Chapter 4: World Politics in The Interwar Years 1919-1939

The Rise and Fall of The League of Nations

This section focuses on the emergence of the new international system after World War I and discusses its development in the 1920s. It begins with a brief introduction of the Paris Peace Conference and then addresses the creation of a permanent international organization, the League of Nations. The section also examines postwar peace settlements, particularly the Treaty of Versailles. Finally, it discusses major developments that shaped the course of world politics in the 1920s.

Paris Peace Conference

After the end of the First World War, the Paris Peace Conference convened between January and June 1919 in order to design the post-war international system and determine the fate of 88 World Politics in The Interwar Years 1919-1939 the defeated countries of the war. Representatives from thirty-two Allied and associated countries participated in the conference. However, the principal actors, known as the “Big Four”, were Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, represented as they were by David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, and Woodrow Wilson, respectively. The main decisions taken at the Paris Peace Conference included the establishment of the League of Nations, war reparations, overseas or colonial possessions of the Germans and Ottomans -many of which subsequently became mandates of France and Britain-, the drawing of new national boundaries, and the preparation of five treaties imposed on the losers that later proved fatal to forging a lasting peaceful order.

The League of Nations

At the very beginning of the Paris Peace Conference, the victorious allies began to work on the covenant of the League of Nations. Hence, the committee on the Covenant of the League of Nations was set up under the chairmanship of US President Wilson whose top priority was to create a permanent international organization for the postwar world order. After extensive debates, the League’s covenant was adopted as part of the Treaty of Versailles, and eventually, the League of Nations was officially established on January 10, 1920. While 44 countries became the original members of the League, the number increased in the interwar years and 63 states became its members by 1939. The main objective of the League of Nations was to promote and maintain international peace through collective security and resolve conflicts through transparent and multilateral negotiations. The League was the first ever permanent and universal international organization for promoting and maintaining world peace with members from all around the world. The League had three principal organs: the Assembly, the Council, and the Permanent Secretariat.

Peace Treaties

At the end of the Paris Peace Conference, peace treaties were signed with the defeated countries: the Treaty of Versailles was signed with Germany on June 28, 1919; the Treaty of Saint-Germain with Austria on September 10, 1919; the Treaty of Neuilly with Bulgaria on November 27, 1919; the Treaty of Trianon with Hungary on June 4, 1920. Following a delay, the last peace treaty was the Treaty of Sèvres signed with the Ottoman Empire on August 10, 1920. Post-war settlements meant huge economic, military and territorial losses for the defeated countries and the collapse of age-old empires.

The Implementation of the Peace in the 1920s

France was the chief architect behind Germany’s economic and political insolvency since it aimed at preventing a future German resurgence. The amount to be paid as war reparations was highly disputable. In 1921, the total sum of the war reparations was fixed at 132 billion Gold Marks (about $33 billion), which was far beyond Germany’s capacity to pay (Hobsbawm, 1995: 98). The US suggested Germany pay in installments according to its capacity, while France insisted on receiving the money at once and in full. France’s goal, after all, was to tailor the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles to make Germany economically too weak to attempt anything with the common wisdom that any payment of such an impossible sum would reduce Germany “to a state of Asiatic poverty”. However, the real problem behind reparations was not its economic burden, but its political symbolism for German resentment, suspicion, and hostility to other major European powers, each of which helped clear the way for World War II.

The Dawes Plan

Both Britain and France were deeply dependent on the US credits for economic recovery, for which German war reparations seemed a perfect solution. Germany, however, first needed to reach a level of economic solvency before it could pay any such sum. To do so, the US devised a plan in 1924 called the Dawes Plan that sought to find a way for everyone to pay their debts. Named after the US banker and statesman Charles G. Dawes, the plan suggested that the US would lend money to Germany for economic build-up. With US assistance, the German economy would recover, and Germany would be able to pay its war debts to France.

The Locarno Pact

“The series of treaties concluded at Locarno in Switzerland in October 1925. The most important was the Rhineland Pact, signed by France, Germany and Belgium and guaranteed by Britain and Italy, which affirmed the inviolability of the FrancoGerman and Belgo-German borders and the demilitarization of the Rhineland. Inaddition, Germany signed arbitration treaties with France, Belgium, Poland and Czechoslovakia,”

Kellogg-Briand Pact

Before the 1920s came to a close, disarmament efforts were also joined by efforts to issue a complete ban on the use of force in world politics. The victors of World War I aimed to outlaw the use of force in international politics through an agreement, “the International Treaty for the Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy”, known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact. The pact emerged from a French suggestion to the US that two countries should sign a bilateral nonaggression pact. However, upon the US proposal, it turned into a multilateral agreement in which other states were also invited to join. Signed in Paris on August 27, 1928, the pact renounced war as an instrument of national policy and declared the use of force illegal.

