On May 7 , 1919 , in a room in the exalted Versailles Palace outside Paris , German extraneous minister Count Ulrich von Brockdorff - Rantzau arrived at the head teacher of a delegation of diplomat . They came to negotiate with representative of the major Allied exponent – Britain , France , Italy , Japan , and the United States – following the armistice that had end World War I in Europe . Instead of finding keister laid out for his delegation , Brockdorff - Rantzau and his workfellow , coif stiffly in frock coats and fender collars , were made to stand up like so many errant schoolboy . This was the first of many humiliations imposed on the Germans after World War I.
The Allied powers thought they had gain the warfare and that Germany had been the architect of its outbreak . The German view that an cease-fire was really a truce , rather than surrender , was ignored .
The origin of this humiliation lay five year before , in the crisis that led to the irruption of what became known as the Great War . The victorious Allies blamed Germany and Austria - Hungary for induce that warfare , but the explanation is more complex . Before 1914 Europe had entered a new phase in its history with the growth of a mathematical group of powerful , industrialized , and heavily armed states , each of which had imperial pursuit to defend . National competition became the key characteristic of the old age .
Earlier , in the nineteenth century , these states had collaborated to keep the peace , because the big businessman and aristocrat who dominated the political scene had a strong interest in avoiding battle . But by the turn of the twentieth century , the old regime were in retreat and modernistic political trend – many of them strongly nationalistic in outlook – had begun to emerge . The unexampled working category , thrown up by speedy industrialization , offer a dissimilar kind of threat , though many of them could be gain over to a loyal causal agent . Throughout Eastern and Southern Europe , where there existed a assortment of nationality under regal Prussian or Austrian or Russian rule , mass political science led to ferment for national self - determination . This way out was at its most acute in the Habsburg Empire , whose capital was in Vienna . Its rulers asseverate a parlous storage area on a territory that comprised a 12 nationality , many of them eager for autonomy .
It is no fortuity that it was there , in the internal patchwork of the Habsburg Empire , that the immediate pedigree of the warfare of 1914 - 18 are feel . The conglomerate buzz with conflicts – between rival nationality , between unlike classes , and between the raw democratic parties and the autocratic monarchy that die hard the organisation . Most acute accent of all was the crisis with the southern Slav populations of the monarchy . Backed by the self-governing state of Serbia , Slav nationalist in the empire look for a southerly Slav commonwealth ( Yugoslavia ) . In Vienna , fear arose that the Serbs would chivy the breakup of the old rules of order .
On June 28 , 1914 , on an prescribed visit to Sarajevo ( Das Kapital of the recently annex state of Bosnia ) , the inheritor to the Habsburg throne , Archduke Franz Ferdinand , together with his married woman Sophie , were assassinated by a young Bosnian terrorist named Gavrilo Princip . The Austrian authorities demanded action . They charge Serbia for boost the Black Hand smart set to which Princip belonged , and demand that Serbia take on Austrian encumbrance in their internal probe of the murder . The Serbs accepted parts of Austria ’s ultimatum but balk at other portions . This was the initiation for Austria ’s declaration of state of war .
None of the other European power had expected or design for state of war in 1914 , but it was a fear that each of them had harbor . In the 10 years before 1914 , many such crises had rise . Each power ’s veneration of the other ability fire an arms raceway that produced large army and navies with small to do but plan fashion of outmaneuver comprehend foe . armament did not cause warfare , as many conceive at the fourth dimension , but they contributed to a growing sentience of instability and hostility , and lessened the capacity of state to encumber the armed services when crisis beckoned .
This is what bump in 1914 . Austria was disposed to go to war with Serbia without the other exponent intervening , but it needed the support of Germany , its friend , and the neutralization of any scourge from Russia . Austria make full financial backing from Berlin , but Russia – fearful that Austria would apply the crisis to overlook the Slavic Balkans and drag one’s heels Russian imperial ambitions in the region – endorse up Serbia and start out to mobilize .
This decision produced a domino burden . In Berlin , it was assume that Russian militarization was the result of Gallic and British boost . The German war machine persuaded the German emperor to let them carry out the so - called Schlieffen Plan , to attack France first and then to turn and get the better of Russia . When Austria in the end invaded Serbia , Germany prepared to attack France . Britain side with France when the Germans invade Belgium , which was in infraction of the concord to respect its neutrality . By August 4 , 1914 , all the major powers of Europe were at war .
The remarkable fact is that few of the powers that entered the war really understood what form it would take . The predominate opinion was that the struggle might be resolved by a few expectant set - piece battles and be " over by Christmas . " The warfare that develop could not have been more dissimilar . A stalemate developed on the Western Front , while there was much apparent movement back and forth on the Eastern Front . Combat was dominated by artillery and the newly developedmachine grease-gun . Warfare stagnate into a direful competition of attrition in which both English sustained loss on scales impossible before 1914 .
