Why didn't Germany stop expanding in 1939? (Short Animated Documentary)

0:00 In the lead-up to the Second World War,

0:01 Germany was on a bit of an expansion spree, and as you'll be aware,

0:04 it was the demands for Danzig and some of the lands

0:06 around it from Poland that led to the outbreak of the war.

0:09 However, had German leaders simply stopped after

0:11 obtaining all of this, Germany would have

0:13 been in a much stronger position than it had been a mere 3 years earlier.

0:16 Its population had grown by over 10 million,

0:18 its economy and industry were now greater,

0:20 and its military was larger and free from the restrictions of Versailles,

0:23 which raises the question, why didn't the Germans just stop there?

0:26 Why risk a war by demanding even more?

0:28 So, as you'll know, in the aftermath of Germany's First World War,

0:32 Germany lost all of this territory,

0:33 and for a long time, the Germans wanted it back.

0:36 Many there felt aggrieved by the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles,

0:39 and the new Republican government that came about

0:41 after the Kaiser's abdication wasn't exactly a stable one.

0:43 And when combined with the terrible economy, the loss of international prestige,

0:47 and Germans being told that the First World War was their fault,

0:49 political extremism took root.

0:51 As you'll be aware, this man who I cannot name because YouTube,

0:54 after winning numerous elections, was appointed German Chancellor.

0:56 He'd come first in the latest election by promising the German

0:59 people that he would ignore all the Versailles Treaty's dictats,

1:01 and that he'd fix the economy and expand Germany's

1:03 borders to incorporate all of the German-speaking people in Europe.

1:06 After a somewhat suspicious fire and some legislative shenanigans in 1933,

1:10 and President Paul von Hindenburg snuffing it in 1934,

1:12 Germany was firmly under new management.

1:15 Its new leaders were keen to undo the Treaty of Versailles,

1:17 but to begin with, this needed to be done discreetly.

1:20 This started with rearmament,

1:21 although you should know that the previous Weimar governments

1:23 hadn't exactly been the best at upholding these terms.

1:26 In 1935, after pressuring Britain and France,

1:28 Germany was granted a referendum in the League of Nations mandate

1:31 of Saarland to decide whether or not it should remain independent,

1:33 become a part of France, or join Germany.

1:35 Reunification with Germany won overwhelmingly,

1:37 and this provided a major propaganda boost for the government,

1:40 who were now seen as reversing Germany's decline.

1:42 The toothbrush mustache-having Austrian man soon

1:45 openly declared the reconstitution of the army,

1:47 and the beginnings of small-scale conscription,

1:49 which had been banned under the Treaty of Versailles.

1:51 The French were outraged,

1:52 but the number of new conscripts that Germany would be training as a result

1:55 was so small that it was too little to justify a war over.

1:57 The same happened when the British

1:59 government learned of Germany building submarines again.

2:01 It also wasn't prepared to go to war over it,

2:03 and so it decided to just sort things out diplomatically.

2:05 In 1935, after some negotiations,

2:08 the two nations signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement that limited

2:11 the size of the German Navy at 1/3 of the Royal Navy,

2:13 and importantly was done without consulting France, the US, or Italy.

2:16 And this drove a wedge between the British

2:18 and the rest of the Versailles signatories.

2:20 And the next year, when the German

2:21 government announced the remilitarization of the Rhineland,

2:23 the growing political distance between Britain and France became obvious.

2:26 Many in France wanted to send in the army,

2:27 which was much larger than the German forces in the region,

2:30 but its economy was doing very poorly,

2:32 and Britain didn't want to risk all that war

2:33 over something that wasn't vital to its own security.

2:35 And the people of both nations firmly opposed going to war,

2:38 and the French military argued against fighting Germany on their own.

2:40 And so France just had to stand by and let it happen.

2:43 This was yet another propaganda victory, and the Germans,

2:45 now free from the Treaty of Versailles, began to rearm in earnest.

2:48 In order to help with that, there were those in government

2:50 who wanted the annexation of Austria to the south.

