Interwar Era, Interwar

In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days), the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second World War. The interwar period was relatively short, yet featured many significant social, political, and economic changes throughout the world. Petroleum-based energy production and associated mechanisation led to the prosperous Roaring Twenties, a time of both social mobility and economic mobility for the middle class. Automobiles, electric lighting, radio, and more became common among populations in the developed world. The indulgences of the era subsequently were followed by the Great Depression, an unprecedented worldwide economic downturn that severely damaged many of the world's largest economies.

Politically, the era coincided with the rise of communism, starting in Russia with the October Revolution and Russian Civil War, at the end of World War I, and ended with the rise of fascism, particularly in Germany and in Italy. China was in the midst of half-a-century of instability and the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party. The empires of Britain, France and others faced challenges as imperialism was increasingly viewed negatively in Europe, and independence movements emerged in many colonies; for example the south of Ireland became independent after much fighting.

The Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and German Empires were dismantled, with the Ottoman territories and German colonies redistributed among the Allies, chiefly Britain and France. The western parts of the Russian Empire, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland became independent nations in their own right, and Bessarabia (now Moldova and parts of Ukraine) chose to reunify with Romania.

The Russian communists managed to regain control of the other East Slavic states, Central Asia and the Caucasus, forming the Soviet Union. Ireland was partitioned between the independent Irish Free State and the British-controlled Northern Ireland after the Irish Civil War in which the Free State fought against "anti-treaty" Irish republicans, who opposed partition. In the Middle East, both Egypt and Iraq gained independence. During the Great Depression, countries in Latin America nationalised many foreign companies, most of which were American, in a bid to strengthen their own economies. The territorial ambitions of the Soviets, Japanese, Italians, and Germans led to the expansion of their domains.

The period ended at the beginning of World War II.

Turmoil in Europe

Following the Armistice of Compiègne on 11 November 1918 that ended World War I, the years 1918–1924 were marked by turmoil as the Russian Civil War continued to rage on, and Eastern Europe struggled to recover from the devastation of the First World War and the destabilising effects of not just the collapse of the Russian Empire, but the destruction of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire, as well. There were numerous new or restored countries in Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, some small in size, such as Lithuania or Latvia, and some larger, such as Poland and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The United States gained dominance in world finance. Thus, when Germany could no longer afford war reparations to Britain, France and other former members of the Entente, the Americans came up with the Dawes Plan and Wall Street invested heavily in Germany, which repaid its reparations to nations that, in turn, used the dollars to pay off their war debts to Washington. By the middle of the decade, prosperity was widespread, with the second half of the decade known as the Roaring Twenties.

International relations

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 of the Soviet Union to 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 efforts at economic autarky; Japanese aggressiveness toward China, occupying large amounts of Chinese land, as well as border disputes between the Soviet Union and Japan, leading to multiple clashes along the Soviet and Japanese occupied Manchurian border; Fascist diplomacy, including the aggressive moves by Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany; the Spanish Civil War; Italy's invasion and occupation of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in the Horn of Africa; the appeasement of Germany's expansionist moves against the German-speaking nation of Austria, the region inhabited by ethnic Germans called the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, the remilitarisation of the League of Nations demilitarised zone of the German Rhineland region, and the last, desperate stages of rearmament as the Second World War increasingly loomed.

Disarmament was a very popular public policy. However, the League of Nations played little role in this effort, with the United States and Britain taking the lead. U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes sponsored the Washington Naval Conference of 1921 in determining how many capital ships each major country was allowed. The new allocations were actually followed and there were no naval races in the 1920s. Britain played a leading role in the 1927 Geneva Naval Conference and the 1930 London Conference that led to the London Naval Treaty, which added cruisers and submarines to the list of ship allocations. However the refusal of Japan, Germany, Italy and the USSR to go along with this led to the meaningless Second London Naval Treaty of 1936. Naval disarmament had collapsed and the issue became rearming for a war against Germany and Japan.

Roaring Twenties

The Roaring Twenties highlighted novel and highly visible social and cultural trends and innovations. These trends, made possible by sustained economic prosperity, were most visible in major cities like New York City, Chicago, Paris, Berlin, and London. The Jazz Age began and Art Deco peaked. For women, knee-length skirts and dresses became socially acceptable, as did bobbed hair with a Marcel wave. The young women who pioneered these trends were called " flappers". Not all was new: "normalcy" returned to politics in the wake of hyper-emotional wartime passions in the United States, France, and Germany. The leftist revolutions in Finland, Poland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Spain were defeated by conservatives, but succeeded in Russia, which became the base for Soviet Communism and Marxism–Leninism. In Italy the National Fascist Party came to power under Benito Mussolini after threatening a March on Rome in 1922.

Most independent countries enacted women's suffrage in the interwar era, including Canada in 1917 (though Quebec held out longer), Britain in 1918, and the United States in 1920. There were a few major countries that held out until after the Second World War (such as France, Switzerland and Portugal). Leslie Hume argues:
: The women's contribution to the war effort combined with failures of the previous systems' of Government made it more difficult than hitherto to maintain that women were, both by constitution and temperament, unfit to vote. If women could work in munitions factories, it seemed both ungrateful and illogical to deny them a place in the polling booth. But the vote was much more than simply a reward for war work; the point was that women's participation in the war helped to dispel the fears that surrounded women's entry into the public arena.

In Europe, according to Derek Aldcroft and Steven Morewood, "Nearly all countries registered some economic progress in the 1920s and most of them managed to regain or surpass their pre-war income and production levels by the end of the decade." The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Greece did especially well, while Eastern Europe did poorly, due to the First World War and Russian Civil War. In advanced economies the prosperity reached middle class households and many in the working class with radio, automobiles, telephones, and electric lighting and appliances. There was unprecedented industrial growth, accelerated consumer demand and aspirations, and significant changes in lifestyle and culture. The media began to focus on celebrities, especially sports heroes and movie stars. Major cities built large sports stadiums for the fans, in addition to palatial cinemas. The mechanisation of agriculture continued apace, producing an expansion of output that lowered prices, and made many farm workers redundant. Often they moved to nearby industrial towns and cities.

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place after 1929. The timing varied across nations; in most countries it started in 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s. It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. The depression originated in the United States and became worldwide news with the stock market crash of 29 October 1929 (known as Black Tuesday). Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide GDP fell by an estimated 15%. By comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession. Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s. However, in many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II.

The Great Depression had devastating effects in countries both rich and poor

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