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International relations (1919–1939) covers the main interactions shaping world history in this era, with emphasis on diplomacy and economic relations. The important stages of interwar diplomacy and international relations included resolutions of wartime issues, such as reparations owed by Germany and boundaries; American involvement in European finances and disarmament projects; the expectations and failures of the League of Nations; the relationships of the new countries to the old; the distrustful relations of the Soviet Union to the capitalist world; peace and disarmament efforts; responses to the Great Depression starting in 1929; the collapse of world trade; The collapse of democratic regimes one by one; the growth of economic autarky; Japanese aggressiveness toward China; Fascist diplomacy, including the aggressive moves by Mussolini'a Italy and Hitler's Germany; the Spanish Civil War; the appeasement of Germany's expansionist moves toward the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, and the last, desperate stages of rearmament as the second world war increasingly loomed.^[1]

Background

Peace and disarmament

League of Nations

The main institution intended to bring peace and stability and resolve disputes was the League of Nations, created in 1919 . The League was weakened by the non-participation of the United States, Germany and the Soviet Union and (later) of Japan. It could not handle the refusal of major countries, especially Japan and Italy, to accept adverse decisions. Historians agree it was ineffective in major disputes.^[2]^[3]

A series of international crises strained the League to its limits, the earliest being the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Japan was censured and quit the League.^[4] This was soon followed by the Abyssinian Crisis of 1934-36, in which Italy invaded Ethiopia (Abyssinia), one of the two independent African nations. The League tried to enforce economic sanctions upon Italy, but to no avail. The incident highlighted French and British weaknesses, exemplified by their reluctance to alienate Italy and lose it as a counterweight against Hitler's Germany. The limited actions taken by the Western powers pushed Mussolini's Italy towards alliance with Hitler's Germany.^[5] The Abyssinian war showed the world how ineffective the League . It played no role in dealing with the Spanish Civil War. There were also other smaller conflicts that major European nations were involved in, such as the Rif War between Spain and Morocco spearatists, that the League could not resolve.^[6]

Disarmament

The Washington Naval Conference, also called the Washington Arms Conference or the Washington Disarmament Conference, was a military conference called by U.S. President Warren G. Harding and held in Washington, under the Chairmanship of Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes from 12 November 1921 to 6 February 1922. Conducted outside the auspice of the League of Nations, it was attended by nine nations—the United States, Japan, China, France, Great Britain, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, and Portugal^[7] Soviet Russia was not invited to the conference. It focused on resolving misunderstandings or conflicts regarding interests in the Pacific Ocean and East Asia. The main achievement was a series of naval disarmament postals agreed to by all the participants, that lasted for a decade. It resulted in three major treaties: Four-Power Treaty, Five-Power Treaty (the Washington Naval Treaty), the Nine-Power Treaty, and a number of smaller agreements. These treaties preserved peace during the 1920s but Were not renewed, as the world scene turned increasingly negative after 1930.^[8]

The peaceul spirit of Locarno

The seven international treaties negotiated at Locarno in 1925 by the major powers in Europe (not including the Soviet Union) significantly strengthened the legitimacy of Germany, paving the way to its return to the role of a major power and membership in the League of Nations in 1926 With a permanent seat on its council. The Locarno Treaties marked a dramatic improvement in the political climate of western European in 1924–1930. They promoted expectations for continued peaceful settlements, often called the "spirit of Locarno". This spirit was made concrete when Germany joined the League in 1926, and the withdrawal of Allied troops occupying Germany's Rhineland.^[9]

Historian Sally Marks says:

Henceforth the spirit of Locarno would reign, substituting conciliation for enforcement as the basis for peace. Yet for some peace remained a desperate hope rather than an actuality. A few men knew that the spirit of Locarno was a fragile foundation on which to build a lasting peace.^[10]

Nazi Germany had no use for a peaceful spirit. It repudiated Locarno by sending troops into the demilitarized Rhineland on 7 March 1936.^[11]

