- Discuss the reasons for the collapse of collective security in Europe between the two World Wars.
The system of collective security evolved at the various peace settlements in 1919 guided by the idealism of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. The League of Nations was a multinational entity in which every participant sought peaceful means for settling disputes in which it became involved and also assisted member nations against aggression. From the very beginning the United States, from whence the idea migrated did not join the League, symbolizing its ineffectiveness for the entire inter war period. At any given point in its history only the memberships of Great Britain and France were constant shattering the sham that it was a world organization committed to preventing another world war. While it can be argued that the Second World War was concretely caused by the aggression of the discontented revisionist powers, single-mindedly repudiating all international laws and treaties to get what they wanted, it can also be, unfortunately argued that it was the inability or unwillingness of the League to take effective measures to counter this aggression that led to appeasement on an unprecedented scale and allowed the pillar of the revisionist powers, Nazi Germany to rise to incredible heights of power. It was this appeasement which made Hitler feel confident of acquiring Poland in September of 1939 without armed conflict. By that time public opinion in both France and Britain, not to mention cabinet opposition in the case of the latter made the governments realize that they could appease no more. War was declared by Britain on 3rd September, followed by France a few hours later.
Nevertheless this ‘phoney war’ continued, until France was pinned down by Germany and only after Western Europe was ridiculously overrun by German troops did the war acquire the status of a European war. It is the attempt of this essay to understand the attitudes of the individual allied powers towards Germany, Italy and Japan’s aggressive politics after 1930 and thus account for the inability of the new international machinery to deal with them.
Peace settlement after the First World War: French greed.
The roots of the problem undoubtedly lie in 1919, when the peace settlement was presented to Germany without negotiation of any kind. The peacemakers themselves differed in their attitudes towards Germany. The United States and Britain having dealt with the immediate war threat posed by Germany were happy to revert to the pre-war scenario; that of isolation from European affairs for America and for Britain the middle path in the European balance of power. Britain never wanted any single nation to dominate the European mainland. Now that France was (as she thought) a dominant military power, it meant adopting a conciliatory attitude towards Germany. Some economists present at the peace conference actually saw German economic revival as vital to Britain’s European trade circuit. As far as they were concerned, extremely punitive measures needn’t be applied on Germany. It was France that was the chief architect of a harsh punitive settlement. Obsessed with their security (a reasonable obsession seeing as they shared a long border with Germany). France set out to smash all chances of a German revival any time soon. For years after the peace settlement, France was still paranoid about the two main issues of disarmament and demilitarization of Germany and the repayment of the massive reparations (6,600 million pounds) by Germany.
France alarmed and went in search of ally:
After the war, France felt abandoned by her allies and immediately set about working for a system of alliances that might protect her against a further German threat. But the allies she obtained (Poland, Czechoslovakia) were not able to contain Germany, and so French interests were still dependent on the British. From the 1920s itself Anglo-French relations were strained when Britain began her systematic policy of appeasement under Chamberlain. The French saw it as an immediate threat to their security (which it did turn out to be when Hitler reunited the Rhineland)
Treaty of Locarno:
A major issue after the war remained Germany. European statesmen generally agreed that peace could only be secured if Germany could be reconciled to accepting the terms of the treaties. However, in the deeply unstable conditions – political and economic, after the war, Germany suffered greatly. In addition to inflation and unemployment, there was also the question of the reparations which Germany had to pay. This was seen as a symbol of everything that the Germans hated about the post World War settlements, and for France, vital to rebuild the economy. Britain, as we saw earlier, was willing to take a conciliatory position and this caused tremendous Anglo-French tension. The French wanted to actively enforce the Treaty of Versailles – occupying the Ruhr and Saar coalfields when Germany defaulted on payments. Finally the problem of reparations was examined by the Dawes Plan in 1924. French occupation of the Ruhr was ended; hyper-inflation arrested and economic recovery was on its way. In 1925 the treaty of Locarno was also signed, whereby Britain, France, Germany and Italy ►agreed to accept the terms regarding Germany’s western frontiers at the treaty of Versailles, in return for which ►the allied occupation for the Rhineland would end early and ►a regular check on the German military would be stopped. ►Germany also agreed to the membership of the League of Nations. Thus by the mid-late 1920s Germany seemed to be resettling into the Europe of reconciliation. But it is significant that the Treaty of Locarno did not recognize Germany’s eastern limits, therefore leaving out the whole issue of revision of the principle of self-determination and nationalism that had been denied to Germany in the Treaty of Versailles.
