Peace and Democracy After World War I

PEACE AND DEMOCRACY AFTER WORLD WAR I

The peacemakers in Paris had 2 general aims. To make the world safe and democratic. They attempted to establish democratic governments in New States and to lay the foundations for peace. However, in neither aim were they particularly successful.

To what extent did the peace settlements (treaties and conferences) result in a democratic and peaceful Europe?

(I) The treaty laid the foundations for many future wars. There are many reasons for this:

• Nations were not satisfied with the way they were treated in Paris. Some like Italy and Greece thought they had not got enough and war resulted, others like Germany, Hungary and Turkey thought they had lost too much and wars also resulted.

• New nations created by the Peacemakers had a heightened sense of nationalism. Some sought to exploit the weakness of neighboring states to expand. Poland had a number of wars like this.

• The peacemakers had been unable to adequately translate the idea of national self-determination into a practical solution of nationalist aspirations. Many small wars were fought amongst the new nations in Central Europe over irredentist minorities (i.e. groups on the wrong side of the frontier) in a neighboring state.

• Some nationalist groups were not given the independent status they had hoped for. They remained minorities inside an allen state. Many of these groups took to armed struggle, and met with sever repression. Situations like this occurred with the Irish against the UK, the Armenians against the Turks and the Macedonians against the Greeks and Bulgarians.

• Nationalist from European colonies in Asia petitioned for national self Determination in vain. Often this failure led to future wars, as in the case of Ho Chi Minh from Vietnam.

• The British and French expanded their empires into the Middle East against wishes of the Arabs. This led to future conflict – especially in Palestine, where the British encouraged Jewish immigration.

1 (II) However, the Peacemakers cannot really be held responsible for the Second World War. In the intervening 20 years many other factors developed that were more relevant. Certainly there were seeds of conflict, which appeared in 1939 such as:

• The German grievance over Poland

• The power vacuum in Central Europe

Yet these seeds had been nurtured by:

• The failure of German democracy and the rise of Nazism

• The failure of the victors to either enforce or abandon the Peace Settlement

• The failure of the new security system based in the League of Nations, Collective Security and Disarmament

• The policies of individual nations with regards to Hitler’s own foreign policies –especially the UK, France, the USSR and Poland.

(III) Wars, which occurred and can be linked to the decisions in Paris were:

1919 – Hungry vs. Czechoslovakia and Romania in an attempt to limit its territorial Losses.

- Poland vs. Czechoslovakia to dispute where the frontier was drawn in Teschen.

- A private Italian army under D’annunzio took flume from Yugoslavia, when the peacemakers failed to give it to Italy. (The Italy government eventually drove him out in 1920).

1920 – Poland took Vilna from Lithuania

- Poland fought Russia to extend its frontiers eastwards from the line drawn by The Peacemakers (called the Curzon Line). The treaty of Riga in 1921 saw Russia dive in, and lose territory.

1922 – Greece fought Turkey to increase its gains in the Treaty Settlement but lost. A major crisis arose at Chanak when the Turks challenged the Peacemakers decision that the Straits should be demilitarized. The Peacemakers gave way and the Turks got a much softer treaty.

2 1923 – Lithuania took military action to take Memel from the League of Nations. No war resulted as the League did not organized resistance.

- France and Belgium invaded the Ruhr region of German when the Germany failed to keep up their crippling reparations payments. No war resulted because Germany decided she was in no condition to flight.

Not all wars can be blamed on the peacemakers though. Italy’s attack on Corfu in 1923 had separate causes.

(B) DEMOCRACY

(I) The Peacemakers tried to establish the new democracies in the vacuums by the collapse of the old Multi-racial empires of Austria-Hungary, Russia, German and Turkey. That the new democracies met with mixed fortune war not always the fault of the Peacemakers. External forces were at that proved frustrating such as:

• Economic distress

• The example of fascist and communist regimes.

However, the Peacemakers were often native and too optimistic because:

• They underrated the problems that might arise from the lack of experience the peoples of Central Europe had in self- government. The complexities of Proportional Representation led to coalitions that did not always work and tended to discredit the whole idea of democracy.

• they underestimated the problems that could arise from minorities and new multi- racial systems like those in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.

(II) Czechoslovakia was the most successful democracy created. It worked well up to the mid1930’s under the leadership of 2 devout democrats Masaryk and Benes. However in the 2nd half of that decade the state was places under great strain by economic conditions deteriorating and by the stirring up of racial tensions by Hitler. The state fell apart 1938-1939.

