Aftermath of World War I

Events after the end of the war in 1918

Aftermath of World War I

Part of the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles in 1919
Date	11 November 1918 – 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months and 3 weeks)
Outcome	Political and social changes such as: Spanish flu Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920) International relations (1919–1939) Revolutions of 1917–1923

The aftermath of World War I saw far-reaching and wide-ranging cultural, economic, and social change across

electoral democracies by bringing near-universal suffrage for the first time in history, as in Germany (1919 German federal election), Great Britain (1918 United Kingdom general election), and Turkey (1923 Turkish general election).^{[citation needed}

]

Blockade of Germany

Main article: Blockade of Germany (1914–1919)

Through the period from the

Armistice did allow food to be shipped into Germany, but the Allies required that Germany provide the means (the shipping) to do so. The German government was required to use its gold reserves, being unable to secure a loan from the United States.^{[citation needed}

]

Historian Sally Marks claims that while "Allied warships remained in place against a possible resumption of hostilities, the Allies offered food and medicine after the armistice, but Germany refused to allow its ships to carry supplies". Further, Marks states that despite the problems facing the Allies, from the German government, "Allied food shipments arrived in Allied ships before the charge made at Versailles".[3] This position is also supported by Elisabeth Gläser who notes that an Allied task force, to help feed the German population, was established in early 1919 and that by May 1919 Germany "became the chief recipient of American and Allied food shipments". Gläser further claims that during the early months of 1919, while the main relief effort was being planned, France provided food shipments to Bavaria and the Rhineland. She further claims that the German government delayed the relief effort by refusing to surrender their merchant fleet to the Allies. Finally, she concludes that "the very success of the relief effort had in effect deprived the [Allies] of a credible threat to induce Germany to sign the Treaty of Versailles.^[4] However, it is also the case that for eight months following the end of hostilities, the blockade was continually in place, with some estimates that a further 100,000 casualties among German civilians due to starvation were caused, on top of the hundreds of thousands which already had occurred. Food shipments, furthermore, had been entirely dependent on Allied goodwill, causing at least in part the post-hostilities irregularity.^[5][6]

Paris Peace Conference

Main article: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

After the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919, between Germany on the one side and France, Italy, Britain and other minor allied powers on the other, officially ended war between those countries. Other treaties ended the relationships of the United States and the other Central Powers. Included in the 440 articles of the Treaty of Versailles were the demands that Germany officially accept responsibility "for causing all the loss and damage" of the war and pay economic reparations. The treaty drastically limited the German military machine: German troops were reduced to 100,000 and the country was prevented from possessing major military armaments such as tanks, warships, armored vehicles and submarines.

Influenza epidemic

Main article: Spanish flu

Albania promiscuous fighting is going on

Turkish War of Independence

After 123 years, Poland re-emerged as an independent country. The Kingdom of Serbia and its dynasty, as a "minor Entente nation" and the country with the most casualties per capita,^[12][13][14] became the backbone of a new multinational state, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later renamed Yugoslavia. Czechoslovakia, combining the Kingdom of Bohemia with parts of the Kingdom of Hungary, became a new nation. Romania would unite all Romanian-speaking people under a single state leading to Greater Romania.^[15] Russia became the Soviet Union and lost Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, which became independent countries. The Ottoman Empire was soon replaced by Turkey and many of its territories became mandates under British or French rule.

In the British Empire, the war unleashed new forms of nationalism. In the Dominions of Australia and New Zealand, the Battle of Gallipoli became known as those nations' "Baptism of Fire". It was the first major war in which the newly established countries fought, and it was one of the first times that Australian troops fought as Australians, not just subjects of the British Crown, and independent national identities for these nations took hold. Anzac Day, commemorating the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), celebrates this defining moment.^[16][17]