Outlawing war

The Kellogg–Briand Pact of 1928 was a proposal drafted by the United States and France that they were illegal. Most nations readily signed up and used the occasion to promote the goal peaceful foreign policies. The only issue was the actual formula of the renunciation of all wars - the French wanted the definition restricted to wars of aggression, while the Americans insisted it should include all kinds of warfare. Historian Harold Josephson notes that the Pact has been ridiculed for its moralism and legalism and lack of influence on foreign policy. He argues instead that it led to a more activist American foreign policy. Its central provisions renouncing the use of war, and promoting peaceful settlement of disputes and the use of collective force to prevent aggression, were incorporated into the UN Charter and other treaties. Although civil wars continued, wars between established states have been rare since 1945, with a few exceptions in the Middle East.^[12]

In the United States, much of the Energetic grass-roots support came from women's organizations, and Protestant churches.^[13]

Criminalizing poison gas

Realistic critics understood that war could not really be outlawed, but its worst excesses might be banned. Poison gas became the focus of a worldwide crusade in the 1920s. Poison gas did not win battles, and the generals did not want it. The soldiers hated it far more intensely than bullets or explosive shells. By 1918 chemical shells made up 35 per cent of French ammunition supplies, 25 per cent of British and 20 per cent of the American stock. The “Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous, or Other Gases and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare” ["Geneva Protocol"] was issued in 1925, and was accepted as policy by all major counties.^[14]^[15]

Europe

Great Britain

Britain was a "troubled giant" that was less of a dominant diplomatic force in the 1920s than before. It often had to give way to the United States, which frequently exercised its financial superiority.^[16] The main themes of British foreign policy include a role at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, where Lloyd George worked hard to moderate French demands for revenge.^[17] He was partly successful, but Britain soon had to moderate French policy toward Germany, as in the Locarno Treaties.^[18]^[19] Britain was an active member of the new League of Nations, but repeated frustration was the main result.^[20]^[21]

Disarmament was high on the agenda, and Britain played a major role following the United States in the Washington Naval Conference of 1921 in working toward naval disarmament of the major powers. By 1933 disarmament had collapsed and the issue became rearming for a war against Germany.^[22]

Britain faced a large debt of money it borrowed from the U.S. to fight the war. The U.S. refused to cancel the debt but in 1923 the British renegotiated its £978 million war debt to the US Treasury by promising regular payments of £34 million for ten years then £40 million for 52 years. The idea was for the US to loan money to Germany, which in turn paid reparations to Britain, which in turn paid off its loans from the US government. In 1931 all German payments ended, and in 1932 Britain suspended its payments to the US. The German and British debts were finally repaid after 1945.^[23]

Britain supported the American solution to German payments through the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan, whereby Germany paid its reparations using money borrowed from New York banks.^[24]^[25]

Labour Party

In domestic British politics, the emerging Labour Party had a distinctive and suspicious foreign policy based on pacifism. Its leaders believed that peace was impossible because of capitalism, secret diplomacy, and the trade in armaments. That is it stressed material factors that ignored the psychological memories of the Great War, and the highly emotional tensions regarding nationalism and the boundaries of the countries. Nevertheless, party leader Ramsay MacDonald as Prime Minister (1924, 1929-35) spent much of his attention on European policies. In his 10 months as Prime Minister 1924 he established the basic tenets of of British foreign policy for the next dozen years. He had been a strong opponent of entering First World War, and in the unhappy aftermath many observers thought he had been vindicated. Incessant French demands against Germany annoyed the British leadership, and undermined the bilateral relationship with France. MacDonald made it a matter of high principle to dispense evenhanded justice between France and Germany, saying, "let them put their demands. In such a way that Great Britain could say that she supported both sides." ^[26] MacDonald played a key role in enabling acceptance of the Dawes plan, and worked hard make the League of Nations dream a reality. In his 10 months as Prime Minister in 1924, he set the course of British foreign policy^[27]

Great Depression

The Great Depression in the United Kingdom starting in 1929 put enormous pressure on the British economy. Britain move toward imperial preference, which meant low tariffs among the Commonwealth of Nations, and higher barriers toward trade with outside countries. The flow of money from New York dried up, and the system of reparations and payment of debt died in 1931.

