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World War I, the Interwar Years, the Rise of Totalitarianism and World War II: 1914-1945

Man's inhumanity towards man. The First World War. The nature of World War I, the numbers

of casualties, and the effects the war had on civilian populations profoundly affected the

coming decades which led to an even more horrible conflict a generation later: World War II

and the Holocaust. Here are a pile of corpses which Allied soldiers discovered upon liberating

concentration camps at the end of World War II, in 1945.

During the course of this semester, we have been studying the development of European

society through the centuries. We have noted that Europeans often yearned for a united

continent and saw themselves as a distinct civilization. The Greeks, you will recall, called non-

Greeks, "barbarians." The Romans tried to unify diverse groups around the Mediterranean Sea

and the European continent. Charlemagne wanted to re-create the Roman Empire with the

additional spiritual umbrella of Christianity in the early middle ages. The French kings Louis XIV

in the 1600s and Napoleon in the early 1800s wished to bring various lands under French

control. But during the first half of the 20th century, Europe was at war with itself. And thus a

critical question must now be asked: why, during the first half of the 20th century, did

Europeans kill each other in enormous numbers? These terrible events occurred even though

Europe appeared to value human rights and freedoms, appeared to value economic and

scientific progress, appeared to value spirituality as embodied in Judeo-Christianity, and

appeared to have a historic sense of belonging to a distinct civilization-- despite real regional,

religious, cultural, and language differences. What were the causes and consequences of this

bloody half-century? The questions we will be asking revolve around several themes. The first

is how, after a century of relative peace and prosperity, did Europe plunge into a horrific war in

1914 which killed over 20 million people? The second question raised from the first is: why did

this war in turn cause governments, democratic, authoritarian and totalitarian alike, to become

much more involved in the day-to-day activities of their citizens in the coming decades? From

the introduction of food rationing and daylight savings time, to the attempts to re-write history

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through propaganda and censorship, Europeans found themselves observed and more directly

led by their governments in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s than ever before. War itself has historically

accelerated governments' influence over their populations. World War I and World War II are

examples of this trend. Third, the difficulties of the interwar decades resulted in a second major

world war from 1939 to 1945, which was even bloodier than the first. We will examine why

Europeans unenthusiastically entered combat less than a generation after the first World War

and killed even more innocent men, women, and children. The legacy of the destructive first

half of the century remains with us to this day. Europeans are quite aware of the havoc these

wars wrought. That is partially why the European Union, a regional institution designed to

ensure political and economic cooperation and composed of most European states, is so

significant.

World War I

About 11:30 AM on Sunday, June 28, 1914, a young Serbian nationalist by the name of Gavrilo

Princip working with a terrorist organization, fired two shots point blank Franz Ferdinand and

his wife, Sophia. Franz Ferdinand was to inherit the Austrian imperial crown. The assassination

took place in the capital of one of the empire's recently-acquired provinces, Sarajevo, Bosnia

located in the southeast part of Europe, the location of repeated diplomatic crises in the

decades before 1914. You probably know that Bosnia has been the location of bloody wars in

the 1990s also. The assassins succeeded in their deed. One bullet traveled through the neck

of the Archduke, Franz Ferdinand, seen here on your left with his uncle, the Austro-Hungarian

emperor Franz Joseph. The other bullet fired entered the stomach of Ferdinand’s wife, Sophia.

As the chauffeured limousine sped away, the Archduke's last words to his wife were "Sophie,

Sophie, do not die. Live for our children." At the trial of the assassins in October, 1914, one of

the defendants declared that: "Franz-Ferdinand was a man of action, and there…existed a

clique, the so-called war-party, which wanted to conquer Serbia. At its head stood the Heir

apparent. I believed that I should take vengeance on them all in taking vengeance on him."

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And Princip, the young man who fired the fatal shots, exclaimed, "I am not at all sorry that I

cleared an obstacle out of our path. He was a German and an enemy of the South Slavs" What

began as a terrorist killing in a remote part of southeast Europe, would in the coming months,

escalate and spread into the bloodiest war Europe had ever experienced.

Alliance System

European countries scrambled to salvage the crisis, yet ultimately became more and more

enmeshed in difficulties leading to the declaration of war in early August. Why were European

countries tangled up in each other’s problems? One of the major reasons was the alliance

system. Groupings of countries banded together for mutual protection in case of war. And

various alliances created in the 19th century and after the turn of the century had locked the

great powers into obligations that resulted in a lack of freedom.

Even 40 years before the war, tensions rose in Europe. In the French political cartoonist

Hadol's comic map of Europe created in 1871 as you see here, various countries seem as

though they are ready to grab territories from their neighbors. By 1914, the Germans,

Austrians and Italians (who later withdrew after the war began) were part of the Central

Powers, seen here on the map in blue. Worried Germans gave their ally Austria what

historians have dubbed a "blank check," telling the Austrians to do what they believed

necessary to eliminate terrorist activity. Thus, emboldened, the Austrians felt free to issue an

ultimatum to Serbia, requesting the Serbs give up the terrorists so they could be put up to trial

in Austria.. The Austrians were convinced that the Serbian government was behind the

Archduke's assassination. The Serbs rejected the Austrian ultimatum. Why? They dismissed

the Austrian demand since they were assured of Russian support. Russia then, like now in the

recent wars in the former Yugoslavia, wanted to defend their Slavic brothers.

