Transcript Steps Toward the Normalization of Europe in the 1920s

The 1920s: Part of a “Thirty Years’ War”
or the “Recovery of Europe”?
 1919: Germans establish the Weimar Republic.
 April 1921: German reparations bill set at 132 billion gold
marks (52% for France, 22% for Britain, 10% for Italy)
 1922: Germany recognizes USSR in Treaty of Rapallo.
 Jan-Nov 1923: Germany defaults on war reparations, and
France occupies the Ruhr Industrial District.
 1924: The Dawes Plan creates a system to pay war
reparations and encourages U.S. loans to Germany.
 1925/26: The Treaty of Locarno leads to German entry into
the League of Nations.
 1929/30: The Young Plan lightens the reparations burden,
and France evacuates the Rhineland.
In early November 1918, Prince Max of Baden appealed to
Friedrich Ebert of the SPD to become Chancellor, prevent a
Communist revolution, and safeguard national unity.
Communist insurgents in Berlin, January 1919
The “Free Corps” crushed the Reds in the name of Ebert
League for
Combating
Bolshevism:
“BOLSHEVISM
BRINGS WAR,
UNEMPLOYMENT,
AND HUNGER,”
January 1919
“Workers, burghers, farmers, soldiers of every German
tribe: Unite in the National Assembly!”
Parties supporting the Weimar Republic won over 75% of
the vote in January 1919
The first women elected to a German parliament
(Weimar, 1919)
THE WEIMAR COALITION SUFFERED MASSIVE
ELECTORAL LOSSES IN JUNE 1920
Year
KPD USPD
SPD
Soc.
Dem.
DDP
DVP DNVP
Center
Demo
(Nat. (nation
(RC)
-cratic
Lib.) -alist)
1919
---
7.7
37.9
18.6
19.7
4.4
10.3
1920
2.1
17.9
21.7
8.3
17.8
13.9
15.1
German Chancellor Joseph Wirth confers with Soviet
Foreign Minister Georgy Chicherin at Rapallo, April 1922
German Foreign Minister
Walther Rathenau, after
signing the Treaty of Rapallo
A shy Soviet observer (on left) at the German
Reichswehr summer maneuvers of 1927
“The Stab in the Back”
(Nazi magazine cover,
1924):
Radical nationalists
assassinated Rathenau
in July 1922
The Boulevards of Paris, 11 November 1918
French troops enter Strasbourg, 29 November 1918
French Military Cemetery at Verdun,
with “Ossuary” built from 1920 to 1932
The Ossuary of Verdun
In December 1920 a
majority of French
Socialists affiliated with
the Comintern
“How can I vote against
Bolshevism?”
(French nationalist
campaign poster, 1919
In January 1923 Premier Raymond Poincaré
ordered the occupation of the Ruhr
The French seized coal
and steel in lieu of war
reparations
President Ebert visits the Ruhr to encourage “passive resistance”
Germany’s hyper-inflation:
A small businessman picks
up cash for his weekly
payroll, early summer,
1923
Weighing currency
to determine its
value, late summer,
1923
Target used
by “Black
Reichswehr”
volunteers in
1923 who
engaged in
“active
resistance”
Alfred Rosenberg and Adolf Hitler review marching
Stormtroopers in Munich, 4 November 1923
Nazi Stormtroopers outside Munich City Hall, 9 November 1923
Postcard of Hitler
in Landsberg
Prison (1924),
where he dictated
Mein Kampf
Gustav Stresemann made peace with France as Chancellor (Aug.Nov. 1923) and Foreign Minister (1923-29). The U.S. banker
Charles Dawes devised a new reparations plan in 1924….
Charles Dawes founded the largest
bank in Illinois, served several
Republican Presidents, and won the
Nobel Prize for Peace in 1925
Opel was the first
German company to
mass produce cars
on an assembly line.
GM bought it in 1929
INTER-ALLIED WAR DEBTS IN 1919
(in millions of dollars, see P.M.H. Bell, p. 22)
John Maynard Keynes proposed in 1920 that all war debts
and reparations be cancelled, but the U.S. government did
not even consider debt forgiveness until 1931.
When Ebert died in 1925, Germans elected Field Marshall
Paul von Hindenburg as President of the Weimar Republic
Gustav Stresemann & Aristide Briand,
Co-Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize for signing the
Treaty of Locarno in 1925
Stresemann addresses the General Assembly of the
League of Nations in Geneva, September 1926
French Communists & nationalists both rejected Locarno
(pro- and anti-communist posters from 1927 target Briand)
The Young Plan, signed in Paris in June 1929,
inspired a referendum campaign by German rightists
“You must slave away
unto the third
generation!”
Stresemann defends the Young Plan in a
turbulent Reichstag session, 1929
“The Rhine is Free!”
(1930)
“The Steel Helmet on the
Rhine” (October 1930)
UNEMPLOYMENT RATES, 1928-1933: The DVP and SPD
clashed over whether to raise taxes or slash jobless benefits
(The French figures are doubtless understated.)
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS (1919-1940)