The World Disarmament Conference opened in Geneva, Switzerland, under the auspices of the League of Nations, in February 1932. Following the partial success of the LONDON Naval Conference of 1930 in extending naval arms limitation agreements, there was hope that new agreements could be reached to curtail arms expenditures and production. The Great Depression, and the desire of the United States and other nations to spend less on armaments so that more could be devoted to domestic economic and social programs, also provided part of the context for the discussions of arms reduction. The conference nonetheless proved a disappointing failure, unable to achieve any significant agreement on disarmament.
In approaching the general question of disarmament, the conference faced the specific issue of Germany’s demand for parity in armaments and France’s concerns about Germany and its own national security on the European continent. Hopes of a disarmament agreement turned on the willingness of the French to scale down their armaments, thus sacrificing the arms superiority over Germany granted by the Versailles treaty. France required that other nations, in particular Great Britain, provide guarantees of security and assistance in the event of conflict, but the British said they could not take on new commitments.
The United States played a significant role at the conference. In June 1932, President Herbert C. Hoover took the initiative by proposing a general one-third reduction in armaments, but he failed to gain sufficient support. In what some called the Hoover Plan, the United States proposed a reduction especially in offensive weapons. As he had in the London Naval Conference, Hoover wanted to reduce arms expenditures so that nations could stabilize their domestic economies as well as reduce the chances for armed conflict, and he also hoped that linkages might be made between the disarmament conference and the planned London Economic Conference.
In 1933, new U. S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt said that disarmament was “one of the principal keys to the world situation,” and he pledged to use “every possible means” to help the disarmament conference have some success. In May 1933, he promulgated an “Appeal to the Nations of the World for Peace and for the End of Economic Chaos” and drew attention to both the World Disarmament Conference and the London Economic Conference. But FDR helped torpedo the London conference by refusing to support currency stabilization and a return to the gold standard. Committed to working for arms control, despite the lack of significant progress at Geneva and his own growing pessimism about the discussions, Roosevelt did try to salvage something from the disarmament conference. But opposition from isolationists in Washington led FDR to withdraw even an offer to link arms reduction to American cooperation with League of Nations economic sanctions against an aggressor nation.
In October 1933, Adolf Hitler, who had become Germany’s new chancellor in January 1933, withdrew Germany from the World Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations. Germany’s withdrawal, and its clear intention to rearm, killed hopes of any meaning disarmament agreement. Like Germany, Japan also withdrew from the League of Nations and pursued both rearmament and territorial aggrandizement as the decade wore on. The United States, though having played active roles in such interwar arms reduction efforts as the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-22, the London Naval Conference, and the World Disarmament Conference, followed a noninterventionist foreign policy until the outbreak of World War II.
Further reading: Hugh R. Wilson, Disarmament and the Cold War in the Thirties (New York: Vantage, 1963).
—Michael Leonard
World History
