Took roll and found that they were all still attending…..a positive sign….there is one problem….a male student tries to inject religion into everything that is covered…..I feel that this will have to be shutdown unless it is relevant to the subject been covered……
Administered test….(lots of heavy sighs)……..gave students 30 minutes to complete….
Lecture began by telling class that we would be covering the time period of 1930 to 1945, the end of WW2……years between the two wars, the Interwar Years, the US was more pragmatic with the election of Harding and the auto was becoming an institution so US foreign policy was more concerned with the search for oil reserves that nations…..a short synopsis…..
After WWI, the US adopted a neutral stance towards the situation in Europe. As the country focused on returning to normal life during the prosperous 1920s, development of military technology was gradually put on the back burner. When the stock market crash of 1929 plunged the nation into a depression, some military programs were abandoned all together. During the 1930s, the last thing on the American mind was going to war again for Europe’s many political problems. As a result, the Americans were years behind their future adversaries like the Germans and Japanese, particularly in aircraft and armored vehicles. Even as the Japanese overtook parts of China and the Pacific islands and the Germans rolled through Poland, the American public was against going to war. It was not until the United States was attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor and the Hitler declared war on the US in 1941 that the country was jolted into military production. Once the great industrial nation was awakened, the enormous output of machines and weapons would soon overwhelm the Axis powers, no matter how hard they fought.
During these years the main player in the foreign policy field was Wilson’s concept, the League of Nations……
Use hand out for the rest of the session…….
Keep in ind the rise of the Great Depression which began in 1929…..when the US foreign policy was centered around the loans to Germany to help them pay for WW1….During this period US oil companies were running around locating oil reserves especially in the new nation of Iraq…..
During this time the US attempted to make war impossible with the Kellogg-Briand Pact……(distribute hand-out)…..
Kellogg-Briand Pact, agreement, signed Aug. 27, 1928, condemning “recourse to war for the solution of international controversies.” It is more properly known as the Pact of Paris. In June, 1927, Aristide Briand, foreign minister of France, proposed to the U.S. government a treaty outlawing war between the two countries. Frank B. Kellogg, the U.S. Secretary of State, returned a proposal for a general pact against war, and after prolonged negotiations the Pact of Paris was signed by 15 nations—Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, the Irish Free State, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, and the United States. The contracting parties agreed that settlement of all conflicts, no matter of what origin or nature, that might arise among them should be sought only by pacific means and that war was to be renounced as an instrument of national policy. Although 62 nations ultimately ratified the pact, its effectiveness was vitiated by its failure to provide measures of enforcement. The Kellogg-Briand Pact was given an unenthusiastic reception by many countries. The U.S. Senate, ratifying the treaty with only one dissenting vote, still insisted that there must be no curtailment of America’s right of self-defense and that the United States was not compelled to take action against countries that broke the treaty. The pact never made a meaningful contribution to international order, although it was invoked in 1929 with some success, when China and the USSR reached a tense moment over possession of the Chinese Eastern RR in Manchuria. Ultimately, however, the pact proved to be meaningless, especially with the practice of waging undeclared wars in the 1930s (e.g., the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, and the German occupation of Austria in 1938).
Source: The Kellogg-Briand Pact, 1928 – 1921–1936 – Milestones – Office of the Historian
Discussion of the events covered in class……