Chapter 26: The Age of Anxiety
Postwar Pessimism
As we saw in the last chapter, everyone – victors and losers – lost the Great War and the unjust Treaty of
Versailles satisfied no one. Most European economies were strained by the war and/or by the peace.
Great Britain had lost her control of world trade. The French got their revenge but still feared Germany.
Italy felt ignored and cheated in that she did not get enough territorial gains. In spite of Wilson’s
idealism, the United States retreated from world affairs and refused to join the League of Nations. The
League of Nations was doomed before it started since it had no power to enforce its decisions and relied
on collective security to keep the peace. China was suffering from internal chaos and Japanese
aggression. Japan was slighted because, like Italy, she felt ignored and did not receive more territory.
Germany was in shock from loss of territory and the brutal severity of the treaty.
The Ottoman Empire was in chaos and dismembered; and both the Mandate System and the Balfour
Declaration left the Middle East resentful and bitter. Austria and Hungary were now second class
nations and the division of their empire created new nations struggling with economic and social
problems. Russia was a singleton (isolated from other nations) having lost much territory, fighting a
bloody civil war but determined to spread its socialist message. Latin America struggled under social
inequality, foreign debts and authoritarian governments. Mahatma Gandhi was leading the way for
India’s independence and the struggle to solve Muslim-Hindu tensions. The world did not seem safe.
All of this led to the phenomenon of Postwar Pessimism. The American writer and feminist Gertrude
Stein (1874-1976) coined the expression The Lost Generation for a group of mostly American expatriates
[exiles; here self-imposed] intellectuals, poets, artists and writers who fled to France in the aftermath of
WWI. Full of youthful idealism, these individuals sought the meaning of life, drank excessively, had love
affairs and created some of the finest American literature to date. They used their talents to express their
disillusionment with materialism, nationalism and the brutal realities of modern, industrialized warfare.
In Europe, they were often called the Generation of 1914 and in France, they were sometimes called the
Génération au Feu, or the Generation in Flames.
In Great Britain the term was originally employed to describe soldiers killed in the war; and most often to
the upper (aristocratic) officers who were perceived to have died disproportionately (out of proportion;
unfair), robbing the country of future leaders and leaving uncounted “war widows.” As we saw in the last
chapter with the English poet Wilfred Owen (1893- 1918) and The Great Lie, many Britons came to feel
"that the flower of youth' and the 'best of the nation' had been destroyed."
The American expatriate, Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), who moved to Paris in 1921, popularized the
expression The Lost Generation and quickly became their leader. He had volunteered to fight with the
Italians in World War I and the defeat at the Battle of Caporetto shattered his Midwestern American
naiveté [innocence]. In 1929, he drew on these experiences to write A Farewell to Arms in which he
graphically showed the meaningless deaths and suffering caused by the war.
F. Scott Fitzgerald portrayed the spirit of the Jazz age and the social and moral rebellion that followed
WWI. Though not strictly speaking an expatriate, he roamed Europe and visited North Africa and
chronicled the prohibition era. In his novel, Tender is the Night, in 1934 he succinctly expressed the
pessimism of the Lost Generation. "This land here cost twenty lives a foot that summer...See that little
stream--we could walk to it in two minutes. It took the British a month to walk it--a whole empire walking
very slowly, dying in front and pushing forward behind. And another empire walked very slowly
backward a few inches a day, leaving the dead like a million bloody rugs. No Europeans will ever do that
again in this generation."
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On the German side, Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen Nichts
Neues) recorded the daily horrors of war in the trenches of the Western Front from the point of view of
ordinary soldiers. Remarque became a spokesman for a generation that was destroyed by war, even
though they had survived the killing. His book was banned by the Nazis, but was turned into a highly
successful American film in 1930.
Another German, Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), published The Decline of the West in which he
postulated that all societies pass through a cycle of birth, growth, decay and death from which he
concluded that European society had entered the final stage of its life. Many felt that Spengler’s gloomy
predictions were a harbinger for the entire world and all its peoples. On a more positive take on
Spengler’s ideas, the English historian, Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975), in his classic, A Study of History,
began to write history as a study of how nations of the world developed and declined over time. In all, he
chronicled the birth, life and collapse of twenty-six nations.
Postwar Pessimism also jolted religion. In 1919, the German/Swiss theologian, Karl Barth (1886-1968),
published Epistle to the Romans in which he suggested that modern religion had become enslaved to
science, culture, mysticism and art. He wanted a return to the reformational ideal that God’s truth is
found only in God’s revelation. Barth’s theology came to be called neo-Orthodoxy and reflected
disillusionment with modern religion and culture as he attacked the Enlightenment ideas of progress and
limitless improvement and called for a return to a belief in the supremacy and transcendence (extending
beyond the limits of ordinary experience) of God. In other words, people had strayed from God and had
made a mess of things, and only by following God’s word could people clean up the mess. He stressed
the wholly otherness of God and reminded people that “God’s kingdom is not of this world.”
Barth was echoed by the Russian philosopher and theologian Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948), who
criticized the institutional church and Bolsheviks both of whom collectivized and mechanized society and
religion. He too felt that mankind had made a mess of things when he said, “Man’s historical experience
has been one of steady failure, and there are no grounds for supposing that it will ever be anything
else.” And he believed that mankind’s only hope was not in God’s justice, but in God’s love which
allows man to be transfigured in the godhead (i.e., be one with God).
In 1922, the English poet and playwright, T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), echoed Barth and Berdyaev. In his
poem, The Wasteland, the “Great War” became a symbol of the breakdown of Western Civilization in a
world which had become barren and spiritually empty.
Attacks on the notion of progress were also characteristic of Postwar Pessimism. Many people had not
forgotten that science and technology had given them the horrors of WWI. How could science and
technology help them, they reasoned, if science was responsible for poison gas and machine guns?
Democracy as well, was questioned at a time when the franchise to vote was extended to women. Many
intellectuals attacked democracy as weak and ineffective. They idealized the rule of the strong and elite.
This would be part of the explanation for the rise of totalitarian states in Italy and Germany.
In 1930, the Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist, José Ortega y Gasset (1885-1955,) wrote a wildly
popular essay, Revolt of the Masses, in which he asserted that society is composed of masses and
dominant minorities. His work echoed the warnings of 19th-century liberals (especially Alexis de
Tocqueville) that democracy carried with it the risk of tyranny by the majority. Both Bolshevism and
Fascism were symptoms of usurpation of power by the "Mass Man,” which Ortega described as
demanding nothing and living like everyone else, without vision or compelling moral code. Ortega
warned his readers that the mass people or the “masses” could be unduly swayed by demagogues and that
without moral code they might destroy the highest achievements of western culture.
