European History Interwar Years (1919-1938) Brief Overview Timeline Events People & Qs
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Brief Overview
With the end of World War I, the old international system was torn down, Europe was reorganized, and a new world was born. The European nations that had fought in the Great War emerged economically and socially crippled. Economic depression prevailed in Europe for much of the inter-war period, and debtor nations found it impossible to pay their debts without borrowing even more money, at higher rates, thus worsening the economy to an even greater degree. Germany especially was destroyed economically by World War I and its aftermath: the reparations to Britain and France forced on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles were impossibly high.
The League of Nations represented an effort to break the pattern of traditional power politics, and bring international relations into an open and cooperative forum in the name of peace and stability. However, the League never grew strong enough to make a significant impact on politics, and the goals of deterrence of war and disarmament were left unaccomplished.
The political atmosphere of the inter-war years was sharply divided between those who thought the extreme left could solve Europe's problems, and those who desired leadership from the extreme right. There were very few moderates, and this situation kept the governments of Britain, France, and Eastern Europe in constant turmoil, swinging wildly between one extreme and the next. Extreme viewpoints won out in the form of totalitarian states in Europe during the inter-war years, and communism took hold in the Soviet Union, while fascism controlled Germany, Italy and Spain.
The extremist nature of these disparate ideologies turned European politics into an arena for sharp conflict, erupting in Spain during the late 1930s in the form of the Spanish Civil War, after which Francisco Franco became dictator. In Germany, Adolf Hitler's fascist Nazi Party came to power during the 1930s and prepared once again to make war on Europe. With Britain and France tied up in their own affairs, the path to World War II lay clear.
Timeline
June 28, 1919: The treaty of Versailles is Signed The Treaty of Versailles ends World War One and imposes heavy reparations payments on Germany.
November 1920: The First Meeting of the League of Nations The Assembly of the League of Nations meets for the first time in Geneva, Switzerland. The US is notably absent, the Senate having voted against joining the League in November 1919.
November 1921: The Washington Conference is Held The United States convenes the Washington Conference, attended by Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, China, Japan, and Portugal. The Conference results in a naval armaments treaty that sets a ratio for tonnage of capital ships (over 10,000 tons, with guns bigger than eight inches) for Great Britain, the US, Japan, France, and Italy. The ratio agreed upon, in that order, is 5:5:3:1.67:1.67.
October 30, 1922: Benito Mussolini is Made Italian Premier King Victor Emmanuel declares Mussolini premier in an attempt to head off violent conflict between the Fascists and the Communists.
November 9, 1923: The Beer Hall Putsch Adolf Hitler and General Ludendorf, a World War One hero, lead a small contingent of followers in a harmless, comical attempt at rebellion, for which Hitler is imprisoned for two years.
January 21, 1924: Vladimir Lenin Dies Lenin's death leaves some question as to who will be his successor. Joseph Stalin eventually beats out Leon Trotsky to take control of the Soviet government.
May 11, 1924: The Cartel des Gauches wins the French Election The Cartel displaces the ruling Bloc National, in a marked victory for the left, but proves unable to govern effectively.
August 27, 1924: The German Chamber of Deputies Accepts the Dawes Plan The Dawes Plan restructures the schedule of German reparations payments so as to reduce the amount of annual payments, and grants Germany a large loan.
December 1, 1925: The Locarno Pacts are Signed The Locarno Pacts are signed in efforts to stabilize relations with Germany and its neighbors. The pacts usher in a period of peace and prosperity.
1926: Joseph Pilsudski Becomes Virtual Dictator in Poland Pilsudski maintains this position until his death in May 1935
March 1926: The Samuel Commission in England Releases Its Report on Coal Mining The Samuel Commission, under the Conservative government, releases a report which advises wage cuts for miners. The Triple Alliance responds by striking, which is emulated by many other industries in England to protest he Conservative government's policies.
April 14, 1931: The Spanish Monarchy is Overthrown and The Republic Is Born A provisional government is established to take Spain from monarchy to republicanism.
1932: General Gyula Gombos Comes to Power in Hungary Gombos becomes prime minister, an office he uses like a dictatorship, setting the tone for Hungarian government during the remaining inter-war years.