After the Battle of Vimy Ridge, where the Canadian divisions fought together for the first time as a single corps, Canadians began to refer to their country as a nation "forged from fire".^[18] Having succeeded on the same battleground where the "mother countries" had previously faltered, they were for the first time respected internationally for their own accomplishments. Like Australia and New Zealand, Canada entered the war as a Dominion of the British Empire and remained so, although it emerged with a greater measure of independence.^[19][20] When Britain declared war in 1914, the dominions were automatically at war; at the conclusion, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa were individual signatories of the Treaty of Versailles.^[21]

Lobbying by Chaim Weizmann and fear that American Jews would encourage the United States to support Germany culminated in the British government's Balfour Declaration of 1917, endorsing creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.^[22] A total of more than 1,172,000 Jewish soldiers served in the Allied and Central Power forces in World War I, including 275,000 in Austria-Hungary and 450,000 in Tsarist Russia.^[23]

The establishment of the modern state of Israel and the roots of the continuing

The prestige of Germany and German things in Latin America remained high after the war but did not recover to its pre-war levels.^[33][34] Indeed, in Chile the war bought an end to a period of intense scientific and cultural influence writer Eduardo de la Barra scornfully called "the German bewitchment" (Spanish: el embrujamiento alemán).^[33]

The Transylvanian and Bukovinian Romanians who were taken prisoners of war fought as the

In the late spring of 1918, three new states were formed in the South Caucasus: the First Republic of Armenia, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Georgia, which declared their independence from the Russian Empire. Two other minor entities were established, the Centrocaspian Dictatorship and South West Caucasian Republic (the former was liquidated by Azerbaijan in the autumn of 1918 and the latter by a joint Armenian-British task force in early 1919). With the withdrawal of the Russian armies from the Caucasus front in the winter of 1917–18, the three major republics braced for an imminent Ottoman advance, which commenced in the early months of 1918. Solidarity was briefly maintained when the Transcaucasian Federative Republic was created in the spring of 1918, but this collapsed in May when the Georgians asked for and received protection from Germany and the Azerbaijanis concluded a treaty with the Ottoman Empire that was more akin to a military alliance. Armenia was left to fend for itself and struggled for five months against the threat of a full-fledged occupation by the Ottoman Turks before defeating them at the Battle of Sardarabad.^[37]

Greece fought against Turkish nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal, a war that eventually resulted in a massive population exchange between the two countries under the Treaty of Lausanne.^[38] According to various sources,^[39] several hundred thousand Greeks died during this period, which was tied in with the Greek genocide.^[40]

Political upheavals

Revolutions

A

Austria-Hungary

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With the war having turned decisively against the Central Powers, the people of Austria-Hungary lost faith in their allied countries, and even before the armistice in November, radical nationalism had already led to several declarations of independence in south-central Europe after November 1918. As the central government had ceased to operate in vast areas, these regions found themselves without a government and many new groups attempted to fill the void. During this same period, the population was facing food shortages and was, for the most part, demoralized by the losses incurred during the war. Various political parties, ranging from ardent nationalists, to social democrats, to communists attempted to set up governments in the names of the different nationalities. In other areas, existing nation states such as Romania engaged regions that they considered to be theirs. These moves created de facto governments that complicated life for diplomats, idealists, and the Western allies.

The Western forces were officially supposed to occupy the old Empire, but rarely had enough troops to do so effectively. They had to deal with local authorities who had their own agenda to fulfill. At the peace conference in Paris the diplomats had to reconcile these authorities with the competing demands of the nationalists who had turned to them for help during the war, the strategic or political desires of the Western allies themselves, and other agendas such as a desire to implement the spirit of the Fourteen Points.

For example, in order to live up to the ideal of self-determination laid out in the Fourteen Points, Germans, whether Austrian or German, should be able to decide their own future and government. However, the French especially were concerned that an expanded Germany would be a huge security risk. Further complicating the situation, delegations such as the Czechs and Slovenians made strong claims on some German-speaking territories.

