Summary of "Twentieth-Century Europe: A Brief History, 1900 to the Present", Sintesi del corso di Storia Contemporanea

Scarica Summary of "Twentieth-Century Europe: A Brief History, 1900 to the Present" e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Storia Contemporanea solo su Docsity! OVERVIEW: 1900 - 1919 The two decades from the dawn of the twentieth century to the end of World War 1 formed the era during which European civilization peaked. However, it was also the period during which European civilization began to crack beneath the weight of inner contradictions and new challenges. In 1900, Europeans could have said that Europe was actually the world, that a world civilization existed, and that was actually European. By 1914, Europeans controlled 84 percent of the world’s land surface. Only Japan (thanks to its process of Westernization - which began in 1871 with the Meiji Restoration) was accepted as a “civilized,” although non-Western, nation. The Europeans’ sense of superiority was somehow “supported” by historical events which took place in Europe and that helped the continent develop a scientific and technological advantage over the non-Western world. Those events were: the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. By the end of the nineteenth century most of the world’s wealth flowed into Western nations. The period from the end of the Napoleonic wars to the outbreak of WW1, was the golden age of the middle class/bourgeoise. Nonetheless, forces originating in the nineteenth century were about to topple centuries-old dynasties and with them their archaic nobility. Likewise, the middle class, the actual pillar of the existing order, was under serious attack. In fact, this was being challenged politically and economically by the emergence of a working class. WORLD WAR 1 changed the course of European history. The assassination of the heir to the Austro- Hungarian Empire rapidly escalated into a world war. All participants believed that they would be fighting a defensive war to save their homeland from an aggressor. They also assumed that the war would have been a short war of motion. Also, since none of the participants expected that war, none of them was actually prepared. However, by 1916, as the war was becoming one of attrition, governments began to organize their home fronts. Governments started to assume a broader and more direct role in their economies and in the private lives of their people: scarce economic resources vital to the war effort were carefully rationed, as were consumer goods. Government-sponsored propaganda, together with censorship, was employed to mobilize “human resources” for more than just military service. Civil liberties were often limited. The year 1917 was a consequential year: • February: the German high Command persuaded the Kaiser to authorize a resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare. • This move, intended to bring about the defeat of Great Britain, resulted in the United States coming into the war in April, thus assuring Germany’s eventual defeat. • March: revolution broke out in Russia, where the Russian soldiers had voted against the war. But the Provisional Government of well-meaning liberals failed to govern effectively. In November, the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. America’s entry into war tipped the scales in favor of the Allies on the Western Front: • Allied armies broke through the Siegfried Line in July 1918. The Central Powers began to collapse. 1 • Revolution broke out in Germany. On November 9, the Kaiser abdicated and went into exile in Holland. Two days later, Germany signed an armistice. Germany had signed the armistice expecting to participate in the peace conference. It was not invited to do so. What came out of the peace conference was a “victors’ peace,” which largely contributed to the outbreak of the Second World War. The Siegfried Line was a World War II German defensive system stretching some 390 miles along the western border of the old 1 German Empire. 1900 - 1914 Chronology 1899 - 1902 Boer War 1901 Death of Queen Victoria 1904 - 1905 Russo-Japanese War 1905 Revolution in Russia Tsar Nicholas II issues the October Manifesto 
 1906 Algeciras Conference 
 Great Britain launches HMS Dreadnought 
 1908 Austria-Hungary annexes Bosnia and Herzegovina 
 1914 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand Europe and the World Europeans before the Great War divided the world into “civilized” and “uncivilized peoples.” To be considered among the civilized nations meant being “Westernized,” which in turn meant accepting the world view and lifestyle of Europeans. “Westernized” peoples included more than the residents of Europe itself but also those of such nations as the United States and Canada in North America and Australia and New Zealand. Europe’s sense of moral superiority could be somehow “justified:” • Europe’s moral values, fundamentally religious in origin, were taken over and secularized by the eighteenth-century intellectuals. Emerging from the Enlightenment as inalienable human rights, these values were summarized by Locke and Thomas Jefferson as the individual’s right to life, liberty, and property (or happiness), the foundation of classical liberalism. • Europeans were better housed, better fed, and better clothed than people anywhere else in the world. They lived longer and their infant mortality rate was lower than in the non-Western world. Europeans governed themselves, while virtually the entire non-Western world was subject to Europeans. • By 1900, the “relics of barbarism,” such as slavery, infanticide, blood sports, and torture, were expunged from the European nations. Even women, who were still denied the vote and full equality with men in employment and education, possessed the same human rights as every other human being. And where human rights clashed with cultural or religious practice, human rights were deemed superior. European women were not subjected to such barbarous practices as genital mutilation, nor were they condemned to a lifetime of illiteracy and subdued to the will of their father or husband. There were, of course, other civilizations in the world whose ancestry reached further back than Europe’s. China, India, Japan, and the Middle East all possessed the characteristics associated with being civilized, for example, literacy, cities, monumental architecture, a socioeconomic class structure, and systematic philosophical and religious thought. By the mid-1800s, however, all of the great non-European civilizations were vulnerable to an industrialized West in need of markets and resources to sustain its rapid development. Of the ancient non-European civilizations, only Japan survived the threat of the new imperialism from the West, and it did so only by rapid Westernization. The humanitarian impulse was often used as a justification for imperialism. It mainly served as an excuse for European domination and exploitation of the non-Western world. Christian missionaries brought Christianity to non-European nations, and they and other humanitarians built hospitals, orphanages, and schools for both boys and girls. Such people often saw the native peoples as child-like and backward, souls in need of “uplifting” from the darkness in which they seemed to exist and an introduction to the benefits of civilization, whether or not they wished such. Imperialism’s primary and most influential motivations always boiled down to economic exploitation and national prestige. The rapid industrialization in the West increased the demand for raw materials, some of which were necessary for the modernization of existing industries and the creation of new ones. As the standard of living LEGENDA: X = Chronology of events (the SAME as the book) THE GREAT POWERS EUROPEAN GREAT POWERS in 1900: 1. Austria-Hungary (the habsburg Monarchy); 2. Russia 3. Germany (formerly Prussia). 4. France 5. Great Britain AUSTRIA-HUNGARY - The dual Monarchy: complicated form of government with separate parliaments for Austria and Hungary. Uniting the vast multinational realm was the emperor, Franz Joseph. The house of Habsburg was the oldest and most prestigious dynasty in Europe. - It did not possess an overseas empire. It was a multicultural (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs…) land empire held together by soldiers, bureaucrats, parades, and a living symbol of past glory. It was being torn apart by nationalism. There were over 51 million inhabitants in 1911, who spoke at least 10 different languages. Among them were roman Catholic and Greek orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Following defeat in the Austro-Prussian War (1866), Franz Joseph avoided dissolution of the empire by appeasing the Hungarians. The result was the dual Monarchy. By 1900, the Czechs were pressing for a further reorganization. Habsburg foreign policy was aimed at three goals: maintain and expand the empire at the expense of Turkey; prevent the spread of Russian influence in the Balkans; and combat the growth of nationalism among the South Slavs, especially the Serbian desire to create a Great Serbia. The greatest obstacle to any solutions proposed was the Hungarian intransigence. Hungarian elites dominated Hungarian politics and opposed any reorganization of the empire. Many contemporary observers felt that only the aging emperor himself held the empire together. RUSSIA - As Austria-Hungary., it was a land-based empire. Its status as a great power in 1900 rested upon its immense size and the fact that it had defeated Napoleon in 1812. Like Austria-Hungary, it was an old- fashioned agrarian state. - Nicholas II (the Romanovs) maintained an autocratic rule, and rejected the ideas of Enlightenment. - The XX century began badly in Russia with an economic recession, strikes, peasant disorders, and acts of terrorism. The population’s discontent increased, and with it the government’s difficulties, after Russia had been repeatedly defeated in battle by the Japanese during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). - Revolution broke out in 1905 and it involved a peaceful protest to the Winter Palace to present a petition by workers to the Tsar. This was brutally suppressed by troops. The event instigated strikes and disturbances, leading the tsar to issue the October Manifesto in 1905. 3 - Consequently, the revolutionary forces split. Most moderates (Octobrists) and liberals (Kadets) were hopeful that a true parliamentary system would evolve. Some of the socialists, however, especially the Marxist revolutionaries, wanted to continue the revolution. - 1906: the government worked to limit the powers of the Duma and to repress any remaining signs of the revolution. The various revolutionary groups were either destroyed or forced underground. It pledged to grant basic civil liberties, including: 3 • To grant to the population the essential foundations of civil freedoms based on the principles of inviolability of the person, freedom of conscience, speech, assembly and association. • To admit to participation in the Duma of all those classes of the population that now are completely deprived of voting rights; • To establish that no law shall take effect without confirmation by the State Duma. • The introduction universal manhood suffrage in Russia. But they both lagged behind in those areas vital to maintaining great-power status into the twentieth century: they had resisted the modernist ideas that came out of the Enlightenment, and they were both still predominantly agrarian states of a few fabulously wealthy landlords and a multitude of poverty-stricken peasants. - Stolypin, the minister of the interior between 1906 and 1911, carried through an important series of measures (Stolypin land reforms) that allowed a peasant to claim his land from the village commune as a unified, independent holding. The idea behind the measure was that the peasants would be more conservative politically if they had property of their own. Furthermore, if they farmed as independent farmers free of the restrictions of the commune they would be more productive. - Continuing problems in the countryside with low productivity and overpopulation, the precariousness and ineffectiveness of the Duma, and the chasm between educated society and the government will make the collapse of the empire inevitable. - After the assassination of Stolypin in 1911 —> lack of political leadership in Russia. GERMANY - Dominant power on the continent: • Scientific and industrial development: by 1914 Germany produced nearly a third more pig iron and twice as much steel as Great Britain + German industry produced far more that could be consumed within the Reich. • Important share of world trade: the nation’s merchant marine was the second largest in the world behind Great Britain’s. - Apparently the most progressive nation in the world: • Educational system + first nation to develop a system of social insurance: it provided for accident and sickness insurance, old age-pensions, and unemployment benefits. It was actually far from being a liberal democratic country, as France and Great Britain for example were. Germany emerged from the nineteenth century as one of the world’s great industrial powers but with a governmental system that one might best describe as a pseudo-constitutional absolutism. Outwardly, Germany appeared to be a liberal constitutional monarchy, but this was only an illusion based upon the fact that the Reichstag, or parliament, was elected on the basis of universal manhood suffrage of all citizens over the age of 25. Actually, the Reichstag possessed little real power other than to refuse to pass the federal budget. The German Reich was in fact a federal union of individual German states in which real power was divided between Prussia, the largest state, and the Bundesrat, or federal parliament. All really significant measures required approval by Prussia. Any attempt to amend the constitution could be defeated by 14 votes in the Bundesrat - and Prussia had 17 votes. - The period from 1890 until Germany’s defeat in 1918 is referred to as the “Wilhelmian era,” for it was the Kaiser who determined the course of events in Germany. In foreign policy, Wilhelm II charted a “new course” meant to achieve for Germany a commanding role in world affairs. Wilhelm II’s new world policy brought Germany into conflict with France and, especially, Great Britain. The “new course” meant colonies, and colonies meant a great navy capable of a commanding presence throughout the world. For Germany, the greatest military power in Europe, to build a fleet capable of challenging British naval supremacy was a direct challenge to Great Britain. - As in Austria-Hungary and Russia, in Germany, the emperor possessed real power. Whatever the constitutional trappings, Wilhelm II ruled Germany. What made the situation dangerous for world peace was the fact that, unlike Austria-Hungary and Russia, Germany possessed the economic power and national unity to make the Kaiser’s wildest dreams possible. Without responsible leadership, the German Reich was a real threat to the peace of Europe. Many believe that responsible leadership was precisely what Germany lacked in the years before 1914. FRANCE - Industrialized nation, but way behind Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. Unlike those, France was a nation of small businessmen, small farmers, and small manufacturers. Also, the majority of the French still made their living from agriculture. - It was the most democratic country. Like Great Britain, it had a parliamentary system, but in France members of the Senate were elected. Also, France did not have only two large political parties, as Great Britain did, but many numerous small parties. This meant that very government was a coalition of different parties. Between 1890 and 1914, France had 43 different governments and 26 different premiers. At the turn of the century, French politics and French society were plagued by a sharp polarization between Left and Right. The formers saw themselves as the heirs of an anticlerical, democratic revolutionary tradition reaching back to 1789. Those on the right were conservatives and they called for more order while blaming France’s decline in power on too much democracy. In short, it can be said that the Third Republic was divided between those who favored a republican form of government and those who desired a restoration of monarchy but were unable to determine the “rightful” monarch. - Between 1906 and 1911, a period in which the Radicals were dominant, two developments took place: • The emergence of a radical right movement centered on the opinions espoused in the newspaper Action Française, which favored a return to strong government at home and a highly nationalistic and aggressive policy abroad. • A sizable labor militancy increased on the left. Strikes among vineyard workers, postal workers, and rail-road workers took place during those years. The criticisms and demands of neither the left nor the right had been met; they had only been sidestepped. GREAT BRITAIN - Golden Age: • It had the world’s largest empire; • The world’s largest navy; • At the center of the world trade; • London was the financial capital of the world. - Stable, two-party parliamentary system. Since the nineteenth century the trend had been of steady, though at times slow, social and political reform. The Parliament had gradually extended the suffrage until virtually every male adult could vote. By 1900, it appeared that Great Britain, of all of the European great powers, would make a smooth transition to democracy. It was the Liberal Party, which came to power in 1906 and remained in power until after the Great War, that actually presided over the transition from aristocratic conservatism to popular democracy and the first signs of the emergence of a welfare state. However, when in 1909 the leader of the radicals within the Liberal Party presented a budget that proposed a revision of the tax system so as to place the burden for financing the new social legislation upon the wealthiest classes, there was a clash between the two houses of the Parliament. As a result, the House of Commons became the unequivocal center of political affairs in Britain. The Liberals remained in power between 1906 and 1914, partly through agreements with the Labour Party and the Irish delegation. By 1914, these agreements were fast becoming burdens. The Labour Party was increasingly dissatisfied with its alliance with the Liberals, despite the gains made. Even more important, the working-class militancy grew enormously from 1911 to 1914, and a series of strikes took place in 1911 and 1912. In the spring of 1914, a “triple industrial alliance ” of transport workers, railwaymen, and 4 miners was formed. Beyond the control of the moderate union officials or the Labour Party, it was watched nervously in the summer of 1914. That same spring, the question of home rule for Ireland, promised to the Irish delegation in return for their support, came before the house for the third time and passed. Ireland was to receive home rule with no separate provision for northern Ireland (Ulster). Volunteer armies in northern and Southern Ireland were already in existence. Civil war seemed a possibility. threat of a recrudescence of militancy on the part of organized labour. For the outbreak of war in I 9I4 Britain suffered some form of 4 “general strike.” THE GREAT WAR, 1914-1918 Chronology 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated Italy defects from the Triple Alliance 
 Fighting begins with German invasion of Belgium First Battle of the Marne and failure of the Schlieffen 
 Battles of Tannenberg Forest and Masurian Lakes Turkey enters war on the side of the Central Powers 
 Western Front established from English Channel to 1915 Beginning of trench warfare along the Western Front 
 First use of poison gas at the Second Battle of Ypres 
 Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary Ill-fated Gallipoli Campaign 1916 Battle of Verdun and the Somme Sykes–Picot Agreement 
 Battle of Jutland 
 Woodrow Wilson reelected president of the United 1917 Zimmerman Telegram 
 Germany resumes unrestricted submarine warfare 
 Russian (March) revolution 
 United States enters the war against the Central Powers as an Associated Power Balfour Declaration 
 Russian (November) revolution 
 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk; Russia leaves the war Major German offensive on the Western Front fails 
 Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates Germany asks for armistice War ends on November 11 
 
 - CAUSES of the War: • Economic and imperial rivalry between the great powers • Armaments race ( especially the naval race between Germany and the United States) • Loss of system of defensive alliances established by Otto van Bismark Plan Switzerland States System of defensive alliances substituted for the balance- of-power principle as the mechanism for maintenance of peace in Europe after 1871 (after Franco-Prussian War and unification of Germany). According to Bismark France represented the greatest threat to peace following its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War = His goal was to isolate France. ➡ Dual Alliance: between Germany and Austria-Hungary. Established in 1879, the alliance promised that the parties would aid each other if Russia attacked them or if Russia assisted another power at war with either nation. ➡ Triple Alliance: between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. Established in 1882, all three nations pledged support should any of them be attacked by France. ➡ Reinsurance Treaty: Bismarck was keen to avoid fighting a war on two fronts, which meant making some form of agreement with either France or Russia. Given the sour relations with France, Bismarck signed what he called a “Reinsurance Treaty” with Russia, stating that both Russia and Germany would remain neutral if one was involved in a war with a third party. Peace was maintained until Bismark retired in1890, moment when his alliance system began to unravel. - Wilhelm II’s new course in foreign policy threatened Great Britain’s position as the world’s leading power. This led the British to seek alliance of its own. 1902: Anglo-Japanese Alliance 1904: France and Britain pledged military support for one another in the Entente Cordiale 1907: Similar agreement with Russia The new alliances between France, Russia and Great Britain comprised what became known as the Triple Entente.. - In 1906 during the Algeciras Conference (called after Wilhem II caused a crisis over Morocco in order to sow discord between France and Great Britain) Bismark’s system completely unraveled and Germany found itself isolated. In fact, during the conference Britain and France stood together against Germany and were even joined by Italy, which formerly was allied with Germany. This meant that Germany now was supported only by Austria-Hungary. - Meanwhile in the BALKANS: In 1908 Austria-Hungary, supported by Germany, annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina. The former hosted a great number of Serbs, which long wanted to create a Great Serbia in the Balkans. As a result, Bosnia’s annexation to Austria-Hungary inflamed Serbian nationalism, which was further encouraged by Russia (which also had expansionist ambitions over the Balkans). The event that served as the impetus for war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by a Serb named Gavrilo Princip. None of the countries which would later be involved in WW1 really wanted a war, except of course Austria. If Austria had acted promptly to punish Serbia for its part in the assassination, the rest of the world would have accepted its decision. But Austria hesitated, wanting to secure Germany’s backing before. This delay allowed time for Russia to conclude that Russian prestige (who also had expansionist ambitions towards that area), could not allow Austria to crush Serbia. Similar crises had occurred in the past but were resolved through diplomacy. Russia warned Austria that it would not tolerate the humiliation of Serbia. Austria ignored the warning and presented an ultimatum to Serbia on July 23. This called for the Serbian government to suppress all public criticism that might incite the Serbs against Austria-Hungary. Serbia accepted all but those few clauses that would have allowed the Austrians to take part in the Serbian investigation of the assassination plot; this, Serbia contended, would infringe on its sovereignty. Austria went ahead with mobilization and a declaration of war on July 28. Also between July 28 and July 30, the Russians ordered a full mobilization. Full mobilization by Russia made it imperative that Germany put the Schlieffen Plan into effect. 