people to control. next our debate show cross talk people develop asks his guests if world ought to could have been avoided. and you can. start. in the low end welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle could have the second world

war been avoided what role did opposing ideologies play and or individuals in states to blame or was the international system so weak that war was made inevitable. and you can. start. to discuss what went wrong in the one nine hundred thirty s. i'm joined by dominique leavin in london he's a professor of russian government at the london school of economics and political science and a fellow of the british academy in boston we have william kale or a professor of history and international relations at boston university and the author of a world of nations the international order since one thousand nine hundred five and unlivable we cross to frank madonna and author and reader in international history at liverpool john moore's university. in one thousand nine hundred thirty nine you have the soviet union and nazi germany embracing each other a deadly embrace that we would find out later how did we get to that point where did what went wrong to the international system go wrong who failed eastern europe

and could have the war been avoided you don't have to answer him all the same time . well i think you possibly start back in one thousand nine hundred nineteen with the end of the first world war i mean the basic point is that the two countries which really matter in europe in the twentieth century germany and russia it's only really germany and russia which have the resources human and other potentially to dominate the whole continent the first world war was above all else a struggle between germany and russia to dominate the central europe and either of them if they dominated the central europe would have the resources to dominate the whole continent the great irony is that the first world war ends with both russia and germany being defeated and the versailles settlement is created against russia and against germany and i suppose at its most basic it's very very difficult to create a stable european order to which neither russia nor germany are committed you could only do that really would you could only have defeated germany in the first place

with the intervention of the americans and the full scale commitment of britain to the continent or quite apart from anything else after nine hundred eighty the americans go home and the british release spend most of their time thinking about the security of their overseas empire so the verse i settlement which is very weak for a start because it's designed against germany and against russia a century has no guarantee behind it and if you have a peace settlement which is against the two most powerful country countries on the continent and doesn't have an effective security guarantee you know under signed by the victors then there's every chance that the international order is going to fall to bits ok i believe another war was necessarily of inevitable but the verse i thought it was not going to survive bill when bassinet would do you would you agree with that i mean with the fragility of the international order doesn't have much to do with ideology is creating weak states in the in the in eastern europe and not protecting them or giving them security guarantees. yes indeed the various size

settlement came about as a result of a an allied victory and the problem was that the americans bugged out and. refused to accept the system and. it was just mentioned great britain really disengaged from the continent and focused on the defense of the empire so that basically left france as the guarantor of the versailles settlement in france simply did not have the wherewithal did not have the military power did not have the economic power to enforce a settlement and so that meant that from the very beginning really germany began to evade the restrictions that was placed upon it by the british size system that france was unable to prevent that from happening so i mean frank should we be

surprised that this pact happened because of munich in one thousand thirty eight after all the same powers that created the international system betrayed it i think that's in the. lake or now there was an opportunity. granted it was an opportunity i think in one nine hundred thirty eight to have prevented the war because at that stage germany's armaments were not strong enough at that stage to wage a war on two fronts we now know from recent german sources that in fact the german army was not even prepared for a long war against france in one nine hundred thirty s. or against the czech army which was well armed then they had thirty seven well armed divisions britain and france had greater strength than germany in one nine hundred thirty eight and if the soviet union had just stayed on the sidelines in one nine hundred thirty eight and in combination with britain and france then if the war began in one thousand nine hundred thirty eight i'm firmly convinced it would have lasted less than two years with germany being defeated and in fact in

one thousand nine hundred thirty eight in september it was actually at all fit leroux back down in the end i don't and went for the munich agreement so dominic it was keeping the soviet union out of the international order is again one of the reasons why we have this pact because stalin we want to partner with someone desperately want to partner with the west the west basically rebuffed him. yes i mean it's not quite that simple i think from the russian perspective in fact the situation is the same before nine hundred fourteen and one nine hundred thirty nine you've got the potential domination of of europe by germany german expansionism is a good deal you know more clear cut another critical of course in the one nine hundred thirty s. well before the first world war but it's the same basic issue of russian security and you have a fundamental choice do you gang up with the english and the french to try and deter germany or if necessary defeat her in war if it comes to that or on the