The result was treaties that compromised many ideals, offended many allies, and set up an entirely new order in the area. Many people hoped that the new nation states would allow for a new era of prosperity and peace in the region, free from the bitter quarrelling between nationalities that had marked the preceding fifty years. This hope proved far too optimistic. Changes in territorial configuration after World War I included:

• Establishment of the
  Habsburg
  family in perpetuity.
• Eventually, after 1920, the new borders of Hungary did not include approx. two-thirds of the lands of the former Kingdom of Hungary, including areas where the ethnic Magyars were in a majority. The new republic of Austria maintained control over most of the predominantly German-controlled areas, but lost various other German majority lands in what was the Austrian Empire.

• Duchy of Cieszyn, large part of Upper Hungary and Carpathian Ruthenia formed the new Czechoslovakia
  .
• Duchy of Cieszyn, northern Árva County and northern Szepes County were transferred to Poland
  .
• the Southern half of the County of Tyrol and Trieste were granted to Italy.
• Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia-Slavonia, Međimurje, Dalmatia, Slovenia, Syrmia, parts of Bács-Bodrog, Baranya, Torontál and Temes Counties were joined with Serbia to form the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later Yugoslavia.
• Transylvania, parts of Banat, Crișana, and Maramureș and Bukovina became part of Romania.
• The Austro-Hungarian concession in Tianjin was ceded to the Republic of China.

These changes were recognized in, but not caused by, the Treaty of Versailles. They were subsequently further elaborated in the

On 28 June 1919 the Weimar Republic was forced, under threat of continued Allied advance, to sign the Treaty of Versailles. Germany viewed the one-sided treaty as a humiliation and as blaming it for the entire war. While the intent of the treaty was to assign guilt to Germany to justify financial reparations, the notion of blame took root as a political issue in German society and was never accepted by nationalists, although it was argued by some, such as German historian Fritz Fischer. The German government disseminated propaganda to further promote this idea, and funded the Centre for the Study of the Causes of the War to this end.

132 billion gold marks ($31.5 billion, 6.6 billion pounds) were demanded from Germany in reparations, of which only 50 billion had to be paid. In order to finance the purchases of foreign currency required to pay off the reparations, the new German republic printed tremendous amounts of money – to disastrous effect.

The treaty required Germany to permanently reduce the size of its army to 100,000 men, and destroy their tanks, air force, and U-boat fleet (her capital ships, moored at Scapa Flow, were scuttled by their crews to prevent them from falling into Allied hands).

Germany saw relatively small amounts of territory transferred

At the end of the war, the Allies

The occupation of Smyrna by Greece on 18 May 1919 triggered a nationalist movement to rescind the terms of the treaty. Turkish revolutionaries led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a successful Ottoman commander, rejected the terms enforced at Sèvres and under the guise of General Inspector of the Ottoman Army, left Istanbul for Samsun to organize the remaining Ottoman forces to resist the terms of the treaty. On the eastern front, after the invasion of Armenia in 1920 and signing of the Treaty of Kars with the Russian S.F.S.R. Turkey took over territory lost to Armenia and post-Imperial Russia.^[43]

On the western front, the growing strength of the

The Soviet Union benefited from Germany's loss, as one of the first terms of the armistice was the abrogation of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. At the time of the armistice Russia was in the grips of a civil war which left more than seven million people dead and large areas of the country devastated. The nation as a whole suffered socially and economically.

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia gained independence. They were occupied again by the Soviet Union in 1940.

Finland gained a lasting independence, though it repeatedly had to fight the Soviet Union for its borders in the Winter War.

Romania gained Bessarabia from Russia.

The Russian concession of Tianjin was occupied by the Chinese Beiyang government in 1920; in 1924 the Soviet Union renounced its claims to the district.

