides in his Mercedes car.

Geli also complained about the way Hitler controlled her life On September 8, 1931, Hitler left for Hamburg after having a blazing row with Geli over her desire to spend some time in Vienna. Hitler was heard to shout at Geli as he was about to get into his car: "For the last time, no!" After he left Geli shot herself through the heart with a revolver.

When he heard the news Hitler threatened to take his own life but was talked out of it by senior members of the Nazi Party. One

consequence of Geli's suicide was that Hitler became a vegetarian. He claimed that meat now reminded him of Geli's corpse.

Rumours about Geli's death spread quickly amongst Hitler's enemies. It was claimed that Geli had been badly beaten up by Hitler before she shot herself. Another story involved Geli committing suicide because she was expecting Hitler's child. Some people claimed she was murdered by Heinrich Himmler because she was threatening to blackmail Hitler. Little evidence has been provided to support these suggestions and the reasons for her death remain a mystery

After the death of Geli Raubal, Hitler began to see more of Eva Braun. However he still had relationships with other women Hitler was especially fond of film-stars and one girlfriend the actress Renate Mueller, committed suicide by throwing herself out of a hotel window in Berlin.

Eva was extremely jealous of Hitler's other girlfriends and in 1932 she also attempted suicide by shooting herself in the neck. Doctors managed to save her life, and after this incident Hitler seemed to become more attached to Eva and saw less of other women.

Hitler had no desire to have children. He told several people that if he had children they were certain to disappoint him as they would never match his own genius.

The Nazi Party always attempted to keep Hitler's love life secret. In his speeches Hitler claimed that he had never married because he was "married to the German people." The severe casualties suffered during the First World War meant that there was a large number of widows and spinsters in Germany. Women in Germany found Hitler's bachelor image attractive and this helped win him votes during elections. It was for this reason that Eva Braun was never seen in public with Hitler.

Emil Kirdorf, a very wealthy industrialist met Hitler in 1927. Although Kirdorf agreed with most of Hitler's views he was concerned about some of the policies of the Nazi Party. He was particularly worried about the opinions of some people in the party such as Gregor Strasser who talked about the need to redistribute wealth in Germany.

Hitler tried to reassure Kirdorf that these policies were just an attempt to gain the support of the working-class in Germany and would not be implemented once he gained power. Kirdorf suggested that Hitler should write a pamphlet for private distribution amongst Germany's leading industrialists that clearly expressed his views on economic policy.

Hitler agreed and The Road to Resurgence was published in the summer of 1927. In the pamphlet distributed by Kirdorf to Germany's leading industrialists, Hitler tried to reassure his readers that he was a supporter of private enterprise and was opposed to any real transformation of Germany's economic and social structure.

Emil Kirdorf and his wealthy right-wing friends were particularly attracted to Hitler's idea of winning the working class away from left-wing political groups such as the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party. Kirdorf and other business leaders were also impressed with the news that Hitler planned to suppress the trade union movement once he gained power. Kirdorf joined the Nazi Party and immediately began to try and persuade other leading industrialists to supply Hitler with the necessary funds to win control of the Reichstag.

Kirdorf expected Adolf Hitler to remove left-wing members of the Nazi Party such as Gregor Strasser, Ernst Roehm and Gottfried Feder to be removed from power. When this did not happen, Kirdorf switched his support to the German Nationalist Party (DNVP) led by Alfred Hugenberg.

In the 1928 German elections, less than 3% of the people voted for the Nazi Party. This gave them only twelve seats, twenty fewer than they achieved in the May, 1924 election. However, the party was well organized and membership had grown from 27,000 in 1925 to 108,000 in 1928.

One of the new members was Joseph Goebbels. Hitler first met him in 1925. Both men were impressed with each other. Goebbels described one of their first meetings in his diary: "Shakes my hand. Like an old friend. And those big blue eyes. Like stars. He is glad to see me. I am in heaven. That man has everything to be king."

Hitler admired Goebbels' abilities as a writer and speaker. They shared an interest in propaganda and together they planned how the NSDAP would win the support of the German people.

Propaganda cost money and this was something that the Nazi Party was very short of. Whereas the German Social Democratic Party was funded by the trade unions and the pro-capitalist parties by industrialists, the NSDAP had to rely on contributions from party members. When Hitler approached rich industrialists for help he was told that his economic policies (profit-sharing, nationalization of trusts) were too left-wing.

In an attempt to obtain financial contributions from industrialists, Hitler wrote a pamphlet in 1927 entitled The Road to Resurgence. Only a small number of these pamphlets were printed and they were only meant for the eyes of the top industrialists in Germany. The reason that the pamphlet was kept secret was that it contained information that would have upset Hitler's workingclass supporters. In the pamphlet Hitler implied that the anticapitalist measures included in the original twenty-five points of the NSDAP programme would not be implemented if he gained power.

Hitler began to argue that "capitalists had worked their way to the top through their capacity, and on the basis of this selection they have the right to lead." Hitler claimed that national socialism meant all people doing their best for society and posed no threat to the wealth of the rich. Some prosperous industrialists were convinced by these arguments and gave donations to the Nazi Party, however, the vast majority continued to support other parties, especially the right-wing German Nationalist Peoples Party (DNVP).

Another new member of the NSDAP was Heinrich Himmler. Hitler was impressed by Himmler's fanatical nationalism and his deep hatred of the Jews. Himmler believed Hitler was the Messiah that was destined to lead Germany to greatness. Hitler, who was always vulnerable to flattery, decided that Himmler should

become the new leader of his personal bodyguard, the Schutzstaffeinel (SS).

The German economy continued to improve and as unemployment fell, so did the support for extremist political parties such as the NSDAP. In the General Election held in May, 1928, the Nazi Party won only 14 seats, while the left-wing parties, the German Social Democrat Party (153) and the German Communist Party (54) still continued to grow in popularity.

The fortunes of the NSDAP changed with the Wall Street Crash in October 1929. Desperate for capital, the United States began to recall loans from Europe. One of the consequences of this was a rapid increase in unemployment. Germany, whose economy relied heavily on investment from the United States, suffered more than any other country in Europe.

Before the crash, 1.25 million people were unemployed in Germany. By the end of 1930 the figure had reached nearly 4 million. Even those in work suffered as many were only working part-time. With the drop in demand for labour, wages also fell and those with full-time work had to survive on lower incomes. Hitler, who was considered a fool in 1928 when he predicted economic disaster, was now seen in a different light. People began to say that if he was clever enough to predict the depression maybe he also knew how to solve it.

In the General Election that took place in September 1930, the Nazi Party increased its number of representatives in parliament from 14 to 107. Hitler was now the leader of the second largest party in Germany.

The German Social Democrat Party was the largest party in the Reichstag, it did not have a majority over all the other parties, and the SPD leader, Hermann Muller, had to rely on the support of others to rule Germany. After the SPD refused to reduce unemployment benefits, Mueller was replaced as Chancellor by Heinrich Bruening. However, with his party only having 87 representatives out of 577 in the Reichstag, he also found it extremely difficult to gain agreement for his policies.

Hitler used this situation to his advantage, claiming that parliamentary democracy did not work. The NSDAP argued that only Hitler could provide the strong government that Germany needed. Hitler and other Nazi leaders travelled round the country giving speeches putting over this point of view.

What Hitler said depended very much on the audience. In rural areas he promised tax cuts for farmers and government actin to protect food prices. In working class areas he spoke of redistribution of wealth and attacked the high profits made by the

large chain stores. When he spoke to industrialists, Hitler concentrated on his plans to destroy communism and to reduce the power of the trade union movement. Hitler's main message was that Germany's economic recession was due to the Treaty of Versailles. Other than refusing to pay reparations, Hitler avoided explaining how he would improve the German economy.

With a divided Reichstag, the power of the German President became more important. In 1931 Hitler challenged Paul von Hindenburg for the presidency. Hindenburg was now 84 years old and showing signs of senility. However, a large percentage of the German population still feared Hitler and in the election Hindenburg had a comfortable majority.

Heinrich Bruening and other senior politicians were worried that Hitler would use his stormtroopers to take power by force. Led by Ernst Roehm, it now contained over 400,000 men. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles the official German Army was restricted to 100,000 men and was therefore outnumbered by the SA. In the past, those who feared communism were willing to put up with the SA as they provided a useful barrier against the possibility of revolution. However, with the growth in SA violence and fearing a Nazi coup, Bruening banned the organization.

In May 1932, Paul von Hindenburg sacked Bruening and replaced him with Franz von Papen. The new chancellor was also a member

of the Catholic Centre Party and, being more sympathetic to the Nazis, he removed the ban on the SA. The next few weeks saw open warfare on the streets between the Nazis and the Communists during which 86 people were killed.

In an attempt to gain support for his new government, in July Franz von Papen called another election. Hitler now had the support of the upper and middle classes and the NSDAP did well winning 230 seats, making it the largest party in the Reichstag. However the German Social Democrat Party (133) and the German Communist Party (89) still had the support of the urban working class and Hitler was deprived of an overall majority in parliament.

Hitler demanded that he should be made Chancellor but Paul von Hindenburg refused and instead gave the position to MajorGeneral Kurt von Schleicher. Hitler was furious and began to abandon his strategy of disguising his extremist views. In one speech he called for the end of democracy a system which he described as being the "rule of stupidity, of mediocrity, of halfheartedness, of cowardice, of weakness, and of inadequacy."

The behaviour of the NSDAP became more violent. On one occasion 167 Nazis beat up 57 members of the German Communist Party in the Reichstag. They were then physically thrown out of the building.

The stormtroopers also carried out terrible acts of violence against socialists and communists. In one incident in Silesia, a young member of the KPD had his eyes poked out with a billiard cue and was then stabbed to death in front of his mother. Four members of the SA were convicted of the rime. Many people were shocked when Hitler sent a letter of support for the four men and promised to do what he could to get them released.

Incidents such as these worried many Germans, and in the elections that took place in November 1932 the support for the Nazi Party fell. The German Communist Party made substantial gains in the election winning 100 seats. Hitler used this to create a sense of panic by claiming that German was on the verge of a Bolshevik Revolution and only the NSDAP could prevent this happening.

A group of prominent industrialists who feared such a revolution sent a petition to Paul von Hindenburg asking for Hitler to become Chancellor. Hindenberg reluctantly agreed to their request and at the age of forty-three, Hitler became the new Chancellor of Germany.

Although Hitler had the support of certain sections of the German population he never gained an elected majority. The best the

National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) could do in a election was 37.3 per cent of the vote they gained in July 1932. When Hitler became chancellor in January 1933, the Nazis only had a third of the seats in the Reichstag.

Soon after Hitler became chancellor he announced new elections. Hermann Goering called a meeting of important industrialists where he told them that the 1933 General Election could be the last in Germany for a very long time. Goering added that the NSDAP would need a considerable amount of of money to ensure victory. Those present responded by donating 3 million Reichmarks. As Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary after the meeting: "Radio and press are at our disposal. Even money is not lacking this time."

