Versailles Treaty and the Age of Anxiety : Europe 1919-1929

1. Versailles Treaty and the Age of Anxiety :Europe 1919-1929

2. Who are these people?

3. Treaty of Versailles, June 28, 1919

4. Versailles Treaty Terms • “War Guilt Clause”: Germany accepts responsibility for the war • Land to France: Alsace-Lorraine • Land to Poland: Main part of West Prussia and province of Posen and Eastern upper Silesia • Land to Belgium: Eupen-Malmedy • Land to Denmark: Northern Schleswig • Saar: France administers under League of Nations • Rhineland: demilitarized, no fortifications or military forces allowed. Allied military occupation (1923-1925) • Sudentenland to Czechoslovakia • Part of East Prussia to Lithuania

6. Versailles Treaty Terms II • Germany loses all colonies in Africa and Asia. All go to France, Britain, Belgium, Japan • Germany army limited to 100,000 men; navy to 15,000 and 36 ships, no more than 10K tons; no compulsory military service • No tanks, airplanes, large ships, submarines, heavy artillery, or gas • Ottoman Empire gives up all possessions outside of Turkey. Great Britain gets Iraq, Palestine, and Jordan; France gets Syria and Lebanon. • Germany can’t join the League of Nations. • Germany has to pay 132 billion gold marks ($1.2 trillion in 2011 dollars) • Austria not allowed to join Germany

7. Reacting to Versailles Treaty • What do you think the prime motivation of the Allies was? • What do you think the Germans felt about to the Versailles Treaty?

9. Weimar Republic 1919-1933 • Parliamentary Republic formed in city of Weimar in Feb. 1919 • Inherited a weakened nation divided between rightwing nationalists and communists • Lots of economic and social turmoil

10. What’s going on in this cartoon? What is the sentiment?

11. Otto Dix, Prager Straße (Prague Street), 1920, oil and collage on canvas, 101 x 81 cm, What images do yousee in this image? What do they tellyou about life inGermany after WW1?

12. Turmoil in the streets Communist workers fighting Right-wing Freikorps—paramilitaries--tries to take over Berlin

13. “Street Fight” by Otto Dix

14. KDP (German Communist Party) fighters .

15. January 1923-France and Belgium occupy Ruhr after Germany defaults on repayments; German “passive” resistance

16. Hyperinflation • German government prints money to pay for reparations • And to support striking workers in the Ruhr • Hurts workers and lower middle class most.

17. Hyperinflation

18. 1920s—media changes lifeWhy is this important? What are the effects? Radio • 1920 1st U.S. commercial radio station goes on the air in Pittsburgh • In Germany number of radios grows from 9,000 in 1924 to nearly 3 million in 1929 • Technology improves: nationwide broadcasts possible Movies • Becomes a mass medium • 1920-1932 “Golden age of German cinema • Focus on crime, horror and historical spectacles: “Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, “Nosferatu”, “M” • Marlene Dietrich, Peter Lorre other German actors become stars

19. German cinema -1920s and 30shttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g-sfrQnwwg

21. Bell v. Buck 8-1 vote • "We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

22. Hitler and National Socialist Workers Party 1920 only 3,000 members

23. Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923, ends in failure and Hitler is arrested.

24. Hitler writes Mein Kampf (My Struggle) in jail • "The external security of a people is largely determined by the size of its territory." • "The Russian Empire in the East is ripe for collapse; and the end of the Jewish domination of Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state." • "Every manifestation of human culture, every product of art, science and technical skill, which we see before our eyes today, is almost exclusively the product of Aryan creative power."

25. Racism & anti-Semitism across Europe and U.S. In the U.S. the Ku Klux Klan claims millions of members The Jewish Peril

27. Nazism taps in commonly held beliefs: Social Darwinism • The application of Darwinism to the study of human society, specifically a theory that individuals or groups achieve advantage over others as the result of genetic or biological superiority.

28. Eugenics • The study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of a human population, esp. by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits or by encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits

29. These beliefs were widespread!