The great `democracies' decided to offer Hitler the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia. Neither Czechoslovakia nor the Soviet Union were invited. But in September, Great Britain and France met in Munich with the fascist powers, Germany and Italy. The Soviet Union, with treaty obligations towards the threatened country, placed 40 divisions on its Western border and called up 330,000 reservists. In mid-May, Hitler concentrated his troops on the border with Czechoslovakia. `Tomorrow will perhaps be too late', underscored the Soviet leadership. The Soviet Union took up Austria's defence and called on Great Britain and France to prepare collective defence. On March 11, 1938, Radio Berlin announced a `Communist uprising in Austria' and the Wehrmacht (German army) pounced on that country, annexing it in two days. In November of the same year, Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Cominterm Pact, which Italy joined soon after. They were trying to placate Hitler and to push him East. France and Great Britain adopted a `non-intervention' policy, leaving free reign to the fascists. In 1936, Italy and Germany sent their élite troops to Spain to fight the legal republican government. At the same time, official voices of the French bourgeoisie were declaring that their country was not obliged to come to the aid of the Soviet Union, should it be attacked. Trotsky made vicious attacks against Stalin who had, with these treaties, `betrayed' the French proletariat and the world revolution. Given this perspective, it signed mutual assistance treaties with France and Czechoslovakia. To oppose the danger of fascist expansion, the Soviet Union proposed, as early as 1935, a collective system of security for Europe. In 1935, fascist Italy occupied Ethiopia. The Soviet Union thought at the time that war with Japan was imminent. In 1931, Japan invaded Northern China and its troops reached the Soviet border in Siberia. In 1927, Great Britain broke diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and imposed an embargo on its exports. In 1918, Churchill was the main instigator of the military invervention that mobilized fourteen countries. Until Hitler's coming to power, Great Britain had led the crusade against the Soviet Union. demand rapprochement with one country or another which is not interested in disturbing peace, we adopt this course without hesitation.' recalls the policy of the former German Kaiser, who at one time occupied the Ukraine and marched against Leningrad, after converting the Baltic countries into a place d'armes for this march'. In January 1934, Stalin told the Party Congress that `the ``new'' (German) policy. Only the Soviet Union understood the dangers to world peace. Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933. From the book, "Another View of Stalin" by Ludo Martens
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