The end of the 1930s… The liquidation of the Czechoslovak state and the creation in its place of a springboard for deploying German-Fascist armies close to the borders of the Soviet Union; the strangling of the Spanish Republic; the creation of a Francoist stronghold instead—an outpost to supply the German-Italian war machine with American military materials, strategic raw materials, and oil products in case of a major war; the crushing of Poland—everything this emboldened the conspirators against the world, who sat in ministerial and banking offices in London, Paris, Washington, and New York.