From World War I through World War II

1.

Dr Guli Yuldasheva,
Webster university

2.

i.
1914–1920: World War One and Wilsonian Diplomacy
ii.
The Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles
iii.
The League of Nations
iv.
The October Revolution and its impact on the IR system – the case of Soviet
Turkestan.
v.
Causes of World War II
vi.
The Western policy of appeasement before the World War Two.

3.

During his tenure as President, Woodrow Wilson encouraged the country to look
beyond its economic interests and to define and set foreign policy in terms of ideals,
morality, and the spread of democracy abroad. The United States continued its
efforts to become an active player on the international scene that also meant
consolidation of the US global status and leadership in the world, and a new balance of
power in the IR system.
Germany’s resumption of submarine attacks on passenger and merchant ships in 1917
became the primary motivation behind Wilson’s decision to lead the United States into
World War I.
Following the sinking of an unarmed French boat, the Sussex, in the English Channel in
March 1916, Wilson threatened to sever diplomatic relations with Germany unless the
German Government refrained from attacking all passenger ships and allowed the
crews of enemy merchant vessels to abandon their ships prior to any attack.
On May 4, 1916, the German Government accepted the US terms and conditions in what
came to be known as the “Sussex pledge.”

4.

By January 1917, however, the situation in Germany had changed. The German
policymakers believed that a resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare could
help defeat Great Britain within five months. They argued that they could violate
the “Sussex pledge” since the United States could no longer be considered a
neutral party after supplying munitions and financial assistance to the Allies; that
the United States had jeopardized its neutrality by acquiescing to the Allied
blockade of Germany.
Accordingly, on January 31, 1917, German Ambassador to the United States Count
Johann von Bernstorff presented U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing a note
declaring Germany’s intention to restart unrestricted submarine warfare the
following day.

5.

Wilson left open the possibility of negotiating with Germany if its submarines refrained from
attacking U.S. shipping. Nevertheless, throughout February and March 1917, German submarines
targeted and sank several U.S. ships, resulting in the deaths of numerous U.S. seamen and citizens.
On January 19, 1917, British naval intelligence intercepted and decrypted a telegram sent by
German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the German Ambassador in Mexico City. The
“Zimmermann Telegram” promised the Mexican Government that Germany would help Mexico
recover the territory it had ceded to the United States following the Mexican-American War. In
return for this assistance, Germany asked for Mexican support in the war.
By 1917, the continued submarine attacks on U.S. merchant and passenger ships, and the
“Zimmermann Telegram’s” implied threat of a German attack on the United States, swayed U.S.
public opinion in support of a declaration of war. Finally, the Germans, by their actions, had
demonstrated that they had no interest in seeking a peaceful end to the conflict.
On April 2, 1917, before a joint session of Congress President W.Wilson criticized Germany’ for
violation of its pledge to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic and the
Mediterranean, as well as its attempts to entice Mexico into an alliance against the United States,
as his reasons for declaring war. On April 4, 1917, the U.S. Senate voted in support of the measure
to declare war on Germany.

6.

Wilson presented a program of fourteen points to a joint session of Congress on
January 8, 1918. Eight of the fourteen points treated specific territorial issues
among the combatant nations. Five of the other six concerned general principles
for a peaceful world: open covenants (i.e. treaties or agreements) openly arrived at;
freedom of the seas; free trade; reduction of armaments; and adjustment of colonial
claims based on the principles of self-determination. The fourteenth point
proposed what was to become the League of Nations to guarantee the “political
independence and territorial integrity [of] great and small states alike.”
Despite Wilson’s idealism reflected in the Fourteen Points, he also had more
practical objectives in mind. He hoped to keep Russia in the war by convincing the
Bolsheviks that they would receive a better peace from the Allies, to bolster Allied
morale, and to undermine German war support. The address was immediately
hailed in the United States and Allied nations, and even by Bolshevik leader
Vladimir Lenin, as a landmark of enlightenment in international relations.

7.