Behind the scenes Goering, who was minister of the interior in Hitler's government, was busily sacking senior police officers and replacing them with Nazi supporters. These men were later to become known as the Gestapo. Goering also recruited 50,000 members of the Sturm Abteilung (SA) to work as police auxiliaries.

Hermann Goering then raided the headquarters of the Communist Party (KPD) in Berlin and claimed that he had uncovered a plot to overthrow the government. Leaders of the KPD were arrested but no evidence was ever produced to support

Goering's accusations. He also announced he had discovered a communist plot to poison German milk supplies.

On 27th February, 1933, someone set fire to the Reichstag. Several people were arrested including a leading, Georgi Dimitrov, general secretary of the Comintern, the international communist organization. Dimitrov was eventually acquitted but a young man from the Netherlands, Marianus van der Lubbe, was eventually executed for the crime. As a teenager Lubbe had been a communist and Hermann Goering used this information to claim that the Reichstag Fire was part of a KPD plot to overthrow the government.

Hitler gave orders that all leaders of the German Communist Party should "be hanged that very night." Paul von Hindenburg vetoed this decision but did agree that Hitler should take "dictatorial powers". KPD candidates in the election were arrested and Hermann Goering announced that the Nazi Party planned "to exterminate" German communists.

Thousands of members of the Social Democrat Party and Communist Party were arrested and sent to recently opened to concentration camp. They were called this because they "concentrated" the enemy into a restricted area. Hitler named these camps after those used by the British during the Boer War.

Left-wing election meetings were broken up by the Sturm Abteilung (SA) and several candidates were murdered. Newspapers that supported these political parties were closed down during the 1933 General Election.

Although it was extremely difficult for the opposition parties to campaign properly, Hitler and the Nazi party still failed to win an overall victory in the election on 5th March, 1933. The NSDAP received 43.9% of the vote and only 288 seats out of the available 647. The increase in the Nazi vote had mainly come from the Catholic rural areas who feared the possibility of an atheistic Communist government.

After the 1933 General Election Hitler proposed an Enabling Bill that would give him dictatorial powers. Such an act needed threequarters of the members of the Reichstag to vote in its favour.

All the active members of the Communist Party, were in concentration camps, in hiding, or had left the country (an estimated 60,000 people left Germany during the first few weeks after the election). This was also true of most of the leaders of the other left-wing party, Social Democrat Party (SDP). However, Hitler still needed the support of the Catholic Centre Party (BVP) to pass this legislation. Hitler therefore offered the BVP a deal:

vote for the bill and the Nazi government would guarantee the rights of the Catholic Church. The BVP agreed and when the vote was taken, only 94 members of the SDP voted against the Enabling Bill.

Hitler was now dictator of Germany. His first move was to take over the trade unions. Its leaders were sent to concentration camps and the organization was put under the control of the Nazi Party. The trade union movement now became known as the Labour Front.

Soon afterwards the Communist Party and the Social Democrat Party were banned. Party activists still in the country were arrested. A month later Hitler announced that the Catholic Centre Party, the Nationalist Party and all other political parties other than the NSDAP were illegal, and by the end of 1933 over 150,000 political prisoners were in concentration camps. Hitler was aware that people have a great fear of the unknown, and if prisoners were released, they were warned that if they told anyone of their experiences they would be sent back to the camp.

It was not only left-wing politicians and trade union activists who were sent to concentration camp. The Gestapo also began arresting beggars, prostitutes, homosexuals, alcoholics and anyone who was incapable of working. Although some inmates were tortured, the only people killed during this period were

prisoners who tried to escape and those classed as "incurably insane".

Hitler's Germany became known as a fascist state. Fascist was originally used to describe the government of Benito Mussolini in Italy. Mussolini's fascist one-party state emphasized patriotism, national unity, hatred of communism, admiration of military values and unquestioning obedience. Hitler was deeply influenced by Mussolini's Italy and his Germany shared many of the same characteristics.

The German economic system remained capitalistic but the state played a more prominent role in managing the economy. Industrialists were sometimes told what to produce and what price they should charge for the goods that they made. The government also had the power to order workers to move to where they were required.

By taking these powers Hitler's government was able to control factors such as inflation and unemployment that had caused considerable distress in previous years. As the government generally allowed companies to maintain their profit margins, industrialists tended to accept the loss of some of their freedoms.

Under fascism, most potential sources of opposition were removed. This included political parties and the trade union movement. However, Hitler never felt strong enough to take complete control of the German Army, and before taking important decisions he always had to take into consideration how the armed forces would react.

By the time Hitler gained power he had ceased to be a practicing Christian. He did not have the confidence to abolish Christianity in Germany. In 1934 Hitler signed an agreement with Pope Pius XI in which he promised not to interfere in religion if the Catholic Church agreed not to become involved in politics in Germany.

The individual had no freedom to protest in Hitler's Germany. All political organizations were either banned or under the control of the Nazis. Except for the occasional referendum, all elections, local and national, were abolished.

All information that people in Germany received was selected and organized to support fascist beliefs. As Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels kept a close check on the information provided by newspapers, magazines, books, radio broadcasts, plays and films.

Hitler, who had been deeply influenced by his own history teacher, was fully aware that schools posed a potential threat to the dominant fascist ideology. Teachers who were critical of Hitler's Germany were sacked and the rest were sent away to be trained to become good fascists. Members of the Nazi youth organizations such as the Hitler Youth, were also asked to report teachers who questioned fascism.

As a further precaution against young people coming into contact with information and the government disapproved of, textbooks were withdrawn and rewritten by Nazis.

Brandt joined Hitler's inner circle and was given the rank of majorgeneral in the Waffen-SS. He was also appointed Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation.

By 1934 Hitler appeared to have complete control over Germany, but like most dictators, he constantly feared that he might be ousted by others who wanted his power. To protect himself from a possible coup, Hitler used the tactic of divide and rule and encouraged other leaders such as Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler and Ernst Roehm to compete with each other for senior positions.

One of the consequences of this policy was that these men developed a dislike for each other. Roehm was particularly hated because as leader of the Sturm Abteilung (SA) he had tremendous power and had the potential to remove any one of his competitors. Goering and Himmler asked Reinhard Heydrich to assemble a dossier on Roehm. Heydrich, who also feared him, manufactured evidence that suggested that Roehm had been paid 12 million marks by the French to overthrow Hitler.

Hitler liked Ernst Roehm and initially refused to believe the dossier provided by Heydrich. Roehm had been one of his first supporters and, without his ability to obtain army funds in the early days of the movement, it is unlikely that the Nazis would have ever become established. The SA under Roehm's leadership had also played a vital role in destroying the opposition during the elections of 1932 and 1933.

However, Hitler had his own reasons for wanting Roehm removed. Powerful supporters of Hitler had been complaining about Roehm for some time. Generals were afraid that the Sturm Abteilung (SA), a force of over 3 million men, would absorb the much smaller German Army into its ranks and Roehm would become its overall leader.

Industrialists such as Albert Voegler, Gustav Krupp, Alfried Krupp, Fritz Thyssen and Emile Kirdorf, who had provided the funds for

the Nazi victory, were unhappy with Roehm's socialistic views on the economy and his claims that the real revolution had still to take place. Many people in the party also disapproved of the fact that Roehm and many other leaders of the SA were homosexuals.

Hitler was also aware that Roehm and the SA had the power to remove him. Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler played on this fear by constantly feeding him with new information on Roehm's proposed coup. Their masterstroke was to claim that Gregor Strasser, whom Hitler hated, was part of the planned conspiracy against him. With this news Hitler ordered all the SA leaders to attend a meeting in the Hanselbauer Hotel in Wiesse.

Meanwhile Goering and Himmler were drawing up a list of people outside the SA that they wanted killed. The list included Strasser, Kurt von Schleicher, Hitler's predecessor as chancellor, and Gustav von Kahr, who crushed the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923.

On 29th June, 1934. Hitler, accompanied by the Schutz Staffeinel (SS), arrived at Wiesse, where he personally arrested Ernst Roehm. During the next 24 hours 200 other senior SA officers were arrested on the way to Wiesse. Many were shot as soon as they were captured but Hitler decided to pardon Roehm because of his past services to the movement. However, after much pressure from Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler, Hitler agreed that Roehm should die. At first Hitler insisted that Roehm should be

allowed to commit suicide but, when he refused, Roehm was shot by two SS men.

Roehm was replaced by Victor Lutze as head of the SA. Lutze was a weak man and the SA gradually lost its power in Hitler's Germany. The Schutz Staffeinel (SS) under the leadership of Himmler grew rapidly during the next few years, replacing the SA as the dominant force in Germany.

The purge of the SA was kept secret until it was announced by Hitler on 13th July. It was during this speech that Hitler gave the purge its name: Night of the Long Knives (a phrase from a popular Nazi song). Hitler claimed that 61 had been executed while 13 had been shot resisting arrest and three had committed suicide. Others have argued that as many as 400 people were killed during the purge. In his speech Hitler explained why he had not relied on the courts to deal with the conspirators: "In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I become the supreme judge of the German people. I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason."

The Night of the Long Knives was a turning point in the history of Hitler's Germany. Hitler had made it clear that he was the supreme ruler of Germany who had the right to be judge and jury, and had the power to decide whether people lived or died.

In 1935 Heinrich Hoffman, who worked as a photographer for Adolf Hitler, was treated by Dr. Theodor Morell for gonorrhoea. Hoffman told Hitler about his new doctor and eventually he was asked to examine the leader of the Nazi Party. At the time Hitler was suffering from stomach cramps. According to Morell, this was being caused by "complete exhaustion of the intestinal system" and recommended the treatment of vitamins, hormones, phosphorus, and dextrose.

Hitler's personal physician, Karl Brandt, warned him he was in danger of being poisoned by these large dosages of drugs and vitamins. Hitler rejected Brandt's advice and replied: "No one has ever told me precisely what is wrong with me. Morrell's method of cure is so logical that I have the greatest confidence in him. I shall follow his prescriptions to the letter." Later he was to remark: "What luck I had to meet Morell. He has saved my life."

It was not long before Hitler began to feel unwell again. As well as stomach cramps he also suffered from headaches, double vision, dizziness and tinnitus. Morell began treating Hitler with intestinal bacteria "raised from the best stock owned by a Bulgarian peasant". Morell tested dozens of unknown drugs on Hitler. This included biologicals from the intestines of male animals and amphetamines.

In the 1933 Election campaign, Hitler had promised that if he gained power he would abolish unemployment. He was lucky in that the German economy was just beginning to recover when he came into office. However, the policies that Hitler introduced did help to reduce the number of people unemployed in Germany.

