The staggering rate of loses in the war of 1918 had even affected the demographic balance with women outnumbering men in demographic counts all over Europe. This of course led to many women taking up jobs in areas of the economy hitherto reserved for men. The bye product was the granting of the right to vote to women in many parts of Europe beginning with Britain in 1920.
The women suffrage campaign now extended to the struggle
for equal rights for women and the escalating debates over birth control and
the woman’s right to have abortion. This shifting trend in society became the
hallmark of European society in the post World War 1 era as technology, innovations
and a shift in social behavior became a dominant trend.
The nationalistic aspirations that erupted as a result of
the dissolution of the Empire of Germany, Austro – Hungary, Russia, Ottoman
Turks also led to an explosion in the number of nation states in Europe that
were seeking visibility and rights to self determination.
The rights of ethnic minorities, nationalities and races
were vigorously campaigned- for and upheld. The issues in any case that arose
in the November armistice of 1918 had to be dealt with in a larger and more
complex treaty that was to ensue after the conflict.
A peace conference to thrash out the issues dealt with in
the Armistice of November 1918 was called for in Paris and attended by the
leaders of the major Allied nations, George Clemenceau of France, Lloyd George
of Great Britain, Woodrow Wilson of the U.S.A and Orlando of Italy.
The one year long
conference was designed specifically to put in place a peace and conflict
resolution mechanism that was designed to ensure that a conflict on the scale
of the Great War as World War 1 was then known, never recurred again.
The Allied delegates embarked on the conference with a
spirit of vengeance and a determination to punish Germany; and imposed terms
that were both harsh and severe and ultimately difficult to fulfill or even
supervise. Whereas the sanctions were specific, the mechanism for enforcement
or even supervision was vague as each country was left to fulfill its
obligations to the best of its interpretation and conscience.
The French were determined not only to recover Alsace –
Lorraine but also to occupy the Saar and detach the Rhineland from Germany. The
British were more interested in increasing Germany’s reparations payment and
sought terms that were harsh and ultimately difficult to fulfill in the midst
of Germany’s own political and economic turmoil.
Economists like
Maynard Keynes had strongly argued for a more accommodating term of reparations
for Germany. In any case the treaty was signed on June 28th 1919. Germany’s
Colonies were dismantled and taken over by the victorious Allies; heavy
reparations were imposed on her army and fleet.
Parts of the Rhineland, Saar and other parts of the fatherland were put
under occupation until the reparations were paid and the terms of the treaty
fulfilled.
Woodrow Wilson’s fourteen peace points had dealt with
issues such as rights to self determination, determination of the right of
nations and minorities, freedom of the seas, trading, reduction of armaments
and adjustment of colonial claims.
His proposition concerning the general assembly of
nations transposed into the League of Nations which was meant to be a body to
ensure peace and tranquility amongst the nations of the world by settling
disputes and conflicts amongst the major and minor powers without a resort to
armed conflict.
The failure of the US to ratify the treaty setting up the
league meant that the same Europeans the league was meant to pacify were the
same nation states left to enforce its sanctions and covenants. In the event it
was obvious to see why the league failed.
The European
statesmen were anxious to curtail Germany’s position and influence and did not
give much thought to the political path and direction, Germany might follow
after the war in the wake of such a punitive peace deal.
The 1920s fortunately brought a brief season of flowering
economically as Europe and the rest of the world including the U.S.A
experienced a season of economic boom that helped to reduce tensions and make
payments of reparations easier. The period also saw a boom in the stock
exchange as trading in stocks and equities boomed. While the economic boom
lasted, the terms of the treaty were somehow enforced and peace seemed to
endure.
The futile efforts to give teeth to the decisions of the
League of Nations at this time underscored the deficiencies associated with the
setting up of the body. In this period also the international Court of Justice
at The Hague was set up and the Geneva conventions regulating the conduct of war,
prisoners and treatment of civilians were also established.
The Washington
naval conference of 1922 also sought to enforce a treaty of self restraint on
the part of the major powers with regards to the building of capital ships.
GERMANY AND THE ISSUE OF PAYMENT OF
REPARATIONS
The challenges of maintaining domestic stability while
responding to the demands of the Versailles treaty continued to prove a
daunting task to the post- war German governments. The elections that followed
the treaty seemed to favor the centre right parties that were in opposition to
the treaty. The coalitions cabinets that resulted thereafter felt insecure in
their bid to fulfill the treaty whilst placating domestic opposition to the
treaty.
