6.

The Coming of a Bipolar World and the Crisis of the

Middle Powers: Part Two, 1919-1942

The Postwar International Order

Treaty of Versailles 1919 (Paris): during the meeting of the greater and lesser
powers, a list of problems more extensive and more intractable had been
encountered.

The most remarkable change in Europe (in terms of territorial borders) was the
emergence of cluster nation-states such as: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria,
Hungary, Yugoslavia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Those lands were
formerly part of the Empires of Habsburg, Romanov and Hohenzollen.

In both the West and the East the international system appeared to have been
stabilized by the early 1920s and what difficulties remained (or might arise in
the future) could now be dealt with by the League of Nations, which met
regularly at Geneva despite the surprise of the United States.

After decades of growth, world manufacturing production turned sharply
down. But despite this, the United States has become major economic power.

The financing of the war had caused economic problems of unprecedented
complexity. Very few of the belligerents (Britain and the US were among the
exceptions) had tried to pay for even part of the costs of the conflict by
increasing taxes; instead most states relied almost entirely on borrowing,
assuming that the defeated foe would be forced to meet the bill. All the
European allies were in debt to Britain, and to a lesser extent to France; while
those two powers were heavily in debt to United States. U.S. became the
worlds greatest creditor nation and started to force other states to pay their
debts.

Before seeing how the international crises of this period unfolded into war, it is
important to examine the particular strengths and weaknesses of each of the
Great Powers, all of which had been affected not only by the 1914-1918 conflict
but also by the economic and military developments of the interwar years. Two
further preliminary remarks about the economics of rearmament should be
made at this point. The first concern differential growth rates, which were
much more marked during the 1930s than they had been, say, in the decade
prior to 1914. Secondly, the interwar developments in military technology
made the armed forces more dependent than ever upon the productive forces
of their nations. The future of the armed forces was increasingly linked to
modern technology and mass production.

The Challengers

The economic vulnerability of a Great Power is nowhere more clearly seen than
in the case of Italy during the 1930s. Mussolinis fascist regime had brought the
country from the hinterlands to the forefront of the diplomatic world (one of
the guarantors of 1925 Locarno agreement, signatory 1938 Munich settlement,
pacification of Libya, large intervention in the Spanish Civil war and etc.). Not
only diplomatic prominence was a measure of Italys new greatness but a new
model to a disenchanted postwar European society and one attractive to those
who feared the alternative model being offered by the Bolsheviks. Military
powers, too, seemed to give good indications of Italys rising status.


The challenge to the status quo posed by Japan was also of a very individual
sort, but need to be taken much more seriously by the established Powers. In
the world of the 1920s and 1930s, heavily colored by racist and cultural
prejudices, may in the West tended to dismiss the Japanese as the little yellow
men; only during the devastating attacks upon Pearl Harbor, Malaya, and the
Philippines was this crude stereotype of a myopic, stunted, unmechanical
people revealed for the nonsense it was.
Both the army and naval air forces were also well trained, with a large stock of
competent pilots and dedicated crewmen. As for the army proper, its
determined and hyperpatriotic officer corps stood at the head of a force
imbued with the bushido spirit (code of honour and morals developed by the
Japanese samurai). Japan in 1938 was much stronger economically than Italy
and also overtook France and manufacturing and military production.

In the 1920s, Germany appeared to be by far the weakest and most troubled of
those Great Powers which felt dissatisfied by the postwar territorial and
economic arrangements due to various factors: need to pay reparations,
transfer of border regions to France and Poland, inflation, class tensions. If the
advent of Hitler transformed Germanys position in Europe within a matter of
years, it is important to recall the points made earlier: that virtually every
German was a revisionist to a greater or lesser degree and much of the early
Nazi foreign-policy program represented a continuity with the past ambitions
of German nationalists and the suppressed armed forces. Much of Hitlers early
popularity stemmed from the fact that the widespread programs of road
building, electrification, and industrial investment greatly reduced the
unemployment totals even before conscription did the rest. By 1936 the
economic recovery was being increasingly affect by the fantastic expenditure
upon armaments.

France and Britain

There were many important differences between France and Britain, both were
liberal-capitalist democracies which had been badly hurt by the war, which
were unable (despite their best efforts) to recover in any sustained way the
rosy Edwadian political economy of their memories, which felt under large and
growing pressure from the labour movement at home, and which possessed a
public opinion eager to avoid another conflict and overwhelmingly concerned
with domestic, social issues rather than foreign affairs.
In the beginning of the 1930s, it was France that seemed the stronger and the
more influential, at least on the all-important European scene. Throughout
these years it possessed the second-largest among the Great Powers (after the
Soviet Union) and also the largest air force (again after the Russian). The
economy of France recovered after the WWI but after 1933 collapsed. Behind
economic and productions difficulties was also social and political problems.
Britain economy recovery began in 1934, led by new industries (automobiles,
petrochemicals, aircraft and electrical goods). The treasury was not in favour to
raising government expenditure.

The Offstage Superpowers

Russia and United States was considered two giants and somewhat detached
Powers.

Russian population had been reduced in strength by the 1914-1918 conflict
and then by the revolution and civil war. With the attempts to establish a
socialist command economy led to a catastrophic decline in agricultural
production. Whatever the reasons for the Stalins manic, paranoid assault upon
so many of his own people, the economic results were serious: civil servants,
managers, technicians, statisticians, even foremen were swept away into the
camps, making Russias shortage of trained personnel more acute than ever.
The Manchurian crisis and Hitlers accession to power led to swift increases in
the size of the army, to 940,000 in 1934 and 1.3 million in 1935. With the rise
in industrial output and national income deriving from the Five-Year Plans,
large numbers of tanks and aircrafts were built.

The relative power of the U.S. in world affairs during the interwar years was,
curiously, in inverse ration to that of both the USSR and Germany. That is to
say, it was inordinately strong in the 1920s, but then declined more than any
other of Great Powers during the depressed 1930s, recovering only (and
partially) at the very end of this period. U.S. suffered disproportionately during
the Great Depression but recovered after 1940.