February - July 1932: The final League of Nations Disarmament Conference is Held The last major League of Nations-sponsored disarmament conference meets from February to July 1932 at Geneva, with 60 nations in attendance, including the United States. However, this conference, like it's predecessors, fails to secure any agreement, and organized disarmament remains an unaccomplished goal.
1933 - 1934: 1,140,000 Communist Party Members are Expelled by Stalin Stalin's Central Purge Commission, created in 1933, publicly investigates and tries many party members for treason as Stalin seeks to rid the party of oppositon.
January 30, 1933: Hitler is Appointed Chancellor of Germany In an attempt to reel in the chaos of the German government, President Paul von Hindenburg declares Hitler chancellor, the first major step in Hitler's ascent to dictatorship.
March 23, 1933: The German Reichstag Passes the Enabling Act The Enabling Act gives Hitler the power to issue decrees with the status of law.
June 3, 1936: Leon Blum's Popular Front Government Comes to Power in France The Popular Front, a leftist party, institutes social legislation and allows wide public participation in the government, but ultimately fails to curtail the depreciating economy.
July 17, 1936: The Spanish Nationalists Begin the Spanish Civil War Generals Goded, Mola, and Francisco Franco lead troops in rebellion against the republic, starting the Spanish Civil War.
April 25, 1937: Spanish Nationalists Bomb Guernica The small northern town of Guernica is bombed, and civilians are gunned down as they flee the scene. In this brutal massacre 1500 die and 800 are wounded, but the military targets in the town remain intact.
September 18, 1938: The Munich Pact is Signed Britain and France appease Hitler by signing the Munich Pact, which grants Hitler control of the Czech Sudetenland.
March 30, 1939: The Spanish Civil War Ends Madrid falls to Francisco Franco's forces, effectively ending the Spanish Civil War. Franco's oppressive dictatorship begins.
September 3, 1939: Britain and France Declare War on Germany In response to Hitler's continued aggression in Eastern Europe, Britain and France go to war with Germany in an attempt to stop Hitler's bid for global hegemony.
Key People
Leon Blum
Leon Blum, a Jew, and a reviled enemy of French rightists, led the Popular Front government that ruled France from 1936 to 1937. The Popular Front government was not successful in maintaining stability, but is notable for its adherence to republican principles and the wide popular participation in the government it encouraged.
Neville Chamberlain
Neville Chamberlain served as British prime minister from 1937 to 1940. Considered a failure in foreign affairs, he pursued the failed policy of appeasement in regard to Adolf Hitler's aggression, signing the Munich Pact.
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco led the Nationalists of Spain in revolt against the Republicans. Upon his victory in 1939, Franco became an oppressive dictator, a position he maintained until 1975.
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George was a talented politician and British moderate who served as prime minister during and after World War I. His exit from government in 1922 signaled the end of centrism and the beginning of extremis politics in Britain.
Gyula Gombos
In 1932, General Gyula Gombos came to power as prime Minister of Hungary, an office he used as a dictatorship. He was not a strong enough ruler to initiate a truly fascist state, but he was quite powerful, and quite conservative, as well as being openly anti-Semitic. Gombos set the tone for a string of conservative prime ministers who practiced open anti-Semitism, and eventually cooperated with Germany in its efforts at European domination.
Paul von Hindenburg
Hindenburg had the misfortune of serving as the President of Germany from 1925 to 1934. He was unable to hold off the rise of the Nazi Party, and in 1933 appointed Hitler chancellor, an action followed by a string of concessions to Hitler until Hindenburg's death in 1934.
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was the leader of the fascist Nazi Party that rose up to lead Germany into the Second World War. Hitler undertook measures to improve Germany's floundering economy and promised Germans a return to past glory.
Benito Mussolini
Mussolini became Italy's premier on October 30, 1922. He consolidated power by using force and intimidation to eliminate his opponents and create a totalitarian state. Mussolini was sympathetic to Hitler's desires for global hegemony, and would join Germany as an ally during World War Two.
Joseph Pilsudski
Pilsudski took advantage of Poland's weak democracy to become virtual dictator in 1926, a position he maintained until 1935. Though his method of government was questionable, Pilsudski provided a measure of stability and strength to Polish politics, which floundered after his death.
Raymond Poincare
Poincare was the stable political leader of France's conservatives. He served as prime minister from 1922 to 1924, and from 1926 to 1929, providing stability to the otherwise chaotic French government.