Appeasement of Germany and Italy

Vivid memories of the horrors and deaths of the World War inclined many Britons—and their leaders in all parties—to pacifism in the interwar era. This led directly to the appeasement of dictators in order to avoid their threats of war.^[28]

The challenge came from dictators, first Benito Mussolini of Italy, then Adolf Hitler of a much more powerful Nazi Germany. The League of Nations proved disappointing to its supporters; it was unable to resolve any of the threats posed by the dictators. British policy was to "appease" them in the hopes they would be satiated. By 1938 it was clear that war was looming, and that Germany had the world's most powerful military. The final act of appeasement came when Britain and France sacrificed Czechoslovakia to Hitler's demands at the Munich Agreement of 1938.^[29] Instead of satiation Hitler menaced Poland, and at last Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain dropped appeasement and stood firm in promising to defend Poland. Hitler however cut a deal with Joseph Stalin to divide Eastern Europe; when Germany did invade Poland in September 1939, Britain and France declared war; the British Commonwealth followed London's lead.^[30]

France

The main goal of foreign policy was the diplomatic response to the demands of the French army in the 1920s and 1930s to form alliances against the German threat, especially with Britain and with smaller countries in central Europe.^[31]^[32]

1920s

France was part of the Allied force that occupied the Rhineland following the Armistice. Foch supported Poland in the Greater Poland Uprising and in the Polish–Soviet War and France also joined Spain during the Rif War. From 1925 until his death in 1932, Aristide Briand, as prime minister during five short intervals, directed French foreign policy, using his diplomatic skills and sense of timing to forge friendly relations with Weimar Germany as the basis of a genuine peace within the framework of the League of Nations. He realized France could neither contain the much larger Germany by itself nor secure effective support from Britain or the League.^[33]

In January 1923 as a response to the failure of the German to ship enough coal as part of its reparations, France (and Belgium) occupied the industrial region of the Ruhr. Germany responded with passive resistance, including Printing fast amounts of marks To pay for the occupation, thereby causing runaway inflation. Inflation heavily damaged the German middle class (Whose bank accounts became worthless) but it also damaged the French franc. France fomented a separatist movement pointing to a independent buffer state, but it collapsed after some bloodshed. The intervention was a failure, and in summer 1924 France accepted the American solution to the reparations issues, as expressed in the Dawes Plan.^[34]

In the 1920s, France established an elaborate system of static border defences called the Maginot Line, designed to fight off any German attack. The Maginot Line did not extend into Belgium, where Germany attacked in 1940 and went around the French defenses. Military alliances were signed with weak powers in 1920–21, called the "Little Entente".^[35]

1930s

Appeasement was increasingly adopted as Germany grew stronger after 1933, for France suffered a stagnant economy, unrest in its colonies, and bitter internal political fighting. Appeasement say Martin Thomas was not a coherent diplomatic strategy nor a copying of the British.^[36] France appeased Italy on the Ethiopia question because it could not afford to risk an alliance between Italy and Germany.^[37]

When Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland—the part of Germany where no troops were allowed—neither Paris nor London would risk war, and nothing wad done.^[38]

Appeasement of Germany, in cooperation with Britain, was the policy after 1936, as France sought peace even in the face of Hitler's escalating demands. Édouard Daladier refused to go to war against Germany and Italy without British support as Neville Chamberlain wanted to save peace using the Munich Agreement in 1938.^[39]^[40] France's military alliance with Czechoslovakia was sacrificed at Hitler's demand when France and Britain agreed to his terms at Munich in 1938.^[41]^[42]

The Blum government joined Britain in establishing an arms embargo during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). Blum rejected support for the Spanish Republicans because of his fear that civil war might spread to deeply divided France. As the Republican cause faltered in Spain, Blum secretly supplied it the Republican cause with arms, funds and sanctuaries. Financial support in military cooperation with Poland was also a policy. The government nationalized arms suppliers, and dramatically increased its program of rearming the French military in a last-minute catch up with the Germans.^[43]

Fascism

Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism in Europe shortly after the First World War. It dominated Italy (1923–43) and Nazi Germany (1933-45) and played a role in other countries. It was based in tightly organized local groups, all controlled from the top. It violently opposed to liberalism, Marxism, and anarchism, and tried to control all aspects of societ\y. The foreign policy Militaristic and aggressive. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were critical allies in the second world war. Japan, with an authoritarian government that did not have a well-mobilized popular base, was allied with them to form the Axis.^[44]

Fascists saw World War I as a revolution that brought massive changes to the nature of war, society, the state, and technology. The advent of total war and the total mass mobilization of society had broken down the distinction between civilians and combatants. A "military citizenship" arose in which all citizens were involved with the military in some manner during the war. The war had resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines and providing economic production and logistics to support them, as well as having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.^[45]

