Reaction to Appeasement and Japanese Aggression (AQA A-Level History): Revision Notes

Reaction to Appeasement and Japanese Aggression

Overview

By 1938, the Soviet Union confronted dangerous threats from both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Stalin's response to Western appeasement policies and Japanese expansion in the Far East would fundamentally reshape Soviet foreign policy and lead to dramatic shifts in international relations. The events of 1938-39 pushed the USSR away from collective security with the West and towards an accommodation with Nazi Germany.

Western appeasement and the Munich conference

Background to security threats

Appeasement was a term widely used in the 1930s to denote the policies of Western democracies in response to demands from Hitler's Germany to revise the Treaty of Versailles; rather than relying on military alliances to enforce the post-war peace, the 'appeasers' believed in negotiations to 'meet legitimate German grievances'.

By 1938, the Soviet Union faced mounting security threats. Stalin had received secret intelligence reports from Germany indicating that Hitler had instructed his generals in November 1937 to prepare for a war of aggression and territorial expansion against Czechoslovakia and Poland. In the Far East, Japan had launched a war of aggression in China in 1937, having already occupied Manchuria in 1931.

The existing collective security arrangements appeared ineffective. The League of Nations had proven toothless in dealing with aggression, particularly following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. The policies of France and Britain were increasingly dominated by appeasement, which prioritised negotiation over confrontation with Hitler. Collaboration with the Western powers and reliance on collective security for defence against these threats did not seem likely to be effective.

The Anschluss and the Czech crisis

In March 1938, German forces invaded Austria and imposed the Anschluss, incorporating Austria into the German Reich. France and Britain protested but took no action. It became evident that Czechoslovakia would be Hitler's next target; in the summer of 1938, Nazi-inspired agitation emerged for the German-speaking Sudetenland to be transferred from Czechoslovakia to Germany.

This crisis directly threatened Soviet interests. The 1935 Soviet pacts with France and Czechoslovakia had been intended to guard against precisely this scenario, yet there was little chance of these pacts being activated. Although Czechoslovakia was the country directly concerned, it was Britain's prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, who took the lead in 1938.

The Munich conference, September 1938

Chamberlain held a strongly anti-communist stance, and he firmly believed that the way to secure peace lay in negotiating directly with Hitler. This approach led to the Munich conference in September 1938, attended by Germany, France, Britain and Italy. The four-power conference excluded Czechoslovakia, despite it being the country whose fate was being decided.

Although the Soviet Union had signed a mutual defence pact with France in 1935, the USSR was not invited either. The pact between Czechoslovakia and the USSR was not activated, as it depended on the French taking action, and they did not. The Western democracies effectively handed Hitler the Sudetenland without Soviet involvement or consultation.

Soviet reaction to Munich

The Soviet Union drew several damaging conclusions from the actions of the Western powers at Munich:

• Any hopes of an anti-Hitler alliance containing the USSR were severely dented
• After Munich, the danger of Stalin turning his back on the West and making a cynical deal with Hitler became plainly apparent
• Stalin feared being isolated and potentially facing a two-front war against Germany and Japan
• The exclusion from Munich suggested the Western powers might be directing Hitler eastwards against the USSR

The contemporary British cartoon by Low from 1938, titled "What, No Chair For Me?", powerfully captured Stalin's exclusion from the Munich conference. The image shows representatives of Britain, France, Germany and Italy seated around a table with a map, while Stalin stands alone in the doorway, excluded from the negotiations that would determine the fate of Europe.

Evidence from Joseph Davies

The former US Ambassador in Moscow, Joseph Davies, provided telling commentary on the situation in a confidential letter to President Roosevelt's adviser, Harry Hopkins, in January 1939. Writing from Brussels on 18 January 1939, Davies observed:

This assessment proved remarkably prescient about the shift in Soviet policy that would culminate in the Nazi-Soviet Pact later that year. Davies recognised that Western appeasement was pushing Stalin towards an accommodation with Germany out of necessity rather than ideological compatibility.

