Responsibility for War

Three men and a war

On 5 November 1937 Hitler told his war minister, his foreign minister and the heads of the three armed services, in a meeting recorded by his adjutant Hossbach, that the German problem of living space could only be solved by force, that Austria and Czechoslovakia would be taken first, and that the whole matter must be settled by 1943 to 1945 at the latest, while Germany was still ahead in the arms race. On 22 August 1939, with the invasion of Poland fixed for the following week, he told his generals at the Obersalzberg that Britain and France would not fight, because their leaders were little worms he had seen at Munich. Between those two speeches Neville Chamberlain flew to Germany three times and came home from Munich on 30 September 1938 with a paper he said meant peace for our time; five and a half months later German troops were in Prague and Chamberlain guaranteed Poland. And on 23 August 1939 Stalin, who had been left out of Munich and offered a Western alliance in which Poland refused to let his troops cross its territory, signed a pact with Hitler that divided Poland in a secret clause and made a two-front war impossible. Nine days later Germany invaded. AQA asks who was responsible and expects an answer that weighs all three against each other with evidence and reaches a justified conclusion, not a verdict on one. It asks through sources: a cartoon to read, two documents to weigh, an account to write, and a judgement to defend. This module gives you the case for and against each man, dated, and the shapes.

Five words the examiners use

Each definition ends with the moment it mattered, because a bare definition earns nothing in a source answer.

The road to September 1939, in order

Put these six events in the order they happened.

• Hitler tells his commanders that Austria and Czechoslovakia must be taken by force and the matter settled by 1945
• Chamberlain returns from Munich with the Sudetenland conceded and speaks of peace for our time
• German troops occupy Prague and Chamberlain guarantees Poland
• An Anglo-French military mission reaches Moscow by sea and the talks stall over Polish territory
• Ribbentrop and Molotov sign the Nazi-Soviet Pact with its secret protocol
• Germany invades Poland and Britain and France declare war two days later

Why did war come in September 1939?

Hitler had broken treaties since 1935 without a war. Which explanation best accounts for the invasion of Poland producing one?

• Hitler intended to take Poland by force and believed from Munich that the West would not fight, so he did not stop when it became clear they would; Chamberlain had ended appeasement after Prague with the guarantee of 31 March and could not abandon it without losing the Commons and the country; Stalin, distrusting a Western alliance that could not get his troops into Poland, took the German offer of 23 August, which removed the two-front war that had deterred every German general; and Poland, unlike Czechoslovakia, refused to negotiate away its territory, so that there was no Munich to be had.
• The war began by accident because nobody expected the guarantee to be honoured.
• Poland provoked Germany by attacking a radio station at Gleiwitz.
• The League of Nations declared war on Germany.

The case against each, and the case for each

The 16-mark judgement wants all three weighed. One row per man, prosecution and defence, with the dates the examiner credits.

Question 1: how do you know?

Source A: a description of a cartoon by David Low published in the Evening Standard on 20 September 1939, three days after the Soviet invasion of Poland. Hitler and Stalin, in uniform, meet in the middle of a battlefield and bow deeply to each other, hats in hand; between them on the ground lies a body labelled Poland. Hitler is saying: The scum of the earth, I believe? Stalin replies: The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume? The title is Rendezvous. AQA Question 1 says: Source A is critical of both Hitler and Stalin. How do you know? Tap the TWO details that show the criticism of both most directly.

• The two dictators bow to each other with elaborate courtesy over the corpse of Poland, which presents the pact as a partnership in murder rather than a non-aggression treaty.
• Both men hold their hats.
• Each greets the other with the insult his own propaganda had used for years, scum of the earth and assassin of the workers, so that Low shows both as hypocrites who abandoned everything they said for a share of Poland.
• The cartoon was published three days after the Soviet invasion.
• The title is a French word.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact

Select the THREE statements that are true of the pact and its part in the outbreak of war.