Fascists argue that liberal democracy is obsolete, and they regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties. Opposition parties or organizations or publications are not tolerated.^[46] Such a state is led by a strong leader—such as a dictator his fascist party—to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society without dissent. Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature, and views political violence and warfare as tools that can achieve national rejuvenation.^[47]

Hitler re-militarised Germany's Rhineland district in 1936 in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles which said no troops would be stationed there. France and Britain did nothing.^[48] Hitler discovered that threats and bold moves paid off, and he escalated demands against Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. Finally Britain and France declared war after his invasion of Poland in September 1939. The Second World War had begun.^[49]

Germany

Germany, stripped of its overseas colonies, its Polish regions in the east and Alsace-Lorraine in the West, became a republic in 1919. It was committed to democracy and modernity, but faced internal challenges from the far left and the farright, and external pressures from France.

Weimar Germany (1919-1933)

Reparations

The Versailles Treaty required Germany to pay reparations for the damage it did during the war. Germany tried to avoid the obligation, but France used military force and occupied German industrial areas, making reparations the "chief battleground of the post-war era" and "the focus of the power struggle between France and Germany over whether the Versailles Treaty was to be enforced or revised".^[50]^[51]

The Treaty of Versailles and the 1921 London Schedule of Payments required Germany to pay 132 billion gold marks (US$33 billion) in reparations to cover civilian damage caused during the war. This figure was divided into three categories of bonds: A, B, and C. Of these, Germany was only required to pay towards 'A' and 'B' bonds totaling 50 billion marks (US$12.5 billion). The remaining 'C' bonds, which Germany did not have to pay, were designed to deceive the Anglo-French public into believing Germany was being heavily fined and punished for the war.

Because of the lack of reparation payments by Germany, France occupied the Ruhr in 1923 to enforce payments, causing an international crisis. It was resolved by American intervention in the form of the Dawes Plan in 1924.^[52] This plan set out a new payment method. New York banks loaned Germany money that was used to pay reparations and rebuild its heavy industry. Despite this, by 1928 Germany called for a new payment plan, resulting in the Young Plan that established the German reparation requirements at 112 billion marks (US$26.3 billion) and created a schedule of payments that would see Germany complete payments by 1988. With the collapse of the German economy in 1931, reparations were suspended for a year and in 1932 during the Lausanne Conference they were cancelled altogether. Between 1919 and 1932, Germany paid less than 21 billion marks in reparations. After 1953 West Germany paid the entire remaining balance.^[53]

The German people saw reparations as a national humiliation; the German Government worked to undermine the validity of the Treaty of Versailles and the requirement to pay. British economist John Maynard Keynes called the treaty a Carthaginian peace that would economically destroy Germany. His arguments had a profound effect on historians, politicians, and the public at large in Britain and elsewhere. Despite Keynes' arguments and those by later historians supporting or reinforcing Keynes' views, the consensus of contemporary historians is that reparations were not as intolerable as the Germans or Keynes had suggested and were within Germany's capacity to pay had there been the political will to do so.^[54]

Rapallo and Locarno treaties

Apart from the reparations issue, Germany's highest priority was normalizing its relations with its neighbors. The new policy was to turn east for a new friendship with communist Soviet Union In 1922, they signed the Treaty of Rapallo. The Soviets for the first time were recognized; it opened The way for large scale trade. Moscow secretly allowed Germany to train soldiers and airmen in exchange for giving Russia military technology.^[55]^[56]^[57]

Nazi Germany (1933-45)

Hitler and his Nazis turned Germany into a dictatorship with a highly hostile outlook toward the Treaty of Versailles and Jews.^[58] It solved its unemployment crisis by heavy military spending.^[59]

Hitler's diplomatic tactics were to make seemingly reasonable demands, then threatening war if they were not met; concessions were made, he accepted them and moved onto a new demand.^[60] When opponents tried to appease him, he accepted the gains that were offered, then went to the next target. That aggressive strategy worked as Germany pulled out of the League of Nations (1933), rejected the Versailles Treaty and began to re-arm (1935) with the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, won back the Saar (1935), re-militarized the Rhineland (1936), formed an alliance ("axis") with Mussolini's Italy (1936), sent massive military aid to Franco in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), seized Austria (1938), took over Czechoslovakia after the British and French appeasement of the Munich Agreement of 1938, formed a peace pact with Stalin's Russia in August 1939, and finally invaded Poland in September 1939.^[61]