United Kingdom

In the

British private investments abroad were sold, raising £550 million. However, £250 million in new investment also took place during the war. The net financial loss was therefore approximately £300 million; less than two years investment compared to the pre-war average rate and more than replaced by 1928.[47] Material loss was "slight": the most significant being 40% of the British Merchant Navy sunk by German U-boats. Most of this was replaced in 1918 and all immediately after the war.^[48] The military historian Correlli Barnett has argued that "in objective truth the Great War in no way inflicted crippling economic damage on Britain" but that the war "crippled the British psychologically but in no other way".^[49]

Less concrete changes include the growing assertiveness of

In Ireland, the delaying of the Government of Ireland Act 1914, which was enacted to resolve the Home Rule issue, later exacerbated by the Government's severe response to the 1916 Easter Rising and its failed attempt to introduce conscription in Ireland in 1918, led to an increased support for separatist radicals. This led indirectly to the outbreak of the Irish War of Independence in 1919. The creation of the Irish Free State that followed this conflict in effect represented a territorial loss for the United Kingdom that was all but equal to the loss sustained by Germany, and furthermore, compared to Germany, a much greater loss in terms of its ratio to the country's prewar territory. However, the new Irish Free State remained a dominion within the British Empire.

World War I also caused a major realignment in British parliamentary politics by leading to the rise of the

The Austro-Hungarian and German concessions in Tianjin were placed under the administration of the Chinese government; in 1920 they occupied the Russian area as well.

The western Allies' substantial accession to Japan's territorial ambitions at China's expense led to the May Fourth Movement in China, a social and political movement that had profound influence over subsequent Chinese history. The May Fourth Movement is often cited as the birth of Chinese nationalism, and both the Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party consider the Movement to be an important period in their own histories.

France

Alsace–Lorraine returned to France, the region which had been ceded to the Kingdom of Prussia in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War. At the 1919 Peace Conference, Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau's aim was to ensure that Germany would not seek revenge in the following years. To this purpose, the chief commander of the Allied forces, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, had demanded that for the future protection of France the Rhine river should now form the border between France and Germany. Based on history, he was convinced that Germany would again become a threat, and, on hearing the terms of the Treaty of Versailles that had left Germany substantially intact, he observed that "This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years."

The destruction brought upon French territory was to be indemnified by the reparations negotiated at Versailles. This financial imperative dominated France's foreign policy throughout the 1920s, leading to the 1923 Occupation of the Ruhr in order to force Germany to pay. However, Germany was unable to pay, and obtained support from the United States. Thus, the Dawes Plan was negotiated after Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré's occupation of the Ruhr, and then the Young Plan in 1929.

Also extremely important in the War was the participation of

Furthermore, under the state of war declared during the hostilities, the French economy had been somewhat centralized in order to be able to shift into a "war economy", leading to a first breach with classical liberalism.

Finally, the socialists' support of the National Union government (including Alexandre Millerand's nomination as Minister of War) marked a shift towards the French Section of the Workers' International's (SFIO) turn towards social democracy and participation in "bourgeois governments", although Léon Blum maintained a socialist rhetoric.

Women in France

“But with its faceless state machinery and unremitting mechanized slaughter, the war instead collapsed these old ideals”^[52] (Roberts 2). When the war was over and the men returned home, the world was a vastly different place than it had been before the war. Many ideals and beliefs were shattered with the war. Those returning from the front lines, and even those who were on the Homefront, were left to pick up the pieces of what was left of those ideals and beliefs, and try to rebuild them. Before the Great War, many thought this war would be a quick war, like many before had been. With new technology and weapons though, the war was at a stalemate for a large part of it, dragging what many thought would be a quick war out into a long, grueling war. With so much death and destruction done to France, it is not surprising when looking back that the way of life for French citizens was forever changed.

Many citizens saw the change in culture and blamed the war for taking away the rose tinted glasses that society had viewed things through. Many scholars and writers, such as Drieu la Rochelle, found many ways to describe this new view on reality such as stripping away clothes^[53] (Roberts 2). This comparison of the new reality and clothing being stripped away also ties into the fact that gender roles changed greatly after the war.

During the war many jobs had been left to women because many men were fighting on the front lines. This gave women a new sense of freedom that they had not been able to experience ever before. Not many women wanted to go back to how things were before the war, when they expected to stay at home and take care of the house. When the war was over many of the older generations and men wanted women to return to their previous roles.