However the Russians did fear the German military machine and began mobilizing before an

actual declaration of war. By mobilizing troops before war was declared was tantamount to

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starting hostilities and this obviously upset and threatened the Germans. This was especially

the case because France and Russia were allies. To prevent a two-front war with Germany

squeezed in the middle, the Germans crossed into neutral Belgium on their way to France on

August 4, 1914. They used a version of the army's Schleiffen Plan. This plan, conceived before

the war, was based on the fact that Russia and France would be fighting on the same side and

against Germany and her allies. Thus the Schlieffen Plan was based on the fact that should a

two front war break out, with Germany in the middle, France would be the obvious power to

defeat first, because her military strength was greater than the Russians. But there was a

major problem for the Germans. Since the French-German border was heavily fortified, the

Schlieffen Plan called for invading France through the less-fortified but neutral Belgium. In

other words, the Germans needed to swing west and invade France from the north rather than

the west.

The German invasion of neutral Belgium outraged many. The Belgian king knew the tiny

country did not have a chance against the mighty Germans, but he said if needed, he would be

defeated “gloriously.” The invasion also angered the British. They now entered the war to

defend the strategically located nation. This French poster, expressing outrage at the German

invasion, is typical of the propaganda which would poison the atmosphere and make attempts

at peace impossible for 4 years. The first battle of the Marne ended an era and determined the

course of war. The Germans quickly advanced through northern France but were stopped

within 40 miles of Paris. One historian observed that "the machine gun and the spade [for

digging trenches] had changed the course of European history." By October, 1914, 300 miles of

trenches ran along a line stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss border. On the eastern

front the battles were more fluid. Here you see the German emperor, Wilhelm, in the center,

with his commanders Hindenburg and Ludendorff. Several victories in the east over two larger

Russian groups, gave the Germans a temporary victory there and hero status for the generals.

But the war continued year after year, depleting all of resources and requiring all of them to

mobilize the civilian population to keep going. Just to cite one example: The French expected

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to use about 13,000 shells a day--they used 120,000 shells instead. To give you another

example: in April of 1917, in preparation for a campaign against the Germans, the French fired

6 million shells on a 20 mile front. But not only shells were expended; the battles of the

Somme, Champagne and Verdun became synonymous with mass slaughter. Here are some

more grim statistics: In the battle of Verdun alone, nearly 700,000 men on both sides lost their

lives. The British lost 400,000 men in the battle of the Somme

The Russians are estimated to have lost through death, capture, and injury between 6 and 8

million men. The Germans lost approximately 500,000 men for every year of the war--2 million

total. This photograph, one of thousands taken, shows the level of utter destruction, with the

dead often not even being able to be buried. The British lost its "best and its brightest" as

military and private school students rushed to volunteer, as did virtually all of Europe's young

men. Here you see young Englishmen enthusiastically volunteering to serve. In August of

1914, 5 million men were called to arms. The total estimates of losses will never be accurately

known, but they hover at 20 million.

For 4 bloody years, soldiers from virtually all the major European countries confronted each

other with the latest in military technology--ranging from machine guns to tanks to

airplanes, an infant technology not yet always reliable, to submarines. The German novelist,

Ernst Junger wrote a graphic retrospective of his experiences in his first book, Storms of Steel.

Let me quote from his description of the conflict. "I heard a monotonous tale of crouching all

day in shell holes with no one on either flank and no trenches communicating with the rear, of

unceasing attacks, of dead bodies littering the ground, of maddening thirst, of wounded and

dying, and of a lot besides. 'Where you fall, there you lie.'

Domestic Consequences of Total War

In addition to the enormous casualties, the war left no aspect of European civilization

untouched. Every country had to marshal its resources. Total war meant that huge quantities

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of supplies were required to feed, clothe, house, and arm the soldiers and war machine. Total

war, and that is what it was called, meant that politicians required great sacrifices of the

population at home. Here you see a French poster calling for the French to conserve wine and

wine drinking, a real sacrifice for the civilian population! Propaganda, , such as this British

poster calling for recruits, or calls for food rationing, calls for price controls, for daylight savings

time to save electricity, were among the methods used by governments to husband precious

resources. Labor shortages meant that the war affected the very old and the very young, men

and women everywhere. Women were enlisted to work at armaments factories as you see

here. The role of women in the war forever changed women’s status thereafter. We know that

four years is a long time. Governments needed to continue the enthusiasm for war which all

belligerents expressed in the opening days. With government censorship, war posters and

patriotic songs sung by school children, governments controlled the news from the battlefields

and censored negative stories. Propaganda posters fanned nationalistic flames of hatred

against the enemies.

