The Mandate System: The Failure Of The Weimar Republic

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The new international order established after World War I completely failed to establish a meaningful and lasting peace. These failures involved the Weimar Republic and the mandate system in Africa and the Middle East.

After Germany’s surrender, there was an attempt to create peace by establishing the Weimar Republic. This new government was made up of German liberals and socialists. They were faced with repairing the damage done on the citizens by the war: “ The people were hungry, cold, and dispirited, and the huge reparation payments demanded by France crippled their recovery” (Voyages, 821). The German centrists faced opposition from both the communists and socialist war veterans. When the French occupied the Ruhr Valley in order to seize …show more content…

The mandate system allowed the great powers to rule over territories such as former German Colonies and Ottoman provinces: In Africa, the Mandate System allowed the French, British, Belgian, and South African governments to take over former German colonies” (Voyages 822). In this process, the French and the British were heavily favored over the African and Arab peoples. This decree was meant to be temporary and last only until the colonies were prepared for individual government. While the Europeans were supposed to help the colonies become individual, they did nothing of the sort: “While the mandate system requires reports to the league of nations showing that they were furthering ‘native rights,’ the Europeans ruled the mandated territories like colonies, doing little or nothing to prepare them for eventual self-determination” (Voyages 822). The Mandate system was corrupted with nationalistic greed. This did not create any sort of lasting …show more content…

Both of these men wanted Russia to move towards a Communist state. They both wanted to illuminate the bourgeoisie and make the entire country revolve around the working class: “From now on there is a new page in the history of Russia, and the present, third Russian revolution shall in its finest result lead to the victory of Socialism” (Sherman 211). Lenin, who was the predecessor of Stalin, treated the people of Russia as his close friends. In his April Theses, he made it clear that he wanted no support for the Provisional Government, as that was one of his decrees. The liberal Provisional Government favored capitalism over socialism. This was neither Lenin nor Stalin’s goal. Stalin went about reforming the Russian government differently after Lenin’s death. Stalin was focused on establishing his socialist envisions by any means necessary: “during the great Purges, Stalin ordered his secret police to arrest many foreign colleagues of Lenin. Anyone who opposed Stalin was considered a traitor and severely punished or executed. This is the opposite of what the Provisional Government

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