At a time where gender roles were so heavily defined and intertwined with the culture of many places, for French citizens viewing how many women went against said roles after World War I, or the Great War as it was called at the time, it was ghastly. While gender roles had slowly been changing over time since the Industrial Revolution gave more work options outside of the home in factories, it had never been such a quick and drastic change as it was after World War I. During the war many men went off to fight, leaving behind factory jobs that were usually seen as a man's job only. These jobs had to be filled and without men there to fill the jobs, it was women who stepped up to fill the hole instead. France suffered a great loss of life during World War I, leaving many jobs unable to be refilled even after the war.

Debates and discussions concerning gender identity and gender roles in relation to society became one of the main ways to discuss the war and people's stances on it ^[54](Roberts 5). The war left people struggling to grasp the new reality. There were mixed reactions to the new way of life after World War I and how it affected both men and women. Some people were willing to completely embrace the new standards that were emerging following the war, while others harshly rejected the changes, seeing the changes as summarizing all the horrors they experienced during the war. Others looked for ways to compromise between the new and old way of life, tried to combine the ideals and beliefs from before and after the war to find a healthy middle ground.

Discussions pertaining to women during post-war debates often split the view of women into three categories—the “modern woman,” the “mother,” and the “single woman” ^[55](Roberts 9). These categories broke up the view of women by the roles they took on, the jobs they did, the way they acted, or by the beliefs they might hold. These categories also came to encompass the views of gender roles in relation to before and after the war. The “mother” category relates back to the role of women before the Great War, the woman who stayed at home and took care of the household while the husband was off at work. The “modern woman” relates to how many women were after the war, working jobs meant for men, engaging in sexual pleasures, and often doing things at a fast pace. The “single woman” was the middle ground between the other two that were very different from one another. The “single woman” came to represent the women who would never be able to marry because there were not enough men for every woman to marry ^[56](Roberts 10).

One thing that sparked much debate in regards to the postwar woman is fashion. During the war things like cloth material were rationed, with people being encouraged to not use as much fabric, so that there would be enough for the military. In response to these rations, women wore shorter dresses and skirts, usually about knee length, or pants. This change in apparel was something that many women continued to wear even after the war ended. It was such a drastic change to the clothing norms for women before the war. This change led to some “modern women” to be described in harsh lights, as if wearing dresses and skirts that short showed that those women were promiscuous.

Those coming back from the war, from the fighting, were very traumatized and had wanted to come back to a home that was not very changed in order to give themselves a sense of normalcy. When these men came back to a home that had changed a lot they did not know what to make of it. Gone were the times of very defined gender roles that most of society conformed to. It was often hard for these traumatized men to accept these new changes, especially the changes in how women behaved.

Italy

In 1882, Italy joined with the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire to form the Triple Alliance. However, even if relations with Berlin became very friendly, the alliance with Vienna remained purely formal, as the Italians were keen to acquire Trentino and Trieste, parts of the Austro-Hungarian empire populated by Italians.

During

Nevertheless, by the end of the war the Allies realized they had made contradictory agreements with other Nations, especially regarding Central Europe and the Middle East. In the meetings of the "Big Four", in which Orlando's powers of diplomacy were inhibited by his lack of English, the Great powers were only willing to offer Trentino to the Brenner, the Dalmatian port of Zara, the island of Lagosta and a couple of small German colonies. All other territories were promised to other nations and the great powers were worried about Italy's imperial ambitions; Wilson, in particular, was a staunch supporter of Yugoslav rights on Dalmatia against Italy and despite the Treaty of London which he did not recognize.^[57] As a result of this, Orlando left the conference in a rage. This simply favored Britain and France, which divided among themselves the former Ottoman and German territories in Africa.^[58]

In Italy, the discontent was relevant:

The "mutilated victory" (vittoria mutilata) became an important part of Italian fascist propaganda.

