ARMY IN ACTION

warfare and the airplane that carried the war into the air and through bombing and strafing created confusion behind enemy lines. The plane was to revolutionize warfare and in so doing change the world and the lives of men. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Less than 2 years after World War I, the war to end all wars, Poland, backed by France, attacked Soviet Russia and tiny Lithuania to reclaim ancient boundaries. Romania invaded Hungary and occupied Budapest. Czechoslovakia clashed with Poland in a border dispute. [Music] and France over British protests occupied the German roar. A far-flung series of seemingly unrelated events was beginning to weave a web that eventually would imsh nearly all mankind. There was inner turmoil in Italy. Post-war discontent had turned that country into a political tender box beset with strikes and economic unrest. A new party was on the verge of acquiring power. They call themselves [Music] Pashisti. Benito Mussolini, an ex newspaper editor, was their leader. As far as most Americans were concerned, those small wars and foreign political turmoils were far from our oceanguarded shores, remote from the American way of life, something to read about in the newspapers. The old maxim, the price of freedom and peace is eternal vigilance, was forgotten in the roaring 20s. During the years immediately following World War I, the chauvinistic Prussian mind, stunned and humiliated by defeat, began planning for the next war. The German militarists planned exceedingly well. They would become masters of the Blitz Creek Lightning War. All they awaited was a political leader and the coming of the next war. 1922, the bombastic newspaper editor with a gladiator's jaw led his black shirted legions in a march on Rome. A bold fascist thrust for power. Benito Mussolini was a flamboyant reincarnation of the Caesar god image. He made good copy for the international press. He ordered large doses of castor oil forced down the throats of those who disagreed with him. A ferocious genius, as Winston Churchill was later to describe him, let a beer hall put in Munich and was thrown in jail. While in prison, he wrote a book, Mine Count, which told the world exactly what he planned to do. Adolf Hitler was merely a rabble rousing part of the political turmoil in Germany that we read about in the newspapers. September 1931, an explosion on the Japanese operated South Manurian Railroad resulted in the invasion and occupation of Manur [Music] It was a farway Asian event that we read about in the newspapers. January 1932, Japan invaded the international settlement at Shanghai. January 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, sharing power with the aging President Von Hindenburg. August 1934, President Von Hindenburg [Music] died. Hitler became absolute ruler of Germany. Now he could do what he had spelled out in mine camp for all to see. In substance it was today Germany, tomorrow the world. Akuselini's fascist army invaded and conquered Ethiopia in 7 months using the weapons of modern warfare against the people who still fought with spears and primitive firearms. [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] March 1936, Hitler, in defiance of the Versailles Treaty, which only 17 years earlier had ended World War I, sent troops to occupy the Rhineland. Amazingly, the French did not resist. Ironically, the German troops had secret orders to withdraw if the French army did resist. July 1936, the Spanish Civil War became a proving ground for Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and Soviet Russia. They furnished men and weapons to the opposing [Music] faction. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] October 1936, the Rome Berlin Axis was formed and unholy alliance of aggressors consolidating their forces for greater [Music] conquests. December 1937, the Japanese invaders of China bombarded and sank the United States gunboat Paneet on patrol in the Yangze River. Heat. Heat. [Music] Secretary of State Cordell Hull protested angrily. Japanese Ambassador Sito replied, "The Japanese government and people wished to express their profoundest regret to the American government and people on account of this deprolable incident." The apology was accepted. World events were beginning to move with everinccreasing momentum toward a cataclysm of blood. The point of no return was fast approaching. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] While the aggressors were either building up their armed might and working toward war or were actually at war, we Americans read all about it in our newspapers. heard all about it over our radios, watched the violence and the carnage in the news reels, in the safety and comfort of our movie theaters. It was all so far away from the shores of our great protective oceans, the Atlantic on the east and the Pacific on the west. Besides, we had our own troubles. The United States was in the grip of a paralyzing depression. Millions were unemployed on some form of relief. A great drought had destroyed hundreds of thousands of acres of farmlands on the Great Plains, creating an arid dust bowl. Thousands of families were impoverished, made homeless. It was a tragic time of domestic travail affecting millions of Americans. The federal government had taken emergency measures to meet the growing internal [Music] crisis. Among the many relief agencies it established was the Civilian Conservation Corps, the CCC. [Music] It provided work and training for unemployed young men in a program of conservation of the country's natural resources of timber, soil, and water and reforestation and soil erosion control. [Music] The United States Army was given the responsibility of operating and administering 1600 CCC camps with 300,000 enroles throughout the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. [Music] Educational