Download the interwar years

THE INTERWAR YEARS
• World War I had been the most devastating war the world had yet seen and following it, many
nations began the futile search for stability and peace
– Treaty of Locarno
• Spirit of cooperation between Germany and France
• 1925 treaty guarantees Germany’s new western borders with France
– Kellog-Briand Pact
• An accord written by U.S. Secretary of State Frank Kellog and French Foreign
Minister Aristide Briand
• 63 nations pledge to renounce war as
– Germany joins the League of Nations in 1926
– No way to enforce any of this
Why Peace Fails
• Weak League of Nations
– Turns out to be a great failure
– The United States does not join
• Americans don’t want to be involved in European affairs
– Could only use economic sanctions, not military force, to stop aggression
– The European powers don’t want another war either
• Great Britain and France will follow the policy of appeasement = will back down and
give in to the demands of aggressor nations to maintain peace
• WWI and the Treaty of Versailles – Germany is angry over the terms and reparations
– The Allied Reparations Commission determines Germany owes 132 German marks, which
equals 33 billion dollars
– The new German republic makes its first payment in 1921, but the next year faces financial
problems
• Announces it is unable to pay anymore
• This angers France, who sends troops to occupy the industrial heartland of Germany
to collect the money
– To solve this problem, Germany starts printing more paper money, which leads to inflation
• 1914: 42 German marks = 1 U.S. dollar
• Nov. 1923: 130 marks = 1 U.S. dollar
• End of 1923: 4.2 trillion marks = 1 U.S. dollar
– An American banker comes up with a plan to reduce reparations and coordinates Germany’s
annual payment plan with its ability to pay
• The Great Depression
– Depression = a period of low economic activity and rising unemployment
– Two factors played a role in the Great Depression
• Series of downturns in the economies of individual nations – consumer spending had
slowed
• Black Tuesday – U.S. Stock market crash, which leads to an international financial
crisis
– Effects
• The United States had been world’s leading money lender and this leads to European
banks crashing
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The two nations hit hardest were the U.S. and Germany – 40% of Germans were
unemployed
• Renewed interest in Marxist doctrines
• Marx had predicted that capitalism would destroy itself
• The new democratic gov’ts in Europe, especially Germany, were unable to deal with
the crisis
• Many people turn to political leaders who offer simple solutions in return for
dictatorial power
Weak Democratic Governments
– President Wilson claimed that the Great War had been fought to make the world safe for
democracy
• However these new democracies were unable to handle the economic crisis
– The former monarchy in Germany was replaced by a democratic state called the Weimar
Republic
Rise of Dictators
– Aggressive dictators came to power in Europe and Japan and began making territorial
demands
– Totalitarian state = gov’t that aims to control the political, economic, social, intellectual, and
cultural lives of its citizens
– Achieves this through mass propaganda