Difficulties in The Disarmament of Germany

1. Difficulties in The Disarmament of Germany And The Collaboration With The U.S.S.R. By Selēna, Betty, Andrea, and Alex

2. Threat to Internal Security • The existence of organized bands of unemployed veterans posed a threat to the republican regime, occasionally conspiring to topple it. • The extreme left had a similar agenda to overthrow the government and replace it with a new communist regime. • The German Government used these two party’s to their advantage. They used the allies’ fears of both an expansionist or communist takeover to avoid complete disarmament. • Germany exploited this fear in order to increase their police forces from 60,000 to 150,000, which then supplemented their regular army of 100,000.

3. IMCC • The IMCC was the inter-allied military control commission. • They had the task of verifying German compliance with the disarmament provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. • They had to overcome geographical, political and economic obstacles. • It had been forced to suspend activities during the Ruhr occupation after the Berlin Government refused to give them security of it’s members.

4. Fertilization, or Weapons of Mass Destruction? • There was a large distinction between the civilians and the military. • It was difficult to regulate industries that produced things such as fertilizers and airplanes, which could easily double as weapons for war. • The allies could not justify regulations on these industries, especially due to the reparations they needed to generate in order to pay back the Allies.

5. German And Soviet Collaboration • Collaboration between German and Soviet military authorities had begun in the winter of 1920-21. • Deep in the Russian interior, the German army was engaged in the production and testing of military aircraft, tanks, poison gases, and other outlawed weapons. • In 1924 the IMCC issued a report detailing flagrant German violations of most of the disarmament clauses.