2:52 Although there were concerns that doing this would alienate the Italians,

2:55 who saw Austria as a part of their sphere of influence.

2:57 By 1938, Austria was a mess and was plagued by political violence.

3:01 Kurt Schuschnigg, the Austrian Chancellor,

3:03 had harshly repressed those pushing for union with Germany.

3:05 This angered that toothbrush-having Austrian man,

3:08 who demanded that he stop doing this and give

3:10 the leaders of pro-annexation movements roles in government or face invasion.

3:13 Schuschnigg reluctantly agreed to this, and to prevent

3:15 things from progressing further,

3:16 he scheduled a referendum in March to show the world

3:18 that Austrians in fact didn't want to join Germany.

3:21 The problem was that he didn't want to let

3:22 those that disagreed with him have a vote.

3:24 Shockingly, this upset the Germans,

3:26 who then mobilized the army and massed it along the border.

3:28 And they demanded that Schuschnigg resign.

3:30 He did this, and the day before his referendum was supposed to be held,

3:32 German troops marched into Austria.

3:34 Berlin declared its annexation,

3:35 which would be subject to another referendum held a month later,

3:38 which was overwhelmingly backed.

3:40 And yet again, the Western powers did nothing.

3:42 Britain saw it as a fait accompli,

3:43 and that anything short of war would change little.

3:45 The French grumbled, but yet again weren't willing to fight a war because

3:48 they were politically fragile and didn't want to go in alone,

3:50 especially against an army that had a further

3:52 two years of rearmament after the Rhineland incident.

3:55 It was only Mexico that actually complained and denounced

3:57 the German annexation as a violation of Austria's sovereignty.

3:59 Austria's annexation meant that Germany now had another 6.5 million citizens,

4:03 greater iron reserves, and an enlarged economy.

4:05 The government was now incredibly popular at this point,

4:07 but it still wanted those Germans living outside

4:09 of the country to come under its authority.

4:11 And after Austria's disappearance, the largest group of Germans living outside

4:14 of Germany were those in the Sudetenland, within the borders of Czechoslovakia.

4:17 Now, tensions there between the Germans and the Prague

4:20 government had existed since the state's formation.

4:22 But after Germany's change in management,

4:23 things escalated with the Sudeten German party pushing for unification

4:27 with Germany and using impolite tactics to get it.

4:29 Political leaders in the region with Berlin's backing made

4:32 demands that the Czechoslovakian government could never reasonably accept,

4:35 thereby pushing the region into a crisis.

4:37 Edvard Beneš, the Czechoslovakian president,

4:39 thought that this time the Western powers would

4:40 come through for him, but fun fact, no.

4:42 Instead, Britain offered to mediate,

4:44 by which I mean its representatives told the Czechs to just give

4:46 in to everything because Britain really didn't want to go to war.

4:49 Despite this, the Sudeten Germans refused to negotiate,

4:51 and within a few months the region was plagued with growing political violence.

4:54 Sensing that things were going to escalate,

4:55 the allies stepped in and asked Prague to just, well, cede the territory.

4:59 The Czechs refused, and when border clashes grew in intensity,

5:01 the British and the French called for a conference

5:03 with the Germans and Italians to sort this out.

5:05 They all agreed that Czechoslovakia should just cede the territory,

5:08 and realizing that they were on their own,

5:09 the Prague government reluctantly agreed.

5:11 This was done on the promise that Germany was done

5:13 with its territorial expansion and would

5:14 leave the remaining Czechoslovakia alone.

5:16 This promise was kept for all of about 5 seconds,

5:18 and through a series of treaties and ultimatums,

5:20 Czechoslovakia was picked apart.

5:21 In early 1939, the Slovakian half of the country declared its independence,

5:25 but it was really now a German puppet state.

5:27 And a day later, Germany invaded the remaining Czech lands

5:29 and turned them into the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

5:32 All of this gave Germany access to a large amount of industry,

5:35 as well as a sizable population of laborers,

5:36 taxpayers, and of course, potential conscripts.

