We explain what were the consequences of World War I and how international relations were formed.
World War I (also known as the Great War) was A war conflict that affected the main world powers. The conflict unleashed due to the political, economic and territorial competence of these colonialist empires.
Between 1914 and 1918, Germany, Italy and the Austro -Hungarian Empire (the side of the “Triple Alliance”) faced France, Great Britain and Russia (the side of the “triple entente”). War fronts were mainly in Europe, but battles were also fought in the Middle East and North Africa, in dispute of the colonial territories of the powers.
In 1917, the United States joined the conflict and the course of the war was in favor of the entente. The continuous defeats led to the exhaustion of the troops and resources of the triple alliance until, in 1918, the German government signed the armistice with France and Great Britain and ended the war.
Although the states involved were mainly European, the conflict took dimensions never seen until then in history and had deep consequences that affected the world economy and drastically changed international political relations.
In the following years, different conferences and meetings were held between the winning powers and the defeated countries, in which the peace treaties of the end of the war were signed. These agreements imposed harsh conditions for defeated countries and, in turn, generated conflicts and tensions that triggered, twenty years later, World War II.
- See also: Causes of World War I
International relations in the postwar period
At the end of World War I, the winning powers met at the Paris Conference and established the main guidelines of postwar agreements. However, the application of peace treaties was enormously difficult.
In a context of serious economic difficulties, tensions arose everywhere. Especially serious was The payment of war repairs by Germany. From 1925, however, a short period of concord was opened that made many think that international peace could consolidate. The depression initiated in 1929 ended those hopes.
- See also: World War I peace treaties
The Nations Society
In April 1919, the Paris Conference approved the Pact of the Society of Nations.
The new society set its headquarters in Geneva (Switzerland). Its main institutions were a general assembly, a council, of which the great powers were permanent members, and a general secretary, in charge of directing the more than 600 officials who worked for society.
Having as an essential the maintenance of peace, lSociety sought to guarantee the protection of small countries to the great powers. It was about creating a new international order based on the principle of collective security.
The society of nations achieved some successes. His golden age was the period 1924-1929, when the Treaty of Locarno (1925) was signed, Germany entered society (1926) and the Briand-Kellogg pact (1928) was signed. However, when the international economic situation was complicated after the 1929 crisis, The Nations Society was totally unable to maintain peace.
Why did the Nations Society fail?
On the one hand, the key powers of the world order did not participate. UU. He refused to enter in 1920 and never participated. The USSR was vetoed at the beginning and only participated from 1934 to 1939. Germany did not enter until 1926 and, with Hitler, abandoned society in 1933. Japan left in 1933 and Italy in 1936. On the other hand, the lack of economic or military means prevented the imposition of its resolutions.
Postwar conflicts
The treaties that ended the First World War generated different tensions in the world order:
- The tensions in the territories of the ancient Austro-Hungarian Empire. His best example was the struggle between Italy and the newborn Yugoslavia for the fiume region. Nationalism unleashed in Italy helped the rise of fascism to power in 1922.
- The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. The national revolution led by Atatürk managed to cancel the conditions of the Sèvres treaty and expel the Greek army. The Greco-Turca War (1919-1922) that followed was greatly cruel (more than 20 % of Anatolia’s male population died) and concluded with the Turkish victory. More than one million Greeks were deported from Anatolia. There was, however, no concession to Türkiye regarding his Arab possessions. Great Britain and France distributed the possessions of the Middle East, following, in broad strokes, the provisions of the Sykes-Picot agreement.
- The Soviet problem and Poland. The western zone of the former Tsarist Empire lived enormous instability. Russian weakness led Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to access independence. The newborn Poland faced the communist Russia in a war that ended with the Riga treaty in 1921. The Soviets never accepted the territorial losses of this war and these tensions ended up leading to World War II.
- The new Japanese power. Despite his little participation in the war, the Japanese position in the Eastern East was greatly reinforced after the conclusion of the Great War. Japan had become the third naval power of the world. The new situation was regulated at the Washington Conference (1921-1922). The treaties signed there ratified the maritime superiority of the United Kingdom and the US and Japanese naval power in the Pacific.
The application of the Versailles treaty: the German problem
In 1921, the winning powers announced the total amount that Germany had to pay for repairs: 132,000 million Marcos-Oro. Germany protested and gave compliance with the expected payment deadlines.
In Paris, the idea that Germany had to pay. A new German moratorium application in July 1922 precipitated the decision of the French government, chaired by Poincaré.
On January 11, 1923, French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr basin, the German and industrial heart of Germany. Since Germany did not pay, the country was invaded and compensation was charged through the exploitation of the riches of the Ruhr.
The German Cabinet reaction was to decree passive resistance. The factories closed and the Berlin government suffered the strikers. The situation led the German economy to collapse. One of the most spectacular phenomena in the economic history of the twentieth century took over Germany: hyperinflation.
The ruin of Germany did not benefit anyone. Little by little, the conviction that Cooperation was, for all, better than confrontation. In February 1924, German Chancellor Stresemann informed the French government that Germany was willing to sign with France and other countries that could be interested in an agreement that guarantees the Franco-Sumian borders marked in Versailles, including the demilitarized area. From that moment on international relations entered a hopeful period of Concordia.