The End of the Conflict

After four years of bloodletting, the Russians pulled out of the war and signed a separate peace

with the Germans several months after the Russian Revolution that you have learned about in

the previous lecture. The same year the Russian Revolution occurred the United States entered

the war in 1917. The US was able to supply fresh troops to help the allied effort. Finally, in the

fall of 1918, war-weary Germany and her allies were forced to sue for peace. Here you see

jubilant crowds deliriously happy about the end of war. Three empires collapsed in defeat: the

German, Austrian, and Russian. On November 9 the German emperor abdicated and a republic

was declared. When the Austro-Hungarian regime asked for an armistice, the Czechs, Poles,

and south Slavs declared their independence in the controlled areas where they were the

ethnic majority. In Russia, as you know, the pressures of war produced a Communist revolution

and a radical Soviet regime. Thus, for the losing states of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the war

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proved fatal for the survival of their states. Here you see how the empires of central and

eastern Europe changed as a result of the conflict. We will be coming to this point again. Even

winning states, such as Italy, who, in 1915, switched alliances and sided with the allies, faced

revolutionary change by the early 1920s when the fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, whom you

see here, overthrew the state. But it seems that relatively homogeneous societies in

industrially advanced states (Britain and France) were able to withstand the battering blows of

war better than the more autocratic, less industrialized or more ethnically diverse states, such

as Russia, Germany or Austria. The Germans were forced to sign a humiliating peace, called the

Treaty of Versailles, and named for the palace the treaty was signed. The ceremony took place

in the hall of Mirrors, in the spectacular Palace of Versailles.

The Germans were accused of starting the war. Their army was reduced to a limit of 100,000.

The treaty required that Germany give back Alsace-Lorraine, a resource-rich, industrialized part

of north-east France, which the Germans seized from France during the 1870-71 Franco-

Prussian War. Germany lost parts of her eastern territories to the newly-created state of

Poland. She lost her overseas colonies. In addition, the allies forced Germany to pay war

damages of $33 billion dollars. The interest payments stemming from these fines and later

loans continue to be paid to this day! The Treaty of Versailles, which the Germans signed under

pressure, was seen as unduly harsh, creating lasting resentments among all segments of the

German population. The treaty has been blamed for the rise of radical right-wing movements

in that country during the 1920s and 30s.

A generation of shell-shocked young men of 18, 19, or 20 years old took away a myriad of

lifetime memories from their combat service. Some became profoundly disillusioned with their

elders who had sent them off to be slaughtered and wounded by the millions. But many were

not only disabled, but were profoundly disillusioned with their leaders. After the war many

rejected the political ideologies that leaders had used as the clarion call to arms in 1914.

Benito Mussolini, the future fascist leader of Italy, remembered that: "when I returned from the

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war--just like so many others--I hated politics and politicians, who, in my opinion, had betrayed

the hopes of soldiers, reducing Italy to a shameful peace and to a systematic humiliation."

Others, however, remembered with pride the camaraderie which developed in the trenches

and in the barracks. Junger was one of those who saw the war as a positive experience. As he

recalled, "I was filled with pride at commanding this handful of men that might very likely be

pounded into the earth but could not be conquered. It is to such moments that the human

spirit triumphs over the mightiest demonstrations of material force. The fragile body, steeled

by the will, stands up to the most terrific punishment."

Aftermath

A cultural critic exclaimed that European conditions in the 1920s and 1930s "…differed as much

from the world of our grandparents as that [world] differed from their ancestors 6,000 years

ago. We are living, he wrote, in the midst of the greatest social revolution that history has ever

known. There is an Old World that is passing away and a New World that is being born." What

was this New World which writers, artists, and intellectuals both admired and feared? For one

thing, the map of Europe had profoundly changed with the collapse of empires and the rise of

nationalistic states. Secondly, Europeans reacted with both fear and admiration to the

Communist Revolution in Russia. Some joined communist parties in their own countries while

others joined parties and organizations to fight what was perceived to be the communist

menace. The war had also changed the economic landscape, creating uncertainty in the value

of currencies, in trading and in industrial production. The war also gave women new political

power in the vote. Fashions of the 1920s and 1930s reflected what was called “the new

women.” One of the most profound consequences of the war was the great depression of

1929, affecting virtually the entire world.

Thus the inter-war years were really just that, a period of twenty years between conflicts.

Many unresolved issues led to the next, the Second World War. New governments were

formed in those states which had been defeated or underwent revolution (Austria-Hungary,

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Germany, and Russia). Victor countries, such as France and England, goaded the Germans to

pay the war damages so they themselves, could get back on their feet economically. The new

nations of Eastern Europe, such as Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia,

all struggled to establish themselves as viable states. But it seemed that in the 1920s,

democracy had triumphed. New democratic states were established in Eastern and central

Europe, including Germany. Yet these very same countries experienced unsettled economic

problems. Germany suffered especially since it had been defeated in war. By 1923, she

experienced hyper-inflation rate of 11% per day. The German mark had been valued at 4.2

marks to one US dollar in 1914 plummeted to over 4 trillion marks to one US dollar in 1923,

that's right trillion marks! Here is an example of worthless German money from the early

1920s. The bill says 20 million marks but it was not even worth the paper it was printed on!

People were often required to bring wheelbarrows to haul their worthless money because its

value was virtually zero. Unsettling conditions led to the rise of extremist, anti-democratic

political parties in Europe, such as the Communists and the fascists.

The radical left communists wanted to overthrow liberal states

through protest demonstrations and strikes, along with setting up

workers' councils. They believed in the power of the working

classes to effect change. They also wanted to nationalize what

traditionally belonged to private individuals, such as factories,

banks, and land. Here is a German Communist party poster from

1924. It proclaims: "Women, smash the chains of capitalism, free

yourselves."

