9: The Treaty of Versailles and the New International System Flashcards
Zimmermann telegram
The Zimmermann Telegram was a secret diplomatic communication issued in January 1917 by the German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the Mexican government, proposing an alliance (along with Japan) that would recover the southwestern states Mexico lost to the U.S. Zimmermann sent the telegram in anticipation of resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, an act the German government expected would likely lead to war with the U.S. Zimmermann hoped tensions with Mexico would slow shipments of supplies, munitions, and troops to the Allies if the U.S. was tied down on its southern border. British intelligence had intercepted and decoded the message and revealed its content to the US. The Zimmermann Telegram galvanized American public opinion against Germany once and for all, and it helped to generate support for the American declaration of war on Germany in April 1917.
Henry Cabot Lodge
Henry Cabot Lodge was an American Republican politician, historian, and statesman who served in the United States Senate from 1893 to 1924 and is best known for his positions on foreign policy. After World War I, Lodge became Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the leader of the Senate Republicans. From this position, he led the successful congressional opposition to his Woodrow Wilson’s Treaty of Versailles ensured that the United States never joined the League of Nations. His strongest objection was to the requirement that all nations repel aggression, fearing that this would erode Congressional powers and erode American sovereignty; those objections had a major role in producing the veto power of the United Nations Security Council.
Kerensky
Aleksandr Fyodorovich Kerensky was a moderate socialist revolutionary who was a key political figure in the Russian Revolution of 1917. After the February Revolution of 1917, he joined the newly formed Russian Provisional Government, first as Minister of Justice, then as Minister of War, and after July as the government’s second Minister-Chairman. A leader of the moderate-socialist, non-Marxist Trudovik faction of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, he was also a vice-chairman of the powerful Petrograd Soviet. On 7 November, his government was overthrown by the Lenin-led Bolsheviks in the October Revolution. He spent the remainder of his life in exile, in Paris and New York City, and worked for the Hoover Institution. Interestingly, Kerensky’s father was the teacher of Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin), and the members of the Kerensky and Ulyanov families had been friends.
Trotsky
Leon Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronstein) was a Ukrainian-Russian Marxist revolutionary, communist theorist and agitator, a leader in Russia’s October Revolution in 1917, and later commissar of foreign affairs and of war in the Soviet Union (1917–24). Trotsky helped organize the failed Russian Revolution of 1905, after which he was arrested and exiled to Siberia. He escaped, and spent the following 10 years working in Britain, Austria, Switzerland, France, Spain, and the United States. After the 1917 February Revolution brought an end to the Tsarist monarchy, Trotsky returned from to Russia and became a leader in the Bolshevik faction. As chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, he played a key role in the October Revolution of November 1917 that overthrew the new Provisional Government. Trotsky initially held the post of Commissar for Foreign Affairs and became directly involved in the 1917–1918 Brest-Litovsk negotiations with Germany as Russia pulled out of the First World War. From 1918 to 1925, Trotsky headed the Red Army as People’s Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs and played a vital role in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922. In the struggle for power following Lenin’s death, however, Joseph Stalin emerged as victor, while Trotsky was removed from all positions of power and later exiled (1929). He remained the leader of an anti-Stalinist opposition abroad until his assassination by a Stalinist agent in 1940.
Brest-Litovsk
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a separate peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, between the new Bolshevik government of Russia and the Central Powers that ended Russia’s participation in World War I. The treaty was agreed upon by the Russians to stop further invasion. As a result of the treaty, Soviet Russia defaulted on all of Imperial Russia’s commitments to the Allies. In the treaty, Russia ceded to Germany hegemony over Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Russia also ceded its province of Kars in the South Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire and recognized the independence of Ukraine. The treaty was annulled by the Armistice of 11 November 1918, when Germany surrendered to the western Allies. However, in the meantime it did provide some relief to the Bolsheviks, already fighting the Russian Civil War (1917–1922) following the Russian Revolutions of 1917.