• The pact signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939 was a ten-year non-aggression treaty in public and, in a secret protocol, a division of Eastern Europe: Poland split along the Narew, Vistula and San, and Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Bessarabia assigned to the Soviet sphere.
• Stalin chose Germany because the Western offer was weak: the Anglo-French mission travelled to Moscow by merchant ship, arriving on 11 August with no power to sign, and Poland refused to allow Soviet troops onto its soil, so that an alliance would have committed Stalin to a war he could not fight where it would be fought.
• The pact removed the two-front war that had deterred German generals since 1914, so that Hitler could fix the invasion for 26 August; the Anglo-Polish treaty of 25 August made him postpone it to 1 September, but not cancel it, and on 17 September Soviet forces took their share.
• The pact was a military alliance under which the Soviet Union promised to fight Britain and France.
• The secret protocol was published in Pravda the next morning.
• The pact kept the peace between Germany and the Soviet Union for the whole of the war.

Question 2: how useful are two sources?

AQA Question 2 gives you two sources and asks how useful they are to a historian studying one thing, for 12 marks. The two below are described for this module; the exam prints the real text. Enquiry: the responsibility of Hitler for the outbreak of war. Source B. From the notes taken by a general present at the speech Hitler made to his commanders at the Obersalzberg on 22 August 1939, in which he said that the destruction of Poland was the first task, that he would provide a propaganda reason for starting the war whether or not it was plausible, and that Britain and France would not fight because their leaders were little worms he had seen at Munich. Source C. From the radio broadcast Chamberlain made from Downing Street at 11.15 on the morning of 3 September 1939, announcing that Britain was at war with Germany, in which he said that everything he had worked for and hoped for had crashed into ruins, that Hitler could have had peace by negotiation and had chosen force, and that the responsibility lay with one man. The method is the same for both: content (what it says about the enquiry), provenance (who, when, why, and what that does to its value), and own knowledge to test it. Source B is useful because it is Hitler speaking in private to men who had to act on it, nine days before the invasion, and it shows intent, a manufactured pretext and a misjudgement of the West; its limit is that it is notes, not a transcript, and Hitler spoke for effect to stiffen nervous generals. Source C is useful for how the war looked to the man who had appeased, and for the claim, made at once and for the record, that Hitler alone was responsible; its purpose was to justify a policy that had failed, which is exactly why a historian reads it with the Munich vote of 366 to 144 and the guarantee of 31 March in mind. This meant that B is useful for what Hitler intended and C for what Chamberlain needed the public to believe, and a top-level answer says so rather than ranking them.

In the shoes of the three men

Four decisions between 1937 and 1939. Choose what was actually done, and notice what each choice added to the responsibility of the man who made it.

• November 1937. You are Hitler. Rearmament is ahead of the West, but the advantage will not last past the mid-1940s, and your generals want to know the plan. What do you tell them?
• March 1939. You are Chamberlain. Hitler has occupied Prague, breaking the Munich Agreement and taking a people who are not German. The Commons and the press have turned. What do you do?
• August 1939. You are Stalin. The Western mission has arrived by ship with no authority to sign, and Poland will not let the Red Army in. Ribbentrop offers to fly to Moscow with a free hand in eastern Poland and the Baltic. What do you do?
• 25 August 1939. You are Hitler. The invasion is fixed for tomorrow. Today Britain has signed a formal treaty with Poland and Mussolini has said Italy is not ready to fight. What do you do?

From cause to consequence

Because Hitler had told his commanders in November _____ that expansion by force must come before 1945, the crises of 1938 and 1939 were the working out of a decision already made. Because Munich handed Germany the Sudetenland without a fight, Hitler concluded that the West would not fight for _____ either. Because Prague in March 1939 took a people who were not German, Chamberlain ended appeasement with the _____ of 31 March. Because Poland would not admit Soviet troops and the Western mission came by ship, Stalin took the German offer and signed the pact on 23 _____. And because the pact removed the danger of a war on two fronts, Hitler attacked on 1 September, and the treaty Britain had signed a week earlier turned a Polish war into a _____ one.