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Postwar Pessimism caused a new kind of optimism which is better said to be escapism. People wanted to
put the horror of war behind them and sought avenues of escape. At the Washington Naval Conference
of 1921 the major nations naively agreed to reduce the size of their battleship fleets and in 1928 a number
of nations signed the Kellogg-Briand Treaty, coauthored by the French and Americans, which (with
almost comical naiveté) outlawed war forever. Many people naively hoped that the League of Nations
would solve the world’s international tensions. But, as was noted, the League was ineffectual because it
had no powers of coercion (force) and relied on Collective Security to maintain peace.
Lastly, even Capitalism was attacked. The best known attack came from the British economist, statesman
and author John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), who had been a member of the Bloomsbury Group
which advocated modernism around the turn of the century. Keynes advocated that governments replace
strict Laissez-Faire with a mixed economy (the state and private enterprise working in unison) coupled with
aggressive interventionist policies when confronted by economic recessions. In the last chapter we saw
that in 1919, he argued that forcing Germany to pay reparations would bankrupt Germany and lead to
another war. He is considered the founder of Macroeconomics (studying the economic as a whole and not
its parts) and predicted an end of Laissez-Faire, but could not say what would replace it.
The Roaring Twenties
The Roaring Twenties (sometimes called the Jazz Age) were a time of new technology and economic
prosperity, emphasizing social, artistic and cultural dynamism. The French called them Années Folles
(the Crazy Years). Industrial production boomed; advertising became more and more pervasive and
powered consumerism. Radios, canned foods and household appliances like refrigerators and washing
machines became common in industrialized nations; rayon was invented and the automobile became
affordable for the middle class. Modernity was the overarching spirit of the decade.
It was the age of Jazz which flourished as musicians took the simple melodies of the nineteenth century
and improvised endless variations often with African rhythms (often imitating the black musicians of the
Harlem Renaissance). American Jazz music, nightclubs and a spirit of hedonism became the world
standard. Movie theatres became a way of life in Euro-American culture. French competition in movie
production had died during World War I and Hollywood soon replaced New York as the movie capital of
the world. Celebrities, especially sports heroes and movie stars were front page news.
Great changes took place in popular culture. Youths and many adults rejected the hypocritical rules of
Victorian morality. Europeans embraced American culture with its greater personal freedom and
willingness to socially experiment. Moreover, rising prosperity and falling birth rates gave women,
especially middle class women, more leisure time. Young women took advantage of less restrictive
clothing fashions and male supervision. They began to date more freely as a preliminary marriage and to
enter colleges in large numbers.
Many women defined the Roaring Twenties by becoming Flappers. They dressed unconventionally and
flaunted their disdain for "decent" behavior. They represented a new breed of woman, unafraid to wear
cosmetics and provocative clothing or to be seen smoking or drinking in public. In spite of protests from
the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, magazine “advice” writers, like the Scottish editor and
columnist Marie Stopes (whom we met in Chapter 24), influenced young women with ideas of sexual
pleasure, allurement and women’s rights.
Finally, the twenties saw the vote give to women (in recognition of their efforts in the war) in almost allWestern Industrialized nations – France and Italy the two main exceptions. In 1919, Lady Nancy Astor
became the first women in Great Britain to be elected and take her seat in Parliament.
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Revolutions in Physics, Psychology and the Arts
Although science was criticized by the Lost Generation, nevertheless great strides were made which had
the impact of revolutions. The1920s saw the first commercial radio transmissions, the first television, the
first sound movies and the development of radar. In 1928, Robert Fleming accidently discovered
penicillin, a type of non-toxic mold that would kill bacteria. This led to the development of modern
antibiotics which we take for granted.
In Chapter twenty-four, we saw that in the early 1900s Max Planck (1858-1947) pioneered the Quantum
Theory of Energy which stated that energy is a series of three discrete (separate or unconnected)
quantities (or packets) rather than a continuous stream. In 1903, Pierre and Marie Curie won the Nobel
Prize in Physics by discovering that certain elements such as uranium and radium spontaneously released
charged particles which led to the discovery of X-rays.
And we saw that in 1905 the greatest scientist of the 20th century, Albert Einstein (1879-1955) developed
the Theory of Relativity and demonstrated that there is no single spatial or chronological framework in
the universe; that is to say, space and time are relative. In 1934, working on the Curies’ and Einstein’s
theories, Enrico Fermi discovered atomic fission, or the splitting of the nuclei of atoms in two which
produced huge bursts of energy and led to the development of the first atomic bomb by Fermi and the
Americans Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller.
Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) in 1927 published About the quantum-Theoretical Reinterpretation of
Kinetic and Mechanical Relationships in which he established the Uncertainty Principle, which states
that the determination of the position and momentum of a mobile particle necessarily contains errors the
product of which cannot be less than the quantum constant h and that, although these errors are negligible
on the human scale, they cannot be ignored in studies of the atom. Although this principle had to do with
sub atomic particles, it quickly became obvious that it had implications beyond physics.
Heisenberg’s theory called into question established notions of truth and seemed to violate the
fundamental law of cause and effect. Objectivity was impossible, because the observer was part of the
process. A historian, for example, cannot be sure his analyses are correct because his mind or cultural
conditioning might interfere will the correct analysis. To ordinary people, this meant that science had
reached the limits of what could be known absolutely and that a common sense universe had
vanished.
We also saw how the Austrian neurologist, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), became interested in hypnotism
and how it could be used to help the mentally ill and how he later abandoned hypnotism in favor of free
association and dream analysis in developing what is now known as "the talking cure." These became
the core elements of Psychoanalysis.
In his practice, Freud noticed that humans had a conflict between conscious and unconscious mental
processes and this clash was the basis of neurotic behavior. This conflict suggested that humans often
repressed the painful, keeping it away from the conscious mind. He felt that dreams held the key to
understanding and resolving this conflict. His controversial conclusions led him to the idea that sexual
drives and fantasies are one of the most important causes of repression.
It is important to understand that, like Darwinian thought, the work of Einstein, Heisenberg and
Freud called into question the idea that humans were the special creation of God (“made in his
image”) and lead to the idea of a new “survival of the fittest” which in turn would lead to the
aggressive nationalism and racism of the totalitarian dictators of the 1920s and 1930s.
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The Visual Arts
Post War Pessimism also created and/or accelerated change in the arts. During the Renaissance, artists
tried to imitate the classical ideal of using canvas or marble to imitate reality. But in the late 19th century
a growing cynicism along with the camera and the movie projector made reality a technological product.
Since reality could be created faster and more accurately than in the past, art had to “reinvent” itself.