This put the government in the centre in Berlin in a weak
position, unable to stamp its authority on the country particularly with
relations to raising taxes and curbing inflations. This gave the industrial
leaders the courage to defy government policies while actively crafting policy by
stealth.
The leadership dithered over how to satisfy the
electorate without violating the treaty. Some favored rapprochement with
Bolshevik Russia in order to pressure the West to ease its demand on Germany
for fear of communist inroads into Germany
While the reparation committee dithered over how much to
demand from Germany as reparations and also how to share the proceeds amongst
the Allies in 1920, a new formula was soon adopted with France taking 52
percent of the reparations while Britain got 22 percent.
After the treaty of Versailles, Great Britain faced
further challenges on the home front in the form of Ireland’s agitation for
independence. The agitation had been boldly suppressed while World War 1 went
on, as Britain could not afford the distraction.
After the signing of the armistice in 1918, Lloyd George
finally caved in to the pressure of the Irish Republican movement for
independence. After much deliberation in the face of the threatened revolt in
Dublin, a compromise was reached in 1921 that established Irish Free State as a
British dominion in the South while predominantly protestatant, Northern
Ireland remained in the United Kingdom.
The Sinn Fein nationalists however continued to agitate
until in 1937, Eire (Ireland) achieved full independence while Northern Ireland
(Ulster) remained British.
In (November 1921 – February 1922) US Secretary of State
Charles Evans Hughes invited the Great Powers to Washington D.C to forge a new
order for maritime power and Asian stability. Amongst other agreements
including the decision to respect China’s sovereignty; a five-power treaty on
naval armaments was put in place to forestall a naval arms race between the US,
U.K, Japan, France and Italy. The treaty temporarily put a halt to the
escalating naval arms race between the US, U.K, Japan and Italy.
Europe 1922
The period described above was a period of armistice
between one season of war and another. It was obvious that the peace settlement
of 1919 as comprehensive as it sought to be, did not deal comprehensively with
all the issues that had arisen concerning defeated Germany and Russia and the
Victorious Powers of Britain, France, Italy and the USA.
French insistence on Germany being weakened, coupled with
the harsh reparations policy meant that the feuding parties were still seething
with resentment. The US which had argued strongly for equality and self
determination amongst nations, had failed to ratify the treaty leaving only
Britain and France to enforce the treaty, the best they could.
There were so many loose ends arising from the treaty
that were left and handled unsatisfactorily. For instance the dismembering of
Germany and handing over of her territories alongside the forbidding of the
Anchluss (Union) with Austria meant that a sizeable German minority were left
to their fate in a number of countries like Poland, Czechoslovakia, France,
Belgium etc.
The issue of war
guilt which was imposed on Germany, Austria and Hungary was one pill too, that
the defeated nations found difficult to swallow; as well as the oppressive
nature of the reparations payments. The territorial issues that touched on
Germany and the newly created nations of Poland especially as it related to the
corridor carved out of Germany in favor of Poland, i.e. Danzig was another bone
of contention.
With the over one
million German residents trapped there, that proved to be another point of
injustice that needed to be dealt with as far as the German people were concerned.
The treaty of Versailles was one harsh treaty that was carefully crafted; yet
nobody was ready to fully defend it.
Even the French
that had demanded many of the harsh provisions, ironically stood aloof when
Hitler’s Nationalist Socialist party came to power and began to openly
repudiate the terms of the peace treaty.
In the words of another “The great war failed to solve
the German question especially as it related to her role and destiny in Europe’’.
Though defeated and shackled by the Versailles treaty, Germany’s strategic
position still remained strong because on all sides it was surrounded by
weakened and dispirited nations.
France and Russia
had been drained and weakened by the war. Moreover the rest of the newly
emerging European countries were hardly in a position to confront a resurgent
Germany’’.
The post-war French leaders thought seriously over these
issues. There was a momentary resort to an -intra European defense arrangement
between France and Belgium in September 1920, a Franco-Polish alliance in
February 1921 and a Franco – Czechoslovak entente in January 1924. The
strivings of a need for European unity was pulsating, but who was to lead it?
Britain, feeling secure in her strength and the natural
barrier of the English Channel, concentrated her energy on her empire and did
not see any serious need to commit vigorously to Europe once the treaty had
been signed. The strict enforcement of the treaty came to rest on a hesitant
France which was all too concerned over its defense than in the provocation of
a fresh war with Germany.
The security of France and the entire Europe came to
depend on German disarmament and the Allied occupation of the Rhineland. French
finances were strained by the cost of rebuilding the war- devastated region of
the north, the army and the demands of the colonial holdings as well as the
refusal of the French parliament to levy sizeable tax increases until either
Germany had paid the reparations or France’s war debts had been forgiven.