The Great Depression, Rise of Nazi and collapse of collective security:
The seeming ‘golden age’ of the Weimar Republic was shattered when the Wall Street Stock Exchange in America crashed plunging America and almost all of Europe (with the exception of the Soviet Union) into the depths of economic depression. With the economic collapse came the collapse of collective security. The rise of the Nazi party in Germany had been less than gradual throughout the 1920s; in fact in certain cases it had definitely been definitely stagnant. With the sudden collapse of the economy for the second time in ten odd years, Adolf Hitler made full use of the general misfortune to push the Nazis into power in 1933. With his coming to power, all hopes that the German problem had been solved were dashed. Here was an ultra-nationalist, anti-parliamentary, anti-communist, anti-conservative (although many at the time did not realize this aspect), racial radical who threatened to pose a considerable threat to European security.
Collective security began to collapse a bit earlier:
But the collapse of collective security was to begin a little earlier, and the first to attack the principles of the League and expose its possible ineffectiveness was Japan. In September 1931, still a member of the League, Japan attacked China who was also a member of the League. Although the Chinese appealed under Article 11, which empowered the League to ‘take any action that may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the peace of nations’, nothing concrete was done. The inactivity and ineffectualness lent encouragement to European aggressors who planned similar acts of defiance.
Hitler pretending to like peace in the initial years:
While Hitler spent the early part of 1933 convincing other foreign powers that Germany wanted peace and made soothing speeches in the realm of foreign affairs, he also attempted to suggest that all other powers either disarm to march the German level or let Germany rearm to match theirs. The first act of British conciliation almost amounting to appeasement is here. Ramsay McDonald tried to persuade a rightly stubborn France into agreeing, which they refused. In October 1933, Hitler withdrew Germany from the League of Nations and the World Disarmament Conference. In the same year, however the Soviet Union was officially recognized by the American government and in July 1934 she entered the League of Nations.
By now, Germany, Italy and Japan began to systematically flout the rules of the treaty and the League. In early 1935, Hitler renounced the Treaty of Versailles and openly announced the remilitarization of the country. In response to this the Stresa front was opened to halt German rearmament, but it didn’t work and Britain subsequently signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement allowing Germany to build a navy 33 % the strength of the British navy. France was outraged but on her own there was nothing she could possibly do.
Italian occupation of Ethiopia:
In October, Italy began her invasion of Ethiopia, and although the League imposed sanctions, they were of no use. Two months later a secret Anglo-French Pact was leaked in the press in which the two countries agreed to accept and condone the Italian aggression on Ethiopia. Public outrage forced Samuel Hoare – British Foreign Secretary to resign on this account. It was believed that the plan had been designed to help Italy extract herself from a difficult situation; nevertheless the mutual connivance on the issue allowed Italy a firm grip on much coveted territory. By May 1936 the Italians had won and this was a cause of great embarrassment to the League and Great Britain.
reoccupation of the Rhineland
At the same time that Italy was flagrantly violating the independence of another country Hitler announced the reoccupation of the Rhineland and thus destroyed the Treaty of Locarno. France immediately protested, yet the League did nothing. This was Hitler’s first and most crucial territorial aggression. Now France was exposed to attack, and violent repudiation of the peace settlement was at hand.
In November, Germany and Japan signed the anti-Comitern pact, a month after the Rome-Berlin Axis, now binging all three aggressors into a single unit – although they did not have any military obligations, it was a dangerous sign that the ‘revisionists’ were drawing together.
In 1937 the Sino-Japanese issue blew into a full-fledged war. By the end of 1937, with the Spanish Civil War and this new conflict it was quite clear that active ‘collective security’ had broken down altogether. The aggressors sat back to savour their acquisitions and Britain and France, among others began to rearm.