Artists no longer tried to reproduce the real world or even the Platonic perfect world, but now
began to use art as an end in itself; to use art as a means to create reality. Now art dealt with
concepts and ideas like feelings, mood, emotion and even Freudian subconscious dreams and fantasies.
As we saw in Chapter 24, Impressionism, which was centered in France in the late 19th century, was
deeply influenced by primitive art and its sense of power. Even before World War I and post war
pessimism, Edgar Degas and Paul Gauguin used Light and Color to reflect (or make a quick) impression
of reality and illustrate the transitory quality of that impression. Another form of artistic experimentation
was Cubism. The essence of Cubism was that instead of viewing subjects from a single, fixed angle, the
artist broke them up into a multiplicity of facets, so that several different aspects/faces of a subject can be
seen simultaneously – that is to say, the abstract.
Dada was the most radical artistic experimentation and paralleled the same pessimism that the Lost
Generation created in literature. Many Dada artists were veterans of World War I and had grown cynical
of humanity. Their art reflected a nihilistic view of the world in which chance and randomness formed
the basis of creation. The basis of Dada (the word is taken from hobbyhorse in French) is nonsense. Since
World War I had destroyed the order of the world, Dada was a way to visually express the
confusion felt by many people in a world turned upside down.
In Dada there is no attempt to find meaning in disorder, but rather to accept disorder as the nature of the
world. Perhaps the most famous Dada artist was Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) whose quintessential
classic is Fountain and Man Ray who said, “"I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes
from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive. I photograph the things that I do
not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence."
Out of or parallel to Dada was Surrealism, which was (and is) a movement for the liberation of the mind
that emphasizes the critical and imaginative powers of the unconscious. In origin it is an intellectual
movement which affected visual arts, writing and the film industry. Most people think of the works of
Salvador Dali as quintessential Surrealism, but in fact he was far too right wing for most Surrealists.
Thus, by the third decade of the twentieth century, the visual arts had fractured and gown in so many
different directions that society no longer determined good and bad art, the artist did.
Architecture also underwent a profound transformation as old styles and types were replaced with
revolutionary styles and concepts. One simple word to define 20th century architecture is modernism and
the most important movement was Bauhaus. Walter Gropius (1883-1969) whose theory of design can be
expressed by “Form follows function” founded the school. Gropius felt that a new period of history had
begun with the end of World War I, and wanted to create a new architectural style to reflect this new era.
He blended engineering and art using simplicity of shape and extensive use of glass.
His successor, Ludwig Mies von der Rohe (1886-1969) was a German-American who experimented with
interior steel frames to carry the load and the surrounded the frames with plate glass, creating the modern
glass-boxed skyscraper. He called his buildings “skin and bones.” The most famous of his buildings was
the IBM Plaza (now the AMA Plaza) in Chicago, completed four years after his death.
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The Fascist Experiment in Italy
The years after World War I were not good years for democracy in Europe. The new governments of
Central and Eastern Europe were fragile and had to deal with ethnic discrimination, class tension, weak
economies, unemployment and inflation. The result was a rise in the number of Right Wing
Dictatorships. In 1920 there were twenty-three European nations that had democratic governments; by
1939 the number had shrunk to twelve. Even the three great victors of World War I, Great Britain, France
and the United States, which appeared dominant and victorious, still - under the surface - all (even the
United States) faced serious problems.
During the war, the Italian Parliament had almost ceased to function and ministers ruled by decree; after
the war, Italy was staggered by disillusionment, strikes, communist agitation and unstable government,
which brought the country to the verge of anarchy. Most Italians felt that Italy had not been treated as a
“great power” at Paris and not received the territories it deserved.
Industrial strikes were common as workers occupied their factories. Peasants seized uncultivated land
from large estates. The Parliament seemed helpless to restore order or national pride. In 1919, the radical
nationalist writer Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938) seized Fiume [which was a city in modern Slovenia
which Italy had wanted as a war prize] with a following of patriotic soldiers. The Italian army eventually
drove him out but D’Annunzio had shown that ultranationalism was a force that might solve Italy’s
problems. In the same year, the Socialist Part had captured a plurality (the greatest number of votes but not
a controlling majority) in the Chamber of Deputies. The Socialists were in the process of dividing into
socialists and communists. A new party, the Catholic Popular Party, had also done well. Both parties
appealed to the workers and the peasants but neither would cooperate and so the government remained
deadlocked. Italy looked for options.
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) was the son of a blacksmith and worked as a schoolteacher and day laborer
until he became active in Italian socialist politics. By 1912, he had become editor of the socialist
newspaper Avanti (Forward) but in 1914, Mussolini broke with the socialists and supported Italy’s going
to war with the allies. It marked the point where his nationalism had become more important than his
support of the proletariat and his belief that only a national revolution could create a strong, united Italy.
He soon founded his own paper, Il Popolo d’Italia (The People of Italy) and later fought in the war and
was wounded fighting the Austrians. In 1919, he became the leader of Fasci di Combattimento or
Bands of Combat.
Mussolini and his Fascist Party were hyper-nationalistic and extremely right wing but also revolutionary
and unafraid of change. Mussolini was anti-communist, anti-capitalist, anti-democratic and pro-racial
bigotry and pro-ethnic superiority. He believed that because the workers and the peasants cared more
about their own issues than the greatness of Italy, they weakened Italy. The socialists thus became his
chief enemy. Mussolini organized his supporters into combat squads called Black Shirts which attacked
socialist rallies, liberal newspapers and farmers’ cooperatives. Conservative landowners and businessmen
were grateful and by 1922, the Black Shirts were intimidating local officials through arson, beatings and
murder controlling much of Northern Italy.
In the election of 1921, voters sent Mussolini and thirty four of his Fascists to the Chamber of Deputies
which reflected their growing power. In October 1922, the Fascists, dressed in their black shirts, began a
march on Rome. King Victor Emmanuel III (r. 1900-1946) for personal and political reasons refused to
allow them to be stopped. The cabinet resigned in protest and on October 29, the king asked Mussolini to
become prime minister. Mussolini had come to power mostly by legal means. For many Italian
politicians, Mussolini was just another prime minister. They did not understand Benito Mussolini.
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Mussolini had not expected so much power so fast but he soon used his power effectively. He was a
brilliant orator and soon became Il Duce (the leader). In 1925 and 1926 laws were passed that allowed
Mussolini to rule by decree and dissolve all other political parties. He jailed or exiled political dissidents.