The Soviet response to Japanese aggression

The threat from Japan

The problem of Japan was a major concern for Stalin in the 1930s. Japan's military dictatorship had built up a powerful war machine. The Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931, and Japan's invasion of the rest of China in 1937, presented a serious threat to the position of the USSR. Many historians believe Stalin was more worried about the rise of Japan in the 1930s than he was about Hitler's Germany. Japan posed a direct threat to Soviet territory in the Far East and to Soviet interests in China.

The Anti-Comintern Pact

The threat from Japan was made more urgent by the Anti-Comintern Pact between Japan and Germany. The Empire of Japan and Nazi Germany signed the first Anti-Comintern Pact in November 1936; an agreement to take joint action against 'interference' in their internal affairs by the Comintern – though the real enemy was the Soviet Union. Italy joined the Anti-Comintern Pact in November 1937, forming the three-power alliance that later became known as the 'Axis'.

Soviet-Japanese border conflict, 1938-39

The USSR stationed substantial military forces on the Manchurian frontier from the summer of 1938 onwards to deter numerous border violations. These tensions spilled over into a major war that raged from May to September 1939, involving over 100,000 troops and 1000 tanks and aircraft.

The decisive battle was at Khalkhin Gol in Soviet Mongolia in August 1939, where the Japanese army was encircled and defeated by Soviet forces led by General Georgy Zhukov. The scale of the Japanese defeat was staggering: 75 per cent of the Japanese troops in the battle were killed. Soviet forces demonstrated superior tactics, coordination and firepower, decisively breaking Japanese military strength in the region.

Significance of Khalkhin Gol

The 1939 war between Japan and the USSR was almost a 'forgotten war', little noticed internationally, but it had substantial consequences for both sides.

The timing was no coincidence. The victory at Khalkhin Gol provided Stalin with greater security in the east, allowing him to focus on the German threat in the west and pursue the dramatic policy reversal represented by the pact with Hitler. With the Japanese threat neutralised, Stalin could afford to abandon collective security with the West and seek an accommodation with Germany.

Key figure: Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov

Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov (1896-1974) was a career soldier in the Red Army. He won medals for bravery in the First World War and in the Russian Civil War. He was promoted to senior positions in 1937 and 1938, during the army purges.

In 1939, he was given command on the Mongolia front; his victory at Khalkhin Gol led to his being made a Hero of the Soviet Union. Zhukov was probably the most important of all Stalin's generals in the Great Patriotic War from 1941 to 1945, though the two men often clashed. He was demoted in 1948 but was restored to favour by Khrushchev after Stalin's death in 1953.

Impact on Soviet foreign policy

The combination of Western appeasement and Japanese aggression pushed Stalin towards a fundamental reassessment of Soviet foreign policy. Several interconnected factors drove this shift.

• Isolation from the West: The Munich conference demonstrated that Britain and France were unwilling to include the USSR in collective security arrangements and might even be hoping to direct German aggression eastwards. Soviet exclusion from the conference that decided Czechoslovakia's fate showed that the Western powers did not view the USSR as an equal partner in European affairs.
• Two-front threat: The Anti-Comintern Pact raised the spectre of coordinated attacks from both Germany and Japan, a strategic nightmare for Soviet military planners. The USSR lacked the resources and military capacity to fight major wars on both its western and eastern fronts simultaneously.
• Failure of collective security: The League of Nations had proven ineffective, and the Franco-Soviet pact of 1935 appeared unlikely to be activated when needed. Western appeasement had undermined the entire system of collective security that Soviet foreign policy had relied upon since the mid-1930s.
• Military success in the East: The victory at Khalkhin Gol reduced the immediate Japanese threat, giving Stalin more freedom to manoeuvre in European affairs. With the eastern border secured, Stalin could focus his attention on managing the German threat.
• German intentions: Stalin knew from intelligence reports that Hitler was planning aggressive expansion, yet the Western powers seemed more interested in appeasing Germany than containing it. The Western democracies' willingness to sacrifice Czechoslovakia suggested they might be willing to sacrifice Soviet interests as well.