International Relations Week 3

League of Nations

International organisation created by the 1919 peace treaties, based in Geneva, to keep peace through collective security, arbitration and disarmament. Dissolved in 1946.

Collective security

All members act together (law, sanctions, force) against any aggressor. The League's core principle.

Covenant of the League

The League's founding charter, written into the peace treaties of 1919.

Assembly

League organ where every member state sat.

Council

League organ with permanent Great Power seats plus rotating members. Where the big decisions were made.

Secretariat

The League's permanent staff in Geneva.

Permanent Court of International Justice

The League's court, in The Hague.

Article 8

Covenant article committing members to disarm to the lowest level consistent with national security.

Design problem of the League

It would deter war by threatening universal war; members were equal but Great Powers decided; members were asked, not bound, to obey.

Sanctions

Economic (or military) penalties on an aggressor. Needed Great Powers willing to pay the cost, which they weren't in a depression.

Lytton Report (1933)

League inquiry into Manchuria that condemned Japan. Its adoption led Japan to leave the League.

Strengths of the League

Standing institution; framework for 1920s consolidation (Locarno, Germany 1926); a home for norms; it named aggression.

Weaknesses of the League

Never universal; fragile treaties; weak enforcement; condemnation without force; disarmament failed; Great Powers went around it (Munich).

Revisionist powers

States that wanted to change the 1919 settlement: Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Soviet Russia.

Dollar diplomacy

US policy of influencing the world through loans and investment instead of political commitments.

Isolationism

US refusal to join the League or make European commitments. Neutrality Acts 1935–37.

Washington Naval Conference (1921–22)

Set naval limits for the USA, Britain, Japan, France and Italy; ended the Anglo-Japanese alliance (Four-Power Treaty); Nine-Power Treaty to respect China.

Bainville, The Political Consequences of the Peace (1920)

French reply to Keynes: Versailles was too weak, leaving a united, resentful Germany.

Treaty of Rapallo (1922)

Germany and Soviet Russia, both excluded at Paris, recognise each other.

Ruhr occupation (1923)

France and Belgium occupy Germany's industrial area over reparations; hyperinflation follows.

Dawes Plan (1924)

Rescheduled German reparations, backed by American loans.

Locarno (1925)

Germany voluntarily accepts its western borders, guaranteed by Britain and Italy. Eastern borders left open.

Spirit of Locarno

The détente of 1925–29: Germany in the League, Franco-German reconciliation, Kellogg–Briand, Briand's European plan.

Briand and Stresemann

French and German foreign ministers who led the reconciliation of the late 1920s.

Kellogg–Briand Pact (1928)

Treaty renouncing war as an instrument of national policy. No enforcement.

Young Plan (1929)

Further reduction of German reparations.

Great Depression

World economic crisis after the Wall Street crash of October 1929: bank collapses, deflation, mass unemployment.

Dual crisis

Best's term for the economic and political crises of the 1930s feeding each other.

Gold standard

System of currencies fixed to gold. Britain left it in September 1931.

Protectionism

Raising tariffs to protect home industry, e.g. US tariffs (1930), British imperial preference (Ottawa, 1932).

Imperial preference (Ottawa, 1932)

Britain's system of lower tariffs inside its empire and higher ones outside.

Autarky

National economic self-sufficiency. Pursued by Germany, Italy and Japan through expansion.

New Deal

Roosevelt's programme of state spending and reform to fight the Depression in the USA.

Keynesianism

Using government spending to fight unemployment and depression.

World Economic Conference (1933)

London conference that failed to coordinate a response to the Depression.

Geneva disarmament talks (1932–34)

League talks that failed after Germany demanded equality and Hitler came to power.

Comintern

Communist International (1919), Moscow's organisation directing communist parties abroad.

Popular Fronts

Anti-fascist coalitions of communists, socialists and liberals, encouraged by the Comintern from 1935.

Twenty-One Demands (1915)

Japanese demands for control over China during WWI.

Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek)

Leader of China's Nationalist Party (GMD), who unified much of China and appealed to the League in 1931.

Mukden incident (1931)

Staged explosion on the South Manchurian Railway used by the Kwantung Army to seize Manchuria.

Kwantung Army

Japanese army in Manchuria that acted without the government's approval in 1931.

Manchukuo

Japanese puppet state in Manchuria, 1932–45.

