Some info on post WW1 Europe to add to the historic picture here

$200 billion had been spent on the war and nearly every European country was bankrupt. Only the US and Japan came out more financially secure than when they entered the war. European world dominance was over.


New democracies rose up in Europe and were very unstable. Austria, Hungary, Germany, France and Italy all had difficulty with democracies. Being ruled for generations by monarchies was hard to overcome as well as a large number of political parties.

The war in the pacific can also trace some lineage back to Versailles. At the outbreak of WWI, Germany had a small but nonetheless existent overseas empire. The Treaty of Versailles saw to it that this empire was divided up between the victors. Germany had several holdings on mainland China in the prewar years, and these holdings were turned over to Japan after the war for its part in the Allied cause. The result was that Japan now had a strong territorial presence in China--a presence that Japan would use to great effect during its later conquest of that country.

Of all of the shortcomings of the Treaty of Versailles, perhaps the most unfortunate was the failure of the League of Nations. Woodrow Wilson, the U.S. president during WWI, had included in his Fourteen Points (upon which the Germans had sued for peace) a stipulation for the creation of an international governing body to resolve future conflicts. The League of Nations, as it was called, was based upon a covenant drafted by Wilson (an idealist), the crux of which called for a collective security agreement between member nations. In the event of an attack upon a constituent, other members would be obligated to provide military assistance. Wilson succeeded in convincing the other participants of the peace conference (namely Lloyd George of England and Clemenceau of France) to agree with this clause, but was unable to persuade the United States Senate. The Senate was afraid that the clause would get the U.S. "sucked into all sorts of little wars" across Europe, and thus refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles unless it were removed or altered. Wilson, however, was adamant that the treaty be left as is--compromise was not an option. Despite Wilson's exhaustive lobbying efforts (which may have contributed to his death), the United States never did ratify the Treaty of Versailles; instead, it signed a separate peace settlement with Germany in the early 1920’s. More importantly, the U.S. did not join the League of Nations--a decision that ultimately condemned it to failure. Had the U.S. lived up to its new position of preeminence and taken an active role in world politics, the Hitlers and Mussolinis and Tojos of the world might have thought twice before embarking down the road to war.


http://www.qt.org/worldwar/prelude/prelude1-2.html

[ 25. March 2003, 09:12 AM: Message edited by: Kai-Petri ]

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