After WWI ended in November of 1918, the victorious world powers looked around realized that even the winners were losers. Yea, Britain and France gained a bunch of colonies and protectorates from the defeated Central Powers, and yeah they were theoretically going to get a reparations payday down the road, but HOLY SHIT, if you’ll excuse the language, it was not freaking worth it. France alone suffered over a million killed in action with another more than four million wounded. Europe’s economy was destroyed, governments had taken on mind-boggling amounts of debt to fight the war, and the fundamental problem of Great Power competition which led to the war had not been fundamentally altered. The Interwar Period is the roughly twenty-one-year period between the end of WWI in 1918 and the start of WWII proper in 1939. During this period, we obviously had the roaring 20s followed by the Great Depression. This episode will cover four topics: first, the Washington and London Naval Treaties which laid out the sizes and types of navies each major naval power could wield; second, the technological shifts the treaties accelerated, specifically the development of aircraft carriers and naval aviation; third, the war planning the United States was doing during this period, and last just a little bit about what the Marine Corps was doing during this period and how that would prove to be significant during WWII. IG/Twitter: @USNavyPodcast email: [email protected]