Japan

Because of the treaty that Japan had signed with Great Britain in 1902, Japan was one of the Allies during the war. With British assistance, Japanese forces attacked Germany's territories in Shandong, China, including the East Asian coaling base of the Imperial German Navy. The German forces were defeated and surrendered to Japan in November 1914. The Japanese navy also succeeded in seizing several of Germany's island possessions in the western Pacific: the Carolines, the Mariana Islands, and the Marshall Islands.

At the

While disillusioned by the war, it having not achieved the high ideals promised by President Woodrow Wilson, American commercial interests did finance Europe's rebuilding and reparation efforts in Germany, at least until the onset of the Great Depression. American opinion on the propriety of providing aid to Germans and Austrians was split, as evidenced by an exchange of correspondence between Edgar Gott, an executive with The Boeing Company and Charles Osner, chairman of the Committee for the Relief of Destitute Women and Children in Germany and Austria. Gott argued that relief should first go to citizens of countries that had suffered at the hands of the Central Powers, while Osner made an appeal for a more universal application of humanitarian ideals.^[60] The American economic influence allowed the Great Depression to start a domino effect, pulling Europe in as well.

Territorial gains and losses

Countries that gained or regained territory or independence after World War I

•  Armenia: independence from Russian Empire
•  Australia: gained control of German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and Nauru
•  Austria: gained territories (Őrvidék) from Hungary
•  Azerbaijan: independence from Russian Empire
•  Belgium: gained control of Eupen-Malmedy and the African territories of Ruanda-Urundi from the German Empire
•  
  Belarusian People's Republic
  : gained control of several cities from the Russian Empire
•  Czechoslovakia: gained territories from the Austrian Empire (Bohemia, Moravia, and part of Silesia) and Hungary (mostly Upper Hungary and Carpathian Ruthenia)
•  Danzig: semi-autonomous free city with independence from the German Empire
•  
  Nordschleswig after the 1920 Schleswig plebiscites
  from the German Empire
•  Estonia: independence from the Russian Empire
•  Finland: independence from the Russian Empire
•  
  Alsace-Lorraine as well as various African colonies from the German Empire, and Middle East territories from the Ottoman Empire. The African and Middle East gains were officially League of Nations
  Mandates.
•  Georgia: independence from the Russian Empire
•  Greece: gained Western Thrace from Bulgaria
•  
  the island) gained independence from the United Kingdom (but still part of the British Empire as a Dominion
  )
•  Italy: gained South Tyrol, Trieste, Istria, and Zadar from the Austro-Hungarian Empire
•  Japan: gained Jiaozhou Bay and most of the Shandong Peninsula from China and the South Seas Mandate (both controlled by German Empire before the war)
•  Latvia: independence from the Russian Empire
•  Lithuania: independence from the Russian Empire
•  New Zealand: gained control of German Samoa
•  Poland: recreated and gained parts of the Austrian Empire, German Empire, Russian Empire and Hungary (small northern parts of the former Árva and Szepes counties)
•  
  Kionga
•  Romania: gained Transylvania, parts of Banat, Crișana, and Maramureș from the Kingdom of Hungary, Bukovina from the Austrian Empire, regained Dobruja from Bulgaria, and Bessarabia from the Russian Empire
•  South Africa: gained control of South West Africa
•  
  Armenian Highlands from the Russian Empire in the Treaty of Kars
  , while losing territory overall
•  
  Soviet Russia in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
•  United Kingdom: gained League of Nations Mandates in Africa and the Middle East
•  Yugoslavia: created from the Kingdom of Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia and gained parts from Austrian Empire (part of Duchy of Carniola, Austrian Littoral, Kingdom of Dalmatia) and Hungary (Muraköz, Muravidék, parts of Baranya, Bácska and Banat)

