双语+MP3|美国学生世界历史86 现代“野蛮人”

86
Modern Barbarians
现代"野蛮人"

     ITALY had a king, but the real ruler of the country was not the king but a dictator named Mussolini. He became dictator some years after the end of World War I. It was Mussolini who led Italy into war with Ethiopia.
     Do you remember the story of Cincinnatus in the days of ancient Rome, and how he was made a dictator and saved Rome? And after the enemy was defeated how he gave up being a dictator and went back to being a simple farmer again?
     Well, Mussolini was a dictator quite different from Cincinnatus. He did not give up being a dictator. Mussolini made himself more and more powerful all the time.
     Now, the people of a country run by a dictator are seldom really happy because they have to do whatever the dictator tells them to do whether they like it or not. What the people think, they must not say for fear of saying something the dictator might not like. People may be imprisoned without a trial. They cannot read about both sides of a question in their newspapers, for the newspapers only print what the dictator wants them to print. People are always afraid in a dictatorship, for the dictator's spies are always listening and watching and waiting for someone to make a slip-to say something against the dictator or do something he might not like. It's then goodbye to that person.
     The short twenty years of peace after World War I were long enough for several dictators to come to power in Europe.
     Mussolini was bad enough. He took away the liberties of the people in Italy. He made war on the Ethiopians just because he wanted their country.
     But Mussolini was "small potatoes" to another dictator who also came to power in Europe. This was Adolf Hitler, who became the dictator of Germany. Hitler's gang called themselves Nazis. The word NAZI was made up of the initial letters of the German words for National Socialist German Workers' Party, but most people think NASTY would be a better way to spell it. You might think when you hear the word party that it had something to do with a good time like a birthday party. But the party of the Nazis meant a society or group of people who were the followers of Hitler, Hitler's gang.
     The Nazis were brutal and cruel. They did horrible things that even Alaric and his Goths, or Attila and his Huns, would not have done. I think the Nazi gang was worse than the Goths or the Huns because the Goths and the Huns were living at a time in history when almost the whole world was ignorant and more primitive. The Nazis lived in a civilized Christian country, with schools and universities and churches, amid the science and knowledge and rules of good behavior of the twentieth century.
     The Nazis were against all Jews. They began to persecute the Jews of Germany. Some of the Jews escaped to other countries, but those who could not get away were put in concentration camps where most of them were tortured and killed. The Nazis built large gas chambers, which were big rooms into which poison gas could be piped. They would crowd the Jews-men, women, and children-into these chambers and turn on the gas. In this way the Nazis murdered millions of Jews.
     Not only Jews but thousands of other people in Germany who were thought to be against the Nazis were put in the concentration camps, where many of them died.
     Hitler became chancellor and dictator of Germany in 1933. He was a powerful speaker and by his speeches he could move his listeners to do anything he wanted. He did not depend only on his speeches. His Nazi spies were everywhere and whoever said a word against him was apt to be arrested by the Nazi secret police.
     Hitler planned to make Germany the most powerful nation in the world. To do this he started to build a huge army. Everyone in Germany was supposed to help make the Germans a warlike nation. Even boys and girls belonged to Nazi clubs and learned to drill and work for the nation. Those men who weren't in the army or navy or air force were put in labor battalions to build forts and military roads and fighting equipment.
     I told you that the Treaty of Versailles did not allow the Germans to have a big army or an air force. How about that? But Hitler said that Germany was not bound by the Treaty of Versailles, even though it had been signed by the German government. Before long the Germans had a huge army and air force. Then the Germans started to take lands that were not theirs. Their army marched into Austria and made Austria a part of Germany. Then they began seizing other pieces of land around them.
     Now, England had a treaty or agreement with Poland, which was the next country to Germany on the east. This treaty with Poland said that England would protect the independence of Poland. When Germany threatened to attack Poland, England warned Germany about the treaty and said it was England's duty under the treaty to protect Poland. Hitler went ahead anyway and attacked Poland. First he sent his airplanes over Poland and bombed the Poles. Then came the German army, and in a few days it was all over for the Polish army. So England declared war on Germany. It was in 1939 when this happened and World War II began.
     Russia was on the other side of Poland, and Russia marched into Poland from the eastern side. There wasn't any Poland left.
     Next Germany attacked Norway and Denmark. Norway was seized by German soldiers, who were carried by airplanes and were helped by a few traitors in Norway.
     Then Germany attacked France and Belgium and Holland. The German airplanes and tanks were too much for the French, Belgian, and Dutch armies and for the English army that had been sent to France to help them. As soon as Mussolini saw the Germans were winning, he brought Italy into the war on the side of Germany. Soon Holland and Belgium and most of France were taken by the Germans. The German army marched into Paris. Thousands of Frenchmen were sent to work as slaves in Germany, and only England was left to fight the Nazis.
     You remember I told you that Parliament was the real ruler of England and not the king. The leader of Parliament, and the man who carries out the laws Parliament makes, is called the prime minister. The prime minister at this time of great danger for England was Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill was a brave and stubborn man. Although England's army had lost its weapons in France, and there were fewer than one hundred tanks in all England and the English had fewer airplanes and a much smaller army than the Germans, Churchill refused to give up. Churchill made speeches over the radio to the people to encourage them to fight on in spite of all the odds against them. Churchill said, "We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills: we shall never surrender."
     Does that remind you of the answer Leonidas gave to the Persians before the battle of Thermopylae over two thousand years ago? Leonidas said, "Come and take us." Churchill's speech was not short and laconic but it meant the same thing.
     The Nazis got ready to invade England.
     They brought more than three thousand barges to the coast of Europe opposite England. These were to carry the Nazi soldiers across the English Channel. But first Hitler wanted to defeat the English air force, so his troops could land in England more easily. Nazi planes were sent over in great fleets to bomb the English airfields and seaports.
     Then Hitler met his first defeat. The English had many fewer planes, but they were able to outfight the Nazi planes. This was called the Battle of Britain. In the first ten days of this air battle, the English shot down 697 planes and lost only 153 themselves!

Europe in World War II （第二次世界大战时的欧洲）
     When Hitler found his planes could not destroy the English air force, he sent fleets of airplanes day and night to bomb London. Thousands and thousands of London civilians were killed by these German bombs. However, the English pilots of the Royal Air Force kept shooting down so many German planes that at last the Germans were afraid to send planes over England except at night. All during the war these night raids on English cities kept up, but Hitler had lost his best chance to invade England. The English had had a few more months to get some weapons and build up their army. Prime Minister Churchill said of the English airplane pilots, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."