Europe Between the Wars
“Attempts at Diplomacy and Peace”
Name: ____________________________
Directions: After you read your information, outline the important information for each requirement.
I. Washington Naval Conference
A. Background:
B. “When did it happen?”
C. “What countries were involved?”
D. “What was it?”
E. Results and Effects:
II. Dawes Plan
A. Background:
B. “When did it happen?”
C. “What countries were involved?”
D. “What was it?”
E. Results and Effects:
III. Locarno Treaties
A. Background:
B. “When did it happen?”
C. “What countries were involved?”
D. “What was it?”
E. Results and Effects:
IV. Kellogg-Briand Pact
A. Background:
B. “When did it happen?”
C. “What countries were involved?”
D. “What was it?”
E. Results and Effects:
The Washington Naval Conference
Between November 1921 and February 1922, the world’s largest naval powers gathered in Washington for a
conference to discuss naval disarmament and ways to relieve growing tensions in East Asia.
In the wake of World War I, leaders in the international community sought to prevent the possibility of another war.
Rising Japanese militarism and an international arms race heightened these concerns and policymakers worked to
reduce the threat. Senator William E. Borah (R–Idaho) led a Congressional effort to demand that the United States
engage its two principle competitors in the naval arms race, Japan and Britain, in negotiations for disarmament.
At the end of the Great War, Britain still had the largest navy afloat but its big ships were becoming out-of-date, and
the Americans and Japanese were rapidly building expensive new warships. Britain and Japan were allies in a treaty
that was due to expire in 1922. Although there were no immediate dangers, observers increasingly pointed to the
American-Japanese rivalry for control of the Pacific Ocean as a long-term threat to world peace. By this time, the
British realized it had best join forces with Washington rather than Tokyo. To stop a needless, expensive and
possibly dangerous arms race, the major countries signed a series of naval disarmament agreements.
In 1921, U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes invited nine nations to Washington to discuss naval
reductions and the situation in the Far East. Great Britain, Japan, France and Italy were invited to take part in talks
on reduction of naval capacity, and Belgium, China, the Netherlands and Portugal were invited to join in discussions
on the situation in the Far East. Three major treaties emerged out of the Washington Conference: the Five-Power
Treaty, the Four-Power Treaty, and the Nine-Power Treaty.
The American delegation at the Washington Conference, led by Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, included
Elihu Root and Henry Cabot Lodge. The primary objective of the conference was to restrain Japanese naval
expansion in the waters of the west Pacific, especially with regard to fortifications on strategically valuable islands.
Their secondary objectives were intended to ultimately limit Japanese expansion, but also to alleviate concerns over
possible antagonism with the British. They were: first, to eliminate Anglo-American tension by abrogating the
Anglo-Japanese alliance; second, to agree upon a favorable naval ratio regarding Japan; and, third, to have the
Japanese officially accept a continuation of the Open Door Policy in China.
The Five-Power treaty, signed by the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France and Italy was the cornerstone of the
naval disarmament program. It called for each of the countries involved to maintain a set ratio of warship tonnage
which allowed the United States and Britain 500,000 tons, Japan 300,000 tons and France and Italy each 175,000
tons. Though Japan preferred that tonnage be allotted at a 10:10:7 ratio, and the U.S. Navy preferred a 10:10:5
ratio, the conference ultimately adopted 5:5:3 limits.
The key reason why the United States and Britain required higher tonnage allowances was because both nations
maintained two-ocean navies: they were active in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, with colonial territories
scattered around the world. Finally, this agreement called on signatories to stop building capital ships and reduce
the size of their navies by scrapping older ships.
Although the Five-Power Treaty controlled tonnage of each navy’s warships, some classes of ships were left
unrestricted. As a result, a new race to build cruiser ships emerged after 1922, leading the powers back to the
negotiating table in 1927 and 1930 to close the remaining loopholes in the agreements.
In the Four-Power Treaty, the United States, France, Britain, and Japan agreed to consult with each other in the
event of a future crisis in East Asia before taking action. This treaty replaced the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1902,
which had been a source of some concern for the United States.
