Futile Search for Stability

Objective: Cover the political and social developments after

WWI

Uneasy Peace• After WWI border disputes breakout

among new nations

• League of Nations was ineffective• U.S. never join league

• League could not use military force only sanctions

Reparation • French wanted strict enforcement of

Treaty of Versailles

• Germans could no longer repay the 33 billion owed

• French army invades Ruhr Valley to operate German industries themselves

• German workers go on strike in protest

German Economic Crisis• To pay strikers government prints more

money

• Greatly devalues German Mark (dollar)• Huge inflation meant people suffered

greatly

• Dawes Plan helped by reducing payments Germany had to make to Allies

• Plan loaned Germany 200 million and America invest heavily

Recovery• As Germany recovers relations between

Germany and France improve

• In 1926 Germany joins League of Nations • In 1928 Germany signs Kellogg-Briand

Pact with 63 other nations

• Pact renounce war as an instrument of national policy.

Great Depression• Ended European prosperity

• Two main causes of depression was– 1. Downturn in the economies of nations

during second half of the 1920’s

– 2. Collapse of U.S. stock market in 1929

As the economy slowed millions lost their jobs

Solutions to the Great Depression

• Englishman John Maynard Keynes argued that unemployment came from lack of demand not overproduction

• American Franklin Delano Roosevelt came up with a government program called the New Deal

• New Deal put millions to work building public projects like roads, bridges, dams, and schools