The+West+Between+Wars

toc 1918-1939 By: Mike Holland, Luke Morman & Devin Wagenman

"Death solves all problems. No man, no problem." - Joseph Stalin =The West Between the Wars Explained=

=  =  The West between Wars was a time era between World War I and World War II. This time era had a lot of uneasy peace and uncertain security due to World War I. One thing that was weak in this era was the League of Nations. One problem with the League of Nations was that the United States didn’t comply with joining this organization. Another problem was the French demands. Between 1919 and 1924, the desire for the security led the French to demand strict enforcement of the Treaty of Versailles. This tough policy towards Germany began with the issue of reparations, which were the payments for the damage they had done in the war. Another issue was the inflation in Germany. This was caused by when the German government adopted a policy of passive resistance to French occupation. This triggered the strike of German workers, which caused the government to pay their salaries by printing more money.

One of the biggest issues was the Great Depression. This was a brief period of prosperity that began in Europe in 1924 ended in an economic collapse. One factor that caused the Great Depression was a series of downturns in the economies of individual nations in the second half of the 1920’s. For example prices for farm products, especially wheat, were falling rapidly because of overproduction. The second factor was an international financial crisis involving the U.S. stock market. The Germans needed the U.S. loans to pay reparations to France and Great Britain. During the 1920’s the U.S. stock market was booming. By 1928, American investors had begun to pull money out of Germany to invest it in the stock market. Then, in October 1929, the U.S. stock market crashed, and prices of stocks plunged. In the panic the U.S. withdrew more money from Germany and other European markets. This weakened the banks of Germany and other European states.

One item that was used to help the crisis was the Five-Year Plans. This plan set economic goals for five-year periods. Their purpose was to transform Russia virtually overnight from an agricultural into an industrial country. The first five-year plan emphasized maximum production of capital goods and armaments. The plan quadrupled the production of heavy machinery and doubled oil production. Between 1928 and 1937, during the first two five-year plans, steel production in Russia increased from 4 million to 18 million tons per year. The social and political costs of industrialization were enormous. Little provision was made for caring for the expanded labor force in the cities. The number of workers increased by millions and these workers lived in pitiful conditions.





=**Key Terms**=

1. __**The Dawes Plan**__ - An American banker named Dawes devised a plan for Germany to make the reparations based on their financial capabilities at the time. 2. __**Treaty of Locarno**__ - After the end of WWI the barriers between France and Germany were not yet set. The Treaty of Locarno finalized these boarders in 1925. 3. __**Kellogg-Briand Pact**__ - The U.S. secretary of state Frank B Kellogg and French foreign minister Aristide Briand created the Kellogg-Briand Pact which said that war would only be used as an instrument of national policy. The pact was signed by 63 nations but terms that if the pact was broken were not established. 4. __**Collective Bargaining**__ - Collective bargaining was the right appointed that said that unions had the right to negotiate with their employers over work wages and hours. 5. __**Weimar Republic**__ - The German democratic state created after the fall of the imperial army under William II. Paul Von Hindenburg was elected president of the Weimar Republic in 1925 at age 77, who was the last leader before Adolfo Hitler took command. 6. __**Deficit Spending**__ - A theory by John Maynard Keynes said that a government should take part in economic depressions in order to solve them. He said that even if the government had to go into debt, or deficit spending, they should. 7. __**Fascism**__ - A political philosophy that glorified the state above the individual. Every person was controlled by the government and any opposition was taken down by secret forces. 8. __**OVRA**__ - The secret police in Italy created by the Fascists and their leader Mussolini. This secret police eliminated any oppositions to the Fascist government. 9. __**Mein Kampf**__ - Mein Kampf means "My Struggle" and was a book written by Adolf Hitler of an account of his ideas while he was in jail. His theories became the basis for Germany when he became dictator. 10. __**Enabling Act**__ - An act passed by the Reichstag that allowed the government to ignore the constitution for four years while it dealt with Germany's problems.



=Map=



=Important Leaders=


 * __1.Czar Nicholas__** II - autocratic ruler of Russia. His stupidity and incompetence in directing Russia's war effort led to revolution, defeat, and the execution of himself and his family.
 * __2.Georges Clemenceau__** - veteran French Socialist politician who headed the Union Sacred, a political alliance of all parties from 1917.
 * __3.Vera Brittain__** - British woman who worked as a nurse during WW1.Her fiancee and brother were killed during the war, and her experiences of the conflict turned her into a pacifist. She wrote 'Testament of Youth' an autobiography describing the impact on women of WW1.
 * __4.Vladimir Lenin__** - Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, whose return to Russia (facilitated by the Germans) from exile in late 1917 led directly to the Bolshevik Revolution and Russia pulling out of the war.
 * __5.Edith Cavell__**- was a British nurse who helped British soldiers escape from occupied Belgium. For this, the Germans executed her, which provided a lot of good propaganda for Britain about the "beastly Hun"
 * __6.Franz Joseph__**- was the aged Emperor of Austria; his determination to crush Serbia after the assassination of his heir by Serb nationalists sparked the July Crisis of 1914 that snowballed into WW1.He died in 1916.
 * __7.Prince Max von Baden__**- The chancellor of Germany during the final months of the war. As Kaiser Wilhelm II lost control of the country, Prince Max temporarily assumed leadership and played a major role in arranging the armistice.
 * __8.Winston Churchill__**- The first lord of the British admiralty. Although Churchill is better known for his role as Britain’s prime minister during World War II.
 * __9.Constantine I__**- The king of Greece for much of the war. Although Greece remained neutral during his reign, Constantine himself had strongly pro-German sentiments, at the same time that his government favored the Allies.
 * __10.Franz Ferdinand__**- The archduke of Austria, nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph, and heir to the Habsburg throne. Franz Ferdinand’s assassination on June 28, 1914, by Serbian militant Gavrilo Princip, is widely considered the unofficial start of World War I.

=Videos & Widgets=

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=For More Information=

1. [|The Great Depression]- this website shows an article from the New York Times on the Great Depression. 2. [|Crashing Hopes]- this website talks about the Great Depression and Black Tuesday. 3. [|The Weimar Republic]- this website talks about the history of the Weimar Republic. 4. [|Dawes Plan]- this website briefly talks about the Dawes Plan. 5. [|Benito Mussolini]- this website talks about Benito Mussolini's life. 6. [|What is Fascism]- this website talks about what Fascism is. 7. [|Joseph Stalin]- this website talks about Joseph Stalin. 8. [|Stalin]- this website talks about Joseph Stalin and his Five Year Plans. 9. [|Beer Hall Putsch]- this website talks about the Beer Hall Putsch coup. 10. [|The 1936 Berlin Olympics]- this website talks about the 1936 Berlin Olympics and its connection to Hitler and the Nazis.

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