Europe in Transition – 1920-1930, Part IV.
German troops enter the Rhineland in 1927.
As the twenties drew to a close, Europe had been merely presented with a new set of divisions and problems between the great powers, this time centred around ideology, rather than simple imperialist competition, as before the Great War. Communists of all varieties distrusted and hated the ‘reactionaries’ in Germany and Italy, and the ‘bourgeois capitalism’ of Britain, whilst nationalists feared the spread of Marxism. The pattern of relations, which would form the basis of tension in the 1930’s, had been forged and was now set.
“I suppose one day”, Curzon had said to his wife, in a moment of exasperation,
“the whole trouble will begin again.” Slowly too, in response to the rise of Communist movements, Fascist movements were gaining ground. Mussolini's 'March on Rome' provided a standard for all other European Fascist movements to follow, such as Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party, Corneliu Codreanu's Iron Guards, and, eventually, the Fallange in Spain and the BUF in Britain. But Fascist parties were increasingly been driven off in many countries by a more assertive traditionalist nationalist right-wing, and it remained to be seen whether Fascist parties outside Italy would play any leading role other than as mere tools of regimes which were partially favourable to them.
However, in 1926, one man in particular was being 'driven off' with increasing energy. The astonishingly rapid 'loss' of the PCF is believed to have struck Stalin's imagination particularly hard, and a new focus on 'party discipline' and a search for a scapegoat hastened Trotsky's ultimate fall, starting with his loss of the position of War Commissar in the same year, 1925. In early 1927, Trotsky was expelled from the party, and later that year, he was deported, settling at first on the Turkish island of Prinkipo, an unsatisfactory location for many reasons, most notably it's proximity to the White soldier-émigrés now based in Istanbul after they had fled the Crimea after the Civil War. Trotsky was not to stay here long, however, as Rosmer, always one of his great admirers, offered him (largely secretly) asylum in France. It was a fateful decision. On 12th of February 1928, Trotsky left Turkey on a French steamer, the
Dunkerque, bound for Marseilles. Trotsky quickly established himself in Paris, resuming a life as a polemicist, now largely critical of Stalin's increasing grip over the Soviet Union. However, that would change, as Rosmer and others began to encourage him to take up an active political life once more. In mid-1929, Trotsky became a member of the Paris Central Committee, and with astonishing swiftness, became a full member of the Politburo in 1930, with overall responsibility for the military - An action that was no doubt made both possible and desirable by a particular series of events in 1927.
Rosmer's government faced it's first big crisis in the shape of the Lyon revolt. On the 7th of June, forces in the Lyon garrison and the nearby areas rebelled, under what quickly proved to be an intended uprising under the control of two French leaders of the Great War; Maxime Weygand and Ferdinand Foch. The intention was simple; to march on Paris and overthrow the government. However, the rebellion had been hastily planned, and it was now badly executed. Ammunition proved to be in short supply, communications were almost impossible, and leadership of the revolt was imprecise. Although expecting a widespread upsurge in popular support, the rebellion found very little from a population that was apathetic about the prospect of further protracted struggle. A small force under Weygand moving through Burgundy was smashed on the 23rd of July under a large red army. When Foch, on whose prestige and personal qualities much was pinned, died in a freak accident on the 17th of August, the rebellion - Which Rosmer had confidently dismissed as
"A little rattle by elements of society whose time has been and gone." - finally died out. Red France had survived. Rosmer now found it expeditious to reorganise the army so that it conformed both professionally and ideologically, and Trotsky seemed well-suited to do it; he was an outsider - which was as much as asset to reform as it was a impediment - and he was reliant on Rosmer's patronage, and, based on his actions in The USSR after Lenin's death, would not pose any direct threat.
Generals Foch and Weygand, leaders of the Lyon revolt.
