International relations (1919–1939)

The important stages of interwar diplomacy and international relations included resolutions of wartime issues, such as reparations owed by Germany and boundaries; American involvement in European finances and disarmament projects; the expectations and failures of the League of Nations; the relationships of the new countries to the old; the distrustful relations between the Soviet Union and the capitalist world; peace and disarmament efforts; responses to the Great Depression starting in 1929; the collapse of world trade; the collapse of democratic regimes one by one; the growth of economic autarky; Japanese aggressiveness toward China; fascist diplomacy, including the aggressive moves by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany; the Spanish Civil War; the appeasement of Germany's expansionist moves toward the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, and the last, desperate stages of rearmament as another world war increasingly loomed.

[15] The Kellogg–Briand Pact of 1928 resulted from a proposal drafted by the United States and France that, in effect, outlawed war to resolve "disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them".

[21] The main themes of British foreign policy include a role at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, where Prime Minister Lloyd George worked hard to moderate French demands for revenge.

[28] The Dominions (Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand) achieved virtual independence in foreign policy in 1931, though each depended heavily upon British naval protection.

[29] The success at Locarno in handling the German question encouraged Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain, working with France and Italy, to find a master solution to the diplomatic problems of Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

MacDonald made it a matter of high principle to dispense even-handed justice between France and Germany, saying, "let them put their demands in such a way that Great Britain could say that she supported both sides.

In his 10 months as Prime Minister in 1924, he set the course of British foreign policy[36] MacDonald, and his Labour Party had a strong record of fighting communists for control union activities.

Hitler, however, cut a deal with Joseph Stalin to divide Eastern Europe; when Germany did invade Poland in September 1939, Britain and France declared war; the British Commonwealth followed London's lead.

[50] Appeasement was increasingly adopted as Germany grew stronger after 1933, for France suffered a stagnant economy, unrest in its colonies, and bitter internal political fighting.

[58] French foreign policy in the 1920s and 1930s aimed to build military alliances with small nations in Eastern Europe in order to counter the threat of German attacks.

The war had resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines and providing economic production and logistics to support them, as well as having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.

[61] Fascists argue that liberal democracy is obsolete, and they regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties.

That aggressive strategy worked as Germany pulled out of the League of Nations (1933), rejected the Versailles Treaty and began to re-arm (1935) with the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, won back the Saar (1935), re-militarized the Rhineland (1936), formed an alliance ("axis") with Mussolini's Italy (1936), sent massive military aid to Franco in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), seized Austria (1938), took over Czechoslovakia after the British and French appeasement of the Munich Agreement of 1938, formed a peace pact with Stalin's Russia in August 1939, and finally invaded Poland in September 1939.

Hungarians stranded elsewhere formed organizations to maintain their identity, such as Czechoslovakia's St. George Scout Circle (later called "Sarló" ) and Romania's Transylvanian Youth (Erdélyi Fiatalok).

After the German occupation of Prague in March 1939, in violation of the Munich agreement, the Chamberlain government in Britain sought Soviet and French support for a Peace Front.

The interventionist attempt left an ugly legacy of fear and suspicion to future relations between Russia and the other great powers, and it strengthened the hand of those among the Bolshevik leadership who were striving to impose monolithic unity and unquestioning obedience on the Russian people.Soviet foreign policy went through a series of stages.

[112] Flushed with victory, Lenin, Trotsky, and the other leaders in Moscow were convinced that they represented the wave of the future, and that with a little help provided by the Communist International (Comintern), headed by Grigory Zinoviev they could spark anti-capitalist revolutions across the globe.

On the left, including labor unions, students and intellectuals, the war represented a necessary battle to stop the spread of fascism and support the cause of the Spanish Republicans.

[142] Many writers and intellectuals on the left became involved, including Ernest Hemingway, who supported the Republican cause, and George Orwell, who reversed himself and turned sharply anti-Communist.

[159][160] In Brazil, the largest country, a liberal revolution of 1930 overthrew the oligarchic coffee plantation owners and brought to power an urban middle class that had business interests that promoted industrialization and modernization.

Two small countries, Bolivia (with 2.2 million people) and Paraguay (with only 900,000) fought grueling battles over control of the Gran Chaco, a large but long-neglected border region where oil had recently been discovered.

Alarmed by the Second Italo-Abyssinian War when Italy invaded Ethiopia, he signed the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, requiring Britain to withdraw all troops from Egypt by 1949, except at the Suez Canal.

[166] In Japan, the Army increasingly took control of the government, assassinated opposing leaders, suppressed the left, and promoted a highly aggressive foreign policy with respect to China.

[174] Hirohito's role in Japan's foreign wars remains a subject of controversy, with various historians portraying him as either a powerless figurehead or an enabler and supporter of Japanese militarism.

[175] The United States grew increasingly worried about the Philippines, an American colony, within easy range of Japan and started looking for ways to contain Japanese expansion.

President Roosevelt imposed increasingly stringent economic sanctions intended to deprive Japan of the oil and steel it needed to continue its war in China.

[177] The Chinese revolution of 1911 that overthrew the last Emperor resulted in a decade of chaotic conditions, with power held by regional warlords with no functioning national government.

Sun Yat-sen, the ideological leader of the revolution against the old Chinese Empire, established a revolutionary base in south China, and tried but failed to unite the fragmented nation.

After Sun's death in 1925, his protégé, Chiang Kai-shek was in control of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party or KMT) and brought most of south and central China under its rule the Northern Expedition military campaign of 1926–1927.

The United States took the lead in expressing outrage, and began plans to systematically aid Chiang's regime by a long supply line through Indochina while demanding that Japan withdraw.