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Unit 7 Overview
Unit 7 Overview
The long nineteenth century came to a violent end in 1914 with the beginning of a 30-year period of global conflict that launched new ideologies and two world wars.
Think about the following questions as you watch the video
- How did the scale of World War I compare to World War II?
- What problems after World War I led to further conflict?
- What economic and political factors encouraged nationalism?
- What were some of the consequences of authoritarianism during World War II?
- What does the data from 1930 to 1944 show about the state of democracy?
: Greetings from across the globe.
: I'm really looking forward to this unit.
: Yeah, it's pretty action packed with all the wars and invasions and hostility.
: Sorry to interrupt but is your window taking up more space than usual?
: Yes, I've changed your appeasement settings. Don't worry it'll stop soon.
: I guess that's okay. Hey! It's not stopping!
: Huh, appeasement never works.
: Hi, I'm Kim Lochner, the emperor of this overview video.
: Hi, I'm Colby Burnett and I know the editor.
: We're introducing Unit 7: Global Conflict 1914 to 1945 CE.
: In May 1914, the transformations of the long 19th century were full of promise.
: Liberal and democratic revolutions had brought representative government to significant parts
: of the world for the first time. The Industrial Revolution promised efficient production,
: cheaper goods, and faster communication and travel.
: If the effects of these revolutions were unequal for different people in different places,
: industrialization allowed some countries to control many others through vast
: overseas empires. Militant nationalism helped inspire competition among those empires.
: But, the long 19th century was about to end in a way that would bring all its progress
: into question. On June 28th, 1914 Gavrilo Princip would assassinate the Archduke
: Franz Ferdinand. Less than two months later, the First World War would erupt. The most
: powerful countries in the world would turn all of their nationalist passions, money,
: factories, railroads, and steam ships to the task of killing each other. From 1914 to 1918
: many suffered through the First World War. The terrible trench warfare, gas weapons,
: artillery, and grinding conflict left a generation of men dead. The economies of
: major world powers and their colonies were destroyed. It seemed impossible that a war
: of that magnitude could ever happen again, so it was often referred to as the war to end all wars.
: Only a few decades later, however, the world would start back down the road to conflict. The
: children, grandchildren of those who had fought in the First World War would become the soldiers,
: sailors, doctors, and nurses on the front lines of the Second World War. And this second war
: would cause even more death and destruction than its predecessor. Most history textbooks
: divide the first and Second World Wars into two units. But what if we look at the whole period
: between 1914 and 1945 as a single, thirty year period of conflict. Even this way,
: the years between the two periods look like a brief interlude than a period of actual peace.
: It's as if the combatants were just taking a moment to catch their breath.
: The problems left by the first war revealed a broken global system. They included
: resentful defeated powers, victorious states squabbling over the spoils,
: a global economic system hobbled by war reparations,
: and widespread trauma. From this perspective the Second World War looks inevitable. It seems like
: a logical result of the world's failure to solve these problems in the 1920s and 1930s.
: Viewed through the communities frame,
: this period looks like a struggle between the different views of how we govern ourselves.
: After World War I, ideas about democracy and international cooperation clash with new,
: radical ideas about nationalism. The peace process did not discredit militant nationalism as a war
: mongering ideology. Ultimately, it strengthened it. A new wave thinking of the state as community
: emerged. It was very nationalist and authoritarian, meaning it required strict
: obedience. These new forms of nationalism depended on oppressive and discriminatory ideas about race.
: Another way to understand the causes of conflict is to look through the production
: and distribution frame. Economic troubles, like the Great Depression beginning in 1929, drove people to
: look for someone to blame. Authoritarian political parties promised economic growth at the price of
: individual freedoms. After making alliances with wealthy business leaders and corporations, this
: was particular true of fascist parties in Germany and Italy. Once these parties gained power,
: they kept it by instituting popular policies of hypernationalism and discrimination against
: minorities. Organizations for global cooperation tried to hold back these movements. The most
: extensive of these was the League of Nations, the world's first international political forum. But
: they failed and their failure set the scene for the horrors of the Second World War. These horrors
: included the slaughter of Chinese civilians by the Japanese army, the deliberate starvation
: and oppression of populations in the Ukraine and Byelorussia by the Soviet Union, the Italian use
: of gas on Ethiopian civilians, the concentrated bombing of Spanish cities by Italian and German
: fascists during the Spanish Civil War, and the Allied fire bombing of German and Japanese cities,
: and finally the Nazi extermination camps in Germany and German occupied Europe. In this
: unit we ask the key question, "What caused the global conflicts and atrocities from 1914 to 1945,
: and how did people experience this period of global war?"
