World War I resulted not only in the deaths of millions of people through war and starvation, but also in the collapse of three major European empires (Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary).  Before the end of the fighting, Woodrow Wilson announced American war aims in his Fourteen Points, the blueprint that was the preliminary basis for a post-war peace settlement.  But rather than negotiating a peace based on reconciliation, the Allied Powers imposed a punitive peace at the Versailles Peace Conference and planted the seeds of the Second World War.  The interwar years can be divided into three major periods: the period of settlement; the period of fulfillment; and the period of repudiation and revision.

The Period of Settlement began with the Armistice of November 1918, which ended the fighting on the Western Front and lasted until the Dawes Plan of 1924.  Delegates from around the globe (excluding those of the Central Powers) met at Versailles from January to June 1919 to negotiate peace treaties for Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey.  These nations lost significant amounts of territory and the Germans had to pay a tremendous reparations bill after accepting responsibility for starting the Great War.  The economic upheaval resulting from these treaties undermined the political stability of these states and contributed to the emergence of radical political parties.  New countries emerged in Eastern Europe and the Western Powers and Japan took over former German colonies as mandates that further altered international relations.  In addition, a major civil war in Russia saw the establishment of a Communist regime that became a pariah state to the rest of the world.  Border wars broke out in Central and Eastern Europe and Asia Minor as new states and colonial powers struggled for ascendancy.  The brightest promise of the Versailles Peace Conference was the establishment of the League of Nations, an international organization designed to promote international peace and stability as a forum for member states.  Léon Bourgeois, Hjalmar Branting, and Robert Cecil played critical roles in the development of the League and its acceptance as the arbiter of international disputes.  Post-war conflict resulted in the migration of millions of refugees and the repatriation of prisoners of war.  The League called on Fritdjof Nansen to oversee the welfare of refugees, a mission taken by the Nansen International Office of Refugees after Nansen’s death.

Through a major financial loan and renegotiation of German reparations through the Dawes Plan of 1924, the Period of Fulfillment emerged in international relations.  For the first time, the defeated and Allied Powers met during the Locarno Conference in 1925 to guarantee the western borders of Europe, to sign arbitration treaties and pacts of mutual assistance, and to accept German membership in the League.  Austen Chamberlain, Aristide Briand, and Gustav Stresemann were the major architects of the Treaties of Locarno and these agreements ushered in a period of harmonious relations.  Beginning with the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, nations negotiated a number of arms limitation treaties.  Christian Lange and Arthur Henderson emerged as the champions of disarmament, arguing that reductions in weapons would force countries to negotiate disputes instead of going to war.  Ludwig Quidde was a strong voice in the German peace movement and worked to expose treaty violations.  Through the League, pacifists sought to cement arbitration into international law through new international treaties.  Briand and Frank Kellogg negotiated the Pact of Paris in 1928, a treaty that renounced war as an instrument of national policy (eventually signed by sixty-four nations), while Carlos Saavedra Lamas drafted the South American Anti-War Pact in 1934 and was the leading arbitrator in ending the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia in 1938.  The entry of the Soviet Union into the League in 1934 represented another milestone in League affairs as all of the Great Powers, with the exception of the United States, held membership in the organization.  By 1931, the League had ambitious programs underway in disarmament, economic cooperation, and European federation.

Despite these successes, the international system fell into political anarchy during the Period of Repudiation and Revision.  The Depression, which began in the U.S. in 1929 and spread to Europe by 1931, resulted in economic havoc and political instability.  International trade collapsed and nations resorted to armament production to spur their economies.  Revisionist regimes that repudiated the Versailles Treaties came to power and sought to redraw the map of the world.  Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1935; Italy seized Ethiopia in 1935; and the Germans occupied Austria in 1938 and Czechoslovakia in 1939.  The Germans and Soviets signed a non-aggression pact in 1939 and secretly redrew the borders of Eastern Europe.  The League of Nations attempted to negotiate settlements of these issues, but the German invasion of Poland in 1939 marked the beginning of the Second World War.

Related Links

http://nobelprize.org/
http://nobelprize.org/peace/
http://www.nobel.no/