Week Eleven

An Accident Waiting to Happen:

• Italy and Germany joined their fragmented territories into two major new powers around 1870
• A system of alliances intended to keep the peace, created obligations that drew the Great Powers of Europe into a general war by early August 1914
• None of the major states planned or predicted the assassination of the archduke 
• Industrialization of warfare had generated an array of novel weapons like submarines, tanks, airplanes, poison gas, machine guns and barbed wire
• 2 million Americans took part in the first U.S. military action on European soil & helped turn the tide in favor of the British and the French

Legacies of the Great War:

• War went on for more than 4 years before ending in German defeat in November 1918
• It became a "total war" requiring the mobilization of each country's entire population 
• Aftermath of war brought social and cultural changes to ordinary Europeans and Americans
• As the war ended, suffrage movements revived & women received the right to vote
• The Treaty of Versailles concluded the firs World War in 1919 but it eventually established conditions that contributed to the second world war only 20 years later
• Germany lost its colonial empire & 15% of its European territory and was required to pay heavy reparations to the winners, creating great resentment
• Soldier Adolf Hitler declared vengeance
• Brought an end to the Ottoman Empire
• Latin American countries were bystanders but benefited by selling nitrates used in explosives
• World War 1 brought the United States to center stage as a global power

Capitalism Unraveling: The Great Depression:

• Never had the flaws of capitalism been so devastating as the Great Depression of 1929
• American market initially crashed October 24, 1929
• 11 Wall Street finances committed suicide
• World trade dropped by 62%
• Banks closed so people lost their life savings
• Political and economic changes stimulated in Latin America by the Great Depression
• President Franklin Roosevelt New Deal (1933-1942) experimental combination of reforms seeking to restart economic growth and to prevent similar events in the future
• To help the unemployed, the poor and elderly, the New Deal worked on the Social Security System, minimum wage and various relief and welfare programs

The Fascist Alternative in Europe:

• Fascists bitterly condemned individualism, liberalism, feminism, parliamentary democracy, and communism because it "weakened the nation" 
• Small fascist movements appeared in Western European countries but had title political impact
•  During the great depression trade unions, peasant movements, and various communist and socialist parties threatened  to establish social order with strikes and land seizures
• Mussolini promised order in\ the streets and an end to bickering party-based politics
• Mussolini government suspended democracy and imprisoned, deported & executed opponents

Hitler and the Nazis:

• European fascism took shape as the Nazi Party under the leadership of Adolf Hitler
• Nazis did not achieve national power until 1933
• Traditional elites attacked the democratic politicians who had the inevitable task of signing the Treaty of Versailles 
• Civilian socialist, communists, and Jews had betrayed the nation
• In 1933, Hitler was legally installed as the chancellor of the German government 
• Hitler had the major support because his ideas brought Germany out of the Great Depression
• Hitler restricted Jewish life,  had people loot their shops and exclude them from most things
• Nazis wanted to limit women largely to the home
• WW1 and the Great Depression brought political and economic collapse 
• Nazi phenomenon represented a moral collapse in the West
• "Scientific racism" linked the size of the skull to human behavior and personality

Japanese Authoritarianism:

• Began its industrialization and empire-building states in the 19th century
• Did not really participate in WW1, their economy increased during this time
• Education expanded, women worked in new professions
• Shrinking world demand for silk impoverished rural dwellers who raised silkworms
• Million or more rural workers unemployed
• Generals and admirals exercised great political authority 
• Their projects of conquest & empire building collided with the interest of established world powers such as the U.S. and Britain, launching a second and even more terrible global war

The Road to War in Asia:

• China had deteriorated further leading to a full scale attack on heartland China in 1937
• This started WW2 in Asia
• Japanese attack on the U.S. at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 1941
• The U.S. increasingly saw Japan as aggressive, oppressive and a threat to U.S. economics

The Road to War in Europe:

• Nazism was born out of WW2 
• WW1 was accidental and unintentional but WW2 was deliberate and planned 
• Hitler prepared the country for war but also pursued territorial expansion
• Germany attacked Poland triggering WW2 in Europe 
• Germans launched a destructive air war against Britain and in 1941 attacked the Soviet Union
• U.S. joined the struggle against Germany in 1942
• German defeat in May 1945

The Outcomes of Global Conflict:

• During the Rape of Nanjing 1937-1938 some 200k-300k Chinese were killed & mutilated
• In the Soviet Union women constituted more than half of the industrial workforce by 1945
• Were urban bombing, blockade, mass murder, starvation, and concentration camps
• 6 million Jews perished in a technologically sophisticated form of mass murder
• Practices of man slaughter continued in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and the Sudan 
• Tens on thousands of Africans had fought for the British or French

The Recovery of Europe:

• 1948-1970's Western European economies grew rapidly, improving living standards
• European Coal and Steel Community is jointly manage the production of this critical item
• Italy, France, West Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg established the European Economic Community (EEC)
• Later renamed the European Union since more countries joined
• American economic, political and military security commitment to Europe 
• Formed a political and military alliance known as the Northern Atlantic Theory Organization (NATO)