Hitlers Foreign Policy International Relations Appeasement: Failings

HITLERS FOREIGN POLICY>INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS>APPEASEMENT: FAILINGS

HITLERS FOREIGN POLICY

· Create a powerful German nation

· Treaty of Versailles overturned

· German unification

· LEBENSRAUM : Living space.

1933 Germany leaves the League of Nations/Disarmament conference

1934 Assassination of Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss by Austrian Nazi’s. Mussolini

Opposed.

1935 January – Plebiscite in the SAAR. 90% voted for a return to Germany.

1935 Stresa Front – GB/Fr/It agree to act if the treaty of Versailles is broken

and condemn the assassination.

1936 Spanish Civil War starts

1937 Germans invade the Rhineland – risky but the Abyssinia crisis is a distraction

1938 Hossbach memorandum: Hitler frustrated by the pace of rearmament –

States that intends to obtain Austria and Czechoslovakia

1939 Austrian nazi’s stir up trouble and chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg forced to

accept three Austrian Nazi’s as ministers. Hitler proposes a German takeover,

Schuschnigg orders a plebiscite for the Austrians to decide. Hitler was furious.

Before the vote was taken Germany moves in and Schuschnigg is sent to a concentration camp. Anschluss is complete.

1938-9 Sudetenland. German speaking people. Hitler asked Nazi’s to stir up trouble.

Used propaganda. The president Benes remained determined as he was allied to Britain, France and USSR.

APPEASEMENT

>CHAMBERLAIN – Munich Agreement 1938 – fate of Czechoslovakia to be decided.

>Agreement reached for Hitler to take the Sudetenland

>March 1939 Nazis march into the rest of Czechoslovakia which is sacrificed to preserve peace.

***********and aside

1949 NATO

1955 Warsaw Pact

ATBQ