The Treaty of Locarno in 1925, for which Germany accepted the western borders marked in the Versailles treaty; the entry of Germany the Society of Nations in 1926; And the Briand-Kellog pact of war resignation in 1928 were the great milestones of this short period of harmony.
The economic depression of 1929 devastated this ephemeral concord and began the way to a general conflict again.
The economic and social consequences
The economic consequences of the Great War were transcendental; Those of the PPAZ too. In economic terms, World War I and its postwar period assumed the end of one time and the beginning of another.
The one that concluded had had among its main characteristics the liberalism and the first globalization, which had been taking shape since the mid -nineteenth century. At the time that began, the State would have a growing economic role and globalization would interrupt its progress.
Economic aspects of war effort
World War I meant an unprecedented mobilization of human and material resources. Towards the end of the war, they supported the allies that represented – colonies included – and 64 % of the world GDP.
The central empires had much more limited resources. In 1913, the population of Great Britain, France and the United States alone already exceeded that of the central empires. In addition, during the conflict, Great Britain and the United States, not France, achieved some economic growth. The opposite happened in Germany and Austria-Hungary.
Economic planning and other forms of state intervention were essential to ensure that resources were oriented towards war effort. The direct costs of the war have been evaluated at about 300,000 million dollars, equivalent to about six and a half times the debt of the European states between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the XX.
Human and material losses
World War I reached dimensions never seen before. The fighting extended to fronts on several continents, lasted more than four years and mobilized millions of troops. The contestants used all the weapons resulting from the technical advances of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (large gauge and range cannons, machine guns, chemical weapons, airplanes, tanks, underwater, cars, among other weapons).
Human losses reached previously unimaginable figures. The human cost of the conflict had to be around ten million dead and twice as wounded. These figures exceed those of all wars had been during the nineteenth century.
If we take into account civil losses, it may, including the birth deficit, the epidemic known as “Spanish flu” and the genocides, Europe, excluded Russia, lost almost 10 % of the approximately 250 million inhabitants with which it had before the war. In Russia, the Bolshevik revolution and the posterior civil war swelled the demographic invoice well above that figure.
In countries that made a warm effort the deaths of adults of working age reached non -negligible proportions: France, 7.2 %; Türkiye and Bulgaria, 6.8 %; Germany, 6.3 %. 3.5 % of physical capital (machinery, infrastructure and factories) that existed in 1914 had disappeared towards the end of the war due to destruction, interruption of investments or lack of maintenance. This percentage was much higher in some countries (Belgium, Poland and Serbia) or regions (northern France).
The external investments of Great Britain and France had been substantially reduced. Those of Germany had practically disappeared. The British fleet had been severely punished. Human and material losses could have been overcome by reconstruction. However, this reconstruction was hindered by additional problems.
The financial “inheritance” of war and peace
Towards the end of the war, the public finances of the belligerent countries were in serious difficulties. Inflation was the inevitable consequence of a huge war spending mainly financed by issuing large volumes of public debt and the creation of money.
The war effort had involved the appearance of a large intealized debt. The allies of the triple entente were due to each other $ 23,000 million in commercial debts. The main creditor was the United States. The American attempts to recover that debt stumbled upon the difficulties of France, the greatest debtor, which in turn needed repairs imposed on Germany to deal with its international payment obligations.
The financial situation of Germany and the new states arising from the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was even more difficult. Germany also faced excessive war repairs and the political instability of the New Republic of Weimar.
Not including the seizures of ships, livestock, raw materials, industrial equipment and exterior assets, The sanctions imposed on Germany by the victors amounted to 33,000 million dollars to be paid in 42 years.
Initially, each annual payment quota was equivalent to 5 % of German GDP. The budget deficit was financed by issuing money. Thus, inflation was exacerbated in 1921 and 1922: prices grew from level 100 in 1914 to 304 in 1918, from 1,301 in 1921 to 14,600 in 1922. In the middle of that year, a dollar was changed to a number of frames more than one hundred times greater than in 1914.
Germany requested a moratorium in the payment of repairs, which motivated the invasion of Ruhr by France and Belgium. Germany responded financially supporting the passive resistance of the employed population. Price growth was greater in 1923. German hyperinflation constitutes the most striking episode of prices growth and of disarticulation in the practice of a modern monetary system: German prices multiplied by 1,000,000,000 in that year. By then a dollar was changed to 4,200,000,0000,000 frames.
After the implementation by the German government of a stabilization plan in autumn of 1923, the definitive solution to the economic and political problem in which Western Europe of postwar was came from the hand of the Dawes Plan, which extended the deadline for the payment of repairs, reduced the initial annuities and facilitated Germany’s access to the North American capital market.
Continue with:
- Chronology of the interwar period
- Happy twenty years
- War repairs (Treaty of Versailles, 1919)
- Speech of the fourteen points (Wilson, 1918)
References
- Hobsbawn, eg (1998). 20th century history. Criticism
- Tato, Mi, Bubello, JP, Castello, AM and Campos, E. (2011). History of the second half of the twentieth century. Estrada
- Gilbert, M., & Devoto, A. (2005). World War I. Sphere of books.
