The First World War and Its Aftermath, c. 1914–1939
This domain covers the First World War, the peace settlement, the interwar crisis, and the rise of fascism and Nazism to 1939.
Total war and peacemaking
- The war became total: conscription, war economies, propaganda, and mass casualties. The Western Front stalemated; Verdun and the Somme (1916) exemplified attrition. US entry in 1917 and the Russian revolutions changed the balance; the armistice came on 11 November 1918.
- The Paris settlement included the Treaty of Versailles (1919), with Article 231 on war guilt, reparations, a 100,000-man army, and Rhineland provisions. Saint-Germain, Trianon, and Sèvres/Lausanne reshaped Austria, Hungary, and the Ottoman lands. The League of Nations and mandate system emerged.
Interwar crisis and dictatorship
- The Weimar Republic faced reparations, hyperinflation in 1923, and political extremism. The Dawes Plan (1924), Locarno (1925), and Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) suggested stabilization.
- The Great Depression after 1929 destroyed confidence. Stalin's Five-Year Plans industrialized the USSR. Mussolini had taken power in Italy in 1922. Hitler became chancellor in January 1933; the Nuremberg Laws followed in 1935, and remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936.
- Anschluss and the Munich Agreement came in 1938; the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 opened the way to war.
Worked example
Question: Was the Treaty of Versailles the main cause of the Second World War? Reasoning: Versailles created grievances - territorial losses, reparations, and war-guilt clauses - that Hitler exploited. But the Depression, failed international cooperation, appeasement, and Nazi ideology were independent causes. Versailles was harsh enough to anger Germany but not harsh enough to disable it permanently. A strong answer balances the treaty's role against these other factors.
Traps that cost marks
- Article 231 was a war-guilt clause, but it did not by itself determine all later German grievances.
- The League of Nations was weakened by US nonmembership and great-power refusal to enforce sanctions.
- Appeasement was a strategy with multiple motives, not simply cowardice.