1 THE GREAT-WAR, 1914 - 1917 - The remarks technological progress which had been made over the previous century, which included the development of railroads, telegraphs, airplanes etc., transformed a little conflict in the Balkans into World War 1. - In the final analysis, what transformed the July crisis into the cause célèbre for the Great War was a breakdown of diplomacy. THE FAILURE OF THE SCHLIEFFEN PLAN According to the plan, Germany had to attack France first. After Belgium (which neutrality was guaranteed by international treaty) rejected Germany’s demand for free passage: • German troops invaded Belgium on August 3, violating its neutrality. The day after, Germany declared war on Belgium. Plan designed to allow France to wage a successful two-front war: 1 France at the east —> first one to be attacked Russia at the west —> after having defeated France, thus with the whole army at disposal. According to this plan, within 6 weeks the war would have been over and Germany’s position as a world power secured. Neither Belgian resistance, nor Russia’s speed in organizing its troops in East Russia, were calculated in the Schlieffen Plan. This led Germany to detach two corps from its vital right and send them east. • This move weakened the German army’s right wing, upon which the Schlieffen Plan depended, and made it possible for the French army to launch a counterattack against the German army along the Marne River. The First Battle of the Marne, September 5–9, saved France from a swift defeat by halting the German advance. • In the East: Germans had managed to halt the Russian advance at the Battles of Tannenberg Forest (August 30) and Masurian Lakes (September 15). The RACE TO THE SEA ensued. The opposing armies, French corps joined by the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and the Belgium army against the German army, tried to outflank each other, as they steadily moved north to the English Channel. Soldiers believed that they would have been home by Christmas, instead, in that day they would find each other stand opposite to each other in a line of trenches that stretched from the English Channel in the north to Switzerland in the south, a distance of about 400 miles. There followed nearly four years of stalemate, wherein the line of trenches remained virtually unchanged. TRENCH WARFARE: Trenches: • Series of holes and ditches. Their arrangement was extremely complicated and it varied from one country to another. • Usually arranged in three roughly parallel lines. They were built in a zigzag fashion to minimize damage form shelling (= bombardamento). Also, there were the firing trenches, from which attacks were launched and enemy attacks repulsed. Those usually had, on the enemy side, a parapets of art or sandbags rising off the ground. • There were various trenches running perpendicular to some or all of the firing trenches. • Behind the front: communication trenches. • Running out from the front line into “No Man’s Land” were “saps,” shallow ditches leading to forward posts for observation, listening, grenade throwing, and machine-gun placements. The strategy for the great breakthrough was the same on both sides. Large numbers of troops were massed at some spot along the front. Artillery bombarded the enemy trenches unceasingly to “soften up” the enemy’s position. Then, the artillery fell silent, and the command was given for the infantry to “go over the top” and across the no Man’s Land of 100-500 yards before meeting the first line of the enemy’s trenches. The advancing infantrymen typically were cut down by enemy machine guns. Eventually, the assault failed. Life in the trenches was an incessant struggle against boredom, extremes of weather, and the assault of the vermin that infested the trenches. At Flanders, rains transformed the battlefield into a quagmire of mud into which a fallen soldier could disappear from sight and drown. Winter along the Western Front could be so cold that wine froze in November, and rations turned into chunks of ice. Lice and rats were also one of the greatest discomfort for soldiers. Lice laid their eggs in the soldiers’ clothing and multiplied with terrifying speed. Nothing could help. Rats, instead, were everywhere. The battle against rats (which could sometimes be as large as small dogs) was an unceasing one. The trenches bred a sense of alienation and estrangement from civilian life and values that endured long after the war. THE COURSE OF THE WAR: 1915 GERMANS had the upper hand (= erano in uno posizione di vantaggio) at the beginning of 1915. They had gained control of Belgium and the industrialized northern regions of France. • On April 22, Germans launched a major offensive against the British at Ypres, in Belgium (Second Battle of Ypres). This battle is primarily remembered for the use of poison gas by the Germans. The battle ended with the German defeat. • From that moment, the Germans assumed assumed a defensive posture on the Western Front while simultaneously attempting to defeat the Russians on the Eastern Front and rescue Austria–Hungary. MIDDLE EAST The war in the MIDDLE EAST was a war of motion in which the cavalry still played an important role. The Raid on the Suez Canal took place in January-February 1915 when a German-led Ottoman Army force advanced from Southern Palestine to attack the British Empire-protected Suez Canal, marking the beginning of the Sinai and Palestine Campaign (1915-1918) of World War I (1914-1918). The Turks wanted to capture the Suez Canal in order to cut Britain’s lifeline to India. The British meant to defend the canal and secure the supply of oil. The British forces were not prepared for the desert environment near the canal. Filth and disease combined with intense heat, blowing sand, and the scarcity of water created a nightmare in the Middle East that was almost comparable to that in Europe. Colonel Lawrence, a British army intelligence officer serving in Cairo in 1914, played a key role in encouraging an Arab revolt against the Turks: • The Arab irregular forces, led by Lawrence, captured the strategically important port of Aqaba on the Gulf of Aqaba in July 1917. • A British force captured Jerusalem in December 1917 and Damascus in October 1918. Also, in order to bring the Arabs into the war against Turkey, McMahan, British high commissioner in Egypt, offered to the Sharif of Mecca British support for an independent Arab state that would include all of the Arab lands then under Turkish rule. The Sharif understood those lands to include Palestine. However, the British were simultaneously seeking the support of the Jewish people, stating that Britain would use its influence to secure in Palestine a national home for the Jews. In May 1916, Britain and France reached an agreement known as the Sykes–Picot Agreement, according to which the Arab lands belonging to the Ottoman Empire would be divided among the two, thus neither the promises made to the Arabs nor the Balfour declaration was to be implemented in the manner in which the Arabs or the Jews expected. The European great powers did not envision a postwar world significantly different than that of the period before the Great War. In AFRICA, the German colonies were all taken by British and French military forces, assisted by Portuguese and South African forces. Minor battles were fought elsewhere in the world. When hostilities began in 1914, the JAPANESE, allied with Britain since 1902, seized German possessions in China and some minor islands in the PACIFIC. DECISION, 1917-1918 When 1917 opened, all of the belligerents were at the point of exhaustion. Yet the scales were not clearly tipped in anyone’s favor. What eventually assured an Allied victory was the entry of the UNITED STATES into the war on April 6, 1917, as an “Associated Power” of the Allies. In December 1916, President Wilson asked the belligerents to state their war aims in an attempt to bring about a negotiated peace. On January 24, just over two weeks after Wilson stated his Fourteen Points as a basis for negotiations, Germany and Austria-Hungary declined a joint American–British peace proposal. The Germans’ attempt to starve Britain into submission by sinking, without warning, all ships on their way to Britain was a desperate gamble. That move would bring the United States into the war against Germany. Indeed, believing that the German crimes against American lives on the high seas were of such a nature that they could only be addressed by the United States becoming a belligerent, Wilson asked the Congress for a declaration of war. On April 6, 1917, the Congress complied with the president’s request. In RUSSIA between March 8 and 14 a REVOLUTION (February Revolution) broke out that toppled the autocratic statist regime. A Provisional Government was established by former deputies of the Duma as a first step toward the creation of a liberal-democratic government. This initial phase of what would prove to be a two-part Russian revolution had two immediate influences: the end of the autocratic rule of the Tsar and the promise of a constitutional government in Russia (which helped move American opinion in favor of intervention in the war). It was simply easier for Americans to enter a war “to make the world safe for democracy” if they would be fighting alongside a constitutional rather than tsarist Russia. Also, the outbreak of the revolution in Russia instilled hope among the German command. If Germany could bring the war with Russia to an end and transfer significant numbers of troops from the Eastern Front to the Western Front, it was possible to achieve victory before American troops began to arrive in Europe. The decision of the new Provisional Government of Russia to defy popular demand and remain in the war caused further deterioration of the Russian home front and a second revolution (October Revolution) on November 7, led by the Bolsheviks. The Bolshevik revolution brought to power a communist government committed to an immediate end to the war. Russia requested an armistice on December 5 and began negotiations on March 5, 1918. In a final desperate effort to achieve victory on the Western Front, Germany launched the last major offensive of the war, on March 21. The Allies were taken by surprise. The Germans made significant gains against the British sector, briefly turning the war back into a war of motion. On March 23, the Germans began bombarding Paris from 120 kilometers. On May 30, the Germans were within 55 miles of Paris. As in 1914, the French government made preparations to leave the capital. On July 18, buttressed by nine fresh American infantry divisions, the Allies counterattacked. With military defeat imminent, Ludendorff and Hindenburg informed the Kaiser on September 29 that they needed to reach an armistice immediately. The next day Germany asked President Wilson for an armistice as preliminary to a peace conference to negotiate a settlement on the basis of Wilson’s Fourteen Points. The Kaiser abdicated on November 9. On November 11, a German delegation signed the armistice. The fighting stopped on November 11, 1918. REVOLUTION AND PEACEMAKING, 1914-1918 Chronology 1917 Russian (March) Revolution Russian (November) Revolution 1918 Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points”
 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk; Russia leaves the war 
 Armistice on the Western Front, November 11 German republic proclaimed 
 Russian Civil War (1918–1920) 
 1919 Paris Peace Conference 
 Weimar Constitution adopted in Germany 
 Versailles Peace Treaty with Germany League of nations Covenant signed 
 The Europe that came out of the war was indeed very different from the one who greeted the beginning of the war in 1914. The “old order” had fallen. At its outbreak, the war was an old-fashioned affair of kings, emperors, and statesmen defending dynastic and/or national honor against the aggressor. By 1916, it had become a war for territorial expansion. In 1917, the Russian revolution and the entry of the United States transformed the Great War into an ideological struggle, a crusade for a new world order. Woodrow Wilson and Lenin personified two different visions of the future and each proposed a new world order entirely different from what Europeans had known before the war. WILSON: supported a new democratic international order based upon the abstract “universal principles of right and justice.” In January 1918 he outlined in his “Fourteen Points” the principles on which a just peace settlement must be negotiated. They included “open covenants openly arrived at,” the principle of national self-determination, and a “general association of nations” (the League of Nations) in order to assure the political independence and territorial integrity of each nation. In the ensuing months, as the peace conference unfolded, the League of nations became Wilson’s chief goal. Wilson’s vision appealed mainly to middle-class liberals, who wished to replace the old world of aristocratic privilege and secret diplomacy with a new international order of democratic nation-states cooperating in a League of nations. This was a free and democratic, but not a classless, world order. None of Wilson’s Fourteen Points dealt with LENIN’S most pressing concern: the need for a new social order. In Lenin’s view, imminent world revolution, for which the Russian revolution was a catalyst, would sweep away both nation-states and classes to liberate mankind from the corruptive influence of past historical development. REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA The Russian revolution of 1917 was actually two revolutions. The first occurred in March (February for the Julian calendar) and resulted in the creation of a liberal Provisional Government This was organized by former deputies of the Duma. The second, or Bolshevik Revolution, occurred in November (or October) and was carried out by the Bolsheviks, a radical Marxist faction within the Soviet of Workers’ and Sailors’ deputies, or Petrograd Soviet. The Petrograd Soviet came into existence on the very same day as the Provisional Government. From its beginning, the Petrograd Soviet functioned as a shadow government, issuing decrees of its own and countermanding decrees of the Provisional Government. Reasons behind the very same existence of the Russian Revolution: failure of the Tsar’s government to deal adequately with the demands of the war (Russia was the most effectively blockaded of the belligerents + it was unable to exploit its vast natural resources due to its general economic backwardness and the government’s unwillingness to organize the economy and society for a total war effort). = It was an abdication of authority by the Tsar’s government that led to the creation of the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet. REVOLUTION IN GERMANY The revolution in Germany was (again) actually two revolutions, or attempted revolutions. Forces on the left attempted a “revolution from below” but were checkmated by forces on the right, who attempted a “revolution from above.” The result was the establishment of an “accidental” republic that lacked popular support. The traditional elites of the army, judiciary, bureaucracy, church, and wealthy landowners and industrialists remained entrenched and hostile toward the republic. During the republic’s brief existence, the forces of extreme right and left struggled to achieve their respective revolutionary goals until the final victory of the extreme right in January 1933. Guilt for the defeat had to be spread as broadly as possible, but without including the military leadership. The solution was to create a broadly based civilian government of center-left parties that would be burdened with the task of asking for an armistice and making the necessary peace. hence, Prince Max von Baden was appointed chancellor; ministers became responsible to the Reichstag; the Prussian three-class voting system was abolished; and the Kaiser lost much of his control of the armed forces. Germany became a constitutional monarchy, but not a republic. All of this was to create a responsible civilian government capable of accepting the burden (or blame) of defeat while at the same time preventing a possible Bolshevik- style revolution from below. Nonetheless, Germany actually faced the serious risk of a revolution from below in November 1918. Many revolts across Germany took place. This eventually led to the Kaiser’s abdication and his own resignation. As he resigned, he transferred his powers to Friedrich Ebert. The “Ebert Cabinet” derived its authority from the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils of Berlin and from the two parties on the left, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD). The moderate socialists in the SPD and USPD were willing to accept government responsibility, and with it the burden of making peace, because they feared a revolution from below as much as did the traditional elites. The socialists actually wanted to preserve a constitutional monarchy. Once a republic was proclaimed by the leader of the SPD on November 9 (who did so in order to prevent the leader of the Spartakusbund, a splinter group of the SPD from proclaiming a Soviet Republic) Ebert and his supporters felt the need to establish order first and then to elect a Constituent Assembly that would draft a constitution. The Spartakusbund originated as a group of radicals who opposed war with Russia. After aligning them- selves with the USPD between 1916 and 1918, they renamed them- selves the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in January 1919. However, once the Social Democrats ranked in the government they did not actually initiate any fundamental changes. Reasons: • A radical revolution lacked a mass base of support; • Radicals in Germany faced strong opposition from the conservative traditional elites; • The army was still a formidable force in German internal affairs. • Bureaucracy continued to function efficiently. And even though the old government had collapsed, most of the other institutions in Germany were still committed to preventing any real change in German society. • The more radical forces found little sympathy for their demands among the Majority Socialists. Any chance that the Majority Social Democrats would lead a “real” revolution in Germany was impeded by the so-called Ebert-Groener Pact on November 9 and the Stinnes-Legien Agreement on November 15. in the former, General Groener offered the Ebert government the support of the army in exchange for Ebert’s promise to “suppress Bolshevism.” The Stinnes-Legien Agreement was, instead, one concluded between employers and trade union leaders on November 15. The employers agreed to recognize the unions as the only legitimate representatives of labor, abolish company unions, and hire returning soldiers. In return, the trade unions agreed not to push for any changes in the existing property structure of Germany. The leftist uprisings during 1919 were swiftly put down by the army and the Freikorps, paramilitary associations of former soldiers. A Spartakus-led revolt in Berlin in January 1919 also was crushed. Further uprisings in February and March in Berlin, Munich, and other areas were all likewise suppressed. The German revolution, unlike the revolution in Russia, stopped halfway. The defeat in the war and the powerful example of 1917 in Russia created potential revolutionary situations. ➡ In Austria, there were disorders throughout 1919, but no revolutionary accomplishments. ➡ In Hungary, a revolution in October 1918 created a government of socialists and communists, but in March 1919, that government became a communist dictatorship under Béla Kun. Communist Hungary did not last long. Eventually, Miklós Horthy, former admiral in the Austro-Hungarian navy, ruled as regent and head of state until 1944. Success in Russia was based on two factors, the utter collapse of the old regime and widespread rebellion among the lower classes. Neither factor led to success in Germany, where the empire collapsed but the institutions and traditional elites undergirding it remained. There was no German equivalent to the Russian peasantry on which the small radical groups could base their activity. In Central Europe, a large peasantry existed, but it was fragmented by ethnic and national differences and kept under control by the aristocracy and the military. The only successful revolution outside Russia in the immediate postwar period occurred in Turkey, where army officers and nationalists rallied in 1919 and 1920 to prevent the victorious Allied Powers from imposing peace terms on their nation. Revolution, if relatively unsuccessful by 1919, still had an enormous impact on postwar Europe. As in the United States, in Europe there was considerable and often irrational fear of a Bolshevik menace. PEACEMAKING, 1919 The PARIS CONFERENCE opened on January 181, 1919 and it lasted until January of the following year. The victorious powers met not simply to end the Great War but also to reconstruct the world. It attempted to set right the map of Europe and draft a peace that would last indefinitely. It failed to do so, and the Paris Peace Settlement lasted only 20 troubled years. Diplomats during the conference, who represented liberal-democratic governments, did not have much freedom of action, since they were answerable to people ( - to make a comparison, diplomats during the Vienna Congress, which was instead successful to maintain a long-lasting peace, were answerable only to their sovereigns. This allowed them to have a much greater freedom of actions). Also, ideology during WW1 was used to mobilize whole nations, and thus it represented a further barrier during the Paris Conference. Lastly, peacemakers in Paris were meeting at a a time when Europe was experiencing revolutions and turmoil. The guiding principle at Paris in 1919 was the the desire of the victors to contain their differences of opinion and present a united front to the defeated powers. There was no agreed-upon basis for peace. Thus, every decision was a political compromise among the victors. Wilson’s Fourteen Points were shunted aside as a victors’ peace emerged. ➡ The treaty with Germany is commonly referred to as the Versailles Treaty. It was the work of the “Big Four” (France, Great Britain, Italy, and the United States), though Italy didn’t actually cooperate to the negotiations once it was denied the territorial compensation it demanded. FRANCE, represented by Clemenceau, wanted a treaty that would assure French national security and require Germany to pay for war damages. France’s desire for a harsh treaty was mitigated by a willingness to compromise in order to achieve assurances of American cooperation in postwar Europe. George, Britain’s representative, was compelled by the results of the December 1918 elections to side with Clemenceau and thus support harsher peace terms than he personally felt were justified. Also, as George introduced social welfare programs in the UNITED KINGDOM, reparations from Germany were required (since money was needed to support those programs). On the other hand, President Wilson (UNITED STATES) firmly believed that the League of Nations was the essential cornerstone of Europe’s new order. For this reason, he was forced to compromise, often at Germany’s expense, in order to cooperate with the other victorious nations. RUSSIA was instead not represented during the peace conference. This was both because the Bolsheviks had little interest in taking part in the Paris Conference and also because of the fear that the very notion of R I E N V Y O E L U U R T O I P O E N Y S Y CENTRAL EUROPE: the Bolshevik revolution caused among the European delegates. If they could not erase Bolshevism, they could at least try to quarantine it. GERMANY was not only excluded from the peace conference, by it was also forced to admit to having started the war (- the inclusion in the treaty of the “war-guilt clause”). Also, the other terms of the treaty seriously weakened the country: • Germany lost a little territory in its west (Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France) • The coal mines of the Saar were placed under French control for 15 years • The area west of the Rhine and a strip 50 kilometers to the east were “demilitarized and Allied troops were to occupy the west bank of the river for 15 years • In the east, Germany lost way more territory. A large part of Posen and West and East Prussia were ceded to Poland. Danzig was declared a free city within the Polish customs union. • Germany lost its colonies • Military clauses —> the number of soldiers in the army was extremely reduced and the weapons available to them limited + the navy was downsized and forbidden to have submarines + the country was not allowed to have an air force. ➡ Treaty of Sèvres: with Turkey - it never went into effect ➡ Treaty of Neuilly: with Bulgaria - it had no important repercussions ➡ Treaty of St. Germain: with Austria ➡ Treaty of Trianon: with Hungary They both created problems that were never fully resolved between the two world wars. Austria and Hungary, before the war semiautonomous parts of the Habsburg Empire and each dominant in its own sphere, became small, relatively weak states. Austria particularly was an anomaly; the state was lopsided in every imaginable way, but especially economically. also, Austria was not allowed to join with Germany for fear that this would unduly strengthen the latter. The other problem involved the creation of a series of new or reconstituted states in Eastern Europe and conflicting claims over territory and population. The idea of national self-determination was extremely difficult to apply in this area with any fairness. Czechoslovakia, for example, included areas in which the majority of the population was German or Polish; these areas had been included for strategic reasons. THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS The failure of the Paris Peace Settlement mainly relies on its inability to recognize the new realities of 1919. By the end of the war, the economic and financial center of the world had shifted from Europe to the United States. The Pax Britannica ended with the Great War, but no one wanted to admit it. Neither was the United 1 States ready to assume the new responsibilities being thrust upon it. Wilson strongly believed in the League of Nations’s potential to maintain a long-lasting peace. Thus, in order to secure French support for the League and to soften France’s demands for a harsh and punitive treaty with Germany, Wilson agreed to a defensive alliance with Great Britain and France. But intense efforts on behalf of United States membership in the League of Nations met with firm opposition from isolationist members of Congress, who argued that Article X would commit the United States to defending any member of the League in the event of an attack. Isolationists in Congress were opposed to any further US involvement in international conflicts and viewed Article X as a direct violation of US sovereignty. As a result, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty, and the United States never became a member of the League of Nations ( - majority of Americans as well felt that participation in the war in Europe had been a mistake and thus wanted to return to a policy of isolationism). Apart from America’s refusal to participate, the League was made ineffective by the absence of both Germany (which did join in 1926) and the Soviet Union (which joined in 1934, shortly after Germany had left). Later, in the early 1930s, the League failed some crucial tests (ex: the Italian invasion of Ethiopia). Given the ineffectiveness of the League, all that was left to maintain the peace was a return to the old- fashioned principle of the balance of power. But that was not possible so long as Soviet Russia remained ostracized and Germany held down by the Versailles Treaty. One of the neglected realities of the 1920s was Period of relative tranquility from circa 1815 to 1914 in the regions to which Britain’s power extended. 1 Clauses (Germany - Treaty of Versailles) the fact that Germany was still potentially the most powerful nation on the continent. All it needed was to get out from under the restrictions of the treaty. Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, believed that humans are motivated by primitive, irrational drives hidden deep in the subconscious (this standing obviously undermined Enlightenment’s image of humanity). The revolution in PHYSICS was, however, what completely overthrew Enlightenment’s standings. Einstein challenged the newtonian view of the universe upon which the Enlightenment tradition rested. Classical physics taught that the universe was an objective reality, whose properties could be measured from an absolute reference point. The new physics taught that there was no objective reality. Space and time did not exist independent of the observer. There is no fixed (absolute) reference point anywhere in the universe. POSTWAR DESPAIR The new view of reality destroyed the premise of classical liberalism and democracy. World War I and the economic crises further worsened people’s idea of the future. Intellectuals felt disillusionment and despair in the postwar period. The storm that was the Great War had passed, leaving those who survived restless, uneasy, and fearful of the future. The atmosphere was filled with anxiety and darkness. All the fundamental assumptions were irreparably damaged by the war. Also, the war dehumanized the generation that experienced it. For those who survived the war in the trenches, their knowledge of life is limited to “despair, death, and fear.” How could the soldier of the Great War ever return to life as a civilian? The war would end for some, but for the veteran, it will never end. The warrior is forever marching, forever haunted by memories that can never be exorcised. Moreover, writers began to emphasize how civilization was an artificial product of human effort, maintained only by work and sacrifice. Freud stressed the idea that civilization was based on the repression of natural instincts. Some authors also claimed that civilization was being eclipsed by a new age of barbarism. The postwar era was witnessing the emergence of new “mass mentality,” one that knows no standard by which to judge the legitimacy of anything, one that demands conformity and the annihilation of all those who refuse to become just like everyone else. The new Bolshevik order in Russia also benefitted from the despair of the postwar years ( = a Nietzschean prophecy was apparently being fulfilled). The new socialist individual and a new Marxist doctrine of progress toward a future utopia on earth were attractive to many, especially leftist intellectuals, who sought to escape despair by a leap of faith. The fine arts were powerful ideological weapons in the mission to construct a new culture in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Marxist-Leninist Russia. Both the visual and performing arts have the power to transform dry ideology into the images and myths that move the individual emotionally. Many intellectuals, artists, and writers of various sorts during the 1930s took one side or the other in the ideological struggle between fascism and communism. Nonetheless, usually fascism received far less support and commitment by artists and intellectuals, who tended to defend democracy and condemned fascism. The social and economic dislocations resulting from the collapse of the old order drove large numbers of people to seek answers. It was easy to direct the resentment of the masses to an identifiable enemy, be it the Jews, capitalists, communists, or simply the establishment. Somewhere, some personified evil force was to blame for the chaos from which it benefitted. It was also possible to preach the mass extermination of the enemy. The Great War had cheapened life. It left behind images of mass death previously unknown. The holocaust of nazi Germany and the “GULAG” of Soviet Russia were to some extent conceivable because of the images left by the Great War. !3 CULTURE The new emerging world view assumed that there is no truth, not even in science. Instead of truth, there are only truths. Instead of order, there is only chaos. The new world view was a fragmented view of reality. This fragmented view of reality is mirrored in the artistic movements which were born in the postwar period. This transition in ART began with the impressionist painters in the 1870s. They rebelled against the practice of portraying the world around them with camera-like realism. They emphasized the play of light as they perceived it. In so doing, they abandoned objective reality for a subjective response to the real world. The impressionists were followed by the postimpressionists. They sought reality in the recesses of the mind. Reality was now the observer’s mental reflections upon the sensory images coming into the mind as light waves. By 1910, postimpressionism yielded to abstract art. The abstract artists totally abandoned reality. There was no fixed reality. Reality was what the artist said it was. A painting was not a portrait or even an impression of reality. Rather, it “created” reality. Also, there could no longer be an objective standard by which to judge what was good art or bad art. The message of most artistic movements of the interwar years was one of anarchy, even nihilism. In responding to the disillusionment of war, the Dadaists rejected all order and reason. Believing that the Great War revealed the absurdity of all of life, the Dadaists embraced nihilism. Dadaism paved the way for Surrealism. The latter sought reality in the unconscious. Both Dadaism and Surrealism were responses to the apparent chaos of the time, but without any hint of an answer. Some artists, like Otto Dix and Picasso, were able to make paintings powerful statements against the insanity of war and the decadence of postwar society and politics. Interwar literature aimed at mass consumption consisted largely of realistic novels and accepted poetic styles. The same was true of music and the new art form, the cinema. Jazz was a peculiarly American contribution to both popular and high culture between the wars. It first appeared as a distinct form of music in New Orleans around the turn of the century, where it was performed without written music by African American street musicians. Jazz music found a home in Paris, one of the two centers of European culture during the 1920s. It was in the 1920s that one could begin to speak of a “popular culture” as distinct from “high culture.” Popular culture in the affluent and vital late 1920s developed most of the attributes familiar in today’s society. Entertainment became increasingly commercialized and built on changing fashions. New songs, new dance steps, and new movie stars followed one another in an accelerating pace. In all areas of entertainment, the lowest common denominator was sought in order to attract as wide an audience as possible. The masses were the passive consumers of culture during the interwar years. The disintegration of the Enlightenment tradition and its consequences, which preoccupied the scientists and philosophers, did not immediately affect the masses. It was not until after World War II that the assumptions of the new world view would filter down to the masses through the mass media. THE SOCIAL IMPACT One of the most important ways in which the Great War changed social relations was to reduce the importance of class or status. The emphasis from the beginning had been on the cooperation of all layers of society in the war effort. Governments erased many distinctions through rationing and other efforts to make the burdens of war somewhat equitable. The comprehensive mobilization of each population during the war created a sense of participation in the affairs of the nation and a sense of individual self-respect that many had never before felt. Many felt that after the war, they could not accept a return to the old society and that, in any case, they had earned a reward for their sacrifices. Women in particular took on new roles during the war. They found positions in industries that had traditionally been closed to them, as well as expanded opportunities in areas in which they were already active. It became far more acceptable than ever before for women to have their own apartments, to go out unescorted, and, generally, to make their own decisions about their lives. it was no longer possible. !4 after the war to deny women the vote. Women’s suffrage were granted in the United Kingdom, Germany, Soviet Russia, and the United States around 1917-1920. PEASANTS AND AGRICULTURE The peasantry was the least affected class by the Great War, and the one class that did not share in the general prosperity of the later 1920s. Food prices, on which the income of farmers depended, were low throughout the 1920s and competition from abroad was stiff. Also, many peasants in Western Europe got into debt during or right after the war to purchase land or equipment. These debts were difficult to repay in the later 1920s. Many peasants had served in the army or had in other ways become more aware of the nature of life beyond their own region. They expected more in the 1920s and in some cases were willing to work in new and different ways to obtain their demands. In Britain, for example, many agricultural laborers joined organizations to improve pay and working conditions. In Italy, an attempt in the early 1920s to reform landholding patterns was defeated in the postwar violence that led to Fascism. In Germany, many peasants left the land for the cities; those who remained on the land began to support movements such as the Nazi Party, which promised to protect the farmer and the small agricultural enterprise. However, there were little changes in terms of agricultural practices and lifestyles. Peasants continued to lead largely isolated, family-centered existences. Though inWestern Europe peasants had been brought into contact with the modern world before the Great War (through the development of the market economy, the spread of public education exc.), that contact was still slight and episodic even in the late 1920s. On the other hand, in Eastern Europe, the process of rural adaptation - which had taken place in Western Europe and America before the Great War - had barely begun by the end of the 1920s. The power of the landed elites and traditional aristocracies was still formidable. In much of Eastern Europe, poverty, superstition, ignorance, and isolation were the rule among the peasantry. Most peasants lived in ways scarcely different from those of their ancestors in the early 1800s. THE WORKING CLASS In general, the working classes benefitted from the war. Labor supported the war effort in each country by ensuring labor stability and thus war production. In return, the working classes received higher wages, recognition of the right to unionize collectively, and even participation by labor’s leaders in government decision making. When the war ended, labor was determined not to yield any of its newly won status or influence. However, even though the working class was stronger in the 1920s, it still was not as strong as it could have been if it had not been divided in different movements. Indeed, in the immediate postwar period the working class split into a communist movement that centered on the Communist international (Comintern) and a socialist movement that continued the policies of the old Second international. Precisely because the Communist and the Socialist Parties referred to the same Marxist heritage to interpret political and social events and because both appealed to the same social group - the working class - they were bitter rivals. Although a united working class would have been stronger than a divided one, a divided one was still impressive. Socialists were not only represented in large numbers on the national level, but they also played important roles in municipal and provincial governments in Italy, Germany, and France. Unfortunately, working-class representatives never gained the trust and full cooperation of their middle-class counterparts. Organized labor faced even stronger resistance to its influence in the economic sphere. At the end of the war, the labor movement had pushed hard for economic changes, including higher wages, better working conditions, shorter hours exc. The dislocation of national economies made it difficult for organized labor to maintain its wartime gains. This fueled strike movements in 1919 and 1920 in France, Britain, Germany, and Italy. Efforts to resolve these economic and social problems in the immediate postwar period met with little success. In part, this failure was due to the short depression that Europe experienced at the beginning of the 1920s. The split within the labor movement at the same time also weakened it. Employers rapidly organized groups in the early 1920s to influence the government and to provide mutual aid against strikes; the rate of defeat of strikes went up. Governments became less sympathetic, sometimes even hostile, to labor goals. Still, by 1924, general prosperity led to better conditions for most groups of workers. Many worked eight- hour days with Saturday half-holidays. Real wages rose between 1924 and 1929. !5 GREAT BRITAIN At the outbreak of the war 3 major problems were afflicting the country: the question of the Irish home rule, the vote for women, and a broad-based dissatisfaction among workers. ➡ IRISH HOME RULE: Agreements in 1920 and 1921 resulted in the division of Ireland into northern Ireland, which remained attached to Great Britain as an autonomous area, and the Irish Free State, which gained dominion status. ➡ VOTE FOR WOMEN: Women over the age of 30 were given the vote in 1918 (10 years later, women received the vote on the same terms as men). ➡ DISSATISFACTION AMONG WORKERS: Britain was facing the economic consequences of the Great War. Before 1914, British prosperity and influence depended upon foreign trade. After the war many old reliable trading partners either developed their own industries or established new trade relations with other nations. Still others were themselves too impoverished by the war to continue as major trading partners. Moreover, the cost of the war had increased the national debt by about 1,000 percent. In the course of the war, Britain had exchanged its position of creditor for that of debtor. Also, Britain had become less competitive industrially. When in 1925 the gold standard was put back on, the problem was only exacerbated. British goods became too expensive, resulting in decreased exports. But the drop in exports hit especially hard those traditional industries that employed large numbers of workers. The result was chronic unemployment during the 1920s. Chronic unemployment led to frequent strikes that culminated in the General Strike of May 1926. The broader labor conflict began with a strike by the coal miners. In solidarity with the miners, the Trades Union Congress called for a general strike, which most of Britain’s organized labor followed. At its peak on May 4, more than 1.5 million workers were out on strike. On May 11, the High Court of Justice ruled that the General Strike was not protected by the Trade disputes Act of 1906, thus opening the way for the employers to seize the unions’ assets. The unions capitulated on the following day, ending the strike without achieving their goals. The 1920s also saw the decline of the Liberal Party and the rise of the LABOUR PARTY amidst a generally conservative political mood among voters. Twice during the 1920s Labour led a minority government headed by Macdonald, and never during either of the two tenures did the Labour government attempt anything radical. Rather, by governing very timidly, largely in line with the policies set by the Conservatives, they earned respect among middle-class voters. FRANCE France’s harsh policy towards Germany depended upon both economic (1) and security reasons (2). (1) France had suffered greater proportional losses than any other country in the Great War: Northeast France had been a battlefield for almost four years, much of the nation’s prewar industry was devastated, and the country had borrowed heavily in order to rebuild the war-ravaged areas. Plagued with inflation and a rising national debt, the French looked to war reparations from Germany for financial relief. (2) Since both the United States and Great Britain had refused to ratify the defensive alliance with France, the French were left to fend for themselves. Thus, France adopted an intransigent attitude toward Germany in order to keep Germany weak and isolated. At the same time, it sought to replace the old prewar Franco-Russian alliance with alliances with the new Eastern European states (as the Little Entente in 1922). Instead, the POLITICAL SITUATION remained unstable in France during the 1920s. The Socialist Party split in 1920 into the French Communist Party, affiliated with the Comintern, and the Socialist Party. Between April 1925 and June 1926, six cabinets came and went as Socialists and radicals remained deadlocked. In July 1926, Poincaré returned to power at the head of a national Union Ministry that governed France until July 1929. Poincaré pursued a conservative economic policy and headed the government between 1922 and 1924, when France (together with Belgium) occupied the Ruhr industrial district of Germany with disastrous !8 results for the Weimar republic and France. Between 1926 and 1929, however, Poincaré’s conservative policies restored financial stability to France. In 1928, France went on the international gold standard. It was a hard hit for many in the middle classes, the value of whose savings and investments was undermined. Devaluation brought financial stability, however, and normality to France. In fact, mainly because of Poincaré’s measures, France was better prepared than most European countries for the worldwide economic difficulties that began in 1929. WEIMAR REPUBLIC In January 1919, German voters elected a national Assembly to draft a constitution. The German republic served by the new constitution became known as the Weimar Republic. The National Assembly chose Ebert, leader of the Social Democratic Party, as president. The constitution drafted at Weimar was the very model of a democratic constitution. However, two aspects of the constitution were problematic: article 48 allowed the president to rule by decree during times of national emergency (1), and also the fact that the lower house of the Reichstag was to be elected by universal suffrage but according to a system of proportional representation that made it virtually impossible for any one party to achieve a majority (2). For this reason, during the life of the republic, no party ever achieved a majority. The survival of the republic became dependent upon the cooperation of the so-called Weimar parties - Social Democratic Party (SPD), Catholic Center Party (Z, or Zentrum), and German Democratic Party (DDP). These parties were ideologically incompatible but willing to collaborate. Most Germans did not prefer the republic and even associated it with defeat and betrayal. The traditional elites of army, judiciary, bureaucracy, church, and landed and industrial wealth remained openly hostile to it. Indicative of German feeling toward the republic was the election in 1925 of Paul Von Hindenburg, war hero and supporter of the monarchy, as president, following the death of Ebert. The actual threat the right represented was expressed through the 2 coups attempted in 1920 and 1923: ➡ 1920: Wolfgang Kapp attempted to seize power in Berlin in what became known as the KAPP PUTSCH. - Kapp was part, together with General Ludendorff and other extreme nationalists, of a union dedicated to overthrow the Weimar republic and establish a conservative militaristic government. Kapp became a member of the Conservative National People’s Party and was elected to the Reichstag in 1919. Kapp blamed socialists, communists, and Jews for Germany’s defeat. The coup began in March 1920 with a group of Freikorps occupying Berlin and Kapp proclaiming himself chancellor. The government left Berlin and called upon the army to suppress the coup, who eventually refused to fight against other soldiers ( - note that the army, together with the Freikorps, had suppressed communist revolts in the preceding years, but was not now willing to defend the Republic from threats from the right). However, Kapp and his followers did not have the support of the citizens of Berlin. Also, the Social Democratic Party called for a general strike. For this reason he was unable to govern and he eventually “resigned” and flew to Sweden. ➡ 1923: Adolph HITLER (again, an exponent from the right) tried to seize control of the government in Munich (this event became know as the BEER HALL PUTSCH). On November 8, he announced in front of a meeting of Bavarian nationalists that he was forming a national government. Armed Nazis took control of the crowd. On the following day, Hitler joined by 1 General Ludendorff, led a march down Ludwigstrasse, but quickly the group was confronted by a cordon of armed Bavarian police. Eventually Hitler was arrested and sentenced to five years of imprisonment, of which he served only nine months. The failure of both coups indicated a relative lack of strength among extremist groups by 1923. What actually represented a threat to the stability of the Republic was the hyperinflation caused by the Franco-Belgian occupation of the heartland of German industry, the RUHR. War reparations were the main sticking point in Franco-German relations and the foremost issue in German domestic politics in the early 1920s. France believed that Germany could pay enough in reparations to finance the costs related to the war. In January 1923, the French and the Belgians occupied the Ruhr in order to force Germany to pay. The German government responded with a program of passive resistance, The National Socialist German Workers Party (NSdAP or Nazi) was a minor right-wing party based in Bavaria in 1923.1 !9 C O U P S financing it by printing more and more money. Currency quickly lost all value. At the point of highest inflation, a single US dollar would be worth 4.2 trillion marks. As a result, many began to turn to the highest parties for an explanation and solution. Finally, the government reorganized under the leadership of Gustav Stresemann from the German People’s Party (DVP). A new mark, the Rentenmark, was issued at the rate of one new mark for one trillion of the old inflated marks. Soon the mark stabilized at its old prewar value of 4.2 marks to the dollar. Stresemann, who served as foreign minister from 1923 until his death in 1929, carried through a policy of “fulfillment” with regard to reparations. This policy basically meant to avoid open confrontation and to work with existing possibilities. Positive results soon arrived. In 1924, the Dawes Plan provided a realistic scale for the payment of reparations and a foreign loan (largely provided by American banks) of 800 million gold marks. These measures, together with the end of the Ruhr occupation, enabled the German economy to recover rapidly. By 1928, German industrial production was second only to that of the United States, and unemployment was extremely reduced. The Weimar republic passed the last half of the decade in relative tranquility. Hitler spent his time in prison writing his Mein Kampf (1925). After his release, he was able to rebuild the Nazi Party so as to make it stronger organizationally and more personally loyal to him. Yet, he was not able to make much headway in the late 1920s. He was the best- known figure of the extreme right, but not a major politician until 1929, when he started cooperating with the German National People’s Party (DNVP). The DNVP, based on the hostility of the aristocratic large landowners and some industrialists toward the Weimar republic, represented a much more substantial threat to the republic than any group on the extreme right. Nonetheless, the major threat for the Republic in the late 1920s was coming from the army. This had achieved a position of almost complete autonomy. It was largely composed of people technically competent but often actively disloyal to the Republic. The 1925 election of Paul Von Hindenburg as president - a man unsympathetic to parliamentary control of government - only worsened the situation. Now the Republic was represented by a president adverse to it and threatened by many groups antagonistic to it. ITALY Though Italy had been among one of the victorious countries from the Great War, the peace conference awarded Italy much less than it felt entitled to by the Treaty of London between the Triple Entente and Italy (1915). The secret treaty promised Italy territory along the Aegean Sea that was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in exchange for it declaring war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Injured national pride was exacerbated by economic and social problems. The aftereffects of the war included a massive national debt, rapid inflation, and increasing unemployment. Between 1919 and 1921, angry workers and peasants began occupying factories and land. The idea was to do as in Russia, so they saw this occupation as the beginning of a “Bolshevik-style” revolution. The political system offered little hope for the future. The two largest parties, the Socialists (who in 1921 split into socialist and communist factions) and the Catholic Popolari, were each deeply divided. Neither the 2 Socialists nor the Popolari were able to govern alone or able to imagine governing with the other. Into this confused situation stepped the small Fascist Party, formed in 1921 by Benito MUSSOLINI, editor of the Socialist Party newspaper, Avanti. Mussolini was expelled from the Socialist Party in 1914, when he called for Italy’s entry into the war on the side of the Allies. After the war, Mussolini organized the Fascist Party in 1921 and began denouncing Marxism and liberal democracy while talking vaguely of social and economic reform. Since the start, Fascism lacked any coherent doctrine or concrete program of reform. Rather, the emphasis was on action. Like both Nazism and Marxism–Leninism, it claimed to abolish class distinctions and fuse the masses into an organic whole. Mussolini coined the term “totalitarianism”, but actually he never achieved such control of the state. Mussolini organized a Fascist Party militia, the Blackshirts, which was used to terrorize peasants, organized labor, socialists, and communists alike. In fact, while much of the disorder caused by workers and peasants ended by 1921, the Fascists continued their work and became in that year the actual source of the largest part of the continuing unrest. In almost every European state communist organization were appearing. In Italy the Communist Party was associated with the 2 Communist International (= Comintern) and it was a section of this transnational network that had its center in Moscow. !10 • Kingdom of SERBS, CROATS, and SLOVENES: In 1929, King Alexander I established a dictatorship and changed the country’s name to Yugoslavia. He attempted to create a unified nation out of the diverse ethnic populations (= a fiction of national unity). • CZECHOSLOVAKIA: Major exception to the rest of Eastern Europe in the 1920s. The First Republic of Czechoslovakia came into being in October 1918, with the union of the Czech lands with Slovakia. Tolerant of its ethnic minorities and heavily industrialized, Czechoslovakia was the only Eastern European nation with a deeply rooted liberal tradition. • ROMANIA: Romania emerged from the war nearly twice its prewar size ( - the country was allied with the Allies). During the two world wars, Romania was a liberal constitutional monarchy from 1918 to 1930, when Carol II (who had renounced the throne a few years before) returned to Romania and established a dictatorship. • BULGARIA: having been one of the Central Powers, Bulgaria emerged from the war as a defeated power. The Treaty of Neuilly burdened Bulgaria with a reparations debt of $4.5 million. Bulgaria was economically a century behind Czechoslovakia. Still, differently from the other eastern European countries, Bulgaria enjoyed a largely homogenous society: 81 percent of its population was Bulgarian. On the whole, the instability of Eastern Europe originated from the strength of the older centers of power (the landholding aristocracy and the military) when confronted by some newer forces for democratic forms of government and more modern social and economic arrangements. Exacerbating this were economic problems caused by the breakup of the old economic unit formed by the Habsburg Empire and diplomatic tensions brought on by its location between two rival powers (Germany and the Soviet Union). TURKEY (OTTOMAN EMPIRE) The Armistice of Mudros (1918) ended the fighting between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies. The ottoman Empire was rapidly dissolving. The fate of the non-Turkish portions was decided at the Paris Peace Conference in accord with the Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916 between Great Britain and France. The outburst of the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1922) prevented Turkey from being partied into a British and a French sphere of influence. The Republic of Turkey gained international recognition with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. The treaty took the place of the Treaty of Sèvres. The capital was moved to Ankara from Constantinople. Under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Pasha, Turkey became a modern nation-state. THE UNITED STATES Since the Senate refused to ratify the Versailles Treaty on March 1920, the United States technically remained at war with Germany until the Treaty of Berlin in 1921. After the War, many Americans felt like the United States’ participation in the conflict had been a mistake. For this reason, a policy of ISOLATIONISM was implemented; increased tariffs were established on foreign imports to protect the postwar economic boom, and a quota system on new arrivals was introduced in order to limit immigration. In just one year (1920-1921) the number of immigrants became a quarter of the those preceding the immigration act. A spirit of nativism and provincialism characterized those years. Fear of Bolshevism led to America’s first “Red Scare.” Some Americans even blamed the Germans for the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918–1919. The Ku Klux Klan spread from the South to the north and northwest, where it was largely anti- Jewish, anti- Catholic, anti-immigrant, and anti-Communist. The US economy entered a boom period that would last until the stock market crash in 1929. The United States emerged from the Great War the richest nation in the world. The financial capital of the world moved to new York City. Wages increased. !13 CHINA AND JAPAN CHINA: Although China was declared a republic in 1912, there was no real central government in China during the 1920s. The period between 1916 and at least 1928 is known as the Warlord Era, during which powerful generals turned provinces into their personal domains. One of the most powerful warlords, Chiang Kai-shek, was the de-facto leader of the non-functioning Republic of China. Meanwhile, a militant communist movement under the leadership of Mao Zedong strengthened during the 1920s. As a result, Chiang Kai-shek gained greater recognition in the West as the leader of the “legitimate” government of China. JAPAN: Japan made territorial gains as a result of the Great War. During the 1920s, Japan appeared to be a democratic state in which democratic forces balanced the influence of the military. During the 1930s, both the army and the navy pursued their own foreign policy objectives without approval of the civilian government. Japan gradually fell under the spell of militarism. The independent actions of the military eventually led Japan into conflict with China and to war with the United States. —————————————————— CONCLUSION: The late 1920s were times of economic prosperity and political stability for the United States and large parts of Europe. However, the experience of the Weimar Republic as well as those in eastern and Southern Europe (in which authoritarian regimes quickly overthrew republican governments) shed into light the lack of strength and popularity of parliamentary governments. Two important tendencies, which became much more influential in the early 1930s, were the decline of the liberal center in politics and the growth of extremist movements on the margins of parliamentary life. 