The fascists, on the far right, hated the communists, but they, too, wanted to overthrow the

liberal states. It was at the height of the hyper-inflation of 1923 that Hitler launched his

unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government, which he blamed for the humiliating peace

treaty after the war. This attempted coup is known as the Beer Hall putsch. Arrested and

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jailed, he spent a short time in prison writing his memoirs, known as Mein Kampf, or "My

Struggle." Mussolini in Italy, believing the country entitled to more spoils of war, was the one

country in the early 1920s which introduced a new form of government called fascism in an

otherwise democratic Europe.

Fascism

What is fascism? When asked to define fascism, the Italian leader, Benito Mussolini

proclaimed, "I am Fascism." The word derives from the word, "bundle," in politics, to denote a

close knit group. The band of ex-mobilized soldiers, a very tiny group initially, entered the

spotlight when they helped landowners and factory owners to break up strikes and

demonstrations by workers and peasants. They hated the communists and socialist left wing

parties. They were extremely nationalistic, believing the highest power to be the state. Fascists

were anti-liberal and anti-democratic, believing in the power of a strong leader. By the end of

1922, the numbers of fascists in Italy had grown to 300,000, ten times its number in 1920.

Unable to form a national government, fascists took matters into their own hands by taking

over local governments throughout Italy. After Mussolini marched on Rome he was asked to

form a government. Within two years, Italy went from a parliamentary regime to a one-party

dictatorship. Controls were imposed on the press and all political parties except the fascists

were outlawed. Even though this photograph looks as though it is a democratic parliament, it is

actually a parliament consisting of only one party, the Italian fascists. This trend towards one-

party rule swamped democratic countries by the late 1930s.

Let us take a moment to briefly look at the rise of authoritarian states during the inter-war

years. We tend to use the terms right and far right, left and far left. These terms were first

used to describe politics during the French Revolution. Like the socialist and communist left,

fascism was a mass movement. Fascists marched in identically colored shirts, such as the black

shirts of Italy or the brown shirts of the German Nazis, seen here marching with their swastika

flags in formation. Fascists wanted to sweep away the politics and economics of pre-1914

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Europe, and replace them with new forms of government and economic planning. By violently

cracking down on political opponents, Mussolini was able to become the ruler of a one-party

state. His example influenced an even more sinister opportunist and racist leader who

emerged in the wake of the 1929 depression in Germany, Adolf Hitler.

Depression

Let us now turn to examine the depression. Although there was a brief period of peace and

prosperity which lasted from the middle 1920s to 1929, the Wall Street stock market crash of

October, 1929 plunged Europe, America, and the world into economic despair.

What does economic depression mean? It is usually defined as a prolonged slowdown in

buying and selling agricultural and industrial products. The inventories increase even though

prices for these products fall. Companies fire their workers or go out of business. Banks cannot

repay those who deposited money in their banks. Depressions had occurred in Europe before.

But the 1929 depression lasted much longer than previous ones. In fact, 1932 was the worst

year: 25% of all Englishmen were unemployed; Here you see free food served to unemployed

Londoners. In parts of Germany, 40% had no work. Industrial production fell between 35 and

45% between 1929 and 1932. Nineteenth-century liberal values, such as the government

staying out of economic regulation, all were questioned by the 1930s. In the US, the 1930s

brought Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. In Europe, many critics offered new ideas so that the

economic downturn could be reversed. Some claimed that by balancing the budget and

spending less, governments would remain solvent. Others saw the depression as a source of

overproduction of goods the poor, in particular, could not buy. Socialists and communists

called for either modifying or eliminating the capitalist system entirely. Others sought a "middle

way" between the liberal hands-off approach and deflation and the socialist interventionist

approach. The most famous "middle way" thinker was the British economist John Maynard

Keynes, whose photograph you see here. In 1936, he published General Theory of

Employment, Interest, and Money; Keynes believed the major problem of the depression was

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unemployment. By stimulating the economy through public works and other forms

of government intervention, he hoped the economy would improve. His ideas remained

popular in Europe and the US through the 1980s and beyond.

The political effects of the depression strained liberal and democratic governments, though

both Britain and France stumbled along with a number of makeshift policies. But in many

European countries, the shift towards authoritarian rule became the norm. For example, after

a bloody civil war lasting three years, Francisco Franco an army general, became an autocratic

dictator in Spain. In Portugal, the leader Antonio Salazar took over. In Poland, Hungary,

Bulgaria, and Romania, authoritarian rulers created either one-party or fascist states. One

fascist slogan exclaimed: "Make way for the new man, the fascist man, the man of the 20th

century." In Germany, the National Socialist Party, known as the Nazis won almost 44% of the

popular vote in the last free election in March, 1933. In January of that year, Hitler was asked

to become chancellor. The Nazis very effectively used propaganda to suggest that fascism was

the wave of the future. This recruiting poster suggests that the brown shirts, or storm troopers,

as they were known, had enthusiasm and dynamism which would lead Germany into a glorious

future.

Spread of Totalitarian Movements

Thus the appeal of authoritarian and totalitarian movements on the far right and far left

attempted to make sense of what was perceived to be a senseless age in the wake of World

War I. Causes included the rise of nationalism and imperialism in the 19th century with their

appeals to racial and cultural superiority. They included the incredible mechanized violence of

trench warfare between 1914 and 1918. They included the economic dislocations in the war's

aftermath, changed the political and social landscape in the 1920s and 1930s. Under

communism and fascism, every aspect of one's life, private and public, would be regulated.