As long as Germany was not forth coming in settling its
debts, then France would continue to face serious budget deficits that
threatened its currency. France also depended on Germany for the coal needed to
revive iron and steel production while at the same time bracing up to face the
stiff competition from German exports.
To compound matters, France’s war- time Allies, the US
and Great Britain quickly distanced each other from the enforcement of the
Versailles treaty. Britain meanwhile was facing a post- war economic slump that
was due mainly to wartime losses particularly in ships and foreign markets.
Unemployment in Britain in the post war years had climbed to 17% in 1921.
Wartime spending and neglect had accelerated the decline
of the ageing British industrial plants and the economy generally. Unemployment
figures in the 20s generally hovered above 10% and there was pressure on the
British government to boost employment by reviving trade.
British economist
Maynard Keynes argued at this time that the recovery of Europe was tied to the
recovery of the German economy which was the dominant economy in Europe, and
yet the very fabric of the Versailles treaty seemed designed to ensure that
Germany never got back on its feet economically as virtually every clause seemed
designed to restrain Germany from reviving its natural economic capacity.
As a pragmatic measure Britain needed the reparation
debts from Germany to balance her own war debts to the United States. However
after the war, British Prime Minister Lloyd George came to support German
recovery in the overall interest of trade. The entente with France became
strained as early as 1920 over the issues of reparations, Turkey and the coal
shortage of that year, from which Britain garnered major profits at the expense
of France.
EUROPEAN ECONOMIC SLUMP
Economically, Europe had come out of World War 1 much
weakened by the economic effect of the conflict particularly as it related to
the credit purchases from the United States which as far back as 1914 had been
the world’s leading economic power. By 1918, the US had invested more than
9billion dollars abroad compared with the 2.5 billion dollars before the war.
Britain and France alongside Italy in the course of the
war had used most of their investments in the US and had consequently
accumulated large public debts particularly to the US treasury. Europe was thus
faced with the shadow of American financial domination alongside European
indebtedness in the first decade following the war.
The Allies were also indebted to one another and to
Britain too which in turn was indebted in the United States. To compound
matters, Germany and Austria faced the penalty of reparation according to the
Versailles treaty which they found very difficult to pay.
English Economist of that era Maynard Keynes had in his
opposition to the principle of reparations payment described it as “morally
detestable, politically foolish and economically nonsensical”. British Minister
and First Lord of the sea, Sir Winston Churchill described it as “a sad story
of complicated idiocy”.
The Allied policy of demanding goods and cash from
Germany as reparations were bound to afflict industry as in the case of the
former or lead to the acquisition of unrepayable loans as in the latter,
particularly because Germany’s only recourse was to source large loans from the
United States.
In April 1921, the Allied reparations committee set
Germany’s reparations bill at 132 billion gold marks to be increased if the
Germans proved able to pay. The first installment of one billion marks was due
by the end of May 1921.
Germany wavered behind two extreme views, refusal to pay
and paying with a view to establishing trust which would now form the basis for
a revised and more lenient repayment policy as advocated by Walther Ratheneau
the finance minister and Stresemann the foreign minister
The Weimar Republic chose the path of compromise by
paying the first installment in August 1921 with a loan obtained in London.
After that, several payments were made in kind until the beginning of 1923 when
it couldn’t continue anymore, and thereafter the French promptly occupied the
Ruhr industrial region with the support of Belgium, but with the opposition of
the US and Britain.
Gustav Stresemann
German statesman Gustav
Stresemann won the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize with his French counterpart, Aristide
Briand. Stresemann was recognized for his work toward peace and his efforts to
have Germany admitted to the League of Nations.
Corbis
Microsoft ®
Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
The occupation in any case proved fruitless as the Ruhr
workers with the connivance of the German government brought production to a
virtual halt and the German treasury printed a huge sum of paper money which
turned out to be worthless and led to a near collapse of the German economy
By 1924 Germany was facing hyper inflation leaving the
mark with no purchasing value, thereby enriching speculators and owners of real
property while ruining the salaried workers and middle class. This trend of
events opened the door for pessimism that gave way to the Nazi victory in years
later at the polls. The Germans loss of faith in their economic system only opened the way
for extreme political doctrines to become acceptable.
