The Interwar Years

1919 - 1939
Saeed Memon
Madam Shaista Zafar
Area Study Centre for Europe

Paris Peace Conference (1919)

The Big Four
David Lloyd
George
of Britain
Vittorio Orlando
of Italy
Georges
Clemenseau
of France
Woodrow Wilson
of the United
States
Public optimism based on Wilsons 14 Points, among them: selfdetermination of nationalities; open diplomacy; general
disarmament; and a League of Nations
Importance of The National Question & its complications
Specter of Communism: Soviet Union & Hungary (Bela Kun)

Treaty of Versailles
Extremely harsh conditions
Significant territorial concessions
Huge reparations
Severe limitations on military
German admission of responsibility for war
Reparations
269 billion gold marks ($64 B then, $834 B today)*
Later reduced to 112 B gold marks ( $26.6 B) (1929)
Equivalent to $360 B today *
Many feel this led to the economic collapse of the
1920s that sewed the seeds of Fascism

Treaty of Versailles
Military Provisions

German army restricted to 100,000 men (long term

contract)
No conscription or training
No tanks or heavy artillery
Navy limited to 15,000 men
6 small battleships, 6 cruisers, 12 destroyers, no Uboats
No air force

Realities of the Paris Peace

Conference
Decisions usually made by Big Four & their
experts lead to resentment among the losers
Conflicting concerns of the victors
France need security, England needs reparations, USA
needs influence

Features of the Peace Treaties (June 1919)

Harsh treatment of Germany: demilitarized;
occupied; huge reparations; war guilt (Clause
231)
League of Nations set up (1920) with key
states missing & without sharp teeth
Map of Europe redrawn, creating new countries
at Austrias & Russias expense

Europe, post-1919

Mussolini and the Blackshirts

Fascism in
Italy

The Fascists :
Tended to be veterans who opposed Versailles settlement
Organized into armed bands; wore distinctive black shirts
Tended to be anti-union, violently breaking up meetings
Led by Benito Mussolini: opportunist, self-promoter,
nationalist
Gained support as centrist parties unable to halt economic
downturn: 1919-21

actors for Mussolinis Rise to Power

Feelings of betrayal after the 1919 peace
settlement.
Italians felt they had been
deprived of territory they had been promised
to them by the other Allies.
Italian government experiencing parliamentary
chaos and had no clear political program.
Fascism seemed to promise a way out of these
economic and political troubles Italy was
facing in the post-World War I era.
Played on middle and upper classes' fears
about inflation and concerns about their
property rights.

Components of Fascism
The State is paramount
Fascism is for liberty the liberty of the
State and of the individual within the State.
The keystone of Fascist doctrine is the
conception of the State, or its essence, of its
tasks, of its ends. For Fascism the State is
an absolute before which individuals and
groups are relative.
The Fascist State has a consciousness of its
own, a will of its own, on this account is
called and ethical state.
Corporatism
Nationalism
War as the natural state of society
Promotes foreign expansion: Ethiopia, Albania

Seeking Stability in Weimar Germany

Weimars built-in instability

Constitution: President and
Reichstag with Proportional
Representation & Article 48
Attempted revolutions from
Left and Right
Anger at Versailles Treaty
Clauses: reparations bill and guilt
French under Poincare invade the
Ruhr Valley, 1923-25
Germans hold general strike
Hyperinflation
Stability comes via the Dawes
Plan, Gustav Stresemann, the
Locarno Pact (1925), & KelloggBriand Pact (1929)
The Mask Falls

The Demise of Weimar

Cabaret to Beauty by Otto Dix (1922)

Berlin a culturally decadent,

vibrant, lonely city
American money and culture
flowing in until 1929
Impact of Great Depression
Party coalitions unable to
deal with crisis
Unemployment grows
from 2.25m (1930) to 6m
(1932)
President, Field Marshall Paul
von Hindenburg started to
rule by decree and to rely on
a small circle of advisors
In early 1933, Hindenburg
calls on Adolf Hitler to
become new Chancellor

Problems in Germany
The punishment of Germany goes too far
and cripples their post-war economy in
1923
Hyperinflation occurs
German money is worthless (when the general
price level rises, each unit of currency
buys fewer goods and services)

Hitlers rise in
Nazi

The Nazi
Party

The Nazis & Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)

National Socialist German Workers Party (f. 1919): sought

repudiation of Versailles; unification of Austria and Germany;
exclusion of Jews from German citizenship; land reforms and
encouragement of small businesses
Party had paramilitary component: the S.A. under Ernst
Roehm
Beerhall Putsch (1923)
Hitler had joined in 1920 & rose to leadership

What was the Nazi Vision?