contrary do you reckon that it's in your interests to try and steer germany westwards so that she fights twenty a war with britain and france and you get on in peace with your own domestic internal development i mean in the sense you could argue that it's the same dilemma that nicolas the second and his advisors make the wrong decision in and before nine hundred forty they decided to confront germany and the result is disaster and revolution vilifying only nineteen thirty nine starlin takes the opposite course decides to deflate germany and the result is also a disaster so i mean it's not an easy it's not an easy dilemma for russia's rules bill if i go to you in boston how much of a role did ideology play with this in this because the british the french had to suspicious of the bolsheviks in the east i mean they weren't looking at geopolitics they're also ideology played a role i think a lot of people forget that. well the the word that hasn't been used yet but obviously is in the background is the term appeasement and i think that the

appeasement policy that britain and france pursued in the one nine hundred thirty s. really is based on three considerations number one and most important of all i think is the absolute obsession with avoiding another war. the trauma of world war one hung like the sword of damocles over the ruling elites of those countries all of whom had had experience in the war secondly i think there was a sentiment of guilt about the versailles treaty particularly in great britain the sense that maybe germany had been maltreated and therefore maybe we ought to try to rectify the injustices of verse but number three and this gets to your your question idiology certainly plays a role in the peace meant that is the very strong sense of added communism that was present particularly in the british conservative party but also in france as well

so there was a sense that as bad as hitler was perhaps he was not as bad as stalin and therefore there were some people who believed that great britain and france simply should not. should not enforce the versailles treaty and if that meant that germany was going to move eastward to regain the living spaces as the germans put it then that's ok because of this strong anti-communist sentiment that was present in the thirty's francophonie go to you in liverpool well this is just abrogating responsibility the west created an international system to its own benefit by the way and then abandon it and really what we have is a catastrophic war i mean is it the international system here that you know could have been repaired somehow to avoid this catastrophe. i don't think it's just the international system i think we can easily blame systems when systems are actually

operated by individuals and personalities and we do have a number of personalities here operating this system in particular neville chamberlain neville chamberlain makes a conscious decision when he becomes prime minister to move away from the league of nations and towards the policy of appeasement so he makes a conscious political decision supported by the majority of the conservative party although there are some elements within it who oppose it particularly churchill and even to some extent also most of the labor party now is turning against the idea of appeasing hitler and there's a vast group of people now who are becoming disenchanted with the whole idea of giving in to hitler for example in one nine hundred thirty six hitler marched into the rhineland that was generally accepted that you know he was going into his own back garden as it was said in one thousand nine hundred thirty eight when he marched into austria there was a lot of upheaval people are unhappy about it but in the end it was accepted it was the czechoslovak crisis which was a different kind of crisis it involved

a democratic country czechoslovakia being bullied by a larger power out of it was germany and a small group located within the sudetenland who were pressing a case for national self-determination but in a sense of national search that self-determination was granted to the people in the survey land that actually opened up the whole idea of all of the success of states these are the states that were created by the treaty of versailles they contained masses of different nationalities all central eastern european nationalities and they they could all viii to join germany so in the end when chamberlain can see that the sudetenland until r.t.a. the french premier pointed out to me said a week if we can see this issue of national self-determination to the sedate land then that opens up the whole idea of a greater sherman reich stretchy. all the way to the ukraine so in a sense the real point to which hitler could have been stopped in my opinion and

there's no question about this was the czech crisis of one nine hundred thirty eight and there was an opportunity to do it if chamberlain had stayed out of that crisis if he hadn't intervened so disastrously the two visits he made to hitler in one nine hundred thirty eight the first ones of berchtesgaden it was a total disaster he actually told hitler that he would concede to is their wishes in gaining the so they will and this wasn't even on the table when he went to the first meeting the cabinet hadn't even agreed whether we should actually can see territory over the third reich the idea was a settlement of the sudetenland within the parameters of the government so i really think the chamberlains decision to intervene so dramatically by visiting hitler what he did there was he showed his hand he showed that he didn't want to stand up to hitler militarily he alienated the soviet union which of course then led on a year later i believe to the nazi so we have pact because why was stalin killed to

intervene when it was quite clear that chamberlain was not going to stick by his guarantee to czechoslovakia he didn't stand by is guaranteed to czechoslovakia in fact he told him at the first meeting of garden and this is in the record i'm saying it langham i don't going to be judge you have to jump in here after a short break we'll continue our discussion on the origins of the second world war stay with are. hungry for the food we've got it's. the biggest issues get cuban voice face to face with the news makers on. wealthy british scientists holds. the

title of. markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy in these kinds of reports. claiming to be a sister. comes. into. play. welcome back to rostock computable about tree mind you were talking about whether the second world war could have been avoided. play. a. plenty. bill before we went to the break you said you wanted to say something go right ahead. yes i just want to underline something that frank said about the absolutely critical role played by this principle of national self the terminations i was