It is in 1937 that Neville Chamberlain, the man associated with the cowardliness of ‘appeasement’ becomes the British Prime Minister bringing the policy of appeasement form the discussion halls into the arena of proper political enforcement. Believing truly to the very end that Hitler and Mussolini had aims essentially limited in scope i.e. reversing 1919, and that their countries had actually been given a raw deal, instead of resisting their claims, if they were granted timely concessions, they would quite happily settle down. An alternate explanation for Chamberlain’s views is that he realized that these objectives were not limited, but wished to avoid war for as long as possible. The first explanation shows Chamberlain as a naïve politician, the second as one who was prepared to sacrifice the autonomy and sovereignty of lesser known countries he ‘knew nothing about’ in order to keep Britain out of war.
Whatever the reasons behind Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement, it was definitely incompatible with the notion of collective security, at least what was left of it. With the final collapse and abandonment of the doctrine of collective security Hitler also realized he could denounce without consequence the restrictions posed on Germany. His first step was to absorb Austria into the German fatherland: the Anschluss in 1938. The attempts of Anthony Eden, Foreign Secretary and Winston Churchill to form in the latter’s words, a ‘Grand Alliance’ to present the dictators with a common front of resistance to any further aggression was greeted by plain reluctance from other countries, even France. The League had failed one too many times for such a policy to appear hopeful by the end of 1937.
The most shocking and blatant appeasement came in 1938 with the Czech Sudetenland. Coveted by Hitler for other reasons besides the nationalist principle of self-determination (‘he who controls Bohemia controls Europe’), Czechoslovakia had recently become a considerable military power. The Czechs turned to Britain and France, their natural allies for aid. So bent were the two governments on avoiding war that hey confronted President Benes with the decision that he must cede the Sudetenland. Finally, in an old style European diplomatic arrangement, Britain, Italy, France and Germany met at Munich, without the Czech government of course, to decide the fate of the nation. By March 1939, Hitler had invaded half of Czechoslovakia. Hobsbawm has said that for generations the very word ‘Munich’ became a synonym in western political discourse from craven retreat. It demonstrated the confident aggression on the one hand and fear and concession on the other.
Between 1935 and 1938, ►the shift in the balance in power in Europe from Allied to Axis powers, ► materially provided the latter with tremendous gains. ►Territorially all gains added to the Axis strength and diminished the Allies. ►International relations deteriorated; while the Axis powers came closer together, the relations between Britain and France, never excessively friendly, fell out of step. Those determined to preserve the settlements of 1919 and power balance were outmaneuvered by those who pursued aggressive dynamic politics.
The two factors that might help us in examining this reversal are the isolationism and separatism of the United States and the other, the ostracism of Soviet Russia. Germany’s defeat in 1919 had been thanks to an alliance between France, England and Russia and eventually the USA. Only a continuation of this alliance could have prevented a German resurgence. However, immediately after the Treaties of 1919, America refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles or join the League of Nations she continued her policy of isolationism and remained on the outside of any power politics on the European continent.
The Soviet Union on the other hand was feared, in many cases even more than the Nazi/Fascist threat. At first, isolated from European politics, she was later sought as an ally by France in 1935-36. But since she was not invited to Munich over the Sudetenland issue, the whole issue being settled with deliberate ostracism of the USSR altogether, she was easily led to believe that the west was perfectly conciliatory towards Germany as long as the latter expanded eastwards. Perceiving this rightly as a threat to her, the Stalin-Ribbentrop Pact (Non-aggression Pact) was signed in 1939, along with the partition of Poland. Hitler had no scruples about sacrificing the independence of smaller states in order to extend his power and allies – though of course he intended to turn the tables on Society Russia as soon as possible.
In September, Hitler marched into Poland and without declaring war, began the first stage of the European war. Here lies the controversy – many historians will say that this is where appeasement came to an end, that ‘conscience revolted against appeasement’. But it needs to be emphasized that at no point during the days of 1st and 2nd September 1939 did Chamberlain’s government entirely give up the hope of a reconciliation. Faced only with stubborn resistance of men like Duff-Cooper, Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill, even though he was not in the cabinet, the Chamberlain government was forced to declare war on 3rd September, followed shortly after by France. If these members of the opposition and public opinion had not…