The Crumbling of Illusion

Abstract

Decades rarely provide convenient historical dividing lines, but 1930 was something of a watershed year. It would be an oversimplification to suggest that the twenties looked back to the First World War while the thirties looked ahead to the Second World War. None the less the diplomacy of the twenties had centred on the postwar settlement and attempts to uphold or undo it, with a mounting desire to consign the postwar bitterness to history. The Hague Conference’s Committee on the Liquidation of the Past was only one of many signs of a widespread belief that old problems could be solved with a consequent reinforcement of peace and prosperity. As the decade turned with many of the old problems unresolved, Europe entered into an era of new problems, economic and political, including immediate fears of a new war. In response to the German election returns of 1930 a French politician remarked, ‘We’ve been outwitted’¹ and the Belgian Foreign Minister nervously expressed ‘great fears of an imminent fresh outbreak of war’.²