 !14 FROM DEPRESSION TO WAR, 1929–1939 Chronology 1928 Soviet Union abandons Lenin’s NEP and implements the first Five-Year Plan (1928–1932) 
 1929 Great Depression begins in the United States 1930 Beginning of presidential dictatorship in Germany 1931 Japan invades Manchuria 1932 Second Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union (1932 - 1933 Hitler appointed as chancellor in Germany. The German Reichstag passes the Enabling Act. 1935 Hitler repudiates the disarmament clauses of the Versailles Treaty 1936 John Maynard Keynes publishes The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money 
 Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) 1937 Japan invades China 1938 Third Five-Year Plan begins in the Soviet Union Munich Conference 1939 Nazi–Soviet nonaggression Pact hitler invades Poland 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl harbor 
 On October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday hit Wall Street. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression (1929-39), the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world up to that time. The crisis deepened and became international during 1930. The rapid economic decline in most countries brought into question social structures and political systems as well as economic policies, and both the middle and working classes began to question political and economic liberalism. THE AMERICAN CONNECTION The 1929 Stock Market Crash sent shockwaves through Europe. Even before the new York crash, the European economy was experiencing difficulties. As already seen before, agriculture had been a troubled sector since at least the mid-1920s and several economies, as the British one, had been severely disrupted by the war, leading to high rates of unemployment. The problematic aspect of European economy was its dependence upon American finances. The great prosperity of the period 1924-1929 was financed by American loans, while the prosperity of America itself was financed by credit. In 1924 the Dawes Plan successfully resolved the issue of World War I reparations that Germany had to pay by loaning to the country huge sums of money in order to help encourage economic stabilization (the plan ended a crisis in European diplomacy following World War I and the Treaty of Versailles). By 1925, American banks had loaned Germany three billion gold marks. The German economy !1 1937) In order to get rid of any possible opposition within the party, Hitler decided to do away with any possible element that could represent an obstacle to his personal control of the state. Hitler purged the party leadership in the “Night of the Long Knives” (June 29, 1933). Moreover, in order to neutralize also the Catholic Church as a possible center of organized opposition, Hitler signed the Reich Concordat with the papacy on July 20, 1933. By the terms of the concordat, the Catholic Center Party was disbanded, and the Catholic clergy were required to give up all political activity. Henceforth, Catholics who opposed the nazi state and its policies had to do so as individuals. As a result the organized institutional churches generally capitulated to and openly supported the regime and its policies. THE STALINIST DICTATORSHIP The Stalinist dictatorship was constructed between 1928 and 1938. During the first period, from 1928 to 1933, the emphasis was on economic development. Stalin’s aim was to make the Soviet Union a major industrial power within 10 years through rapid industrialization. • NEP was abandoned for state planning of the economy through a Five Year Plan (= the Soviet Union • would issue a plan every 5 years); • It was an “industrialization from above,” thus a forced, rapid industrialization; • Especially heavy industry, needed specifically for the armaments; • Lead by workers and peasants (since the country should have been lead by those, from an ideological point of view); • “Socialist competition:” in order to increase workers’ productivity, workers who worked hard (“shock workers”) were considered as heroes, as contributing to a major common effort. The concept of Stakhanovism was created. • State control of agriculture: essential in order to sustain the industrialization. There was a significant revolution of Soviet agriculture through “collectivization.” The brutal process of collectivization of agriculture was meant to destroy the independence of the peasants while assuring the food supply necessary for industrialization. The peasants were forced into collective farms, where they were given production quotas to meet. hen the peasants resisted by burning their crops and farm buildings and slaughtering their livestock, they experienced severe repression. In the winter of 1934–1935, Stalin began a reign of systematic terror aimed at physically eliminating all individuals and groups who might challenge his regime. Stalin’s purge of party leaders (who he perceived to be a threat to his control) had begun. Millions were arrested by the secret police (NKVD), and either executed without trial or sent off to the slow death of the GULAG , the growing network of prisons and 3 labor camps. When the purges ended in 1938, millions of innocent citizens languished in the GULAG; the government and party bureaucracies and the military high commands were decimated; and the population of the Soviet Union lived in fear. THE ROAD TO WAR IN EUROPE World War II in Europe was the result of Hitler’s aggressive foreign policy. Hitler had the goal top create a greater Reich, hence to enlarge Germany’s boarders to include all German- speaking nearby countries. He had the idea that Germany had the right and need for a vital space, which basically was Eastern Europe (whose population was considered to be of a “lower order,” thus it was (((Hitler removed Germany from both the League of Nations and the Geneva Disarmament Conference in October 1933.))) In order to fulfill his goal (which of course violated the Locarno Treaty, which aimed to secure the post-war territorial settlement, and stated that Germany would never go to war with the other countries), Hitler began a rearming policy. The German army was transformed in a sizeable and well-equipped military force, and the Air Force (prohibited by the Versailles Treaty) was reintroduced. Those were usually located in Siberia. Though the gulags had not been instituted as extermination sites, but instead as collective 3 workcamps (usually prisoners had to work for the construction of enormous infrastructural works), millions of people died as a result of malnutrition and because of the dire and exhausting works they had to carry out daily. !4 legitimate for Nazi Germany to enslave them, even to destroy them - this concept is linked to the German Nazi-racial hierarchy). Although the League of nations condemned hitler’s unilateral action, the British and French took no action to enforce the treaty (- the aversion to war, and the commitment to avoid a replay of the Great War, was strong among the Western democracies). In fact, Britain signed the Anglo-German Naval Treaty with Germany in June 1935, implicitly legitimatizing Hitler’s violation of the Versailles Treaty. The Heads of the Government of France, Great Britain, and Italy, reunited in the Stresa Front, condemned the German rearmament, reaffirming the validity of the Locarno Treaties, but again did concretely nothing towards Germany. The Stress Front did not last long. Mussolini’s attack on Ethiopia in October 1935 marked the departure of Italy from western democracies and the moving closer of Fascist Italy to Germany. In November 1936, Hitler and Mussolini formed the “Rome–Berlin Axis.” The attack on Ethiopia was in part an attempt by Italy to avenge its defeat at the Battle of Adowa in 1896. it was also meant to connect Italian Somaliland and Eritrea. Mussolini also had the dream of rebirthing the Roman Empire, and of course he felt like Ethiopia was an easy kill. Instead, the Ethiopian army bravely resisted the Italians, who resorted to using both mustard and phosgene gas against the Ethiopians. Both Italy and Ethiopia were members of the League of nations. Despite that fact, and Italy’s use of outlawed chemical weapons, the League limited its action to condemning Italy’s aggression and imposing some minor economic sanctions. By taking only a weak-willed stand, the League merely offended Mussolini, pushing him into an alliance with Hitler, while effectively ending the League’s role as an agent for collective security. Mussolini and Hitler found an opportunity for cooperation when civil war broke out in SPAIN in July 1936. Nationalist forces led by FRANCISCO FRANCO reacted against increasing bloodshed at the hands of the republicans and political chaos following the election of a left-wing Popular Front government in February. The nationalists were aided by materiel and some military forces from Italy and Germany. The republicans were aided by volunteers, including the international Brigades, but by the Soviet Union. For its part, the Soviet Union hoped to divert hitler and Mussolini from a possible thrust into Eastern Europe and to rally the democratic powers to a strong antifascist position. Britain and France chose to remain neutral. Spain’s nationalists eventually won. Since Hitler wanted to reunite in the Third Reich all populations of German descendants located in Europe, he proceeded to annexation of Austria, the so-called Anschluss, in March/April 1938. He didn’t even need to resort to force, since the Austrian Chancellor Schuschnigg was forced to resign and was replaced by Seyss-Inquart an Austrian Nazi. At that point, Hitler directed his expansionistic ambitions to the Sudetenland (part of Czechoslovakia in which a German minority was located). Encouraged by Hitler, the pro-Nazi Sudeten German Party under demanded autonomy for the Sudetenland. On September 12, Hitler threatened intervention unless the Sudeten Germans were allowed to decide their own fate. On the following day annexation with Germany was called from the Nazi-German Party. On May 1938, the Czechoslovakian government declared the general mobilization of there army. The same decision was taken by Germany. Indeed, if the Czechoslovakian government was willing to grant administrative autonomy to the Sudetenland, it would have not complied with German exorbitant demands. Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, had already declared that Great Britain would have not sacrificed itself for Czechoslovakia’s independence. Indeed, the English diplomatic channel wanted, again, to go along with Hitler’s demands. On the 29 of September, Chamberlain, Hitler, Daladier, and Mussolini gathered in the Munich Conference. Hitler presented the western Allies with a choice between sacrificing Czechoslovakia or an almost certain war. They chose to sacrifice Czechoslovakia. In March 1939, German troops invaded what was left of Czechoslovakia, establishing a Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, while Slovakia became a separate satellite of Germany. It was the first time Hitler had taken territory not containing a German population. Even Chamberlain had to acknowledge this act as aggression. When Hitler then began making demands on the free city of Danzig and the Polish Corridor, Chamberlain pledged military assistance to Poland if it was attacked by Germany. !5 M U S S O L I N I Y F R A N C O Meanwhile, the Nazi–Soviet Non-Aggression Pact (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) had been signed on August 23, 1939. A secret portion of the pact divided Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. When the Polish government did not comply to Hitler’s requests, German forces invaded Poland and annexed Danzig (September 1). Two days later, on September 3, Britain and France declared war on Germany. On September 17, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. Anschluss, Sudetenla nd + Invasion of Poland THE ROAD TO WAR IN THE PACIFIC What transformed the war with Germany in Europe into a second world war was the emerging conflict with JAPAN in the Pacific. Since the end of the Great War there was rivalry between the two new great powers, Japan and the United States. Each country felt its vital interests in the Pacific threatened by the other. Relations between Japan and the UNITED STATES remained cordial during the 1920s. Both enjoyed immense prosperity. Japan was the only nation, other than the United States, whose investments exceeded its foreign debt. The arrival of the Great Depression brought an end to prosperity in Japan, as it did elsewhere. The effects of the Depression in Japan were made worse by an increase of 25 percent in the American tariff on Japanese goods. Soon one-half of Japan’s rural population was living in abject poverty. As conditions worsened, real power within Japan’s government passed into the hands of a small clique of military leaders, who saw Japan’s salvation in an aggressive foreign policy. Japan set out to establish economic control of China and Southeast Asia and military domination of the whole region. Such an aggressive imperialism meant conflict with both the Soviet Union and the United States. In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria, an act of unprovoked aggression which was condemned by the League of nations. Condemnation by the League and its attempt to impose sanctions provoked the Japanese into withdrawing from the League and renouncing the Washington Naval Conference Agreements. Japanese forces invaded China in July 1937. Once again, the League of nations condemned Japan’s aggression, but the deteriorating situation in Europe prevented effective action and even encouraged Japan’s militarist leaders. Relations with the United States grew more tense when in December 1937 Japanese bombers attacked the American gunboat Panay. The United States pursued a cautious policy toward Japan in hopes of avoiding war, until the summer of 1940. With the steady success of German forces in Europe, Japan occupied Indochina in 1940-1941. President Roosevelt responded by freezing Japanese assets in America and imposing an embargo on trade with Japan, including oil. When the Dutch East indies complied with the oil embargo, Japan decided to gain control of the Dutch East indies. That, however, necessitated first defeating, or at least disabling, the American and British fleets in the Pacific. On December 7, 1941, Japanese forces attacked the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. ➡ On December 8, the United States declared war on Japan. ➡ Germany and Italy declared war on the United States on December 11. The war in Europe and the war in the Pacific became World War II, a global conflict that lasted until September 1945. !6 J A P A N Y German troops occupied Paris. On JUNE 22 an armistice between France and Germany was signed. By terms of the agreement, France was divided into a Nazi-occupied zone in the north and an unoccupied zone in the south, which the French were allowed to govern (= Vichy France). - 10 JUNE 1940: Italy enters into war against France. Until that point Mussolini had declared the state of non-belligerence. Therefore, by summer 1940, only Britain remained to carry on the struggle against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. - JULY 1940: Hitler began the Operation Sea Lion, which goal was to the invasion and occupation of Great Britain. According to the plan, after having achieved air domination and having broken the population’s spirit through a series of raids, the German army should have proceeded in attacks from the sea. Therefore between July and October 1940 the Battle of Britain was fought, a series of violent clashes between the German air force and the British fighters planes. Because of the strong home front, the “lightning war” against Britain failed, and the project of an invasion postponed (odds against success were very high since Germany lacked command of the air and could not challenge Britain’s naval strength). OPERATION BARBAROSSA At that point Hitler believed that the time to invade the Soviet Union had come. Indeed, according to his belief the east was were Germany could find its Lebensraum (= “vital space”). In addition, Slavs were second only to the Jews as objects of Hitler’s hatred. Hitler regarded the defeat of the Soviet Union crucial also for the elimination of what he termed “Jewish Bolshevism.” On June 22, 1941, the Operation Barbarossa was launched. The Red Army was taken aback, both because Stalin didn’t expect Hitler to attack the URSS before having defeated Great Britain, and also because the Russian army were not prepared for a war of movement. Whole armies collapsed and were cut off. Attempts to retreat and regroup turned into routs. Much of the Russian air force was lost in the first days of the invasion. Within weeks, Leningrad was under siege, German troops were advancing rapidly toward Moscow, and most of the rich croplands and important industrial complexes of the Ukraine had been conquered. Yet the Soviet Union did not surrender. Stalin had encouraged a partisan warfare, which basically led to the adoption of the scorched-earth policy. This meant the destruction of any assets that could be used by the enemy, hence weapons, transport vehicles, communication sites, industrial resources, food stores, and agricultural areas. Russian winter also came to aid, catching the German military totally unprepared. Hitler had counted on a quick victory and therefore troops were not provisioned for a winter campaign. Strategic errors were compounded by tactical errors. Rather than regroup and establish winter quarters, Hitler demanded the army to push on until, in some cases, major units were cut off and lost. UNITED STATES and JAPAN On December 11, 1941, Hitler declared war on the United States. Germany was under no obligation to do this. In fact, Japan had not informed Germany beforehand of its plans (the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbour). By declaring war on the United States when Germany was already involved in a massive 1 campaign against the Soviet Union, Hitler one of his greatest mistakes of the war. Following the attack of December 1941, many territories in the Pacific were taken by Japan until summer 1942. Among these Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong. However, pursuing its expansionistic ambitions, Japan did not take into consideration the overwhelming air-naval superiority of the United States. This mistake Italy, Germany, and Japan had been allied since the Tripartite Pact was signed on September 27, 1940. The Tripartite Pact was the 1 culmination of a series of agreements between Germany, Japan, and Italy. On October 25, 1936, Germany and Italy completed the Rome-Berlin Axis, a cooperation deal. A month later Japan joined the so-called Axis powers by signing (with Germany) the Anti- Comintern Pact, an anti-communist agreement that was primarily directed against the Soviet Union; Italy signed in 1937. However, that compact was broken with the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of August 23, 1939, which paved the way for Germany to invade Poland. !3 became clear once the United States delivered a decisive victory in the air-naval battle of the Midway Islands (May 1942) and disembarked in the island of Guadalcanal. STALINGRAD In June 1942 Hitler resumed the offensive against the Soviet armies, pressing the German military to capture Stalingrad at any cost, while the Russian military was determined to resist the German assault with all the resources it could gather. Between July and November 1942 the city was besieged. The struggle was an intense one waged block by block, house by house. In November the Russian counter-offensive began, overturning the situation in favor of the Soviet Union. In February 1943 Nazis troops were forced to surrender. In July 1943 Hitler launched the last offensive against the Soviets, beginning the Battle of Kursk in western Russia. Despite a massive planned assault on Soviet troops using heavy tanks, artillery and air power, postponements by German dictator Adolf Hitler gave the Soviets ample time to prepare for the onslaught. Ultimately, Germany’s plan to wipe out the Red Army once and for all failed, but not before both sides experienced heavy casualties. At that point the Soviet Union began steadily advancing on all fronts. in January 1944, the siege of Leningrad was lifted and Soviet forces were nearing several key cities in Eastern Europe. ITALY After the Soviet Union had repeatedly asked its Allies to open a second, Western, front in Europe as a means of easing the enormous burden they were shouldering in fighting off the Germans, in January 1943 Roosevelt and Churchill decided to invade Italy. Between July 9-10, 1943, the Allied invasion of Sicily began, and in a few weeks the islands was conquered. The local population welcomed the Allied troops as liberators. The invasion of the Italian mainland took Italy out of the war. The Fascist Grand Council deposed Mussolini, and King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Marshal Pietro Badoglio as premier to replace Mussolini. Badoglio, after disbanding the Fascist Party, opened negotiations with the Allies, which resulted in Italy switching sides on September 3, 1943. Meanwhile, the Nazis established the Italian Social Republic (in the northern part of the peninsula) with Mussolini as head of state, but it was a puppet regime. Mussolini had no power and seemingly little interest in the course of the war. The “Republic” lasted only from September 1943, until April 1945. A large number of German troops were committed to the defense of Italy. These troops, combined with the mountainous terrain, made the Allied campaign as it made its way up the peninsula a difficult and bloody one. NORMANDY LANDINGS In November-December 1943, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Roosevelt met in the Tehran Conference. The chief discussion centered on the opening of a “second front” in Western Europe. Stalin agreed to an eastern offensive to coincide with the forthcoming Western Front, and he pressed the western leaders to proceed with formal preparations for their long-promised invasion of German-occupied France. Operations began on June 6, 1944 with the simultaneous landing of U.S., British, and Canadian forces on five separate beachheads in Normandy, France. By the end of August 1944 all of northern France was liberated, and the invading forces reorganized for the drive into Germany, where they would eventually meet with Soviet forces advancing from the east to bring an end to the Nazi Reich. On August 25 the Germans surrendered. HOME FRONTS Germany lost the war in large part because it failed to make a commitment to an all-out effort until it was too late. Throughout 1941, this kind of commitment had seemed unnecessary. Quick victories made it possible to reequip the German military without placing much strain on the civilian economy. !4 When the Soviet Union did not collapse as expected in 1942, however, it became clear that the economy needed to be coordinated for military purposes. The German economy was, thus, reorganized, and the production of munitions and weapons tripled between 1942 and 1944. however, Allied bombing raids and a lack of raw materials and manpower resulted in a precipitous decline in production in 1945. On the other hand, Britain worked to organize its resources and transform a peacetime economy into one fully mobilized for war. Also the Soviet Union had tightly controlled command economy from the beginning. Until 1943, however, Germany controlled large amounts of Russian farmland and significant parts of Russian industry. As the German army retreated, it destroyed as much as possible. The standard of living for the individual Russian dipped below even the previous lows reached in the days of the civil war or the early 1930s, but the war effort was sustained. Behind the successful allied war effort stood the enormous resources of the United States, its productive capacity freed from the depression by the demands of war. Within a year of the late 1941 attack on Pearl harbor, American production of armaments equaled that of all Axis powers combined. By 1944, the amount of armaments produced in the United States was double that of the Axis. COLLABORATION AND RESISTANCE 2 In occupied Europe, it was frequently difficult to draw a clear distinction between resistance and collaboration. Indeed, how should a state functionary have acted if his actions were largely for the welfare of the people in his country, but aided the German war effort? The most emblematic example is that of Vichy France. Its premier argued after the fact that his policies were necessary in order to keep the German occupation at a distance. It was better for Vichy authorities to supervise the recruiting of workers for labor in the German war industry than to turn this task over to the Germans themselves. Similarly, he argued, it was important for the French police to function as fully as possible, even if this meant cooperating with the Gestapo in tracking down Jews or in dealing with the resistance. Most of those involved in the Vichy government were conservatives who practiced collaboration because it seemed unavoidable. Between June 1940 and April 1942, members of the Vichy government believed