Some rivals he murdered (including Giacomo Matteotti, a leading non-communist socialist) and used
propaganda to create a cult of personality. He established a totalitarian dictatorship which outlawed
opposing political parties, rigged elections, and used censorship to control Italy for twenty-one years. It is
important to understand that many respectable Italians supported Mussolini because they believed he had
saved them from Communism. However, compared to Stalin or Hitler, he was a mild dictator.
Mussolini tried to modernize Italy. He built highways, sponsored literacy campaigns, fought corruption,
and brought medicine and technology to backward parts of Italy. He even made peace with the pope
creating an independent Vatican City with the Lateran Accord of 1929 which brought further
respectability to his regime. In economics, he followed a corporatist principle of Syndicalism or Statecontrolled Capitalism in which labor unions were suppressed and corporate leaders cooperated directly
with the government. Mussolini saw the state as a corporate body that needed to be controlled. Indeed, by
1935, Mussolini boaster that three-quarters of Italian businesses were under state control.
In the 1920s, Mussolini was considered by many to be an effective, even admirable leader, despite his
totalitarianism and his dreams of turning Italy into a new Roman Empire. During the 1930s, however, his
reputation was tarnished as the Great Depression undermined his modernizing, and he became more
ruthless in foreign policy by attacking Ethiopia and drawing closer to his new friend Adolf Hitler.
Great Britain and France: the “Joyless” Victors
Great Britain
Great Britain suffered no property damage during the war but the trauma of the enormous number of
casualties suffered during the war paralyzed the national identity. Moreover, Great Britain had lost world
wide economic dominance to the United States. Indeed, Great Britain was to receive huge war
reparations but that was counterbalanced by the fact that the war had bankrupted the country. The
Liberal Party under Herbert Asquith had presided over a coalition government with the Labour Party
that ran the war. However in 1916, disagreements on the management of the war caused Asquith to be
replaced by his fellow liberal David Lloyd George who split his party and alienated the Labour Party.
In December of 1918, Lloyd George called for elections. Parliament had expanded the electorate to
include men aged twenty-one and women aged thirty. The coalition government won even though it lost
the support of the Labour Party and the Asquith Liberals. So in spite of his popularity, the election meant
the Lloyd George could only remain prime minister with the support of the Conservative Party which
won the highest number of seats in the election. During the election campaign there had been much talk
of creating “a land fit for heroes to live in.” But that did not happen and except for the three years
immediately following the war. After that, the economy stagnated, unemployment soared and the
government expanded its insurance programs. From 1922 on, accepting the government dole with little
expectation of employment would become a degrading pattern of life.
Remember that the Labour Party traced is origins to the late nineteenth century when it became obvious that
there was a need for a political party to represent the interests of the urban working classes. In Chapter twenty
three, we saw that in 1901, the House of Lords decided that unions could be liable for loss of profits to employers
that were caused by union strikes. The Labour Movement was outraged and responded by founding the Labour
Party. In the 1906 elections, the new Labour party sent twenty-nine members to the House of Commons. The
Labour Party was not yet socialist in its agenda but becoming more and more militant, so that in the years leading
up to World War I, strikes increased and the government was forced to mediate more and more.
-7-
David Lloyd George would be the last Liberal Party Prime Minister of Great Britain. The Liberal party,
once supported by the Middle Class, began to disappear after the war, as the middle and upper classes
began more and more to give their support to the new Conservative Party, which held power for most of
the twenties. (The Conservative Party was an offshoot of the old Whig Party that coalesced around William Pitt
the Younger in the last years of the eighteenth century and came to be called Tories. Then in 1834, the name
Conservative was suggested and adopted under the leadership of Sir Robert Peel. Remember that after Peel,
Benjamin Disraeli was the most famous Tory or Conservative in the nineteenth century). As we saw, the
Conservatives served with the Liberals in a coalition government during the war but after the war Lloyd
George’s coalition fractured and collapsed. In the elections of 1922, the Conservative Party won a great
victory and replaced David Lloyd George with Andrew Bonar Law. Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947) soon
replaced Law (who was dying of throat cancer) and tried to cure Britain’s economic woes by abandoning
free trade and imposing protective tariffs.
However in the elections of December 1923, Baldwin’s policies were rejected and King George V (18651936) asked Ramsay Mac Donald (1866-1937) to form the first Labour Party government in British
history. The shrinking Liberal Party did not serve in the government but did provide the Labour Party
with a working majority in the House of Commons. The Labour party put forth a socialist platform, a
platform which MacDonald himself had opposed during World War I. Mac Donald’s program consisted
of extensive social reform rather than nationalization or public seizure of industry. Although his party
lost the fall 1924 elections, his nine months in office made the Labour Party both respectable and a viable
alternative to the Conservatives.
When Baldwin returned to office, he had to deal with the stagnant economy which continued to plague
the nation. Baldwin tried to return to prewar conditions. In 1925, he returned Britain to the Gold Standard
(abandoned during the war) but the conversion rate was set too high and caused the price of British goods
to rise for foreign customers which in turn crippled Britain’s competitiveness. So in order to make their
goods competitive, British industries lowered prices by cutting workers’ wages. The coal industry was
the hardest hit and miners went on strike in 1926. This was followed by a general, nation-wide strike in
May which caused much tension but little violence. In the end, the miners and other strikers gave in and
the Baldwin government tried to help by building new housing and making reforms in the poor laws.
The terrible cost of World War I in human suffering and material resources marked the end of the Age of
Imperialism and the beginning of the Era of Decolonization. Australia, New Zeeland, India, South Africa
and Canada had supported Great Britain during the war and wanted a more independent or two-way
relationship. This was achieved in 1931 by the Statute of Westminster which transformed the British
Empire into the British Commonwealth. But not all former British colonies were treated the same. In
India, Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) through the Congress Party began a dialogue (often contentious)
with the unsympathetic British government to gain home rule and eventual independence.
The Irish Question
Great Britain was also forced to deal with Ireland. In 1914, Britain was about to give Ireland Home Rule
but the war cancelled those plans. Then in 1916, a group of Irish militants launched the famous Easter
Uprising, which was suppressed but with great bitterness. The British made a terrible error when they
executed the rebel leaders who – overnight – became martyrs for a cause. Moreover, leadership for Irish
independence now shifted from the Irish Party in Parliament to the extremist Sinn Fein (Ourselves Alone)
movement. In the election of 1918, the Sinn Fein party won all but four of the Irish Parliamentary seats
outside Northern Ireland (or Ulster) which had a Protestant majority. They refused to go to the Parliament
in London and constituted themselves into an Irish Parliament or Dail Eireann.