1933-35

Hitler and the leading Nazis had little diplomatic experience before they came to power in January 1933, and they moved slowly in that arena . While the concentrated on a total takeover of the power centers inside Germany.^[62] The first external move was to cripple a disarmament conference that was underway in Geneva, by rejecting troop limitations. The Germans insisted that the Nazi storm troopers should not be counted in any quota system. Although Britain, France, Italy and the United States were ready to freeze armaments for four years, the Germans insisted on having "defensive weapons" immediately.

Germany quit the disarmament conference and the League in October 1933 but even then few few European leaders (apart from Winston Churchill) saw Hitler as an enemy or threat to peace. For example, Eric Phipps the British ambassador 1933-37 eagerly promoted policies, later known as appeasement. He believed that that the League of Nations Was the key to preventing the next war, and tried to enlist the French in efforts to get the Germans to cooperate.^[63] Mussolini was also eager to cooperate with Hitler, and succeeded in getting the German signature on the Four-Power Pact, between Britain, France, Italy, and Germany. The Pact failed, and after Hitler visited Mussolini in Rome, they had a falling out German intentions to take over Austria. Britain and France tried for the next several years to attract Italy more to their side than to Germany's.^[64] In January 1934 Germany signed a non-aggression pact with Poland, which disrupted the French network of anti-German alliances in Eastern Europe.^[65] In March 1935 Hitler denounced the requirement of German disarmament contained in the Versailles Treaty of 1919. Germany and Britain came to terms in June 1935, in the Anglo-German Naval Agreement. Germany promised to limit or naval expansion to 35 percent of the British, thereby driving a wedge between Britain and France.^[66]

Americans had a deep negative attitude toward Hitler and the Nazis, and relations Steadily deteriorated over trade disputes, anti-Jewish demonstrations, and rearmament. Washington decided that German foreign policy primarily reflected two factors: its internal economic problems and Hitler's expansionist dreams. Meanwhile, the lay Roosevelt administration open new relations with the Soviet Union on a basis of détente, along with the promise there would be no espionage.^[67]

1936-37

Greece

In Greece, the site of several revanchist wars in the years prior to the First World War, the divided international loyalties of the political elite reached a crisis over entering the World War against its historic enemy, the Ottoman Empire. During what was known as the National Schism, a pro-British, liberal and nationalist movement led by Eleftherios Venizelos struggled with the conservative and pro-German monarch Constantine I for control.

Greek troops seized Smyrna and a large sector of western Anatonia in 1919. They had British support. In 1920 the Ottoman government agreed to the Treaty of Sèvres; it stipulated that in five years time a plebiscite would be held in Smyrna on whether the region would join Greece. However, Turkish nationalists, led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, overthrew the Ottoman government and organised tried to expell the Greeks in the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922). A major Greek offensive ground to a halt in 1921, and by 1922 Greek troops were in retreat. The Turkish forces recaptured Smyrna and drove out all the Greek forces. The war with Turkey ended with an agreement to stage massive ethnic exchange, with 1.1 million ethnic Greek Christians who had lived in what was now Turkey (and perhaps could not speak Greek) moving back to Greece, and 380,000 Muslims moving to Turkey.^[68]

Soviet Union

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War exposed political divisions across Europe. The right and the Catholics supported the Nationalists as a way to stop the expansion of Bolshevism. On the left, including labor unions, students and intellectuals, the war represented a necessary battle to stop the spread of fascism. Antiwar and pacifist sentiment was strong in many countries, leading to warnings that the Civil War had the potential of escalating into a second world war.^[69] In this respect, the war was an indicator of the growing instability across Europe.^[70]

The Spanish Civil War involved tens of thousands of outsiders from right and left who came to fight.^[71] Italy sent infantry regiments; Germany sent its air force.^[72] Communist elements around the world, supervised by Moscow, sent volunteers to the "International Brigades."^[73] Britain and France led a coalition of 27 nations that promised non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War, including an embargo on all arms to Spain. The United States unofficially went along. Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union signed on officially, but ignored the embargo. The attempted suppression of imported materials was largely ineffective, however, and France especially facilitated large shipments to Republican troops. The League of Nations did not try to act.

