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

• 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