-8-
The first president was Éamon de Valera and on January 21st, 1919, the Dail Eireann declared
independence. The military wing of Sinn Fein became the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and turned to
guerrilla violence. Civil war followed with great bitterness but in late 1921, clearer heads on both sides
prevailed and most of Ireland (the southern mostly Roman Catholic counties) became independent. Under
the terms of the treaty, the Irish Free State took its place with other British Commonwealth nations while
Ulster – the predominately Protestant counties in the north were allowed to remain part of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Almost immediately another civil war broke out
between Irish moderates and radicals. The moderates supported the treaty and accepting Commonwealth
status; the radical diehards wanted to abolish the oath to the British monarch and form a totally free
Ireland. In 1923 the civil war ended when Valera resigned and organized resistance to the treaty. In 1932,
he was again elected president and the following year, the Dail Eireann abolished the oath of allegiance.
After World War II, Ireland declared herself the independent Republic of Erie.
France
France emerged from the war a winner, but with huge loss of life and property damage. She got her
revenge on Germany including the lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine and huge German war
reparations, but it was a hollow and haunting revenge, as France was plagued by fear of Germany,
political feuding and financial scandals. At the close of the war; just as after Napoleon’s defeat, the
Revolutions of 1848 and the defeat of 1871, the voters elected a conservative Chamber of Deputies.
In 1920, the conservatives defeated Georges Clemenceau’s bid to be president mostly because he had
been unable to make the Rhineland a separate state under French domination. The deputies, driven by
fear of Germany and fear of Communism, intended to make as few concessions to domestic social reform
as possible. Thus during the 1920s, governments came and went; between 1918 and 1933, twenty-seven
different French cabinets took office.
During the years after the war, France was seen as the leading European power. But fear of Germany was
deeply rooted in the French national psyche. So in the 1920s, France established an elaborate system of
border defenses known as the Maginot Line and made defensive alliances with Czechoslovakia,
Romania and Yugoslavia; sometimes called the Little Entente. The Poles were sympathetic but a border
dispute with Czechoslovakia, kept them out of the alliance. These alliances were the best France could do
because her allies were more afraid of Russia and Hungary than Germany. This new system of alliances
was the best France could do under the circumstances and left the French fearful of a revitalized
Germany.
Nevertheless, these alliances made the Germans and the Soviet Union feel isolated so they made their
own treaty in 1922 at Rapallo (in Italy) which improved diplomatic and economic relations that was useful
for both of them. There were no secret agreements (although German military advisors helped Russia) and
(no surprise!) the Russo-German treaty terrified the French even more.
In early 1923 pushed on by the French, the Allies declared Germany to be in technical default of its
reparation payments. The French premier Raymond Poincaré (1860-1934) became determined to teach the
Germans a lesson and force them to comply. On January 11, France with Belgian support sent troops to
occupy the Ruhr Basin which was Germany’s mining and manufacturing powerhouse in the Rhineland.
In response to this Ruhr Invasion, the German government ordered passive resistance which was like
calling a general strike. So Poincaré sent French civilian workers to run the mines and factories. It was a
terrible blunder! Although the Germans were forced to pay, the British were shocked at French
ruthlessness and refused to participate. Moreover, the occupation increased inflation (and human misery)
in France and especially Germany. And it left Germany bitter and humiliated; a fact that would not be
lost on Adolf Hitler in his rise to power.
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In 1924, Poincare’s conservative government was replaced by a coalition of leftist parties called the
Cartel des Gauches led by Edouard Herriot (1872-1957). The new government under the foreign
minister Aristide Briand (1862-1932) recognized the Soviet Union and became more conciliatory to
Germany. He championed the League of Nations and tried to convince the French that its military power
did not give it unlimited influence in foreign affairs. In 1925, inflation creped upward and caused the
franc to fall in value the next year. In 1926, Poincaré returned to power in a coalition government. The
value of the franc recovered, inflation cooled and France enjoyed prosperity until 1931 and the advent
(coming) of the Great Depression. It is important to note that France’s post war prosperity lasted longer
than any other nation.
Eastern Europe
One of the core values of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points was that democracy would lead the new
and old states of Eastern Europe to a brighter future. But that was not to be the case. In Poland, Austria,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia the challenge was simply to find a stable form of government.
None of these states had a strong economy. National unity was a major problem in Czechoslovakia and
Yugoslavia which had multiple ethnic peoples. Most were poor in natural resources; only Czechoslovakia
was financially independent and all of them depended on foreign loans to finance economic development.
Nationalistic animosities (rivalries) often prevented these states from trading with each other.
Poland: Poland had not been an independent nation since the Third Partition of 1795 and when the
country was restored, nationalism was not strong enough to overcome class differences, economic and
regional interests and the rivalries of large Ukrainian, Jewish, Lithuanian and German minorities now
part of the new Poland and resentful of Polish domination. For over a hundred years, the new Poland
been under Prussian/German, Austrian and Russian administration and now had to create a new
governmental system. The government was unstable from the start and tragedy struck in 1922 when
Gabriel Narutowicz, Poland’s first president, was assassinated by a right wing extremist. In 1926,
Marshal Josef Pilsudski (1867-1935) carried out a military coup and ruled until his death after which
Poland was governed by a group of his military followers.
Czechoslovakia: was the one East European country that managed to form a successful democracy.
Czechoslovakia had a strong industrial base, a thriving middle class and a tradition of liberal values.
Even before the war, the Czechs and the Slovaks [both Slavs] had learned to cooperate for common goals
and during the war aided the Allies. After the war, the new government broke up the large estates of the
wealthy landholders in favor of small peasant farmers. The nation was further bound together by its first
president, Thomas Masaryk (1850-1937) who was elected to office three times in 1920, 1927 and 1934.
There were problems especially with non-Slavic nationals including Poles, Magyars and many Germans
living in the Sudetenland which lay in the north, west and south closest to Germany and Austria.
Hungary: Hungary was at last free of Austria but at a terrible price of defeat, humiliation and economic
chaos. The Hungarians deeply resented the territory Hungary had lost. During 1919, a communist Bela
Kun (1885-1937) established a short lived Hungarian Soviet Republic. The Allies authorized a Romanian
invasion to remove Kun’s government. Then the Hungarian landowners who were angry over the general
economic stagnation, turned to Admiral Miklós Horthy (1868-1957), the last commanding admiral of the
Austro-Hungarian imperial navy, as regent for the Hapsburg King (Charles IV) who could not return
because of opposition from the Allies. From 1920, Horthy was in many ways dictator and held his
position until 1944. Many of Kun’s supporters were imprisoned or executed in what has come to be
called the White Terror and Kun himself fled to Russia where he worked for the international spread of
communism but was later murdered by Stalin during the Great Purge.
