The Interwar Years:

League of Nation's Problems:
- No United States membership
- Economic sanctions vs. aggression?
- No defensive alliance with France and US/UK
- Soviet Union hostile/French-Eastern European alliance (weak)

Harsh German Punishment:
- France enforced strict reparation payments from Germany
- German inability to pay due to financial problems
- French occupation of the Ruhr Valley: workers' strike
- Government printed paper money: runaway inflation

Reaction: German Extremism
- Economic disaster prompted communist uprisings
- Middle-class shift to right wing politics
- (1923) Nazi attempt to seize power: Beerhall Putsch (Munich)
- Hitler jailed for 9 months/wrote Mein Kampf

Post World War I: The Easing of Tensions
- Dawes Plan: reduced reparation payments for Germany
- Treaty of Locarno: Guaranteed Germany's new western borders
- (1926) Germany admitted to League of Nations
- Kellogg-Briand Pact: international treaty outlawing war
- (1924) Diplomatic relations with Soviet Union
- (1929) Great Depression: money pulled out of German investments