Landes, Unbound Prometheus, ch. 6
Peter Clarke, Hope and Glory: Britain 1900-1990 (1996), chs. 3-6
Wright, France in Modern Times, chs. 27-31
Carr, History of Germany, chs. 9-12
§Holborn, Political Collapse, chs. IV and V

Materials on the course website:
     Chronology of Major International Events, 1919-1939
     The Weimar Republic and the Third Reich

The Western Allies in the First World War fought to "make the world safe for democracy," but the world that emerged from the war was nothing of the kind. In France the democracy of the Third Republic was threatened in the 1930’s; Germany’s new democracy, the Weimar Republic, failed catastrophically; and even British democracy seemed enfeebled. Compare and contrast these three democracies and explain their different fates, being sure you give due weight to the times in which all this happened.

European democrats entered the inter-war years (1918-39) with high hopes. The First World War had destroyed all the remaining authoritarian powers, the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian Empires. The Peace Conference proclaimed the self-determination of peoples and established the League of Nations to guarantee a cooperative new Europe. In this atmosphere, nearly all the defeated countries and newly founded national states adopted democratic parliamentary systems as a matter of course. In old liberal systems the political base was broadened – in Britain, for instance, by allowing women to vote and accepting Labour as a governing party. Governments adopted new tasks like public housing that showed increased sensitivity to a mass electorate. The major anomaly in this democratic world was the Soviet Union, which set up an alternative model to liberal democracy; but in the inter-war years the USSR was weak, self-isolated and ostracized.

The overall scene changed sharply by the late 1930s. Mussolini and his Fascist Party had come to power in Italy in 1922, Hitler and his Nazi Party in Germany in 1933. Spain, Portugal, and all the new East European countries except Czechoslovakia had gone over to sharply restricted parliamentary systems, or authoritarian regimes, or outright fascism. Instead of leading and guiding a democratic Europe, Britain and France headed a beleaguered minority. Even French democracy seemed threatened.

These years were hard times. Landes shows you the weakness of the European economy, even before the Depression started, and Holborn discusses the frailty of the European international order. You are asked to look at the different experience of democracy in three key countries in the inter-war years. Try to work out how their different fates were influenced by broad general factors, like economic conditions, international uncertainty, the "spirit of the times", and the like; and also by the different national traditions, by the politics and constitutional system of each country, by the political leadership each received, and so on.

Just as there are preconditions for revolution, there are preconditions for democracy – probably more complex than those for revolution. We started thinking about them in connection with the Russian Revolution, and this week should take you further in your understanding of them.