The Aftermath of the World War 1: the Western World in the Twenties

Th WEEK (Political History- 2, Europe and America)

The Aftermath of the World War 1: the Western World in the Twenties

(Weimar Republic and the seeds of the rise of Nazism)

William R.Keylor, pp. 84-116 and pp.116-156

Daniel Brower, pp. 68-75, and pp. 103-137

Affects of the War.

A) Economic Collapse.

B) Social Dislocation.

C) Political Instablility.

D) The Growth of State Power

E) Affects on Colonial Empires

F) Cultural and Psychological Affects.

Political Instability & Economic Collapse (Inflation & Recovery, Depressions & Dictatorships).

The Precarious (doubtful, uncertain) Peace (War, Peace, and Germany)

By the 1930s moderate historians had concluded, with Lloyd George (British Prime-Minister), that no one country was to blame for the WW1: “We all stumbled into it.”

In the Treaty of Versailles (1919) the victorious coalition justified its peace terms by forcing Germany and its allies to acknowledge guilt for the war. This tactic was historically dubious and politically disastrous, but it stemmed from the liberal conviction, as old as the Enlightenment, that peace was normal and war an aberration or crime for which clear responsibility—guilt—could be established.

As early as 1928 the American Sidney B. Fay concluded that none of the European leaders had wanted a great war and identified as its deeper causes the alliance systems, militarism, imperialism, nationalism, and the newspaper press. (Marxists, of course, from the publication of Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism in 1916, held finance capitalism to be accountable for the war.)

The causes of the Second World War are to be found in the peace terms of the First World War, it has been frequently stated. One point is certain: the peace was not, as Woodrow Wilson advertised it should be in 1917, a peace without victors and without recriminations. On the contrary, the main feature of the peace treaties insofar as they concerned European affairs was their attempt to assure the submission of Germany.

By Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles Germany was declared responsible for aggression. This clause has been termed the "war guilt" clause, and was the one the Germans tried to avoid and were soon to denounce bitterly. The peacemakers of 1919, like the historians who have since followed them, were determined to establish a causal pattern that would explain why the war had occurred. Germany's defeat was the immediate reason why that nation was selected as the guilty party, but the ideological nature of the war had already conditioned the populations of France, England, and the United States to acceptance of the idea. Moreover, subsequent historical investigation has yielded considerable proof that the Germans acted both recklessly and aggressively. Yet the issue, quite simply, is still not resolved. Article 231 satisfied the victors, however, and on the basis of it they fixed the requirement of reparations to be financially assumed by Germany. This new diplomatic term - " reparations " - replaced the older concept of " indemnities," or war spoils. The reparations scheme was designed to pay for damages caused by German aggression to Allied civilian property, but also ingeniously covered the expense of veterans pensions.

Germany was not only thus financially burdened; it was also politically constrained.

The treaty makers, assuming Germany's war guilt, were determined to deprive that nation of the means of making war again. The German army was, therefore, restricted to a professional force of one hundred thousand; the navy was severely reduced in size and scope (the battleship was denied to the Germans, for instance); and the newer weapons in the arsenal of war - tanks and aircraft - were also forbidden.

One traditional condition of defeat was also introduced to hold Germany in place: territorial reapportionmen t. Germany's colonies were taken away and placed under the control of the victors and under the supervision of the League of Nations; some of the national territory was dismantled, given to Poland, Czechoslovakia, and France (notably the return of Alsace-Lorraine). Most unusual of all these territorial arrangements was the creation of a "demilitarized zone" along the west bank of the Rhine River, in some points of which Allied forces were temporarily stationed, but in all of which German troops could not be placed. The intention of this territorial adjustment was to assure France of what was considered to be a very necessary buffer against possible future German attack.

As this brief review of the peace terms should suggest, Germany was purposely disadvantaged, primarily because of French insistence, but with the concurrence of the other victorious states. What was widely feared was German industrial and military potentia l. If not contained or boxed in, ran the argument, Germany would rise and expand aggressively again.

The German population perceived the peace to be a Diktat, an unjust, dictated peace, forced on the entire nation. And, in truth, this was the case: the German delegation had not been invited to participate in the discussions. And it had been peremptorily required to sign the concluded treaties, and this in the presence of the haughtily silent Allied representatives who gathered in the Hall of Mirrors at the palace of Versailles.

The new German Republic began its political career already weighted down (burdened and troubled) by the heavy burden of Versailles. The Nazis and others opposed to the republic would call its leadership the " November Traitors," those who had signed the armistice and endured the peace terms. Seldom before in history had a new government been so diplomatically isolated (the Soviet Union was, however, another contemporary example); never before had a sense of national chagrin (upset) and anger been so susceptible to political use by those who opposed the new regime.

No single political issue worked more advantageously to the Nazi cause than did the Versailles settlement. Hitler promised the German people that he would regain and embellish the national honor so badly sullied (spoiled, made dirty) by the conditions of peace. And once in power, Hitler used the repressive features of the Treaty of Versailles as the basis for a series of demands for diplomatic change.

The peace treaties, then, can be considered self-contradictory: establishing international conciliation in the form of the League of Nations, and severely repressing Germany, making it a pariah, or an outcast among nations.

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