Béla Kun
Béla Kun was a Hungarian communist activist and politician who governed the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. Kun served in the Austro-Hungarian Army and was captured by the Imperial Russian Army in 1916, after which he was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in the Urals. Kun embraced communist ideas during his time in Russia, and in 1918 he co-founded a Hungarian arm of the Russian Communist Party in Moscow. He befriended Vladimir Lenin and fought for the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War. In March 1919, Kun led a successful coup d’état, formed a Communistic-Social Democratic coalition government and proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Though the de jure leader of the republic was president Sándor Garbai, the de facto power was in the hands of foreign minister Kun, who maintained direct contact with Lenin via radiotelegraph and received direct orders and advice from the Kremlin. The new regime collapsed four months later and Kun fled to the Soviet Union. During Stalin’s Great Purge, Kun was accused of Trotskyism, arrested, interrogated, tried, and executed in 1938.
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg was a Polish Marxist philosopher, anti-war activist, economist and revolutionary socialist. After the Social Democratic Party of Germany supported German involvement in World War I in 1915, Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht co-founded the anti-war Spartacus League (Spartakusbund) which eventually became the KPD (Communist Party of Germany). After World War I, the extreme burdens suffered by the German population during the war, the economic and psychological impacts of the German Empire’s defeat by the Allies and growing social tensions between the general population and the aristocratic and bourgeois elite led to the German November Revolution of 1918-1919, which replaced the German federal constitutional monarchy with a democratic parliamentary republic (Weimar Republic). During the conflict, Luxemburg co-founded the newspaper Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag), the central organ of the Spartacist movement. The movement attempted overthrow of the government and rejected any attempt at a negotiated solution. Friedrich Ebert’s majority SPD government crushed the revolt and the Spartakusbund by sending in the Freikorps, government-sponsored paramilitary groups consisting mostly of World War I veterans. Freikorps troops captured and summarily executed Luxemburg and Liebknecht during the rebellion.
Clemenceau
Georges Clemenceau, known as le tigre (the Tiger), was a French statesman and journalist who was a dominant figure in the French Third Republic and who, as premier (1917–20), a major contributor to the Allied victory in World War I and a framer of the post-war Treaty of Versailles. After about 1,400,000 French soldiers were killed between the German invasion and Armistice, he demanded a total victory over the German Empire. Clemenceau stood for reparations, a transfer of colonies, strict rules to prevent a rearming process, as well as the restitution of Alsace-Lorraine. Nicknamed Père la Victoire (“Father of Victory”) or Le Tigre (“The Tiger”), he continued his harsh position against Germany in the 1920s.
Lloyd George
David Lloyd George was the British prime minister (1916–22) who dominated the British political scene in the latter part of World War I. After H. H. Asquith succeeded to the premiership in 1908, Lloyd George replaced him as Chancellor of the Exchequer. To fund extensive welfare reforms he proposed taxes on land ownership and high incomes in the “People’s Budget” (1909), and with the National Insurance Act 1911 and other measures helped to establish the modern welfare state. As wartime Chancellor, Lloyd George strengthened the country’s finances and forged agreements with trade unions to maintain production. Lloyd George became Minister of Munitions and rapidly expanded production. In 1916, he was appointed Secretary of State for War but was frustrated by his limited power and clashes with the military establishment over strategy. After Asquith was forced to resign in December 1916, Lloyd George succeeded him as prime minister. In the aftermath of World War I, he and the Conservatives maintained their coalition with popular support following the December 1918 “Coupon” election. His government had extended the franchise to all men and some women earlier in that year. He remains the only British prime minister to have been Welsh and the only one to have spoken English as a second language.
Fiume
The Fiume question was a post-World War I controversy between Italy and Yugoslavia over the control of the Adriatic port of Fiume (known in Croatia as Rijeka). Although the secret Treaty of London (April 26, 1915) had assigned Fiume to Yugoslavia, the Italians claimed it at the Paris Peace Conference on the principle of self-determination. On 12 November 1920, the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes signed the Treaty of Rapallo by which both parties agreed to acknowledge the “Free State of Fiume”. It would exist as an independent state for about one year de facto, and four years de jure. Control over the Free State was in an almost constant state of flux until in January 1924, the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes signed the Treaty of Rome (27 January 1924), agreeing to the annexation of Fiume by Italy. With the surrender of Italy in the Second World War, the “Fiume-Rijeka” issue resurfaced and by the Treaty of Paris (Feb. 10, 1947), all of Fiume became part of Yugoslavia.