The Allies therefore set up a committee of financial
experts chaired by the American, Charles G. Dawes to find a lasting solution to
the issue of reparations payment. The committee resolved to offer Germany a two
– year moratorium on payments, grant Germany a fresh loan of 800 million marks,
coupled with a new rate for reparation payment of 1 – 25 billion gold marks
annually. This was continued for five years.
In 1929 a further committee chaired by Mr. Owen D. Young
revised the Dawes plan by granting Germany a new loan of 1.2 billion marks and
to spread reparations payments over the next 59 years. The plan was grudgingly
accepted by the German people and parliament in a nationwide referendum, but in
real terms, reparations payment ceased in 1932 when the effect of the great
depression really hit hard and payment became impossible.
The rest of Europe also faced serious and severe debt
issues that arose out of World War1; and while the United States was willing to
write – off debts associated with reparations, it could not write off the
commercial debts owed to it.
This trend of events opened the door for the pessimism
that gave way to the Nazi victory in years later at the polls. The Germans loss
of faith in their political and economic system only opened the way for extreme
doctrines to become acceptable.
On the whole Europe prospered in the inter war years as economic growth enabled most of the
European countries to exceed their 1914 economic output levels as growth
continued across all sectors of the economy. Growth however turned out faster
in the United States where the 1920s saw such a period of rapid growth that
speculative financial investments particularly in stocks and risky financial
behaviors became the order of the day.
Borrowing to buy and postponing the day of payment became
the order of the precarious prosperity people were investing in. A lot of the
money involved was based on pure speculation as people borrowed to buy stocks
and the declared values of the stock exceeded the actual value of the
investment made. Life was easy and prosperity came in handily even though many
people knew that the boom could go bust anytime.
This finally came to on “Black Tuesday” 24th
October 1929 when the Wall Street stock market crashed as everybody seemed to
want to disinvest in stocks all about the same time as investor’s confidence in
the system had plummeted. It was an all – sellers market and few buyers.
With so many people willing to sell their stocks at any
rate and few people willing to buy the overvalued stocks, the inevitable result
was a crash that eventually sent the economy into a depression that took the
wind out of the world economy.
Banks that had invested heavily in the overvalued stocks
suddenly saw their balance sheets turn red as the stocks went up in smoke, and
with their capital gone, most banks stopped lending and the effect spread to
every part of the US and eventually the
world economy.
Many major banks went under and most mortgages failed as
the number of people out of job spiraled. Unemployment reached unprecedented
figures, almost affecting over a quarter of the entire workforce in the United
States.
As the Depression hit harder in the US, the effect spread
to Europe as loans were quickly recalled and foreign investments dried up. As
the American institutions repatriated huge sums of money to shore up their own
sagging economy many European banks were hit and many went under.
A Bundle of Marks
After World War I
(1914-1918), inflation in Germany was so high that millions of marks were
required to buy even the most basic item. As a result, German money frequently
had more value as kindling than as legal tender. Shown here, a German woman
prepares to light her stove with a bundle of paper currency.
Corbis
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All
rights reserved.
Germany, Austria and Britain were the hardest hit and the
great Kredistanstalt bank of Vienna collapsed in May 1931 and as depositors
rushed to withdraw their savings, the Bank of England began to lose gold at the
rate of 2.5 million pounds a day and this led to a catastrophic decline in
production as figures fell 40 percent in Germany, 14 percent in Britain and 29
percent in France.
To compound matters the United States under President
Hebert Hoover tried to mitigate the effect of the slump and had granted a
moratorium on the payment of all government debts for one year on Jan 1931.
When this expired in June 1932, the US Secretary of State Henry Stimson
proposed another one year extension which the president refused.
The European Allies meanwhile had tied the canceling of
Germany’s reparations payment to the willingness of the US to forego all
wartime debts which the Americans promptly declined, citing a European
conspiracy; and as everybody subsequently went their way, the situation was
compounded.
CENTRAL EUROPE AND THE
MIDDLE EAST,
1920 – 1930
With the expiration of the Habsburg Empire, the successor
states of Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia came to be the main object of the
peace conference’s deliberations. The first two, being the main stays of the
Austro – Hungarian empire were dealt with as defeated powers.
Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia together with Poland even
though were given benevolent treatment by the victorious powers, were however
not in themselves homogeneous entities; rather conflicting ethnic, racial,
economic, military and political divisions left these states less than stable
even with the victorious powers.
The state of Yugoslavia was only an amalgamation of Serbs,
Croats and Slovenes, while Czechoslovakia was a melting pot made up of Czechs,
Slovaks and Sudeten Germans. Poland on its own part comprised Ukrainians,
Germans, Lithuanians and Yiddish speaking Jews. Romania greatly enlarged by the
addition of Transylvania and Bessarabia, now included millions of Ukrainians,
Hungarian Jews and other minorities.
