Between the 1920s and 1930s, several attempts were made to prevent future wars in Europe after World War 1, but they faced challenges. The Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawed war but lacked enforcement. The League of Nations struggled due to its diverse membership and lack of enforcement powers. Meanwhile, countries like Germany, Italy, and Spain faced economic and political instability during this interwar period known as the "Age of Anxiety."

1. Between the Wars
The Age of Anxiety
1920s and 1930s
England, France, Germany, Italy,
and Spain

2. After the War to End All Wars…these are the
attempts to make sure it ended all wars…
• Kellogg-Briand Pact
– “renounced war as an act of instrument of national policy”
– Aka…it outlawed war
– Nearly every nation in the world signs it – even the Soviet Union
– Problem? Can’t be enforced…
• League of Nations
– Not successful
– Wide variety of membership
– Collective Security
• If any member state were attacked, others would provide financial
aid
• Violates US isolationist policies/tendencies
– No enforcement power
• But would issue disapproval for acts of aggression
– Germany and Japan frustrated that League is strictly pro-allies

3. France
•Was more damaged and more in debt after WW I than
most
•Horizon of Blue 1920
•Chamber of Deputies all military guys
•Show down for Reparations…
•Attempted Ruhr Strike
•Causes Severe inflation
•After 1924 will be steadily receiving $ from Germany,
•1931 – Depression will hit France
•Not as bad as elsewhere, some, but not
devastating unemployment
•Support farmers
•July 1935 – Leon Blum and the Popular Front
•Preserve republic
•Press for social reform
•Will win majority in Chamber of Deputies in 1936,
socialists will have weight
•Seek programs like FDR’s New Deal
•Matignon Accords – 7-15%; 40hr wk; 2 wk vacay
•Maginot Line becomes priority

4. Left in Shambles
• British cities suffered from German air raids
• Economically struggling
• 1920’s Labour v. Liberal party
– Lloyd George (C); 1922 Bonar Law (C)
– Stanley Baldwin 1923 (C)
– Labour party – Ramsey MacDonald
– Standley Baldwin
• Conservatives return govt to gold standard
• Makes conversion rate too high, raises price of British goods
to foreign countries
• Management needs to lower expenses, cuts wages
• Coal miners strike
• Other workers inspired to strike
• Miners and unions have to capitulate to keep their jobs
because of high unemployment
• Conservative gov’t does grant some housing and welfare
reform

5. • Status Check on British Empire
• National Government – 1931
– Coalition of Liberal, Labour, and Conservative Parties
– Raises taxes
– Cut ins benefits to unemployed and elderly
– Lower govt salaries
– Argue that falling prices in Britain mean salaries
haven’t “really” changed b/c cost of living is lower too
– Went off the gold standard
– Value of pound falls by 30%
– 10%tariff on all imports except from within empire

7. • Civil War erupts
• Secret negotiations – 1921 treaty that produces a status
similar to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Northern
Ireland
• Civil War between Irish diehards v. Irish moderates
– Diehards want totally independent republic with no
oath to the Br monarch
• Da Valera resigns as President, organizes resistance to
the treaty
• Reelected in 1932, abolishes oath to monarchy
• Ireland = fully independent in 1949

8. Mussolini
• Forms Fascist party in
1919
• “Il Duce” – the leader
• Blackshirts terrorize and
control opposition
• 1922 appointed Prime
Minister when he
threatens to march on
Rome
• “The Country is Nothing
Without Conquest”
– Roman Empire
Wannabe
– Wants Mediterranean
to be Mare Nostrum
again
– Wants lands on the
Adriatic back from
Yugoslavia
(irredenta)
• 1935 – gets Ethiopia
(revenge at last)

9. Il Duce’s Italy
• Suppressed rival parties, muzzled the
press, rigged elections and replaced
elected officials with Fascist support
• Critics thrown into prison, exiled or
murdered
• Secret police and propaganda bolster the
regime
• Preserved capitalism, but workers
forbidden to strike, wages very low
• “Believe! Obey! Fight!”
• Youth groups toughen kids and teach them
strict military discipline
– Taught about glories of ancient Rome
– March in parades, sing hymns and chants,
“Mussolini is always right”
• Women asked to “win the battle of
motherhood”
– 14 kids and you get a medal!