In March of 1919, William Christian Bullitt, an attaché to the U.S. delegation to the
Paris Peace Conference, visited Soviet Russia on a clandestine mission. Bullitt’s
actual objective was far more ambitious: to broker an agreement between the
Allies and Russia’s Bolshevik government that would end the Russian Civil War, lift
the Allied blockade of that country, and allow the Allies to withdraw the troops
dispatched to Russia in 1918.
Bullitt eventually received a proposal from the Bolshevik government that would
have realized these goals, but the Allied leaders at the Paris Peace Conference
were unwilling to accept the offer.
Although there was opposition to negotiations with the United States within the
Bolshevik leadership, on March 14, 1919, the Bullitt mission received a Russian
proposal that demanded that the Allies call for a ceasefire within the former
Russian Empire and agree to a peace conference in a neutral nation.

8.

Bullitt believed that the greatest danger confronting the United States was the
possibility that continued Allied interventions and support of the Whites Russians
would lead to the rise of more radical political factions. Bullitt concluded that
Lenin’s faction of the Bolshevik was “as moderate as any Socialist Government
which can control Russia.”
Bullitt returned to Paris on March 25, where he faced Allied resistance to the
proposal he received from Lenin. The failure of the Allies to agree to the proposal
secured by the Bullitt Mission delayed official U.S. recognition of Soviet Russia for
many years.
In early 1919, both Lloyd George and President Wilson suggested that the leaders
of the warring Russian factions should meet in order to hammer out a peace
accord. In spite of fierce French opposition, President Wilson succeeded in
proposing that the Russians would meet on Prinkipo Island off the coast of Turkey.
While the Bolsheviks accepted Wilson’s proposal, the conference failed to
materialize due to French resistance and the unwillingness of Russian antiBolsheviks to attend negotiations that would include the Bolshevik government.

9.

The Paris Peace Conference convened in January 1919 at Versailles just outside
Paris. The conference was called to establish the terms of the peace after World
War I.
The United Kingdom, France, the United States, and Italy became known as the “Big
Four” dominated the proceedings that led to the formulation of the Treaty of
Versailles, a treaty that ended World War I.
The Treaty of Versailles articulated the compromises reached at the conference. It
included the planned formation of the League of Nations, which would serve both
as an international forum and an international collective security arrangement. U.S.
President W. Wilson was a strong advocate of the League as he believed it would
prevent future wars.
Negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference were complicated. The United
Kingdom, France, and Italy fought together as the Allied Powers during the First
World War. The United States, entered the war in April 1917 as an Associated Power
and was not bound to honor pre-existing agreements among the Allied Powers. The
U.S. President W.Wilson strongly opposed many of these arrangements, including
Italian demands on the Adriatic.

10.

Treaty negotiations were also weakened by the absence of other important nations. The
Bolshevik decision to repudiate Russia’s outstanding financial debts to the Allies and to
publish the texts of secret agreements between the Allies concerning the postwar
period angered the Allies. The Allied Powers refused to recognize the new Bolshevik
Government and thus did not invite its representatives to the Peace Conference. The
Allies also excluded the defeated Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey,
and Bulgaria).
In July 1919, U.S. public opinion overwhelmingly favored ratification of the Treaty,
including the Covenant of the League of Nations. However, in spite of the fact that 32
state legislatures passed resolutions in favor of the Treaty, the U.S. Senate strongly
opposed it. Senate opposition cited Article 10 of the Treaty, which dealt with collective
security and the League of Nations. This article, opponents argued, ceded the war
powers of the U.S. Government to the League’s Council.
The U.S. Government signed the Treaty of Berlin on August 25, 1921. This separate
peace treaty with Germany stipulated that the United States would enjoy all “rights,
privileges, indemnities, reparations or advantages” conferred to it by the Treaty of
Versailles, but left out any mention of the League of Nations, which the United States
never joined.

11.

