Source I

Speech by Adolf Hitler at the Sportpalast, Berlin, 26 September 1938, during the Sudetenland crisis.

I have demanded that the oppression of three and a half million Germans in Czechoslovakia shall cease and that instead they shall receive the right to self-determination that every people must possess. I assured him that the moment Czechoslovakia solves her other minority problems (that means when the Czechs have come to terms with their other minorities, Poles and Hungarians) I will have no further interest in the Czech State. And I give him the guarantee. We want no Czechs. But in the same way I also wish to state before the German people: With regard to the problem of the Sudeten Germans my patience is now at an end. I have made Mr. Beneš an offer which is nothing but the carrying out of what he himself has promised. The decision now lies in his hands: peace or war.

Source J

British political cartoon published in the Daily Express, October 1938, captioned "The Führer's Harvest." It shows Hitler carrying a large sack labelled "Sudetenland" while figures representing Britain and France hold open a barn door labelled "Munich Agreement," allowing him to walk in freely.

Source K

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, broadcast to the British nation, 27 September 1938.

How 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. It seems still more impossible that a quarrel which has already been settled in principle should be the subject of war. I am myself a man of peace to the depths of my soul. Armed conflict between nations is a nightmare to me; but if I were convinced that any nation had made up its mind to dominate the world by fear of its force, I should feel that it must be resisted. Under such a domination, life for people who believe in liberty would not be worth living; but war is a fearful thing, and we must be very sure before we embark on it that it is really the great issues that are at stake.

Source L

Winston Churchill, speech to the House of Commons, 5 October 1938, following the Munich Agreement.

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. We have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat... 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.

Source I

Speech by Benito Mussolini at the Campidoglio, Rome, 9 May 1936, announcing the conquest of Ethiopia.

Ethiopia is Italian! ... With the annexation of Ethiopia, Italy has at last obtained its place in the sun. The Italian people have created the Empire with their blood. They will fertilise it with their work and defend it against anyone. Will you be worthy of it? This is the cry of Italy, which at the moment of its greatest victory renews its faith in the Duce, its Founder and its Leader, in the name of the fallen, in the name of those who suffer and work. It is the cry of Italy, the cry of fascism, the cry of a people which has no fear and no hesitation, a people which marches and which will always march.

Source J

Italian propaganda poster from 1935, showing a large Roman eagle bearing a fasces symbol spreading its wings over a map of East Africa, with Ethiopian territory coloured in Italian national colours. The caption reads: "L'Impero — La Civiltà Fascista" ("The Empire — Fascist Civilisation").

Source K

Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, address to the League of Nations, Geneva, 30 June 1936.

I, Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, am here today to claim that justice which is due to my people, and the assistance promised to it eight months ago, when fifty nations asserted that aggression had been committed in violation of international law. There is no precedent for a head of state himself speaking in this Assembly. But there is also no precedent for a people being victim of such injustice and of the inaction of the League of Nations in the face of a war of conquest. God and history will remember your judgment. It is not merely a question of the settlement of Italian aggression. It is collective security; it is the very existence of the League of Nations; it is the confidence that each state is to place in international treaties.

Source L

Historian R.J.B. Bosworth, Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, published 2005.

The Ethiopian war was the high-water mark of fascist Italy's international ambitions. It appealed to deep currents in Italian nationalism, the humiliation of Adwa in 1896, when an Italian army had been routed by Ethiopian forces, remained a wound in the national psyche. For Mussolini, Ethiopia was also a test of the fascist ideology of violence, expansion and national renewal. The relatively easy military victory, achieved through the use of poison gas, aerial bombardment and vastly superior firepower against an adversary equipped with spears and rifles, gave a false sense of Italian military capability that would prove catastrophic later. More damagingly, the war isolated Italy diplomatically, pushing Mussolini towards dependence on Hitler at precisely the moment when he might otherwise have remained a counterweight to German expansion.

Source I

Official Soviet communiqué announcing the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact, 23 August 1939.

The Government of the USSR and the Government of Germany, guided by the desire to strengthen the cause of peace between the USSR and Germany, and proceeding from the fundamental provisions of the Treaty of Neutrality concluded between the USSR and Germany in April 1926, have reached the following agreement: Article I. The High Contracting Parties undertake to refrain from any act of violence, any aggressive action, and any attack on each other, whether individually or jointly with other Powers. Article II. Should one of the High Contracting Parties become the object of belligerent action by a third Power, the other High Contracting Party shall in no manner lend its support to this third Power. The present treaty has been concluded for a term of ten years, with provision that it shall be automatically prolonged for another five years if neither of the High Contracting Parties denounces the treaty one year prior to its expiration.

Source J

British political cartoon published in the Evening Standard, 20 September 1939, captioned "Rendezvous." It shows Hitler and Stalin bowing mockingly to each other over the body of a soldier labelled "Poland," with Hitler saying "the scum of the earth, I believe?" and Stalin replying "the bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?"

Source K

Maxim Litvinov, Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, speech to the League of Nations, 21 September 1938: one year before the Pact.

