Interwar Years Part 1

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Interwar YearsPart 1
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The Peace Conference

• Participants
• Georges Clemenceau (France)
• David Lloyd George (Britain)
• Woodrow Wilson (U.S.)
• Vittorio Orlando (Italy)

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The Peace of Paris

• After months of difficult negotiations, a
  settlement was reached.
• Five treaties made up the Peace of Paris
• One each with Germany, Austria, Hungary,
  Bulgaria, and Turkey.
• Of the 5, the Treaty of Versailles, which Germany
  signed on June 28, 1919, was the most
  significant.
• France regained Alsace and Lorraine.
• The German Rhineland was demilitarized and
  occupied by Allied troops for 15 years.

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Poland
Jozef Pilsudski

• Of all the issues under debate at Versailles the
  one surrounding the fate of Poland was to be the
  most intense.
• In 1792, the old Polish state was dismembered by
  the three empires of Prussia, Austria and Russia.
  
• It ceased to exist, and apart from a brief return
  under Napoleon as the grand duchy of Warsaw, it
  did not reappear until 1919.
• The creation of a new power in northern Europe
  had many supporters. A new Poland would, and
  indeed did, act as a buffer zone between
  "western" Europe and the new and somewhat feared
  Soviet Union.

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The Peace of Paris

• The treaty also gave part of Prussia to Poland
  along with a corridor to the Baltic Sea.
• The Germans would never resign themselves to this
  loss of territory that separated East Prussia
  from the rest of Germany.
• To strip Germany of any offensive capability
• The settlement abolished the German general staff
  and forbade military conscription in Germany.
• The German army was limited to a hundred thousand
  volunteers and deprived of heavy artillery,
  tanks, and warplanes.
• The German navy was limited to a token force,
  which did not include submarines.

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The Peace of Paris

• A reparations clause assigned Germany the guilt
  for the war and ordered it to pay a debt that
  would have taken generations to pay.
• The Austrian-Hungarian Empire was broken apart
• Austria was reduced to only 12 percent of its
  prewar size.
• Hungary lost 75 percent of its land. Serbia
  joined with part of Hungary to become Yugoslavia.
  Czechoslovakia was formed. Hungary became a
  separate country.
• The Ottoman Empire was broken apart, setting up a
  multitude of problems in the Middle East.

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Treaty of VersaillesAssessment and Problems

• The Germans unanimously denounced the Treaty of
  Versailles
• In their minds the war had ended not in German
  defeat but in a stalemate.
• They had thought the armistice would lead to a
  negotiated settlement among equals and based on
  Wilsons 14 points.
• Instead they were barred from participating in
  the negotiations.
• The resulting treaty was vindictive and designed
  to keep Germany economically and militarily weak.

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Treaty of VersaillesAssessment and Problems

• But, the new German Republic had no choice but to
  sign the treaty.
• What is most significant about the treaty is that
  it did not solve the German problem.
• German was left weak but unbrokenits industrial
  and military power was only temporarily contained
  and its nationalistic fervor was only fueled by
  the unjust treaty.
• Also, the responsibility for enforcing the treaty
  rested primarily with France.
• The Paris peace settlement left Germany resentful
  but potentially powerful.

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Rise of Fascism in EuropePostwar Unrest

• At the Peace of Paris, the Allied powers had
  attempted to force democracy throughout Europe.
• Yet within two decades, in Spain, Portugal,
  Italy, Germany, and in all the newly created
  states of central and eastern Europe except
  Czechoslovakia, democracy collapsed, and various
  forms of authoritarian government emerged.
• The defeat of democracy and the surge of
  authoritarianism was best seen in the triumph of
  totalitarian fascist movements in Italy and
  Germany.

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Mussolini and Italy

• Although Italy had been on the winning side in
  World War I, it resembled a defeated nation.
• Food shortages, rising prices, massive
  unemployment, and violent strikes created a
  climate of crisis.
• Adding to the unrest was the national outrage at
  the terms of the peace settlement.
• Italians felt that they had been denied the
  fruits of victory because they were not given
  land that they were promised by the Allied forces
  when Italy entered the war on their side.
• They blamed their government for the mutilated
  victory

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Mussolini and Italy

• A supreme opportunist rather than an ideologist,
  Benito Mussolini exploited the unrest in postwar
  Italy in order to capture control of the state in
  1921 and bring his Fascist party to power.
• Many Italians viewed Mussolini as the man who
  would take the territory due Italy and win
  Italys rightful place in international affairs.

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Depression of 1930

• Just as most of Europe was beginning to recover
  economically from World War I, a worldwide
  depression hit in 1930 and became the worst
  depression of the 20th century.
• The United States emerged from WWI as the
  dominant economic power and Europe had grown
  dependant on U.S. investments. When the Great
  Depression started in the U.S. in 1929, it
  quickly spread to Europe.
• It would be the worst depression of the
  industrial age, comparable to the depression of
  the 1840s, which had led to the revolutions of
  1948.
• The Depression of 1930 also led to political
  unrest.