Key Dates and Events for Chapter 2 Flashcards
what were the locarno treaties?
The Locarno Treaties were seven agreements negotiated at Locarno, Switzerland, during 5 to 16 October 1925 and formally signed in London on 1 December, in which the First World War Western European Allied powers and the new states of Central and Eastern Europe sought to secure the post-war territorial settlement, in return for normalising relations with the defeated German Reich (the Weimar Republic). It also stated that Germany would never go to war with the other countries. Locarno divided borders in Europe into two categories: western, which were guaranteed by the Locarno treaties, and eastern borders of Germany with Poland, which were open for revision.
Whast was the Young Plan?
he Dawes Plan (as proposed by the Dawes Committee, chaired by Charles G. Dawes) was a plan in 1924 that successfully resolved the issue of World War I reparations that Germany had to pay. It ended a crisis in European diplomacy following World War I and the Treaty of Versailles.
The plan provided for an end to the Allied occupation, and a staggered payment plan for Germany’s payment of war reparations. Because the Plan resolved a serious international crisis, Dawes shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925 for his work.
The Dawes Plan was put forward and was signed in Paris on August 16, 1924. This was done under the Foreign Secretary of Germany, Gustav Stresemann. Stresemann was Chancellor after the Hyperinflation Crisis of 1923 and was in charge of getting Germany back its global reputation for being a fighting force. However he resigned from his position as Chancellor in November 1923 but remained Foreign Secretary of Germany.
It was an interim measure and proved unworkable. The Young Plan was adopted in 1929 to replace it.
Treaty of Rapallo, what was it?
The Treaty of Rapallo was an agreement signed on 16 April 1922 between the German Republic and Soviet Russia under which both renounced all territorial and financial claims against each other and opened friendly diplomatic relations. The treaty was negotiated by Russian Foreign Minister Georgi Chicherin and German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau. It was a major victory for Russia especially and also Germany, and a major disappointment to France and Great Britain. The term “spirit of Rapallo” was used for an improvement in friendly relations between Germany and Russia. [1]
The treaty was signed in Rapallo. Ratifications were exchanged in Berlin on 31 January 1923, and registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on 19 September 1923.[2] The treaty did not include any military provisions, but secret military co-operation was already scheduled between Germany and Russia, which was a violation of the Versailles Treaty.[3]
A supplementary agreement, signed in Berlin on 5 November, extended the treaty to cover Germany’s relations with the other Soviet republics: of Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and the Far Eastern Republic. Ratifications were exchanged in Berlin on 26 October 1923, and the supplementary protocol was registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on 18 July 1924.[4] The agreement was reaffirmed by the Treaty of Berlin, 1926.
What were the Washington conferences of 1921-1922?
Washington Conference, also called Washington Naval Conference, byname of International Conference on Naval Limitation, (1921–22), international conference called by the United States to limit the naval arms race and to work out security agreements in the Pacific area. Held in Washington, D.C., the conference resulted in the drafting and signing of several major and minor treaty agreements.
The Four-Power Pact, signed by the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and France on December 13, 1921, stipulated that all the signatories would be consulted in the event of a controversy between any two of them over “any Pacific question.” An accompanying agreement stated they would respect one another’s rights regarding the various Pacific islands and mandates that they possessed. These agreements ensured that a consultative framework existed between the United States, Great Britain, and Japan—i.e., the three great powers whose interests in the Pacific were most likely to lead to a clash between them. But the agreements were too vaguely worded to have any binding effect, and their chief importance was that they abrogated the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902; renewed 1911), which had previously been one of the principal means of maintaining a balance of power in East Asia. Another supplementary document defined the “insular possessions and dominions” of Japan.
The Five-Power Naval Limitation Treaty, which was signed by the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, and Italy on February 6, 1922, grew out of the opening proposal at the conference by U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes to scrap almost 1.9 million tons of warships belonging to the great powers. This bold disarmament proposal astonished the assembled delegates, but it was indeed enacted in a modified form. A detailed agreement was reached that fixed the respective numbers and tonnages of capital ships to be possessed by the navies of each of the contracting nations. (Capital ships, defined as warships of more than 10,000 tons displacement or carrying guns with a calibre exceeding 8 inches, basically denoted battleships and aircraft carriers.) The respective ratios of capital ships to be held by each of the signatories was fixed at 5 each for the United States and Great Britain, 3 for Japan, and 1.67 each for France and Italy. The Five-Power Naval Limitation Treaty halted the post-World War I race in building warships and even reversed the trend; it necessitated the scrapping of 26 American, 24 British, and 16 Japanese warships that were either already built or under construction. The contracting nations also agreed to abandon their existing capital-ship building programs for a period of 10 years, subject to certain specified exceptions. Under another article in the treaty, the United States, Great Britain, and Japan agreed to maintain the status quo with regard to their fortifications and naval bases in the eastern Pacific.