Latin America

The main foreign policy initiative of the United States was the Good Neighbor Policy, which was a move toward a more non-interventionist U.S. policy in Latin America. Since the 1890s Americans had seen this region as an American sphere of influence. American forces were withdrawn from Haiti, and new treaties with Cuba and Panama ended their status as U.S. protectorates. In December 1933, Roosevelt signed the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, renouncing the right to intervene unilaterally in the affairs of Latin American countries. The U.S. repealed the Platt Amendment, freeing Cuba from legal and official interference by the United States.^[74]

The Great Depression in Latin America had a devastating impact, as the demand for its raw materials drastically declined, undermining the critical export sector. Chile, Peru, and Bolivia were hardest hit.^[75]^[76] Intellectuals and government leaders in Latin America turned their backs on the older economic policies and turned toward import substitution industrialization. The goal was to create self-sufficient economies, which would have their own industrial sectors and large middle classes and which would be immune to the ups and downs of the global economy. Despite the potential threats to United States commercial interests, the Roosevelt administration (1933–1945) understood that the United States could not wholly oppose import substitution. Roosevelt implemented a Good Neighbor policy and did not block the nationalization of some American companies in Latin America. Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized American oil companies, out of which he created Pemex.^[77]^[78]

Brazil

In Brazil, the largest country, a liberal revolution of 1930 overthrew the oligarchic coffee plantation owners and brought to power an urban middle class that and business interests that promoted industrialization and modernization. Aggressive promotion of new industry turned around the economy by 1933, and encouraged American investors. support. Brazil's leaders in the 1920s and 1930s decided that that Argentina's implicit foreign policy goal was to isolate Portuguese-speaking Brazil from Spanish-speaking neighbors, thus facilitating the expansion of Argentine economic and political influence in South America. Even worse, was the fear that a more powerful Argentine Army would launch a surprise attack on the weaker Brazilian Army. To counter this threat, Brazil forged closer links with the United States. Meanwhile, Argentina moved in the opposite direction. During World War II, Brazil was a staunch ally of the United States and sent its military to Europe. The United States provided over $100 million in Lend-Lease grants, in return for free rent on air bases used to transport American soldiers and supplies across the Atlantic, and naval bases for anti-submarine operations. In sharp contrast, Argentina was officially neutral and at times favored Germany.^[79]^[80]

Border disputes and warfare

Small-scale border disputes were common,^[81] but only one spiraled out of control, leading to a major war: the Chaco War in 1932-35. Two small countries, Bolivia (with 2.2 million people) and Paraguay (with only 900,000) fought grueling battles over control of the Gran Chaco, a large but long-neglected border region where oil had recently been discovered. Bolivia, heavy oil, but needed a port on rivers controlled by Paraguay to export it. Bolivia used authoritarian methods to raise a large, well-equipped army. However, its soldiers were accustomed to high altitudes and became sickly in the low-lying disease infested Chaco jungles.^[82] Paraguay, employing émigré Russian officers, had much better planning and logistics, and was generally more successful militarily. About 28,000 soldiers and all were killed. Paraguay was awarded about three fourths of the disputed territory in a peace treaty brokered by Argentina and four other South American nations. Frustrated Bolivian veterans formed a political party, staged a coup and ruled for three years until they in turn were overthrown by the next coup^[83]

Asia and Africa

Egypt

In December 1921, demonstrations again led to violence. In deference to the growing nationalism and at the suggestion of the High Commissioner, Lord Allenby, the UK unilaterally declared Egyptian independence on 28 February 1922 Britain, however, continued in control of what was renamed the Kingdom of Egypt. British guided the king and retained control of the Canal Zone, Sudan and Egypt's external and military affairs. King Fuad died in 1936 and King Farouk inherited the throne at the age of sixteen. Alarmed by the Second Italo-Abyssinian War when Italy invaded Ethiopia, he signed the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, requiring Britain to withdraw all troops from Egypt by 1949, except at the Suez Canal. During World War II, British troops used Egypt as its primary base for all Allied operations throughout the region. British troops were withdrawn to the Suez Canal area in 1947, but nationalist, anti-British feelings continued to grow after the war.^[84]

