Great Britain After the Great War

During the late 1920’s Great Britain was still struggling to recover from the Great War. Devastating things awaited in the future, a great depression, a new type of governors including the totalitarian ones, and the biggest war ever; World War 2.
The great depression came in a time when England was still recovering from the Great War and in 1929 a big crisis hit the world. This big crisis, or as commonly known the Great Depression, started in the US but had a worldwide effects.

England was already in economic problems but this just made it all worst. The great depression was mainly caused because of the loans that were lent to England from the US that couldn’t be paid. This led to the decrease of exports in England, this led to the fall of the industrial production because of this millions where left unemployed. In 1930 new taxes where imposed this to help pay the budgetary deficit from past years that England’s government had.

In 1931, George May, leader of the national expenditure, released a report, which announced that the deficit had just been growing in the past months and the solution was to cut the money that was destined to the unemployed. This never worked and a series of reports where released a little bit after this helping a little. In 1933, banks reduced bank rates and unemployment rates went down, by 1935 unemployment went back to the 1928 levels and the production in the industries grew by 55%.

Great Britain did not have a major involvement during the growth of the totalitarian regimes. The problems the country had due to the Great Depression kept them busy to take action (if they saw it necessary) over the rise of the dictators. The Treaty of Versailles was its most important act that actually affected the new governments. Because of the treaty, Italy and Germany had a grudge over how it ended. Because of this and the great depression, both countries changed their government to a totalitarian one.

As Great Britain had a passive role over the rise of the totalitarian regimes, Hitler (ruling Germany) began violating the treaty. They began arming themselves again and conquering lands. Great Britain’s influence over this is simple; along with France they didn’t punish Germany for the violation of the treaty. In October 1, 1938, Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany signed the Munich Pact. The pact stated that none of these countries would attack each other; it was an appeasement. Great Britain signed it along with France to prevent another outbreak of the war, preventing confrontations with Germany. The pact also claimed that Germany would be given the lands of Sudetanland to Germany and stated that Germany would not conquer any other European lands.

In 1939 Great Britain said that if Germany attacked Poland, Britain would react against the Germans. But the Germans didn’t care and invaded and also sign a secret contract with Stalin dividing Poland. On Sep. 3 1939, Britain declares war to Germany and the World war in Europe started. In 1940 Winston Churchill became the prime minister of Britain, in these year the biggest mark of evacuation of people was established. In the middle of 1941 the German troops attacked with big artillery and bomb attack, but the British air forces defended and they didn’t let them be defeated. On 1941 around the beginning, USA began to send direct help to the British troops, and the Lend-Lease Act was created. Then in 1942 Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt decided to make Germany’s defeat the top priority in the war. After three years of battling, Germany was finally defeated and the war was over in Europe.


Sources:
"Munich Pact." Think Quest. Oracle Educational Foundation. Web. 13 Mar. 2011. .

"SparkNotes: The Interwar Years (1919-1938): Britain During the Inter-War Years (1919-1938)." SparkNotes: Today's Most Popular Study Guides. Web. 14 Mar. 2011. .

"World War II in Britain." World War II History Library. Web. 15 Mar. 2011. .

Great Britain- World War 2 Timeline

· 1901

o Queen Victoria died

· 1914

o England entered ww1 because Germany attacked Belgium.

· 1915

o British bombed British forces in Dardanelles

· 1916

o British forces Turkey to surrender

· 1918

o Paris peace conference

· 1919

o Naval army race against Germany.

· 1931

o Britain left the gold standard

· 1938

o Unemployment had fallen to 1.5 million, having towns with near the 70% of unemployment.

· August 25, 1939

o Britain and Poland signed a mutual assistance treaty

· Sep, 3, 1939

o Entered ww2

· July-September 1940

o Battle of Britain

· 1940

o Winston Churchill becomes prime minister

· 1940

o Italy declares war to Britain

· 1941

o Declare war on japan.

· 1944

o Britain dropped 3000 tons of bombs on Hamburg, Germany

Sources:

"World War II in Europe Timeline." The History Place. Web. 14 Mar. 2011. <http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/ww2time.htm>.

"Timeline of World War One." History Learning Site. Web. 14 Mar. 2011. <http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/timeline_of_world_war_one.htm>.

"Timeline of the Great Depression." World History. Web. 14 Mar. 2011. <http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/connections_n2/great_depression.html>.

Essay

Patricio Nuñez – A01175873

Gerardo Ancer – A01175767

Mauricio Kuri – A01175865

Guillermo Porras – A01175848

Before the outbreak of the war, Great Britain was under some changes of the government. There was a change of governing party, from conservative to liberal. This meant that new laws were made that supported the working class’ desires. Some of these are old age pensions, unemployment benefit and public health provision. During the war, public speech was supressed as they needed all the control over people’s toughts of the war through propaganda, but after the war it was returned. During the years, Britain felt threatened by Germany, as they were growing economically as well as in military; especially the navy.

On June of 1914, Europe plunged into a war. Great Britain isolated by the English channel and having a great Naval army had the choice to stay out of this problem. But after the German invasion to Belgium, Britain decided to come to the aid of Belgium and France and subsequently declared war on Germany. Europe had legal and moral obligations to his allies that were France and the Russia.

England possessed the most powerful Navy, but this Navy was getting a little competence from German High Seas Fleet. England’s vulnerability was that they depended on the imports from other countries that came across the sea by taking out this Great Britain would stop getting primary resources and the country would start struggling.

The main causes of the WW1 are the following:

· The assassination of archduke France Ferdinand

· Nationalism

· Alliances

· Imperialism

· Militarism

Great Britain had a lot of action during the New Imperialism, this stage basically meant that this Europe countries getting new colonies from Africa and Asia. This was to get resources and new countries for a trade market. Britain was the one who was more involved in this, getting a lot of colonies around Africa and Asia, the most important was India. Countries like Germany and Italy may grow a little envy on Britain because they had more colonies than they did.

On June 28, 1914 on Sarajevo, Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were killed by Gavrillo Princip a Bosnian from a group called “Black Hand” was the detonating point for the war. Before this Britain had made a pact with Russia and France that established that if one had a problem they would help, they were called the allies. The same for Germany, Austria and Italy but they were called the Central Powers.

In February of 1917 Britain declared an unrestricted warfare. Even though the strong force in the British was the navy, they also provided a strong and powerful army capable of stopping other big countries. Thanks to the then Chancellor David Lloyd George, he made sure that the provision workers were skilled by making the industry into war making. This means, they made ammunitions and supplies for war so that Britain’s soldiers could be more effective. He then became Prime Minister.

As the war reached an end, with Germany defeated as well as its allies signing an armistice, the Great Powers reunited to find a resolution of the conflict. In this, David Lloyd George along with the other important nation leaders went into the Paris Peace Conference. In there, Britain and France enraged with Germany, wanted the nation to pay for the war, reducing its territories and army. In the end, some of the ideas proposed were agreed by the powers, which summarizing it ended with Germany losing the right of having weapons in their army and accepting the guilt with Austria-Hungary of the war. The latter was proposed in the Treaty of Versailles.

GB during this revolution was an alliance of the white army during the civil war. This team was

made up of anti-Bolsheviks (Mensheviks), who were the working class. Great Britain by being

in the white movement tried to stop the Russians communism, by supporting Mensheviks

with army’s and weapons. So everything was going great, but then the Bolsheviks started to

demonstrate that Great Britain support to the Mensheviks wasn’t in off, because Bolsheviks had

the help off the country and after some time the red army won the battle.