The Post-War Settlement (1919)
World War I ended on 11 November 1918, but the impact of the war continued for many years. Revolutions broke out in the countries that had lost the war, Germany and Austria-Hungary, and nationalist movements also resulted in the creation of new countries in the borderlands of the former Russian Empire. European diplomats proposed a peace settlement that attempted to satisfy nationalist aspirations by creating 7 new countries (Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia) and greatly altered the borders of many others. They also tried to set up a system that would ensure future peace and allow the continent to recover from the economic costs of the war.
Many of the changes made as a result of the war were inspired by the ideas of US President Woodrow Wilson, who had hoped that World War I would be “the war to end all wars,” and that the European countries would now learn to live in peace with one another. With the disappearance of the autocratic empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia, all of Europe seemed to have embraced the values of liberal democracy. Wilson hoped that an international organization, the League of Nations, would protect peace and democracy and oversee the development of non-European territories to the point where they could become self-governing.
Wilson’s hopes were destined to be disappointed. Four years of bitter conflict, the Russian Revolution, and the drastic changes made at the end of the war, rather than strengthening liberal democracy, turned out to have made it less stable. Populations blamed liberal politicians for having gotten them into the war, and for not having achieved great enough gains to justify its enormous human and economic cost. European countries were less willing to cooperate with each other than before 1914, and faith in the inevitability of progress had been badly undermined. Members of the working classes throughout Europe were attracted to the new model of society offered by Communist Russia. Other groups turned to movements of the new right, which called for the creation of dictatorships to protect national interests. The overthrow of Italy’s constitutional government by one such movement, Benito Mussolini’s Fascists, in 1922, showed how fragile democracy had become in the wake of the war.
I. The War and the Bases of Liberalism
A. The Discrediting of Liberalism
B. The New Age of Violence
II. The Wilsonian Program
A. National independence for all
B. Liberal democracy as a universal model
1. the constitutions of the new states
2. Germany’s Weimar Constitution
C. The League of Nations
D. Wilson’s principles and the Treaty of Versailles
1. reparations
2. the war guilt issue
III. Challenges to Wilsonianism
A. Problems of security
B. The appeal of Communism
C. The rise of Fascism
D. American isolationism
Woodrow Wilson’s ideals: “What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world, as against force and selfish aggression.”
“All well-defined national aspirations shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be accorded them without introducing new or perpetuating old elements of discord and antagonism that would be likely in time to break the peace of Europe and consequently of the world.”
Economist John Maynard Keynes warns that the post-war settlement will cause economic disruption and therefore social upheaval (1919): “The danger confronting us, therefore, is the rapid depression of the standard of life of theEuropean populations to a point which will mean actual starvation for some…. These in their distress may overturn the remnants of organization, and submerge civilization itself in their attempts to satisfy despearately the overwhelming needs of the individual.”
Benito Mussolini defines “the doctrine of Fascism” (1932): “Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State… for the Fascist, everything is in the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value, outside the State. In this sense, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist state, the synthesis and unity of all values, interprets, develops, and gives strength to the whole life of the people.”