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Admiral Horthy was a regent (for as was noted, the monarchy was restored by the Hungarian Parliament but
Charles could not assume his throne) but the substantive or effective power lay in the hands of Count
Stephen (István) Bethlen (1874-1947) whose government was parliamentary in form but controlled by the
aristocrats. In 1932, he was succeeded by General Julius Gömbös (1886-1936) who was both anti-Semitic
and determined to make Hungary a Fascist state. He rigged elections and no matter how the popular vote
turned out, his party kept control in Parliament until his death. Gömbös admired both Hitler and
Mussolini and it is said that he coined the term axis. Just prior to the Second World War, Hungary
benefited from its close ties with Germany when it was allowed to annex parts of former Slovak
territories from Czechoslovakia. Economically, after the mid-30s, Hungary’s economy benefited from
trade with Germany becoming economically dependent on Germany.
Austria: The Paris Peace Treaty left Austria in terrible shape. Now so small and with reparations to
pay, inflation skyrocketed and a viable economy was almost impossible to maintain. No union with
Germany was permitted. Politically the government in the 1920s was in shambles as the two major
parties, the conservative Christian Socialists and the leftist Social Democrats vied for power; both
groups using small Para-military forces to terrorize their opponents and impress their followers.
In 1933, the Christian Socialist Engelbert Dollfuss (1892-1934) became chancellor and tried to steer a
middle path between the Social Democrats and the growing power of the Nazi party which had begun to
surface. In 1934, he outlawed all political parties except the Christian Socialists, the Agrarians and his
own Fatherland Front. He used force again the Social Democrats but was shot later in the year during an
unsuccessful Nazi coup. His successor, Kurt von Schuschnigg (1897-1977) presided over Austria until
Hitler’s Anschluss in 1938 when Austria was annexed into Germany.
Yugoslavia: was founded by the Corfu Agreement of 1917 and was known as the Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats and Slovenes until 1929 but from the beginning the common name was Yugoslavia. All during
the 20s and 30s, the Serbs dominated the government but were opposed mostly by the Croats. Both were
Slavs but they clashed violently. The Serbs had the advantage of being an independent nation before the
war while the Croats were parts of Austria-Hungary. The Croats were mostly Roman Catholic, better
educated and accustomed to reasonably uncorrupt governmental administration.
The Serbs were Orthodox, less well educated and – by Croatian standards – hopelessly corrupt. Even
though each had selected areas, they both had significant enclaves in the other’s areas – and in BosniaHerzegovina there was a significant Muslim population. Serb/Croatian conflicts complicated by Muslims
and Slovenes led to a royal dictatorship under King Alexander I, who outlawed political parties and
jailed his opponents. He was assassinated in 1934, but the authoritarian government continued under a
regency for his son.
Communist Russia
The February revolution toppled Czar Nicholas II and installed a provisional government led by
Alexander Kerensky. The Provisional Government continued the war and failed bring economic
stability or land reform. So in October 1917, Lenin and Leon Trotsky overthrew the Provisional
Government. This brought about a terrible civil war between the RED Communist forces and the
WHITE royalist/moderate forces who were helped for some of their former allies. The Red Army,
organized by Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) eventually overcame both the Whites and foreign military
interventionists but only after more than ten million people had died. The Whites had many advantages
including foreign aid but were unable to organize adequately. During the struggle which Lenin declared
to be the vanguard of the revolution, a new secret police appeared, the Cheka, which Lenin used to
impose the dictatorship of the proletariat.
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Political and economic administration was tightly administered and all major decisions flowed from the
top down in a nondemocratic manner. This War Communism allowed the revolutionary government to
confiscate and then run the banks, railroads and heavy industry. The state also seized grain from the
peasants to feed the army and the workers in the cities. All opposition was squashed. War Communism
made the Red victory possible but Lenin also wanted to modernize Russia. But there were two problems:
The first was that the industrial and agricultural outputs were a fraction of their prewar levels. Secondly,
after the war was won, many Russians opposed the Bolsheviks; they were no longer will to make the
economic sacrifices that the party dictated. There were strikes; even the Baltic Fleet mutinied.
So Lenin made a strategic retreat and replaced War Communism with his NEP or New Economic
Policy. He restored a market economy and allowed limited private enterprise. Large industries, banks,
transportation and communication systems remained under state control, but peasants (after the
government had purchased a certain amount of grain at prices it set itself) could sell their surpluses at free
market prices. The NEP also sought to modernize and industrialize Russia, building dams and
hydroelectric plants and establishing technical schools. The NEP was a resounding success (and note that
it really was modified capitalism) but Lenin did not live to see its fruition. He died of a stroke in 1924.
Lenin’s death touched off a four-year power struggle. Many, like Trotsky, wanted a continuing
revolution, which would spread communism abroad and rapid industrialization financed by expropriating
(or collectivizing) the farm production of the peasants. Trotsky thus headed the left wing of the party
and argued that the revolution in Russia could only succeed if new revolutions took place in other
countries. He argued that only then could Russia tap the skills and wealth of more technologically
advanced nations. However, Trotsky’s influence began to wane as the party became dominated by its
right wing led by Josef Stalin, (Joseph Dzhugashvili) whose adopted name Stalin means Man of Steel.
Stalin, who had once been a seminary student until he read the writings of Lenin, had been born into a
poor family. Unlike many of the early Bolshevik leaders, he had not spent many years in exile and was
much less an intellectual and internationalist. He was also more pragmatic and brutal. He even shocked
Lenin in his dealing with various national groups within Russia. As the party general secretary, a post
that most of the intellectual communists distained as merely secretarial, Stalin amassed power though his
skillful organizational and administrative methods. He was neither a dynamic speaker nor a brilliant
writer but he did master the necessary details of party structure, including admission to the party and
promotion within it. Such skill allowed him to gain support from the lower levels of the party when he
clashed with other leaders.
The other great supporter of right wing Bolshevism which opposed Trotsky’s collectivization of farm
production and rapid industrialization was Nikolai Bukharin (1888-1938) who was the editor of the
official party newspaper, Pravda (or The Truth). Bukharin had participated in Marxist activities in his
teens and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1906, becoming a member of the
Bolshevik faction. In 1911, he was imprisoned, exiled to Siberia but escaped to the West until 1917,
when he returned to Russia and participated in the October Revolution. After Lenin’s death and in the
face of an uncertain economic recovery, Bukharin and the right wing of the Bolshevik party advocated a
continuation the New Economic Policy and relatively slow industrialization. This policy focused on
decentralized economic planning and allowing some modest free enterprise and small landholdings.
