• How did Germany abandon the Versailles Treaty restrictions and what was the impact? – Germany abandoned the Versailles Treaty restrictions almost immediately after the initial signing of the document. “The buildup of the German armed forces was not officially proclaimed until 1935, though known to everyone (pg. 457)”. This goes to show that there were major flaws within the document particularly referring to the enforcement of policies, once they have been broken. On a side note, the League of Nations also lacked a backbone in this period thus allowing for the opportunity of enforcement for broken policies to be minimal from any possible angle. The author does point out an interesting point pertaining to enforcement on page 458. He states …show more content…
– There were several unintended consequences of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 including an arms buildup and the three states lying on paper to bypass the treaties regulations. The author details out the relation of the arms reduction treaty backfiring on itself causing an arms buildup. Most of the blame can be found on Japan in consideration for the buildup of arms. Japan built 64,000 ton ships equipped with 18-inch guns in contrast to the treaty restricting the max gun size to 16-inches. Japan also equipped their cruisers with the 8-inch guns to have the option of being interchangeable with 12-inch guns. Japan continued down this path with all of their arms throughout the 1930’s. The United States had to respond in some way to the buildup of Japan. They chose to displace an extra 3,000 tons on most of the newer ships, however, it was never reported on paper. Another consequence was the addition of the Aircraft carrier to fleets. Since the treaty limited only cruisers and battleships, both Japan and the United States developed aircraft carriers as a major portion of their navies. In turn, this caused a buildup of air power on both sides to fit the aircraft carriers out with the more aircraft. Once one portion of the treaty was broken, it became a snowball down a hill in getting around the treaty with an arms race buildup and air power