The War in Pictures I. [antikvár]

HOW THE WAR BEGAN ©N 3 September, 1939, the war clouds, which had been temporarily dispersed at Munich a year before, burst and Britain and Francé found themselves at war with Germany for the second time within a quarter of a century. What were the reasons for this new clash of arms? Were they economic or imperialistic? Or was the reason, as Hitler himself had said, that the democracies of the west were decadent and that the first places in Europe must be taken by younger and more virile nations? The reader must form his own conclusions from the history of events that took place in Europe and elsewhere between the years 1918 and 1939. At the end of the First World War, Germany, defeated in the field after four years and three months of the most bloody warfare the world had ever seen, was completely at the mercy of the victors. At Versailles, the statesmen of Britain and Francé were in no mood to deal leniently with their conquered foe. Francé, more than Britain, was determined to revenge the terrible suffering that had been inflicted on her people and her ter-ritory by the Germán invasion. Even so, the terms laid down were much less severe than those dictated by Germany to the Russians at Brest-Litovsk on 3 March, 1918. In the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, on 28 June, 1919, the Germán delegates listened in silence to the terms that were to be imposed upon their defeated country. Germany was to be stripped of large tracts of her most valuable industrial land, Francé, Belgium, Poland, Lithuania, Denmark and Czechoslovakia were all to share in the spoils. Ali her colonies were to be divided up amongst the Allies under mandates; the Rhineland was to be occupied by the Allies for fifteen years, and the Saar territory, a rich industrial and coal-pro-ducing district, was to be internationalized. Germany was to recognize her sole war guilt and to pay reparations amounting to L6,000,000,000. In addition, complete disarmament, abolition of military service and military aircraft and the totál destruetion of armament factory equipment were demanded