Ideas were not simply censored by the press or the government controlled radio, but ideas

would be manufactured to suit the needs of the likes Lenin or Stalin or Hitler. Here, for

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example, is a painting, glorifying the deeds of the communists under Lenin’s leadership.

Women were encouraged to bear many children for the good of the state, and children were

taught to worship their government leaders; this German poster proclaims:"The German

Student Fights for the Fuehrer and the People," The communists blamed many of the world's

problems on capitalism and conflicts between rich and poor. The fascists, on the other

hand, denied that classes were in conflict. They emphasized the power of the state bringing all

classes together in harmony. To nationalists, fascism offered glory; to the jobless, jobs and

security. Group solidarity also psychologically appealed to many during the uncertain times of

the postwar years.

Inter-war Diplomacy

In addition to the swing from democracy to authoritarian rule by the 1930s, we must note

another development leading to World War II: the peace treaties signed in 1919 were still in

effect ten years later. In fact, Germany entered the League of Nations and many countries

signed a treaty in the late 1920s condemning war as a solution to solving problems. But twenty

years later, in 1939; these treaties had been swept into the dustbin of history. What

happened? Two major factors caused the unraveling of the peace treaties: increasing German

and Italian militancy and the uncertain responses of the allies to fascist and Nazi demands.

In many speeches before and after Hitler took office as chancellor, he brutally condemned the

Versailles Peace settlement--calling it shameful and a "dictated peace." In 1935, after two years

in power, Hitler announced that Germany would create an air force, the Luftwaffe. This

violated treaty obligations. Germany also believed that she had been unfairly discriminated by

not being allowed to have a military force as large as the countries that had won World War I

and took steps to increase its army. The government took steps to revise the Versailles treaty

year-by-year, slowly but surely wearing down the opposition of the English, French and even

Italy, otherwise a friend of the Nazis.

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For example, in 1936, Hitler sent a division of 10,000 men into Rhineland, located in western

Germany. It had declared a demilitarized zone after World War I. Here you see a French

soldier in this demilitarized area of Germany. In 1936, the allies allowed the Germans to let

their troops enter what had been part of Germany before 1918. Yet, the Versailles treaty had

firmly declared that any violation of the Treaty would be a hostile act. The remilitarization of

the Rhineland, a seemingly obscure crisis in 1936, raises a number of questions which historians

have debated ever since. One question is: Can allied forces maintain a treaty system over long

periods of time? Second, are they willing to use force if need be, to maintain the treaty

obligations? History has not satisfactorily answered the question of how one confronts

aggression on the part of a country, in this case, Germany during the 1930s. In a moment, I

will be outlining the other diplomatic confrontations Hitler made in places like Austria,

Czechoslovakia and finally Poland, in which the allies were confused and uncertain in their

response. In retrospect, we know that Hitler was clearly an opportunist. Should the allies have

fought back and risked war earlier than when it actually broke out? Hitler and Germany's

initial testing of allied resolve in the Rhineland crisis unfortunately does not give us a definitive

answer.

Europe faced repeated diplomatic incidents, crises, and near outbreaks of war. The reasons for

these crises were that the two fascist countries, Italy and Germany, while occasionally differing

in foreign policy aims, pursued common dynamic goals--to expand their influence and their

territory. Mussolini's invasion of the African kingdom of Ethiopia in 1936 outraged the world.

The League of Nations imposed sanctions on Italy. But Germany backed the Italian conquest,

leading to an alliance, known as the Rome-Berlin Axis, beginning in 1936. The consequences of

this new Italian-German configuration continued with the two countries helping their fellow

nationalist, the Spanish general, Francisco Franco, during the Civil War.

Between late 1936 and the spring of 1937, the Italians sent 100,000 troops to Spain while the

Germans tested their growing air force, the Luftwaffe. 6,000 men manned the infamous

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Condor Legion, which rained down bombs on Spanish cities and civilian targets. Because of

German and Italian military help, Franco's could proclaim victory over the Spanish republican

forces, which had some support from the Russians and sympathetic leftists. The Spanish Civil

War caught the imagination of the political right and the political left because both groups were

fighting each other. In its destruction, the war was a prelude to World War II. The Spanish

were cursed with incredible brutality--about 13% of the clergy were murdered. Returning

soldiers from the colonies, the Spanish Legionnaires were known for their strange slogan "Long

Live Death." The famous Spanish painter, Pablo Picasso was living in France. He painted a

magisterial work dedicated to those who died in the conflict, Guernica, named after the town

where Germans dropped bombs This painting has served ever since as a symbol of the 20th

century’s inhumanity.

The Italians and Germans supported each other again in 1938 when, after Hitler's troops

occupied Austria, Mussolini assured Hitler that he did not object to the invasion. A grateful

Hitler exclaimed to his representative in Rome that "Please tell Mussolini I will never forget him

for this…Never, never, never, whatever happens. As soon as the Austrian affair is settled, I shall

be ready to go with him, through thick and thin, no matter what happens." In fact, Hitler, now

the senior partner in the fascist alliance, would support Mussolini throughout the war and even

when the tide turned against both in 1943. The Austrians appeared grateful for union with

Germany as well. Two images demonstrate this gratitude. Here Happy Austrians greet Hitler

with a sign, "Victory to the Chief" upon his arrival in Vienna and here is a ballot for Hitler's

plebiscite asking the Austrians whether they approved union with Germany. In Germany the

approval rate was 99.08%. In Austria, it was even higher, 99.75%.