Stalin craftily supported the right wing favoring the establishing a “socialism in one country alone
philosophy.” Trotsky lost ground to Stalin, Bukharin and the right wing and, in 1927, was removed from
all his offices, expelled from the party and deported to Siberia. In 1929, Trotsky was deported from
Russia and eventually moved to Mexico where he was murdered in 1940 near Mexico City by a Stalinist
agent, while Stalin proceeded to make himself one of the most brutal dictators of all time.
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The Third International or Comintern
The attitude of Western European Socialists was very much shaped by the Bolshevik revolution in
Russia. Socialists had long debated among themselves as to whether or not to participate in democratic
and parliamentary governments – and most Western socialists worked within that framework. But when
the Bolsheviks won, Western European socialists had to rethink their position towards Bolshevism,
especially since many Bolsheviks like Trotsky intended to establish themselves as the new socialists’
leaders in the world.
So at the end of 1919, the Soviet communists founded the Third International of the European socialist
movement better known as the Third Comintern or Third International. The Third Comintern’s goal
was to imitate Lenin’s model and make Bolshevism the model for all socialist movements. In the
following year, the Comintern imposed in Twenty-One Conditions on any socialist party that wished to
join it. Among these, were acceptance of Moscow’s leadership, rejection of revised socialism (i.e.,
Bernstein’s Revisionism) and adopting the Communist Party name. The Comintern was determined to
destroy democratic socialism because, according to the Third International, it had betrayed the working
class by working through parliaments for modest, compromising reforms.
The decision to accept or reject these conditions split every major European socialist party. As a result,
Western socialists divided into separate communist and social democratic parties as we saw happen in
Italy. The communist parties modeled themselves after the Soviet party and took their direction and
orders from Moscow. The social democratic parties attempted both social reforms while working within
the parliamentary system. The result was they fiercely competed to deliver the socialist message in the
European political landscape. It also meant that opposition right-wing parties rarely had to confront a
united left wing socialist movement.
Women and Family Life in the Early Soviet Union
The Communist view towards women and family assumed the same traditional orientation as found in
middle-class capitalism which were (ironically) contradictory to the “liberty of the proletariat” which was
proclaimed by Marxists and Communists alike. In the early years of the Soviet Union, these views led to
utopian visions of what the life of women and the family would look like. The most well-known of the
utopian visionaries was Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952), a former Menshevik who later joined the
Bolsheviks. In Communism and the Family (1918), she foresaw a new kind of family that she thought
would liberate both men and women. Her views included the expansion of sexual expansion (not sexual
license) and the (then) radical idea of men and women sharing home tasks and responsibilities. She
argued for a replacement of exploitative family relationships by families based on love and comradeship.
However, Kollontai’s vision evaporated in the brutal world of life in the early Soviet Union. After seizing
power, the Bolsheviks began to issue laws that made divorce easier to obtain, marriages no longer
religious ceremonies and both legitimate and illegitimate children given the same rights. Women were
given more protection in the workplace and at the home. Abortion was legalized in 1920. All of these
measures were meant to create a socialist society. Educational opportunities for women were more
available than ever before. And a few women gained high positions in the Communist Party and more
women voted but, in fact, women had little impact of Soviet government.
Moreover, with the violent social upheavals brought on by the civil war, shifting economic policies and
the general reordering of Russian society, the 1920s saw increasing disruption of family life. Domestic
violence (men on women) was commonplace. The birthrate fell. There were more abortions and more
abandoned children. The new divorce laws made it easier for husbands to leave their wives and family
tensions increased because housing shortages often forced divorced couples to continue to live together
which often made life more difficult for women than men.
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Thus, even before Lenin’s death, women could become leaders in the party and the economy but they
seldom achieved senior positions. Women who worked, even those who had professional careers, were
still expected (in spite of all the Soviet talk of comradeship) to do the housework, and there was no
significant state run child care system. Women were almost always paid less than men; and the chronic
shortages of consumer goods was harder on women who – more than men – had to wait in long lines,
cope with shortages of food, clothing and other necessities – and still hold themselves and their families
together.
The Weimar Republic
On November 18 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated ending the German Empire. Germany became a
republic which took its name, The Weimar Republic, from the town of Weimar where its constitution
was issued in1919. While the constitution was being completed, the German delegates to Paris were
forced – under threat of military invasion – to sign the Versailles Treaty and the Weimar government was
blamed unfairly by many Germans for the Treaty. This feeling only deepened during the 1920s, as the
reparations and military consequences of the treaty were carried out; and the Weimar Government
became an easy target of blame for German nationalists and generals who were looking for a scapegoat.
In Germany, more than in any other of the defeated nations, all political parties shared the desire to revise
the Treaty of Versailles, although they differed in the ways the revision might be accomplished. Some
groups were cautious hoping to oppose the treaty whenever favorable opportunities arose and other
simply called for total opposition to the treaty. These disagreements about how to obtain a common goal
created different degrees of loyalty to the Weimar government.
The Weimar Constitution was basically an enlightened constitution. It provided for broad civil liberties
and universal suffrage of the Reichstag or Parliament. Its principal two flaws were that it was easy for
small parties to get members elected and that the president could rule by decree in an emergency thus
permitting a presidential dictatorship. The Weimar government was not supported by a majority of the
German people. Many wanted a constitutional monarchy; others like civil servants and schoolteachers
who had special loyalty to the Kaiser’s government were deeply distrustful of the new constitution and
the Social Democratic Party which dominated the new Reichstag.
The officer corps, so influential under the Kaiser, was bitterly resentful about the military reductions that
took place under the Versailles Treaty and blamed the Weimar government. Finally, the government took
much blame for the Stab-in-the Back Myth that stated that the German army did not lose the war but
rather that they were betrayed by the civilians on the home front, especially the republicans who
overthrew the monarchy along with communists, socialists and Jews. Moreover, the early difficulties and
humiliations the republic was forced to endure, only cemented these sentiments.
The new government’s prestige was so damaged by the treaty and economic instability that in March
1920, a right-wing insurrection called the Kapp Putsch (an armed insurrection or rebellion) rocked Berlin.
Led by conservative civil servants and army officers, the coup forced the city government to flee and
incited workers to go on strike. Strikes also broke out in the Ruhr Valley but the government sent troops
and restored order. This extremism from both left and right, would haunt the Weimar Republic during its
troubled existence.
In May 1921, the Allies presented a reparations bill that demanded Germany pay a total of 132 million
Gold Marks (about thirty-three billion American dollars), an astronomical sum. The Weimar government
balked but finally agreed when the Allies threatened to invade Germany. During the first five years of the
1920s, assassination and violence ravaged German politics and discrediting the government. Reparations
were made all the more bitter because Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey had to pay almost nothing.
