The Interwar Years and World War II (^) ‹ 183
where and how women worked. In rapid succession, women across Europe gained the right
to vote and fought to hold on to the greater freedom they had enjoyed during the war years.
Politically, uncertainty fueled continued radicalization. In France, ultraconservative and
socialist parties vied for power. In Great Britain, the wartime coalition government led by
David Lloyd George stayed intact and won another term in office, but the Labour Party
made great gains at the expense of the Liberals. The various subjects of the British Empire,
who had supported Great Britain in the war effort, now began to demand that their loyalty
and sacrifice be rewarded, and independence movements coalesced in Ireland and India. In
the newly created or reconstituted nations of east-central Europe—Hungary, Poland, and
Yugoslavia—liberal democracy failed to take root, and right-wing authoritarian regimes
came to power.
The cultural developments of the interwar years also reflected the deep uncertainty of the
period. The 1920s have often been referred to as “the Roaring Twenties.” The cabaret culture,
where men and women mixed easily, seemed to reflect a loosening of social conventions and
a pursuit of pleasure after the sacrifices of the war years. But cultural historians have increas-
ingly pointed out that the culture of the interwar years seemed to reflect a deep anxiety for
the future. An excellent example is Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis (1925). Filmmaking became a
popular art form in the interwar years, and film stars became celebrities whose lifestyle seemed
to epitomize the Roaring Twenties. However, Lang’s Metropolis depicted a world in which
humans are dwarfed by an impersonal world of their own creation. Similarly, T. S. Eliot’s epic
poem, The Waste Land (1922), depicts a world devoid of purpose or meaning.
The Weimar Republic in Germany
The problems and uncertainties of the interwar years were felt most keenly in Germany.
The new government, known as the Weimar Republic, was a liberal democracy led by a
moderate Social Democrat, Friedrich Ebert. It was a government doomed to failure by
several factors:
• Liberal democracy was a form of government largely alien to the German people whose
allegiance had been to the kaiser.
• It was a government that was perceived to have been imposed on Germany by its venge-
ful war enemies.
• It was wrongly blamed for the humiliating nature of the Treaty of Versailles.
• It was faced with insurmountable economic problems, as the general economic dif-
ficulties of interwar Europe were compounded by Germany’s need to pay the huge war
reparations imposed on it.
Almost immediately, the government of the Weimar Republic was challenged by Marxist
revolutionaries, known as Spartacists, led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, who
were dedicated to bringing a socialist revolution to Germany. In order to defeat them, Ebert
turned to the old imperial army officers who formed regiments of war veterans known as
the Freikorps (“Free Corps”). Once the right-wing forces gained the upper hand, they too
tried to overthrow the Weimar government in a coup attempt in 1920 that has come to
be known as the Kapp Putsch. The government was saved, ironically, by the workers of
Germany, who forced the right-wing insurgents to step down by staging a general strike.
Just as the Weimar government began to stabilize, it found itself unable to pay the repara-
tions demanded of it. When the French occupied the Ruhr Valley in retaliation, German
workers again went on strike. The overwhelming uncertainty caused by the situation trig-
gered hyperinflation, which made German currency essentially worthless.22_Bartolini_Ch22_181-194.indd 183 27/04/18 1:56 PM