a principle that was. part of president wilson's idiology and in the case of germany it really turns out to be catastrophic hitler exploits this principle throughout the nine hundred thirty s. to justify his territorial expansion the rhineland was part of germany why should germany not have the right to have military forces within its own country austria was a german speaking country hitler himself was originally austrian the sudetenland was a german speaking territory in czechoslovakia so hitler was able to work split that principle and with one win widespread support for his policies by a centrally sovereign like woodrow wilson the real change comes in the spring of nine hundred thirty nine when germany invades the the remnant of czechoslovakia and that's the first time that you have german military forces

occupying a territory that is not inhabited by german people so this principle of national soft terminations really was a tremendously powerful influence that had very nefarious consequences ok done many good things a very interesting thing that we're discussing about i was going to write and that is that a minute the point is that it's all set to put international relations under a sort of ethical morals spotlight not was woodrow wilson and to some extent the british and the americans both looked at things in that way but the french didn't really the french were perfectly willing to say. it was simply that they had the ground cut underneath them by first of the americans and subsequently the british so that by the one nine hundred thirty is the french simply titled along the line british policy because they didn't think they had either the military all the financial. means to go it alone and that does bring it back to the fact that there's no rush or in the rush or of being one of the guarantors of the one thousand nine hundred settlement he would have had a much more hard headed rail politique attitude towards international stability the

basic problem of course is that once you begin quoting national self-determination . you know you're basically talking about a greater germany in the center of europe as a huge security threat to everyone else around so that is the basic dilemma of their side you know frank if i go to you this on this theme is very interesting for me because basically by the end of the one nine hundred thirty s. there is this contempt for international law and the peace settlement of nine hundred nineteen so it was perfectly acceptable but it's insane public of course but leaders who say if you divide up europe and this is what happened the system failed the soviet stepped in and looked look your system isn't working out of self defense again i agree with dominique i mean i'm not to talk about the moral issues of this we can talk about that later but because because the system made collapse it was perfectly willing to divide up this country that country that's that's how we got to where we are to a nine hundred thirty nine. i think that you know i agree with what bill and dominic was saying but i think we've got to go back into this period think of how

complex it was it was a much more complex world at this time you know you had a national socialist regime in germany poland had the rightist regime pilsudski italy had a fascist regime you also had the communist regime in the soviet union there were all kinds of really even in britain and france you can say that democracy was really that stable i mean in france there was governments that came and went in a cascade throughout the one nine hundred thirty s. there was a coalition government in britain they called it the national government of the time there was a still a fear of communism at the time there was great economic problems the usa had retreated into isolationism i mean these were very difficult problems i don't underestimate the problems of the statesmen of the one nine hundred thirty s. group grappled with and they were supplied with some terrible information i mean we now know some of the british intelligence in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight

was telling chamberlain that the the law of the capacities of bomb london and now we know that they didn't even have an effect of air force to even conduct an air campaign over czechoslovakia so all of that made the one nine hundred thirty s. a very difficult place because i have to reiterate it was a failure not just of the complexity of the situation i do come back to personalities here and i do think that chamberlain in particular made a string of catastrophic decisions one of them i mentioned there about going to visit hitler twice and revealing totally revealing britain and france his position that they were not prepared to stand up to him then there was the catastrophic decision to guarantee poland in one thousand nine hundred eighty nine a contrary that britain could not defend and then there was the fatal delay to try and gain an alliance with the soviet union now whether or not stalin wanted an alliance with the britain and france at the. we will never fully know but in one

thousand nine hundred thirty eight i'm not so sure i think in one thousand nine hundred thirty eight that stalin at least would have stayed out of the war in one nine hundred thirty eight and he would not have joined then a nazi soviet pact because once britain and france were at war it's very doubtful then that a nazi soviet power would ever of be possible in those circumstances and the soviet union could have actually helped by being with a naval blockade in one nine hundred thirty eight in the baltic for example and that would've not allowed germany to gain vital iron ore supplies from norway for example so in so many ways own only a very is that by then if the british are going to actually confront germany they are committing themselves to what can be a very nasty and chancy war it might have gone better than it did in nineteen thirty nine in my might not but by then the stakes are already very high courses are coming in thirty three thirty four thirty five and simply you are immediately reacted to german rearmament of the reoccupation of the rhine learned about point