Japan

In Japan, the Army increasingly took control of the government, assassinated opposing leaders, suppressed the left, and promoted a highly aggressive foreign policy with respect to China. Japanese policy angered the United States, Britain France, and the Netherlands.^[85] Japanese nationalism was the primary inspiration, coupled with a disdain for democracy.^[86] The extreme right became influential throughout the Japanese government and society, notably within the Kwantung Army, which was stationed in Manchuria along the Japanese-owned South Manchuria Railroad. During the Manchurian Incident of 1931, radical army officers conquered Manchuria from local officials and set up the puppet government of Manchukuo there without permission from the Japanese government. International criticism of Japan following the invasion led to Japan withdrawing from the League of Nations.^[87]^[88]

Japan's expansionist vision grew increasingly bold. Many of Japan's political elite aspired to have Japan acquire new territory for resource extraction and settlement of surplus population.^[89] These ambitions led to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. After their victory in the Chinese capital, the Japanese military committed the infamous Nanking Massacre. The Japanese military failed to destroy the Chinese government led by Chiang Kai-shek, which retreated to remote areas. The conflct was a stalemate that lasted until 1945.^[90] Japan's war aim was to establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, a vast pan-Asian union under Japanese domination.^[91] Hirohito's role in Japan's foreign wars remains a subject of controversy, with various historians portraying him as either a powerless figurehead or an enabler and supporter of Japanese militarism.^[92] The United States grew increasingly worried about the Philippines, an American colony, within easy range of Japan And started looking for ways to contain Japanese expansion.^[93]

American public and elite opinion-- including even the isolationists-- strongly opposed Japan's invasion of China in 1937. President Roosevelt imposed increasingly stringent economic sanctions intended to deprive Japan of the oil and steel in needed to continue its war in China. Japan reacted by forging an alliance with Germany and Italy in 1940, known as the Tripartite Pact, which worsened its relations with the US. In July 1941, the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands froze all Japanese assets and cut off oil shipments--Japan had little oil of its own.^[94]

China

The Chinese revolution of 1911 that overthrew the last Emperor resulted in a decade of chaotic conditions, with power increasingly held by regional warlords. In the 1920s, Sun Yat-sen established a revolutionary base in south China, and set out to unite the fragmented nation. With assistance from the Soviet Union (itself fresh from a Lenin's takeover ), he entered into an alliance with the fledgling Communist Party of China. After Sun's death in 1925, his protégé, Chiang Kai-shek, seized control of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party or KMT) and brought most of south and central China under its rule in a military campaign known as the Northern Expedition (1926–1927). Having defeated the warlords in south and central China by military force, Chiang was able to secure the nominal allegiance of the warlords in the North. In 1927, Chiang turned on the CPC and relentlessly chased the CPC armies and its leaders from their bases in southern and eastern China. In 1934, driven from their mountain bases such as the Chinese Soviet Republic, the CPC forces embarked on the Long March across China's most desolate terrain to the northwest, where they established a guerrilla base at Yan'an in Shaanxi Province. During the Long March, the communists reorganized under a new leader, Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung).^[95]

Few Chinese had any illusions about Japanese desires on China. Hungry for raw materials and pressed by a growing population, Japan initiated the seizure of Manchuria in September 1931 and established ex-Qing emperor Puyi as head of the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1932. The League of Nations denounced Japan, and it quit the League. The Japanese began to push from south of the Great Wall into northern China and the coastal provinces. In 1937, the Japanese army, acting largely independent of Tokyo, clashed with Chinese forces in the Marco Polo Bridge Incident outside Beijing.^[96]

A full-scale war began--the Second Sino-Japanese War.^[97] Japan held enormous advantages in firepower, mobility and organizational strength. China had the sympathy of most of the world, especially the United States and Britain.^[98] Shanghai fell after a three-month battle and Japan took control virtually all the coastal cities. The capital of Nanjing fell in December 1937. It was followed by an orgy of mass murders and rapes known as the Nanjing Massacre. Chiang moved his national capital to remote Chongqing. Japan set up a second puppet government, the Wang Jingwei regime, based in Nanjing. The United States took the lead in expressing outrage, and began plans to systematically aid Chiang's regime by a long supply line through Indochina while demanding that Japan withdraw. Japan took control of Indochina from France in 1941, cutting the main supply line, and escalating the conflict toward a war with the United States and Britain.^[99]^[100]

