Prelude to Conflict

Uses newsreels and Armed Forces' footage to portray events and explain conditions and political forces that contributed to the outbreak of World War II. Includes discussion of the failure of the Versailles peace treaty; the impact of the great depression; the political crisis which resulted from economic chaos in Germany; and the growth of isolationism in the U.S., Follows the events leading up to World War II through the failure of the peace of Versailles, the Russian Revolution, economic chaos in Germany, the boom of the early twenties and the depression that followed in the United States, which spread across Europe and the Orient. Includes the development of Communism, Nazism, Japanese conquest of Manchuria, the long war against the Spanish Republic, anti-Semitism, stormtroopers, Gestapo, broken treaties, and appeasement.