
Japan Overruns Manchuria and Eastern China
1. What does this map illustrate?
The growth of Japan’s empire.
2. Why Do you think Japan invaded Manchuria and
Eastern China?
a. Japan wanted to prove itself as a great power by
extending its borders to the max. Its closest targets
were Manchuria and Eastern China.
b. By occupying Manchuria and Eastern China, they
will share borders with Russia which poses a threat to
the Russian dictatorship.
3. Do you think that the League of Nations will be able to stop the Japanese aggression?
The League of Nations was well-known to stop political problems, but all it did was blame
the Japanese. It could not stop them because it was weak.

Italy Invades Ethiopia
1. Abyssinia is known today as Ethiopia.
2. What is the significance of the Italian invasion of Abyssinia?
It disturbed world peace. It was a harm of the peace actions delivered by the League of
Nations.
3. What was the result of the Battle of Adowa?
It was a failure, and the Italian army was crushed. This caused their national pride to be
severely wounded. (The Battle of Adowa was the first trial in imperializing Abyssinia)
4. Why did Italy invade Abyssinia?
a. To distract people from the Great Depression
b. To restore Italy’s wounded pride
5. What was the reaction of the league of Nations? Why?
The League of Nations (Britain and France) IGNORED it in hopes that Italy would help
them in the future war against Nazi Germany.

Hitler Goes Against the Treaty of Versailles
1. How did Hitler violate the Treaty of Versailles?
a. He rearmed the German military.
b. He occupied the Rhineland in order to have an open access to France, Britain and Italy.
(The land that separated Germany from France)
c. The Anschluss (a term which means the unification of all German speaking countries.) They were
collectively called the Sudetenland: (This violates the treaty because Germany was not allowed to extend
its borders.)
o Overthrowing the Austrian government: the Austrians gave in peacefully because
many of them supported Hitler, and Austria was also an ally of Germany’s during
WWI.
o Overthrowing the North-West part of Czechoslovakia: he signed the Munich
Agreement which meant Hitler was allowed to expand to the German-speaking
countries, but not to invade France and Britain; they ensured safety in the expense
of other countries.
o Invading Poland
2. What is the policy of appeasement?
The policy of appeasement is ignorance to aggression in order to avoid getting into a war.

Keeping the Peace
1. What are the three measures that were taken by Europe and USA to maintain peace?
Europe:
Widespread pacifism (staying silent to maintain peace), or opposition to all war.
USA: the United States Congress passed a series of Neutrality Acts. The goal was avoiding
war, not preventing it.
The main objective: to keep a state of disinterest during wars.
a.
They stopped the sale of arms to any nation at war.
b. They refused giving loans to countries at war.
c.
They prohibited Americans from traveling on ships of countries at war. (Referencing the
British Lusitania ship)
2. Based on your historical overview of the events leading to WWII, How will you group
the countries below into two opposing alliances?
Group A
Group B
USA
Germany
Britain
Italy
France
Japan
Soviet Union

Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis
Britain, France, and the United States were weak, so Germany, Italy, and Japan formed what
became known as the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.
a. The Axis powers agreed to fight Soviet communism.
b. They agreed not to interfere with one another’s plans for territorial expansion.
\

Spain Collapses into Civil War
Reasons of the Civil War

Political division:
1. Trouble started in Spain when popular unrest against the old order
forced the king to leave Spain.
2. A republic was set up with a new, more liberal constitution.
3. The government passed a series of controversial reforms, taking land
and privileges away from the Church and old ruling classes.
4. Conservatives, backed by the military, rejected change.

Revolution:
Why did the civil war happen in Spain?
Political division leads to revolution:
1. Fascists supported the right-wing (high class.)
 They were called Nationalists.
 They didn’t want change in the government.
 Francisco Franco started a revolution (civil war.)
2. Communists supported the left-wing (commoners.)
 They were called Loyalists.
 They wanted change in the government.
Participants
Result
Loyalists vs. Nationalists

Hitler and Mussolini supported the Nationalists.

Stalin supported the Loyalists.
Nationalists

German Aggression Continues
1.
Hitler was ready to engineer the Anschluss, or union of Austria
and Germany.
2.
At the Munich Conference, British and French leaders chose
appeasement. They caved in to Hitler’s demands and then
persuaded the Czechs to surrender the Sudetenland without a fight.
In exchange, Hitler assured Britain and France that he had no
further plans to expand his territory.
3.
Hitler broke his promises and gobbled up the rest of
Czechoslovakia. The democracies finally accepted the fact that
appeasement had failed. At last thoroughly alarmed, they
promised to protect Poland, most likely the next target of Hitler’s
expansion.
4.
After the Nazi- Soviet Pact, German forces invaded Poland. So,
Britain and France declared war on Germany. World War II had
begun on September, 1 1939.
Why did Hitler invade close countries?
a. He believed they were a poorer race.
b. They served economic purposes.

“Peace for Our Time” (name of the Munich agreement)
Britain:

Returning from Munich, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told cheering
crowds that he had achieved “peace for our time.” He told Parliament that the Munich
Pact had “saved Czechoslovakia from destruction and Europe from Armageddon.”

British politician Winston Churchill, who had long warned of the Nazi threat, judged the
diplomats harshly: “They had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor;
they will have war.”
France: French leader Edouard Daladier reacted differently to the joyous crowds that greeted him
in Paris. “The fools, why are they cheering?” he asked.
Both Churchill and Daladier believed that a war was going to happen after the agreement
was signed.

Nazi-Soviet Pact

Hitler did not want to fight a war with the Western democracies and the Soviet Union at
the same time, so he made a pact with Stalin.

It was called a nonaggression pact; the two agreed not to fight if the other went to war
and to divide up Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe between them.