5:39 Whilst all of this was ongoing,

5:40 the Germans had been in contact with the Lithuanian

5:42 government to discuss the return of Memel, which Germany had lost in 1919.

5:45 Much like the Sudetenland and Austria before it,

5:47 the Germans living there had been aided in agitating for union with Germany.

5:50 As things escalated,

5:51 the Germans had hoped that the Lithuanians would just simply hand it over,

5:54 but the Lithuanians had a plan.

5:56 They would just pretend that the problem didn't exist,

5:58 hoping that it would go away.

5:59 Now, the toothbrush mustache-having Austrian man felt that he had to intervene,

6:03 and Germany issued an ultimatum to Lithuania.

6:05 Lithuania accepted this because if the Western

6:07 powers didn't want to risk war for Czechoslovakia,

6:09 it definitely wasn't going to do so for Lithuania.

6:11 And with this, Germany had managed to go from this to this in four short years.

6:15 And had it stopped there,

6:16 the Allies would have had little reason to start a war.

6:18 So, why didn't the Germans just stop?

6:20 Well, the first reason was that Britain and France's responses so

6:22 far had been those of acquiescence and appeasement, and as such,

6:25 German political thought was that they wouldn't

6:26 suddenly grow a backbone and start fighting now

6:28 when it would have been much easier for them to do so 4 years ago.

6:31 And seeing Britain and France as utterly spineless meant that when

6:33 it was time for the Germans to make demands of Poland,

6:35 they felt that it was a low-risk, high-reward gambit.

6:37 Initially, they wanted the return of Danzig as well as control

6:40 over some of the roads and railways linking it with Germany proper,

6:42 and they also wanted Poland to join the Anti-Comintern Pact to isolate the USSR.

6:46 The Polish government refused because Poland

6:47 needed the port there for international trade,

6:49 without which it would have to trade through Germany,

6:51 thereby essentially ending its economic independence.

6:53 Also, the government in Warsaw was confident that it would

6:55 be overthrown by riots if it were to hand over Danzig.

6:58 And to complicate things,

6:59 it technically didn't have the authority to do so anyway because it was

7:01 a League of Nations mandate and not a full part of Poland itself.

7:04 Unsurprisingly, most German politicians weren't happy with this response,

7:07 except for a few at the very,

7:08 very top of government that is, who really, really wanted war.

7:11 You see, whilst the return of Danzig was seen as extremely important,

7:14 what German leaders really wanted was the end of Poland and the incorporation

7:16 of its lands into Germany for the purposes of living space,

7:19 into which Germans would expand and increase their numbers to help bring

7:21 about what was seen as their inevitable domination of the European continent.

7:25 And this is one of the most important

7:26 reasons why Germany didn't stop at these borders.

7:28 The ideology of his leadership emphasized expansion,

7:30 military glory, and geopolitical hegemony over Europe.

7:33 As such, the Germans sabotaged negotiations

7:35 with the Polish to make it impossible for them to support Danzig's return

7:38 and take away Germany's primary justification for war.

7:40 The The government also acted to confuse everyone else by sending

7:42 officials who would advocate for different positions on behalf of Berlin,

7:45 meaning that nobody really knew when things were going

7:47 to come to a head or if they ever were.

7:49 The plan being that the upcoming surprise invasion of Poland would

7:52 be so quick that even if Britain and France wanted to help,

7:54 they couldn't because it would be over too quickly.

7:56 And again, it cannot be stressed enough that the Berlin government was

7:58 100% convinced that neither Britain nor France would do anything to help Poland.

8:02 A position which was bolstered when Germany signed

8:03 a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union,

8:05 which included secret clauses dividing Eastern Europe between the two.

8:08 And with both of those great powers seemingly on the same side,

8:11 there was no way that London or Paris would risk a war.

8:13 Of course, when the Germans crossed the border on September the 1st,

8:15 that assumption was proven completely wrong.

8:17 One which would lead to Germany not just

8:19 losing the lands that it had recently gained, but also losing much more.

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