These policies often involved taking away certain freedoms from employers. The government banned the introduction of some labour-saving machinery. Employers also had to get government permission before reducing their labour force. The government also tended to give work contracts to those companies that relied on manual labour rather than machines. This was especially true of the government's massive motorway programme. As a result of this scheme Germany developed the most efficient road system in Europe.

Hitler also abolished taxation on new cars. A great lover of cars himself, and influenced by the ideas of Henry Ford, Hitler wanted every family in Germany to own a car. He even became involved in designing the Volkswagen (The People's Car).

Hitler also encouraged the mass production of radios. In this case he was not only concerned with reducing unemployment but saw them as a means of supplying a steady stream of Nazi propaganda to the German people.

Youth unemployment was dealt with by the forming of the Voluntary Labour Service (VLS) and the Voluntary Youth Service (VYS), a scheme similar to the Civilian Conservation Corps introduced by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States. The VYS planted forests, repaired river banks and helped reclaim wasteland.

Hitler also reduced unemployment by introducing measures that would encourage women to leave the labour market. Women in certain professions such as doctors and civil servants were dismissed, while other married women were paid a lump sum of 1000 marks to stay at home.

By 1937 German unemployment had fallen from six million to one million. However, the standard of living for those in employment did not improve in the same way that it had done during the 1920s. With the Nazis controlling the trade unions, wage-rates did not increase with productivity, and after a few years of Hitler's rule workers began to privately question his economic policies.

In Mein Kampf Hitler made it absolutely clear that he had a deep hatred of the Jewish race. However, anti-Semitism did cause difficulties for Hitler when he was trying to gain power in Germany. Jewish businessmen in Germany and the rest of the

world were occasionally able to use their influence to prevent anti-Semitic ideas being promoted.

Henry Ford was forced to stop publishing anti-Semitic attacks in the United States after the Jewish community organized a boycott of Ford cars in the late 1920s. Lord Rothermere, who used his newspaper, The Daily Mail, to argue for Hitler's policies abruptly withdrew his support in 1930. Later that year, Rothermere told Hitler that Jewish businessmen had withdrawn advertising from the newspaper and he had been forced to "toe the line".

Aware of the power of Jewish money, Hitler began to leave out anti-Semitic comments from his speeches during elections. This was one of the major factors in the increase in financial contributions from German industrialists in the 1933 General Election. His change in tactics was so successful that even Jewish businessmen began contributing money to the National Socialist German Workers Party.

Once in power Hitler began to express anti-Semitic ideas again. Based on his readings of how blacks were denied civil rights in the southern states in America, Hitler attempted to make life so unpleasant for Jews in Germany that they would emigrate. The campaign started on 1st April, 1933, when a one-day boycott of Jewish-owned shops took place. Members of the Sturm Abteilung (SA) picketed the shops to ensure the boycott was successful.

The hostility of towards Jews increased in Germany. This was reflected in the decision by many shops and restaurants not to serve the Jewish population. Placards saying "Jews not admitted" and "Jews enter this place at their own risk" began to appear all over Germany. In some parts of the country Jews were banned from public parks, swimming-pools and public transport.

Germans were also encouraged not to use Jewish doctors and lawyers. Jewish civil servants, teachers and those employed by the mass media were sacked. Members of the SA put pressure on people not to buy goods produced by Jewish companies. For example, the Ullstein Press, the largest publisher of newspapers, books and magazines in Germany, was forced to sell the company to the NSDAP in 1934 after the actions of the SA had made it impossible for them to make a profit.

Many Jewish people who could no longer earn a living left the country. The number of Jews emigrating increased after the passing of the Nuremberg Laws on Citizenship and Race in 1935. Under this new law Jews could no longer be citizens of Germany. It was also made illegal for Jews to marry Aryans.

The pressure on Jews to leave Germany intensified. Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Reinhard Heydrich organized a new programme

designed to encourage Jews to emigrate. Crystal Night took place on 9th-10th November, 1938. Presented as a spontaneous reaction of the German people to the news that a German diplomat had been murdered by a young Jewish refugee in Paris, the whole event was in fact organized by the NSDAP.

During Crystal Night over 7,500 Jewish shops were destroyed and 400 synagogues were burnt down. Ninety-one Jews were killed and an estimated 20,000 were sent to concentration camps. Up until this time these camps had been mainly for political prisoners. The only people who were punished for the crimes committed on Crystal Night were members of the Sturm Abteilung (SA) who had raped Jewish women (they had broken the Nuremberg Laws on sexual intercourse between Aryans and Jews).

After Crystal Night the numbers of Jews wishing to leave Germany increased dramatically. It has been calculated that between 1933 and 1939, approximately half the Jewish population of Germany (250,000) left the country. This included several Jewish scientists who were to play an important role in the fight against fascism during the war. A higher number of Jews would have left but antiSemitism was not restricted to Germany and many countries were reluctant to take them.

Once in power Hitler began to consider how he could expand the territory he controlled. Hitler's reading of history convinced him

that Britain posed the main threat to his dream of a Germany that dominated Europe.

In the 1930s Britain still had an empire that covered a quarter of the world. In the past Britain had reacted swiftly to any country that had threatened her empire or attempted to become the main power in mainland Europe.

Hitler respected the British and considered them to share many of the qualities possessed by Germans. In Mein Kampf he argued that to achieve his foreign policy objectives, Germany would probably have to form an alliance with Britain. "No sacrifice," Hitler wrote, was "too great if it was a necessary means of gaining England's friendship."

In his first few years in power Hitler had meetings with several British politicians and diplomats. He discovered that the British now tended to believe that the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were too harsh on the defeated countries and that Britain was unlikely to declare war if Germany ignored them. Hitler also became aware that the British had a strong dislike of communism and feared a Europe dominated by the Soviet Union.

France was more committed to the Treaty of Versailles but Hitler guessed she would be unwilling to take action against Germany

without support of the British. Hitler therefore felt he was in a strong position. With Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president of the United States, making it clear that he would not interfere in European disputes and both Italy and Japan having right-wing governments sympathetic to Germany, Hitler felt he was in a position to make a move.

In October 1933, Hitler withdrew from the League of Nations and claimed that he had done so because of the failure of the disarmament talks. Hitler argued that under the Treaty of Versailles Germany was militarily weak. He said that Germany had been willing to keep to this state of affairs if other countries disarmed. As this had not happened, Germany now had to take measures to protect herself.

In the months that followed, Hitler trebled the size of the German Army and completely ignored the restrictions on weapons that had been imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. By 1935, when it was clear that no action was going to be taken against Germany for breaking the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler felt strong enough to introduce military conscription.

Hitler was not sure how far he could go and was constantly looking for clues that would reveal at what point Britain and France would go to war with Germany. Hitler was heartened

when Benito Mussolini was allowed to send his army Ethiopia in October 1935 without any serious political reaction.

Hitler knew that both France and Britain were militarily stronger than Germany. However, he became convinced that they were unwilling to go to war. He therefore decided to break another aspect of the Treaty of Versailles by sending German troops into the Rhineland.

The German generals were very much against the plan, claiming that the French Army would win a victory in the military conflict that was bound to follow this action. Hitler ignored their advice and on 1st March, 1936, three German battalions marched into the Rhineland.

The French government was horrified to find German troops on their border but were unwilling to take action without the support of the British. The British government argued against going to war over the issue and justified its position by claiming that "Germany was only marching into its own back yard.".

Hitler's gamble had come off and, full of confidence, he began to make plans to make Austria part of Germany (Anschluss). In February, 1938, Hitler invited Kurt von Schuschnigg, the Austrian Chancellor, to meet him at Berchtesgarden. Hitler demanded

concessions for the Austrian Nazi Party. Schuschnigg refused and after resigning was replaced by Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the leader of the Austrian Nazi Party. On 13th March, Seyss-Inquart invited the German Army to occupy Austria and proclaimed union with Germany.

After his success in Austria Hitler was now in a good position to take on Czechoslovakia. The country had been created in 1918 from territory that had previously been part of the AustroHungarian Empire. As well as the seven million Czechs, two million Slovaks, 700,000 Hungarians and 450,000 Ruthenians there were three and a half million German speaking people living in Czechoslovakia.

Although Czechoslovakia had never been part of Germany, these people liked to call themselves Germans because of their language. Most of these people lived in the Sudetenland, an area on the Czechoslovakian border with Germany. The German speaking people complained that the Czech-dominated government discriminated against them. German's who had lost their jobs in the depression began to argue that they might be better off under Hitler.

Hitler wanted to march into Czechoslovakia but his generals warned him that with its strong army and good mountain defences Czechoslovakia would be a difficult country to overcome.

They also added that if Britain, France or the Soviet Union joined on the side of Czechoslovakia, Germany would probably be badly defeated. One group of senior generals even made plans to overthrow Hitler if he ignored their advice and declared war on Czechoslovakia.

In September 1938, Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, met Hitler at his home in Berchtesgaden in Germany. Hitler threatened to invade Czechoslovakia unless Britain supported Germany's plans to takeover the Sudetenland. After discussing the issue with the Edouard Daladier (France) and Eduard Benes (Czechoslovakia), Chamberlain informed Hitler that his proposals were unacceptable.

Hitler was in a difficult situation but he also knew that Britain and France were unwilling to go to war. He also thought it unlikely that these two countries would be keen to join up with the Soviet Union, whose communist system the western democracies hated more that Hitler's fascist dictatorship.

Benito Mussolini suggested to Hitler that one way of solving this issue was to hold a four-power conference of Germany, Britain, France and Italy. This would exclude both Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, and therefore increasing the possibility of reaching an agreement and undermine the solidarity that was developing against Germany.

The meeting took place in Munich on 29th September, 1938. Desperate to avoid war, and anxious to avoid an alliance with Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union, Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier agreed that Germany could have the Sudetenland. In return, Hitler promised not to make any further territorial demands in Europe.

On 29th September, 1938, Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Edouard Daladier and Benito Mussolini signed the Munich Agreement which transferred the Sudetenland to Germany.

When Eduard Benes, Czechoslovakia's head of state, protested at this decision, Neville Chamberlain told him that Britain would be unwilling to go to war over the issue of the Sudetenland.

The German Army marched into the Sudetenland on 1st October, 1938. As this area contained nearly all Czechoslovakia's mountain fortifications, she was no longer able to defend herself against further aggression.

From his meetings with Neville Chamberlain, Hitler had discovered that this man would do anything to avoid military conflict. Chamberlain was aware of the appalling destruction that

would take place during a modern war. He also feared that a large-scale war in Western Europe would weaken the countries involved to the point where they would be vulnerable to a communist takeover. Hitler told Albrecht Haushofer: "This fellow Chamberlain shook with fear when I uttered the word war. Don't tell me he is dangerous." Haushofer told his friend Fritz Hesse that "Hitler is now convinced that he can afford to do anything. Formerly he believed that we must have the maximum armaments because of the warlike menaces of the Powers striving to encircle us, but now he thinks that these Powers will crawl on all fours before him!"

