Great powers paid price for `peace': history shows that the pacifist movement of the 1930s ultimately helped to usher in the horror of World War II by allowing rogue nations to rise to power unabated

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 1, 2003 | by Stephen Goode

Indeed, it all began in far-off Asia. The first world crisis the great powers failed to meet was Japan's invasion of Manchuria, a province of China, in 1931. Early the next year, Japan created out of Manchuria the puppet state of Manchukuo and proceeded to carry its war of aggression deeply into China.

The Republic of China was a member of the League of Nations, the U.N.--like organization created at the end of World War I. The Japanese invasion violated League of Nations rules, and Great Britain called for an inquiry. An inquiry was forthcoming--but that was all.

The League of Nations declined to recognize Manchukuo, but it also refused to place any sanctions on Japan's behavior, in part because neither Great Britain nor any other member nation was strong enough to enforce them. The United States had not joined the League of Nations, nor did it support sanctions. The result: Japan continued to occupy Manchukuo and to make war in China. And it removed itself from membership in the League.

The failure to put an end to Japanese aggression had ramifications beyond the Far East. Benito Mussolini, dictator in Italy since 1922, noted the failure of the League of Nations to say "no" to Japan. In October 1935, Italy invaded Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia), creating the second major crisis of the 1930s. His aim was to create an overseas Italian empire and avenge the Italian failure 40 years earlier to seize the African country, an effort in which 5,000 Italians lost their lives at Aduwa.

World opinion was outraged when Italy attacked Abyssinia. Here was a modern European country armed with modern weapons, including poison gas, warring against a desperately poor nation that could in no way match Italy's firepower. Abyssinia was a member of the League of Nations and its emperor, Haile Selassie, made an eloquent and passionate appeal for League help. But none was forthcoming. Great Britain urged sanctions. But Pierre Laval, the French foreign minister, didn't want to antagonize Italy, and the only kind of sanctions that would have mattered--sanctions on oil that would have starved oil-poor Italy--never were brought to bear. Mussolini remained in Abyssinia.

But the worst failure of the great powers was their failure to check the power of Germany when they could. Hitler's aims were clear. There was, first of all, Mein Kampf. Then there were his actions. In 1933, he removed Germany from the League of Nations. In 1935, he repudiated the Versailles Treaty. But it was his March 7, 1936, reoccupation of the Rhineland that was his most daring act.

Hitler had watched as the world did nothing when Japan took provinces of mainland China and Italy seized its African province. His goal, which he openly had declared many times, was to restore Germany's pre-World War I greatness--a greatness that had been stolen from it unfairly, he contended, by Jews and others who had betrayed Germany. So he took the Rhineland area, where France and Germany meet, which had been neutralized after World War I. There were no German troops there until, suddenly, there were many--right up next to France. What's more, once the Rhineland had been reoccupied, Hitler began to rearm Germany with a vengeance.