Nations that lost territory or independence after World War I

•  Austria: as the successor state of Cisleithania in the Austro-Hungarian Empire
•  
  Greece, also lost a part of Pirin Macedonia and Western Outlands
  to Serbia (Yugoslavia)
•  China: temporarily lost Jiaozhou Bay and most of Shandong to the Empire of Japan
•  Germany: as the successor state of the German Empire
•  Hungary: as the successor state of Transleithania in the Austro-Hungarian Empire
•  Montenegro: declared union with Serbia and subsequently became incorporated into Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
•  Russian SFSR, as the successor state of the Russian Empire
•  Turkey: as the successor state of the Ottoman Empire (although it did simultaneously gain some territory from the Russian Empire in the Treaty of Kars and reverse some territorial losses in Anatolia with the Turkish War of Independence)
•  United Kingdom: lost most of Ireland as the Irish Free State, Egypt in 1922 and Afghanistan in 1919

Social trauma

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The experiences of the war in the west are commonly assumed to have led to a sort of collective national trauma afterward for all of the participating countries. The optimism of 1900 was entirely gone and those who fought became what is known as "the Lost Generation" because they never fully recovered from their suffering. For the next few years, much of Europe mourned privately and publicly; memorials were erected in thousands of villages and towns.

So many British men of marriageable age died or were injured that the students of one girls' school were warned that only 10% would marry.^{[61]: 20, 245} The 1921 United Kingdom census found 19,803,022 women and 18,082,220 men in England and Wales, a difference of 1.72 million which newspapers called the "Surplus Two Million".^{[61]: 22–23} In the 1921 census there were 1,209 single women aged 25 to 29 for every 1,000 men. In 1931 50% were still single, and 35% of them did not marry while still able to bear children.^{[citation needed]}

As early as 1923,

Artists such as Otto Dix, George Grosz, Ernst Barlach, and Käthe Kollwitz represented their experiences, or those of their society, in blunt paintings and sculpture. Similarly, authors such as Erich Maria Remarque wrote grim novels detailing their experiences. These works had a strong impact on society, causing a great deal of controversy and highlighting conflicting interpretations of the war. In Germany, German nationalists including the Nazis believed that much of this work was degenerate and undermined the cohesion of society as well as dishonoring the dead.

Economic consequences

The war left allied countries overburdened with debt to the United States, and the wrecked German economy wasn't able to pay reparations except when loaned by American banks. Many wished to restore the gold standard despite opinions that would hurt their economies.

After the war, governments didn't return to the policies of the First globalization, instead erecting capital controls and trade barriers, and new borders didn't help. Introduced as a temporary war measure, passport control hindered economic migration and prevented equalizing labor costs in poor and developed countries, with the latter declaring they wish to abolish any restrictions but not actually wanting their workers to compete with emigrants.

The end of the first total, global war, met world industry with a massive overcapacity for military and military-related production (as well as military surpluses) such as aviation engines and stimulated research in how to adapt it to the peaceful life. For example,

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Remains of ammunition

Throughout the areas where trenches and fighting lines were located, such as the

Many towns in the participating countries have war memorials dedicated to local residents who died. Examples include:

• Australian War Memorial, Canberra, Australia
• Liberty Memorial, Kansas City, Missouri
  , United States
• Memorial for The Battle of Jutland, Thyborøn, Jutland, Denmark
• District of Columbia War Memorial, Washington, D.C., United States
• Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial
• The Cenotaph, London, United Kingdom
• Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres
  , Belgium
• Thiepval Memorial
• Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing at Passchendaele
• Verdun Memorial Museum
• Vimy Ridge Memorial, Vimy
  , France
• Gallipoli Memorial
  , Turkey
• Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne, Australia
• Irish National War Memorial Gardens, Dublin, Ireland
• Island of Ireland Peace Park, Messines, Belgium
• National War Memorial, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
• National War Memorial, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada
• Kriegerdenkmal auf dem Neroberg,^[63] Wiesbaden, Hessen, Germany
• Sacrario militare di Redipuglia, Fogliano Redipuglia, Italy
• Mausoleum of Mărășești, Romania