The Great Depression and Its Impact on World Politics

The world economic crisis of October 1929, also known as the Great Depression, brought an abrupt end to efforts for world peace. Instead, it augured a decade full of agony, uncertainty, distrust and, eventually, conflict. The 1929 Great Depression also had a remarkable impact upon the world economy, causing a significant drop in the global industrial production and trade. Producing 42% of global industrial output in 1929 compared to Europe’s 28%, the US’ disproportionate influence on the global economy was destined to have a particularly negative effect on the global economy after 1929.

Unemployment rates in Europe and the US between 1932- 33 demonstrate the depth of the Great Depression: in Britain they were 23%; Belgium 22%; Sweden 24%; the US 27%; Austria 29%; Norway 31%; Denmark 32%; and in Germany a whopping 44%. Unemployment was highlighted in the Western press as “the most widespread, the most insidious, and the most corroding malady of.... Western civilization”. Due to the Great Depression, economic liberalism lost its influence, and the gold standard system that had long maintained a stable international currency exchange system was abandoned by the US, Britain, France, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia. Britain, the heart of trade liberalization in Europe, abandoned free trade in 1931, while both Britain and France sought economic recovery through a “domestic-oriented and inward-looking” economic policy.

The 1929 Great Depression also had significant political effects. Democratic governments the world over were forced to resign, while military coups in Latin America became an almost daily occurrence. With 13 million unemployed in 1932, it was not long before Germany succumbed to ultranationalist, populist, and aggressive promises of redemption. When the Nazi Party was founded, for example, 85% of its members were unemployed. At the end of the day, the Great Depression was fertile ground for the rise of extremist ideologies such as Nazism, Fascism, and Stalinism. Aggressive aspects of these policies included revisionism, irredentism, and bandwagoning, while defensive ones included appeasement and isolationism.

Revisionism

Revisionism is the desire to alter the international status quo in a significant way through the violation of treaties and the imposition of territorial change by coercion or the use of force.

Irredentism

Irredentism is a territorial claim by one sovereign state against another, aimed at equalizing the boundaries of its ‘nation’ (or ethnicity) with the borders of the state. It carries a nationalist and populist agenda to liberate “brothers and sisters suffering under a foreign dominance” and claims the recovery of ethnic frontier groups lying outside the territory of the nation-state.

Bandwagoning

Bandwagoning is to side with the rising revisionist power contrary to traditional notions of the balance of power, which counter-alliances historically try and prevent (think of Napoleon, for example). Generally exercised by lesser powers for offensive or defensive purposes, one either joins an alliance with the expected winner to share in the spoils of victory or, in the case of defensive bandwagoning, to escape invasion oneself.

Appeasement

Appeasement is the policy of buying off a potential aggressor through negotiation and compromise in order to prevent an armed conflict, a policy Britain and France applied to both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. It was first applied to fascist Italian leader Benito Mussolini, who invaded Abyssinia/Ethiopia in 1935.

The Rise of Revisionist Powers in the International System

The Great Depression not only brought the nations of the world to the brink of bankruptcy, it also provided fertile ground for the establishment of extreme political formations, most notably including Nazism in Germany and Fascism in Italy. Nor, for that matter, would the military takeover in Japan or the revisionist policies of the Soviet Union have been possible without the fallout of the Great Depression.

Nazi Germany

An already defeated Germany went through serious economic and political crises in the early 1920s, first experiencing hyperinflation and a near-complete dependence on the Allied powers. The once mighty Prussian-led German Empire had been dissolved into a weak Weimar Republic, while society was torn between ultra-nationalist and communist clashes. National Socialist German Workers’ Party, known as, also known as the Nazi Party, was founded in 1920 and increased in popularity throughout the mid-1920s onwards as the German public grew more and more distraught with the Treaty of Versailles and Allied pressures over war reparations and the War Guilt clause. On March 5, 1933, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi Party won the federal elections with 43.9% of the vote and became the dominant political force in Germany until 1945. These were the last democratic elections held in a unified Germany until 1990.

According to Taylor (1961: 10), there were two popular views about Hitler. The first depicted Hitler as a “mad man” with an agenda to conquer the world at any cost. The second depicted him as a rational tactician who carefully planned his longterm strategy to defeat the Soviets and establish a colonial empire in Eastern Europe. Taylor (1961:11) denies both views and claims that Hitler had neither a quest for world supremacy nor had prepared long-term plans for the future. Rather, he claims, Hitler neither desired nor prepared for a great war, but aimed to reach his goals through guile, propaganda, deception, and limited warfare. Besides, he was much more obsessed with antiSemitism than world supremacy.