After the Nazis took over Austria, other east European countries were vulnerable, especially

Czechoslovakia. Its western mountainous area was predominantly ethnic German and the

Nazis encouraged the Germans living in the Sudetenland, as the German area was called, to

"Demand so much that we can never be satisfied." The French and English response to Hitler's

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demands over the Czech Sudetenland has been known ever since as the policy of

appeasement. In the late 1930s, the British felt, under their Prime Minister Neville

Chamberlain, that by "removing the danger spots one by one," and bowing to German

demands, war would be averted. The French accepted this notion. Before World War II, the

verb "to appease" simply meant "to lessen conflict." It had a positive spin. After the horrors of

World War II, it turned into a negative term. What is very interesting when looking at more

recent history is that those political leaders, who came of age in the late 1930s, reacted during

the 1950s and 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s in the opposite way--to stand firmly against

crises. A whole generation of western leaders, from Britain's Anthony Eden to Lyndon Johnson,

Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, remembered the appeasement policies before World

War II (often summarized as "peace at any price") as the most important negative lesson of that

era.

But by the end of September, 1938, the Czech crisis escalated after rioting broke out in the

Sudetenland. British Prime Minister Chamberlain wanted to make sure that war did not break

out. Though fearful of flying, he flew to Germany three times to discuss the situation with

Hitler. By the end of the month, after frantic negotiations and hostilities were about to break

out because Hitler's refused to compromise, the British, French, Italians and Germans forced

the Czechs to surrender the Sudetenland and comply with the four power Munich Agreement.

Thus in the short run, war was averted. In the long run, the Munich agreement was a failure,

because war broke out one year later. Two important countries were not even represented at

the Munich conference: the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia!

A few short months after the Munich agreement, the Germans marched into Prague, the capital

of Czechoslovakia. That is when the western allies realized the game was up. Hitler no longer

appeared to be the rational statesman, demanding what seemed legitimately to be his and the

Germans. It was increasingly obvious that he wanted "Lebensraum” or living space for a

greater Germany and would get it only by annexing more land. This expansionist German policy

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also worried the Russians who, to the total shock of the world, signed a treaty with Germany

just days before the outbreak of World War II, called the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Here you see the

Germans and the Soviets signing the treaty in August, 1939

But the Soviet Union was vulnerable, especially after the turmoil of the 1930s in the USSR which

included purges of the military, throwing peasant farmers off their land, and the killing or

imprisoning of millions. That is partly why it made sense for Stalin, despite his hatred for

fascism, to make an agreement with the Nazis and prevent a German invasion.

War broke out a little over one week later, the ink barely dry, in September, 1939. By the time

Hitler declared war on Poland on September 1, the Germans had, in the space of less than five

years, totally revised the Versailles Treaty of World War I.

World War II

Most Europeans, including Germans were not enthusiastic to fight another war so soon after

the bloodbath of 1914-1918, but fight they did. Germans launched what was called the

"Blitzkrieg," or lightening warfare in September, 1939 in order to avoid the problems of trench

warfare. The planes had loud horns attached. Since the Germans had made a deal with the

Soviet Union, when the Germans invaded Poland, the Soviet Union did the same—and actually

occupied more Polish territory than the Germans.

From the beginning of the Blitzkrieg in 1939, until the German invasion of the USSR in June,

1941, two years later, it seemed as though the Nazis were invincible. After a lull in the fighting

during the winter of 1939-40, the Germans resumed their relentless attack, this time in the

west, conquering Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and finally France, with its fall in June

1940. Recalling the bloodbath of World War I, the French quickly signed an armistice with the

Nazis to avoid more slaughter. Conservative and liberal France was divided, but no Frenchman

wanted to relive the disasters of the first war. Hitler gleefully took revenge for Versailles when

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the French surrendered. That swift surrender left Britain utterly alone to face the Nazis.

And a few months later, the Germans attacked Britain which you see here. While London was

bombed repeatedly during the autumn of 1940, as were other English cities. The British held

out—their Prime Minister Winston Churchill calling the time, England’s “finest hour.” Britain did

not surrender to the Germans as so many countries had before. But Hitler decided to abandon

conquering England and turned his sights to his real desire, the Soviet Union. As you recall, he

had made an agreement with the Russians, the Nazi Soviet Pact. He had no intention of

honoring the agreement. Hitler thought the Germans were far superior to the Russians and

decided that by invading their country, Russia would fall like a house of cards and be part of a

greater German empire for his master race.

