Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [22]
Through the twenties the United States became increasingly preoccupied with its own affairs. An extremely jaundiced view of World War I and what it had been all about sprang up, and many men—not just Americans—of the generation who had fought the war, began to question what it had been about anyway. At a distance of ten years it looked less like a crusade for freedom and democracy than a large confidence trick, foisted on a gullible public by crooked diplomats, arms manufacturers, and backroom politicians. The anti-war movement was in full cry, and a series of great books painted an appalling picture of what the war had really been like. There has always been a vision in the United States of Europeans as a sordid bunch of petty-minded states, and the interwar debunkers did nothing to disabuse the public of it. Americans were busy with their own affairs, foremost among them prohibition. They limited immigration, especially of Asians, and they invoked high tariffs to protect American industry. There was a great deal of labor unrest, there were Communist scares, there were political scandals, and there was unhappiness in the veterans’ organizations.
The things that interested Americans internationally were not such as to make them better disposed toward Europe. There was the ongoing matter of disarmament talks that never seemed to achieve anything solid. There was above all the question of reparations payments and war debts.
Germany at Versailles had agreed to pay war reparations, with the cost to be filled in later. Meanwhile, all of the Allied governments had contracted immense debts to the United States. After the end of the war the United States wanted to be repaid. The other Allies tended to the view that the debts had been incurred in the common cause, and perhaps ought to be canceled. Needless to say, this did not appeal to the American taxpayer. The Allies then proposed that the debtors repay the money, but that payment be contingent upon their, in their turn, receiving reparations from Germany. Since the Allied governments simply did not have the money—there was not enough money in the world to repay the debts—the Americans had to settle for this.
But Germany did not have the money either. She soon defaulted on her reparations, inflated the mark, and went officially bankrupt.
The solution arrived at was logical only to financiers and, presumably, voters. Under the Dawes Plan the United States loaned money to Germany. Germany thereupon paid war reparations to the Allies; they then repaid some of their war debts to the United States, who turned about and loaned more money to Germany. This circular cash flow lasted until the Depression, when everyone defaulted all along the line. The only state that fully paid off its war debt to the United States was the little Baltic state of Finland, independent of Russia after the 1917 revolution. Americans were left to conclude, not entirely accurately, but not entirely inaccurately either, that they had not only been tricked into the war, but had also been tricked into paying for it. Americans were not inclined to take a profound or particularly benevolent interest in Europe in the thirties.
They were mildly interested in the Far East. There has always tended to be an oscillation in American foreign interests, from Europe to East Asia; Russian foreign policy tends to swing, too, between central Europe and the Far East. American interests were upset by the forward Japanese policy in Manchuria, they were outraged by the intervention in China, and they delivered a constant series of protests to the Japanese government. They made it quite clear,