3 (III) By contrast Yugoslavia and Poland did not survive long as democracies. The Serbs dominated Yugoslavia and by 1929 the Serb king and established a Royal Dictatorship, which frustrated the aspirations of the other races. The Croatians took to violence, and in 1934 assassinated the Yugoslavia king. Poland quickly fell under the grip of a ring wing nationalist dictator called Pllsudski.

(IV) The fear of Russia and Communism made many Eastern European states vulnerable to fascism.

(V) The defeated nations of World War I found that the frustrated of defeat and the political and economic consequences of the peace made democracy fragile.

• Germany’s Weimar Republic was attacked by left and right up to 1923 and survived because of Army. It only thrived briefly 1924-1929. When the Depression hit and political crisis followed, a constitutional authoritarian Introduced in 1930. Frequent Elections failed to produce a working democracy government. The destruction of German democracy was completed after 1933.

• Hungary’s democracy collapsed rapidly. First to a Communist dictatorship under Bela Kun in 1922, and then to a right wing one under Admiral Horthy in 1920.

• The Turkish revolution of 1922 deposed the sultan, but Mustapha Kemal was not a democrat.

• Only in Austria did some sort of democracy work, though it never worked well. Neither of the main parties wanted Austria to be a nation at all. They both wanted to merge with Germany. Yet this “democracy” desire was not acceptable to the Allies.

(VI) Even in Italy, which was one of the victorious nations, democracy did not long survive the post war slump, the frustrated expectations about the peace and the weakness of the political system. In 1922 Mussolini because Prime Minister and proceeded to turn Italy into a Fascist Dictatorship.

(VII) Other Victorious Allies found democracy unsuitable, impossible or impractical China’s revolutionary progress in the 1920’s did not follow a democracy path; instead it fell under the dictatorship of military strong man Chiang Kai-shek. Whilst the failure of Japan’s democracy leaders to extend her economic markets effectively led to the collapse of Japan’s democracy.

(VIII) The greatest threat to democracy that the Peacemakers saw was Russian

4 Communism, which tried to sponsor World Revolution through the Comintern However, attempts were few and fat between, and were failures (German & Hungary). The USSR did end the brief independence of the Ukraine in 1921, but was unable to reverse any of the other democratic losses suffered at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution 1917 and Treaty of Brest-Litovsk 1918. The USSR would have to wait until World War 2 to do this. In the meantime the Democracies tried to topple the Communist government by intervention in the Russia Civil war 1918- 1920. The put Russia in quarantine, by denying her membership of the League, and by establishing “Gordon Sanitaire” between Russia and themselves in E. Europe.

(IX) The strongest democratic nation was the USA, but it withdrew into isolation after 1918 and did not give its support to the struggling democracies. It even followed its own policies of imperialism in the Philippines and Latin America.

(X) The other 2 democracies nations-the UK and France-whilst maintaining the system themselves after WWI, denied it to the million of people throughout their Asian and African Empires, and denied it to the Arabs who thought they had won their chance for self-determination in WWI. b) International Changes i. Western Europe Western Europe was the least altered part of Europe in terms of bound-arise. Germany lost Eupen and Malmedy to Belgium to Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine to France and Northern Schleswig to Denmark. The Saar area was to be administered by the League of Nations for fifteen years, after which the inhabitants could decide whether or not to rejoin Germany. In addition, the Western border of Germany –the Rhineland area-was to be ‘demilitarized’ permanently (i.e. Germany could not put troops or fortifications there) and it was to be occupied by allied troops for fifteen years. Germany was also effectively disarmed.

ii. Central and Eastern Europe The political situation in central and Eastern Europe was trans- formed. Germany, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria all lost territory. Specifically, Germany lost the ‘Polish Corridor’ and part of Silesia to Poland. The previous German city of Danzig became an international city under the control of the League of Nations. The most obvious change in this area was the creation of new ‘nation’ states from the collapse of the German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires. The new states were: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia Hungary and Austria as separate states, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Broadly speaking,

