The interwar period — the twenty years between the First World War armistice in 1918 and the Second World War in 1939 — was not a time of settled peace but of unresolved tensions, economic catastrophe and the rise of brutal authoritarian regimes that made another war almost inevitable.
Why was the peace settlement of 1919 so unstable?
The Treaty of Versailles (1919) ended the First World War, but it satisfied almost nobody. Germany was forced to:
- Accept sole "war guilt" for causing the war (Article 231, the "War Guilt Clause")
- Pay reparations eventually set at £6.6 billion (equivalent to many hundreds of billions today)
- Lose approximately 13% of its territory, including the Rhineland demilitarised zone, Alsace-Lorraine (to France), and the Polish Corridor
- Reduce its army to 100,000 men and abolish its air force and most of its navy
German politicians across the spectrum denounced the treaty as a Diktat — a diktat, meaning a settlement imposed without negotiation. The sense that Germany had been humiliated while other countries escaped similar treatment fed directly into the political resentments that Hitler would exploit.
The League of Nations, set up to maintain peace through collective security, was fatally weakened from birth. The United States Senate refused to ratify the treaty and join the League, robbing it of the world's most powerful nation. The USSR was excluded. Germany was initially excluded. The League had no army of its own and relied on member states to act — which they consistently refused to do when it mattered.
What was the impact of the Great Depression?
The Wall Street Crash of October 1929 triggered the worst global economic depression in modern history. By 1932:
- American GDP had fallen by approximately 30%
- Around 25% of the US workforce was unemployed
- Industrial production in Germany had fallen by more than 40%
- Unemployment in Germany reached 6 million — nearly 30% of the workforce
The Depression destroyed the political centre in countries across Europe. When the economy collapses and mainstream parties seem unable to respond, voters turn to the extremes — either communist parties on the left or fascist/nationalist parties on the right. In Germany, support for the Nazi Party rose from 2.6% of the vote in 1928 (before the Depression) to 37.4% in July 1932 (its peak in a free election).
| Year | Nazi Party vote share | Unemployment in Germany |
|---|---|---|
| 1928 | 2.6% | c.1.3 million |
| 1930 | 18.3% | c.3 million |
| July 1932 | 37.4% | c.5.5 million |
| November 1932 | 33.1% | c.5.8 million |
The pattern is stark: as unemployment rose, Nazi support grew. The Depression did not make Hitler's rise inevitable — other factors mattered too — but it created the conditions in which extremism could flourish.
How did fascism and authoritarianism spread across Europe?
By the mid-1930s, democracy was in retreat across much of Europe. Mussolini had been ruling Italy as a fascist dictator since 1922. Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933 and had established a personal dictatorship by August 1934. By 1938, free democracies in Europe were a minority: Spain had just fought a brutal civil war (1936–1939) in which General Franco's fascists, aided by Hitler and Mussolini, defeated the Republican government. Poland, Hungary, Romania and other Eastern European states had authoritarian governments.
Fascism as an ideology combined intense nationalism, hatred of communism, rejection of democratic politics, glorification of violence and war, and worship of a charismatic leader. It exploited economic despair, nationalist grievance and fear of communism simultaneously. In Germany, it was overlaid with virulent antisemitism that became the ideological foundation of the Holocaust.
What was the policy of appeasement and why did Britain and France pursue it?
Appeasement was the policy of making concessions to Hitler's demands in the hope of avoiding a wider war. Its most notorious example was the Munich Agreement of September 1938, in which Britain's Neville Chamberlain and France's Édouard Daladier allowed Hitler to annex the Sudetenland (the German-speaking border region of Czechoslovakia) in exchange for Hitler's promise that he had no further territorial ambitions.
Chamberlain returned from Munich declaring he had achieved "peace for our time." Within six months, Hitler occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in violation of the agreement.
Why did Britain and France pursue appeasement?