Confident that Britain and France would not interfere as long as Germany headed east towards the Soviet Union, Hitler began to make plans for his next step. Poland was the obvious choice as it was in the east and included areas of land taken from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler began to make speeches demanding the return of Danzig, and German access to East Prussia through Poland.

Neville Chamberlain now changed tactics in an attempt to convince Hitler that Britain would indeed go to war if Germany continued to invade other countries. He made a speech in the House of Commons promising to support Poland if it were attacked by Germany. The British government also sent diplomats to the Soviet Union to talk to Joseph Stalin about the possibility of working together against Germany.

The British government were still uncertain about signing a military agreement with the Soviet Union, and while they hesitated Germany stepped in and signed one instead. The NaziSoviet Pact took the world by surprise. Fascists and communists had always been enemies. However, both Hitler and Stalin were opportunists who were willing to compromise for short-term gain.

In August 1939, a group of concentration camp prisoners were dressed in Polish uniforms, shot and then placed just inside the German border. Hitler claimed that Poland was attempting to invade Germany. On 1st September, 1939, the German Army was ordered into Poland.

Hitler, who wanted a series of localized wars, was surprised when Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany. Even after it happened he found it difficult to believe that during the first few months of the war he genuinely believed that Britain would still negotiate a peace settlement.

For most of the war Hitler lived underground in a concrete shelter at his headquarters in East Prussia. It was here that Hitler controlled the German war effort. At first he was extremely successful. Employing fast-moving tanks backed up with air support, Germany defeated Poland in four weeks. This victory was

followed by the occupation of Norway (four weeks), Netherlands (five days), Belgium (three weeks) and France (six weeks). The German Army was amazed at how quickly they defeated these countries and they became convinced that Hitler was a military genius.

The English Channel meant that these Blitzkrieg tactics could not be continued against Britain. Hitler had great respect for Britain's navy and airforce and feared that his forces would suffer heavy casualties in any invasion attempt. Hitler, who had not seen the sea until he was over forty, lacked confidence when it came to naval warfare. As he told his naval commander-in-chief: "On land I am a hero. At sea I am a coward."

At this stage Hitler still hoped that Britain would change sides or at least accept German domination of Europe. His dreams of a large German empire were based on the empire created by the British during the nineteenth century. Although Hitler was often guilty of extreme arrogance he lacked confidence and tended to hesitate when dealing with Britain.

Immediately after the defeat of France in June 1940, Adolf Hitler ordered his generals to organize the invasion of Britain. The invasion plan was given the code name Operation Sealion. The objective was to land 160,000 German soldiers along a forty-mile coastal stretch of south-east England.

Within a few weeks the Germans had assembled a large armada of vessels, including 2,000 barges in German, Belgian and French harbours. However, Hitler's generals were very worried about the damage that the Royal Air Force could inflict on the German Army during the invasion. Hitler therefore agreed to their request that the invasion should be postponed until the British airforce had been destroyed.

On the 12th August the German airforce began its mass bomber attacks on British radar stations, aircraft factories and fighter airfields. During these raids radar stations and airfields were badly damaged and twenty-two RAF planes were destroyed. This attack was followed by daily raids on Britain. This was the beginning of what became known as the Battle of Britain.

Although plans for an invasion of Britain were drawn up Hitler was never very enthusiastic about them and they were eventually abandoned on October 12, 1940. Instead, Hitler attempted to batter Britain into submission by organising a sustained nightbombing campaign.

Frustrated by his lack of immediate success over Britain. Hitler began to concentrate his attentions on Eastern Europe. After

taking over Poland, Germany now shared a frontier with the Soviet Union.

In Mein Kampf and in numerous speeches Hitler claimed that the German population needed more living space. Hitler's Lebensraum policy was mainly directed at the Soviet Union. He was especially interested in the Ukraine where he planned to develop a German colony. The system would be based on the British occupation of India: "What India was for England the territories of Russia will be for us... The German colonists ought to live on handsome, spacious farms. The German services will be lodged in marvellous buildings, the governors in palaces... The Germans - this is essential - will have to constitute amongst themselves a closed society, like a fortress. The least of our stable-lads will be superior to any native."

Hitler intended to force Norwegians, Swedes and Danes to move to these territories in the East. Hitler believed that the Blitzkrieg tactics employed against the other European countries could not be used as successfully against the Soviet Union. He conceded that due to its enormous size, the Soviet Union would take longer than other countries to occupy.

Stalin's response to France's defeat in the summer of 1940 was to send Vyacheslav Molotov to Berlin for discussions. Molotov was instructed to draw out these talks for as long as possible. Stalin

knew that if Adolf Hitler did not attack the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 he would have to wait until 1942. No one, not even someone as rash as Hitler, would invade the Soviet Union in the winter, he argued.

Germany was now in a strong negotiating position and found it impossible to agree to Hitler's demands. As soon as talks broke-up, Hitler ordered his military leaders to prepare for Operation Barbarossa. The plan was for the invasion of the Soviet Union to start on the 15th May, 1941. Hitler believed that this would give the German Army enough time to take control of the country before the harsh Soviet winter set in.

Hitler's plan was to attack the Soviet Union in three main army groups: in the north towards Leningrad, in the centre towards Moscow and in the south towards Kiev. The German High Command argued that the attack should concentrate on Moscow, the Soviet Union's main communication centre. Hitler rejected the suggestion and was confident that the German army could achieve all three objectives before the arrival of winter.

There was also disagreement about Hitler's plans for the territory captured in the Soviet Union. Himmler's SS rather than the army was to take control. The SS were instructed to wipe out all aspects of communism in the Soviet Union. Communist officials should be executed and, as the Russians were 'sub-human', ordinary

conventions of behaviour towards captured soldiers did not apply. It is estimated that during the first year of invasion, over a million communists were executed by the SS. Senior officers objected on tactical as well as humanitarian grounds. They argued that knowledge that they faced death or torture would encourage the Soviets to carry on fighting instead of surrendering.

Hitler, as always, was unwilling to listen to opposing arguments. If his advisers persisted in disagreeing with him they were dismissed. Of the seventeen field-marshals only one managed to keep his post throughout the war. Thirty-six colonel-generals were also involved in advising Hitler during the Second World War. Of these, twenty-six were sacked or executed. As seven were killed in action, only three managed to hold on to their positions during the war.

Hitler's unwillingness to listen to information that might lead him to change his desired goals constantly caused him problems during the war. This was especially true of his attack on the Soviet Union, when he ignored warnings concerning winter weather and poor road conditions. Instead he relied on information that suggested that the morale in the Red Army was extremely low and that they would rather surrender than be involved in a long drawn-out struggle with Germany. Hitler was so confident of early success that the German Army was sent into the Soviet Union with equipment for only a summer campaign.

At first the German forces made good progress and important cities such as Riga and Kiev were taken. However, the heavy rains in October interfered with the speed and efficiency of Germany's tanks. This was followed by heavy snow in November and December that brought Germany's advance to a halt. Hitler refused to accept his mistake and ignored suggestions that the German army should make a tactical withdrawal.

After taking over Poland Hitler had another three and a half million Jews under his control. For a time there was talk of deporting all Jews to Madagascar or keeping them confined to a small area in Poland.

The number of Jews under Hitler's control grew as German forces advanced deeper into the Soviet Union. Over two million Jews lived in the Soviet Union and most of them lived in the areas under German occupation. It was while the SS were rounding up the Jews in the Soviet Union that Hitler decided on what became known as the Final Solution.

In 1942, Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary about Hitler's plans: "The Fuehrer... expressed his determination to clean up the Jews in Europe... Not much will remain of the Jews. About sixty per

cent of them will have to be liquidated; only about forty per cent can be used for forced labour."

Special units from the SS were set up under the control of Heinrich Himmler to carry out this extermination programme. At first the victims were shot but, with a high proportion of those involved in the killings suffering from nervous breakdowns a more impersonal method was developed.

By the beginning of 1942 over 500,000 Jews in Poland and Russia had been killed by the Schutz Staffeinel (SS). At the Wannsee Conference held in January 1942, Reinhard Heydrich chaired a meeting to consider what to do with the large number of Jews in Germany's concentration camps. Also at the meeting were Heinrich Muller, Adolf Eichmann and Roland Friesler.

Those at the meeting eventually decided on what became known as the Final Solution. From that date the extermination of the Jews became a systematically organized operation. After this date extermination camps were established in the east that had the capacity to kill large numbers including Belzec (15,000 a day), Sobibor (20,000), Treblinka (25,000) and Majdanek (25,000).

It was decided to make the extermination of the Jews a systematically organized operation. After this date extermination

camps were established in the east that had the capacity to kill large numbers including Belzec (15,000 a day), Sobibor (20,000), Treblinka (25,000) and Majdanek (25,000). It has been estimated that between 1942 and 1945 around 18 million were sent to extermination camps. Of these, historians have estimated that between five and eleven million were killed.

Except for the execution of Ernst Roehm, Hitler never showed any signs of remorse when people died because of his actions. It was reported that Hitler used to laugh when Joseph Goebbels described the sufferings of the Jews.

Hitler also showed little concern over the numbers of Germans who died. Late in the war, when all chance of victory had disappeared, he gave orders that resulted in thousands of German soldiers being unnecessarily killed. When commanders refused to carry out these orders he had them executed. Hitler never showed any signs of regret for these actions. He once remarked that a guilty conscience was a Jewish invention.

At the start of the Second World War, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the intention of the United States to remain neutral. Roosevelt was personally hostile to Hitler's Nazi dictatorship but he was aware that the American people had no desire to become involved in the war. However, Roosevelt did

arrange for Britain to receive supplies and loans that enabled her to continue fighting the war.

Hitler believed that he would eventually be forced to fight the United States but he wanted to make sure that he controlled Europe before that happened. He gave strict instructions that German submarines should avoid firing on ships that were likely to be carrying American passengers. He also attempted to persuade his Japanese allies to attack the Soviet Union and to leave the United States alone. They ignored Hitler's advice and on December 7, 1941, the Japanese Air Force attacked Pearl Harbor and declared war on the United States.

Hitler, who had not been told of Japanese plans, was furious at first that the United States had been dragged into the war. Hitler, who had previously called the Japanese "honorary Aryans" claimed that this is what happens what your allies are not AngloSaxons.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared war on Japan but did not mention Germany in his speech. It was still possible for Hitler to postpone the war with the United States but he decided to honour his treaty Guest Operation Green, the Nazi invasion of Ireland 1940

After Dunkirk, Adolf Hitlers general staff drew up detailed plans to invade Ireland. In June of 1940, Germanys 1st Panzer Division had just driven the British Expeditionary Force into the sea at Dunkirk. The Nazis, intoxicated by their military victory in France, considered themselves unstoppable and were determined to press their advance into Britain and Ireland. Germanys invasion plans for Britain were codenamed Operation Sealion. Their invasion plans for Ireland were codenamed Unternehmen Grn or Operation Green.