Joseph Stalin
Stalin became the leader of the Soviet government upon Vladimir Lenin's death. He established a totalitarian state in the Soviet Union, consolidating power and purging the party of his enemies during the 1930s, while forcing a command economy on the Soviet people.
Leon Trotsky
Trotsky was Stalin's chief competition for leadership of the Communist Party, presenting his theory of 'permanent world revolution' against Stalin's 'socialism in one country.' When Stalin came to power, Trotsky was expelled from the party and fled the Soviet Union. He eventually fled to Mexico, where a Stalinist agent killed him in 1940.
Terms
Black Shirts
The black shirts were Benito Mussolini's band of thugs, who used force to intimidate all opposition to the Italian Fascist Party.
Bloc National
The Bloc National was a coalition of rightist groups in France that came together in fear of socialist opposition to run the French government during the early years of the inter-war period. The Bloc National maintained conservatism in France to a high degree, and demanded that Germany pay its reparations in full.
Cartel des Gauches
After the French government's embarrassing failure to collect German reparations even after invading the Ruhr, the Bloc National was replaced by the Cartel des Gauches, a moderate socialistic coalition elected on May 11, 1924. However, the Cartel proved inept at governing, and was dissolved in 1926.
Central Purge Commission
During the 1930s, Joseph Stalin consolidated power in the Soviet Union by eliminating his opponents. In 1933, he created the Central Purge Commission, which publicly investigated and tried members of the Communist Party for treason. In 1933 and 1934, 1,140,000 members were expelled from the party. Between 1933 and 1938, thousands were arrested and expelled, or shot.
Collectivization
Stalin's agricultural program, collectivization, forced farmers to pool their lands into government-run farms. When the upper peasant class, the kulaks, protested this program, some three million of them were killed during a reign of terror in 1929 to 1930.
Dawes Plan
Proposed by the American, Charles Dawes, the Dawes Plan lowered the annual amount of reparations to be paid by Germany to France and Britain, and loaned Germany a sizable amount of money so that it could pay on time.
Gestapo
Adolf Hitler's secret police, the Gestapo terrorized the German citizens, spying on them and often arresting and executing suspects without a warrant or trial.
International Brigades
These groups of leftist volunteers were made up mostly of workers, who volunteered to aid the Republicans in the Spanish Civil war. They did so out of boredom, disillusionment, or a desire for adventure as often as from genuine political idealism.
Kellogg-Briand Pact
Developed in 1928 by United States Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand to jointly denounce war, the Kellogg-Briand Pact stated that the singing parties condemned recourse to war, and denounced it as an aspect of policy. The pact was eventually ratified, often hesitantly, by 65 nations.
League of Nations
The League of Nations was established as the body of international cooperation after World War One, with the deterrence of war and disarmament as its primary goals. However, largely due to the refusal of the United States to join, the League never grew strong enough to pass any broad measures.
Livitinov Protocol
The Livitinov Protocol was adopted by the Soviet Union and four other states, in response to the Kellogg-Briand Pact. It contained similar language, denouncing war as an aspect of foreign policy.
Locarno Pacts
The Locarno Pacts were a series of treaties signed to assure the stability of Germany's borders and discourage Germany from lashing out at its neighbors. They represented a largely French effort to keep Germany crippled and disarmed, and led to an improvement of relations between Germany and its neighbors.
Mein Kampf
The book Hitler wrote while imprisoned from 1923 to 1925, Mein Kampf (My Struggle) sets forth Hitler's future policies, and expounds upon the inferiority of the Jewish people to the Aryans. The book was widely read once Hitler came to power.
Nazi
The Nazi Party, short for the National Socialist German Workers Party, controlled Germany completely, under Hitler, from 1933 until the end of World War Two. The Nazi's strove to return Germany to its past glory, rectify the problem of unemployment, and expel German-Jews from society.
Triple Alliance
Made up of the miners, railway workers, and other transport workers in England, the Triple Alliance was the most organized and powerful labor coalition; it constantly battled the Conservative government for higher wages, better conditions, and shorter hours.
Westphalian System
Under this system the elites of government often met in secret to determine the fate of Europe and the world. However, World War I shattered the old system along with the empires that had maintained it.