Coming of World War II

Notes

^ Norman Rich, Great Power Diplomacy since 1914 (2003) pp 70-248.
^ F.P. Walters, A History of the League of Nations (Oxford UP, 1965).
^ Mowat, ed. The New Cambridge Modern History, Vol. 12: 1898-1945 (1968) pp 242-68.
^ Ian Hill Nish, Japan's Struggle with Internationalism: Japan, China, and the League of Nations, 1931-3 (Routledge, 1993).
^ George W. Baer, "Sanctions and security: The League of Nations and the Italian–Ethiopian war, 1935–1936." International Organization 27#2 (1973): 165-179.
^ Pablo La Porte, "'Rien à ajouter': The League of Nations and the Rif War (1921—1926)," European History Quarterly (2011) 41#1 pp 66–87, online
^ u-s-history.com- Retrieved 2011-12-18
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@@ Line 47: / Line 47: @@
 Britain supported the American solution to German payments through the [[Dawes Plan]]  and the [[Young Plan]], whereby Germany paid its reparations using money borrowed from New York banks.<ref>Patrick O. Cohrs, ''The unfinished peace after world war 1: America, Britain and the stabilization of Europe, 1919-1932'' (2006).</ref><ref>Sally Marks, "The Myths of Reparations", ''Central European History'', (1978) 11#3 pp 231–255</ref>
+====Labour Party====
+In domestic British politics, the emerging Labour Party had a distinctive and suspicious foreign policy based on pacifism. Its leaders believed that peace was impossible because of capitalism, secret diplomacy, and the trade in armaments. That is it stressed material factors that ignored the psychological memories of the Great War, and the highly emotional tensions regarding nationalism and the boundaries of the countries.  Nevertheless, party leader [[Ramsay MacDonald]] as  Prime Minister (1924, 1929-35) spent much of his attention on European policies. In his 10 months as Prime Minister 1924 he established the basic tenets of of British foreign policy for the next dozen years. He had been a strong opponent of entering First World War, and in the unhappy aftermath many observers thought he had been vindicated. Incessant French demands against Germany annoyed the British leadership, and undermined the bilateral relationship with France. MacDonald made it a matter of high principle to dispense evenhanded justice between France and Germany, saying, "let them put their demands. In such a way that Great Britain could say that she supported both sides." <ref>A.J.P. Taylor, ''English History: 1914-1945 '' (1965) p 214-17 </ref>  MacDonald played a key role in enabling acceptance of the Dawes plan, and worked hard make the League of Nations dream a reality.  In his 10 months as Prime Minister in 1924, he set the course of British foreign policy<ref>Henry R. Winkler, "The Emergence of a Labor Foreign Policy in Great Britain, 1918-1929." ''Journal of Modern History'' 28.3 (1956): 247-258. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1876236 in JSTOR]</ref>
-The [[Great Depression]] starting in 1929 put enormous pressure on the British economy. Britain move toward imperial preference, which meant low tariffs among the Commonwealth of Nations, and higher barriers toward trade with outside countries.  The flow of money from New York dried up, and the system of reparations and payment of debt died in 1931.
+====Great Depression====
-In domestic British politics, the emerging Labour Party had a distinctive and suspicious foreign policy based on pacifism. Its leaders believed that peace was impossible because of capitalism, secret diplomacy, and the trade in armaments. That is it stressed material factors that ignored the psychological memories of the Great War, and the highly emotional tensions regarding nationalism and the boundaries of the countries.  Nevertheless, party leader [[Ramsay MacDonald]] spent much of his attention on European policies.<ref>Henry R. Winkler, . "The Emergence of a Labor Foreign Policy in Great Britain, 1918-1929." ''Journal of Modern History'' 28.3 (1956): 247-258. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1876236 in JSTOR]</ref>
+The [[Great Depression in the United Kingdom]] starting in 1929 put enormous pressure on the British economy. Britain move toward imperial preference, which meant low tariffs among the Commonwealth of Nations, and higher barriers toward trade with outside countries.  The flow of money from New York dried up, and the system of reparations and payment of debt died in 1931.
 ====Appeasement of Germany and Italy====