they were working to replace the old values and institutions of the Third Republic with something far better. By 1943, however, Pétain, Laval, and the rest of the Vichy government found it possible to do only what Germany allowed or required them to do. Elsewhere in occupied Europe, there was even less possibility than in Vichy France of convincing oneself one was working out a national regeneration within the context of the German occupation. The pressure to supply the Nazi occupiers with food, workers for the factories, and Jews for the death camps was too great. Here and there, efforts were made to save the young men from labor service and the Jewish population of the country from exportation. Some countries, for instance, did a great job in protecting their Jewish populations. Among those we may find Denmark, which was able to send most of its Jewish citizens to safety in neutral Sweden. The resistance movements accomplished much of crucial importance. They furnished intelligence, helped downed pilots and escaped prisoners of war, and, in some cases, severely hampered the German war effort. The most successful resistance movement in the war was the Communist resistance movement in Yugoslavia led by Tito. The liberation of Yugoslavia without outside help was vitally important in the postwar period. THE HOLOCAUST • ANTI-SEMITISM had long been a major point in the Nazi program. It increased even more during the war years, along with the idea that the enemy’s power in part derived/was caused by the Jews. • During the years of the war numerous laws and measures were issued. Those had the aim to push Jews to leave the country. They were issued around 1935 and had the aim to discriminate them (thus this was somehow “legalized”). With the so-called Nuremberg Laws, Jews were denied equality of rights, and were reduced to simple “subjects” of the Third Reich. We might talk about armed resistance, and civil resistance (ex: hiding those who were persecuted by the Nazi-Fascist regimes - this 2 form of resistance was usually carried out by civilians, religious bodies, and institutions). !5 - CONSEQUENCES of WW2: • Human casualties: More than 40 million people were killed in the European part of the war. Civilian deaths were nearly three times the number of military deaths. Millions survived with disabilities of one kind or another. Millions more fled before advancing armies or were forced to migrate after the war. • Material losses were enormous: The estimate, in 1945 dollars, was between $2 and $3 trillion. This included damage to farmland, destruction of cattle and other livestock, and the devastation of villages, towns, cities, bridges, railroads, and highways. Not only Germany but every country that had been involved in the war faced the need to rebuild its economy and to repair the social fabric. Some countries suffered more than others, of course. Denmark was, comparatively speaking, unmarked by the war. The Soviet Union, victorious and powerful, had nevertheless incurred enormous losses. And, of course, it seemed Germany could not possibly recover. • Pessimism: Some believed Europe had been hopelessly weakened. This idea was also supported by the weakening of the colonial empires. In different manners, in some cases quickly and in others slowly and painfully, the empires collapsed and disappeared. Also, this pessimism was exacerbated by the spiritual cost that the war had; Europe had fallen back into a barbarism (the Holocaust, the firebombing of several cities in Germany and Japan, the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) during World War II that contradicted the previous decades of progress or perhaps simply effaced them. All the claims of cultural or moral superiority Europeans had ever made now seemed hollowed out by the events of the war. A spiritual malaise accompanied military impotence and economic devastation. • Emergence of the two superpowers: Beginnings of a decades-long struggle between the two “superpowers” the war had produced: the Soviet Union with its massive army and devastated economy and the United States with its unique atomic arsenal and hugely productive economy. The contest that developed between these two giants in the wake of the war would reshape Europe and the rest of the world in fundamental ways. Nearly all Europeans nations, instead, lost their power in the international panorama. The majority of European nations were struggling with the post-war reconstruction; the majority of European cities had been razed to the ground, healthcare infrastructure had been wiped out, and the number displaced persons was enormous. = NEW INTERNATIONAL ORDER was established. • “The United Nations”: A new international organization was established in summer 1945. It was a forum for discussion and a place where peaceful ways to settle international disputes could be found. It had to prevent in any way the outburst of another war. THE COLD WAR - The first stark contrasts between the two superpowers emerged during the conference of Potsdam (July- August 1945), which took place after the end of the war in Europe and while this was still going on in the Pacific. Here Truman (who succeeded Roosevelt), Stalin, and Atlee (who succeed Churchill) met. The atmosphere during the conference was really different from the one which permeated the precedent conferences. Indeed, in Postdam Truman clearly showed his strong antagonism toward the communists, with who he believed it was impossible to find an agreement (= very different approach from that of Wilson). His attitude, moreover, was even more rigid because of what was happening in Eastern Europe, where the Soviets were clearly not willing to concede free elections, as they instead promised during the Yalta Conference (February 1945). By midsummer of 1945, serious differences of opinion began to surface with regard to postwar Europe: • The most important disagreement concerned the composition of the Polish government. The Soviet Union contended that if it were to install in Poland a government it sponsored, and largely excluded one backed by Britain, this would be the same thing the Soviet Union believed the United States was doing in Italy and Britain was doing in Greece. In fact, since the end of February 1945 the !2 Soviet occupation forces in Romania had started undertaking a series of political maneuvers aimed at discrediting the monarchy and bringing the Romanian communist party to the summit. • The question of administration of occupied Germany. During the Yalta Conference it was decided that Germany would have been divided in 4 occupation zones (British, French, American, and Soviet), but the Soviet Union and the United States had different opinion concerning the amount of war reparations Germany had to pay. Indeed, the Soviet Union had begun a policy of wholesale confiscation of materiel and facilities in its zone and also in the other three zones. The United States feared this would lead to the economic collapse of Germany and require greatly expanded American aid. During the Postdam Conference, the division of Germany into 4 different occupation zones was confirmed, and Berlin as well became divided into those four occupation zones. In 1946, the United States and Britain no longer allowed the Soviet Union to take reparations from their zones. On January 1, 1947, the British and American zones fused into a single economic and administrative unit, “Bizonia.” - Though the Cold War actually started to take shape in 1947, from 1946 we might speak of an “iron curtain,” term which was coined by Churchill in a speech he made that year: • Europe became a divided continent - East Europe is under the influence of the Soviet Union, and is divided from Western Europe, which is instead under the influence of the United States, by this so- called “iron curtain.” • The United States begun a policy of “containment,” with the aim of containing the expansion of communism and thus provide to any country that could fall under communism (either because of internal reasons, or by a Soviet Union’s action). - The threat of a communist expansion behind this “iron curtain” took shape in the first months of 1947. Here lay the origins of the Cold War. • Since August 1946 Turkey had been under considerable pressure from the Soviet Union to allow a Soviet military presence near the straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. The Turkish government refused such measure, thanks also to the support of the United States, and arranged the dislocation of part of its fleets in the Aegean Sea. • Greece was still involved in a civil war between Greek communists and Greek monarchists. The northern regions were de facto controlled by pro-Soviet partisans forces, while the southern regions were under western control. Between 1945 and 1946, in front of the restoration of the monarchy and of the right-wing parties, the communist armed movements undertook guerrilla actions in order to military conquer power. In February 1947, after Britain had informed the United States it could no longer afford to supply aid to the two countries (Romania and Greece), the United States felt it was indispensable to give military and financial support to the Greek government in order to avoid it falling under the Soviet influence. • Facing the possibility that Turkey and Greece might crack under Soviet pressures, the American government decided to apply the Truman doctrine. President Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. Even though Truman did not explicitly mention the Soviet Union, the reference to it was clear. - In 1948 the Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was adopted. This was a U.S. program providing economic aid to Europe following the devastation of World War II. It consisted of five- year aid plans addressed to both western and eastern European countries. The United States, in fact, believed that in order to achieve an anti-communist economic and political stability in Europe, it was central to support the economic recovery and the formation of free institutions. According to the US, the establishment of those would create a broad basis of consensus able to isolate the communist parties. (Of course, he was also aware of the importance to American business of an economically viable Europe.) Through this plan the United States wanted to support the development of market economies even in Eastern Europe. In order to present such thing to happen, Stalin forced Poland and Czechoslovakia to refuse American aid. - Stalin saw the Marshall Plan simply as a means whereby the United States could gain control of the European economies - at this point, the formation of a Western Bloc led by the United States was clear. In September (1947), the Cominform, the successor to the Comintern, was established with head- quarters in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. This was seen in the West as evidence of the existence of a monolithic communist movement, controlled by Moscow and dedicated to the subversion of democratic governments everywhere. !3 Actually, the main task of the Cominform was to tighten Soviet control over Eastern Europe and in particular to try to gain a greater measure of control over communist Yugoslavia. 1 THE TWO GERMANIES The status of Germany was the most important issue in relations between the Soviet Union and the other Allied Powers. ➡ For the URSS the priority was to prevent Germany from being a military threat again + to put on the country war reparation damages. In 1946, the Soviet Union virtually eliminated political parties in its zone and put intense pressure on the old Social democratic Party (SPD) to unite with the Communists (KPd) to become the Socialist Unity Party. The Soviets also carried out an extensive program of land reform and nationalization of industry. This was based in part on the idea that destruction of capitalism would eliminate the basis for fascism since fascism was a product of “monopoly capitalism.” ➡ For the US (and the French and British) the priority was to revive Germany’s economy (among a general European recovery). They knew that it was not to their advantage to destroy the German economy if this meant later they would have to send food, goods, and money back into Germany to prevent social unrest and instability. In the American and the British zones, an effort was made to carry out a program of de-Nazification, demilitarization, and democratization, but the programs were only partially successful. In particular, the process of de-Nazification moved slowly and was not especially effective. Many high-ranking Nazis were able to escape trial. The inability to find a suitable form of cooperation resulted in the division of Germany in two states in 1949: • West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany). It was the outcome of the French, British, and American occupations. Hence, it was under the Western Sphere of Influence. • East Germany (German Democratic Republic). It was instead a communist regime under the Soviet sphere of influence. MILITARY ALLIANCES - After the Czech coup in February 1948 (in which the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, with Soviet backing, assumed undisputed control over the government) the “North Atlantic Treaty Organization” (NATO) was established in 1949. It was a military organization between Northern American countries (US + Canada) and Western European countries. In 1955 West Germany joined the organization. - By way of contrast, the Soviet Union imposed its empire on Eastern Europe in the interests of the national security of the Soviet Union. In 1955, following West Germany joining the NATO, the Warsaw Pact was stipulated between the URSS and the other Eastern European countries. THE COLD WAR LAUNCHED Three developments in Asia also contributed to the shaping of the emerging Cold War world. These were the American occupation of Japan, the victory of the Chinese Communists over the Chinese nationalists in 1949, and, finally, the Korean War. JAPAN: At the end of the war, the United States imposed a status of military occupations, establishing an administration entrusted to general MacArthur. He reshaped Japanese political life, reestablishing a tradition of parliamentary democracy while allowing the Japanese Emperor to remain as a national symbol. MacArthur had less impact on the contours of economic and social affairs, although he did much to improve the status and rights of women. The Japanese themselves decisively rejected militarism. The Soviet Union wanted to be sure that no threat could come from Eastern Europe. Those countries had to be sympathetic towards 1 the Soviet Union, thus they had to be controlled by the latter. Therefore, the Soviet Union placed local communists to power in Eastern Europe to guarantee their loyalty. !4 The United States became a major factor in the politics of the area over the next half century with mixed results. The Soviet Union attempted to play a role in Middle Eastern affairs, but generally without success except in the area of terrorism. Israel, heavily influenced by the influx of European Jews and the historical legacy of the holocaust, became the strongest and most successful state in the area. AFRICA: By the mid-1950s (second wave of independence movements), the British and the French both began moving to grant their African colonies independence. In 1960, the French granted full independence to their African colonies. ➡ ALGERIA: The French faced a major challenge in Algeria when the National Liberation Front (FLN) began a revolution in 1954. Although the French had considerable success militarily against the FLN, they steadily lost ground in the court of world opinion. The revolution grew increasingly brutal in the methods used by the two sides. For the French, it was particularly troubling since they could not help but note they were using many of the same methods the Gestapo had used in World War II against the French resistance. It was only after the coup in Algiers, the capital of Algeria, and a close brush with civil war, which brought Charles de Gaulle to power in 1958, that a way was found to extricate France from Algeria in 1962. ➡ TUNISIA and MOROCCO gained independence in 1956, The British did somewhat better in terms of training a large group of Africans to take over the task of governing themselves. Several areas of the former colonies, however, contained large numbers of white settlers. ➡ KENYA: The Mau Mau movement struggled for independence. Most of its terrorist tactics were directed against Africans reluctant to support independence against the British, but white settlers were also killed. ➡ RHODESIA ( = ZIMBABWE): Controlled by white settlers, declared its independence in 1965. After more than a decade of struggle, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980 and power was handed over to the black majority. ➡ REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA: The country left the Commonwealth in 1961, becoming the Republic of South Africa, a state characterized by an elaborate system of apartheid or state-mandated segregation. Only after adopting a new constitution in 1993 and holding free elections in 1994 did South Africa leave behind the destructive system of apartheid (in which the white majority lived vastly better than the black majority it controlled). ➡ CONGO: In 1960, with very little advance preparation, the Belgians simply withdrew from the Congo and granted it independence. This led to a five-year period of civil war in which the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People’s Republic of China intervened at one time or another. Between 1971 and 1997, the nation was known as Zaire and ruled by Mobutu Sese Seko’s brutally corrupt and inept regime. By the mid-1960s, the second wave of independence movements had ended. Only a few white settler regimes and the Portuguese colonies remained in Africa. Elsewhere, a handful of colonies in the Western hemisphere and in the Pacific still existed. To all intents and purposes, imperialism in the sense of colonial empires had disappeared from the face of the earth. !7 F R E N C H B R I T I S H B E L G I A N OUT OF THE ASHES, 1945–1967 Chronology 1945 Nazi Germany defeated; Japan surrenders Labour party wins elections in Britain 1946 Constitution of French Fourth republic approved 
 Italy becomes a republic 
 National Health Service established in Britain 
 Beginning of the Indochina War between France and the Viet Minh 
 1947 British rule in India ends Truman Doctrine 
 Marshall Plan 
 Communists forced out of coalition governments in France and Italy 
 1948 Communist coup in Czechoslovakia 
 Christian Democrats win elections in Italy 
 1949 Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) founded German Democratic Republic (East Germany) founded Dutch rule in East indies ends 
 1950 Schuman Plan 
 1952 European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) established 
 1953 Death of Stalin 1954 France defeated at Dien Bien Phu Vietnam divided into two states at the Geneva Conference 1956 Khrushchev’s speech denouncing Stalin at the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Worker unrest in Poland Hungarian revolution and Soviet intervention Suez Crisis 
 1957 European Economic Community (EEC) established by the Treaty of Rome 
 1958 Charles de Gaulle becomes president of France French Fifth republic established 1959 European Free Trade Association (EFTA) established 
 1961 Construction of Berlin Wall begins 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis !1 1963 De Gaulle vetoes British membership in the EEC Franco-German Treaty signed 
 West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer retires after 14 years in office 
 1964 Khrushchev forced to retire-replaced by Brezhnev 1966 Grand coalition of the CDU and SPD in Germany ends 17 years of conservative government De Gaulle announces French withdrawal from NATO
 1967 Military seizes power in Greece EEC, ECSC, and Euratom combine to become the European Community (EC) 
 
 RECONSTRUCTION Several FACTORS enabled the European economy to not only recover, but also develop at a rapid rate, through the first two decades after World War II. • War damage had sometimes been exaggerated. In addition, sometimes the wartime demolition had a “positive” side. A factory destroyed in the war became an advantage if the factory was replaced by a more efficient plant. In other situations, the economies of the belligerent nations had expanded during the war and were nearly as large, or even larger, than their prewar versions. • The capital needed to finance economic growth. Was mainly provided from the United States through the Marshall Plan. Under it, the US provided Europe with about $13 billion in aid. In many ways, the Marshall Plan’s main contribution was a psychological one. It demonstrated American faith that European economies could be successfully reconstructed and gave Europeans reason to cooperate with one another in the process. • Increase in trade worldwide and several demographic factors also helped Europe to recover. First, there was a rising birthrate. Additionally, the influx of refugees and, later, the arrival of large numbers of foreign “guest workers” added to the capacity to produce goods relatively cheaply. Heavy consumer demand, especially in areas of housing and automobiles, was vitally important in maintaining a long-term economic growth. • A new kind of capitalism, one characterized by extensive state intervention in national economies through the use of devices such as planning and nationalization, also played an important role in recovery. Governments extended their activities beyond areas having to do with welfare (unemployment, retirement, working conditions exc.) to the workings of the economy itself. Efforts to make the economy function effectively and equitably followed patterns that had developed in each of the two world wars. BRITAIN Three MAJOR DEVELOPMENTS characterized Britain in the first decade after the war: - The slow recovery of the economy and Britain’s failure to share fully in the rapid economic growth of the 1950s. Britain was initially handicapped by an enormous war debt and by foreign policy crises in areas such as India and Palestine. The country had become less competitive on the world market. The industrial plant was aging, the labor force more concerned with benefits than productivity, and the management reluctant to modernize facilities and encourage innovation. Despite economic difficulties, Britain resisted the idea of long-term economic planning and restricted governmental interference in the private sector. - The expansion of the welfare state. The Labour Party erected a comprehensive social security system and a socialized medical care program. Even during Labour’s long absence from power between 1951 !2 By the 1950s, Italy enjoyed a high rate of economic growth, becoming a major supplier in Europe of automobiles, refrigerators, office machinery, and other goods. It was an unusual mixed economy. Overall, the south gained little from Italy’s reconstruction after the war. THE SOVIET UNION 1946: The Fourth Five-years Plan was launched. Its goals were: post-war reconstruction, strengthening of heavy industry and armaments industry. Still, resources destined to the production of consumer goods and to intended to agriculture (which was heavily harmed during the Nazi occupation) were insufficient. 