there's no question that they could have imposed there were no german uniting official reason or evidence the problem is though what he's doing it's go ahead i think i think the recent evidence is suggesting that in actual fact german rearming was not complete by nine hundred thirty eight for example well of course it wasn't illegal you are still going to be facing something pretty nasty whereas in nineteen thirty five nine hundred thirty six there was no question that the british and french if they'd had the will could have imposed the policy with very little cost to themselves in the short run the question is what do you do next but in actual fact if you think about it now you a little on three thirty four in one hundred thirty three thirty four thirty five british rearmament hadn't really started by then so really need to realize the germans didn't have anything to fear i mean you know the french are research real deal and. you know pretty interesting we could reduce even in one nine hundred thirty nine britain puts war two divisions on the continent of europe in terms of

actual continental commitment britain isn't serious even in one nine hundred forty . it's the results that matter but they lack the will ok bill i want to judge you go ahead you want to jump into this make sure they're still go ahead. i'd like to i'd like to jump in to say a few words about soviet foreign policy in the one nine hundred thirty s. let's not forget that a nine hundred thirty four stalin executes an about face in soviet foreign policy up to about time the soviet union had been on very close terms with germany and after hitler comes to power stalin inaugurate the so-called popular front policy he brings his country into the league of nations which had been shunned shunning before he orders the communist parties in western europe to vote in favor of rearmament and in one hundred thirty five he signed a military alliance with france so you have the two countries on each side of germany in

a military alliance and he is doing what he can to try to strengthen the anti german coalition we all know about the nazi soviet pact and nine hundred thirty nine but let's not forget from the one nine hundred thirty four to nine hundred thirty nine the soviet union was pursuing a consistent policy of trying to limit german expansionism and trying to impose germany at the same time that the british and the french are appeasing germany ok i can ask all you gentlemen here was the soviet union acting logically in the end of the day in the one nine hundred in the war started the to make an embrace you need a nine hundred thirty nine nine hundred thirty nine guinean in one thousand eight hundred nine and ninety three did it did what did you make them special to say yes logically it was a logical decision ok the point is they miscalculate the it was perfectly clear in one thousand nine hundred eighty nine that the soviet union full with britain and france it was going to have to do most of the fighting because britain had

virtually no all me ready to commit to the continent the french had that national and which they're not going to come out from behind and in any event the germans are going to go east against poland so it's clearly the soviet army which is going to have to do most of the fighting and which. yeah but of course he miscalculated his basic calculation was that the germans were going to fight the british and french was going to be like the first world war soviet union was going to be out of it all it would have a generation to get on with its own peaceful development what completely stunned him but it also stunned the british and french and surprise most german generals was that it turned out that the germans defeated france in six weeks pushed the british back over the continent alone face the soviet union with a completely huge and unexpected crisis that was the basic miscalculation good frank drebin there. can we go back to the one nine hundred forty about the defeat of france in actual fact the defeat of france when you look at the balance of forces in one nine hundred forty the germans won in one nine hundred forty by a tactical maneuver by von months time in going through the are dead in actual fact

britain and france had more military equipment they had more aircraft it was actually a tactical victory and there's been many books is a great book by robert citee know about the myth of the blitzkrieg and in fact if you look at recent evidence the germans in one thousand nine hundred eighty nine started the war against poland with five weeks supply of petroleum when they started that war hitler was already calculations perfectly sensible the british and stalin make the same calculation all absolutely amazed when hitler knocks out france in six weeks completely turns the whole thing upside down absolutely wrong. i agree but i think really the international system at the end of the one nine hundred thirty s. is rather like a game of poker and hitler was the best poker player of all the people around that table he bluff his way all the way to stalin grad and stalin grad his bluff was called all right gentlemen i'm going to jump in here thank you very much many thanks to our guests today in london boston and liverpool and thanks to our viewers

for watching us here at r.g.p. the next time and remember cross talk to me. every month we give you the future we help you understand how to get there and what tomorrow brings the best in science and technology from across russia and around the world. join us for dick knology update on our g.

olympic competition the battle to create the best mascots for the two thousand and fourteen winter games in russia kicks off but in the nationwide contest. we have met all responsibilities now. it's time to turn the page president obama praises the sacrifice of u.s. soldiers in iraq saying they've successfully handed the country back to its people . and. russia remembers the deadly beslan school massacre six years ago just after more than three hundred people dead most of them children. who costing lives from the heart of the russian capital this is r.t. russians who lack the sporting talent to compete at the top level.