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LESSON 1 Instability After World War I (The Great Depression (The brief…
LESSON 1
Instability After World War I
Uneasy Peace, Uncertain Security
From the beginning, the peace settlement at the end of World War I left nations unhappy.
One problem was the failure of the United States to join the League.
Between 1919 and 1924, desire for security led the French government to demand strict enforcement of the Treaty of Versailles.
The new German republic made its first payment in 1921.
Inflation in Germany
The German government adopted a policy of passive resistance to this French occupation.
Both France and Germany began to seek a way out of the disaster. In August 1924, an international commission adopted a new plan for reparations.
The Dawes Plan also granted an initial $200 million loan for German recovery.
The Treaty of Locarno
With prosperity came a new European diplomacy. The foreign ministers of Germany and France, Gustav Stresemann and Aristide Briand, fostered a spirit of cooperation.
Three years later, the Kellogg-Briand Pact brought even more hope.
The Great Depression
The brief period of prosperity that began in Europe in 1924 ended in an economic collapse that came to be known as the Great Depression.
Two factors played a major role in the start of the Great Depression.
The second trigger was an international financial crisis involving the U.S. stock market.
The second trigger was an international financial crisis involving the U.S. stock market.
In a panic, U.S. investors withdrew more funds from Germany and other European markets.
Responses to the Depression
Economic depression was not new to Europe.
Governments were unsure of how to deal with the crisis.
One effect of the economic crisis was increased government activity in the economy.
In 1919, most European states, both major and minor, had democratic governments.
Germany
Imperial Germany ended in 1918 with Germany's defeat in the war.
To make matters worse, after a period of relative prosperity from 1924 to 1929, Germany was struck by the Great Depression.
France
France, too, suffered from financial problems after the war.
The Popular Front started a program for workers that some have called the French New Deal.
Great Britain
Although Britain experienced limited prosperity from 1925 to 1929, by 1929 it too faced the growing effects of the Great Depression.
Political leaders in Britain largely ignored the new ideas of a British economist, John Maynard Keynes.
The United States
After Germany, no Western nation was more affected by the Great Depression than the United States.
The New Deal included an increased program of public works.
The Roosevelt administration instituted new social legislation that began the U.S. welfare system.
These reforms may have prevented a social revolution in the United States, but they did not solve the unemployment problems.
Arts and Sciences
With political, economic, and social uncertainties came intellectual uncertainties.
After 1918, the prewar fascination with the absurd and the unconscious content of the mind seemed even more appropriate in light of the nightmare landscapes of the World War I battlefronts.
The dadaists were artists who were obsessed with the idea that life has no purpose. They tried to express the insanity of life in their art.
The prewar physics revolution begun by Albert Einstein continued in the 1920s and 1930s.