1950s: The Soviet Union reached prewar levels in industry and agriculture through the utilization of its own resources, reparations from some nations, and one-sided economic arrangements with its East European satellites. A major industrial power in terms of basic categories like coal and steel production, and closing the gap between itself and the United States in some areas, it nevertheless lacked the technological range of a truly modern industrial society. Much of its production in the 1950s was inferior in quality or outmoded in design. There were serious shortages from the consumer point of view. Agriculture, despite the vigorous efforts of Khrushchev, was inefficient and had not recovered from the effects of collectivization in the 1930s. In 1953 Stalin died. At first, the new Soviet leadership, formed by a Directory composed by Stalin’s closest collaborators, tried to follow the path taken until then, maintaining the autocratic system inherited and continuing to impose a strict control over the satellite countries. Nonetheless, several turmoils arose in Eastern countries from the beginning. Those were due to the miserable economic conditions in which those countries found themselves. This situation led to a change of direction. In 1955 the leadership passed to Khrushchev. In 1956, at the Twentieth Party Congress, Khrushchev made a so-called secret speech in which he denounced Stalin’s crimes. This was the beginning of a process of de-Stalinization: many of Stalin’s closest collaborators were removed from the government, political prisoners were liberated, and several restrictions on culture and social life were loosened. By blaming Stalin for many past wrongs, Khrushchev and his colleagues deflected a good deal of the criticism of the existing situation. Indeed, Khrushchev wanted to preserve the validity of the communist experience and of Lenin’s doctrine, together with the legitimacy of the Communist Party. In order to do so he had to ascribe to Stalin all the crimes and aberrations of the Soviet system. Criticizing Stalin was also a way to improve relations with those communist movements that had resented Stalin’s autocratic behavior toward them. Finally, distancing the present government from Stalin made the relaxation of Cold War tensions more likely. In 1956, Khrushchev also faced difficult situations with Poland and Hungary. Ironically, the Soviet Union was trying not only to reestablish a good working relationship with Tito and Yugoslavia but also to treat countries in the East Bloc as sovereign states. Thus, the Warsaw Treaty Organization (= the Warsaw Pact) came into being in 1955, partly in response to West Germany joining NATO but additionally as a way of establishing proper relationships between the Soviet military and the armed forces of the East European states. In the case of Poland, the Polish leader Gomulka convinced the Soviets of the loyalty of the Polish Communists and the stability of the political situation in Poland. Hungary, for its part, appeared about to leave the WTO, and the Russians resorted to force to end the Hungarian revolution. From 1957 until Khrushchev was successfully deposed in 1964, he tried many schemes to create conditions for a more productive, efficient, and technologically sophisticated economy in the Soviet Union. In some respects, he was remarkably successful (launching of Sputnik in 1957 + the first man in space). Ultimately, Khrushchev’s downfall came from a streak of adventurism in foreign policy. In particular, the Cuban Missile Crisis between the Soviet Union and the United States in 1962, during which the world ventured to the edge of a nuclear holocaust, prompted his colleagues to bring in someone less erratic. !5 EAST GERMANY On the political level, the German Democratic Republic experienced a journey analogous to that of the other eastern European countries under the Soviet control. A one-party rule dominated by the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany), led by Ulbricht, was established in 1953. Unlike West Germany, the German Democratic Republic had to pay heavy war indemnities to the Soviet Union (- it basically exploited East Germany). In the first years after the GDR’s founding, it was forced to follow the Soviet economic and political model closely and to join in the witch hunt for national deviationists or Titoists. Moreover, the forced collectivisation of lands did not help the country’s development prospects. The SED agreed to follow a Soviet line emphasizing social and economic concessions. Those concessions led to a workers’ protest on June 16, 1953. Only toward the end of the day did the Soviets send in tanks to help restore order. By the late 1950s, the GDR was suffering from the effects of a massive depopulation process. Hundreds of thousands of people each year were flowing out across the border. Almost all the border was sealed off by the end of the decade, but there remained the problem of Berlin. The East German leaders finally came up with a crude but workable solution to the problem: the Berlin Wall. Construction of the wall began on August 13, 1961. POLAND Poland was the country in Eastern Europe about which the Soviet Union worried most. By 1948, Poland was on its way to becoming a carbon copy of the Soviet Union. People like Gomulka, who emphasized a 2 national approach to communism, were arrested, imprisoned, and in some cases even executed. After Stalin’s death in 1953 and Khrushchev’s speech in 1956, the rigidly authoritarian communist regime in Poland relaxed some of its policies. These changes stimulated a popular desire for more-radical reforms, but the Polish leadership, which included a substantial number of conservative Stalinists, was reluctant. Consequently, the impatient industrial workers of Poznań, seeking better standards of living staged a strike in June 1956 (but also more generally protesting against the pro-Soviet government). Soviet troops stationed there responded with a harsh repression. Protests continued in the following months. Facing the risk of a popular uprising and considering the fragility of the Communist Party, the Kremlin allowed Gomulka to return power (1956). Gomulka and his supporters worked hard to convince the Soviet Union of two things: Poland would remain in the Soviet Bloc and the Polish Communist Party would continue to exercise power. The Soviets agreed, not relishing the prospects of fighting the Poles. Aside from abolishing collectivization and de-emphasizing heavy industry, relatively little changed in Poland. Gomulka and the Poles were able to avoid the fate of the Hungarians who, in October and November of 1956, became involved in revolution. HUNGARY 1949: Hungary became a People’s Republic and began following the Stalinist path of economic development over the next four years to the point of economic collapse. 1956: Popular uprising following Khrushchev’s speech in which he attacked the period of Joseph Stalin’s rule. Encouraged by the new freedom of debate and criticism, a rising tide of unrest and discontent in Hungary broke out into active fighting in October 1956. Thousands of protesters took to the streets demanding a more democratic political system and freedom from Soviet oppression. In response, Communist Party officials appointed Nagy, a former premier who had been dismissed from the party for his criticisms of Stalinist policies, as the new premier. Nagy tried to restore peace and asked the Soviets to withdraw their troops. The Soviets did so, but Nagy then tried to push the Hungarian revolt forward by abolishing one-party rule. He also announced that Hungary was withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact on November 1(= announcing Poland’s neutrality). He was accused of “nationalist deviation.” 2 !6 Khrushchev refused to accept the idea of Hungary leaving the Warsaw Pact as it would leave a gap in the USSR's buffer zone with Western Europe. Soviet security was Khrushchev's priority, and he decided to crack down on the new Hungarian government. On November 4 the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to stop the revolution. The Kremlin smashed the Nagy government and installed Kádár as the new leader. Although the West expressed sympathy for the Hungarian people, there was no attempt at intervention by the USA or Western Europe. In the midst of the uprising, the West’s attention was on the Anglo- French invasion of Suez, which became one of the USA’s main concerns. Though Kádár did steer a course close to Moscow’s, and thus placed Hungary under strict communist control, he also allowed some freedom of discussion. Stalinist-type domination and exploitation did not return, and Hungary thereafter experienced a slow evolution toward some internal autonomy. ————————————————— Throughout the 1950s, the SOVIET UNION dominated the affairs of East and Central European countries with the exception of Yugoslavia. The Soviet Union not only shaped the political systems but also the social and economic systems. This meant an emphasis on industrialization and urbanization in what had been countries with large peasant populations and small industrial bases before the war. In each nation, the pattern was roughly the same: centralized planning, rapid economic growth, and the development of heavy industry at the expense of the production of consumer goods. ON THE WAY TO A UNITED EUROPE In the West, movement toward unity built on ideas and concepts coming from the experience of World War II and followed three parallel paths, two of which reached dead ends by the mid-1950s. 1. The matter of political union. In May 1948, a Congress of Europe took place. Among the participants were such leading Europeanists as Churchill, de Gasperi, Schuman (France), and Paul-henri Spaak (Belgium). The Congress proposed the political and economic unification of Europe and established the Council of Europe to that end. The power of decision lay in the hands of the foreign ministers of the member states, organized as the Committee of Ministers. But they guarded the sovereignty of their respective nation states jealously. Political integration was not in the cards. 2. The military aspect, specifically the rearmament of West Germany. In 1950, the French proposed to create a European army (= a common army run by unitary bodies) as a means of circumventing the problem of German rearmament and enhancing the defensive capabilities of Western Europe while the United States was embroiled in the Korean War. Before the European Defense Community (EDC) could be organized, however, events passed it by. Stalin’s death, the end of the Korean War, and the easing of Cold War tensions in the mid-1950s all worked to remove some of the more pressing reasons for the EDC. 3. The French Foreign Minister Schuman proposed a pooling of coal and steel resources in Europe in what became known as the Schuman Plan . This led to the creation in April 1951 of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The ECSC was a great success. Its members pressed on to further economic integration in part because of the obvious potential economic advantage. They were also painfully aware of their vulnerability and weakness as individual states. In 1957, the Treaty of Rome established the European Economic Community (EEC) or Common Market. The EEC set out to eliminate customs barriers among its member states and to create a common tariff structure for the rest of the world. Finally, the so-called Merger Treaty of 1967 combined the EEC, the ECSC, and Euratom (the European Atomic Energy Community) into a single institution, the EUROPEAN COMMUNITY (EC) !7 In Eastern Europe, the Comecon, in existence since 1949, took on a new life. Originally constructed as a counter to the Marshall Plan, but actually little more than a cover for Soviet exploitation of the Eastern European economies, Comecon became directed more toward mutually advantageous economic relations. DÉTENTE Détente, period of the easing of Cold War tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union from 1967 to 1979. The era was a time of increased trade and cooperation with the Soviet Union and the signing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) treaties. Relations cooled again with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Détente was the product of two crises: • The BERLIN CRISIS was actually a series of crises culminating in the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961. Between the formation of the German democratic republic in 1949 and August 1961, about three million East Germans, approximately 16 percent of the country’s population, went through Berlin in order to leave the country. Many of the emigrants were young and well educated. The East German regime worried about the survival of the state if the flow of citizens to the West were to continue. • The CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS, which edged the world very close to a thermonuclear war. Khrushchev decided in 1962 to take a chance on installing missiles in Cuba as a means of gaining advantage at little cost. There were several reasons why he pursued this risky policy. One reason, of course, was to back up his guarantee to Fidel Castro to protect Cuba from American threats. A second was probably domestic. A cheap but dramatic victory in the Cold War competition would reinforce his position in the Soviet Union. Various disasters in domestic policy and reservations about the de- Stalinization campaign had eroded Khrushchev’s power. Also, Khrushchev probably thought it might be possible to trade removal of missiles in Cuba for removal of American missiles in Turkey. In October 1962, the two superpowers were on the verge of a nuclear war. On October 22, Kennedy decided to set up a naval quarantine of Cuba, in order to impede to the Soviet ships carrying the nuclear weapons to the island from reaching its shores. This stalemate situation continued until October 28, when Khrushchev agreed to dismantle the missile sites, getting in return the promise of the American government to respect the independence of Cuba and withdraw the American missiles from Turkey and Italy. After the crisis, the two powers moved rapidly in the direction of détente. A direct telephone line, the “hot line,” was installed between the White House in Washington and the Kremlin in Moscow. In 1963, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed originally by the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain and later by most other nations. Even when America began to play an active role in the conflict in Vietnam, détente continued. The Soviet Union continued to support the forces of north Vietnam but did what it could to prevent the war from widening. The United States, for its part, supported the forces of South Vietnam while pursuing policies designed to keep the Soviet Union as well as “Communist China,” from taking a more active role in the war. The United States was caught in a particularly delicate situation wherein certain measures that might lead to military victory over the north Vietnamese had to be rejected for fear they would inadvertently bring the Soviet Union or Communist China directly into the war. !10 CONCLUSION By 1967, Europe had recovered from the war and had broken much new ground. Industry had become the major factor in almost every European economy. The nature of industry was changing as well, especially in North-Western Europe, where the emphasis was on the production of consumer goods, the development of new products, and the use of new machines and techniques. Standards of living had surpassed prewar levels. Societies were becoming more homogenous. In politics, both east and west, governments became more involved in social and economic issues, resulting in the creation or extension of some kind of welfare state. The changing political spectrum had resulted in the virtual disappearance of the prewar type of liberal or conservative party. Two major developments were the emergence of Christian Democratic Parties, which dominated the first two decades of politics in Italy and Germany, and reform-minded, non-revolutionary Socialist parties in several states. In many ways, the Christian democratic parties, attracting members with widely differing interests, replaced the old conservative parties. The Socialists were a partial replacement for the liberals, although far more enthusiastic about government intervention. Politics was less polarized than in the period between the wars. Politics had changed drastically in Eastern Europe with communist states subservient to Moscow (with the exception of Yugoslavia and, later, both Albania and Romania), taking the place of the mostly authoritarian right-wing governments that had existed in the 1930s. In the west, parliamentary democracies existed in all states but Spain and Portugal, which still had 1930s-style authoritarian governments, and Greece, which had a military dictatorship for a brief period. Still, Europe had not yet made itself into a third great power. In fact, it was actually losing rather than gaining ground in world affairs. !11 OVERVIEW: 1968 - Present The revolutionary years of 1968 and 1989 were a period of consolidation and attempted reform in response to dissatisfaction with the political, economic, social, and cultural arrangements in Europe. The period also featured efforts to deal with rapidly changing geopolitical, economic, and technological realities on a global scale: 1968: the radicalism of the 1960s peaked, both in Europe and in the United States. In Western Europe, radicalism reached its peak in the events of May 1968 in France. For a brief moment, it seemed students and workers would unite to defeat the government of Charles de Gaulle. Eventually, de Gaulle and the Fifth republic prevailed. In Czechoslovakia, Dubček attempted to renew communism in a reform movement known as the “Prague Spring.” The Soviet Union, strongly backed by East Germany and Poland, crushed the movement in August. The 1960s in the United States featured widespread protest against the Vietnam War and a massive Civil Rights Movement. In 1968, the assassination of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and President Kennedy, led to race riots in major American cities, and widespread protest against the US participation in the Vietnam War on college campuses across the country. All that left the American people divided and influenced the foreign policy of the nation throughout most of the 1970s, but it was the Civil Rights Movement that brought about fundamental change in American society. 1970s: The Cold War featured first a period of détente in the 1970s that continued and expanded developments from the previous decade, and then a brief revival of its worst features. The Soviet Union bore the major share of responsibility for said revival, primarily because of its military intervention in Afghanistan. President Ronald Reagan, took a hardline approach in the early 1980s. The activities of his administration, highly visible in the Caribbean and Central America, also worked in the Middle East and Central Asia to create the foundations of 21th foreign policy dilemmas in those regions. Under the circumstances, it was nothing short of miraculous that Soviet Premier Gorbachev succeeded by the late 1980s in convincing Western leaders to work on defusing what by the 1980s was a more than four-decade-old Cold War. 1989: Large numbers of people in several Eastern European countries responded publicly and courageously to economic and political systems that were visibly failing. The disproportionate emphasis on heavy industry had locked communist economic systems into an economic strategy that resisted innovation and failed to match the levels of material comfort achieved in Western Europe: • Poland and Hungary gave way to popular discontent; • East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria resisted ineffectively before completely losing control. In Romania Government efforts to hold on to power led to considerable bloodshed, ending in the trial and televised execution of Ceausȩscu. • The most important result of the revolutions was the unification of the two Germanies in 1990. This event signaled a definitive end to World War II and also marked a resolution of the German Question. Also, between the revolutionary years of 1968 and 1989, Western Europe experienced a period of economic dislocation and political turmoil: 1970s: ECONOMIC CRISIS: Though were the oil price shocks of the 1970s triggered it, the economic crisis of this period had more deeply rooted causes: by the late 1960s, the postwar boom had ended, and the continuous growth of the welfare state had become a burden to the economy. The 1980s were, thus, a period of combined economic stagnation and inflation (“stagflation”). 1980s: RECOVERY: The flexibility of Western European economies and the advantages provided by institutions like the European Community helped bring about recovery in the 1980s. Government policy, particularly that developed in Britain under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, also helped. She, and other conservative politicians, tried to end the continuous growth of the welfare state and to decrease the role of government in the economy. Her neoconservative policies were mirrored by President Reagan’s approach in the United States. Along with economic recovery, however, came a more clear division of society into winners and losers, as reflected in particular in the persistence of high rates of unemployment. RADICALISM IN WESTERN EUROPE IN THE LATE 1960S At the end of the 1960s, most Western European countries seemed virtually besieged by radicals questioning political frameworks, social institutions, economic arrangements, and even cultural assumptions. Radicals accused governments of ruling in an authoritarian style at home and of aiding “imperialism” and counterrevolution abroad. They viewed social and economic institutions as consciously contrived to perpetuate political and economic power in the hands of ruling cliques while keeping the masses both ignorant of the true situation through manipulation of the media and satisfied through the production of inexpensive consumer goods. Many had quite limited aims and concentrated in particular on the reform of what they saw as an undemocratic, elitist educational system designed to reinforce and perpetuate the inequities of the larger political and socioeconomic systems. The organized radical movements were mostly students and young intellectuals. They varied widely in terms of their impact on existing systems. France was affected far more than any other Western European country. Germany and Italy both confronted large-scale movements but escaped major crises. Britain and the Netherlands had important, if not greatly influential, movements. GERMANY: The German Socialist Student Federation (SDS) protested against the established system with great seriousness. The first major protest was directed against the Shah of Iran during his visit to West Berlin in 1967. The next focus of SDS attacks was the publications empire of Axel Springer, the influential newspaper and magazine publisher widely regarded as a pillar of conservatism or even counterrevolution. After one of the SDS leaders was shot and seriously wounded in April 1968, protests against the Springer empire intensified. Events in Germany in the spring of 1968 were highly dramatic but the government escaped serious challenge. The SDS lacked circumstances similar to France in May. Student radicals in Germany found themselves isolated from a general public largely satisfied with existing political and economic arrangements. FRANCE IN 1968 While de Gaulle was preoccupied with foreign affairs and contacts with communist Bloc and Third World leaders, domestic problems began to surface. One was the odd contrast between the sophistication of French technology and science and the backwardness of some aspects of life in France. Second, society was still stratified (though democratic).The different strata were determined in large part by educational achievement, but the way to an appropriate education was paved with money, family background, and connections. The very bright were co-opted into the system, but the system worked here as in other areas mostly to perpetuate the elites. The events of May 1968, although based on widespread dissatisfaction and on student grievances, began as a spontaneous reaction to a specific event of little significance: the arrest of a number of students demonstrating against the involvement of the United States in Vietnam. On March 22, a meeting to protest the arrests took place at the University of Nanterre. A radical movement called the March 22 Movement came out of the meeting. On May 2, members of the March 22 Movement, finding themselves locked out of Nanterre, went to the Sorbonne. The following day, the police violated traditions of academic freedom by coming into the Sorbonne and arresting hundreds of students. This was the beginning of a series of demonstrations and confrontations between students and police in the Latin Quarter of Paris. A climax of sorts came on May 10, the “Night of the Barricades,” when events in the streets were described minute-by- minute on national radio. On May 13, more than a million people demonstrated in Paris against the government. The day after, workers seized the Sud Aviation plant. More workers followed their example until, eventually, 10 million were on strike. Toward the end of May, the government dissolved the national Assembly and set a date for elections. De Gaulle appealed for “civic action” against a “totalitarian plot.” Many French began to worry about the possibility of anarchy or a communist takeover. Even in Paris, where sympathy for the students had been widespread, people were tired of the confusion and the disruptions caused by the ongoing demonstrations and strikes. There was, meanwhile, no consensus among the student radicals as to specific aims and goals. Workers generally wanted only moderate changes, in particular a substantial pay hike. Still, almost no one in the general public liked the idea of a genuine revolution. The radicals had little chance. The “system” was the enemy, but there was no agreement as to how to define the system or what program to follow in order to combat or replace it. Additionally, the radicals did not understand the aspirations of those temporarily allied with them, whether those of the working class or the middle class. The major results of the radical movement were changes in the education system, principally possibilities for revised curricula, less elitist student bodies, and less authoritarian structures of university administration. In reaction to the events of May, many turned back to moderate or conservative parties. Parties on the left tried to appear moderate in order to distance themselves from the radicals. The Communist Party in France, which had done nothing to aid the radicals, found itself simultaneously distrusted by moderates and under heavy fire from the radicals. The year 1968, particularly as it played out in France, was the high point of postwar radicalism in Western Europe. Radicals had gained a hearing, but the