end of the war and the 1920s

His242: July 19, 2011 Lecture 1. End of the first world war 2. Germany and the Revolution 3. Russia and its civil war 4. The early 1920s 5. Post ww1 and the reordering of Europe 6. Ww1 led to the replacement of old empires 7. Self-determination from Western, Central and Eastern Europe 8. The boarders of the new states that were created at the paris peace conference, have lasted till today 9. The spead of democracy across the continent, came nationalism, the spead of the nation state --because of the difficulty of the different political parties 10. In the old empire, the loyalty was to the emperor, thus different enthicities were accepted as long as they pledge their loyalty, but the new states that ememrged after ww1 derived their nationalism from one group 11. This created a challenged for those that believed the nation belonged to one national group 12. Those are the type of nentions during the interwar period 13. How did the first world war ended in Germany? 14. November 1918—the german ppl were fed up with the war efforts and were being told by the press and govt, they needed one more effort which was unrealistic and frustrated the German people 15. On November 9, 1918—many ppl took to the streets of Berlin to protest , 2 days b4 the war officially ended, the authorities couldn’t find any reliable troops to put down the protest, so the two generals, persuated the empiror of Germany to advocate, there are a lot of parallels between Russia and Germany 16. They asked him to advocate because they feated the state’s authority would disappear, so the empiror left to Belgium 17. Who will step in? 18. There were several contenders of power, from the central left the german social democratic party (SPD) 19. It was composed of moderate socialists who cooperated with the war efforts, they called for a parliamentary republic, wanted the social democracy to flourish 20. Further to the left, was the independent spocial democratic partty, which wanted an immidate comporomised peace and called for the revolution of the soviet party 21. The radical facism within the party was led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg 22. The sparticas 23. They call themselves the spartics 24. The SPD proclaimed a parliamentary republic, and the Independents declared their own republic, 25. Unlike the Russia, the spartics were more organized, the SPD dominated 26. With Germany at peace, Sparticus couldn’t 27. Land, peace and bread (Russia appealed to the population) 28. Germany was at 2 days peace after the revolution began 29. Germans couldn’t use peace as a slogan 30. The battle for control 31. From 1918-1919 over who would govern Germany 32. Fredrich Ebert—moderate socialist leader & allied themselves with the empire’s remaining bureaucrats 33. “free crops” 34. Weimar 35. Ebert made a deal with the Prussian generals to leave the authority of the officer core intact 36. He would get control of the workers in clase they decide to side with sparticus 37. unified their group 38. Ebert and his allies responsed by turning themselves with the moderates 39. The Free corps were a white wing group that stalked the streets and recruited as an anti- revolutionary force 40. They killed many of the communist leaders 41. They also killed thousands of workers 42. By jan 1919, the communists were mostly defeated 43. The moderates were victorious with the help of the convervative party 44. A constitutional assembly was held in the city of Weimar and brought sovernty to Germany 45. They left many of the bureaucratic institutions intact 46. The wealthy land owners were still intact 47. Just the leader changed 48. These groups had lots of power and influence and they remained half heartedly in support of the democratic government 49. The Weimar republic was unstable for those reasons 50. Paris Peace Conference, 1919 51. --reason why the Germans thought they were mistreated 52. The “big four” 53. Priminister david loyed geoorge of the UK, groupr klaminso of France, president widrow willson of the us, ritorio of Italy, each of these leaders had different goals 54. French wanted to eleminate Germany as a military threat against them 55. They wanted to put their troops in the wrime land 56. The british supported the French goals, 57. But they also wanted to restore the German economy as a support block for communist Russia 58. The Italians were involved because they were bribed by the alpine region 59. Widrow Willson of the US was the most ambitious, he wanted national self-determination, as a bases for the new state, based on the idea of ethnicly determined states 60. The new Europe—they wanted to divide the land through ethnicity 61. The leage of nations founded to settle international disbutes and war and increase dialog, he wanted to get back to nations rather than empires 62. All the powers agreed that Germany was responsible for the war and that they should assume the financial burden of the war 63. War guilt clause—the fact that they have to pay for everything and blamed for everything 64. As a result of this, germany had to pay heavy reperations and had to give up the merchant and fishing and railroad stock and limit the size of its army—a heavy burden on a new government—paying for the mistakes of the Germany empire—led to a lot of resentment 65. In reality they didn’t have to pay that much but psychologically it affected them 66. Hitler would refer to the war guilt clause 67. New States Committee 68. Legislate minority rights 69. The new state committee had responsibility of drewing out boundaries of the new empires 70. Poland map— 71. The committee desided to deal with the minority issue in Poland by making it sign a treaty guaranteeing all these rights 72. These rights and protections were to protect the minorities 73. League of Nations as protector—legislate minority rights 74. These types of treaties were signed by all the states 75. The system was sifficult to enforce, because the minorities couldn’t bring cases to the league of nations 76. Big offenders were never punished for the most part, they had it on paper only 77. Not everyone had to accept the system, like germany 78. Western Europe had much fewer minority, unlike Eastern Europe—it’s a bigger issue there 79. This new state rule was a way of civilizing the Eastern Europeans 80. In order for democracy to work, they had to assimilate the minorities 81. This whole arrangement overlooked the great powers and how they abused the minorities –double standard of the West 82. Nationalism and Minorities 83. Realities of the system 84. Alternative to legislating Minority Rights 85. Formily ruling minorities had to assimilate to the new national domination 86. Inspite of the new rules, eastern Europeans discriminated against the minorities as they were building national communities 87. E.g. the polish ignored the ukranias and only taught polish 88. The emphasis of these elites made them atisemetic 89. The jews wouldn’t assimilate-they argued 90. Alternative to the legislating minority rights—violence was used to kill the minorities, the armanians were killed in turkey 91. Repatriation was another solutions—send them back to where u think they belong 92. E.g btw Greece and Turkey, 1.2 million Greeks 1922—were forced to uproot from Turkey back to Greece, 500 000 turkes back to the Greece 93. They don’t speak the langugee the only thing in common was the religion 94. The legacy of future democracy based on this new system was a failure 95. Led to the violence of the ww2 96. Commun