The term balkanization of Europe was drawn largely from
the many nationalities and ethnic divisions and rivalries that these new
nations came to represent. Poland even though enjoying the sympathies of the
United States and France remained agitated over the issues of an outlet to the
sea through the Port city of Danzig which incidentally consisted of 1.5 million
Kashribians and Germans.
Further north, the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and
Estonia won their independence from Russia and depended largely on Britain’s
sea power to secure their freedom. However Poland and Lithuania were tangled in
a quarrel over the control of Villinius a town which according to Russia’s 1877
census figures was 40 percent Jewish, 31% Polish, 24% Russian and 2% Lithuanian.
In December 1919 the Supreme Allied council awarded the city to Lithuania.
Similarly the Czech–Polish dispute over the coal – rich
Teschen district led to recognition of the occupation claims of both powers as
they were presently standing. The German – Polish dispute over Upper Silesia
also was resolved in favor of Poland which came to win over most of the mines
to the disadvantage of Germany which had the greater ethnic nationalities
population resident there.
An Allied approved
plebiscite in 1921 showed that ethnic Germans were more outside the coal mine
district while the Poles were in the majority around the coal mines.
The treaty of st Germaine similarly disposed of the
Austrian half of the former Hapsburg monarchy in favor of Czechoslovakia while
the American President succeeded in getting the strategically important
province of Bohemia granted to Czechoslovakia with the inherent problem of 3.5
million ethnic Sudeten Germans alongside the grant of territory stretching
south to Bratislava on the Danube river but also creating a host minority of 1
million Magyars.
The settlement of Italy’s territorial claims on Austrian
land became a heated issue as the Italians insisted on the Allies fulfilling
their wartime promises which President Wilson regarded as immoral and unethical.
Before World War I began in 1914, the major European
powers included Britain, France, Italy, and the empires of Germany, Russia, and
Austria-Hungary. The Ottoman Empire also controlled territory in Europe.
His denunciation
of the Allies pact with Italy was made openly in a press conference in Paris on
April 24, 1919 in violation of the ethics of the conference; only to return
later to a compromise solution that included declaring the city of Fiume an
open city to both Italy and Austria.
Meanwhile Italy was granted Trieste, parts of Istria and
Dalmatia and the upper Adige as far as the Brenner pass with its 200,000
Germans speaking Austrians. The refusal of Wilson to concede Fiume to the
Italians led to an imbroglio that led to the collapse of the Orlando government
and the ultimate victory of Mussolini’s fascists in 1922 following Italy’s
revolt over the Allies’ volte-face on the territorial claims issue.
As for Hungary, the treaty of Trianon which was delayed
by the communist coup in Hungary until 1920 partitioned the ancient Hungarian
kingdom among neighbors. Transylvania along with its 1.3 million.... minority
was handed over to Romania; the Banat of Temesvar (Timisoara) was divided
between Romania and Yugoslavia.
Hungary’s territories thus shrank from 109, 000 to 36,000
square miles, while the post war armies of Austria and Hungary were limited to
35,000 men each. The treaty of Neville with Bulgaria saw Bulgaria losing its
western territories to the kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and nearly all
of Western Thrace to Greece cutting the Bulgarians off from the Aegean Sea.
Their armed forces were limited to 20,000 men for Austria,
Bulgaria and Hungary even though the reparations payment was eventually called
off for obvious reasons of economic weakness. The treaty settlement in East
Europe was a fair attempt to implement the principles of self – determination
in an area where the conditions were completely unfavorable to its policies.
The issues of
dissatisfied and dislocated minorities, inadequate finances, lack of an
existing democratic culture, equipping of a functional government, army, police
and institutions of government all combined to make these newly formed
countries unstable and potential breeding grounds for dissent and crises in the
midst of the suppressed nationalistic aspiration of a defeated Germany and a
comatose Russia.
Austria with its population nearly all German was
forbidden by the terms of the treaty from seeking union with Germany.
MIDDLE EAST AND EUROPE, 1920
The Ottoman Empire was likewise dismantled by the treaty
of Sevres. The political aims of Great Britain and France were largely achieved,
as president Woodrow Wilson felt less inclined to interfere on behalf of Arab
aspiration as he felt that the Arab world was not yet ready for self rule. The
British and French thereby legitimized their acquisition of Ottoman Turkish
territories under League of Nations mandate.
