Events preceding World War II in Europe
The events preceding World War II in Europe are closely tied to the bellicosity of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union, as well as the Great Depression.
The treaty ceded Alsace–Lorraine to the French Third Republic, Eupen-Malmedy to Belgium, Northern Schleswig to Denmark, Hultschin District to Czechoslovakia, and allowed the Saarland to be occupied as a League of Nations territory.
[7][8] German irredentists refused to recognize the legitimacy of the new Central and Eastern European nation states, and demanded the return of Germany's lost territory.
After several liberal governments failed to deal with these threats, and the fascists had increased their public profile by highly visible punishment expeditions to supposedly crush the socialist threat, King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy invited Benito Mussolini to form a government on 29 October 1922.
On 7 January 1935, he and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval signed the Franco-Italian Agreement, giving him a free hand in the Abyssinia Crisis with the Ethiopian Empire, in return for an alliance against Hitler.
Shortly after the League of Nations exonerated both parties in the Walwal incident, Italy attacked Ethiopia, resulting in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War.
The Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, blamed Germany's ruined economy on the harshness of the Versailles Treaty, on faults of democracy, and on the stab-in-the-back legend.
Left- and right-wing anti-democratic parties in the Reichstag—the German parliament—obstructed parliamentary work, while different cabinets resorted to government by Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution.
The Nazis grew in popularity due to the impact of the Great Depression, and President Paul von Hindenburg completed Adolf Hitler's rise to power by appointing him Chancellor of Germany in January 1933.
These steps produced nothing more than official protests from the United Kingdom and France; they were more serious about enforcing the economic provisions of the treaty than its military restrictions.
Many Britons felt the restrictions placed on Germany in Versailles had been too harsh, and they believed that Hitler's aim was simply to undo the extremes of the treaty, not to go beyond that.
This sentiment was underscored by the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, which authorized Germany to build a fleet one third the size of the Royal Navy.
In the meeting, Hitler emphasized his limited expansionist aim of building a Greater Germanic Reich, and his desire for British understanding and cooperation.
Czechoslovakia had a large and modern army backed with a sizable armament industry, and had military alliances with France and the Soviet Union.
In the Munich Agreement of 30 September 1938, the major European powers allowed German troops to occupy the Sudetenland, for the sake of "peace for our time".