The battle was presented as a life - and - death conflict for home natural selection . The Turkish Empire joined the conflict in 1914 , side with Germany and Austria . Italy entered in 1915 , side with the Western Allies . In 1917 the United States , entirely upstage from the conflict when it broke out , run to hostilities in response to Germany ’s unrestricted use ofsubmarinesagainst American shipping . In three eld , the war between Austria and Serbia had become global .
To gain the war , the major belligerent found themselves face an unprecedented labor . It became necessary for the DoS to control their economies , to regiment Agriculture Department , to direct trade , and to conscript labor ( and to draw in an army offemaleworkers ) . Production was take more and more to armaments . The high-sounding demands of this unexampled form of internal conflict come to be known as " total state of war , " a full term coined by German general Erich von Ludendorff in 1919 to describe the mobilization of the intact economical , social , and moral energies of the state . In the ending , the economical resource of the Allied powers proved great than those of Germany and its friend . armored combat vehicle andaircraftbegan to exchange the nature of war , and the Allies had more of both . With its allies having already been get the better of and its own United States Army beaten , Germany sought an cease-fire , which was signed on November 11 , 1918 .
In the next section , learn how Europe was reshape after the effect of World War I.
To follow more major events of World War II, see:
The Reshaping of Europe After World War I
The cost of the World War I contravene in term of human losses was colossal . More than nine million soldiers were toss off , millions were for good maim , and an unknown number of civilians pass from malnutrition , disease , and combat . In 1918 and 1919 , aninfluenzaepidemic wiped out millions more from a population enfeeble by four years of grow privation .
It is against this backdrop that the decision to blame the Central Powers for the state of war must be understand . When the Treaty of Peace was drawn up in the springiness of 1919 , a clause was inclose that made percipient the obligation of the Central Powers for reparation . article 231 , the " War Guilt " article , was signed by the German commission , under protest , on June 28 , 1919 .
The Germans conceive that the conditions impose on them were exceptionally harsh . The German armed force and fortifications were to be disbanded , and Germany was set aside to retain only a rump 100,000 - man army to keep domesticated peacefulness . Germany was denied the right to possessaircraft , submarines , and most form of fleshy U. S. Army weapons . All German colonies were taken and distributed as mandates to the triumphant powers . Territory taken by Prussia or Germany in the past tense was returned to Germany ’s neighbors . France took back Alsace - Lorraine , seized by Germany in 1870 , while the restored Polish state was awarded the deep ember and steel region of Silesia . To overcompensate for damages due to the war , Germany was finally required to pay off 132 billion amber marks , in instalment , up to the yr 1988 .
No other issue so joined Germans in their resentment of the victors than the question of fixing . Though Germany managed to keep off paying much of what it was supposed to pay , and take up and then repudiated Brobdingnagian sums , the crucial point is that average Germans comprehend reparation to be a punitive sanction . They were compulsive to turn over the Diktat ( dictate peace of mind ) .
The final year of war had ushered in a menses of momentous transmutation worldwide . In 1917 the Russian war effort break down and the emperor , Nicholas II , was forced to abdicate . The revolutionary regime tried to extend the fight , but economic status and military capacity degenerate sharply . In October 1917 , Lenin ’s Bolshevik Party – the most revolutionary wing of the Russian radical motion – seized power in Petrograd ( St. Petersburg ) , and declare a communistic regime .
Bolshevik drawing card expected that their revolt would herald the onset of worldwide revolution . After three years of bitter polite war , Bolshevik normal was assure by 1921 but world revolution did not follow . Short Communist uprising erupted in Hungary and Germany in 1919 , and red confrontations occurred between workers and the nation in Italy and Spain in the immediate postwar years , but no other European companionship fancy a communistic takeover . The Communist movement outside Russia was violently suppressed , and many of its leader were murder or imprisoned .
The close of the warfare transformed the political geography of Europe and the Middle East . After the capitulation of the Russian Empire , the German , Austrian , and Ottoman Turkish conglomerate also disappear . They were supplant by new , small states from the Baltic Sea to the Suez Canal . The former Turkish state in Iraq , Syria , Lebanon , and Palestine were handed over as mandates to Britain and France .
The former majestic territories in Europe held by Russia , Austria , and Germany all became sovereign national DoS . This was consistent with the requirement expressed by U.S. United States President Woodrow Wilson that the the great unwashed of Europe should be allowed internal " self - determination . " From 1919 to 1921 , more treaties were drawn up and sign with Germany ’s ally – Austria , Hungary , Bulgaria , and Turkey – which confirmed the novel shape of the continent . In every case , the national settlements were messy . diminished national fraction were isolate in the territory of other land .