Like Operation Sealion, Operation Green was never executed. The Nazis failed to achieve air superiority over the English Channel that summer. By the autumn of 1940 the Battle of Britain had been won by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and Hitler postponed his British and Irish invasion. Some military historians also believe that the plans for Operation Green, drawn up in minute detail, may have been a feint to divert British resources away from Germanys invasion of southern England. However, had the RAF been overwhelmed that summer by the German air force, the Luftwaffe, Operation Green gives a sobering insight into what fate neutral Ireland would have suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Operation Green was conceived under the scrutiny of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock. Bock had a fearsome reputation as an

aggressive campaign officer well versed in the concept of Blitzkrieg. Bock had been commander of Germanys army group north during the invasion of Poland in 1939 and army group B during the invasion of France in May of 1940. Nicknamed Der Sterber, or Death Wish, by his fellow officers, von Bock was ultimately given responsibility for Germanys planned assault on Moscow (Operation Typhoon) during Germanys subsequent invasion of Russia. In the summer of 1940 however before Hitler had turned his attentions towards Russia von Bock was preoccupied with invasion plans for neutral Ireland and assigned responsibility for it to the German 4th and 7th army corps, army group B under the command of General Leonhard Kaupisch.

If these German army units in particular had reached Irelands shores in 1940, the consequences for Ireland would have been tragic and would have profoundly altered the course of history for the Republic and its citizens. The German 4th army corps in particular had a brutal reputation in battle and inflicted many civilian casualties as they secured the Polish corridor to Warsaw during the invasion of Poland in 1939. Later in 1941, the 4th army corps, equipped with its own motorised infantry and Panzer tank divisions, would play a crucial role during Operation Barbarossa, Hitlers invasion of Russia. The 4th army corps, earmarked for service in Ireland in the summer of 1940, conducted brutal operations the following

summer as they took Minsk and Smolensk on their advance to Moscow in June and July 1941. Had the 4th and 7th been deployed to Ireland in 1940, their tactics would have been brutal and their advance rapid up to 100km per day. The Nazis allocated 50,000 German troops for the invasion of Ireland. An initial force of about 4,000 crack troops, including engineers, motorised infantry, commando and panzer units, was to depart France from the Breton ports of Lorient, Saint-Nazaire and Nantes in the initial phase of the invasion. According to Operation Green, their destination was Irelands southeast coast where beach-heads were to be established between Dungarvan and Wexford town.

Once they had control and airstrips had been established (negligible armed resistance was expected) waves of Dornier and Stuka aircraft would have started bombing military and communications targets throughout the Irish Free State, as it then was, and Northern Ireland. In the second phase of the invasion (to start within 24 hours of the first landings), ground troops of the 4th and 7th army corps would have begun probing attacks, initially on the Irish Army

based in Cork and Clonmel, followed by a thrust through LaoisOffaly towards the Armys Curragh Camp base in Co Kildare. Their rate of advance would have been rapid, with some units reaching the outskirts of Dublin within 48 hours of landing in the southeast. The capital city was identified by the Nazis as one of six regional administrative centres for the British Isles had occupation taken place. Dublins Gauleiter was to have sweeping executive powers and would have had instructions to dismantle, and if necessary, liquidate, any of Irelands remaining indigenous political apparatus, her intellectual leadership and any non-Aryan social institutions such as the trade union movement or the GAA, for example. Irish Jews would have been murdered en masse. Hitlers generals were aware that their operations in Ireland would have to be self-sustaining given that their troops would be operating far from the continental mainland in Europes most western region. Adm Raeder described the German force in Ireland as one which of necessity would be left to its own devices in order to execute its mission of conquest. Therefore, Operation Green envisaged that German troops here would administer martial law and curfews, commandeering shelter, food, fuel and water from the civilian population. The plans even contained an annex with the names and addresses of all garage and petrol station owners throughout Munster and the midlands.

This policy of predation on the civilian population would have inevitably led the Germans into direct conflict with civilians as they confiscated livestock, food, fuel and used forced labour to support their advance northwards. As was the case in continental Europe, Irish civilians would have borne the brunt of the casualties in an invasion, either through the vagaries of war, punitive actions by the Germans or through the almost inevitable counter-attack by Britain. In military terms, the Irish Army would have been wholly illequipped to challenge a German invasion in the summer of 1940. In 1939, there were approximately 7,600 regulars in the Army with a further 11,000 volunteers and reserves of the Local Defence Force, forerunner of the FCA. By May 1940, this number had dropped by 6,000 due to financial constraints. The Irish governments recruitment campaign only began to bear fruit by the autumn of 1940. Had the Germans come ashore in the summer of 1940, they would have been met by an Army with no experience of combined arms combat and capable only of company- sized manoeuvres, involving a maximum of about 100 men. In addition, the Irish Army was poorly equipped, possessing only a dozen or so serviceable armoured cars and tanks. In terms of small arms, the Army did have plenty of Lee Enfield rifles of first World War vintage but had only 82 machine guns in total for the defence of the entire State.

Many Irish units also moved about on bicycles referred to at the time as Peddling (or Piddling) Panzers. Had they been engaged by the Wehrmacht, the Irish would have been slaughtered. Ironically, the Germans were not the only foreign power making plans for the invasion of Ireland in the summer of 1940. In June of that year, Gen Montgomery drew up plans for the seizure of Cork and Cobh along with the remainder of the Treaty ports. When Britains prime minister, Winston Churchill, became aware of Operation Green, the British military set out detailed plans to counter-attack the Germans from Northern Ireland. Codenamed Plan W, it envisaged Irish Army units regrouping in the Border areas of Cavan-Monaghan and being reinforced by British troops moving south from Northern Ireland. In this scenario, the Irish and British armies would have fought alongside one another to repel the German invasion. Had this happened, it is hard to see that widespread casualties, military and civilian, would not have ensued. Of course, neither Operation Green nor Plan W were implemented. Ireland survived the war almost entirely untouched by it, thanks largely to its neutral status being respected by the combatants and the crucial role played by the RAF in the summer of 1940. Were it not for the sacrifices of the 544 British, New Zealand, Czech, South African, Canadian, Polish, Australian, French and some Irish who fought and died with them during the Battle of Britain, who knows what flag would now fly over Leinster House.

Reply With Quote Reply With Quote 02-05-2011 #2 The Border Fox Guest operation green

The germans woudnt have attacked in 1940 it would be more like spring/summer of 1941 first they would have to defeated the raf in battle of britain. by 1941 the irish army was two divisions and two independant brigades. The 1st thunderbolt divison south protected the southern coast from nazi invasion Its units consisted of 3 light brigades the 1st 3rd and 7th each with its own motorised squadron witch included a armoured element with localy produced morris and ford armoured cars bsa motorbikes and scout cars made with modified ford trucks called bug chasers unarmoured but armed with lewis light machine guns. the brigades also had Artillery consisting mostly of 18 pounder field guns and a battery of 4.5 inch howitzers. reserves for this division would be provided by the 5th brigade from the curragh witch contained two armoured squadrons the 1st and 2nd and a bren carrier squadron.

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The Munich Agreement

More Sharing Services Share on facebook_like Share on google_plusone Share on linkedin Share on email Print October 5, 1938. House of Commons If I do not begin this afternoon by paying the usual, and indeed almost invariable, tributes to the Prime Minister for his handling of this crisis, it is certainly not from any lack of personal regard. We have always, over a great many years, had very pleasant relations, and I have deeply understood from personal experiences of my own in a similar crisis the stress and strain he has had to bear; but I am sure it is much better to say exactly what we think about public affairs, and this is certainly not the time when it is worth anyone's while to court political popularity.

We had a shining example of firmness of character from the late First Lord of the Admiralty two days ago. He showed that firmness of character which is utterly unmoved by currents of opinion, however swift and violent they may be. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Hull (Mr. Law), to whose compulsive speech the House listened on Monday, was quite right in reminding us that the Prime Minister has himself throughout his conduct of these matters shown a robust indifference to cheers or boos and to the alternations of criticism or applause. If that be so,

such qualities and elevation of mind should make it possible for the most severe expressions of honest opinion to be interchanged in this House without rupturing personal relations, and for all points of view to receive the fullest possible expression.

Having thus fortified myself by the example of others, I will proceed to emulate them. I will, therefore, begin by saying the most unpopular and most unwelcome thing. I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat, and that France has suffered even more than we have.

The utmost my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has been able to secure by all his immense exertions, by all the great efforts and mobilisation which took place in this country, and by all the anguish and strain through which we have passed in this country, the utmost he has been able to gain for Czechoslovakia in the matters which were in dispute has been that the German dictator, instead of snatching the victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer [Sir John Simon] said it was the first time Herr Hitler had been made to retract - I think that was the word - in any degree. We really must not waste time after all this long Debate upon the difference between the positions

reached at Berchtesgaden, at Godesberg and at Munich. They can be very simply epitomised, if the House will permit me to vary the metaphor. 1 was demanded at the pistol's point. When it was given, 2 were demanded at the pistol's point. Finally, the dictator consented to take 1 17s. 6d. and the rest in promises of goodwill for the future.

Now I come to the point, which was mentioned to me just now from some quarters of the House, about the saving of peace. No one has been a more resolute and uncompromising struggler for peace than the Prime Minister. Everyone knows that. Never has there been such instance and undaunted determination to maintain and secure peace. That is quite true. Nevertheless, I am not quite clear why there was so much danger of Great Britain or France being involved in a war with Germany at this juncture if, in fact, they were ready all along to sacrifice Czechoslovakia.

The terms which the Prime Minister brought back with him could easily have been agreed, I believe, through the ordinary diplomatic channels at any time during the summer. And I will say this, that I believe the Czechs, left to themselves and told they were going to get no help from the Western Powers, would have been able to make better terms than they have got after all this tremendous perturbation; they could hardly have had worse.

There never can be any absolute certainty that there will be a fight if one side is determined that it will give way completely. When one reads the Munich terms, when one sees what is happening in Czechoslovakia from hour to hour, when one is sure, I will not say of Parliamentary approval but of Parliamentary acquiescence, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer makes a speech which at any rate tries to put in a very powerful and persuasive manner the fact that, after all, it was inevitable and indeed righteous: when we say all this, and everyone on this side of the House, including many members of the Conservative Party who are vigilant and careful guardians of the national interest, is quite clear that nothing vitally affecting us was at stake, it seems to me that one must ask, What was all the trouble and fuss about?