The Holocaust

Why did Hitler want to invade Russia and expand his empire? The question brings us to a very

important issue concerning the Nazi state and its ideas. We will now discuss a horrific set of

events, collectively known as the Holocaust. The Nazis believed in racial inequality. That is,

they believed that there were superior and inferior races and that the Germans belonged to the

most superior of all races, which they called the Aryan race. At the bottom of the racial ladder

were the Jews. Not far above them in this twisted racial ladder were the Russians. This anti-

Jewish propaganda poster implies that the Jew is preying on the world and conspiring with

communists to take over the world, though the Jewish population in Germany was less than

1%. He believed that the Germans and so-called Nordic, or Scandinavians were superior and

the Slavs, that is, those living in the Soviet Union, inferior. Here you see Germans taking

Russians as prisoners. Let us now examine how Hitler and the Nazi’s ideas of racism and anti-

Semitism, or prejudice against the Jewish people first took hold in Germany and drove many of

their domestic policies from 1933 onwards. Racism also drove their foreign policies after 1939

to their military defeat in 1945.

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How did the Nazis convert their terrible ideas of racism into policy? Almost immediately after

Hitler took power in 1933, the Nazis ordered a boycott against businesses owned by Jews. Jews

were immediately fired from government positions. Two years later, in 1935, the Germans

passed the Nuremberg Laws, which defined who was a German citizen. Jews were defined as

those having 3 grandparents who were Jewish and denied citizenship. In 1938, a massive attack

on Jewish synagogues, shops, and people was orchestrated after a German diplomat was shot

to death by a Jewish young man upset with German policies. After 1938, it was very difficult for

Jews to leave Germany.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, the Germans implemented policies that

culminated in a series of events known as the Holocaust. When the Nazis invaded Poland, they

put Jews into ghettos, or special segregated quarters. Here you see Jews of the Polish capital

city of Warsaw being herded into a ghetto. At the time of the invasion of the USSR, the Nazis

implemented the so-called “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” which called for the

Jews’ total destruction and extermination. Concentration and extermination camps were built,

mainly in Poland, to collect Jews from various parts of conquered Europe and the Soviet Union

and kill them in gas chambers and their remains burned in ovens, seen here. By 1945, the end

of World War II, the Germans had annihilated approximately 6 million Jews and killed hundreds

of thousands other groups of people deemed “undesirable,” such as the gypsies, Russians,

Poles, religious dissidents, and other unfortunate people caught in the horrible web of Nazi

policies.

Because the Germans had to commit many resources to setting up concentration and

extermination camps in eastern Europe, it meant that many resources which they would have

committed to the war effort were used elsewhere.

And even though the Germans captured millions of prisoners and forced them into slave labor

so that war could continue, there were constant labor shortages in Germany. Only one million

out of 5 million Russians prisoners survived the war., there were constant labor shortages in

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Germany. The Germans brutalized hundreds of thousands of prisoners they captured from all

over Europe. Today, the German government is paying compensation for slave labor policies of

World War II.

Nazi Occupation Policies

The Nazi racial policies also dictated their attitudes and their treatment of people in the

countries they occupied. The Danes and Norwegians were treated the best because the

Germans believed them to be fellow members of the Nordic races. The Poles and Russians

were treated very badly, scorned as sub-human by the Germans. It was under the leadership of

Heinrich Himmler that the paramilitary organization, the SS, set up a network of concentration

and extermination camps throughout Europe, but mainly in Poland. Here are two horrific

images, one showing Germans forced to view victims of Nazi slaughter. The other image shows

prisoners in a German camp, Dachau, which was the first concentration camp to be built in

Germany.

Turning Point of World War II

By 1942, the Germans were overextended militarily in large part because they pursued the

racial policy of annihilation against millions. Soon, trains transporting prisoners from all over

Europe diverted military transportation. Construction of camps and the manufacture of camp

equipment diverted resources from the battlefields.

The Nazis had not intended World War II to be long and drawn out like the first World War. By

striking quickly through their lightening warfare tactics, the Germans thought that they would

seize conquered countries' raw materials and supplies. That way, the Germans would not have

to ration food or raw materials. But two events in late 1941 changed these plans—the Russian

winter and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Germans, after advancing steadily during

the summer of that year into Russia, got bogged down because of an early and terribly cold

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winter. They had to commit more resources into the eastern front effort. Secondly, the US

entered the war after the Japanese bombed the military installation in Hawaii, Pearl Harbor and

Hitler declared war on the United States in support of Japan, Germany’s ally. By this time, the

German army had thousands of men in Russia, in North Africa, and in Western Europe.

Once in the war and together with the British, the US began strategic bombing of German

cities. These bombing raids began in 1942 and lasted until the end of the war Here you can see

the results of this bombing of Hitler’s Third Reich.

The turning point in the war came in 1943 when the supposed "sub-human" Russians defeated

the Germans at Stalingrad, seen here in these two images of fierce fighting, sometimes house-

to-house and hand-to-hand. After the Soviets captured an entire German division and forced

the commanding general to surrender, the Germans were no longer regarded as invincible. The

Russians then began their long assault against the Nazis by moving westward.

Likewise, the Americans, together with the British and Canadians and French exiles planned for

an invasion into France. On June 6, 1944, D-Day, the world largest amphibious attack in the

history of the world began on the Normandy coast of France. 4,000 ships carried over 150,000

troops along 60 miles of coastline, seen here.

