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

Statement by the Japanese delegation to the League of Nations, Geneva, 24 February 1933, announcing Japan's withdrawal from the League.

The Japanese Government has been compelled to conclude that Japan and the other members of the League entertain different views on the manner in which peace can be maintained in the Far East. The Japanese Government believes that the maintenance of peace in East Asia is primarily the responsibility of the nations of East Asia, and that the conditions of the region cannot be properly understood or managed by distant European powers. Japan has acted in Manchuria not out of aggression but out of necessity: to protect the lives and property of its nationals and to preserve order in a region where the Chinese Government has proved incapable of maintaining stability. The report adopted by the Assembly fails to recognise these realities. Japan therefore finds it impossible to accept the report and, with deep regret, must withdraw from the League.

Source J

Western editorial cartoon published in an American newspaper, 1933, showing a Japanese military officer in uniform standing over a map of East Asia, holding a sword in one hand and a banner reading "Greater East Asia" in the other. Small figures representing China and Southeast Asian nations cower beneath. A rising sun flag fills the background.

Source K

Fumimaro Konoe, Prime Minister of Japan, statement announcing the "New Order in East Asia," 3 November 1938.

What Japan seeks is the establishment of a new order which will ensure the permanent stability of East Asia. This is the aim not only of the present hostilities in China but of Japan's entire foreign policy. The new order means a tripartite relationship of mutual aid and co-ordination between Japan, Manchukuo and China. Japan does not seek territorial aggrandisement. She seeks the overthrow of the old order based on Anglo-American exploitation of the peoples of East Asia and its replacement with a new order founded on co-prosperity and mutual respect. Japan is prepared to work with any Chinese government that shares this vision and abandons the policies of dependence on foreign powers.

Source L

Historian Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945, published 2013.

Japanese foreign policy in the 1930s was shaped by a potent combination of militarism, economic anxiety, and racial ideology. The military, and particularly the Kwantung Army, operated with increasing independence from civilian government, pursuing expansionist policies in Manchuria and China that the politicians in Tokyo could neither authorise nor prevent. The language of "co-prosperity" and "new order" masked a programme of imperial conquest driven by the belief that Japan had a divinely ordained mission to lead Asia. The economic dimension was equally important: Japan lacked the raw materials (oil, rubber, iron) necessary to sustain its industrial economy and saw control of China and Southeast Asia as the solution. The tragedy was that Japanese nationalism, which had begun as a defensive response to Western imperialism in the nineteenth century, had by the 1930s become an instrument of imperial aggression indistinguishable from the Western colonialism it claimed to oppose.

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

An extract from a memoir, written in 1931, by Ubukata Toshiro, a journalist-novelist, who was a teenager at the start of the Sino-Japanese War.

... Everybody agreed that it would be very difficult to capture Pyongyang, since the city held huge British cannons. However, in August, the Japanese army overpowered Pyongyang with so little effort that it almost was disappointing - and the Japanese people were enraptured. My home town had no telephone system back then. News of victories came to the police before the newspaper received it, thanks to a telegraph line between the post office and police station. All news was put upon the message board in front of the police station, and we children ran to check it several times a day. The excitement of the Japanese people was beyond imagination. After all, C hina was thirty times as big as Japan, and its population was over 200 million, compared t o o u r 30 million. It had such a competent leader in Li Hongzhang ... and this was our first war with a foreign country, a country supported moreover by the British. Everyone - adults, children, the aged, the women - talked about war and nothing else, day and night ... no one ever had been as happy as when we learned of the fall of Pyongyang ...

Source J

A Japanese artist depicts Chinese officials surrendering to naval officers in 1895

Source K

An extract from Japanese government official Hayashi, written in June 1895 following the Triple Intervention.

We must continue to study and make use of Western methods ... If new warships are considered necessary we must, at any cost, build them; if the organisation of our army is inadequate we must start rectifying it from now; if need be, our entire military system must be changed. At present Japan must keep calm and sit tight, so as to lull suspicions nurtured against her; during this time the foundations of her national power must be consolidated; and we must watch and wait for the opportunity in the Orient that will surely come one day. When this day arrives Japan will decide her own fate; and she will be able not only to put into their place the powers who seek to meddle in her affairs; she will even be able, should this be necessary, to meddle in their affairs.

Source L

John Hunter B oyle. Modern Japan: The American Nexus ( 1993 ).

Speaking for many of his countrymen, journalist Tokutomi wrote that the Triple Intervention was to transform him psychologically and dominate the rest of this life . "Say what you will, it had happened because we weren't strong enough. What it came down to was that sincerity and justice didn't amount to a thing if you weren't strong enough." Japan had learned to emulate the West. It had played by the rules. From the standpoint of the victim, they were not particularly fair rules, but they were the established rules of imperialism. Now, in Japan's moment of victory, it found that it was reviled by yellow-peril sloganeering and denied equal membership in the imperialist club. Japanese, even those who had been most enthusiastic about Western models, became convinced, as Marius Jensen writes, that international law and institutional modernization alone would never bring full respect and equality from the West.

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.