sweeping, comprehensive changes they envisioned were not acceptable to most Europeans. Most found life all right as it was and worried more that the economy would cease growing or something else might happen to prevent them from achieving goals they had come to see as realistic possibilities. ——————————————————————————————————————— BREZHNEV’S RUSSIA In the 1960s and early 1970s, Brezhnev ruled the Soviet Union as president and first secretary of the Communist Party. He had to wrestle with basically the same kinds of problems that had plagued Khrushchev, an unresponsive and overly centralized economy, unproductive agriculture, and elements in Russian society that enjoyed privileged positions. Brezhnev steered a course in the 1960s between the arbitrary terror of Stalin and the adventurism of Khrushchev. His policies were largely conventional and followed two major paths: • Highly concentrated efforts to succeed at particular tasks, most of which had a military payoff (ex: the Soviet space effort). This approach achieved some amazing successes but at a high cost. • Increasing the number or amount of various components of an industry: more capital, a larger number of workers, a greater supply of energy, and so forth. This approach worked well as long as larger numbers of workers or greater amounts of capital could make a tangible difference in a particular industry. What doomed this approach by the 1960s were the rapid increases in productivity outside the Soviet Bloc and the rapid changes in technology, which quickly began to alter the very definition of a modern economy. By the early 1960s, the position of the Soviet consumer had begun to improve, with refrigerators and television sets now being items people might finally be able to afford to purchase. The improvements were heartening, but still the contrast with the Western world startling. Soviet consumer goods tended to be scarce, expensive, and of poor quality. Housing in the cities was difficult to find even 20years after the war; most of what was available was cramped and poorly constructed. Long lines to purchase almost anything were customary. On the other hand, the “new class” of party officials, high-level bureaucrats, military personnel, scientists, ballet and movie stars, world-class athletes, and some literary and intellectual luminaries were privileged. They had not merely higher incomes, but a range of privileges unavailable to the ordinary citizen. These included a dacha (a cottage/large house in the countryside) for use on weekends or vacations, special stores with a wider selection than ordinary stores, special clinics for medical treatment without crowds and long waits, official cars for private use… Growth rates began to fall in the 1950s and 1960s. By the early 1970s, the Soviet economy was scarcely growing at all (= stagnant economy). Agriculture remained a major problem despite a sizable investment by the state in the early 1970s. To some, the answer seemed to lie in technology transfers from the West. Certainly, part of the motivation for détente was the idea that if the Soviet Union played by the “rules,” it could expect to receive help from Western Europe, the United States in helping it bridge technological gaps and overcome obstacles to rapid economic growth. In addition to economic problems, the Soviet Union faced growing problems with dissidents, some of which emerged in response to the neo-Stalinism that characterized the Soviet Union by the end of the 1960s. Although the Stalin cult of personality and the practice of arbitrary terror were not revived, Brezhnev became increasingly the center of Soviet politics, and Andropov as head of the KGB worked out sophisticated methods utilizing the criminal justice system and mental health facilities to deal with anyone considered troublesome by the regime. THE PRAGUE SPRING Elsewhere within the Soviet Bloc, there were attempts to make the Soviet model of communism work better than it did in the Soviet Union. In some cases, mild deviations from the model had been allowed: • POLAND had retreated from collectivized agriculture in the 1950s and enjoyed in the 1960s a much more productive agricultural sector. • HUNGARY was allowed to experiment with different economic structures and to seek some trade ties with Western Europe. • EAST GERMANY, despite Soviet restrictions on the economy, had made considerable economic progress in the 1960s, in part because people realized after the construction of the Berlin Wall that there was no alternative to life in East Germany. Czechoslovakia was an exception from the other countries in the Eastern Bloc. It had been an urbanized, industrialized state even before World War II, and before this last event the country even experienced a democratic and liberal period (it was the only country in the Eastern Bloc to not fall under any kind of authoritarian leadership in the interwar period). By the early 1960s, the Czech economy had deteriorated badly and the political system was regarded as repressive and ineffective. Communist leadership increasingly came under criticism. The reformists, supporters of a democratic transition induced of the government, found the appropriate interlocutor in the Slovak leader Dubček, who, in January 1968, became secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party. Dubcek promulgated a sweeping reform program that included autonomy for Slovakia, a revised constitution to guarantee civil rights and liberties, plans for the democratization of the government, and a partial liberalization of the economy. He also lifted censorship and encouraged cultural and intellectual life. Dubĉek sketched a path to democratic socialism over several years and called for “socialism with a human face.” This brief period of liberalization in Czechoslovakia under Dubček in 1968 is commonly known as Prague Spring. 3 By June many Czechs were calling for more rapid progress toward real democracy. Although Dubček insisted that he could control the country’s transformation, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries viewed the developments as tantamount to counterrevolution. Poland and East Germany, in particular, were worried that the reforms which were taking place in Czechoslovakia might spread and take place in their countries too. On August 20, Soviet armed forces invaded the country and quickly occupied it. Dubček was deposed and expelled from the party. By the spring of 1969, an orthodox communist regime under Gustav Husák controlled the country. Even after the intervention of the troops, Czechoslovakia continued to represent the center of the dissent in Eastern Europe. In 1977, several politicians, writers, and intellectuals founded the civil rights movement “Charter 77” with the aim to keep the spirit of the Prague Spring alive in the population. WILLY BRANDT and OSTPOLITIK Between the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s there was a lessening of tensions between East and West Germany. Architect of this was Willy Brandt (West Germany). He had been the Social Democratic mayor (SPD) of Berlin at the height of the Berlin Crisis at the end of the 1950s. In 1969, in a coalition with the Free Democrats (FDP), the SPD (German Social Democratic Party) became the governing party, headed by Brandt. Throughout the first half of the 1970s, West Germany had interrupted any kind of relationship with any foreign country which recognized East Germany. Once Brandt became foreign minister he gave way to a new foreign policy stance, establishing normal relationships with Romania and Yugoslavia. When he became chancellor, Brandt launched the so-called Ostpolitik (“politica verso l’est”), through which he established a dialogue between West Germany and East Germany. In 1970, Brandt negotiated treaties with Poland and the Soviet Union and then in 1972 an agreement that led to East Germany and West Germany according each other diplomatic recognition. In particular, West Germany recognized the Polish-German boundaries. = political reform 3 C Z E C H O S L O V A K I A W E S T G E R M A N Y All of the agreements taken together stabilized the status of both West Germany and East Germany and eliminated a major cause of the Cold War. THE WELFARE STATE Welfare state: concept of government in which the state plays a key role in the protection and promotion of the economic and social well-being of citizens. It is based on the principles of equality of opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for those unable to avail themselves of the minimal provisions for a good life. The general term may cover a variety of forms of economic and social organization. A fundamental feature of the welfare state is social insurance, a provision common to most advanced industrialized countries. Such insurance is usually financed by compulsory contributions and is intended to provide benefits to persons and families during periods of greatest need. The welfare state also usually includes public provision of basic education, health services, and housing (in some cases at low cost or without charge). After World War II, there was consensus in most European countries about the need to ensure the basic necessities of life (food, clothing, shelter, education, and health care) and to guard against catastrophes such as unemployment, injury, and illness. While the aims of most nations were similar, the means to accomplish them diverged considerably. Most Western European countries offered citizens free health care and family allowances. Workers’ income was covered in case of injury or other disability and in case of unemployment. Some provisions were made for the construction of low-cost or public housing. Education was either free or provided for nominal fees. A major difference among the various systems concerned who paid for services. In Britain and the Scandinavian countries, for instance, the state (= taxpayers) paid most of the costs. By the 1980s, the welfare state not only existed to ensure an adequate foundation for people’s lives and to guard against the unexpected disaster but also to provide a range of amenities that included parks, libraries, cultural facilities, and subsidies for artists and writers. A final factor that convinced many that the welfare state had to be revised might be subsumed under the term “permissive society.” Many critics of the welfare state regarded it as having robbed large groups of people of initiative and self-reliance; others unfairly blamed the welfare state for new attitudes toward sex and drug use. The apparent rise in taxes was more a product of life in a highly industrialized and urbanized society than the existence of the welfare state as such, but whatever the real deficiencies of the welfare state, it became in the 1980s a major target for a new breed of conservative politicians in Western Europe. ——————————————————————————————————————— TERRORISM Terrorism on the left was largely an outgrowth of the failures and frustrations of the 1960s. When revolution had not occurred at the end of that decade, some radicals turned to terrorism: bombing, kidnapping, and murder. The best known of these groups were the Red Brigades in Italy and the RAF (the Red Army Fraction) in West Germany. Centers of terrorist activity existed in the near East, where the main players were the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), backed by enormous amounts of petrodollars from sympathetic OPEC members. To this mix could be added the activities of the KGB and other East Bloc intelligence services and the existence of independent nationalist movements like the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Northern Ireland and the Basque separatists in Spain. While these groups aided one another in securing weapons, in locating sites for training, and with other matters, they seldom worked together on operations. Each group had its own agenda and cooperated with other terrorists only when this served its purposes. Red Brigades: militant left-wing organization in Italy that gained notoriety in the 1970s for kidnappings, murders, and sabotage. Its self-proclaimed aim was to undermine the Italian state and pave the way for a Marxist upheaval led by a “revolutionary proletariat.” Proclaiming the existence of the Red Brigades in 1970, the group began kidnapping and later assassinating. In 1978 the Red Brigades kidnapped and murdered former prime minister Aldo Moro. The national reaction against this senseless killing was the beginning of the group’s downfall; nevertheless, it took the Italian police another five years to destroy the organization. Sporadic right-wing terrorism continued in the 1980s, and disquieting instances of anti-Semitism also appeared. Most of the terrorism of the 1980s, however, was state terrorism sponsored by countries like Libya and Iran. Overall, Western Europe weathered the outbreak of terrorism in good fashion. In particular, both West Germany and Italy came through difficult times with their constitutional systems intact. ——————————————————————————————————————— RECOVERY While the economic and social problems of Western Europe were genuine and serious, the political problems were more apparent than real. For what concerns the welfare state, many conservatives believed that a government willing to divest itself of government-owned operations and to reduce controls and regulations could help create a climate favorable to business. US President Reagan became the person most closely identified with this political position. It was the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, however, who most successfully translated this approach into national policy. THATCHERISM Margaret Thatcher served as British prime minister between 1979 and 1990, transforming the Conservative Party and Great Britain in the process. Her main contribution to British recovery came in the area of ECONOMIC POLICY. That policy had three main components: • The “privatization” of nationalized industries and national utilities. Though much emphasis was put on this, it is difficult to say whether it contributed much to overall economic recovery. • The reduction of inflation, which stood at nearly 22 percent in 1979 but had fallen to 3.7 percent in 1983, created favorable conditions for investment and economic growth. The Thatcher government was also blessed by the discovery of oil deposits in the North Sea. • The weakening of trade union power was probably the most important and successful achievement under the Thatcher government. Trade unions in Britain had contributed to the lack of competitiveness of the economy by a series of regulations regarding work and seniority that made it difficult for companies to reorganize production for greater efficiency. The new political climate favoring business and trade and the greatly weakened trade unions allowed many British firms to take maximum advantage of opportunities to secure profits. For many British, the 1980s was a period of new prosperity. In most respects, the economy was stronger than it had been since the early years of the century. One major downside, however, was the rate of unemployment. However, some sections of the country, the north in particular, did not share in the general prosperity. Generally, the Thatcher years had created a class of big winners, a large group of people who were doing somewhat better or at least okay, and “everyone else,” a layer of people who were doing very badly with little prospects of improvement. Vital to Thatcher’s reelection in 1983 was Britain’s successful defense of the Falkland Islands, an archipelago of islands near the coast of Argentina that was a contested British territory, from invasion by the Argentines. Finally, in the realm of international relations, Thatcher could count on the support of President Reagan, her ideological twin, Kohl (West Germany) and Mitterrand (France). B R I T A I N FRANCE Differently from West Germany and Great Britain, the ‘80s in France saw the left-wing parties in ascendant. Protagonist of this new period was the Socialist Party led by Mitterand. When he came to power in 1981, he set in motion a wave of nationalization involving nine industrial groups including steel, aerospace, armaments, electronics, banking, and insurance. Within two years, the government quietly abandoned the socialist policies. Thereafter, a more conventional approach, one paying more than merely lip service to Thatcher’s ideas, came to the fore. Over the 1980s, the power and appeal of the French Communist Party declined considerably. It gained only 9.7 percent of the vote in 1986, in contrast to the past when it regularly won 20-25 percent of the vote. A less powerful Communist Party on his flank allowed Mitterrand to moderate his positions to some extent. To some extent, the decline of the Communist Party was reflected in the growth of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National in the 1980s. The Front National is a political movement based to a large extent on hatred and fear. It is racist, chauvinistic, and well to the right in terms of French politics. Le Pen’s charisma and cunning, as well as persistent high rates of unemployment in the 1980s, helped to convince many that Le Pen’s perspective was worth taking seriously. By the end of the 1980s, the French were doing well, despite the ongoing political controversy and severe unemployment. For the majority, the standard of living had greatly improved since the 1960s. France also was characterized at the time by a greater degree of egalitarianism, especially in terms of equality of opportunity as reflected in such areas as education and health care. WEST GERMANY In 1982 in West Germany the season of social-democratic governments begun by Brandt, and then continued by his successor Schmidt, ended with the return of Christian democrats to government in a coalition with the the Free Democrats. The new chancellor, Helmut Kohl, wanted to propose again a model of Social market economy, and a pact of collaboration with France. In the 1980s, the Kohl government was successful in leading West Germany to a strong recovery, in part because of policies it introduced and also because of policies Schmidt had set in motion. The Kohl government largely followed policies West German governments had been following since the 1950s and 1960s. The major exception was an effort to stop the growth of the welfare state. The major disappointment for West Germany was the continuing high unemployment figures, especially in a country that had long enjoyed full employment. The major political development of the 1980s was the growing appeal of the Greens. Formed as a party in the 1970s, the Greens were interested primarily in environmentalism but diverse in outlook. In the 1987 elections, the Greens elected 47 members to the Parliament. The Christian Democrats lost ground but continued to govern in coalition with the Free Democrats. The Social Democrats remained polarized between a radical left wing and a moderate center. ITALY In the 1970s and the 1980s, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) provided a major political story. Under the leadership of Berlinguer, the party undertook a “historic compromise” in 1979 when it explicitly accepted 8 the rules of the parliamentary system. It fared well in the elections in 1976, gaining 34 percent of the vote, and became part of an informal coalition between 1977 and 1979. In addition, the PCI controlled most of the major cities and 7 of the 16 regions, which meant it was often the leading political force on a local or regional basis. In the 1980s, its vote totals plunged. In the 1980s, Italians enjoyed a decade of progress. The Christian Democrats continued to dominate national political life but had to concede in the mid-1980s the position of premier to Craxi, the leader of the Socialist The Historic Compromise was a historical political accommodation between the Christian Democracy (DC) and the Italian 8 Communist Party (PCI) in the 1970s. Party. Craxi’s government, which lasted from 1983 to 1986, was actually one of the more effective governments in Italian political history. Searching for Meaning in a Multicultural World Chronology 1940s - 1950s Existentialism Post-expressionism + Pop Art (in the ‘50s) 1960s Structuralism 
 1970s - 1980s Deconstructionism/Poststructuralism Minimalism (in the ‘70s) 
 The damage done to the psyche by the war was far greater than the ruin of the physical landscape. The disintegration of the Enlightenment tradition, which had begun before the Great War, now appeared complete. Faith in reason, the innate goodness of human beings, and the inherent value of the individual, like the belief in universal truths, values, or principles upon which to construct a humane world, all fell victim to apparent reality. Were reasonable people responsible for such devastation? Were the concentration camps, the firebombing of cities, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the acts of reasonable people? EXISTENTIALISM In their attempt to make sense out of a world in which all the old values and certainties had either failed or vanished, a universe that rejected the existence of God or any other absolute truth that might provide unity and meaning, the intellectuals of the immediate postwar years embraced the philosophy of existentialism. Existentialism appeared to provide a means by which the individual could find (or create) meaning for his or her existence in a universe that seemed increasingly meaningless and frightening. The roots of existentialism reach back into the nineteenth century with the writings of Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche. Though existentialism is not easily defined, we might say that in general, existentialists asserted that the individual must affirm and give meaning to his or her existence by struggling against the absurdity of a universe that is silent and indifferent to the individual’s existence. By choosing to act, the individual gives meaning to his or her existence. Postwar existentialism (thus 1940s-50s) was born in the French resistance to German occupation during World War II: - Camus, one of the greatest exponents of existentialism, confronted the predicament of the individual in a world without God that was silent and indifferent to the individual’s existence. Camus compared the individual’s task to that of the Greek mythic figure of Sisyphus. Like Sisyphus, who was condemned to repeatedly roll a great rock uphill, only to have it roll back down again, the individual is condemned to struggle against the absurdity of the universe, knowing all along that his struggle is in vain. - Sartre, on the other hand, believed that the starting point is the existence of the individual. There is no reference point in the universe or in time to which the individual relates that validates one’s existence. The individual creates his or her own essence, that is, defines his or her own being. The individual is neither the product of environmental forces nor unconscious drives. To be a human being is to bear the burden of being one’s own creator. One thing that the individual can do, indeed must do, is make authentic choices. STRUCTURALISM During the 1960s the intellectual trendsetters were moving on to structuralism, as if hoping to restore some order to the increasing fragmentation. Once again, the birthplace was France. By the mid-1970s, however, it was already no longer fashionable among French intellectuals, who were turning to deconstruction, a more radical form, or mutation, of structuralism. Nonetheless, structuralism remained popular among intellectuals in the United States (where the philosophical current had begun to spread in the ‘60s), England, and Germany through the end of the century. !1 LEGENDA: X = Philosophical movement X = Artistic movement Structuralism was anti-humanist. Whereas the existentialists focused on the individual and the individual’s need to find meaning, the structuralists assumed a universal structure, or a kind of hidden harmony, or universal code, that exists independent of human beings. They focused on these universal structures that are independent of humans and determine human behavior. This universal code could be found in the human mind, that is, in universal thought processes that are unconscious but determine consciousness. Since these thought processes are universal, the same for the uneducated native and the sophisticated university professor, there is an alleged unity to humanity that transcends all cultural, racial, and class distinctions. It even transcends history. Structuralism was a rejection of all Western thought, at least since the Enlightenment. Human beings as the self-conscious creators of a meaningful history were abolished. They were merely the playthings of hidden mechanistic forces, like puppets in the hands of an unseen puppeteer. The autonomous individual, who controlled his or her environment and was master of his or her fate, gave way to the individual as a social creature controlled by his or her environment. History as a linear process that implied progress over time was denied. history was meaningless, and the study of history a waste of time. Two of the most important exponents of structuralism were Barthes and Lévi-Strauss. POSTSTRUCTURALISM or Deconstruction Structuralism slid into deconstruction, sometimes called