The World Wars

 

WORLD WAR I

After the defeat of Napoleon many changes occurred in Europe.  Many people moved from framing communities to cities to work in factories.  New inventions made production faster and industrialization occurred at a very rapid pace.  People began to have a great deal of trust in technology, industry and science.  Few people doubted that progress was real, that it was good, and that Europe had left behind an era of bloodshed and war.

 

The balance of power established at the Congress of Vienna maintained peace for about 100 years.  However, this system was being disrupted by some changes.  In 1871 several German speaking kingdoms united and formed the nation of German.  As Germany grew stronger, it upset the delicate balance of power between the nations.

 

Germany began to build a large army.  When they decided to build a navy it was a direct challenge to Britain, whose navy dominated the seas.  France was so alarmed by Geramny’s power that she formed an alliance with an old enemy, Britain.  Germany then established an alliance with Austria and Italy called the Triple Alliance.  France, Britain and Russia formed a rival alliance called the Triple Entente.  The balance of power system had produced two rival and powerful groups of nations that almost guaranteed that if any nation went to war against another, all would end up fighting.  As the arms race between the alliances grew, so did the tension and the slightest little incident could set these two alliances at war.

 

By this time the ideas of Charles Darwin were becoming influential in politics and society.  Darwin taught that only the strong survive, that the strong destroy the weak.  This struggle brought progress.  When applied to history, this meant that nations had to be strong or they would be dominated by more powerful nations.  When added to nationalism, this created a dangerous situation in Europe.

 

If you remember, the balance of power system had not taken into account the strong nationalist feelings that were rising in Europe.  National boundaries split up some ethnic groups into several countries and combined other groups that historically did not get along.  Several ethnic groups in the Balkan peninsula were placed under control of Austria.  They deeply resented this.  In June, 1914 when the Prince Franz Ferdinand of Austrian visited the Balkans, a Serbian terrorist assassinated him in the name of national independence. 

 

Germany took this opportunity to convince Austria to declare war over this incident.  They wanted war while they still had a larger military than France, who was quickly catching up.  When Austria declared war, it set off a series of chain reactions as each of the nations of these two alliances, bound by treaties and loyalties, declared war on each other.  Before most people knew what had happened, the world was at war. 

 

World War I was unique for several reasons.  It took full advantage of new industrial technologies.  Machines that produced good things quickly now produced death quickly.  Chemicals used in agriculture and medicine now produced poisonous gas.  People began to wonder if humans had progressed at all since the stone age.

 

The new weapons of war were:

Machine gun

U-boats

Barbed wire

Poison gas

The airplane (but wasn’t used significantly until WWII)

 

This war was also unique because is was mainly a defensive war.  The new weapons almost always favored the defender and were devastating to the attacker.  So when the German invasion into France slowed down and turned into trench warfare, it seemed no side would ever win.

 

World War I was the first case of total war in history.  This means that the economy and civilian populations of the nations fighting contributed to the war effort.  World War II, which would also be a total war, would turn deadly as the civilian populations were considered valid targets by both sides.

 

The course of the war

Germany found itself in a grave situation trying to fight a two-front war.  In the west, its armies had slowed down and weres entangled in a hopeless situation in the trenches.  In the east they were trying to defeat the Russian armies. 

 

On the western front both sides attempted to break through the stale mate with massive assaults.  The worst was the British assault at the Battle of the Somme.  The German machine guns cut down the attacking Brits in mass numbers; there were over 1 million casualties, nothing like the world had ever seen before.

 

On the eastern front Germany tried something different.  They took Vladimir Lenin, a Russian communist who had been kicked out of Russia, and secretly sent him back to Russia to start a Revolution.  In October 1917 it worked and the Russian government became the first communist nation in the world.  Russia stopped fighting and Germany could focus on the western front alone. 

 

But by this time the Americans had entered the war, mainly because the Germans were targeting passenger ships at sea (the Lusitania).  The Germans could not stand up to a fresh and seemingly endless supply of fresh troops and were forced to surrender.

 

The Treaty of Versailles

The First World War was settled by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.  Although president Wilson went to spread democracy, the allies had one objective: to punish and humiliate Germany.  The treated said:

1) Germany must admit full blame for war

2) Germany must pay for damages (reparations)

3) Germany could only keep a very small army

4) Germany lost it colonies and some of its land

 

Because this Treaty tried to punish Germany, none of the problems that led to the war were solved.  There were still rival alliances, national boundaries that split ethnic groups, and powerful nationalistic feelings.  This war would have to be fought again.