May Fourth Movement
The May Fourth Movement was a Chinese anti-imperialist, cultural, and political movement which grew out of student protests in Beijing on May 4, 1919. It was directed toward national independence, emancipation of the individual, and rebuilding society and culture. Students gathered in front of Tiananmen (The Gate of Heavenly Peace) to protest the Chinese government’s weak response to the Treaty of Versailles decision to allow Japan to retain territories in East China. The demonstrations sparked nation-wide protests and spurred an upsurge in Chinese nationalism, a shift towards political mobilization away from cultural activities, a move towards a populist base and away from traditional intellectual and political elites. In the big cities, strikes and boycotts against Japanese goods were begun by the students and lasted more than two months. For one week, beginning June 5, merchants and workers in Shanghai and other cities went on strike in support of the students. Faced with this growing tide of unfavourable public opinion, the government acquiesced; three pro-Japanese officials were dismissed, the cabinet resigned, and China refused to sign the peace treaty with Germany.
Piłsudski
Józef Piłsudski, was a Polish revolutionary leader and statesman, and the first chief of state (1918–22) of the newly independent Poland established in November 1918. Early in his political career, Piłsudski became a leader of the Polish Socialist Party. Believing Poland’s independence would be won militarily, he formed the Polish Legions. In 1914, he predicted a new major war would defeat the Russian Empire and the Central Powers. After World War I began in 1914, Piłsudski’s Legions fought alongside Austria-Hungary against Russia. In 1916 he demanded recognition of Poland’s independence, which was granted in 1918. He served as Poland’s first head of state until the constitution was established in 1922. After staging a coup in 1926, he rejected an offer of the presidency but remained politically influential by serving as premier (1926–28) and minister of defence (1926–35) under handpicked premiers, enabling him to be the de facto ruler of Poland.
Masaryk
Tomáš Masaryk was a Czechoslovak politician, statesman, sociologist, and philosopher who was the chief founder and first president of Czechoslovakia. Until 1914, he advocated restructuring the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a federal state. In early 1915, after the outbreak of World War I, Masaryk made his way to western Europe, where he was recognized as the representative of the underground Czech liberation movement and conducted a vigorous campaign against Austria-Hungary and Germany. After the overthrow of the autocratic tsarist regime in 1917, Masaryk transferred his activities to Russia in order to organize the Czechoslovak Legion, formed by Czechoslovak war prisoners, and to develop contacts with the new government. After the Bolshevik Revolution, he set out for the United States, where he negotiated the terms of Czechoslovak independence with President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of State Robert Lansing. With the help of the Allied Powers, Masaryk gained independence for a Czechoslovak Republic as World War I ended in 1918. He co-founded Czechoslovakia together with Milan Rastislav Štefánik and Edvard Beneš and served as its first president.
Soviet Polish War
The Polish-Soviet War was fought primarily between the Second Polish Republic and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in the aftermath of World War I, on territories formerly held by the Russian Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was the result of the German defeat in World War I, Polish nationalism sparked by the re-creation of an independent Polish state, and the Bolsheviks’ determination to carry the gains they had achieved during the Russian Civil War to central Europe. After the collapse of the Central Powers and the Armistice of 1918, Russia annulled the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and started moving forces in the western direction to recover and secure the lands vacated by the German forces that the Russian state had lost under the treaty. Lenin saw the newly independent Poland (formed in November 1918) as the bridge which his Red Army would have to cross to assist other communist movements and to bring about more European revolutions. At the same time, leading Polish politicians of different orientations pursued the general expectation of restoring the country’s pre-1772 borders. Motivated by that idea, Polish Chief of State Józef Piłsudski began moving troops east. The decisive Polish victory resulted in the establishment of the Russo-Polish border that existed until 1939.
Balfour Declaration
The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 during the First World War announcing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. It was made in a letter from Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary, to Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild, a leader of the Anglo-Jewish community. The British government hoped that the declaration would rally Jewish opinion, especially in the US, to the side of the Allied powers during World War I and they hoped also that the settlement in Palestine of a pro-British Jewish population might help to protect the approaches to the Suez Canal in neighbouring Egypt and thus ensure a vital communication route to British colonial possessions in India. The declaration fell short of the expectations of the Zionists, who had asked for the reconstitution of Palestine as “the” Jewish national home. The declaration specifically stipulated that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” Nevertheless, the declaration aroused enthusiastic hopes among Zionists.