Events
Beer Hall Putsch
On November 9, 1923, Hitler and World War I hero General Ludendorf attempted a small, and somewhat comic revolution known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler had jumped onto a beer hall table and proclaimed the current Weimar government overthrown. He and Ludendorf led their supporters into the street, and were promptly arrested. While this putsch was unsuccessful, it was important in predicting what was to come.
Guernica
During the Spanish Civil War, on April 25, 1937, the small northern town of Guernica was bombed by the Nationalists, and civilians were gunned down as they fled the scene. In this brutal massacre 1500 died and 800 were wounded, but the military targets in the town remained intact. While the casualty figures pale in comparison to later numbers, Guernica was crucial in crushing the spirit of the Republicans and convincing many that to resist the Nationalists was to open the doors to bloodbath.
Washington Conference
In November 1921, the United States convened the Washington Conference, attended by Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, China, Japan, and Portugal. The Conference resulted in a naval armaments treaty that set a ratio for tonnage of capital ships (over 10,000 tons, with guns bigger than eight inches) for Great Britain, the US, Japan, France, and Italy. The ratio agreed upon, in that order, was 5:5:3:1.67:1.67. The Washington Conference and the subsequent London Naval Conference of 1930 produced the only successful armaments agreements of the inter-war years.
Study Questions
Why did Italy turn to Fascism in the years following World War I?
Democracy as an institution was unstable and novel to the Italians, with universal male suffrage only having been granted in 1912. This made it easier for Benito Mussolini to capitalize on the reaction to chaos and bring his party, representing rigid order, to power. Mussolini's power lay in his ability to harness the anger and disillusionment of the returning soldiers and the lower middle class. Soldiers returned to a broken homeland after World War I, filled with misery and poverty. Moreover, they were not thanked for their sacrifices but jeered as the cause of Italy's hard times. These jeers seemed to come more than anywhere else, from the liberal left, which was in control of the Chamber of Deputies early in the inter-war years. Under their rule, conditions only worsened, and in many instances it seemed like they were doing nothing as Italy collapsed. The Fascist party appealed to the frustrations of these soldiers, and to the culturally instilled conservatism of the middle class. Rather than preaching liberalism and newly emerging liberal values, the Fascists offered a return to traditional politics and traditional values, promising to undo the changes made by the liberals and lift poor, crippled Italy to a position of glory once more. Most importantly, they offered the masses a type of government in which the leaders could and would do something about deteriorating conditions. To many, it mattered not what the Fascists did, but only that they acted, and acted within the framework of a stable and strong government.
Some historians claim that Europe's failure to rebound from the First World War was caused by the extensive loss of lives, especially those of the intellectual elites during the war. Evaluate this 'lost generation' theory?
It is beyond doubt that the extensive loss of life in World War One had a profound impact on European life, but to attribute the troubles of the inter-war period, as many do, to the concept of a 'lost generation,' is folly. This concept revolves around the contention that the intellectual elite was destroyed by the war and the mediocre survived, becoming the social and political leaders of the era, unable to deal with the crises of the period. It is true that the young men of the elite suffered greater casualties than any other segment of the population, but while 2,680 Oxford graduates were killed in the war, it must be remembered that 14,650 fought and survived. In uncompassionate economic terms, in view of the rampant unemployment of the inter-war period, this 20% loss of skilled workers actually alleviated some of the problems of the era, which included the wastage of the skilled, intelligent, and enterprising.
How did the League of Nations demonstrate changing concepts of international relations?
The League of Nations was heralded as the bastion of a new system of international relations in Europe. The so-called 'old diplomacy' is known as the Westphalian System since it had been in place since the Treaty of Westphalia, signed by the major European powers in 1648 at the end of the Thirty Year's War. Under this system the elites of government often met in secret to determine the fate of Europe and the world. However, with the Great War, the old system was shattered, along with the empires that had maintained it. American participation in the war was a major step toward a shift in the balance of world power, and the beginning of the end for European dominance. The brutality, and to some, apparent needlessness, of the war and the changing face of European geography led to new ideas about how international affairs should be managed. The secretive nature of the Westphalian system had led to petty resentments, the pursuit of narrow self-interest, and the division of Europe into warring camps. Many, including Woodrow Wilson, felt that a more open, all- inclusive system would be more fostering to cooperation, a concept of international justice, and peace. The League was seen as a way to institutionalize these goals and strive for peace as a collective world community.
