European Socialists and the International Order, 1918–1925
This chapter examines the collective efforts of British, French, and German socialists to place a socialist stamp on the emerging post-war political order both within and between countries. The period covered runs from the end of the First World War to the mid-1920s, a moment that several recent scholars have identified as marking the end of the post-war period and the making of a ‘real peace’. In exploring the post-war practice of socialist internationalism, the chapter focuses on a series of interlocking issues: the peace treaties; national self-determination; reparations and economic reconstruction; and the League of Nations and post-war security. On issues such as reparations and Western European security, European socialists claimed with justice to have pointed the way forward to intergovernmental arrangements. But if socialists could rightly boast of their role as trailblazers, their deliberations also exposed the fragile nature of the much-vaunted ‘real peace’ achieved by mid-decade.