The League of Nations was an international organization, headquartered in Geneva,
Switzerland, created after the First World War to provide a forum for resolving
international disputes and prevent wars like World War I. It was first proposed by
President W. Wilson as part of his Fourteen Points plan for an equitable peace in
Europe and reflected Wilsonian vision for collective security through U.S.
leadership in international organizations.
The last of Wilson’s Fourteen Points called for a “general association of
nations…formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual
guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small
states alike.”
However, the US never became a member due to Article X of the League of Nations’
charter that committed the US to defend any League member in the event of an
attack.

12.

Republican opposition to the League feared that the League would commit the
United States to an expensive organization that would reduce the US’ ability to
defend its own interests. They also feared the consequences of involvement in
Europe’s tangled politics, then even more complex because of the 1919 peace
settlement. They adhered to a vision of the United States returning to its traditional
aversion to commitments outside the Western Hemisphere.
Additionally, growing disillusionment with the Treaty of Versailles diminished
support for the League in the United States and the international community.
However, even while rejecting membership, the Republican Presidents of the
period, agreed with many of its goals.

13.

Revolutionary Turkestan in fact was indirectly involved into these processes as a
part of the new stage of the “Great Game” between Great Britain and Bolsheviks in
their struggle for political domination in the region. Additional, important factor
was at the same time, the ideological competit
ion of the two powers during the formation of the bipolar world.
Soviet historians wrote about the division of spheres of influence between England
and France on December 23, 1917, about the official commentary on the Wilson’s
"14 points", as evidence of the aggressive plans of Britain and the US against
Turkestan.
However, the Western scientists wrote that one of the main reasons for Britain was
the need to protect the country from the "Bolshevik danger.“ British authors sought
to prove the continuity of the foreign policy of the tsarist government and the
government of the Soviet Union, arguing that the principles remained unchanged,
that was, even then, in the 19th century, India was threatened from the north by the
Soviet Union.

14.

It should be recognized that the real threat to India really existed at the end of the 19th
century, when, according to Soviet historians, "the inextricable part of the activities of
the Turkkom was the ideological leadership of the work of small national sections and
other revolutionary organizations in Persia, Turkey, Bukhara, Khiva, India and China,
operating in Central Asia“ (Nazarov S.A.1972).
In August 1919, after the Red Army broke through the Urals, Trotsky convinced the
Bolsheviks to begin long-term training for a "military throw against India“ (Mawdlsley
E. 1987).
In general, the Western authors identify two main reasons that prompted Britain to
launch an intervention into the Soviet Turkestan: the ongoing war with Germany and
fear of Bolshevism. Both of these factors simultaneously posed a threat to India.
The basis for many Western studies was the work of the famous British historian W.
Chemberlin "Russian Revolution of 1917-1921." According to the author, one of the
reasons for British intervention into Turkestan was the possibility of a German-Turkish
threat to India. However, fear of Bolshevism was the decisive factor in the beginning of
intervention into Russia, which at that time included Turkestan as well.

15.

In the atmosphere of “glasnost” of 1990, Kurtis Keeble, a former English diplomat, who
worked in Moscow, wrote that with all the disagreements in the British government and
its hostility to the Bolsheviks, the main goal was nevertheless to continue the war with
Germany. The policy of the British government, in his opinion, was to support all forces
ready to help the cause of the allies.
The British government in 1918-1921 experienced a power crisis caused by the
destabilization of the world. Hence – its inconsistency in its policy in relation to Soviet
Russia, and, hence, to Turkestan, which affected the activities of military missions there.
The forces sent to Turkestan to "restore order" were insignificant, the intervention was
short-lived, and therefore Britain could not have a serious impact on the course of the
civil war, but only temporarily delayed full establishment of the Soviet regime in the
region. British assistance to the counter-revolutionary forces of Turkestan was limited,
as evidenced by the very outcome of the anti-Bolshevik protests, which failed to
achieve their goal.
1921, Great Britain reconciled itself with the fact of the existence of Soviet Russia and
started rapprochement with Moscow, providing the marginal people (that included
Turkestani people) to their fate.

