Rachel's Blog - The Blog Filled With My History Stuffs. :]

May 6, 2009

Neville Chamberlain accused of causing the Second World War! [half done!]

Neville Chamberlain has been accused of being directly responsible for the Second World War. Would you agree that he is guilty of this?

I could both agree and disagree with this statement. There are a few reasons that lead to the fact that he did have something to do with beginning the Second World War, but there are also some reasons that show how the war was caused by other factors, and not Neville Chamberlain directly.

One reason that suggests Neville Chamberlain was responsible is that he appeased Hitler too much. With this, Hitler believed that he could get away with anything at all. This made Hitler be able to get away with things like invading different countries. Even after he did, Britain didn't do anything about it. This gave Chamberlain a very bad reputation, suggesting that he was weak, and couldn't handle it. Neville also believed that the League of Nations were too harsh on Hitler, giving him very large reparations to pay, and basically destroying their country. He thought that this would make Hitler want revenge back on them, and so would be calmer if a better attitude was given to him, which gave the impression he was letting him off with anything.

There was a reason which Neville had nothing to do with. This was the League's choices. After the Manchurian and Abyssinian crises, the League had done nothing really to help these countries get back on top or to stop them being invaded. This showed that the most powerful countries in the world were actually weak, and weren't doing anything to protect the people they should have been protecting. This gave Hitler the idea again that he would be able to get away with anything he wanted, and so ignored Neville when he said they'd go to war if Hitler invaded Poland.

Comments [1]

May 4, 2009

Nazi-Soviet Pact the Main Reason? [updated!]

Some have said that the Nazi-Soviet Pact was the single most important reason for the start of the Second World War. Would you agree with this judgement? Explain your answer.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact was made in 1939. It involved the nations of Germany and Russia. It was a pact which agreed upon both of the nations not being able to attack each other and could divide up Poland between them. This also meant that the two most powerful nations in the world had joined together and that it would be an even greater difficulty to stop them. But although this was quite a big part in the cause of the second world war, there was also another reason for the cause - stated later.

Britain was asking Russia to protect Poland from Germany's invasion. Nobody trusted anybody. Chamberlain didn't trust Stalin over his communist beliefs, and Stalin didn't trust Chamberlain over his appeasement beliefs. Stalin believed that because Neville was being kind to Hitler too much and letting him off with basically anything, he'd leave Russia to fight Germany alone. Poland didn't trust Russia. They thought that if they came into the country to protect them, they'd never leave, and might eventually take over. This wasn't a good idea to them.

Britain had taken it's time to do anything about Stalin having to sign to their agreement. Neville Chamberlain could have actually trusted Stalin more on not about his communist beliefs but about what they were having to do. So instead of Britain getting what they wanted, they let it badly slip into the hands of Germany. And so the Nazi-Soviet Pact was created, where Russia and Germany had agreed not to fight each other, split Poland between them and protect themselves.

This was not the only reason, as the League of Nations had a part in it. After the first world war, the Abyssinian and Manchurian Crises had taken place. Mussolini had invaded Abyssinia and the leader came to the League for help - nothing was done. A railway near Manchuria was blown up and no one had a clue who it was - again the League did nothing. This showed they were weak, and Hitler thought that he would be able to get away with doing anything - invading countries, taking over, and planning a war.

So in conclusion there are two sides to whether the Nazi-Soviet Pact was the main reason. It could have been, because nobody trusted anybody except Stalin and Hitler. And it could have also been because of Hitler's need to expand his country. His want for lebensraum* meant that he would invade countries and inevitably something would happen in the end.

*lebensraum - living space.

Comments [1]

April 3, 2009

Annotated Links.

Click on the coloured and underlined text to go to the links!!!!!

A detailed history of Neville Chamberlain's life and business.

A more detailed history of his life and his political career.

An introduction of appeasement and who is involved with examples of how it is used.

A brief detail about appeasement and how it relates to Neville Chamberlain.

Detailed information about appeasement between the British Prime Minister and Hitler, along with many other people.

Brief information about the Munich agreement and statements made by important people about it.

Detailed information about the Munich agreement and what had happened during it.

I CAN TRUST THIS LINK! [ocr textbook.]

Comments [0]

March 19, 2009

The Abyssinian Crisis Presentation.

You must have flash to see this embedded document.

(download)

Comments [1]

March 11, 2009

Jaycut.

The Abyssinian Crisis Video.

that's my video for the Abyssinian Crisis.

:D

needs music.

unless the linkin park works.

Jaycut is easy to use. Unless it closes half way through. Which is annoying.

Comments [1]

February 27, 2009

The Manchurian Crisis.

Mine and Callum's Manchurian Crisis poster.

Jonny saved it, i'm so happy.

In September of 1931, near Mukden [now Shenyang] a section of the South Manchurian railroad in South Manchuria owned by Japan was mysteriously dynamited and blown up. No one knew who it was, but the Japanese accused the Chinese dissindants of destroying their railroad, leading to the Japanese invading Manchuria. The explosion was first of all to take over Mukden, but was also used to take over Manchuria, and the whole Japanese army had taken this without the knowledge of the Japanese Government.

Because the Chinese were being invaded in Manchuria by the Japanese Imperial army, they had strongly protested to the Japanese Government for the immediate stop of Japanese military operations in Manchuria. They also appealed to the League of Nations. The request by the Chinese Government and The League of Nations was rejected, although this was mainy because of the army not being in full control by the Japanese Government.

Because of this incident, Japan had withdrew from the League, and the League had failed to restrain Japan. In Japan's aggression against China, the league had done very little - they didn't apply economic or military sanctions at all. Because of failing to stop the aggression between Japan and China, the League underwent a reputation of powerlessness in the face of an even bigger power than chose to defy it. And because of the little that the League did, aggression had been encouraged rather than put off.

=)

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the League of Nations.

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 was very affective, and had affected nearly every country in the world. There was hardly a country left which was not affected.

In the top left of the diagram, the circle is showing that other countries became poorer because of the USA cancelling all of the loans that they were to make or had made. They had stopped this because the other countries couldn't afford to pay the loans back after they'd used them. In the top right of the daigram, it is showing that the USA had had to stop importing goos to and from other countries because they could not afford it and none of the other countries could afford it either.

The bottom of the diagram shows that the USA losing money and many companies had to go bust and close down. This meant that the unemployment had risen in the USA and many people were living without jobs. The USA introduced tariffs so that they would be protected from cheap imports. The prices of all goods had fallen because of the loss of money and many other countries become poorer because the USA can't buy any goods from them.

The Wall Street Crash had caused the Great Depression between the countries. The League of Nations had been crashed down because of the loans to all the other countries. They were losing trust with giving away loans to other countries and because the countries were losing money they couldn't support the League anymore. Without money to the League they couldn't give away any more loans to anyone else because they were out of money, they couldn't pay them back and everyone was out of money.

Every other country were only concerned with their own countries and none other so they hadn't helped with anything else.

Comments [1]

February 13, 2009