10. Fascism
• An authoritarian (non-communism) government that
emphasizes extreme nationalism and glorifies violence,
discipline and blind loyalty to the state
• Bundle of sticks around an axe - “fasces”
• Antidemocratic – democracy leads to corruption and
weakness, allows individual or class interests to rise
above national goals
• Aggressive foreign expansion
– “survival of the fittest”, dominance and war are necessary for
survival
• Sworn enemies of communists
– Fascism – support comes from business leaders, wealthy
landowners, and lower middle class
– Communism – support comes from urban and agricultural
workers

11. Appeal of fascism?
• Promises a strong, stable government and
end to political feuding that had paralyzed
democracy
• National pride

12. Totalitarian Rule
• Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin:
– Single party dictatorship
– State control of economy
– Use of police spies and terror to
enforce the will of the state
– Strict censorship and government
monopoly of the media
– Use of schools and media to
indoctrinate and mobilize citizens
– Unquestioning obedience to a
single leader

13. AP Euro Bellringer
• Turn work in
• Please pick up the article on Hyperinflation
and begin reading
• This is a class set, so you may want to
take a few notes from this article for your
notebook

14. Weimar Republic
• By the end of WW I People feel very betrayed by
the government
– They were winning WW I until they were
suddenly not
– Kiel Mutiny
• Weimar Republic – established in 1919
– Constitution being debated as the Social
Democrats in power have to accept the
condemning Treaty of Versailles
– Nationalists and military figures will blame the
republic and socialists for Germany’s
problems

15. • Weimar Constitution
– “quite enlightened”
– Civil liberties, universal manhood election of Reichstag
and President
• Complicated system of proportional representation
• Makes it easy for small parties to gain seats
– President appointed and removed the Chancellor
– Article 48 – president to rule by decree in time of crisis
– Many Germans (political figures, teachers, civil
servants, military officers) tend to favor a constitutional
monarchy
– Early years of Weimar only make people want to revise
the TofVersailles and the Weimar Repub.

16. Hyperinflation
• Weimar Republic
– According to T of Versailles, had
to pay allies in Gold-backed
Deutschmarks
– French occupy Ruhr Valley Jan
1923
• Print money to solve economic
problems
• Hyperinflation 1920-1923 *22-23*
– 1 Rentenmark = 1 billion old
marks
• Dawes Plan 1924-1929

25. • Does anyone know which other country
had a very similar hyperinflation problem
in the past decade?

27. Hitler
• Born in Austria 1889
• Failed hopes of becoming an artist
• Very anti-Semitic, hates Marxism,
associates it with Jewish people
• Earned the Iron Cross in WW I
• 1919 National Socialist German
Workers Party (aka Nazi Party)
– Settles in Munich
– Nazism – fascism shaped with
fanatical German nationalism
and racial superiority’
• Symbol – swastika
• Platform of 25 points
– Repudiation of the ToV,
unification of Germany
and Austria, agrarian
reform, exclusion of
Jews, replace dept
stores with smaller
shops

28. The Nazi Party
• Socialist
– Nazi or Marx?
– Nazis redefine socialists
– Subordination of economic enterprise to the
welfare of the nation rather than state
ownership of the means of production
• Nazis - Create the SA (storm troopers) led by
Ernst Rohm
– Brown shirt uniform
– Main Nazi instrument for terror and
intimidation
– Preserve military values
• Beer Hall Putsch – November 9, 1923
– Hitler arrested and tried for treason
• Condemns the Republic, the T of V, the
Jewish people, and German weakness
• Sentenced to five years, paroled after a
few months
• **realizes he must come to power legally
• Mein Kampf and Aryan race

29. Nazis are Gaining
• Stresemann – Rentenmark, Locarno, Nobel
Peace Prize,
• 1925 President Ebert dies; Field Marshal Paul
von Hindenberg elected president
• Locarno Treaty – 1925
• The depression hits and Germany becomes a
Presidential dictatorship
• Unemployment from 2.2 million to 6 million in 2
years
– Communist win 77 and Nazis win 107 seats
in the Reichstag in 1930 (54 and 12 seats in
1928)
– SA membership rises from 100,000 in 1930
to 1 million by 1933
• 1932 – Nazi’s gain majority in Reichstag
• 1933 -- Hindenburg appoints Hitler chancellor
– Suspends freedom of speech and press
– Brownshirts/stormtroopers silence opposition
• 1934 – Hindenburg dead, Hitler “Der Fuhrer”