poststructuralism (1970s-80s). It did so by assuming that everything had to be decoded in order to discover the hidden meaning of things, which led to the question of whether there was any one meaning or simply different meanings. It did so, too, by insisting that one’s intellect is determined by hidden structures, that is, by linguistics (words). Also, the structuralists were characterized by a sense of alienation that compelled them to play the role of subverters of meaning. Once again, the home of this intellectual movement was France. The leading deconstructionists were Lacan, and Derrida. Deconstruction was an open denial of the whole Western intellectual tradition with its emphasis on the individual, the individual’s ability to reason, and through reason to arrive at a true understanding of reality, which in turn implied the capacity to make meaningful moral judgments, resulting in a reasoned reformation of society. Deconstructionists held that there was no one hidden meaning to be arrived at as a result of decoding a literary text, for example. There are an infinite number of possible meanings, as many as there are “decoders.” What are the implications of deconstruction for understanding civilization in general and modern European civilization? When the deconstructionists finish their work, there are no “great books,” no treasure trove of wisdom from the past that defines, inspires, or provides a standard for modern civilization. History itself is a text to be deconstructed. Historical and cultural institutions and forms are revealed to serve the interests of those who rule, who dominate. They are the means whereby the dominant class (e.g., European males) exploits the lower classes. What events of the past are worthy of recording is determined by whatever class is dominant at any given time. Deconstruction was a logical by-product of the disintegration of European culture and the growth of cultural pluralism or multiculturalism after World War II. Deconstructionists believe that agreement on a meaningful history was only possible during the nineteenth century when there was a cultural unity among the literate classes of Europe. Historians of different cultural backgrounds would naturally interpret history differently. ———————————————————————————————————————— POSTMODERNISM At the turn of the twenty-first century, postmodernism and postmodernity were being used commonly to refer to the third and most recent period in a tripartite division of Western intellectual history into premodernity (the Medieval Synthesis), modernity (the Enlightenment tradition), and postmodernity (the Enlightenment tradition in disarray): PREMODERNITY: in roughly the period from the high Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, reality was an orderly universe in which there was meaning and purpose for both the individual and history. The individual was understood to be capable of understanding oneself and the universe he inhabited, because the individual was a special creation created in the !2image of God. The experts were the theologians and philosophers who interpreted God’s revelation in Scripture and in nature. MODERNITY: in roughly the period from the Enlightenment to the mid-twentieth century, reality was an orderly universe of cause-and-effect natural law but in a closed system, for God, the creator, was now a great architect or watch-maker. God created the universe machine, but was not involved in its operation. His continued existence as creator, however, kept at bay the troubling questions of why anything exists and whether or not there was any meaning for the individual or history. The experts were the scientists who could discover, interpret, and exploit natural law. POSTMODERNITY: The term “postmodern” first appeared during the 1870s, when it was used to refer to what was later classified as postimpressionist art. The term became fashionable during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Applied to the arts and architecture, it describes whatever is at the moment considered avant-garde. Postmodernism is similar to modernism in that it presents a fragmented view of reality. However, in contrast to modernism, which lamented the loss of unity and meaning while holding forth the hope that such could be restored, postmodernism celebrates the fragmentation and loss of meaning. Beginning with the conviction that the world is meaningless, postmodernism sees no value in pretending otherwise. Therefore, if in premodernity and modernity mankind had faith in progress and was optimistic about the future, in postmodernity reality is a universe of random chaos, without meaning for either the individual or history. There is no creator, no God. There is only the illusion of order. The ultimate reality is impersonal matter. There are no experts to interpret reality, for reality is only what anyone says it is at any given moment. Any attempt at a metanarrative (a “big story” that explains the meaning of all that is) to explain reality is only the flawed expression of a particular subculture. Another way of looking at the contrast is to understand premodernity as the house that God built, modernity as the house that man built, and postmodernity as the house that never got built. ——————————————————————————————————————— CULTURE ART ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM: • The dominant artistic style after the war. Its roots lay in the surrealism of the interwar era. • Like the surrealists, the abstract expressionists looked to the psychoanalytic theories of Freud. Believing that faith in reason and rationalism had guided European culture and politics into the horrors of two world wars, they were seeking a truth beyond reason in the realm of the unconscious. • Abstract expressionism was characterized by a lack of recognizable content and an emphasis upon gesture and/or color. The artist intended to communicate a reality that he or she felt by means of the unconscious, rather than the conscious will. • Leading figures in surrealism: Dali, Mondrian… POP ART: • Rejection of abstract expressionits’ emphasis on nonrepresentationalism - thus a return to representation. • For its artists, art should depict the real postwar world, one obsessed with commercialism and mass culture. Pop artists looked to everyday objects and images of mass production for their subject matter - soup cans, comic strips, and photographs of movie and rock stars. • America was the primary home of this movement that was in vogue during the 1960s and early 1970s. • Unlike the abstract expressionists who were tuned into the problems of alienation and anxiety inherent in the postwar world as expressed by the existentialists and other philosophers, the Pop artists both celebrated and condemned the middle-class values of the consumer culture of the prosperous 1960s. !3 CINEMA The cinema, like rock music, did much to create a common popular culture. European directors, often enjoying government subsidies, continued to dominate the motion picture genre commonly referred to as the “art film.” These were “gourmet” films intended for a very small but discriminating audience. The popular cinema, like popular music, was dominated by American-made action films, comedies, and sentimental romances, heavy on the entertainment but making very little demand on the viewer’s intellect. As the growing popularity of television lured more and more people away from the movie houses. American dominance of the silver screen continued during the last quarter of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - . - The rapid spread of television from the 1950s on and the development of new technology such as videotapes, and digital video disks assisted creation of a universal pop culture. Since American commercialism was the major driving force behind the new technology, the culture that it nurtured reflected that of middle-class American youth. American films and television programs were now available to virtually unlimited audiences, and American entertainment stars became international stars. Videotapes, video disks, and compact disks (Cd) were but a small part of a revolution in technology that both shrunk the world and at the same time greatly increased its complexity. Technology made it possible for an individual virtually anywhere in the world to communicate live and visually with any other individual anywhere. For anyone with access to the new communications technology, any great work of art, rare book, or recorded music or voice was instantly available. ——————————————————————————————————————— To reiterate, postwar intellectuals, who pondered the meaning of history and of life, concluded that human beings were adrift, alone in a cold and meaningless universe. However, at the end of the century and the beginning of the new millennium, there were signs that the masses did not agree with that conclusion. The average man or woman living under the influence of European civilization is living in a world of hope, a world in which the future is brighter than the past. !6 EUROPE FROM 1989 TO THE PRESENT Chronology 1989 First free elections in Poland in the postwar period; massive gains by Solidarity 
 Fall of the Berlin Wall 
 End of communist regimes in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania 1990 Unification of Germany; Helmut Kohl reelected chancellor in the first free all-German elections since 1932 
 1991 John Major replaces Margaret Thatcher as leader of the British Conservative Party and as Prime Minister First Gulf War 
 Dissolution of the Warsaw Treaty organization Attempted coup in the Soviet Union; Gorbachev resigns as president of the Soviet Union; The Soviet Union is dissolved at the end of the year Slovenia and Croatia leave the Yugoslav Federation; beginning of the disintegration of Yugoslav Federation 1992 Bosnia withdraws from the Yugoslav Federation Maastricht Treaty sets the process by which the European Community (EC) will become the European Union (EU) 
 1993 EC becomes the EU Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet divorce” results in the formation of the Czech republic and the republic of Slovakia 
 1995 Austria, Finland, and Sweden join the EU Dayton (Ohio) Agreement establishes a loosely federated Bosnia and ends the civil war in Bosnia (1992–1995) 1997 British Labour Party under Tony Blair wins the election 
 1998 Helmut Kohl defeated by Gerhard Schröder; Germany governed by Social-democratic/ Green coalition 
 1999 Introduction of the Euro NATO admits Poland, Hungary, The Czech Republic War in Kosovo 
 2000 George W. Bush becomes president of the United States in an election decided by the US Supreme Court
 Vladimir Putin becomes president of the Russian republic !1 2001 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in new York and the Pentagon in Washington, dC, by members of Al-Qaeda 
 2002 US invasion of Afghanistan Rose revolution in Georgia Chechen rebels seize theatre in Moscow 
 2003 Second Gulf War (United States invades Iraq and drives Saddam Hussein from power) Completion of the human Genome project Space Shuttle Columbia destroyed on re-entry 
 2004 EU enlarged by the inclusion of 10 new members NATO adds seven new members Madrid train bombing 
 Orange revolution in Ukraine Boxing day tsunami 
 2005 7/7 attacks on the London Underground Angela Merkel becomes the German chancellor Benedict XVI becomes pope hurricane Katrina 2007 Beginning of the recession in the United States 
 2008 Barack Obama elected president South Ossetia War between Russia and Georgia Independence of Kosovo 2009 Election protests in Iran 2010 David Cameron becomes prime minister in the United Kingdom Moscow Metro bombing Problems with the Greek economy set off the European sovereign debt crisis Arab Spring begins in Tunisia 2011 Arab Spring continues Earthquake and tsunami in Japan Official end of the Iraq war 
 Osama bin Laden killed in a US navy Seals raid 
 World population reaches the seven billion mark 2011-2012 Russian election protests 2012 Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth olympics held for the third time in London Barack Obama elected to a second term as president 
 2013 Pope Benedict XVi resigns as pope and Francis I, the first pope from the Western hemisphere becomes pope 
 !2 THE SOVIET UNION The fall of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe was not obstructed by Gorbachev. In the late 1980s the Soviet Union was too weak to engage in any military action outside its borders: in addition to the dramatic economic situation, several secessionist tensions had spread throughout the country. Glasnot had, indeed, allowed public debate, and thus the re-emergence of several ethnic and religious contrasts between different social groups. Moreover, perestrojka had not worked, and thus did not pull the Soviet Union out of its poor economic conditions. In fact, this policy ended up being a victim of the irreconcilable dichotomy between Gorbachev’s economic reformism and the Soviet Union’s ideological conservatism. The economy seemed stuck between two systems, communism and capitalism. Thus, Gorbachev’s “revolution from above” proved to be unrealizable. Elected president of the Russian Republic in 1991, Yeltsin began immediately to enhance the power of the republics of the Soviet Union and to decrease the power of the central government. By the late summer of 1991, he and his fellow presidents of the republics of the Soviet Union appeared to have achieved success. A treaty setting up a federal arrangement that would have given the republics a good deal more authority was scheduled to be signed. Before the treaty could be signed, members of Gorbachev’s own government staged a coup. Yeltsin, in his capacity as president of the Russian republic (which made up the major part of the Soviet Union), defied the coup from the White House. After the collapse of the coup, Gorbachev returned to power in Moscow, but his days as president of the Soviet Union were numbered. By the end of the year (1991), the Soviet Union had been dissolved. Several republics, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, went their own way. The remaining republics grouped together in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CiS), but this organization did not develop into a strong association. Instead, the various republics played largely independent roles. The most powerful was the Russian republic under Yeltsin. We might say that even though the Soviet Union ceased to exist, in many important ways the Russian republic continued to play the same role in the world. While it cooperated with the United States in the important task of disarmament, it regarded itself as a major power with its own set of interests and objectives. It has at times acted as if the old Soviet Union had never imploded, intervening on occasion in Georgian affairs and in the affairs of some of the Central Asian republics. From the beginning of its independent existence, the Russian Republic replaced the Soviet Union as a permanent member of the United nations Security Council. Under Yeltsin, Russia made only limited progress toward a working democracy. Yeltsin’s biggest problem was the attempt to lift price controls and establish a market economy in Russia. The existence of a very large defense sector made the transition to a market economy difficult. A second problem was the existence of so-called “mono-industrial regions,” areas in which a particular part of the economy had been concentrated. All these factors helped to bring on a depression in the mid-1990s. By 1993, estimates of those in poverty ranged from one-third to one-half of the population. The first Chechen War began in 1994. It began after the Chechen president announced the region’s independence in 1991. The war lasted until 1996 and resulted in Chechnya’s de facto independence from Russia. RUSSIA IN THE 21TH CENTURY On the last day of 1999, Yeltsin resigned. He picked Vladimir Putin to replace him as temporary president. In the 2000 elections, Putin was elected president in part because of Russian success in the Second Chechen War that had begun in September 1999. Putin remained in power even in the face of grisly incidents connected with the war in which the government response appeared inept and was heavily criticized. Those incidents were: the Moscow theater hostage in 2002, in which around 160 hostages were killed; and the Beslan elementary school hostage in 2004, in which there were around 400 deceased. During his first term, Putin also staged a confrontation with another group that contested his power. This group included some of the oligarchs. Those were either went into exile, or were sentenced to prison (there are reasons to believe that the charges were politically motivated). !5 Putin not only removed powerful and wealthy critics from the Russian political scene, but he also took over their extensive media holdings, thus eliminating a major source of opposition. Putin won re-election in 2004. Much of his popularity was due to an economic recovery based largely on the rising price of oil, of which Russia had plenty. Relations with the West deteriorated first because of Western support for the independence of the Serbian province of Kosovo in 2008 and secondly after the West criticized Prussia’s intervention in the quarrel between South Ossetia and Georgia. In 2008, Medvedev, an associate of Putin’s, was elected president of Russia and named Putin as Prime Minister. Medvedev, worked to modernize the Russian economy and to decrease its dependence on natural resources. The two men worked out an exchange of jobs with Putin again winning election for president in 2012 and Medvedev accepting the post of Prime Minister. YUGOSLAVIA Over the course of just three years, torn by the rise of ethno-nationalism, a series of political conflicts and Greater Serbian expansions, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia disintegrated into five successor states: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (later known as Serbia and Montenegro). The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, founded in 1943 during World War II, was a federation made up of six socialist republics. From 1960 to 1980, the country was something of a regional power and an economic success story. Following Tito’s death in 1980, leaders such as Milosevic (the leader os Serbia) rose to power and took advantage of the weakening state by utilizing Serbian ultra-nationalism to fan the flames of conflict throughout the various neighboring countries. Milosevic played on Serbian fears of other ethnic groups, first in Kosovo, an autonomous province of Serbia with an Albanian majority, and then in Vojvodina, another autonomous province of Serbia, in this case one with a large Hungarian population. As the rise of nationalism grew, Slovenia followed by Croatia voted for independence and broke away from Yugoslavia by 1991. Serbia’s response was to use the Yugoslav army against the two republics. Slovenia was able to defend itself and escape the civil war. Croatia and Serbia went to war with one another. The following year (1992) Bosnia declared independence too. Bosnia had once been a model of the possibilities for a harmonious existence of Serbs, Croatians, and Muslims. The population spoke the same language, Serbo-Croatian, although Serbs would use the Cyrillic alphabet to write it while Croatians would use the roman alphabet. They differed, of course, in terms of religion, with the Serbs belonging to the orthodox faith, Croats to the Catholic religion, and the Bosnian Muslims to Islam. Up to 1992, however, despite differences, there had been a great deal of intermarriage and mixed neighborhoods were common. The Serbian siege of Bosnian-Muslim Sarajevo (in Bosnia) became the centerpiece of the Yugoslav tragedy. Here the first episodes of “ethnic cleansing” took place. During the war, efforts by the European Community to negotiate a settlement or even to find a common position were for the most part unsuccessful. The United nations sent a peacekeeping force, which was largely ineffectual. After four years of brutal ethnic cleansing, genocide, and crimes against humanity the Dayton Agreement was signed in 1995. The last act of the Yugoslav tragedy came in Kosovo. While civil war raged elsewhere in Yugoslavia, the Serbs stripped Kosovo of its autonomous status and worked to ensure Serbian control of every aspect of life in the province. A Kosovar (Albanian) resistance movement appeared. In 1991, a Kosovo parliament declared the independence of the province. The Dayton Agreement, which seemed to give Milosevic a free hand in Kosovo, galvanized the Kosovar resistance. In 1996, the Kosovo Liberation Army went on the 1 offensive. In response, in 1998 Milosevic stepped up the level of military actions, authorizing the use of helicopter gunships and armored personnel carriers against civilian targets and destroying homes and villages. This, in turn, radicalized the Kosovars. The United States and Western European countries threatened the Serbs with NATO air strikes and compelled them and the Kosovars to negotiate (in 1999). The Kosovars eventually agreed to a plan that would have brought NATO peacekeepers to Kosovo and forced Serbian troops to leave. Kosovo would have remained in the truncated Federal republic of Yugoslavia as an autonomous province. The Serbs refused to sign. An ethnic Albanian separatist militia that sought the separation of Kosovo from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (active since 1 1993). !6 NATO began bombing in March 1999. The situation in Serbia itself began to rapidly deteriorate. In June 1999, Milosevic agreed to withdraw troops from Kosovo in return for an end to the bombing. He also agreed to the introduction of a NATO peacekeeping force. Milosevic himself became a casualty of the Kosovo war. In September 1999, he failed to gain reelection as president. In June 2001, the Serbian government turned him over to the international Criminal Tribunal in The Hague to be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity. THE EUROPEAN UNION • “Maastricht Treaty:” signed in 1992 by the representatives of 12 countries, it called for further radical changes, among them a single European currency (the Euro) and a common foreign policy. Those states wishing to join the monetary union had to meet a number of fiscal criteria, among them low inflation, budget deficits no more than 3 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and a government debt less than 60 percent of GDP. In June 1998, the European Central Bank began operation. On January 1, 2002, the Euro became the sole currency of 12 EU states. In 2007, the European Union had 27 member states (= the current number). • “Treaty of Lisbon:” it was ratified by all EU members, and thus entered into force, in 2009. (Premises:) In 2004, the European Union presented a constitution that, if it had been approved, would have resulted in a more centralized federal system. The proposed constitution failed, however, to gain the unanimous support required for it to take effect (because of fears of losing national sovereignty). Thus, the Treaty of Lisbon was created in order to replace the old draft treaty in 2007. The Treaty of Lisbon kept much of the old treaty but adjusted the political structure to address concerns about national sovereignty. THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC COLLAPSE OF 2008 The financial crisis of 2008, was the outcome of severe contraction of liquidity in global financial markets that originated in the United States as a result of the collapse of the U.S. housing market. 2 It threatened to destroy the international financial system; caused the failure of several major investment and commercial banks, mortgage lenders, insurance companies, and savings and loan associations; and precipitated the Great Recession (2007-09), the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression (1929-1939). The American economy went into deep recession and, despite stimulus efforts by both the Bush administration and the Obama administration, only slowly began a weak recovery in 2010. The EU experienced its own recession and an even slower comeback during the same period. The European debt crisis was a period when several European countries experienced the collapse of financial institutions, high government debt, and rapidly rising bond yield spreads in government securities. The debt crisis resulted from the structural problem of the eurozone and a combination of complex factors, including: the globalization of finance; easy credit conditions during the 2002-2008 period; the 2008 global financial crisis; international trade imbalances; and the 2008-2012 global recession. Though the crisis had an impact on every country in the European Union, it primarily affected Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain in 2009. The crisis peaked between 2010 and 2012, and it eventually led to a loss of confidence in European businesses and economies. Simply put, it became clear by 2007 and 2008 that a large number of mortgages issued by American banks, both big and small, 2 should never have been offered in the first place. These loans, with little or no down payments required, were provided to people who simply lacked the income to pay their mortgage payments. !7