facilities were provided from elementary through high school as well as college courses. Each camp was commanded by an officer, usually a captain with two lieutenants, one as agitant and the other is supply and mess officer. It was invaluable experience and leadership for army officers. Military law and discipline did not apply to the CCC camps. To gain respect and authority, officers had to learn to rely on the personal characteristics of leadership. The president took a personal interest in the CCC [Music] program. More than 4,500 regular and reserve army officers on active duty were engaged in this work during the years preceding our entry into World War II. While this goodly percentage of our officer corps was engaged in the peacetime pursuits of making democracy work at home, the officers in the aggressors armies were being trained, conditioned, and blooded to combat toughness by the brutal war in Ethiopia. [Music] as military advisers and so-called volunteer participants in the viciously fought Spanish Civil War. [Music] At the same time, Japan's continuing war of conquest in China was honing her armed forces to razor edge sharpness. [Music] While the aggressors were flexing their mighty muscles, our army could muster only 180,000 officers and enlisted men. The Navy had less than 114,000 men. The Marine Corps 18,000. [Music] a total defense establishment of a little more than 300,000 men. The aggressor nations continued their march of conquest. In 1938, Nazi Germany seized Austria in a lightning-like coup. [Music] At a parley in Munich, in a desperate bid for peace, Britain, France, Italy, and Germany agreed to the dismemberment of democratic Czechoslovakia. Hitler got the spoils without firing a shot. [Music] 1938 was a year of triumph for the ever stronger and more belligerent [Music] aggressors. Drunk with power and blood lust, the Nazis turned upon a large segment of their own German citizens, perpetrating their greatest abomination. [Music] German Jews were herded into concentration camps. A mass fine of $400 million was imposed, holding them collectively responsible for the assassination of one German diplomat. The concentration camps were a brutal prelude to a ghastly program of mass extermination. Now the greatest of the aggressors had brazenly come forth in full view of the world to reveal not only his evil purpose and design, but the abysmal depths of his ruthless character as well. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich. This morning I had another talk with the German chancellor here Hitler and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again. [Applause] At Munich, Britain believed she had gained peace in our time. France sat behind her mino line, confident of its impregnability. It was a labyrinth of fortifications above and below ground. Considered at the time the ultimate in military defense, elaborate, impressive, but outmoded. [Applause] [Applause] [Music] with inhaling distance to the east of the marginal line was Hitler's seagret line. Its structure was comparable to the defense line of its neighbor, sealing off Germany from France with a mass of steel, concrete, and [Music] manpower. Adolf Hitler toured the Sief Freed line. Now he was a powerful ruler ready to set in motion his plans for conquest. The United States reacted featly to the threatening Holocaust. While our military planners were considering defense measures which involved mobilization of the National Guard and the reserves for a total defense force of about a million men, actual regular army strength was increased by only 5,300 men. [Music] The Navy added [Music] 5,400. And the Marine Corps, the combat ready shock troops, increased their strength by a pitiful handful, 133 men. We were little better off than in 1917, and the flames of an even greater conflration were already licking at our feet. We had yet to learn the lessons of [Music] history. The aggressors drew their own logical conclusions. The United States was an isolationist nation, a nation struggling to recover from the grip of a great depression. 19% of its workforce unemployed, a total defense force, army, navy, and marines of less than 320,000. It was the false and fatal economy of unpreparedness, the ages old invitation to an aggressor at the war department. the War College and the Command and General Staff School, our dedicated military planners studied the implications of the ominous events. For through those years of the gathering storm, United States military leaders remained alert to the defense and security of their country. They were not deaf to the triumphant shouts of the arrogant aggressors. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] frightening display of ruthless power and evil purpose by the Nazi, fascist, and Japanese militaristic bully boys. Time was running out fast for the free world. Human liberty was in deadly peril. You have just seen the second episode in a special documentary series of Big Pictures, presenting highlights of the history of the United States Army. From World War I to the years of the Cold War, a history which has been dictated by the far-reaching events which have carried this nation from isolationist complacency to immense global responsibilities and commitments in a titanic struggle to defend its own way of life and that of the rest of the free world as well. We know now that military weakness is an invitation for the aggressor to attack. And in the light of that great lesson that we have finally had to learn the hard way at tragic cost in blood, lives, and resources. We have good cause to wonder if World War II with all its carnage would have happened. If the free nations had remained militarily strong, if the armed forces of the United States had at that time been as strong and as ready as they are today, it is a good and significant question. [Music]