The Washington and London Naval Treaties
-Jason
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The Washington and London Naval Treaties were designed as arms limiting naval agreements aimed at preserving peace between the great powers after World War I. In light of the naval race between Great Britain and Germany which created tensions that helped lead to the Great War, there was call for the halt of both new warship construction and maintaining current fleet size. Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, the United States, and eventually, Germany, all agreed to limit the construction of new warships: the term naval holiday was coined to label the Washington Naval Treaty signed in 1922. New warship construction would be limited to replacing older ships that were decommissioned. The new ships would also be limited to an agreed upon maximum size and armament. In addition, the current total tonnage of any country’s war fleets would be reduced significantly to again ease tensions around the world. In theory, these restrictions would stop a naval race before it could begin to destabilize peace.
Battleship construction was severely curtailed by the strict number of this type that a country could possess. Many of the last classes of battleships and battlecruisers still under construction at the end of World War I were scrapped. One way for a navy to keep some of these uncompleted ships was to convert them into aircraft carriers. Aircraft carriers were a new type of warship with no clear guided role for a fleet: they were seen as a reconnaissance tool to help battleships detect and close against their enemy counterparts. Two excellent examples of this conversion system were the American carriers USS Lexington and USS Saratoga: both were laid down as battlecruisers and completed as fast aircraft carriers. This model of negotiation for keeping these two American ships was followed by the Japanese IJN Akagi and IJN Kaga.
Eventually the Naval Treaty system broke down. Japan and Italy felt that they had been insulted in terms of total tonnage they were allowed. France eventually backed out as tensions with Italy grew throughout the 1930s. The British and Americans attempted to work within the treaties but did make plans and adjustments for future ships based on the intelligence they gathered about potential rival navies. Japan walked out of both the Second London Naval Conference and the League of Nations in 1933. The Japanese-Sino War had been raging for two years before this and the military was pushing for more expansion to keep the Japanese economy afloat. In secret, the Japanese were constructing the two largest battleships in history: the IJN Yamato and the IJN Musashi.
Japan had fought on the side of the Entente (Great Britain, France, Italy, Russia, and United States) during World War I. It had previously signed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, a defensive agreement between the two island empires, in 1902. This Alliance was renewed in 1905 and 1911, then ended in 1923. Many of the earliest Japanese warships had been built by British shipyards and their crews trained by the Royal Naval Academy. This close relationship was formed due to security reasons for both empires: they were island nations who relied on overseas trade to keep their people and economies safe, and both saw their navies as key to their protection.
As World War I erupted in Europe, Great Britain was pulled into the fighting. The British had considerable colonial assets in the Pacific but few extra ships with which to protect them. Japan wanted the German colonies located in China and Oceania, and approached its ally asking for those enemy territories in exchange for the Japanese policing of the Pacific. Britain agreed, allowing the majority of the Royal Navy was able to be stationed either in Home Waters or the Atlantic. Japan was very active in hunting down and scattering the German East Asia Squadron in the beginning months of the war. Once this threat was eliminated, the Japanese ships and soldiers seized the German colonies in China, New Guinea, Samoa, Micronesia, the Marianas, the Caroline, and the Marshall Islands by the end of World War I.
Japan expected to be treated as a power equal in standing to Great Britain and the United States when the spoils of Great War were divided. They had hoped to be able to gain more territory in China (beyond what few possessions they had taken from the Germans). This expansion was not granted, and they were also denied a war indemnity to help cover the costs of operations. This put Japan’s economy in danger as the cost of maintaining their war footing was considerable. To add further insult to injury, the failure of the Russian Intervention further alienated the Japanese from the British and Americans. The British, Americas, French, and Japanese sent military forces to help defeat the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War (1917-1923), during which Japan had occupied a large swath of Siberia and expected to hold the territory no matter which Russian faction won. The natural resources in Siberia were viewed by the Japanese Army as being paramount to making Japan economically independent. However international pressure, and the withdrawal of other intervention forces, forced the Japanese to abandon Siberia. This was another reason for the Anglo-Japanese Alliance to be dissolved. Beginning in 1923 the Japanese turned their attention to the conquest of Western imperial possessions spread throughout Asia and the Pacific.
Italy joined Britain, France, Russia, the United States, and Japan in the Entente in 1915. Before the war broke out, Italy had been part of the Central Powers, a defensive alliance between itself, Austria-Hungary, and Germany. Tensions between Austria-Hungary and Italy had existed for centuries and neither state was satisfied by their borders. The Austrians had occupied northern Italy for centuries and had only been pushed out of those regions with the Wars of Italian Unification less than a century prior. Realistically, the Austrians and Germans believed that the Italians would not honor the treaty and expected them to declare neutrality at the outbreak of war.
When World War I broke out in August 1914, Italy quickly declared itself neutral by stating that the Austrians and Germans were the aggressors and not victims of war, thus Italian participation in the alliance was null and void. Despite the expectations of neutrality, no one expected the British and French to court the Italians with promises of Austrian territory. Italy strongly desired the territories of Tyrol, located near the Austrian, Italian, Swiss border, and the coastline of Dalmatia, the Adriatic lands of today’s Croatia, Slavonia, and Istria. The reincorporation of some of these lands was viewed as a way for Italy to gain more resources and markets for trade.
And so, early 1915, goaded by British and French promises Italy declared war on Austria and Germany. The Italian Army was severely pressed, and then heavily defeated, in its engagements against the Austrians. The Italian Front became a bloody stalemate where the Italians lost territory once the Austrians counterattacked. The casualties were devastating, and the Italians quickly felt the horrific effects of trench warfare. When World War I ended, very little of the promised territory would be turned over to Italy. The collapse, and subsequent division, of the Ottoman Empire appeared to make up for these “lost lands.” Italy was supposed to gain possession of the southern and western area of Anatolia, or Turkey, under its occupation. But the military actions of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, expelled both the Greeks and Italians from Anatolia by 1923.
Italy, too, felt that it had been scorned and lied to about the spoils of empire by the British and French. Both those powers gained considerable new territories from the defeated Central Powers throughout Africa and the Middle East. Turned away from both the Balkans and Turkey, Italy still had a considerable North African empire that it expanded between the late 1920s and throughout 1930s. The heavy cost of World War I in terms of lives and materials damaged and destroyed, and failure to secure the promised territories, led to the rise of the Benito Mussolini and the Fascist Party. By October 1922. Mussolini and the Fascists marched on Rome and took over the government. Ostensibly, Mussolini served as Prime Minister for the reigning King Victor Emmanuel III. Shortly thereafter, Mussolini declared himself dictator, a political term used by the Romans in times of great peril and consolidated the power of the Fascists and himself. The dream of the new dictator was to recreate the Roman Empire at the expense of his neighbors, thus the need to dispose of arm limit treaties.
When the Second London Naval Conference met between 1935-1936, Italy and Japan each felt that they would be further crippled by the new terms of the treaty. Both countries walked out of the conference after they were questioned about their military aggression taking place in Ethiopia and China, respectively. Their departure led to the French abandoning the limitations as they needed to protect their world empire. Britain and the United States both tried unsuccessfully to keep the spirit of the Naval Treaties alive by limiting their own navies. In light of the Italian and Japanese naval expansions, both the Royal Navy and United States Navy created new classes of warships that were laid down before the storm of World War II descended on the planet.