The resolve was taken by the British and the French Governments. Let me say that it is very important to realise that it is by no means a question which the British Government only have had to decide. I very much admire the manner in which, in the House, all references of a recriminatory nature have been repressed. But it must be realised that this resolve did not emanate particularly from one or other of the Governments but was a resolve for which both must share in common the responsibility.

When this resolve was taken and the course was followed - you may say it was wise or unwise, prudent or short-sighted - once it had been decided not to make the defence of Czechoslovakia a

matter of war, then there was really no reason, if the matter had been handled during the summer in the ordinary way, to call into being all this formidable apparatus of crisis. I think that point should be considered.

We are asked to vote for this Motion which has been put upon the Paper, and it is certainly a Motion couched in very uncontroversial terms, as, indeed, is the Amendment moved from the Opposition side. I cannot myself express my agreement with the steps which have been taken, and as the Chancellor of the Exchequer has put his side of the case with so much ability I will attempt, if I may be permitted, to put the case from a different angle. I have always held the view that the maintenance of peace depends upon the accumulation of deterrents against the aggressor, coupled with a sincere effort to redress grievances. Herr Hitler's victory, like so many of the famous struggles that have governed the fate of the world, was won upon the narrowest of margins.

After the seizure of Austria in March we faced this problem in our Debates. I ventured to appeal to the Government to go a little further than the Prime Minister went, and to give a pledge that in conjunction with France and other Powers they would guarantee the security of Czechoslovakia while the Sudeten-Deutsch question was being examined either by a League of Nations Commission or some other impartial body, and I still believe that if that course had been followed events would not have fallen into

this disastrous state. I agree very much with my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery) when he said on that occasion - "Do one thing or the other; either say you will disinterest yourself in the matter altogether or take the step of giving a guarantee which will have the greatest chance of securing protection for that country."

France and Great Britain together, especially if they had maintained a close contact with Russia, which certainly was not done, would have been able in those days in the summer, when they had the prestige, to influence many of the smaller states of Europe; and I believe they could have determined the attitude of Poland. Such a combination, prepared at a time when the German dictator was not deeply and irrevocably committed to his new adventure, would, I believe, have given strength to all those forces in Germany which resisted this departure, this new design.

They were varying forces; - those of a military character which declared that Germany was not ready to undertake a world war, and all that mass of moderate opinion and popular opinion which dreaded war, and some elements of which still have some influence upon the Government. Such action would have given strength to all that intense desire for peace which the helpless German masses share with their British and French fellow men, and which, as we have been reminded, found a passionate and rarely permitted vent in the joyous manifestations with which the Prime Minister was acclaimed in Munich.

All these forces, added to the other deterrents which combinations of Powers, great and small, ready to stand firm upon the front of law and for the ordered remedy of grievances, would have formed, might well have been effective. Between submission and immediate war there was this third alternative, which gave a hope not only of peace but of justice. It is quite true that such a policy in order to succeed demanded that Britainshould declare straight out and a long time beforehand that she would, with others, join to defend Czechoslovakia against an unprovoked aggression. His Majesty's Government refused to give that guarantee when it would have saved the situation, yet in the end they gave it when it was too late, and now, for the future, they renew it when they have not the slightest power to make it good.

All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness. She has suffered in every respect by her association with the Western democracies and with the League of Nations, of which she has always been an obedient servant. She has suffered in particular from her association with France, under whose guidance and policy she has been actuated for so long. The very measures taken by His Majesty's Government in the Anglo-French Agreement to give her the best chance possible, namely, the 50 per cent, clean cut in certain districts instead of a plebiscite, have turned to her detriment, because there is to be a plebiscite too in wide areas, and those

other Powers who had claims have also come down upon the helpless victim.

Those municipal elections upon whose voting the basis is taken for the 50 per cent. cut were held on issues which had nothing to do with joining Germany. When I saw Herr Henlein over here he assured me that was not the desire of his people. Positive statements were made that it was only a question of home rule, of having a position of their own in the Czechoslovakian State. No one has a right to say that the plebiscite which is to be taken in areas under Saar conditions, and the clean-cut of the 50 per cent. areas - that those two operations together amount in the slightest degree to a verdict of self-determination. It is a fraud and a farce to invoke that name.

We in this country, as in other Liberal and democratic countries, have a perfect right to exalt the principle of self-determination, but it comes ill out of the mouths of those in totalitarian states who deny even the smallest element of toleration to every section and creed within their bounds. But, however you put it, this particular block of land, this mass of human beings to be handed over, has never expressed the desire to go into the Nazi rule. I do not believe that even now, if their opinion could be asked, they would exercise such an opinion.

What is the remaining position of Czechoslovakia? Not only are they politically mutilated, but, economically and financially, they are in complete confusion. Their banking, their railway arrangements, are severed and broken, their industries are curtailed, and the movement of their population is most cruel. The Sudeten miners, who are all Czechs and whose families have lived in that area for centuries, must now flee into an area where there are hardly any mines left for them to work. It is a tragedy which has occurred. There must always be the most profound regret and a sense of vexation in British hearts at the treatment and the misfortune which have overcome the Czechoslovakian Republic.

They have not ended here. At any moment there may be a hitch in the programme. At any moment there may be an order for Herr Goebbels to start again his propaganda of calumny and lies; at any moment an incident may be provoked, and now that the fortress line is turned away what is there to stop the will of the conqueror? Obviously, we are not in a position to give them the slightest help at the present time, except what everyone is glad to know has been done, the financial aid which the Government have promptly produced.

I venture to think that in future the Czechoslovak State cannot be maintained as an independent entity. I think you will find that in a period of time which may be measured by years, but may be measured only by months, Czechoslovakia will be engulfed in the

Nazi regime. Perhaps they may join it in despair or in revenge. At any rate, that story is over and told. But we cannot consider the abandonment and ruin of Czechoslovakia in the light only of what happened only last month. It is the most grievous consequence of what we have done and of what we have left undone in the last five years - five years of futile good intentions, five years of eager search for the line of least resistance, five years of uninterrupted retreat of British power, five years of neglect of our air defences.

Those are the features which I stand here to expose and which marked an improvident stewardship for which Great Britain and France have dearly to pay. We have been reduced in those five years from a position of security so overwhelming and so unchallengeable that we never cared to think about it. We have been reduced from a position where the very word "war" was considered one which could be used only by persons qualifying for a lunatic asylum. We have been reduced from a position of safety and power - power to do good, power to be generous to a beaten foe, power to make terms with Germany, power to give her proper redress for her grievances, power to stop her arming if we chose, power to take any step in strength or mercy or justice which we thought right - reduced in five years from a position safe and unchallenged to where we stand now.

When I think of the fair hopes of a long peace which still lay before Europe at the beginning of 1933 when Herr Hitler first obtained power, and of all the opportunities of arresting the

growth of the Nazi power which have been thrown away, when I think of the immense combinations and resources which have been neglected or squandered, I cannot believe that a parallel exists in the whole course of history.

So far as this country is concerned the responsibility must rest with those who have had the undisputed control of our political affairs. They neither prevented Germany from rearming, nor did they rearm themselves in time. They quarrelled with Italy without saving Ethiopia. The exploited and discredited the vast institution of the League of Nations and they neglected to make alliances and combinations which might have repaired previous errors, and thus they left us in the hour of trial without adequate national defence or effective international security.

In my holiday I thought it was a chance to study the reign of King Ethelred the Unready. The House will remember that that was a period of great misfortune, in which, from the strong position which we had gained under the descendants of King Alfred, we fell very swiftly into chaos. It was the period of Danegeld and of foreign pressure. I must say that the rugged words of the AngloSaxon Chronicle, written a thousand years ago, seem to me apposite, at least as apposite as those quotations from Shakespeare with which we have been regaled by the last speaker from the Opposition Bench. Here is what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle said, and I think the words apply very much to our treatment of Germany and our relations with her.

"All these calamities fell upon us because of evil counsel, because tribute was not offered to them at the right time nor yet were they resisted; but when they had done the most evil, then was peace made with them."

That is the wisdom of the past, for all wisdom is not new wisdom.

I have ventured to express those views in justifying myself for not being able to support the Motion which is moved to-night, but I recognise that this great matter of Czechoslovakia, and of British and French duty there, has passed into history. New developments may come along, but we are not here to decide whether any of those steps should be taken or not. They have been taken. They have been taken by those who had a right to take them because they bore the highest executive responsibility under the Crown.

Whatever we may think of it, we must regard those steps as belonging to the category of affairs which are settled beyond recall. The past is no more, and one can only draw comfort if one feels that one has done one's best to advise rightly and wisely and in good time. I, therefore, turn to the future, and to our situation as it is to-day. Here, again, I am sure I shall have to say something which will not be at all welcome.

We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude which has befallen Great Britain and France. Do not let us blind ourselves to that. It must now be accepted that all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe will make the best terms they can with the triumphant Nazi power. The system of alliances in Central Europe upon which France has relied for her safety has been swept away, and I can see no means by which it can be reconstituted. The road down the Danube Valleyto the Black Sea, the road which leads as far as Turkey, has been opened.

In fact, if not in form, it seems to me that all those countries of Middle Europe, all those Danubian countries, will, one after another, be drawn into this vast system of power politics - not only power military politics but power economic politics radiating from Berlin, and I believe this can be achieved quite smoothly and swiftly and will not necessarily entail the firing of a single shot. If you wish to survey the havoc of the foreign policy of Britain and France, look at what is happening and is recorded each day in the columns of The Times. Why, I read this morning about Yugoslavia - and I know something about the details of that country

"The effects of the crisis for Yugoslavia can immediately be traced. Since the elections of 1935, which followed soon after the murder of King Alexander, the Serb and Croat Opposition to the

Government of Dr. Stoyadinovitch have been conducting their entire campaign for the next elections under the slogan: 'Back to France, England, and the Little Entente; back to democracy.' The events of the past fortnight have so triumphantly vindicated Dr. Stoyadinovitch's policy...." his is a policy of close association with Germany "that the Opposition has collapsed practically overnight; the new elections, the date of which was in doubt, are now likely to be held very soon and can result only in an overwhelming victory for Dr. Stoyadinovitch's Government."

Here was a country which, three months ago, would have stood in the line with other countries to arrest what has occurred.

Again, what happened in Warsaw? The British and French Ambassadors visited the Foreign Minister, Colonel Beck, or sought to visit him, in order to ask for some mitigation in the harsh measures being pursued against Czechoslovakia about Teschen. The door was shut in their faces, The French Ambassador was not even granted an audience and the British Ambassador was given a most curt reply by a political director. The whole matter is described in the Polish Press as a political indiscretion committed by those two powers, and we are to-day reading of the success of Colonel Beck's blow. I am not forgetting, I must say, that it is less than twenty years since British and French bayonets rescued Poland from the bondage of a century and a half. I think it is indeed a sorry episode in the history of that country, for whose

freedom and rights so many of us have had warm and long sympathy.