The odds on 1 September

Germany attacked Poland on 1 September 1939 with around 1,500,000 men. The Polish army that faced them numbered around 1,000,000. By how many men did the German force outnumber the Polish one?

Question 1: how do you know, marked

AQA Question 1 asks: Source A (the Low cartoon Rendezvous) is critical of both Hitler and Stalin. How do you know? It is marked for 4 on identifying the message and supporting it from the source with own knowledge. Which answer scores all four?

• I know because Low has the two dictators bowing politely to each other across the body of Poland while each greets the other with the abuse his own propaganda had used for years, which presents the pact as a partnership of hypocrites in the killing of a country. That fits what had happened by 20 September 1939: the two had divided Poland in the secret protocol of 23 August and the Soviet Union had invaded on 17 September, so that a cartoonist who had attacked Hitler for a decade now attacked both.
• The cartoon shows Hitler and Stalin bowing to each other over a dead body.
• Low was a British cartoonist and Britain was at war with Germany.
• The cartoon shows that the two dictators respected each other.

Question 3: an account, marked

Question 3: Write an account of how the Nazi-Soviet Pact led to the outbreak of war in September 1939. The road to the pact began with the occupation of Prague on 15 March 1939, because it convinced Britain and France that Hitler could not be appeased and led Chamberlain to guarantee Poland on 31 March, which meant that any German attack on Poland would now bring in the West. Both sides then needed the Soviet Union: the West to make the guarantee credible by threatening Germany with a war on two fronts, and Hitler to remove that threat. The Western approach failed because the Anglo-French mission sent to Moscow in August travelled by merchant ship, arrived on 11 August without the power to sign, and could not answer the one question that mattered, since Poland refused to allow Soviet troops onto its territory. This in turn opened the door to Ribbentrop, who flew to Moscow and signed the non-aggression pact on 23 August with a secret protocol dividing Poland and the Baltic states between the two powers. The pact led directly to war because it gave Hitler what his generals had feared to be without since 1914, a war on one front: he fixed the invasion for 26 August, postponed it when Britain signed its treaty with Poland on the 25th, and attacked on 1 September once it was clear the West would not desert Warsaw. Britain and France declared war on 3 September, and on 17 September the Soviet Union took its half. What earned the marks: a sequence of events with dates; each linked to the next by because, which meant and this in turn, so that the account explains how the pact caused war rather than describing it; and a closing sentence that carries the chain to its end. That structure, sustained, is what reaches the top level of the 8-mark account.

Question 4: the 16-mark judgement

"Hitler was mainly responsible for the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939." How far do you agree with this statement? Explain your answer.

• One paragraph on Hitler with dated evidence: Lebensraum, the Hossbach meeting, the treaty breaches from 1935, Prague, the Obersalzberg speech and the decision of 1 September
• One paragraph each on Chamberlain and Stalin with dated evidence, giving the case against each AND what can be said in mitigation

Question 4: the judgement, tested

A student has argued that Hitler alone was responsible for the war. Which is the strongest point to set AGAINST that judgement, in the way the top level of Question 4 requires?

• Hitler supplied the intention, from Mein Kampf to the Obersalzberg, but intention became war only when others made it possible: Munich taught him in September 1938 that the West would not fight and handed him the Czech arms, and the pact of 23 August 1939 removed the two-front war that had held his generals back, so that Chamberlain gave him the confidence and Stalin gave him the opportunity; he bears most of the responsibility because the aim was his and the order was his, but a judgement that stops there cannot explain why the war came in 1939 rather than 1938 or 1945.
• Chamberlain was the real cause because appeasement was a mistake.
• Versailles caused the war, so no individual was responsible.
• Hitler ordered the invasion, so nobody else can be blamed.