The end of the warfare produced a paradox of crisis coexist with a mood of optimism about the future . Parliamentary democracy was innovate everywhere in the areas overlook by the prewar monarchies ( except for Russia ) , and in 1920 almost every European state was , in courtly term , popular , even though jillion of cleaning woman still lacked the vote . The closure in 1919 was supposed to pave the way for a new earthly concern gild based on quislingism and mutual respectfulness . At Versailles , the foundations were laid for the League of Nations , which was commit to isolating international aggression and providing a framework for the peaceful resolution of conflicts .
In 1920 the League of Nations finally get together in session in the Swiss city of Geneva , choose because of Switzerland ’s farseeing tradition of neutrality . The League muse a widespread revulsion against war . The Covenant of the League of Nations committed all its member to work toward universal disarmament .
On the next page , read about how the intemperately - won peace after World War I began to crock up .
The New World Order Disintegrates
As the terrible human price of World War I were grave on thousands of monuments to the war dead across Europe , the pop temper echoed the slogan that the Great War had really been " The War to End All Wars . " In 1928 German source Erich Maria Remarque publish his classical invoice of the war , All Quiet on the Western Front . The novel was immediately translated into other oral communication . The book ’s vivid descriptions of death and mutilation reminded Europeans of the futility of warfare .
From the outset , it was difficult to operate the new postwar order on the idealistic terms in which it had been constructed . The peace village trigger off a wide range of grievances for those states that regarded themselves as victims . Even the victor were not altogether happy . Italy got little out of the territorial readjustments , and Italian nationalists condemn what they called " the maimed peacefulness . " Japan was resentful at what it regarded as the wash bias of the other victorious states . In Britain , the peace was viewed as unnecessarily harsh .
In the United States , whose president had been the main architect of the young order , the repose closure was eliminate by Congress as the result of a originate backlash against the European Allies , who were seen as ego - concerned imperial states exploit American assistance for their own ambitions . The United States abandon the League and the peace settlement totally . It refused to ratify the accord with France intended to see that the French would not detach the remaining bank of the Rhine from dinge Germany .
The Soviet Union regarded the new purchase order as a mask to cover the interests of imperialistic capitalism . It was debar from the League because of the prevailing hostility toward communism . As the principal former foe , Germany was also excluded from the League until 1926 . This placed the three potentially most brawny economic and military states outside the run order . The situation only enhanced the belief that the League really was a Franco - British puppet designed , in the word of honor of American " wireless priest " Father Charles Coughlin , " to make the mankind safe for hypocrisy . "
The system was also step down by economical crisis . The pre-1914 world trading saving could not be fully revived , and during the 1920s far-flung unemployment and poverty existed across much of Europe . From 1919 to 1924 , currency break down all in Russia , France , Germany , Austria , and Hungary . Bank accounts and paper asset became worthless . The result was the dispossession of panoptic sections of the European in-between class , leaving behind a bequest of bitterness that fueled the increment of ultra correct - flank politics .
In the next section , study about the former life history of Adolf Hitler and BenitoMussolini , who set the stage for World War II .
The Rise of Hitler and Mussolini
The maturation of acuate ideological divisions in European politics – which finally led to World War II – can be explain not only by the cost increase of communism and socialism but also by the collapse of the constitute materialistic society in much of Europe and the egress of mass nationalism .
Many World War I ex-wife - soldier returned home angry at failure in the state of war and resentful of the workers and flush who had appease behind . They preach a new kind of nationalism that was hostile to the old order and fanatically anti - Communist . They were attracted to new form of autocratic and collectivist rule . The first grounds of what this new political science meant was seen in Italy , where a young , militant old-timer , Benito Mussolini , establish the Italian Fascist movement in 1919 .
Fascismtook its name from the arrangement of rods and axis vertebra – the fasces – that had been a symbolisation of dominance in ancient Rome . Soon the full term " Fascist " became tachygraphy for any political chemical group that combined a radical nationalist and societal insurance and called for tyrannic regulation . In Munich in southern Germany , another oldtimer – young Austrian agitator Adolf Hitler – assumed leadership in 1921 of a modest political party , the National Socialist German Workers ' Party . Its name made clear a joint commitment to national revival and radical social change .
If fascism had just stay a small bang motion , the history of the post - Great War years would have been very unlike . But Mussolini ’s new party , through a combination of effective propaganda and street violence , soon became a rival for world power . In October 1922 , after endanger a march on Rome , Mussolini was offered the premiership . Within four age , he had bring down parliamentary ruler , destroyed the Italian leftfield , and set up a one - company state with himself asIl Duce(The Leader ) .
