International History (1900-90)
John Baylis
Chapter – 3
Table of Contents
Introduction
- The First World War (Great War) began between European states on European battlefields but extended globally, being the first modern, industrialized total war.
- The war involved mobilization of populations, economies, and armies, resulting in enormous casualties.
- The Second World War was even more total and global in scope, leading to fundamental changes in world politics.
- Before 1939, Europe was the arbiter of world affairs, with the USSR and USA focused on internal development rather than global roles.
- The Second World War brought the USSR and the USA militarily and politically deep into Europe, transforming their relations.
- These transformations led to confrontations outside Europe, notably in the Cold War.
- The Great War led to the demise of four European empires: Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman (Turkey).
- After 1945, European power declined, while the USA and USSR emerged as superpowers with global political ambitions and military capabilities, including weapons of mass destruction.
- European weakness contrasted with Soviet strength and growing Western concerns about Soviet intent.
- The Cold War marked the collapse of the wartime alliance between the UK, USSR, and USA.
- The legacy of the Second World War was the development of the atomic bomb, built to counter Nazi Germany’s nuclear ambitions.
- After 1945, nuclear weapons posed unprecedented challenges to world politics and diplomacy, with Cold Wartensions fueling the nuclear arms race.
- The Cold War led to the growth of nuclear arsenals that threatened human existence, continuing beyond the Cold War and East-West confrontation.
- Since 1900, world politics has been transformed by political, technological, and ideological developments, with three key changes:
- Transition from European crises to modern, industrialized total war.
- End of empire and withdrawal of European countries from their imperial acquisitions.
- Cold War: political, military, and nuclear confrontation between the USA and the USSR.
- Other important changes and continuities are explored in other chapters, but these three changes frame the exploration of events shaping international politics and the modern world.
Modern total war
- The origins of the Great War have been long debated, with historians focusing on political, military, and systemic factors.
- Fritz Fischer (1967) argued that German aggression, driven by an autocratic elite’s internal political needs, was responsible for the war.
- The motivations of those who fought were more explicable, with masses of belligerents sharing nationalist beliefs and patriotic values.
- Many soldiers expected the war to be short, victorious, and glorious, but trench warfare led to harsh realities.
- Machine guns and defensive technologies triumphed over attrition tactics, with the Allied offensive in 1918 bringing the war to an end.
- The war was a total war, mobilizing entire societies and economies, with men conscripted and women working in factories.
- Conflict spread globally, with Japan joining the war in 1914 as an ally of Britain.
- The United States entered the war in 1917 under President Woodrow Wilson, whose Fourteen Points shaped the Paris Peace Conference.
- The Russian Revolution in 1917 led the USSR to withdraw from the war, leaving Germany to face a new threat from USA resources.
- Germany agreed to an armistice after failing in its last great military offensive and facing an effective British naval blockade.
- The Treaty of Versailles imposed German war guilt and reparations, but failed to address the core issue of a united and frustrated Germany.
- Some scholars viewed the period 1914-45 as a thirty-year war, while others saw 1919-1939 as a twenty-year crisis.
- Economic factors, including the Great Depression (1929), weakened liberal democracies and strengthened communist, fascist, and Nazi parties.
- In Germany, mass unemployment and acute inflation created instability, providing a foundation for Nazi support.
- Adolf Hitler rose to power by 1933, marking the beginning of the transformation of the German state.
- A. J. P. Taylor (1961) argued that Hitler’s ambitions were not carefully thought out but based on Nazi ideology, including racial supremacy and imperial expansion.
- The Munich Agreement (1938) allowed Hitler to annex the Sudetenland in exchange for peace, but within months, Germany seized all of Czechoslovakia.
- By 1939, defensive military technologies were replaced by armoured warfare and air power; blitzkrieg victories over Poland and the West followed.
- Hitler expanded into the Balkans to support his ally Mussolini and into North Africa.
- The invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 marked the beginning of large-scale fighting and revealed the full scope of Hitler’s goals.
- Early German victories on the Eastern Front turned into a winter stalemate, with Soviet mobilization strengthening resistance.
- German treatment of civilians and Soviet prisoners of war reflected Nazi racial ideas, resulting in millions of deaths.
- Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust escalated after the 1942 decision on the Final Solution, targeting Jewish people and other minorities, including the Roma.