After World War I

The close of World War I found the nations of Europe exhausted by the long conflict and determined to build a lasting peace. The Treaty of Versailles was designed to prevent Germany from ever again taking the offensive. Many people hoped that through the League of Nations and mutual disarmament agreements countries would be able to conduct international relations on a peaceful basis. The Washington Naval Limitation Agreement of 1921, putting limits on the numbers and sizes of major naval vessels, seemed a successful first step toward international disarmament. However, the League of Nations was doomed from the start, in large part because of the refusal of the United States to join.

The victorious Allies demanded huge reparations (payments for damages) from defeated Germany. These demands, later described by Winston Churchill as "malignant and silly," were impossible for Germany to meet. German leaders sought to ease the burden of reparations by deliberately devaluing their currency; in the resulting runaway inflation, German money became worthless.

Meanwhile, world opinion was becoming less harsh towards Germany. When France sought to enforce collection of reparations from Germany by armed occupation of the Ruhr in 1923, the action was widely denounced. The Dawes Plan of 1924 and the Young Plan of 1929 provided huge loans to restore the German economy and put reparations on a more equitable basis.

The European nations permitted Germany to participate as an equal in negotiating the Locarno treaties in 1925. In these treaties, Germany and France agreed not to attack one another, and Germany and Belgium made a similar agreement. Britain and Italy agreed to aid the victim of a violation of these treaties. Germany, France, Belgium, Poland, and Czechoslovakia pledged to settle disputes among themselves peacefully. The treaties also stipulated that the German Rhineland, which was adjacent to the French border, would be a demilitarized area. In 1926 Germany entered the League of Nations, and in 1928 it signed the Pact of Paris, or Kellogg-Briand Pact, by which 62 nations renounced war as an instrument of policy. The Lausanne Conference of 1932 permitted Germany to cease reparations payments.