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Burdened by enormous reparations payments, the German government struggled and turned to borrowing
to meets its obligations. But inflation made Germany money of less and less value until a point was
reached where German money after the French invasion of the Ruhr in 1923 became almost worthless.
German printing presses could not print money fast enough and money was not worth as much as the
paper it was printed on. Stores would not accept the worthless money and farmers held back produce to
avoid being paid in worthless money.
The results were disastrous! Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people lost their life savings; their
insurance policies were worthless; and government bonds were equally worthless. Debts and mortgages
could be easily paid off and speculators made fortunes but workers and the lower classes suffered
terribly. Farmers and those who could barter generally did well but this economic chaos and suffering
made ordinary Germans ready to listen to extreme solutions.
The Communists offered a socialist solution, but Germany would eventually turn to the extreme right.
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was born in Austria; as a young man he tried to become an artist and then
supported himself with odd jobs. He came to hate Jews and Communists whom he felt would destroy
society. In 1913, he moved to Germany and joined the German army when the Great War broke out. He
fought bravely and was highly decorated.
After the war, he joined the National Socialist German Workers Party (or the Nazi Party); and in1921
became chairman of the party. The Nazis put forth a platform, the Twenty-Five Points, which
demanded repudiation of the Versailles Treaty, unification of Austria and Germany, denying Jews
German citizenship, agrarian reform, the prohibition of land speculation, confiscation of war profits and
state administration and nationalization of major corporations and business cartels.
Nazi “socialism” was right wing and nationalistic; and did not advocate state ownership of property as
the means of production but the subordination of all economic endeavors to the benefit of the nation.
Unlike the Social Democrats and the Weimar governments, Nazi views appealed to the most vulnerable
Germans such as lower class workers and war veterans. The Nazi organized a paramilitary organization,
The Sturmabteilung (SA) commonly called the Brown Shirts. Like Mussolini’s Black Shirts they used
intimidation and terror for political purposes; and they were a law unto themselves. They targeted and
harassed socialists and communists. The Social Democrats and the Communists both organized their own
paramilitary organizations but neither could match the SA.
On November 8, 1923, Hitler and his band of followers - including the World War I hero, General Eric
Ludendorff - attempted the famous Beer-hall Putsch in Munich intending to overthrow the Weimar
government. Sixteen Nazis were killed and Hitler and Ludendorff were arrested and tried for treason.
Imprisoned in an old fortress (rather comfortably), Hitler dictated his book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle),
which was filled with anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist outpourings, as well as his disdain of the Versailles
Treaty, his racist world views including his racial hierarchy which placed Germans on the top of
humanity as a super race, and his strategy for world domination. During his imprisonment, Hitler came
to two conclusions: First, he saw himself as the leader that would transform Germany from weakness to
strength; and second, he and his party must use legal means to acquire political power.
Nevertheless, the Weimar government was able to meet the challenges of the early 1920s. In 1923 during
the French occupation of the Ruhr, Gustav Stresemann (b. 1878), who was chancellor for three and a half
months in 1923 and foreign minister (wielding considerable influence in the government) until his death in
1929, abandoned the policy of passive resistance in the Ruhr because Germany could not continue to
support paying the striking workers. Stresemann also, with the help of Hjalmar Schacht (1877-1970),
introduced a more stable form of German currency and crushed Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch.
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In 1924, the government negotiated a new system of reparation payments that lowered annual payments
under the Dawes Plan, submitted by the American banker, Charles Dawes. The Dawes Plan also
provided that the French leave the Ruhr. In the same year, the German president, Friedrich Ebert, died
and was replaced by the World War I hero, Paul von Hindenburg who was a conservative (and
monarchist) and helped to bring stability to Germany – as did improving economic conditions in general.
Hindenburg governed in strict accordance with the constitution and suggested that Germans had become
more conservative. In fact, it appeared that conservatives had become reconciled with the republic.
Because of the new political and economic stability (brought in large measure by the renegotiated payments
of the Dawes Plan), Germany experienced a prosperity that lasted until the Great Depression hit. Foreign
capital now flowed into Germany and employment rose dramatically. Heavy industry (especially steel and
chemicals) flourished. It looked at last like the Weimar Republic was being accepted the average German
citizen.
In foreign affairs, Stresemann was conciliatory (trying to be pleasing). He continued to fulfil the peace
treaty provisions, even as he tried to get them revised. He was willing to accept the land changes in the
west (principally Alsace and Lorraine) but was revisionist in the east. His principal aim (though not as
aggressive as Hitler’s vision of Lebensraum) was to recover the German-speaking territories lost to Poland
and in Czechoslovakia – and possibly to unite with Austria. But the first step was to achieve
respectability and that meant economic recovery.
The Locarno Treaty
The Weimar Republic also received a boost from the October 1925 Locarno Treaties that normalized
relations between Germany and the Allies. France and Germany both accepted a western frontier while
Great Britain and Italy agreed to intervene against whichever side violated the agreement. The Germans
signed treaties of arbitration with Poland and Czechoslovakia and France strengthened its ties with the
Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia). France supported Germany’s entrance into the
League of Nations and agreed to withdraw its troops from the Rhineland (five years earlier than specified in
the treaty).
Locarno had its faults but generally everyone was pleased and brought a new spirit of hope to warexhausted Europe. France felt a little more secure; Germany felt a little more respectable. But the new
spirit of hope was not justified. France had merely recognized its inability to bully Germany without the
assistance of other nations. Great Britain had revealed its unwillingness to uphold the Paris agreements in
Eastern Europe which was made clear when her foreign minister, Austen Chamberlain (no relationship
to the racialist writer Houston Steward Chamberlain and the son of Joseph Chamberlain (who lobbied for tariff
reform) and half-brother of Neville Chamberlain whom we shall soon meet.) declared that no British
government would risk “the bones of a British grenadier” for the Polish Corridor. Chamberlain’s
comment also revealed a pacifism that was rooted in Britain’s trauma from the horrors of the war and
would be played out in his half-brothers capitulation to Hitler at Munich in 1938.
Moreover in Germany, most Germans felt that the Locarno Treaties were merely an extension of the
unjust Versailles Treaty. To make matters worse, when the Dawes Plan expired in 1929, it was replaced
by the Young Plan. Named for its architect, an American businessman Owen D. Young, the Young Plan
lowered German reparation payments, put a limit on how long they had to be made and removed
Germany entirely from outside supervision and control. It sounded good to the allies, but backfired in
Germany because most Germans were vehemently opposed to the continuation of any reparations. In
other words, Germany was convinced (and rightly so) that she should not be punished any more for a war
for which she was not responsible more than any other of the combatant nations.
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