Foreign governments were quick to take advantage of this turbulence. Japan, under Prime Minister Tanaka Gi'ichi, seized French Indochina, albeit with strong protests from both The US and The UK. The UK in turn occupied the French mandates in Syria and Lebanon, under the pretence of temporarily
"securing order" in the two areas under
"responsible governance". In protest at this crude and hypocritical violation of the established rules, The French withdrew from the League of Nations. It was an action that marked the beginning of the end of the League as a serious body for mediating international issues, and merely served to heighten the bitterness now growing between the UK and France. In 1929, Britain - in accordance with it’s promises made to the Arabs during the Great War - would combine, under League auspices, both the Syrian and Lebanese mandates with the eastern half of the Palestine mandate – ‘Transjordan’ - into a single Greater Syrian mandate, with Abdullah bin Husayn as King. Britain reasoned that this would placate the Arabs, and deter the unrest, which was now becoming a frequent feature in Palestine. However, this would prove to be an illusory ambition. France would also pull out troops stationed in the Rhineland to deal with the situation, thus removing another plank of the post-Versailles settlement, and allowing Ludendorff to re-militarise the Rhineland, which, considering events in France, was seen less as an act of beligerence than it otherwise would have in normal conditions. Saarland, the small state established on Germany's borders by Versailles, transfered to Belgian administration from it's former French masters.
The events in France, combined with Curzon's policy of encouraging limited German revival, allowed Ludendorff to begin breaking from the shackles of the despised Versailles Treaty. Ludendorff stated blandly to the top generals of the Reichswehr that now, given Britain's attitude and France's weakness and isolation, they would want for nothing, and a massive - albeit largely secret - programme of reform and military renewal over the course of five years was drawn up, which in the words of one historian amounted to a
"Re-armament bonanza." Conscription was re-introduced, amid some fanfare, in early 1927, and a new General Staff was constituted, amid much less fanfare, from the remnants of the General Staff of the Great War, the
Truppenamt. This further frustrated the ambitions of the more radical nationalist parties, who had initially fed on the weakness of Weimar, but who now found themselves slowly becoming irrelevant under Ludendorff, who had an easy re-election in 1927, virtually unopposed.
William Joynson-Hicks, Prime Minister after Curzon.
The Conservatives, however, needed to chose a new leader after Curzon's death. It was a largely open field; Baldwin had been much reduced since his loss to Curzon, Chamberlain looked set to refuse, and Churchill was more or less out of the running due to his 'unreliability.' The surprise victor was William Joynson-Hicks, Secretary of State for War under Curzon, who won more or less on the back of being a 'stop Baldwin' candidate, with the support of Churchill and, eventually, and with much reservation, Chamberlain.
Almost immediately, trouble was brewing in the form of the General Strike of 1926. Partly this had been caused by Baldwin’s mistaken return to the Gold Standard in 1925, which had been taken on advisement of senior economists, including the Governor of the Bank of England, Montague Norman, who Keynes described as
"Always so charming, always so wrong". Mine workers had been particularly badly effected by this, combined with free 'reparation coal' coming from Germany, and economic problems stemming from the Great War. An attempt by the government to resolve the situation, with the Samuel Commission, merely resulted in mine owners committing their workforce to more punishing working conditions. In consequence, the Trades Unions Congress (TUC) declared, on the first of May, that a General Strike would be held in support of the miners. Although both the TUC and the Labour party were worried about whether revolutionary elements would be tempted by this, Joynson-Hicks appeared utterly intransigent, and indeed, appeared to be courting a fight, and managed to so outrage the Labour leadership with his behaviour during preliminary talks to avert the crisis, that the TUC called a full General Strike, to include all workers, not merely those in the key industries, as originally envisaged.
The result was a disaster both for the government, the economy, and the strikers, and resulted in an increasing embitterment amongst the workforce. Clashes between the police and strikers - For which Churchill was much criticised at the time - simply served to fuel an already heated atmosphere, and radicalise many within the Labour movement. Small-scale rioting was reported in some areas, supposedly helped by CPGB agitators. When, belatedly, a compromise was found, the government and the economy had been lain low, and Joynson-Hicks felt compelled to offer his resignation later in the year, to be replaced by Baldwin - who had cautioned Joynson-Hicks against his policy during the strike, and who many considered should have taken over after Curzon's death. Radicals had, however, been given a massive boost by the strike, with bonds being formed in particular by the CPGB in many industrial areas. Baldwin himself was defeated in the 1929 election, having done much to restore Conservative standing, although not enough to be replaced by Ramsay MacDonald's minority Labour administration. The CPGB itself managed to win six seats, obviously capitalising on the events of 1926.
Perhaps the symbolic end-point of the 1920's was when the New York Stock Exchange crashed on October the 24th, 1929, inaugurating the beginning of the Great Depression, and the promise of perhaps further instability in the 1930's. Whatever the consequences, Europe now looked set to enter a particularly uncertain period in its history.