Fascist Italy

Italian Fascism was similar to Nazism in terms of its antiliberalism, anti-capitalism, antiMarxism, and ultranationalism. It was not, however, necessarily anti-Semitic or racist. In fact, Mussolini only adopted anti-Semitism in 1938 after his alliance with Hitler had grown stronger (Hobsbawm, 1995: 116). In the meantime, Italy pursued self-sufficiency and protectionism in its economics and irredentism in its foreign policy. Fascists under the leadership of Benito Mussolini believed they had a right to invade weaker states. Ironically, Mussolini, the founder of the Italian Fascist movement, had claimed to be the voice of the oppressed in Italy. Elected Prime Minister in 1922, he became Il Duce, or dictator, in 1925 when he dismissed Rome’s democracy. That being said, Italian Fascism was more pragmatic and less clearly based on a certain ideology. Its ultimate objective, at least on paper, was to revive the Roman Empire with Mussolini at its head.

Imperial Japan

After facing economic collapse during the Great Depression, Japan witnessed spiraling prices, falling exports, high unemployment, and social unrest. Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi, for example, was shot by an ultra-nationalist in 1930, and the military had taken over the civil administration by the summer of 1931. The military government adopted a planned economy inspired by the Soviet economic model and initiated heavy armament and industrialization to boost their economy in ways that would mirror Nazi Germany (Hobsbawm, 1995: 128). Japan also called for Asian unification against Western imperialism that would lead to Asian selfsufficiency and prosperity. In reality, it meant Japanese imperial domination in the Far East. According to Hobsbawm (1995: 104), the gates to World War II were opened first in 1931 with the Japanese military take-over and the invasion of Manchuria. Japanese revisionist acts can be summarized as follows: Japan denounced the 1922 Washington Treaty, which limited its naval capacity, and increased the size of its military fleet to 14,000, nearly double the prescribed limit of 8,000. It also invaded Manchuria in 1931, occupied Shanghai in 1932, and withdrew from the League of Nations in 1933. It then launched a full-scale invasion of China in 1937 and started a continent-wide armed conflict through the rest of the war until 1945. The invasion of Manchuria was the League of Nations’ first serious challenge, against which it clearly failed. Manchuria was under Chinese jurisdiction, but China did not have physical control over the territory. The lawlessness in Manchuria also hurt Japanese trade interests, which helped push Japan to take action. In November 1936, Japan signed an anticommunist treaty called the “Anti-Comintern Pact” with Germany. After Italy joined the pact in 1937, the Axis bloc was finalized under the name of “Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.”

The Soviet Union

The Soviet Union emerged victorious from the Great Depression since Soviet economic policy had become a model for other countries suffering from the crisis. According to Kennedy (1987: 285), the Soviets were both admired and detested in the West, because they offered a new civilization, which had escaped the world economic crisis, but also openly declared their rivalry to the Western liberal economic and political system. That is why the Soviets were treated as a “pariah state” and kept out of the League of Nations until the mid1930s, when only a bigger enemy, Nazi Germany, began to emerge (Kennedy, 1987: 290). Emerging economically powerful after the Great Depression, the Soviets sought to play an important role in European politics throughout the 1930s. They positioned themselves against the rising Nazi Germany and sought to form a balancing bloc in Europe against the Nazis and other extreme rightwing tendencies on the continent.

Europeans, however, did not necessarily desire an alliance with the Soviets; it was merely a marriage of convenience against the Nazis. Besides, the Soviets under the leadership of Joseph Stalin went through an intensive authoritarian transformation, especially from the mid1930s onwards. Stalin’s infamous Great Purge (1936-8) had already aimed at wiping out any opposition against him within the Red Army or across the bureaucracy, resulting in the torture and execution of more than a million people, consolidating Stalin’s authoritarian grip, and hugely weakening the international image of the Soviet Union.

The Spanish Civil War

The Spanish civil war was one of the most significant events in world politics during the interwar period, which turned into a proxy war between the Axis powers and the Soviet Union. Therefore, it was considered as a preview of World War II (Sander, 2004:55). The Spanish civil war was an outcome of mainly internal political, social, and economic factors. A troubling political climate in Spain led to 33 cabinet changes between 1902 and 1923, the year a fascist dictator, General Primo de Rivera, came to power through a coup d’état. His six years of dictatorship paved the way for the flourishing of an extreme right and left, though he was finally forced to resign in 1930 after losing the support of the army. A republic was proclaimed in 1931 and leftist Republicans won the elections. However, they had inherited a bankrupt and politically polarized state lacking well-functioning democratic institutions. A failed coup against the Republican government in January 1932 revealed increasing social and political polarization that rendered the environment ripe for a civil war. A series of fascist and ultra-nationalist groups were pitted against the Republican regime, namely the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rightwing Groups (CEDA), the ultratraditionalist, Catholic, monarchist Carlists, and the Falange Española movement led by the son of Rivera.

A great struggle between two grand ideologies, Fascism and Communism, the Spanish Civil War was more than a civil war. Accordingly, it can be seen as a ‘little World War’ whose implications for Europe were considerable. It increased solidarity among fascists and ultra-nationalists all over Europe, encouraging them to sharpen their ambitions. It gave Nazis the confidence to invade Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland and drew Fascist Italy completely away from the democratic western front toward the Nazis. It also crystallized the division between democratic and dictatorial states.