Fascism was simulate in every European state . It traded on each nation ’s grievance but also promised a bright utopian future tense . Militarism was a central feature of Fascist solicitation , and thousands of untried Europeans flock into the movements and their paramilitary organizations .
In 1923 , at the top of the European inflationary crisis , Adolf Hitler moved to copy Benito Mussolini . In addition to planning a march on Berlin , he staged acoupin Munich on November 8 - 9 as a prelude to a national gaining control of powerfulness . His putsch was stamp down , and Hitler was imprisoned . However , he come forth a year subsequently , reestablished his leading of the National Socialist bowel movement , and launched a campaign of violent anti - Marxism side - by - side with a struggle for parliamentary hind end . Both Mussolini and Hitler were unwilling to accept the postwar settlement . Their rhetoric suggested that a " newfangled edict " was want to replace a liberal international system that they regarded as decadent .
On the next page , see how economic woe throughout Europe and the creation led to an mentally ill atmosphere right for World War II .
Economic Woes Lead to World War II
The scourge posed by fascism lay in the future tense . In the 1920s , the outside order was rule by the interest of Britain and France , and there was small to menace it . In 1925 a pact was sign on at Locarno between Britain , France , Italy , Germany , and other European countries that gave a mutual guaranty of the frontiers harmonise upon in 1919 . In 1926 , thanks to the efforts of German foreign minister Gustav Stresemann , Germany was admitted to the League with a permanent seat on the Council . The willingness of the United States , despite the failure to fall in the League , to land up the European thriftiness with generous credits helped to produce a brief period of economic stableness from 1924 to 1928 .
The high stop of the postwar decade was reached in 1928 , when U.S. secretary of state Frank Kellogg and Gallic foreign rector Aristide Briand invite the states of the earth to Paris to bless a solemn declaration that they would never again resort to war as a means of subside disputes between them . The Pact of Paris was signed by more than 60 commonwealth , including the interpreter of Italy , Germany , Japan , and the Soviet Union ( each of which would set up warfare of aggression in the 1930s ) .
The frangibility of the existing ordering was queer suddenly in 1929 by a austere economic crisis . The macrocosm thriftiness had never hark back to full wellness after 1919 , but the perky American boom of the 1920s , fuel by expectations of a secure trading hereafter , had cloak the underlying problems . When the speculative share bubble broke on Wall Street in October 1929 , the impact was catastrophic . Desperate American loaner tried to recall their money at home and overseas , provoking a wave of bankruptcy and widespread unemployment . The economical orthodoxy of the clock time preached downsizing and reduce on spending at points of crisis . As governments tried to balance their budgets and the residual of payments , a further moving ridge of economic crisis followed .
The downward spiral was not kibosh for some time . World trade vanish by 60 percent from 1928 to 1932 , and unemployment worldwide reached an count on 40 million worker . The weak thriftiness , already hit by wartime deprivation and theinflationcrisis , suffered most . In Germany , 30 per centum of the workforce was unemployed by 1932 and industrial output was halved . Unwilling to honor debts overseas , Germany present serious problems . It was rescued only by the American decision to suspend debt repayment for a year . By that leg , the United States present a business sector - cycle crisis so serious that many commentator assumed that Marx must have been right to anticipate that overheated capitalism was destined to crumple in revolution .
The political fallout from the economical depression was every bit severe . external collaboration to obviate catastrophe evaporated . National economies were protect by newfangled protective walls . In the U.S. in 1930 , the Hawley - Smoot Tariff Act ( constitute after the two congresswoman who innovate it ) placed severe limits on imports . Two years later , Britain adopted a organisation of Imperial Preference , give a inner position to imperium traders . Thus , the two largest trading thriftiness in the earth became committed to saving their own interest first in parliamentary law to void further risk of domesticated political crisis .
In Germany , political science was polarize between extreme right wing and left . In the 1930 parliamentary election , both German Communists and National Socialists made satisfying profit , taking almost one - third of the democratic vote between them . All company became united in hostility to the major Western countries . The economical slump inflamed be resentments and ignited Modern ones . The mood of conservative optimism that had characterized the brief period of stability in the 1920s was replace with an overpowering good sense of foreboding .
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS:
John S. D , Eisenhower , Senator Daniel K. Inouye , Rochard Overy Ph.D. , David J. A. Stone , Wim Coleman , Martin F. Graham , James H. Hallas , Mark Johnston Ph.D. , Christy Nadalin M.A. , Pat Perrin , Peter Stanley PhD
