SBQ: CMC/Korean war/ WWII / War in Europe / Cold War.
Must give correct answer hor.
Don't give those
western propaganda bullshit answers.
Against this background the aggressive Powers rose after 1931 to
challenge Western Civilization and the "satisfied" Powers which had
neither the will nor the desire to defend it.
The weakness of Japan and Italy from the point of view of
industrial development or natural resources made it quite
impossible for them to have issued any challenge unless they were
faced by weak wills among their victims. In fact, it is quite clear
that neither Japan nor Italy could have made a successful
aggression without the parallel aggression of Germany.
What is not so
clear, but is equally true, is that Germany could have made no
aggression without the acquiescence, and
even in some cases the actual encouragement, of
the "satisfied" Powers, especially
Britain. The German documents captured since 1944
make this quite evident...
Any analysis of the motivations of Britain in 1938-1939 is
bound to be difficult because different people had different
motives, motives changed in the course of time, the motives of the
government were clearly not the same as the motives of the people,
and in no country has secrecy and anonymity been carried so far or
been so well preserved as in Britain.
In general, motives become vaguer and less secret as we move our
attention from the innermost circles of the government outward. As
if we were looking at the layers of an onion, we may discern four
points of view:
(1) the anti-Bolsheviks at the
center, (2) the "three-bloc-world"
supporters close to the center, (3) the supporters of
"appeasement," and (4) the "peace at any price" group in a
peripheral position.
The "anti-Bolsheviks," who were also anti-French, were extremely
important from 1919 to 1926, but then decreased to little more than
a lunatic fringe, rising again in numbers and influence after 1934
to dominate the real policy of the government in 1939.
In the earlier period the chief figures in this group were Lord
Curzon, Lord D'Abernon, and General Smuts. They did what they could
to destroy reparations, permit German rearmament, and tear down
what they called "French militarism."
The anti-Bolsheviks, including D'Abernon, Smuts, Sir John Simon,
and H. A. L. Fisher (Warden of All Souls College),
were willing to go to any extreme to tear down
France and build up Germany.
Their point of view can be found in many places, and most
emphatically in a letter of August I l, 1920, from D'Abernon to Sir
Maurice (later Lord) Hankey, a prot้g้ of Lord Esher who wielded
great influence in the inter-war period as secretary to the Cabinet
and secretary to almost every international conference on
reparations from Genoa (1922) to Lausanne (1932).
D'Abernon advocated a secret alliance of Britain "with the German
military leaders in
cooperating against the Soviet."
...
http://real-world-news.org/bk-quigley/12.html
Question: Some people do not realize yet
that the Soviet-German non-aggression treaty is the result of the
breakdown of the Anglo-French-Soviet talks, but think that the
Soviet-German treaty caused the breakdown. Will you please explain
why the Anglo-French-Soviet talks failed?
Mao: The talks failed purely because the
British and French governments were insincere. In recent years the
reactionary international bourgeoisie, and primarily that of
Britain and France, have consistently pursued the reactionary
policy of "non-intervention" towards aggression by fascist Germany,
Italy and Japan. Their
purpose is to connive at wars of aggression and to profit by
them.
Thus Britain and France flatly rejected the Soviet Union's repeated
proposals for a genuine front against aggression; standing on the
side-lines, they took a "non-interventionist" position and connived
at German, Italian and Japanese aggression. Their aim was to step
forward and intervene when the belligerents had worn each other
out. In pursuit of this reactionary policy they sacrificed half of
China to Japan, and the whole of Abyssinia, Spain, Austria and
Czechoslovakia to Italy and Germany.
Then they wanted to sacrifice the Soviet
Union.
This plot was clearly revealed in the recent Anglo-French-Soviet
talks. They lasted for more than four months, from April 15 to
August 23, during which the Soviet Union exercised the utmost
patience.
But, from start to finish, Britain and France rejected the
principle of equality and reciprocity; they demanded that the
Soviet Union provide safeguards for their security, but refused to
do likewise for the Soviet Union and the small Baltic states,
so as to leave a gap through which Germany could
attack, and they also refused to allow the
passage of Soviet troops through Poland to fight the aggressor.
That is why the talks broke down. In the meantime, Germany
indicated her willingness to stop her activities against the Soviet
Union and abandon the so-called Agreement Against the Communist
International and recognized the inviolability of the Soviet
frontiers; hence the conclusion of the Soviet-German non-aggression
treaty.
The policy of "non-intervention" pursued by
international and primarily Anglo-French reaction is a policy of
"sitting on top of the mountain to watch the tigers
fight", a downright imperialist policy of
profiting at others' expense.This policy was initiated when
Chamberlain took office, reached its climax in the Munich agreement
of September last year and finally collapsed in the recent
Anglo-French-Soviet talks.
From now on the situation will inevitably develop into one of
direct conflict between the two big imperialist blocs, the
Anglo-French bloc and the German-Italian bloc. As I said in October
1938 at the Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of
our Party, "The inevitable result of Chamberlain's policy will be
like 'lifting a rock only to drop it on one's own toes'."
Chamberlain started with the aim of injuring
others only to end up by ruining himself. This is the law of
development which governs all reactionary
policies.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_17.htm
...And by this date, certain members of the Milner Group and of
the British
Conservative government had reached the fantastic
idea that they could kill two birds with one stone by
setting Germany and Russia against one another in
Eastern Europe.
In this way they felt that the two enemies would
stalemate one another, or that Germany would become
satisfied with the oil of Rumania and the wheat of the
Ukraine. It never occurred to anyone in a responsible
position that Germany and Russia might make common cause, even
temporarily, against the West.
Even less did it occur to them that Russia might beat
Germany and thus open all Central Europe to Bolshevism.
In order to carry out this plan of allowing
Germany to drive eastward against Russia, it was necessary to do
three things:
(1) to liquidate
all the countries standing between Germany and
Russia;
(2) to prevent France from honoring her alliances with these
countries; and
(3) to hoodwink the English people into accepting this as a
necessary, indeed, the only solution to the international
problem.
The Chamberlain group were so successful in all three of
these things that they came within an ace of succeeding, and failed
only because of the obstinacy of the Poles, the unseemly haste of
Hitler, and the fact that at the eleventh hour the Milner Group
realized the implications of their policy and tried to reverse
it...
http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/The_Anglo-American_Establishment.pdf
http://www.carrollquigley.net/books.htm