Those illustrations are typical. You will see, day after day, week after week, entire alienation of those regions. Many of those countries, in fear of the rise of the Nazi power, have already got politicians, Ministers, Governments, who were pro-German, but there was always an enormous popular movement in Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia which looked to the Western democracies and loathed the idea of having this arbitrary rule of the totalitarian system thrust upon them, and hoped that a stand would be made. All that has gone by the board. We are talking about countries which are a long way off.

But what will be the position, I want to know, of France and England this year and the year afterwards? What will be the position of that Western front of which we are in full authority the guarantors? The German army at the present time is more numerous than that of France, though not nearly so matured or perfected. Next year it will grow much larger, and its maturity will be more complete. Relieved from all anxiety in the East, and having secured resources which will greatly diminish, if not entirely remove, the deterrent of a naval blockade, the rulers of Nazi Germany will have a free choice open to them as to what direction they will turn their eyes. If the Nazi dictator should choose to look westward, as he may, bitterly will France and England regret the loss of that fine army of ancient Bohemia

which was estimated last week to require not fewer than 30 German divisions for its destruction.

Can we blind ourselves to the great change which has taken place in the military situation, and to the dangers we have to meet? We are in process, I believe, of adding in four years, four battalions to the British Army. No fewer than two have already been completed. Here are at least 30 divisions which must now be taken into consideration upon the French front, besides the 12 that were captured when Austria was engulfed.

Many people, no doubt, honestly believe that they are only giving away the interests of Czechoslovakia, whereas I fear we shall find that we have deeply compromised, and perhaps fatally endangered, the safety and even the independence of Great Britain and France. This is not merely a question of giving up the German colonies, as I am sure we shall be asked to do. Nor is it a question only of losing influence in Europe. It goes far deeper than that. You have to consider the character of the Nazi movement and the rule which it implies.

The Prime Minister desires to see cordial relations between this country and Germany. There is no difficulty at all in having cordial relations between the peoples. Our hearts go out to them. But they have no power. But never will you have friendship with the present German Government. You must have diplomatic and

correct relations, but there can never be friendship between the British democracy and the Nazi power, that power which spurns Christian ethics, which cheers its onward course by a barbarous paganism, which vaunts the spirit of aggression and conquest, which derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution, and uses, as we have seen, with pitiless brutality the threat of murderous force. That power cannot ever be the trusted friend of the British democracy.

What I find unendurable is the sense of our country falling into the power, into the orbit and influence of Nazi Germany, and of our existence becoming dependent upon their good will or pleasure. It is to prevent that that I have tried my best to urge the maintenance of every bulwark of defence - first, the timely creation of an Air Force superior to anything within striking distance of our shores; secondly, the gathering together of the collective strength of many nations; and thirdly, the making of alliances and military conventions, all within the Covenant, in order to gather together forces at any rate to restrain the onward movement of this power. It has all been in vain. Every position has been successively undermined and abandoned on specious and plausible excuses.

We do not want to be led upon the high road to becoming a satellite of the German Nazi system of European domination. In a very few years, perhaps in a very few months, we shall be confronted with demands with which we shall no doubt be invited

to comply. Those demands may affect the surrender of territory or the surrender of liberty. I foresee and foretell that the policy of submission will carry with it restrictions upon the freedom of speech and debate in Parliament, on public platforms, and discussions in the Press, for it will be said - indeed, I hear it said sometimes now - that we cannot allow the Nazi system of dictatorship to be criticised by ordinary, common English politicians. Then, with a Press under control, in part direct but more potently indirect, with every organ of public opinion doped and chloroformed into acquiescence, we shall be conducted along further stages of our journey.

It is a small matter to introduce into such a Debate as this, but during the week I heard something of the talk of Tadpole and Taper. They were very keen upon having a general election, a sort of, if I may say so, inverted khaki election. I wish the Prime Minister had heard the speech of my hon. and gallant friend the Member for the Abbey Division of Westminster (Sir Sidney Herbert) last night. I know that no one is more patient and regular in his attendance than the Prime Minister, and it is marvellous how he is able to sit through so much of our Debates, but it happened that by bad luck he was not here at that moment. I am sure, however, that if he had heard my hon. and gallant Friend's speech he would have felt very much annoyed that such a rumour could even have been circulated.

I cannot believe that the Prime Minister, or any Prime Minister, possessed of a large working majority, would be capable of such an act of historic, constitutional indecency. I think too highly of him. Of course, if I have misjudged him on the right side, and there is a dissolution on the Munich Agreement, on Anglo-Nazi friendship, of the state of our defences and so forth, everyone will have to fight according to his convictions, and only a prophet could forecast the ultimate result; but, whatever the result, few things could be more fatal to our remaining chances of survival as a great Power than that this country should be torn in twain upon this deadly issue, of foreign policy at a moment when, whoever the Ministers may be, united effort can alone make us safe.

I have been casting about to see how measures can be taken to protect us from this advance of the Nazi power, and to secure those forms of life which are so dear to us. What is the sole method that is open? The sole method that is open is for us to regain our old island independence by acquiring that supremacy in the air which we were promised, that security in our air defences which we were assured we had, and thus to make ourselves an island once again. That, in all this grim outlook, shines out as the overwhelming fact.

An effort at rearmament the like of which has not been seen ought to be made forthwith, and all the resources of this country and all its united strength should be bent to that task. I was very glad to see that Lord Baldwin yesterday in the House of Lords said

that he would mobilise industry to-morrow. But I think it would have been much better if Lord Baldwin had said that two and a half years ago, when everyone demanded a Ministry of Supply. I will venture to say to hon. Gentlemen sitting here behind the Government Bench, hon. Friends of mine, whom I thank for the patience with which they have listened to what I have to say, that they have some responsibility for all this too, because, if they had given one tithe of the cheers they have lavished upon this transaction of Czechoslovakia to the small band of Members, who were endeavouring to get timely rearmament set in motion, we should not now be in the position in which we are. Hon. Gentlemen opposite, and hon. Members on the Liberal benches, are not entitled to throw these stones. I remember for two years having to face, not only the Government's depreciation, but their stern disapproval. Lord Baldwin has now given the signal, tardy though it may be; let us at least obey it.

After all, there are no secrets now about what happened in the air and in the mobilisation of our anti-aircraft defences. These matters have been, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Abbey Division said, seen by thousands of people. They can form their own opinions of the character of the statements which have been persistently made to us by Ministers on this subject. Who pretends now that there is air parity with Germany? Who pretends now that our anti-aircraft defences were adequately manned or armed?

We know that the German General Staff are well informed upon these subjects, but the House of Commons has hitherto not taken seriously its duty of requiring to assure itself on these matters. The Home Secretary said the other night that he would welcome investigation. Many things have been done which reflect the greatest credit upon the administration. But the vital matters are what we want to know about. I have asked again and again during these three years for a secret Session where these matters could be thrashed out, or for an investigation by a Select Committee of the House, or for some other method. I ask now that, when we meet again in the autumn, that should be a matter on which the Government should take the House into its confidence, because we have a right to know where we stand and what measures are being taken to secure our position.

I do not grudge our loyal, brave people, who were ready to do their duty no matter what the cost, who never flinched under the strain of last week - I do not grudge them the natural, spontaneous outburst of joy and relief when they learned that the hard ordeal would no longer be required of them at the moment; but they should know the truth. They should know that there has been gross neglect and deficiency in our defences; they should know that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road; they should know that we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies:

"Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting."

And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

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More Sharing Services Share on facebook_like Share on google_plusone Share on linkedin Share on email Print "No One Would Do Such Things"

"So now the Admiralty wireless whispers through the ether to the tall masts of ships, and captains pace their decks absorbed in thought. It is nothing. It is less than nothing. It is too foolish, too fantastic to be thought of in the twentieth century. Or is it fire and murder leaping out of the darkness at our throats, torpedoes ripping the bellies of half-awakened ships, a sunrise on a vanished naval supremacy, and an island well-guarded hitherto, at last defenceless? No, it is nothing. No one would do such things. Civilization has climbed above such perils. The interdependence of nations in trade and traffic, the sense of public law, the Hague Convention, Liberal principles, the Labour Party, high finance, Christian charity, common sense have rendered such nightmares impossible. Are you quite sure? It would be a pity to be wrong. Such a mistake could only be made onceonce for all."

1923, recalling the possibility of war between France and Germany after the Agadir Crisis of 1911, in The World Crisis,vol. 1, 1911-1914, pp. 48-49.

"The King's Ships Were at Sea"

"We may now picture this great Fleet, with its flotillas and cruisers, steaming slowly out of Portland Harbour, squadron by squadron, scores of gigantic castles of steel wending their way across the misty, shining sea, like giants bowed in anxious thought. We may picture them again as darkness fell, eighteen miles of warships running at high speed and in absolute blackness through the narrow Straits, bearing with them into the broad waters of the North the safeguard of considerable affairs....The Kings ships were at sea."

1923, recalling the passage of the Royal Navy to its war stations at the outbreak of World War I, in The World Crisis,vol. 1, 1911-1914, pp. 212. Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, had taken it upon himself to order the fleet to its stations as war loomed between Franceand Germany.

"I'd Drink [Poison]" (Apocryphal)

Lady Astor: "If I were married to you, I'd put poison in your coffee."

Reply: "If I were married to you, I'd drink it."

1920s. Churchill biographer Sir Martin Gilbert said this exchange was more likely to have occurred between Lady Astor and Churchill's good friend F.E. Smith, Lord Birkenhead, a notorious acerbic wit. But both ConsueloVanderbilt(The Glitter and the Gold) and ChristopherSykes(Nancy: The Life of Lady Astor) say the riposte was by Churchill. The argument was rendered moot when FredShapiro, in The Yale Book of Quotations, tracked the origins of the phrase to a joke line from a 1900 edition of The Chicago Tribune.

"Total and Unmitigated Defeat"

"I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat, and France has suffered even more than we have....the German dictator, instead of snatching the victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course."

House of Commons, 5 October 1938, after the Munichagreement began the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. The rest of that unhappy country was swallowed by Hitlersix months later.

"Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat"

"I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many long months of toil and struggle.

"You ask what is our policy. I will say, it is to wage war with all our might, with all the strength that God can give us, to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.

"You ask what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terror. Victory however long and hard the road may be. For without victory there is no survival."

First speech as Prime Minister, House of Commons, 13 May 1940. Churchillfirst used the phrase blood and sweat in 1900; Blood, sweat and tears came together in his 1939 article, Can FrancoRestore Unity and Strength to Spain.

"Be Ye Men of Valour"

"Today is Trinity Sunday. Centuries ago words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: 'Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. As the will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be.'"

