"The first successful attempt in world history to limit armaments was marked for the scrap-heap on December 31, 1936, when Hirosi Saito, the slim and smiling Japanese Ambassador to the United States, bowed himself into the State Department building in Washington last Saturday and handed to Secretary Cordell Hull a document that the world has expecting for many months - Japan's formal denunciation of the Washington Naval Treaty."
Click here to read about FDR's Secretary of State, Cordell Hull.
One thing about Adolf Hitler: he had a real bee in his bonnet when it came to the colonies that Imperial Germany had lost as a result of article 119 of the Versailles Treaty: "Germany renounces in favor of the principal Allied and Associated Powers all her rights and titles over her overseas possessions." Attached, you will find a nifty cartoon depicting a terribly upset Hitler as he contemplated the map of Africa and all the colonies he was having to do without - all rendered in that glorious 1930s manner. Click here to read more about the African colonies lost to Germany as a result of the Versailles Treaty. "'Bombs rained like hailstones and churned the waters all around the ship like geysers.' said Earl Leaf, United Press correspondent in China and eyewitness of the sinking of the United States gunboat "Panay", by Japanese aviators, in the Yangtze River about 26 miles above Nanking....President Roosevelt stressed the seriousness of the situation..."
Historians are still at odds as to whether or not the sinking of the 'Panay' was deliberate.
Attached, you will find a survey of opinions drawn from diverse corners of the fruited plain regarding the restraint exercised by President Franklin Roosevelt in the wake of Imperial Japan's sinking of the U.S. gunboat "Panay": "[President Franklin Roosevelt] should be sustained in his effort to make Japan realize that she cannot continue a policy of aggression with disregard of treaties and international law. A firm policy now for law and order will save many lives." -Russell J. Clinchy,Washington Council for International Relations
The attached 1936 magazine article presents a picture of the Polish city of Danzig as it was during the mid-thirties. It was a city in which Danzig Nazis, like Arthur Karl Greiser, spoke of making that town a part of Germany once more (it was ordained a Polish city as a result of the Versailles Treaty) and Minister Joseph Beck who liked everything just the way it was, thank you very much. "NAZI PATIENCE: Neither Beck nor Hitler is anxious to come to a break over Danzig. Hitler, a sworn enemy of Soviet Russia, advises his Danzig Nazis to forbear from mentioning their intention of completely abandoning League control for secession to Germany..." Hitler's troops invaded Poland on August 31, 1939. Italy's "friction with the League of Nations began May 11, 1936, when her delegates stalked out of a lively League Council meeting after it had voted to continue economic sanctions against her over the Ethiopian war."
Nazi Germany quit the League years earlier, click here to read about it...
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