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The Postwar Worlda. Political
Consequences of the War
The armistices of 1918 and the treaties of 1919 and 1920 brought peace to only part of the world, for wars continued in eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. In Russia civil conflict raged through 1919, and the Bolsheviks did not succeed in reconquering the Caucasus, the Ukraine, and the territory between Petrograd (now Leningrad) and the Baltic Sea until early in 1920. In that year, they negotiated treaties recognizing the independence of Estonia, Latvia,. Lithuania, and Finland. Meanwhile, however, the Polish government had come to the aid of the defeated Ukrainians, and war between Russia and Poland continued through the spring and summer of 1920. After suffering initial reverses, the Bolsheviks rallied and drove almost to the outskirts of Warsaw. The Poles, reinforced by French officers and money, then pushed them back. Peace negotiations opened in September 1920, and a treaty of peace delimiting the SovietPolish frontier was signed at Riga on March 18, 1921. In Hungary the Communist government of Bela Kun declared war on Rumania on April 22, 1919, only to have the Rumanians march toward Budapest, forcing Kun to flee the country on August 1. On March 1, 1920, a reactionary regency was established under Adm. Miklos (Nicholas) Horthy. In Albania a nationalist uprising early in 1920 compelled the Italians to withdraw their occupying forces and, on August 2, to recognize the nation's independence. In Turkey, Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal Atatiirk) battled from 1919 to 1922 to drive the Greeks from Smyrna (now Izmir) and to force the Allies to revise the Treaty of Sevres. In Syria nationalists rose against the French, who had beep assigned a mandate over the area by the inter-Allied Conference of San Remo of April 1920; much blood was shed before the French consolidated their control over Syria proper, and the Republic of Lebanon successfully proclaimed its independence (1926). In Iraq, which the Conference of San Remo had designated as a British mandate, there were uprisings in 1920. In Arabia there was fighting in 1919 between ibn-Saud and King Husayn (Hussein) of the Hejaz, and it was not until 1925 that the former succeeded in consolidating his control over the entire peninsula. In Iran, which a treaty of Aug. 9, 1919, placed under British protection, a nationalist uprising was backed by the Soviet Union; it was only ended in February 1921 with the triumph of the British-backed military chieftain Reza Khan Pahlavi. The British treaty was denounced, and both Russians and British left the country. In Afghanistan, Emir Amanullah Khan declared war against the British in 1919, and peace was not fully restored until they recognized the complete independence of the nation in November 1921. In China civil war continued without interruption. Nor did peace in the full sense of the term come even to western Europe. The new German Republic was tormented by insurrection in the Polish provinces in 1918 and 1919, by separatist movements in the Rhineland nurtured by the French occupying authorities, by an independent Communist republic established briefly in Bavaria in April 1919, and by the violent agitation of both Communist and right-wing nationalist groups elsewhere in the country. All of these difficulties were increased by the Allied blockade, which, continuing throughout the period of treaty making, brought much of the population to the point of starvation. The Allies themselves, despite their hard bargaining at Paris, proved unable afterward to agree on the measures to be applied to Germany. A conference held at Spa in July 1920 determined the percentage of reparations which each of the victors should obtain from the defeated state. Other conferences at Paris ( January 1921) and London (February-March; April-May 1921) altered these percentages and fixed the payments in money and in kind that the Germans were to make. The French became increasingly irritated by the failure of the Germans to meet these obligations. They suggested repeatedly that the Allies invoke the sanctions provided in the Treaty of Versailles and occupy the Ruhr. The British opposed this suggestion and at conferences at London (December 1921) and Genoa (April 1922) proposed as partial compensation a new treaty guaranteeing the French frontiers. Nothing came of this proposal nor of further conferences at London (August and December 1922). Dissatisfied and alarmed by the fact that Germany and Russia had signed a treaty of commerce and friendship at Rapallo on April 16, 1922, the French defied the British and proceeded to occupy the Ruhr in January 1923. The conferences which exacerbated disagreements were
not, of course, the only ones held. A large assemblage of delegates
met in Washington in the winter of 1921-1922 and framed a treaty of
naval limitations which permitted cut?backs in capital ships by all
the major maritime states; a nine-power pact providing for the maintenance
of the open door for trade in China;
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