The Soviet Union proposes the practical application of regional agreements for mutual defence against aggressors. I am sure the Soviet Union is not alone in thinking that the League must not allow an aggressor to devour states one by one. The principle of indivisibility of peace, if not acted upon, becomes a formula for surrender. When Czechoslovakia's independence is threatened today, it is the peace of all nations that is at stake. The USSR is ready to participate in collective actions to curb aggression, and I call upon the great powers of Europe to join in this effort before it is too late.

Source L

Historian Geoffrey Roberts, The Soviet Union and the Origins of the Second World War, published 1995.

Stalin signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact not because he was an admirer of Hitler or fascism, but because by August 1939 he had concluded that a collective security arrangement with Britain and France was unobtainable. The Anglo-French negotiating team sent to Moscow in the summer of 1939 arrived without full powers to commit their governments, without an agreement from Poland to allow Soviet troops transit rights, and without a clear military plan. Stalin interpreted this as evidence that Britain and France were content to see Germany turn east. The Pact was thus a defensive measure: an attempt to buy time and territory rather than an act of ideological solidarity with Nazi Germany.

Source I

Speech by Benito Mussolini to the Italian Grand Council, Rome, December 1936, on Italian involvement in the Spanish Civil War.

Italy's intervention in Spain is not an act of aggression. It is a crusade. When General Franco raised the flag of revolt against the Bolshevik forces that had turned Spain into a field of disorder and ruin, Italy responded to his appeal. We are fighting in Spain not for territorial conquest but for an idea: the idea that a European nation has the right to choose its own government without foreign interference from the Communist International. Italy will not stand by while Marxism extinguishes civilisation on the Iberian peninsula. The Rome-Berlin Axis grows stronger with each passing month. We are building a new Europe, and Spain is one of its first battles.

Source J

British political cartoon published in the Daily Herald, October 1936, showing Mussolini and Hitler as puppet masters operating marionettes dressed as Spanish Nationalist soldiers above a map of Spain, while a figure representing the Non-Intervention Committee sits beneath with its eyes covered.

Source K

Statement of the Non-Intervention Committee, London, 9 September 1936.

The Governments subscribing to this agreement have agreed to prohibit all export, re-export, and transit to Spain of arms, ammunition, and implements of war. They recognise that the internal conflict currently taking place in Spain is a Spanish matter, and that foreign intervention on either side risks transforming a civil conflict into a wider European confrontation. The Governments are united in their desire to prevent the Spanish conflict from becoming a cause for a general European war and in their hope that the Spanish people will be permitted to resolve their differences without external interference.

Source L

Historian Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, published 2006.

Mussolini's intervention in Spain was driven by a mixture of ideological, strategic and prestige considerations. Fascist Italy could not allow a leftist republic on its Mediterranean flank, a victory for the Popular Front would undermine the fascist model across Europe. But Mussolini also saw Spain as a training ground for Italian forces and an opportunity to project Italian power into the western Mediterranean, challenging British and French naval dominance. In the end, the intervention proved enormously costly in men and materiel, tied down Italian forces for three years, and delivered strategic gains that were far less significant than Mussolini had imagined.

Source I

Speech by Adolf Hitler to the German Reichstag, 20 February 1938.

For over ten million Germans in two of the states adjoining our frontiers, it was their misfortune in 1919 to be torn away from their motherland solely as a result of the arbitrary decisions of the peace dictators. As long as Germany was powerless and defenceless, she was obliged to accept this outrage. But today the German nation refuses to accept a permanent condition in which people of German blood and German culture are denied the right to belong to the German Reich. The German Government expects that the German-speaking peoples in the border states will at last be accorded that right to self-determination which every other people in Europe enjoys. If these demands are not met, Germany will not stand by and watch indefinitely. The German nation will not tolerate the continued oppression of millions of its kinsmen beyond its borders.

Source J

British political cartoon published in Punch magazine, March 1938, captioned "Spring Cleaning." It depicts a large figure representing Germany sweeping a smaller Austrian figure into a dustpan, while a group of European statesmen look on from a distance.

Source K

Statement by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to the House of Commons, 14 March 1938.

The hard fact is that nothing could have arrested this action by Germany unless we and others with us had been prepared to use force to prevent it. I imagine that in accord with the general desire to avoid the catastrophe of another European war, His Majesty's Government were not prepared, and are not prepared, to take that step. Nothing that we could have said or done would have been effective, or would have stopped this action, unless we had been ready, with France and perhaps other Powers, to use force. That is a situation which I very much deplore. The events which have taken place in Austria fill me with the deepest concern. But we must recognise that this has occurred and consider what action is now appropriate.

Source L

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, published 1960.

Hitler's annexation of Austria was achieved without firing a single shot in anger. The Austrian government, under intolerable pressure from Berlin and abandoned by Britain and France, had capitulated before the Wehrmacht even crossed the border. What had been achieved was remarkable: an entire state of six and a half million people absorbed into the Reich, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, in defiance of the League of Nations, and without the slightest effective protest from the Western powers. The Anschluss demonstrated with devastating clarity that neither Britain nor France would risk war to prevent German expansion. Hitler had learned his lesson. He moved immediately to plan his next step.