Tombs of unknown soldiers

• Monument to the Unknown Hero, Belgrade, Serbia
• Amar Jawan Jyoti, New Delhi, India
• Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Ottawa, Ontario
  , Canada
• Arc de Triomphe, Paris, France
• The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, London, United Kingdom
• Tomb of the Unknowns, Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia
  , United States
• Tomba del milite ignoto
  , Rome, Italy
• Australian War Memorial, Canberra, Australia
• New Zealand Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, Wellington
  , New Zealand
• Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Syntagma Square, Athens, Greece
• Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Bucharest
  , Romania
• Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Batalha Monastery, Batalha, Portugal
• Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Warsaw, Poland

See also

• Historiography of World War I
• International relations (1919–1939)
• Revolutions of 1917–1923
• Interwar period
• Political history of the world

Notes

Bibliography

• ISBN 978-0-674-01880-8
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• Evans, Leslie (2005). Future of Iraq, Israel-Palestine Conflict, and Central Asia Weighed at International Conference. UCLA International Institute. Archived from the original on 24 May 2008. Retrieved 30 December 2008.
• OCLC 59879560
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• Hooker, Richard (1996). The Ottomans. Washington State University. Archived from the original on 8 October 1999.
• ISBN 978-0-520-00574-7
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• Isaac, Jad; Hosh, Leonardo (7–9 May 1992). Roots of the Water Conflict in the Middle East. University of Waterloo. Archived from the original on 28 September 2006.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Kaplan, Robert D. (February 1993). "Syria: Identity Crisis". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 24 December 2018. Retrieved 30 December 2008.
• Muller, Jerry Z. (March–April 2008). "Us and Them – The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism". Foreign Affairs. Council on Foreign Relations. Archived from the original on 23 June 2015. Retrieved 30 December 2008.
• OCLC 9405688
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• Salibi, Kamal Suleiman (1993). "How it all began – A concise history of Lebanon". A House of Many Mansions – the history of Lebanon reconsidered. I.B. Tauris.
  OCLC 224705916. Archived
  from the original on 3 April 2017. Retrieved 11 March 2008.

Further reading

• Aldcroft, Derek Howard (2006) Europe's third world: the European periphery in the interwar years
• Blom, Philipp (2015) Fracture: Life and Culture in the West, 1918–1938
• Cornelissen, Christoph, and Arndt Weinrich, eds. (2020) Writing the Great War - The Historiography of World War I from 1918 to the Present free download; full coverage for major countries.
• Gerwarth, Robert (2008) "The central European counter-revolution: Paramilitary violence in Germany, Austria and Hungary after the great war." in Past & Present 200.1: 175-209. online
• Gerwarth, Robert (2016) The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End
• Kallis, Aristotle (2015) "When fascism became mainstream: the challenge of extremism in times of crisis." in Fascism 4.1: 1–24.
• Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War
• Mazower, Mark (2009) Dark continent: Europe's twentieth century
• Mowat, C.L. ed. (1968) The New Cambridge Modern History, Vol. 12: The Shifting Balance of World Forces, 1898–1945 online
  25 chapters; 845pp
• Overy, R. J. (2nd ed. 2016) The Inter-War Crisis excerpt
• Somervell, D. C. (1936) The Reign of King George V online 550pp; wide ranging political, social and economic coverage of Britain, 1910–35
• Wheeler-Bennett, John
  (1972) The Wreck of Reparations, being the political background of the Lausanne Agreement, 1932 New York, H. Fertig

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Aftermath of World War I.

• Post-war, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
• Kitchen, James E.: Colonial Empires after the War/Decolonization, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
• Bessel, Richard: Post-war Societies, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War
  .
• Rothermund, Dietmar: Post-war Economies, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
• Sharp, Alan: The Paris Peace Conference and its Consequences, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
• FirstWorldWar.com "A multimedia history of World War I"
• The war to end all wars on BBC site
• "The Heritage of the Great War"
• The British Army in the Great War