First broadcast as Prime Minister, 19 May 1940. Churchill adopted the quotation from 1 Maccabees 3:58-60. The four Books of the Maccabees, also spelled "Machabbes," are not in the Hebrew Bible but the first two books are part of canonical scripture in the Septuagint and the Vulgate and are in in the Protestant Apocrypha. But Churchill somewhat edited the text. For the original wording click here.

"Never Surrender"

"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing-grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!"

House of Commons, 4 June 1940, following the evacuation of British and French armies from Dunkirkas the German tide swept through France.

"Their Finest Hour"

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may more forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their Finest Hour.'

House of Commons, 18 June 1940, following the collapse of France. Many thought Britainwould follow.

"War of the Unknown Warriors"

This is no war of chieftains or of princes, of dynasties or national ambition; it is a war of peoples and of causes. There are vast numbers, not only in this island but in every land, who will render faithful service in this war but whose names will never be known, whose deeds will never be recorded. This is a war of the Unknown Warriors; but let all strive without failing in faith or in duty, and the dark curse of Hitler will be lifted from our age."

BBC Broadcast, London, 14 July 1940

"The Few"

"The gratitude of every home in our island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. "

Tribute to the Royal Air Force, House of Commons, 20 August 1940. The Battleof Britainpeaked a month later. Because

of German bombing raids, Churchillsaid, Britainwas "a whole nation fighting and suffering together." He had worked out the phrase about "The Few" in his mind as he visited the Fighter Command airfields in Southern England.

"A Dark and Deadly Valley"

"Far be it from me to paint a rosy picture of the future. Indeed, I do not think we should be justified in using any but the most sombre tones and colours while our people, our Empire and indeed the whole English-speaking world are passing through a dark and deadly valley. But I should be failing in my duty if, on the other wise, I were not to convey the true impression, that a great nation is getting into its war stride."

House of Commons, 22 January 1941

"Linchpin of the English-Speaking World"

"Canada is the linchpin of the English-speaking world. Canada, with those relations of friendly, affectionate intimacy with the United States on the one hand and with her unswerving fidelity to the British Commonwealth and the Motherland on the other, is the link which joins together these great branches of the human

family, a link which, spanning the oceans, brings the continents into their true relation and will prevent in future generations any growth of division between the proud and the happy nations of Europe and the great countries which have come into existence in the New World."

Mansion House, London, 4 September 1941, at a luncheon in honour of MackenzieKing, Prime Minister of Canada.

"Captain of Our Souls"

"The mood of Britain is wisely and rightly averse from every form of shallow or premature exultation. This is no time for boasts or glowing prophecies, but there is thisa year ago our position looked forlorn, and well nigh desperate, to all eyes but our own. Today we may say aloud before an awe-struck world, 'We are still masters of our fate. We still are captain of our souls.'"

House of Commons, 9 September 1941

"Never Give In"

"This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, neverin nothing, great or small, large or pettynever give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."

HarrowSchool, 29 October 1941. It is commonly believed that Churchillstood up, gave the three-word speech, "Never give in!," and sat down. This is incorrect, as is the suggestion, variously reported, that the speech occurred at Oxfordor Cambridge. It was on his first visit to his old school, Harrow, where he would continue to return for the annual "Songs," making his last appearance in 1961.

"Child of the House of Commons"

"I am a child of the House of Commons. I was brought up in my father's house to believe in democracy. 'Trust the people' that was his message....I owe my advancement entirely to the House of Commons, whose servant I am. In my country, as in yours, public men are proud to be the servants of the State and would be ashamed to be its masters. Therefore I have been in full harmony all my life with the tides which have flowed on both sides of the Atlantic against privilege and monopoly....By the way, I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British, instead of the other way around, I might have got here on my own!"

First of three speeches to a Joint Session of the States Congress, after Pearl Harbor, delivered 26 December 1941. (The others occurred in 1943 and 1952.)

"Some ChickenSome Neck!"

"When I warned [the French] that Britain would fight on alone, whatever they did, their Generals told their Prime Minister and

his divided cabinet: 'In three weeks, England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.

"Some chicken....Some neck!

Canadian Parliament, Ottawa, 30 December 1941. Following this speech, YousufKarshtook his famous photographs of Churchill.

"Sugar Candy"

"We have not journeyed across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy."

Canadian Parliament, Ottawa, 30 December 1941.

"The End of the Beginning"

"The Germans have received back again that measure of fire and steel which they have so often meted out to others. Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

Lord Mayor's Luncheon, Mansion House following the victory at El Alameinin North Africa, London, 10 November 1942.

"We Shape Our Buildings"

"On the night of May 10, 1941, with one of the last bombs of the last serious raid, our House of Commons was destroyed by the violence of the enemy, and we have now to consider whether we should build it up again, and how, and when.

"We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us. Having dwelt and served for more than forty years in the late Chamber,and having derived very great pleasure and advantage therefrom, I, naturally, should like to see it restored in all essentials to its old form, convenience and dignity."

House of Commons (meeting in the House of Lords), 28 October 1943. The old House was rebuilt in 1950 in its old form, remaining insufficient to seat all its members. Churchill was against "giving each member a desk to sit at and a lid to bang" because, he explained, the House would be mostly empty most of the time; whereas, at critical votes and moments, it would fill

beyond capacity, with members spilling out into the aisles, in his view a suitable "sense of crowd and urgency."

"Up with which I will not put" (Apocryphal)

"This is the kind of tedious [sometimes "pedantic"] nonsense up with which I will not put!"

Alleged marginal note by Churchill, 27 February 1944, to a priggish civil servant's memo objecting to the ending of a sentences with prepositions. The New York Timesversion reported that the Prime Minister underscored up heavily.

The source are a cable reports by The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, 28 February 1944. The Yale Book of Quotations quotes The Wall Street Journal of 30 September 1942 which in turn quoted an undated article in The Strand Magazine: "When a memorandum passed round a certain Government department, one young pedant scribbled a postscript drawing attention to the fact that the sentence ended with a preposition, which caused the original writer to circulate another memorandum complaining that the anonymous postscript was 'offensive impertinence, up with which I will not put.'" Verdict: An invented phrase put in Churchills mouth.

Results of the war 10 million dead and 20 million wounded Influenza epidemic Loss of population Loss of leadership Loss of optimism Emergence of conditions that led to World War II Appeal to Assessment before WWII France = weak in 1930s, Brit = alone LON mandates: All aid if any member attacked All disputes settled by arbitration MacDonald Baldwin (1935) Neville Chamberlain (Con, 1937-40) Failure to Appeasement British idealism Versailles as harsh German national self-determination Rearmament = expensive Chamberlain lack of understanding

 Genuine desire to avoid war

Appeasement Fear arms build up German grievances Germany as bulwark against Russia

Treaty of Versailles 18 January 1919 / 10 January 1920 Terms: Germany loses land Reparations Union with Austria Military New Euro states

"I leave when the pub closes"

Toward the end of World War II, before the July 1945 election that would lose, The Times (London) prepared an editorial suggesting that Churchill campaign as a non-partisan world leader and retire gracefully soon afterward. The editor kindly informed Churchill that he was going to make these two points.

"Mr. Editor," Churchill replied to the first point, "I fight for my corner."

And, to the second: "Mr. Editor, I leave when the pub closes."

May 1945. H.A.Grunwald, Churchill: The Life Triumphant(American Heritage, 1965)

"Lousy" as a Parliamentary Expression

The Minister of Fuel and Power, Hugh Gaitskell, later Attlee's successor as leader of the Labour Party, advocated saving energy by taking fewer baths: "Personally, I have never had a great many baths myself, and I can assure those who are in the habit of having a great many that it does not make a great difference to their health if they have less."

This was too much for Churchill, a renowned bather: "When Ministers of the Crown speak like this on behalf of HM Government, the Prime Minister and his friends have no need to wonder why they are getting increasingly into bad odour. I have even asked myself, when meditating upon these points, whether you, Mr. Spekaer, would admit the word 'lousy' as a Parliamentary expression in referring to the Administration, provided, of course, it was not intended in a contemptuous sense but purely as one of factual narration."

House of Commons, 28 October 1947

"Withhold No Sacrifice"

"We have surmounted all the perils and endured all the agonies of the past. We shall provide against and thus prevail over the dangers and problems of the future, withhold no sacrifice, grudge no toil, seek no sordid gain, fear no foe. All will be well. We have, I believe, within us the life-strength and guiding light by which the tormented world around us may find the harbour of safety, after a storm-beaten voyage."

Chateau Laurier, Ottawa, 9 November 1954 Last Updated on Sunday, 01 March 2009 13:56

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The TUC supported the special conference of socialists, co-operators and trade unionists held on 17 February 1900, at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, London at which the Labour Represenation Committee (LRC) was established. The LRC was composed of seven trade union representatives, two from the ILP, two from the SDF and one Fabian and elected James Ramsay MacDonald as its secretary. Its purpose was simply 'to establish a distinct labour group in parliament who shall have their own whips and agree upon their own policy'. Affiliated organisations would finance their own candidates but would receive LRC backing. The LRC (known from 1906 as the Labour Party) did not, as yet, represent a distinct socialist current - it was not even a party in the accepted sense of the term, rather a federal organisation - a broad church. Individual unions were slow to affiliate until the Taff Vale decision of 1901 (see below) finally convinced them that it was futile to rely on the existing political parties. Only the Miners' Federation remained outside the labour coalition. (It eventually affiliated in 1909). Keir Hardie of the ILP characterised the 'philosophy' of the new organisation not as socialism but as 'labourism'.

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he second Industrial Revolution fueled the Gilded Age, a period of great extremes: great wealth and widespread poverty, great expansion and deep depression, new opportunities and greater standardization. Economic insecurity became a basic way of life as the depressions of the 1870s and 1890s put millions out of work or reduced pay. Those who remained in the industrial line of work experienced extremely dangerous working conditions, long hours, no compensation for injuries, no pensions, and low wages. But for a limited minority of workers, the industrial system established new forms of freedom. Skilled workers received high wages in industrial work and oversaw a great deal of the production process. Economic independence now required a technical skill rather than ownership of ones own shop and tools. Its proponents labeled it progress, but those who worked the floor at the factory knew it came at a price.

William Greg, Shall We Retain Our Colonies? Benjamin Disraeli, The Maintenance of Empire William Gladstone, Englands Mission Joseph Chamberlain, True Conception of Empire Joseph Chamberlain, Boer War Defended David Lloyd George, Boer War Criticized John A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Student No secret diplomacy Freedom of navigation on the seas Removal of trade barriers Reduction of arms National sovereignty a general association of nations--the League of Nations 18 January 1919 / 10 January 1920

 Terms: Germany loses land Reparations Union with Austria Military New Euro states League of Nation

Triple Alliance n 1. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) the secret alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy formed in 1882 and lasting until 1914 2. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) the alliance of France, the Netherlands, and Britain against Spain in 1717 3. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) the alliance of England, Sweden, and the Netherlands against France in 1668

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