Chapter 17The Road to War

Section 1

The Search for

Peace

Legacies of WWI

• {{Americans worried about being dragged back into another foreign war}

• Such worries led the United States to follow a policy of partial isolationism}, or withdrawal from world affairs in the 20’s and 30’s

• Isolationism led the U.S. to shun international organizations that were set up after WWI, like the League of Nations and the World Court

• Rather than joining international peacekeeping organizations the U.S. used diplomacy to promote world peace

• American peace groups tried to urge the U.S. government to negotiate {disarmament, or reducing the size of a country’s military}, with other world leaders

The Washington Conference

• Starting in November 1921 the U.S. hosted the {Washington Conference which asked several nations to agree to focus on naval disarmament} and Pacific security

• {The meeting was organized by U.S. secretary of state Charles Evans Hughes}

• Hughes proposed that the U.S., Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan destroy or retire some of their warships in a plan called the Five-Power Naval Treaty

• In the Four Power Treaty, Britain, France, Japan and the U.S. pledged to respect one another’s territory in the Pacific.

• In the Nine-Power Treaty, which included the countries in the Five-Power Treaty plus China, Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal, China’s territorial integrity was guaranteed, and all its signers had to uphold the Open Door Policy

The 1921 Washington Conference

Unsuccessful Efforts

• On April 6, 1927 French foreign minister Aristide Briand and U.S. secretary of state Frank Kellogg suggested an agreement signed by all nations to outlaw war

• {The Kellogg-Briand Pact, signed by 62 countries, outlawed war except in the event of self defense}

• But the treaty lacked provisions of enforcement • This became clear in September 1931 when Japan

invaded Manchuria in China leading to war between Japan and China

• Many Americans called for a boycott of Japan, but do you think the U.S. leaders would let that happen?

• The failure of diplomacy to prevent Japanese aggression marked the end of attempts to reach international accords

Japan’s invasion on Japan’s invasion on ManchuriaManchuria

War Debts and Reparations • The issue of war debt also weakened efforts to

maintain peace• Because of the hardships that WWI had on European

allied countries, by 1920 the Allies owed more than $10 billion to the U.S.

• The indebted nations argued that their debts should be canceled. The U.S. rejected appeals from Britain, France and Italy to cancel their war debts

• The only way the Allies could pay back their war debts was to collect reparations from Germany

• In order to pay the $32 billion owed, Germany began to borrow money and print more paper money

• This led to a massive inflation and caused the value of the German mark (dollar) to fall

• British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George urged the U.S. to cancel the debts that Britain and other European nation owed the U.S. from WWI. In explaining his reasoning he said: “the United States did not from first to last make any sacrifice or contribution remotely comparable to those of her European Associates, in life, limb, money, material or trade, towards the victory which she shared with them.”

Military Casualties in World War I 1914-1918Military Casualties in World War I 1914-1918 Belgium 45,550 British Empire 942,135 France 1,368,000 Italy 680,000 Japan 1,344 Portugal 8,145 Romania 300,000 Russia 1,700,000 Serbia 45,000 United States 116,516

Continued….

• With his country in financial collapse, a particularly embittered WWI veteran sought someone to blame

• Adolf Hitler was convinced that politicians, not the German army, was to blame for Germany losing the war

• {Hitler joined a radical political organization and developed a plot to overthrow the German government} in 1923

• The plot failed and Hitler was imprisoned• In prison he continued to plan revenge against those who he

believed had betrayed Germany• In 1924, the Dawes Plan temporarily eased the economic crisis

in Germany by providing loans and giving more time to pay back the reparations.

• In 1931 as the worldwide depression deepened, President Hoover put a halt on reparation and war-debt payments

^ Hitler (far left) with his platoon in Germany WWI

<Hitler (far right) served as a messenger in WWI

>Hitler in prison 1924

In light of Hitler’s ridiculous moustache, here is some more weird beards