There were three pillars of the post-war order.  All were built on sand. 

The Illusion of Peace. 

            The continuation of war by other means.  America and Britain shanked France by defaulting on a promised alliance treaty against Germany.  France demanded complete fulfillment of every other part of the Versailles Treaty as a way of keeping Germany down.  When Germany defaulted on reparations payments in 1922, France occupied the Ruhr for a year and forced Germany to surrender. 

            The real peace settlement.  However, France—foolishly—had been living on American and British credit, so the Anglo-Americans forced France to surrender in turn.  The Dawes Plan (1924) greatly reduced Germany’s reparations debts, then provided American loans to get the German economy, German reparations, and European war debts to the USA moving again.  The Locarno Treaty (1925) gave a British guarantee to defend the Franco-German border against military action—by either country.  So, no more Ruhr Occupations.  Germany won, France lost.  No guarantees for Eastern Europe. 

A Fragile Prosperity. 

            The American System.  Mass production, assembly lines, standardization, and efficiency led to low costs, low prices, huge sales, and enormous profits.  Think Henry Ford here, but it applied to lots of other people.  American prosperity led to lots of purchases from abroad and lots of American loans all over the world.  America served as the locomotive pulling the world ahead.  So far, so good. 

            Shadows on the Land.  During the war high prices and the collapse of European exports led to a massive increase in production and industrialization everywhere else.  After the war, prices collapsed and Europeans returned to exporting goods.   Frankly, there was just too much stuff being produced for the size of the market.  Prices went down.  Fine, except that lots of people had borrowed money to expand production.  Their incomes went down without their debts going down.  Solution?  Make even more stuff.  Fine, except that forced down prices even more and made it even harder to pay debts. 

A Weak Consensus on Liberal Values. 

            Restoration.  After the war everyone wanted to put everything back just the way it had been and pretend that the war hadn’t happened.  Partly, this meant returning to a belief in representative government and civil rights, a market economy, faith in human reason, and belief in Progress.  America and Western Europe did this, while Germany and parts of Central Europe became democracies for the first time.  Science, medicine, and technology made great strides.  Prosperity revived.  Peace seemed to be restored. 

            Challenges to this orthodoxy.  Russia and Italy established dictatorships, then experimented with government control of the economy in place of the market.  Democracy soon failed in Central and Eastern Europe.  Scientists, doctors, and philosophers insisted on the power of the sub-conscious and the irrational in human behavior, and on “relativity” and “uncertainty” in science. 

            Then there was “The War.”  Who could believe slogans about the Triumph of Reason or the Inevitability of Progress after that?