Restructure Europe to benefit the
racial hierarchy
Mein Kampf places Aryans at top:
He furnishes the gigantic buildingstones and also the plans for all
human progress.
Unite ethnic Germans
(Volksdeutsch) in a Greater
Germany
Lebensraum or Living Space: Must
move eastward and push out those
already living there.

What was the Nazi Vision?

Nazi Racial
Ideas

Aryans/Germans
Semi-Aryans (Scandinavians)

Himmler spoke of
the war in the east
as a war of
extermination.

Anglo-Saxons & other Europeans

Untermenschen

Vermin: Jews, Gypsies, Gays

Emergence of a Global
Economy
Germanys hyperinflation means it cannot
pay war reparations to the winners of WWI
What effect will this have on those economies?

The U.S. had a very strong economy after

WWI, so they began to lend money to
Germany, which helps end Germanys
hyperinflation
Now, who will start getting their reparation
payments again?

The End of Prosperity:

1929

In October 1929, the U.S. Stock

Market crashed What does this
mean?
Speculation:
When a potential buyer
of stock buys it in expectation of it
reaching a higher price per share.
Margin: The buyer does not pay full
value for the stock; the balance (what
is not paid for) is borrowed. If the
stock price goes up, this benefits the
buyer who completely owns the stock
and has potential for profit (without
paying completely for it). However, if
the stock price falls, the buyer not
only suffers a loss, he/she still must
pay the money borrowed for the
balance. This can be RISKY and it
was this practice that contributed to

Causes of Worldwide
Depression
German reparations
Expansion of production capacities and
dominance of the United States in the global
economy
Britain and France owed huge war debts to the U.S.
Better technologies allowed factories to make more
products faster, leading to overproduction

Excessive expansion of credit (people spending

money they dont have)
Stock Market Crash of 1929
Buying stock on margin
A crisis in finance that led the Federal Reserve to
raise interest rates
Panic set in when stock prices crashed

Inability of the League of Nations to stop

The Soviet Union: From Lenin to Stalin

Limits to control, even after Civil War
600,000 Bolsheviks out of 160 million population
Use of army & secret police (the Cheka, later
NKVD, much later KGB)
New Economic Policy (1921)
Allowed for some private ownership in small
shops
Kulaks: peasants farming for profit
Results: more stable food supply & industrial
capacity back to pre-war level by 1927
Lenin dies (1924), sets up leadership struggle
Trotsky vs. Stalin

rowing Relationship between Italy and German

Hitler in Rome, 8 May 1938

Benito Mussolini
1922

Country: Italy
Type of Government: Fascism
(dictatorship)
Goals and Ideas:
Centralized all power in himself as
leader (total control of social,
economic, and political life)
Ambition to restore the glory of Rome
and create a vast Italian empire
Invasion of Ethiopia
Alliance with Hitlers Germany

Il Duce

Joseph Stalin
1924

Country: Soviet Union

Type of Government: Communism
(dictatorship)
Goals and Ideas:
Crushed opponents and took control
after Lenins death
Held absolute authority; suppressed
resistance
Brought his country to world power
status but imposed upon it one of the
most ruthless regimes in history
New Economic Policies (NEP)
Collectivization: exported seized goods
and gained enough capital to finance a
massive industrialization drive
Rapid industrialization: three 5-year
plans

The Great Purges: KGB = secret

police killed thousands of army officers
and prominent Bolsheviks who opposed
Stalin
Feared the growing power of Nazi
Germany

Adolf Hitler
1933

Country: Germany
Type of Government: Nazism
(dictatorship)
Goals and Ideas:
Inflation and depression weakened
the democratic government in
Germany and allowed an opportunity
for Hitler to rise to power
Believed the western powers had no
intention of using force to maintain
the Treaty of Versailles
Anti-Semitism: persecution of Jews
Extreme nationalism: National
Socialism (aka Nazism)
Aggression: German occupation of
nearby countries
Lebensraum: unite all German
speaking nations
Anschluss: German union with
Austria

Hideki Tojo
Country: Japan
Type of Government: Militarism
Goals and Ideas:
Though Japan had an emperor, the
military had taken control of the
government
Emperor Hirohito could not stand up
to the powerful generals, but he was
worshipped by the people, who often
fought in his name
Industrialization of Japan, lending to
a drive for raw materials how do
you get raw materials? IMPERIALISM
Japan conducted aggressive
imperialistic policies in Asia: invasion
of Korea, Manchuria, and the rest of
China (the League of Nations did
nothing)

Hideki Tojo, Military Leader of

Japan
Hirohito, Emperor of
Japan