20th+

Monday, March 21, 2016

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

NDA-20 USA - National Defense Act of 1920

1920 Defense Act / American Isolationism | Interbellum | 1933 3/3 > .
Isolationism in 30s > .

The National Defense Act of 1920 (or Kahn Act) was sponsored by United States Representative Julius Kahn, Republican of California. This legislation updated the National Defense Act of 1916 to reorganize the United States Army and decentralize the procurement and acquisitions process for equipment, weapons, supplies and vehicles. It was passed by Congress on June 4, 1920...
The legislation established the Army of the United States as an organization of three components: a) the Regular Army, b) the National Guard, and c) the Organized Reserve. The Organized Reserve included the Officers’ Reserve Corps, Enlisted Reserve Corps and Reserve Officers Training Corps.

The National Defense Act of 1920 also required the Army to conduct studies and planning for wartime mobilization, rather than waiting for war to be declared to begin planning. This shift to contingency planning and a long-range outlook led to decentralization of the contracting and procurement process, and increased coordination between military leaders and leaders of business and industry. The need for specialists in procurement and mobilization planning led to the 1924 creation of the Army Industrial College.

Neutrality Acts, USA, 30s

American Isolationism and Neutrality Act of 1935 > .

The Neutrality Acts were passed by the United States Congress in the 1930s in response to the growing threats and wars that led to World War II. They were spurred by the growth in isolationism and non-interventionism in the US following its disillusionment after World War I, and sought to ensure that the US would not become entangled again in foreign conflicts.

The legacy of the Neutrality Acts is widely regarded as having been generally negative; they made no distinction between aggressor and victim, treating both equally as "belligerents", and they limited the US government's ability to aid Britain and France against Nazi Germany. The acts were largely repealed in 1941, in the face of German submarine attacks on U.S. vessels and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Monday, March 7, 2016

Versailles Treaty - Germany Cheats

How the Germans Cheated the Versailles Treaty - MHV > .
1920-1-10: Treaty of Versailles into effect; League of Nations established - HiPo > .

How Harsh was the Treaty of Versailles Comparatively? > .

Versailles Treaty - Hitler’s Rise to Power - Ghost > .

Treaty of Versailles vs the rise of Nazism | Professor Dan Stone > .

The Treaty of Versailles (Traité de Versailles) was the most important of the peace treaties that brought WW1 to an end. The Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919 in Versailles, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which had directly led to the war. The other Central Powers on the German side signed separate treaties. Although the armistice, signed on 11 November 1918, ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on 21 October 1919.

Of the many provisions in the treaty, one of the most important and controversial required "Germany [to] accept the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage" during the war (the other members of the Central Powers signed treaties containing similar articles). This article, Article 231, later became known as the War Guilt clause. The treaty required Germany to disarm, make ample territorial concessions, and pay reparations to certain countries that had formed the Entente powers. In 1921 the total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion marks (then $31.4 billion or £6.6 billion, roughly equivalent to US$442 billion or UK£284 billion in 2019). At the time economists, notably John Maynard Keynes (a British delegate to the Paris Peace Conference), predicted that the treaty was too harsh—a "Carthaginian peace"—and said the reparations figure was excessive and counter-productive, views that, since then, have been the subject of ongoing debate by historians and economists. On the other hand, prominent figures on the Allied side, such as French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, criticized the treaty for treating Germany too leniently.

The result of these competing and sometimes conflicting goals among the victors was a compromise that left no one satisfied, and, in particular, Germany was neither pacified nor conciliated, nor was it permanently weakened. The problems that arose from the treaty would lead to the Locarno Treaties, which improved relations between Germany and the other European powers, and the re-negotiation of the reparation system resulting in the Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, and the indefinite postponement of reparations at the Lausanne Conference of 1932.

Although it is often referred to as the "Versailles Conference", only the actual signing of the treaty took place at the historic palace. Most of the negotiations were in Paris, with the "Big Four" meetings taking place generally at the Quai d'Orsay.

1925-10-5_16 Locarno Treaties ..