In the years following World War I, U.S. policymakers saw Japan as the greatest rising military threat. Heavily
militarized and looking to expand its influence and territory, Japan had the potential to threaten U.S. colonial
possessions in Asia and the profitable China trade. Because of the 1902 agreement between Britain and Japan,
however, if the United States and Japan entered into a conflict, Britain might be obligated to join Japan against the
United States. By ending that treaty and creating a Four-Power agreement, the countries involved ensured that
none would be obligated to engage in a conflict, but a mechanism would exist for discussions if one emerged.
The final multilateral agreement made at the Washington Naval Conference was the Nine-Power Treaty, which
marked the internationalization of the U.S. Open Door Policy in China. The treaty promised that each of the
signatories – the United States, Britain, Japan, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal and China – would
respect the territorial integrity of China. The treaty recognized Japanese dominance in Manchuria but otherwise
affirmed the importance of equal opportunity for all nations doing business in the country; for its part, China
promised not to discriminate against any country seeking to do business there. Like the Four-Power Treaty, the
treaty on China called for consultations in the event of a violation instead of tying the signatories to a particular
response. As a result, it lacked a method of enforcement to ensure that all powers abided by its terms.
In addition to the multilateral agreements, several bilateral treaties were completed at the conference. Japan and
China also signed a bilateral agreement, the Shangtung (Shandong) Treaty, which returned control of that province
and its railroad to China. Japan had taken control of the area from the Germans during World War I, and then it
maintained control over the years that followed. The combination of the Shangtung Treaty and the Nine-Power
Treaty was meant to reassure China that its territory would not be further compromised by Japanese expansion.
Additionally, Japan agreed to withdraw its troops from Siberia and the United States and Japan formed agreement
over equal access to cable and radio facilities on the Japanese-controlled island of Yap.
Together, the treaties signed at the Washington Conference served to uphold the status quo in the Pacific: they
recognized existing interests and did not make fundamental changes to them. At the same time, the United States
secured agreements that reinforced its existing policy in the Pacific, including the Open Door in China and the
protection of the Philippines, while limiting the scope of Japanese imperial expansion as much as possible.
The Dawes Plan
In the years following the First World War, issues of debt repayment and reparations troubled relations between
the Allies and the now defeated Germany. The American-sponsored Dawes and Young Plans offered a possible
solution to these challenges.
At the end of the First World War, the victorious European powers demanded that Germany compensate them for
the devastation wrought by the four-year conflict, for which they held Germany and its allies responsible. Unable to
agree upon the amount that Germany should pay at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the United States, the
United Kingdom, France, and the other Allies established a Reparation Commission to settle the question.
In the spring of 1921, the Commission set the final bill at 132 billion gold marks, approximately $31.5 billion. When
Germany defaulted on a payment in January 1923, France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr in an effort to make it
pay; instead, they met a government-backed campaign of passive resistance. Inflation in Germany, which had
begun to accelerate in 1922, spiraled into hyperinflation. The value of the German currency collapsed; the battle
over reparations had reached an impasse.
Meanwhile, a second wartime financial issue was causing tension among the former co-belligerents. While the
United States had little interest in collecting reparations from Germany, it was determined to secure repayment of
the more than $10 billion it had loaned to the Allies over the course of the war. Time and again, Washington
rejected calls to cancel these debts in the name of the common wartime cause; it also resisted efforts to link
reparations to inter-allied war debts.
In 1922, London made this link explicit in the Balfour Note, which stated that it would seek reparations and wartime
debt repayments from its European allies equal to its debt to the United States. That same year, Congress created
the United States War Debt Commission to negotiate repayment plans, on concessionary terms, with the 17
countries that had borrowed money from the United States.
In late 1923, with the European powers stalemated over German reparations, the Reparation Commission created a
committee to review the situation. Headed by Charles G. Dawes (Chicago banker, former Director of the Bureau of
the Budget, and future Vice President), the committee
presented its proposal in April 1924.
Under the Dawes Plan, Germany’s annual reparation
payments would be reduced, increasing over time as
its economy improved; the full amount to be paid,
however, was left undetermined. Economic policy
making in Berlin would be reorganized under foreign
supervision and a new currency, the Reichsmark,
adopted. France and Belgium would evacuate the
Ruhr and foreign banks would loan the German
government $200 million to help encourage economic
stabilization.
American financier J. P. Morgan floated the loan on
the U.S. market, which was quickly oversubscribed.
