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    Explaining International Relations 1918-1939: A Students Guide
    Explaining International Relations 1918-1939: A Students Guide
    Explaining International Relations 1918-1939: A Students Guide
    Ebook95 pages1 hour

    Explaining International Relations 1918-1939: A Students Guide

    By Nick Shepley

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    About this ebook

    Between 1918 and 1939 diplomats and politicians sought to create a lasting world order. However, they struggled to maintain stability in an international system still struggling with the legacy of the First World War. This eBook focuses on addressing ten of the most complex and challenging questions that face students of inter war diplomacy, including:

    1. How did the decisions taken at the Paris Peace Conference affect Europe?

    2. How did the decisions taken at the Paris Peace Conference affect Asia?

    3. What was the significance of the Washington Naval Conference?

    4. What was the significance of the Locarno Treaties?

    5. How did the appointment of Hitler in 1933 affect International Relations?

    6. What was the impact of the Abyssinia Crisis?

    7. How did the Spanish Civil War affect international relations?

    8. Why did Britain pursue a policy of appeasement?

    9. Why did Stalin and Hitler sign a treaty in 1939?

    10. Who is to blame for the outbreak of war in September 1939?


    This e-book also features additional advice on essay writing and other related subjects.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAUK Academic
    Release dateMar 7, 2016
    ISBN9781785384271
    Explaining International Relations 1918-1939: A Students Guide

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      Explaining International Relations 1918-1939 - Nick Shepley

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      Question 1

      How did the decisions taken at the Paris Peace Conference affect Europe?

      Following the armistice between Germany and the allied powers in November 1918, a peace conference to decide Germany’s fate was organised and held in Paris, the French capital in January the following year. The conference was far more than a meeting of victorious powers to decide the fate of the defeated former German empire, however, it was perhaps the most important international gathering of the 20th Century because it helped to shape the very nature of the post war world. Four empires (German, Austrian, Russian and Ottoman) had collapsed as a result of the war and new nations had emerged, including Poland, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. The five main victorious powers (Britain, America, France, Japan and Italy) in 1918 had to create the foundations of a new international order while also protecting their own interests. The result was the Treaty Of Versailles and its sister treaties (Sevres, Triannon and Lausanne).

      Woodrow Wilson and the conference

      America remained neutral in the First World War until April 1917 when German attacks on US shipping to Britain, along with the revelation secret communiques to Mexico to attack America if the USA joined the war, brought the USA into the war on the allied side. The British and the French had become financially reliant on America long before the USA joined the war and US president Woodrow Wilson knew that this gave him the upper hand at the negotiations. He had allied America with the British and French against the Germans but had no great love for any of Europe’s old imperial powers. He had offered Germany a separate peace deal in 1918, deliberately undermining his coalition partners (Wilson did not allow America to become a full ally of Britain and France, instead she was referred to as an associate power). Wilson saw the war as an opportunity to replace Britain, the world’s biggest and wealthiest economy, with the USA. The secret of Britain’s wealth and prestige was her empire and navy. Wilson hoped to undermine both, by building a bigger navy than the British and by arguing for self determination for all nations (including those colonised by Britain and France) at the conference. When Wilson arrived in France by ship, he was greeted with parades and cheering crowds. The French public believed that American intervention had helped save France, but the crowds cheered Wilson because there was a popular belief that he had arrived to help punish Germany. Wilson had little interest initially in punishing Germany, and instead believed that the creation of a new framework of international law would reduce the power of European empires and protect American interests (specifically the right to trade internationally). He also believed that this was the best chance for a lasting peace and thought that legally imposed economic sanctions could deter aggressor nations from invading their neighbours. Wilson refused to visit the battlefields of the western front, believing that if he saw them, he would become too impassioned to apply reason to the negotiations. This was exactly what the French hoped for and were disappointed when the realised that Wilson had not come to Paris to champion France’s cries for revenge.

      Georges Clemenceau and the conference

      The Prime Minister of France, Clemenceau, wanted a treaty that would permanently weaken Germany and force her to pay for the damage she had done to France. Clemenceau hoped that France and Britain would be able to forge a permanent alliance with America and the three great powers would not only be able to ‘keep Germany down’, but they would be able to stabilise the world following the upheavals of the First World War. He realised as the conference drew on that Wilson’s plans for stabilising the world did not involve becoming permanently involved in the great power politics of Europe, instead, he wanted to create an organisation that would manage diplomacy across the entire world. Wilson proposed a League of Nations (see more on the league in Question 6). Not only was Clemenceau keen to keep Germany weak, but he also suspected that Russia, a country that had undergone a bloody and violent communist revolution in 1917, might easily ally herself with the new German republic that had emerged at the end of the war. To this end, Clemenceau supported a ‘cordon sanitaire’ of new nations in eastern Europe between the two powers. Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria were all given diplomatic, military and economic support by France in the hope that they would become checks on both German and Russian power.

      David Lloyd George and the conference

      For the British, the First World War was seen as an unmitigated disaster and tragedy. Lloyd George hoped to occupy the middle ground between the idealism of Wilson and the French desire for revenge that Clemenceau embodied. The British were keen to see the world financial system that had benefited Britain for over a century re-established and wartime debts reduced. The Americans were reluctant to let Britain and the other European allies off the hook so easily, realising that they had immense power over Britain as a result of the country’s debts. The British were also seeking to extend their empire into the Middle East (this was a particular interest of Lloyd George’s), and had made a secret arrangement with France in 1915 to do so (see next section). The British delegation at the conference believed it was in their interests to create a stable Europe once again that would not result in the type of war that would engulf them and their empire. However even before the conference began, Lloyd George considered the national feeling of anti German sentiment at home in Britain. A general election in December 1918 saw Lloyd George and his allies in the Conservative Party returned to power, partly on a pledge to ‘make Germany pay’.

      Russia

      The most significant great power not to be represented at the Paris Peace Conference was Russia. Two revolutions had swept the Russian autocracy and the fledgling democracy of the Provisional Government away in 1917. By the end of 1918 Russia had descended into a bloody civil war and the British, Americans and French had all dispatched armies to Russia to help overthrow the new Bolshevik government. Woodrow Wilson had begun to have misgivings about the invasion of Russia by mid 1918, as had Lloyd George. Neither men were even remotely close the the Bolsheviks in their thinking, but neither had been sympathetic towards the previous autocratic tsarist regime. As the peace conference began, Wilson became more keen to have the Bolshevik government attend the conference, in the hope that they might participate in the development of the League of Nations. Lloyd George hoped that if they Bolsheviks did attend the meetings, some agreement for the repayment of wartime loans to Britain and

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