During the course of the war, allied leaders, Winston Churchill of England, Franklin Roosevelt of

the United States, and Joseph Stalin of the USSR met periodically to map out war strategy and

postwar plans for Europe. Sharp disagreements over both war strategy and the future of

Europe contributed to later misunderstandings, leading to the Cold War after 1945. Yet at the

time, the leaders were preoccupied with defeating Hitler and not worrying about a postwar

world. The Russians worried that they were bearing the brunt of the war. The Germans, after

all, mounted their fiercest attacks on the Soviet Union. The Russians wanted the British and

Americans to open fronts against the Germans in Western or Southern Europe. The first of

many major conferences was held in Casablanca, Morocco in early 1943, at the time of the

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Stalingrad battle. At this conference leaders called for Germany's unconditional surrender. A

critical conference was held in early 1945 in Yalta, a seaside resort on Russia's Black Sea. Here

you see the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, the US President Franklin Roosevelt, and

the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin at Yalta. At this conference, when Russian troops were less

than 50 miles from Berlin, the allies agreed to divide Germany into 4 military zones of

occupation.

The End of the War, 1945

Two months later, in April, 1945, American and Russian troops jubilantly meet at the Elbe River.

A few weeks later, Hitler committed suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin as bombs

rained on the German capital. The 3rd Reich, which Hitler claimed would last 1000 years, was

gone in twelve. Not only Hitler, but many of his loyal supporters and government officials also

committed suicide rather than surrender. Here is a photograph of the Mayor of the east

German city of Leipzig, who, along with his wife and daughter, committed suicide using poison.

The ragtag remnants of the German army surrendered on May 8, 1945.

This is what Germany looked like after the war. The total numbers killed worldwide, both

soldiers and civilians, topped 50 million. The Soviet Union suffered the highest casualty rate,

about 7 million civilians and 11 million soldiers. All told, approximately 18 million European

civilians died from bombing, shelling, disease, malnutrition, overwork, and genocide between

1939 and 1945. Virtually every major city in Germany was bombed. Dresden lost 135,000

inhabitants during the bombing raids in February 1945. Cities in Poland, Russia, France, and

other parts of Europe, all suffered tremendous losses. Towns were reduced to little more than

rubble. Bombs fell in Asia, too. Especially devastating was the dropping of the atomic bomb by

the United States against Japan in the summer of 1945. Millions were displaced and criss-

crossed through Europe in search of a place to live, since so many towns were uninhabitable.

In addition to having to surrender, the German state ceased to exist. From 1945 to 1949, there

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was no Germany, but simply four territories occupied by the countries that had defeated the

Nazis--the British, the Russians, the Americans, and the French. Likewise the capital of Berlin

was also occupied; Berlin would not be united until 1990. In addition to dividing Germany into 4

zones, the allies also decided to put high Nazi officials on trial for their crimes against

humanity. Here is a picture of these men at the trial proceedings in Nuremberg, Germany. The

world learned the depths to which the Nazi regime stooped to implement its horrific racial

policies. While war trials had taken place before, the Nuremberg trials symbolized the attempt

to come to grips with what had happened. War crimes trials would be held and continue to be

held to this day; the latest over genocidal behavior in Rwanda and Bosnia, ironically the place

where World War I began.

What Have We Learned?

Let's step back a minute and review what we have described thus far. We discussed the

reasons for the outbreak of World War I. Through a system of alliances and growing

nationalism and militarism, several European countries decided that waging war was better

than waging peace. After four bloody years, the victors and vanquished both had lost millions

of soldiers and civilians and had disrupted the European continent's growing prosperity. The

interwar years between 1919 and 1939, saw each country trying to repair itself economically

and politically. Three empires, the Russian, the German, and the Austrian, had vanished in the

wake of military defeat. New countries were established in east Europe. For a time, it seemed

as though democratic values predominated. But the world-wide depression of 1929 after the

Wall Street crash diminished the hopes for world stability. New types of governments,

believing in the total control of their subject populations, both communist and fascist,

dominated the European horizon during the 1930s. Diplomatic crisis after diplomatic crisis

ensured that war was near. Hitler's fanatical quest for a master race and living space to house

them also meant that war was near. Between 1939 and 1945, less than a generation after the

Austrian archduke's assassination in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, Europeans killed each

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other in record numbers, causing the bloodiest civil war in their entire history. If one were to

survey the European landscape in the summer of 1945, one would be hard-pressed to believe

that Europe could ever recover. Yet, within a few years, the continent would be on the road to

recovery and renewal, but sobered by what had happened. Like a recovering drug addict or

reformed convict, Europeans vowed never to allow a civil war to take place on their soil. In

your next and last episode of this course, you will be hearing about how the Europeans went

about working towards peace and prosperity.

While I have been painting a rather dismal portrait of Europe and Europeans in the first half of

the 20th century, there were some positive developments nonetheless. The interwar years also

witnessed the growth of popular culture, reaching the masses and not just select upper and

middle classes. The growth of vaudeville, movies, both silent and talking, the widening use of

radio all gave a sense that modern life was affecting millions in positive ways. That is why the

horrors of two world wars and the unbelievable destruction and wanton cruelty of the

Holocaust appears even more senseless to us. But what we have learned is that while

humankind can be incredibly inventive and progressive, humankind can also be incredibly cruel,

heartless, and uncivilized--at the same time. Writers, philosophers, and intellectuals all

pondered the heights to which humanity had climbed but also the depths to which humanity

fell in these decades.

One can certainly say that since 1945, Europe has not had the confidence, the continent had in

1914. Its people realized how fragile and thin the veneer or surface of civilization can really be.

It is a sobering lesson we all must remember.