Interwar Europe – Quiz

1. Identify the attempted coups against the Weimar government from both the Left and Right in the years immediately following World War I.
2. Identify the members of the “Little Entente” of the 1920s.
3. Explain the chain of events that led to French occupation of the Ruhr and hyperinflation in Germany.
4. Explain Gustav Stresemann’s strategy of attempting to revise the Treaty of Versailles.
5. Explain how the Dawes Plan allowed the Versailles to continue functioning through the 1920s.
6. Explain how Western states attempted to deal with stock market crash and following depression in the early 1930s.

Show answers

1. Kapp Putsch; Spartacist Revolt
2. Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania
3. Germany missed a reparations payment; France seized control of industry in the Ruhr; German government urged passive resistance and guaranteed salaries of Ruhr workers; German government printed money to pay Ruhr workers; hyperinflation resulted
4. He offered to confirm Germany’s western boundaries as stipulated at Versailles, but worked to revise Germany’s eastern border to recover lands that had been lost in 1919.
5. American banks lent to Germany so it could make reparations payments to Britain and France, which in turn were then able to service their loans to American banks.
6. In general, they raised trade barriers and attempted to prop up wages and prices, thus prolonging the depression.