Key Revision notes – The changing international order 1918-1975

Treaty of Versailles 1919

- No German attendance.
- Clemenceau (FR) (harsh), Lloyd George (UK) (Middle), Woodrow - Wilson (Moderate)
- Guilt clause 231
- Germany lost all colonies/10% of land/100,000 army, 6 naval vessels and no Anschluss

League of Nations

- No USA key issue as Britain and France lacked funds

- Early 1920s some successes. 400,000 displaced people resolved, Aaland Island dispute (Fin
vs Sweden)/Aid to Austria and Hungary
- 1923 Corfu crisis – example of failure.
o Italian general killed, Mussolini invades and Greeks are told to pay compensation!
o 1925 Greece penalised for incident in Bulgaria – the league punishes weak nations
but not strong ones
- Other factors in the League’s weakness:
- Crucially deals are done outside league i.e., Dawes plan 1924 (lends money to Ger from US)
and 1929 Young plan (less reparations), 1924 Locarno pact where Germany agrees frontier in
West but not East
- 1931 – Japan invades and annexes part of Manchuria then all of it by 1934. 1 year review
with no action and Japan resigns from the pact
- 1934 – Abyssinia invaded by Italy. Brit/Fr (Hoare/Laval) offer 2/3 of Abyssinia to Muss!
Actually, they could have acted with troops and control of Suez. Muss rejects and ignores
them, leaves the league and then joins Germany in the Axis. Hoare / Laval is leaked
embarrassing Brit/FR and discrediting league forever.

Lead up to WW11

Key factors in causes of war:

- 1929 – Wall Street crash. Loans withdrawn from Germany. Reparations still being paid =
unemployment and hyper inflation disenfranchise German middle class
- Germany moves to dictatorship in 1933, Japan becomes military dictatorship and Mussolini
becomes more hard-line
- Disarmament has failed in 1920’s
- German and Italian expansionism is not stopped
- Failure of appeasement – Hitler and Mussolini take the view the West is weak
- Fear of another war in Britain and France

Timeline
- 1933 Germany starts to rearm
- 1934 Germany takes Rhineland
- 1935 Saar plebiscite
- March 1938 Anschluss with Austria following plebiscite
- 1938 September Munich and Sudetenland given to Hitler despite the fact that Britain and
France had promised to defend it – Hitler originally only wanted part of it but when he was
 given that went for more! This is important because Czech had good defences and industry
and the agreement was reneged on by the west
- March 1939 – Invades the rest of Czech
- August 1939. Nazi / Soviet non – aggression pact (Ribbentrop/Molotov) removes threat of
wart on two fronts. Stalin had tried to deal with the west – a missed opportunity for the
west.
- September 1st : Ger invades Poland and war declared

Cold War build up

1945 – Grand Alliance (U.S, Brit, USSR) starts to fall apart

Feb 1945 – Yalta conference ok as Roosevelt moderates and gets on well with Stalin.

July 1945 – Potsdam

– Tension over Russian aims on Poland and Germany – Russians want it united and stronger
reparations than the West wants.

- Russia worried by US successful atomic tests.

1945-1949 – Growing tensions

Stalin forms Comintern and takes Eastern Europe: East Ger, Czech, Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia,
Albania, Romania, Bulgaria.

The West response with:

A - Marshall aid to bolster Western Europe against communism with $17 bn dollars. This is
successful. Stalin bans help for Eastern Europe.

B – Truman doctrine. Support all countries under threat from communism.

1946 – The West combine their zones of West Germany

1949 – Stalin is feeling threatened by the Western zone in Berlin and blockades the land routes
to supply it. The west carried out an airlift of all supplies. By May 1949 Russia had failed and the
Soviet Zone becomes GDR/ The west becomes FRG. In essence the West faced down Stalin.

1949 – NATO founded

Cold War – Berlin wall and Cuba

1959 – Batista overthrown by Castro and Soviets support him

July 1961 – Khrushchev aims to be more successful than Stalin and demands removal of US
troops. This was partially because of loss of people (brain drain) and the obvious affluence of the
West German sphere. Kennedy defies Khrushchev and moves more troops in and visits Berlin

August 1961 – Barbed wire fence put up between zones of Berlin. This resolves the people drain
but not the way Khrushchev wanted. Another Soviet loss of face.

1961 – Bay of Pigs – failed US attempt to overthrow Castro

14/10/62 – U2 sees Soviet missiles in Cuba

22/10/62 – Naval blockade announced by Kennedy as Soviets cannot send in weapons by air
(lacking techno)

26/10/62 – Robert Kennedy and Dobrygin (soviet US ambassador) do deal to remove US missiles
from Turkey in return for end to missiles in Cuba

1962/1963 – some thawing of hostilities as hotline established and Nuclear test ban treaty in
place

Vietnam

- North Vietnam became communist and at war with the French controlled South until the
French pulled out in 1954
- Geneva peace conference divided the country into north and south and recommended free
elections
- The U.S did not follow up on election and started to support the southern leader Ngo Dinh
Dien - who was unpopular with his own people - with military advisors
- The North continued to win the fighting though as the people preferred fighting for them
- 1965 – The Americans get involved directly with U.S troops
- The Northern leader Ho Chi Minh uses guerrilla tactics, his popularity, and the Ho Chi Minh
trail to fight the south. The Viet Cong become the unofficial army and are well supported by
dissidents from the South
- The Americans use heavy bombing (more payload than was ever dropped against Germany),
agent Orange and Napalm to try and keep control.
- Popular support falls away after the successful “Tet” offensive targets 100 cities with great
success and the media becomes critical. Then the Mai Lai massacre where American soldiers
killed 300-400 civilians made many wonders if the U.S was acting correctly
- Jan 1973 Nixon agrees a peace deal and pulls out
- Within two years, South Vietnam was communist