16.

The imperfections of the post-World War I system of international
relations: ignoring the interests of Great Britain, the USA and France,
the interests of other countries (including the winners), the lack of
common goals among the major powers, the removal of Soviet Russia
from solving international policy issues led to the collapse of the
Versailles-Washington world order;
The world economic crisis that began in 1929:
Germany's economy was weakened by excessive reparations, and the
crisis further increased the lack of financial resources (lower wages,
higher taxes, unemployment). This increased the discontent of the
population;

17.

The rise to power in Germany of the National Socialists, led by Adolf Hitler (1933):
Hitler sought favors in military restrictions and assistance in paying reparations,
intimidating world leaders with the threat of spreading the communist regime.
National interests were actively promoted domestically;
Non-compliance by Germany with the main points of the Treaty of Versailles (since
1935): military build-up, cessation of payments;
Invading actions: Germany annexed Austria (1938), occupied the Czech Republic,
Italy captured Ethiopia (1936), Japan invaded China;
The formation of two military-political alliances (by 1939): Anglo-French and
German-Italian, to which Japan was inclined.

18.

The United States emerged from the World War I as a global power. Financially, no one
could compete with the US. The main lesson of the war - American involvement was a
mistake, there was lack of cohesion among the powers. As a result the international
society had to deal with real vacuum of power in the IR system.
These outcomes, aggravated by the growing strength of the fascist Germany, later
influenced the course of the World War II when the Allies couldn’t manage to appease
Germany in the beginning of the war.
In contemporary politic the term “appeasement” means dealing with the “devil”, thus,
efforts to pacify an aggressor state. Being the British Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945,
during the Second World War, Winston Churchill said: “appeasement is an extremely
honorable when realized from the position of force. It is shameful only when it is
realized from the position of weakness”.
Motivations of the Allied forces to conduct the policy of appeasement:
1) To prevent the allies moving to the enemy camp;
2) Britain wanted to smooth its blame for humiliating Germany during the WWI
(reparations, etc.).

19.

In view of the fascist atrocities and growing German antisemitism, the Western
public opinion in the 30ths demonstrated that there was a massive decision to go to
war. However, the leaders thought that Britain was not ready for the war. There was
no unity among the Western elites on the issue of involvement into the war.
Finally, the Western powers could not appease Hitler, all undertaken negotiations
failed. The outcome of the failed appeasement was the death of more than 16,5 mln
of the Western people in the WWII.
Compare:
- 26,6 mln of the Soviet citizen died during the WWII;
- Uzbekistan with 6,5 mln population before the WWII mobilized about 2 mln people,
588 thousand died.

20.

Considering the above-said, the Allied policy of appeasement before the WWII is
strongly criticized and the British policy, mostly responsible for this policy, is called
hypocritical.
Indeed, Germany's violation of the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty was largely
possible due to the connivance of Great Britain and France, which made
concessions, not willing to start military operations. They limited themselves only
by formal expression of discontent. So, with their permission (Munich Agreement)
in 1938, Germany annexed the border region of Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland).
The same year, Britain and France signed non-aggression declarations with the
Germans.

21.

Thus, we have studied the process of one IR subsystem changing into another: the
system of the "European concert of nations" of the 19th century has exhausted itself
before World War I and attempts were made to form a new political equilibrium of
states that resulted into a new the Versailles-Washington system between the two world
wars.
This process lead the world community to endeavors of forming the League of Nations,
the ideal goals of which, however, failed to accomplish in reality.
The October Revolution embraced such a periphery of the IR system as the Soviet
Turkestan, which also became an arena of the great powers’ clash, but in the end
brought to the spread of socialist ideas on this territory and inclusion of the region into
the Soviet Union.
Despite all efforts, many problems, touched in the League of Nations, were not solved
that lead to the beginning of World War II. Discrepancies and hypocracy of some
Western powers lead to the failed Western policy of appeasement before the World War
Two. Consequently, the world entered the new war.