Stimson Doctrine (1932)

US policy of not recognising territory taken by force (Manchuria).

Amau statement (1934)

Japan's claim to a 'Monroe Doctrine' for East Asia, warning others off China.

Pan-Asianism

Idea that Asia should free itself from Western imperialism, under Japanese leadership in Japan's version.

New Order in East Asia (1938)

Prime Minister Konoe's plan for a Japanese-led bloc including China.

Tripartite Pact (1940)

Alliance of Germany, Italy and Japan.

Pearl Harbor (7 Dec 1941)

Japanese attack on the US fleet in Hawaii; the US enters the war.

Stresa Front (1935)

Short-lived agreement of Britain, France and Italy against German treaty-breaking.

Anglo-German Naval Agreement (1935)

Britain let Germany build a navy at 35% of Britain's. Broke the Stresa Front.

Abyssinian Crisis (1935–36)

Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. League sanctions were too weak; Haile Selassie was abandoned.

Hoare–Laval plan (1935)

Secret British-French plan to give Mussolini most of Abyssinia. It leaked and Hoare resigned.

Rhineland remilitarisation (1936)

Hitler sends troops into the demilitarised zone; Britain and France do nothing.

Non-intervention (Spain)

British and French policy in the Spanish Civil War. In practice let Germany and Italy help Franco.

Rome–Berlin Axis (1936)

Mussolini's name for the Italian-German partnership.

Anti-Comintern Pact (1936)

German-Japanese pact against communism; Italy joined in 1937.

Anschluss (1938)

Germany's annexation of Austria.

Appeasement

Policy of removing the causes of conflict by negotiation. Became an insult only after 1939.

Four reasons for appeasement

Uncertainty about Hitler's aims; 'never again'; imperial overstretch; deterrence needed a long war Britain couldn't yet fight.

Munich Agreement (Sept 1938)

Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler and Mussolini give the Sudetenland to Germany. USSR excluded.

Sudetenland

German-speaking border region of Czechoslovakia, handed to Germany at Munich.

Neville Chamberlain

British PM 1937–40, the leading figure of appeasement.

Litvinov

Soviet foreign minister and champion of collective security. Replaced by Molotov in May 1939.

Great Terror (1937–38)

Stalin's purges; about half the Red Army officer corps removed.

Nazi–Soviet Pact (23 Aug 1939)

Molotov–Ribbentrop non-aggression pact dividing Eastern Europe into spheres of influence.

Adverse timing (Best)

When Moscow wanted collective security, London and Paris preferred Berlin; when they turned to Moscow, Stalin preferred Hitler.

Danzig

Free City under the League with a German majority. Hitler's pretext for attacking Poland.

Lebensraum

'Living space': Hitler's goal of conquering land in the East for Germans.

A.J.P. Taylor

Historian (1961) who called Hitler a 'supreme opportunist', not a planner.

Churchill's thesis

'There was never a war more easy to stop': firmness and a Soviet alliance could have prevented it. Best disputes this.

Operation Barbarossa (1941)

Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, June 1941.

Lend-Lease (1941)

US programme supplying weapons and goods to Britain and later the USSR.

Atlantic Charter (1941)

Roosevelt and Churchill's statement of war aims, including self-determination.

Grand Alliance

Britain, the USSR and the USA, together from December 1941.

Midway (1942)

US naval victory that turned the Pacific War.

Stalingrad (1942–43)

Soviet victory; the German Sixth Army surrendered in February 1943.

Unconditional surrender

Allied demand from Casablanca (1943): no negotiated peace with the Axis.

Yalta (Feb 1945)

Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill plan the post-war settlement.

Holocaust

Nazi Germany's systematic murder of six million Jews.

United Nations

Organisation founded in 1945 to replace the League of Nations.

Why the Allies won

Parker/Harrison: economics, once the Grand Alliance formed. Overy: contingent factors such as organisation, morale and technology.

Mandate system

League system under which former German and Ottoman lands were run by Britain, France, Japan, Australia and South Africa.

Dominion

Self-governing British colony: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Irish Free State.

Statute of Westminster (1931)

Gave the Dominions equal constitutional status with Britain.

Amritsar massacre (1919)

British troops kill hundreds of Indian protesters; boosts Indian nationalism.

Decolonisation

Process by which imperial powers give up formal control of colonies. Best: the world wars accelerated existing trends.