5 these new countries were based on the principle of self- determination in place of the old multi-national empires. However, this was not the only rule followed. Another principle was one of reward for contribution to the allied victory (the old Serbia now became the much bigger state of Yugoslavia). Also, the peacemakers wanted to ensure that the new states were militarily defensible (thus Czechoslovakia acquired German-speaking area of the Sudetenland around its western borders). Equally, the new states had to be economic ally viable (thus, the Czechs and Slovaks were put together in one state, the Poles got the Polish Corridor to give them access to the sea). One effect of the new state system was to cut Russia off from central Europe by creating a line of states (a ‘cordon sanitaire ’) on her Western border. One other effect of the new boundaries was to create new ‘minorities’ within states. It was impossible to draw frontiers so that all the people of one race were within one state. The new ‘minorities’-many of them Germans and Hungarians-tended to be discontented with their new lot, especially because they were often formerly members of ruling races. iii. Middle East Turkey lost its old empire in the Middle East. The states of the Arabian Peninsula-Saudi Arabian, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar-became independent, and Britain and France shared out the remainder. Britain got Palestine, Iraq and Transjordan. Tran got Syria and the Lebanon. These were all ‘A’ Mandates from the League of Nations (i.e. supposed to get independence in the near future). iv. Overseas Germany lost all of her colonies to the victorious powers, which were again distributed as ‘mandates’ by the League of Nations. v. League of Nations The Peace Settlement was a triumph for nationalism in that it created a lot of nation states. But it was also a triumph for internationalism with the creation, for the first time, of a permanent international body: the League of Nations. The League of Nations was to have many functions but one of the most important was that it would (in theory) help to keep the peace in future through collective security. v. The Balance of Power One of the basic questions to consider about the Peace Settlement was how it had altered the balance of power. Before 1914 one can see a ‘balance’ of power between the Triple Alliance and Triple Entente. How had this altered? Was there any sort of ‘balance’ of power? It needs to remembered that ‘power’ does not just mean numbers of guns and soldiers – in modern warfare, industrial strength and efficiency of economic organization are also important. Regard the following statistics: Population (millions): 1920 1930 France 38.8 41.2 Germany 59.2 64.3

6 Coal Production (Million Metric tons): 1920 France 24.3 Germany 107.5 Britain 233.0

Steel Production (Million metric tons): 1920 1929 France 3.0 9.7 Germany 7.8 16.2 Britain 9.2 9.8

It also needs to remember that the previous balance of power was based on a system of alliances. How did the new states structure of Europe affect the prospects for new alliances?

EFFECTS OF WORLD WAR I: POLITICAL (INTERNAL)

Before 1914, Europe had been dominated by multi-national, non democratic (mainly monarchical) regimes. The international effect of the war was to replace these multi-national Empires with the new nation states. Internally, these new states and some of the old states-were, to begin with, democracies.

GERMANY

Even before the war ended on November 11, 1918, revolution had broken out in Germany against the old regime. The Kaiser fled to Holland and a democratic republic (the Weimar Republic) was established. The democracy lasted until 1933.

RUSSIA

Russia experienced two revolutions in 1917. The first overthrew the Czarist regime and replaced it briefly with a ‘democratic’ one but this, in turn, was overthrown in the second revolution in which the Bolsheviks seized power and sought to establish a dictatorship. In turn this, and the peace of Brest-Litovsk, helped to cause a civil war, which lasted until the end of 1920. By 1921 the Communist dictatorship had firmly established itself.

AUSTRIA

As Austria was defeated, so the old Empire disintegrated and the monarchy collapsed. It was replaced by a democratic republic but this was unstable and weak. Democracy had virtually disappeared by 1934.

7 HUNGARY

In October 1918 a liberal democratic government was formed, but this collapsed as Rumanian forces advanced against Hungary. In 1919 there was a very short-lived Communist dictatorship under Bela Kun. This was overcome by the Rumanians. Later in 1919 Admiral Horthy took power and set up a right wing, semi-fascist dictatorship.

TURKEY

Before 1918 Turkey was nominally governed by a monarch (Sultan), but in fact power had been held by an inefficient group know as the ‘Young Turks’. When the Sultan signed the peace treaty of Sevres in 1920, this helped to provoke a nationalist rebellion led by Mustapha Kemal. In 1922 the sultanate was abolished and Kemal was elected President of Turkey. He established an authoritarian regime.

Thus, inspite of the wishes of the peacemakers, most of the democracies in the defeated countries soon collapsed. Only the Weimar Republic lasted a significant time and it had to face many threats from extremist groups.