- Fear of another catastrophic war. The First World War had killed 17 million people; the idea of a repeat was genuinely horrifying
- Belief that German grievances were partly legitimate. Some British politicians accepted that the Versailles settlement had been unjust
- Military unpreparedness. The British and French armed forces were not yet strong enough to fight a major war; appeasement bought time for rearmament
- Underestimation of Hitler. Many in the British establishment believed Hitler was a rational statesman who would stop making demands once his legitimate grievances were satisfied
These were not all foolish calculations; several are defensible in the context of 1938. But Hitler was not a rational statesman with limited aims — he was committed to European domination and the racial reordering of the continent.
What triggered the Second World War?
On 23 August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact — a shocking alliance between ideological enemies that guaranteed Hitler's eastern flank would be secure if he invaded western Europe. Stalin gained time to strengthen Soviet defences; Hitler gained freedom to act in the west without fear of a two-front war.
On 1 September 1939, German forces invaded Poland using a new form of fast mobile warfare — Blitzkrieg ("lightning war") combining tanks, motorised infantry and air power. Britain and France had pledged to defend Poland. On 3 September 1939, both declared war on Germany.
The Second World War had begun — twenty-one years after the "war to end all wars" had concluded.
Why did the interwar period fail to produce a lasting peace?
Historians have identified several structural failures:
- The peace settlement was punitive but not decisive. It was harsh enough to generate lasting German resentment but not total enough to actually prevent German recovery and rearmament
- International institutions were inadequate. The League of Nations could not enforce its decisions
- The Depression destroyed the political and economic conditions that democracies need to survive
- Appeasement, however understandable, rewarded aggression and emboldened Hitler
- The refusal to include the USA and USSR in a collective security arrangement left a fatal gap
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between fascism and communism?
Both fascism and communism reject liberal democracy and free-market capitalism, but they differ profoundly in theory. Communism (as theorised by Marx) sees history as a class struggle between workers and the owning class, aiming for a classless society where the state eventually withers away. Fascism rejects class conflict in favour of racial or national unity, celebrates hierarchy, the strong state and a supreme leader, and glorifies war. In practice, both produced totalitarian states that used mass terror, censorship and political violence. Hitler and Stalin — despite their ideological hatred — signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939, demonstrating that realpolitik (practical politics) could override ideology when convenient.
Was appeasement entirely wrong?
Historians debate this. Traditional accounts condemn appeasement as naive and cowardly — Chamberlain is often portrayed as failing to recognise Hitler's true nature. Revisionist historians of the 1960s–1980s argued that Chamberlain was aware of British military weakness and was buying time for rearmament, and that Munich was a tragic but rational calculation rather than naive foolishness. More recently, historians have pointed out that British intelligence consistently underestimated German military strength while overestimating German vulnerability. The debate matters because it is not just about 1938 but about how democracies should respond to aggressive authoritarian states — a perennially relevant question.
How did ordinary Germans respond to Hitler's rise?
This is one of the most difficult questions in modern history. Some Germans enthusiastically supported Hitler and the Nazis. Others voted for them as the least bad option in desperate economic circumstances. Some were indifferent. Some were actively opposed but were silenced by terror. The historian Ian Kershaw's concept of "working towards the Führer" suggests that many Germans anticipated what Hitler wanted and acted accordingly without direct orders, producing a system that was not simply a top-down dictatorship but one in which large numbers of ordinary people were willing participants. The German resistance — the people who plotted against Hitler, like the July 1944 bomb plot — was real but ultimately small and too late.
What was the Spanish Civil War and why did it matter for the wider world?
The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was a conflict between the elected Republican government and fascist Nationalist rebels led by General Francisco Franco. It became a proxy war: Hitler and Mussolini sent aircraft, tanks and troops to support Franco; the USSR sent advisers and weapons to support the Republic. Around 35,000 volunteers from across the world (including the British "International Brigades") went to Spain to fight fascism. Many democratic governments, including Britain and France, declared non-intervention. Franco's victory in April 1939 brought a fascist regime to power in Spain and tested the German and Italian military methods — including the bombing of civilian towns like Guernica — that would be used in the wider war. Many historians see the Spanish Civil War as the opening act of the Second World War.
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