Over the next four years, U.S. banks continued to lend
Germany enough money to enable it to meet its
reparation payments to countries such as France and the United Kingdom. These countries, in turn, used their
reparation payments from Germany to service their war debts to the United States. In 1925, Dawes was a corecipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his plan’s contribution to the resolution of the crisis over
reparations.
In the autumn of 1928, another committee of experts was formed, this one to devise a final settlement of the
German reparations problem. In 1929, the committee, under the chairmanship of Owen D. Young, the head of
General Electric and a member of the Dawes committee, proposed a plan that reduced the total amount of
reparations demanded of Germany to 121 billion gold marks, almost $29 billion, payable over 58 years. Another
loan would be floated in foreign markets, this one totaling $300 million. Foreign supervision of German finances
would cease and the last of the occupying troops would leave German soil. The Young Plan also called for the
establishment of a Bank for International Settlements, designed to facilitate the payment of reparations.
The advent of the Great Depression doomed the Young Plan from the start. Loans from U.S. banks had helped prop
up the German economy until 1928; when these loans dried up, Germany’s economy floundered. In 1931, as the
world sunk ever deeper into depression, a one-year moratorium (suspension, or freeze) on all debt and reparation
payments was declared at the request of President Herbert Hoover; an effort to renew the moratorium the
following year failed.
At the Lausanne Conference in 1932, European nations agreed to cancel their reparation claims against Germany,
save for a final payment. After the November 1932 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, France and the United
Kingdom resurrected the link between reparations and war debts, tying their Lausanne Conference pledge to cancel
their claims against Germany to the cancellation of their debts to the United States. The United States would not
accept the proposal. By mid-1933, all European debtor nations except Finland had defaulted on their loans from
the United States.
Nevertheless, the Dawes and Young Plans were important U.S. efforts that had lasting consequences. Coming so
soon after the American rejection of the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations, the Dawes and Young Plans
were significant instances of U.S. re-engagement with European affairs.
Locarno Treaties
The discussion at Locarno, Switzerland arose from exchanges between the British Empire, France and Germany
throughout the summer of 1925 following German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann's proposal for a reciprocal
of his country's western frontiers as established under the Treaty of Versailles, as a means of facilitating Germany's
diplomatic rehabilitation among the Western Powers.
At least one of the main reasons Britain promoted the Locarno Pact of 1925, besides to promote Franco-German
reconciliation, was because of the understanding that if Franco-German relations improved, France would gradually
abandon its alliance system in Eastern Europe that it developed in the early 1920s. Once France had abandoned its
allies in Eastern Europe, thereby creating a situation where the Poles and Czechoslovaks having no Great Power to
protect them from Germany, would be forced to adjust to German demands, and hence in the British viewpoint
would peacefully hand over the territories claimed by Germany such as the Sudetenland, the Polish Corridor, and
the Free City of Danzig (modern Gdańsk, Poland). In this way, promoting territorial revisionism in Eastern Europe in
Germany’s favor was one of the principal British objects of Locarno, making Locarno an early instance of
appeasement.
The principal treaty concluded at Locarno was the “Rhineland Pact” between Germany, France, Belgium, the United
Kingdom and Italy. The first three signatories undertook not to attack each other, with the latter two acting as
guarantors. In the event of aggression by any of the first three states against another, all other parties were to
assist the country under attack. Germany also agreed to sign arbitration conventions with France and Belgium and
arbitration treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia, undertaking to refer disputes to an arbitration tribunal or to
the Permanent Court of International Justice. France signed further treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia,
pledging mutual assistance in the event of
conflict with Germany.
The Locarno Treaties were regarded as the
keystone of the improved western European
diplomatic climate of 1924–1930, introducing a
hope for international peace, typically called
the “spirit of Locarno.” This spirit was seen in
Germany's admission to the League of Nations,
the international organization established
under the Versailles treaty to promote world
peace and co-operation, and in the subsequent
withdrawal (completed in June 1930) of Allied
troops from Germany's western Rhineland.
In contrast, Locarno contributed to the
worsening of the atmosphere between Poland
and France (despite the French-Polish alliance), and introduced distrust between Poland and Western countries.
