Conflict and tension

• The British public wanted revenge on germany, but Lloyd George was cautious as he still wished to trade with Germany.
• America was not affected by the war as much as the european countries had been, and Woodrow Wilson had the idealist belief that the world should be free of war.
• Most of the fighting had taken place in France
• Clemenceau wanted to cripple Germany financially, and wanted Germany to never be able to recover again
• Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Wilson were known as the Big Three
• When Germany and its allies surrendered, they signed an armistice on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month (11th November 1918)
• The terms of the treaty of Versailles included: freedom of the seas, Alsace Lorraine returned to France, an independent polish state, and a League of Nations.
• Germany had to accept war guilt, as well as pay 6.6 billion marks in reparations and reduce their army to 100,000 men
• The general feeling was that the treaty of Versailles was fair but could have been harsher
• The German people were shocked by the severity of the treaty and wanted to reject it, but the government had no choice
• The League of Nations was based in Geneva, Switzerland
• The Assembly met once a year
• Vilna was designated to be the capital of Lithuania, but the majority of its citizens wanted to be polish
• The League ended up giving Vilna to Poland after they refused to withdraw their army
• Upper Silesia was a region between Poland and Germany and both countries wanted it
• The economy crashed in 1929 and the Great Depression began
• The Great Depression made the league of Nations weak
• The Manchuria crisis was Japan invading Manchuria, a region of China
• The League released the Lytton report, which stated that Japan was in the wrong for the Manchuria crisis
• Japan ignored the Lytton report and left the league, continuing the invasion
• The Abyssinia crisis was the Italian invasion of Abyssinia
• Italy left the league as a result of the Abyssinia crisis, which left the league unrespected
• The Locarno Treaty was signed in 1925 and was a treaty between France, Britain, Italy, Belgium, and Germany
• When Hitler came to power he began to break the terms of the treaty of Versailles, such as remilitarising the Rhineland
• Hitler then invaded the Sudetenland, which was on the border of Czechoslovakia. This caused international tensions to rise drastically
• Neville Chamberlain attempted to appease Hitler by allowing him to take what he wanted partly, in the hope that this could prevent war
• In September 1938, Neville Chamberlain met with Hitler at Munich where they agreed to allow Hitler to have all of the Sudetenland
• The Nazi-Soviet pact was formed, which was the agreement that the USSR would get polish territory if Germany invaded it
• After the Nazi-Soviet pact, Germany began the invasion of Poland, kickstarting the Second World War