 

BETWEEN THE WARS

Democratic nations experienced a crisis after the First World War.  The war seemed to challenge the Enlightenment’s view that man was a rational creature who would act with civility if he only had the proper education.  These ideas were further enhanced by the popularity of thinkers such as Sigmund Freud.  Freud taught that man’s true motivations do not come from his conscious thinking or rationality, but rather from the dark provinces of his unconscious mind.  Man was not a rational creature at all and does not really know himself.  If this is true, democracy was doomed as a form of government, for how could a group of people possibly choose what is best for them.  What they needed was for a strong super-human figure to lead them out of chaos.  In Europe, several people volunteered for the job.

 

Another problem democracy suffered was the world-wide Great Depression that broke out in the late 1920s and 1930s.  Nations with strong leaders, like Stalin in Russia, did not seem to be affected so much.  But democratic nations such as the United States were devastated.  For the first time in history more people were trying to get out of America than were trying to get in. 

 

With all of this going on in Europe and America, a new form of government emerged in Europe called Fascism.  This form of government allowed only one political party that was held together by a strong leader.  It was base on a strong military and complete control of the nation’s information.  While America suffered from the depression, fascist leaders in Italy (Mussolini) and Germany (Hitler) led their people out of hard times.  For the time being, it seemed worth giving up one’s individuality and right to think for one’s self.  Under the leadership of Hitler, Germany quickly rose to a powerful nation and rescued the German people from their humiliation after the First World War.

 

WORLD WAR II

As Hitler rose to power in Germany he began to break all the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles.  He massively re-armed Germany.  He stopped paying the war reparations.  When he threatened to take back land that once belonged to Germany, the Allies adopted a policy of appeasement.  That means they gave in to Hitler and gave him what he wanted to prevent war.  In this way, Hitler simply seized Austria and Czechoslovakia without a shot being fired.

 

On September 1, 1939 Hitler’s armies invaded Poland.  The Second World War had begun.  Hitler’s blitzkrieg (or lightening attack) seemed unstoppable.  After taking Poland he turned to Western Europe.  Denmark, Holland, and Norway fell quickly.  Then he turned to France, Germany’s enemy from the First World War that they were never able to take.  France fell to Hitler quickly.  The only democracy left in Western Europe was Great Britain.  Hitler tried to bomb Britain into submission.  London was bombed every night for over 70 nights.  Over 40,000 civilians died. 

 

To deal with the large number of Jews falling into Nazi hands, Hitler adopted what was called the Final Solution.  People thought to be racially inferior were taken and murdered.  Himmler’s SS was given this job.  Special groups called the Einsatzgruppen were formed to kill Jews in lands conquered by the German Army.  Soon the SS would build their notorious death camps, such as Auschwitz in Poland. 

 

The boldest attack Hitler made was against the Soviet Union.  In attacking them Hitler was breaking the Nazi-Soviet Pact he had made with Stalin.  But Hitler had always wanted to take Russia. His reasons were:

1) they were racial enemies

2) they were communists (and Hitler hated communists)

3) he wanted Russia’s rich land and oil fields

 

Hitler’s attack on Russia, like Napoleon’s, turned out to be his biggest mistake.  The blitzkrieg toward Moscow slowed down as the harsh Russian winter set in.  When he realized he could not take the capital, he turned his army south toward the rich oil fields.  The only city stopping him was Stalingrad.  This battle would be the turning point of the war.

 

Despite horrific casualties on both sides, the Russians won the Battle of Stalingrad and began to push the Nazis back toward Germany.  Stalin begged the US to invade Nazi-occupied France to open up a western front.  As in the First World War, having to fight on two fronts would split the Germany army and weaken them on both sides.

 

The US was brought into the war on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Then on June 6, 1944 the long awaited invasion of France took place.  On D-Day, as it was called, thousands of American and allied troops landed on the beaches of northern France.  Soon the Americas had liberated Paris from the Nazis and were headed for Germany.

 

The Russians reached the capital of Germany in April 1945.  They took the city (Berlin) one block at a time in bloody urban fighting.  As the Soviet army blasted the Nazi government out of existence, Hitler committed suicide.  In that same month Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president of the US, died in Georgia.  The war in Europe was over.

 

The US had been fighting a bloody battle with the Japanese in the Pacific for several years.  They slowing approached Japan one island at a time.  When the new president, Harry Truman, was sworn into office he soon learned about a secret project the US had to develop an atom bomb.  On August 6, 1945 Truman decided to use one of the bombs on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.  His reasons were:

1) it would prevent a land invasion of Japan in which thousands of American soldiers would certainly die

2) it would be politically dangerous not to after having spent so much money on the project

3) it would make Russia more “manageable” after the war.

 

Then on August 9 America dropped a second atom bomb on Nagasaki.  A few days later Japan surrendered and World War II was over.

 

World War II was the costliest in human history.  Tens of millions of civilians were deliberately killed.  The economies and factories of once great nations lay in ruin.  The only two powers left in the world were the United States and the Soviet Union.  The struggle of these two powers to spread their influence and power after WWII was called the Cold War.  It lasted until about 1990.