Locarno divided borders in Europe in two categories: those guaranteed by Locarno, and others, which were free for
revision.
One notable exception from the Locarno arrangements was, however, the Soviet Union, which foresaw western
cooperation as potentially deepening its own political isolation in Europe, in particular by detaching Germany from
its own understanding with Moscow under the 1922 Treaty of Rapallo (both sides renounced all territorial and
financial claims against the other following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk). Political tensions also continued throughout
the period in eastern Europe.
In 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power; his practice was to conduct bilateral, not multilateral, negotiations. Proposals
in 1934 for an “eastern Locarno” pact securing Germany's eastern frontiers failed due to German opposition and on
Poland's insistence that its eastern borders should be covered by a western guarantee of her borders. Germany
formally repudiated its Locarno undertakings by sending troops into the demilitarized Rhineland in March 1936.
Kellogg-Briand Pact
The Kellogg-Briand Pact was an agreement to outlaw war signed on August 27, 1928. Sometimes called the Pact of
Paris for the city in which it was signed, the pact was one of many international efforts to prevent another World
War, but it had little effect in stopping the rising militarism of the 1930s or preventing World War II.
In the wake of World War I, U.S. officials and private citizens made significant efforts to guarantee that the nation
would not be drawn into another war. Some focused on disarmament, such as the series of naval conferences that
began in Washington in 1921, and some focused on cooperation with the League of Nations and the newly formed
World Court. Others initiated a movement to try to outlaw war outright. Peace advocates Nicholas Murray Butler
and James T. Shotwell were part of this movement. Both men were affiliated with the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, an organization dedicated to promoting internationalism that was established in 1910 by
leading American industrialist Andrew Carnegie.
With the influence and assistance of Shotwell and Butler, French Minister of Foreign Affairs Aristide Briand
proposed a peace pact as a bilateral agreement between the United States and France to outlaw war between
them. Particularly hard hit by World War I, France faced continuing insecurity from its German neighbor and sought
alliances to shore up its defenses. Briand published an open letter in April of 1927 containing the proposal. Though
the suggestion had the enthusiastic support of some members of the American peace movement, U.S. President
Calvin Coolidge and Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg were less eager than Briand to enter into a bilateral
arrangement. They worried that the agreement against war could be interpreted as a bilateral alliance and require
the United States to intervene if France was ever threatened. To avoid this, they suggested that the two nations
take the lead in inviting all nations to join them in outlawing war.
The extension of the pact to include other nations was well-received internationally. After the severe losses of the
First World War, the idea of declaring war to be illegal was immensely popular in international public opinion.
Because the language of the pact established the important point that only wars of aggression – not military acts of
self-defense – would be covered under the pact, many nations had no objections to signing it. If the pact served to
limit conflicts, then everyone would benefit; if it did not, there were no legal consequences. In early 1928,
negotiations over the agreement expanded to include all of the initial signatories. In the final version of the pact,
they agreed upon two clauses: the first outlawed war as an instrument of national policy and the second called
upon signatories to settle their disputes by peaceful means.
On August 27, 1928, fifteen nations signed the pact at Paris. Signatories included France, the United States, the
United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Belgium, Poland, Czechoslovakia,
Germany, Italy and Japan. Later, an additional forty-seven nations followed suit, so the pact was eventually signed
by most of the established nations in the world. The U.S. Senate ratified the agreement by a vote of 85–1, though it
did so only after making reservations to note that U.S. participation did not limit its right to self-defense or require it
to act against signatories breaking the agreement
The first major test of the pact came just a few years later in 1931, when the Mukden Incident led to the Japanese
invasion of Manchuria. Though Japan had signed the pact, the combination of the worldwide depression and a
limited desire to go to war to preserve China prevented the League of Nations or the United States from taking any
action to enforce it.
Further threats to the Peace Agreement also came from fellow signatories Germany, Austria and Italy. It soon
became clear that there was no way to enforce the pact or sanction those who broke it; it also never fully defined
what constituted “self-defense,” so there were many ways around its terms. In the end, the Kellogg-Briand Pact did
little to prevent World War II or any of the conflicts that followed. Its legacy remains as a statement of the idealism
expressed by advocates for peace in the interwar period. Frank Kellogg earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 1929 for his
work on the Peace Pact.