30. Figure 3: Alois Derso and
Emery Kelen's cartoon of
the League Secretariat
holding back the waters of
the crises of the early
1930s. Albert Thomas and
Eric Drummond are in the
center. From Le Testament
de Genève (Geneva, 1931).
Reproduced by permission
of Princeton University
Archives, Department of
Rare Books and Special
Collections, Princeton
University Library.

31. The Depression Made the Nazis
• The Depression made the Nazis
– Public works
– Blame everything on leftists, Jews, or TofV
– Strikes = illegal
– “strength through joy”
– 4 year plan – Herman Goring leads economic vamp up for war
starting in 1936
– Private Property and Capitalism = okay
– Significant enterprises and decisions are subordnate to the
goals of the state
• Price controls, restricted investments, and military production
= top priority

32. Hitler’s Nazi Germany
• Joseph Goebbels – minister for propaganda
• Hitler’s three approaches to consolidating power
– Capture full legal authority
– Eliminate all alternative political groups
– Consolidate power within Nazi Party
• Controlling all ways of Life
– Hitler Jugend, Gestapo, prohibit all other political parties, censor
all communication, create concentration camps
• SS (Blackshirts) – Heinrich Himmler
• Summer 1934 – Night of the Long Knives
– Operation Hummingbird or Rohm-Putsch
– At least 85 potential threats from the SA, critics of the Nazis, etc.
are silenced

33. Der Fuhrer’s Acts of Aggression
• Begins rearming
• Hires unemployed workers for public works projects
– Massive public buildings
– Autobahn
• 1935 – Nuremberg Laws
• 1936 – Depression ends in Germany
• 1936 – The Olympics are held in Nazi Germany
• Germany needs more living space – lebensraum
– Militarize Rhineland in 1936
• 1936 - Axis powers agreed between Berlin and Rome
• 1938 Anschluss realigned (most Austrians welcome
them) – Sound of Music!
• 1938 - Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain, and
Appeasements “peace in our time!”

34. The rest of Europe
• E Europe – self-determinism had created some nations here, but still a poor,
rural nation
• Hungary
– Bolsheviks est socialist Bela Kun in 1919
– Allies invade to remove the communist
– Admiral Miklos Horthy est as “regent” til 1940
– Defacto rulers – Count Stephen Bethlen and General Julius Gombos
(anti-Semitic)
– Hungary is bitter about WW I’s ending
• Austria
– Quite bitter – lost their empire, down to 8 million citizens (25% in
Vienna)
– Economy in shambles,
– Political Parties – Christian Socialists and Social Democrats
– Nazi coup in 1934 – Kurt von Schuschnigg – rules until Anschluss in
1938

35. Spanish Civil War
• Nationalism group rises to
power led by Franco
• Nationalists v. Republicans
• Nationalists – supported by
Germany and Italy
• Republicans supported by
Soviets and International
Brigade
• Nationalists take Madrid,
Franco rules from 1939-1975

36. Guernica – Pablo Picasso

37. On to war!
• March 1939 – Br and Fr agree to help Poland if
invaded
• Aug 1939 – Hitler and Stalin agree to a ten year
Non-Aggression Pact (secret document attached
about how to divide up E. Europe)
• Sept. 1, 1939, Germany invades Poland
– Blitzkrieg, Poland down in a month, Holocaust begins
in Poland
– Stalin seizes E. half of Poland
• Sept. 3, 1939, Br and Fr declare war on
Germany

38. • April 9, 1940 – Hitler takes Denmark and
Norway
• May 10 – Netherlands, Belgium,
Luxembourg, France to British Channel
• June 10 – Fr govt flees
• June 14 – Germans take over Paris
• Aug 1940 – Luftwaffe hits London hard
– British Royal Airforce, Chamberlain – “Never
in the field of human conflict was so much
owed by so many to so few”