The Naval Limitation Treaty remained in force until the mid-1930s. At that time Japan demanded equality with the United States and Great Britain in regard to the size and number of its capital ships. When this demand was rejected by the other contracting nations, Japan gave advance notice of its intention to terminate the treaty, which thus expired at the end of 1936.
The same five powers signed another treaty regulating the use of submarines and outlawing the use of poison gas (see chemical weapon) in warfare. A Nine-Power Pact signed by the above five powers plus the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, and China affirmed China’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity and gave all nations the right to do business with it on equal terms. In a related treaty the nine powers established an international commission to study Chinese tariff policies.
What was the The Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments?
The Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments, generally known as the Geneva Conference or World Disarmament Conference, was an international conference of states held in Geneva, Switzerland, between February 1932 and November 1934 to accomplish disarmament in accordance with the Covenant of the League of Nations. It was attended by 31 states, most of which were members of the League of Nations, but the USSR and the United States also attended.[1]
The conference was a response to the militarisation of global powers during and after the First World War. Aimed towards a global reduction in arms, the conference was organised and campaigned for by the League of Nations with the main objective to avoid another world war.
The conference symbolised global co-operation to a combined goal of limiting arms, but it is generally perceived as a failure because of the onset of the Second World War five years later and the withdrawal of Nazi Germany from both the conference and the League.
The conference’s main achievements included defining aggressively-offensive weapons, reasonably-defensive weapons, abolishing submarines, aviation and heavy-duty tanks and limiting land forces.
What was the ruhr crisis?
The Occupation of the Ruhr (German: Ruhrbesetzung) was a period of military occupation of the Ruhr region of Germany by France and Belgium between 11 January 1923 and 25 August 1925.
France and Belgium occupied the heavily industrialized Ruhr Valley in response to Germany defaulting on reparation payments dictated by the victorious powers after World War I in the Treaty of Versailles. Occupation of the Ruhr worsened the economic crisis in Germany,[1] and German civilians engaged in acts of passive resistance and civil disobedience, during which 130 were killed. France and Belgium, facing economic and international pressure, accepted the Dawes Plan to restructure Germany’s payment of war reparations in 1924 and withdrew their troops from the Ruhr by August 1925.
The Occupation of the Ruhr contributed to German re-armament and the growth of radical right-wing movements in Germany.[1]
what was the Kelogg-briand pact?
The Kellogg–Briand Pact or Pact of Paris – officially the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy[1] – is a 1928 international agreement on peace in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve “disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them”.[2] The pact was signed by Germany, France, and the United States on 27 August 1928, and by most other states soon after. Sponsored by France and the U.S., the Pact is named after its authors, United States Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and French foreign minister Aristide Briand. The pact was concluded outside the League of Nations and remains in effect.[3]
A common criticism is that the Kellogg–Briand Pact did not live up to all of its aims, but it has arguably had some success.[4] It was unable to prevent the Second World War, but it was the base for trial and execution of Nazi leaders in 1946. Furthermore declared wars became very rare after 1945.[5] However, it has also been ridiculed for its moralism, legalism and lack of influence on foreign policy. The pact had no mechanism for enforcement, and many historians and political scientists see it as mostly irrelevant and ineffective.[6] However, the pact did serve as the legal basis for the concept of a crime against peace, for which the Nuremberg Tribunal and Tokyo Tribunal tried and executed the top leaders responsible for starting World War II.[7]
With the signing of the Litvinov Protocol in Moscow on February 9, 1929, the Soviet Union and its western neighbors, including Romania, agreed to put the Kellogg–Briand Pact in effect without waiting for other western signatories to ratify.[8] The Bessarabian Question had made agreement between Romania and the Soviet Union challenging and dispute between the nations over Bessarabia continued.[9][10]
Similar provisions to those in the Kellogg-Briand Pact were later incorporated into the Charter of the United Nations and other treaties, which gave rise to a more activist American foreign policy which began with the signing of the pact.[11]