: One method we can use to identify the causes of conflict is by looking at data.
: You can revisit this chart showing the number of democracies across the world at the time.
: You may remember we looked at this data in Unit 4 and we saw the number of democracies rising
: across the 19th century. But then the number levels off before suddenly dropping dramatically
: in the 1930s. This chart defines democracy as a system that has institutions in which individuals
: can play a political role, voting and expressing their preferences. This definition requires that
: the people in charge are kept under some control by courts, journalists, and other institutions.
: Clearly, the number of countries that were democracies by this measure were decreasing
: in the 1930s as authoritarianism rose. We can also explore the causes and experiences of this
: thirty year conflict by scale switching. We can zoom in to explore smaller stories. The Treaty of
: Versailles which ended the First World War also created the League of Nations. We established
: its headquarters in the neutral country of Switzerland. Here on the shores of Lake Geneva
: delegates from many of the world's nations met in the hopes of creating a better future. During the
: 1920s, the League passed treaties that sought to dictate the rules of war and protect civilians as
: well as wounded and captured prisoners. These would be the Geneva Conventions. But soon,
: authoritarian leaders would begin to test the League, challenging it's authority. In June 1936,
: ruler of Ethiopia, Emperor Haile Selassie, arrived in the newly constructed Palace of Nations in
: Geneva. He was there to appeal to the League for protection against one of those challenges.
: Kim, help me out here.
: Yeah, this part's tricky so let's team up. Right, Selassie's nation was under siege.
: In the 1930s, Ethiopia was one of the few remaining independent African nations.
: Benito Mussolini, the fascist leader of Italy wanted to expand his empire and in 1935 he had
: invaded Ethiopia. Italy's industrial military gave it a distinct advantage in the conflict.
: So Selassie fled to Geneva to seek the League's intervention.
: He asserted that the invasion was a violation of international law
: and accused the Italians of using mustard gas which was banned under the Geneva Conventions.
: In his speech to the delegates in the Palace of Nations, Selassie warned that the stakes
: of this conflict reach beyond Ethiopia's borders. Colby, can you read what he said?
: Here is it. "It is international morality that is at stake. Have the signatures appended to a Treaty
: value only in so far as the signatory Powers have a personal, direct and immediate interest
: involved?... At a time when my people are threatened with extermination, when the support
: of the League may may ward off the final blow, may I be allowed to speak with complete frankness...
: Should it happen that a strong Government finds it may with impunity destroy a weak
: people, then the hour strikes for that weak people to appeal to the League of Nations
: to give its judgement in all freedom. God and history will remember your judgement."
: After his speech, Selassie warned the world, it is us today, it will be you tomorrow.
: His warning was ignored. The League failed to take action because it's delegates feared
: that angering Mussolini would drive him to ally with Hitler's Germany. Meanwhile,
: Mussolini declared himself Emperor of Ethiopia and withdrew Italy from the League of Nations.
: The League's failure to act exposed it's weakness. Authoritarians in Germany and Japan were now
: emboldened to continue their own aggressive expansions, confident they would not be challenged. This
: impunity helped produce the horror surrounding the Second World War in which over 70 million died.
: Of these, 12 million were murdered by Germany's Nazi state and the Holocaust.
: The dead included not only Jews, but also Roma, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, political prisoners,
: disabled people, and citizens of Eastern European states.
: Genocide. The attempt to extinguish entire peoples was one of the principal horrors of
: the Second World War. The war and it's horrors was arguably the result of the unresolved
: conflicts of the three decades that proceeded it. How would it influence the decades to come?
: Okay, I finally get what you were doing with that appeasement settings thing earlier.
: Oh. You do?
: Yeah, I mean sure. At first it just looked like you were hogging all the screen time.
: But now I see you were illustrating how the Allie
: strategies of appeasing fascists in the 1930s was doomed to fail.
: Yeah. That's totally what I was doing. I am such a clever teacher.
: I'm really looking forward to this unit.
: Yeah, it's pretty action packed with all the wars and invasions and hostility.
: Sorry to interrupt but is your window taking up more space than usual?
: Yes, I've changed your appeasement settings. Don't worry it'll stop soon.
: I guess that's okay. Hey! It's not stopping!
: Huh, appeasement never works.
: Hi, I'm Kim Lochner, the emperor of this overview video.
: Hi, I'm Colby Burnett and I know the editor.
: We're introducing Unit 7: Global Conflict 1914 to 1945 CE.
: In May 1914, the transformations of the long 19th century were full of promise.
: Liberal and democratic revolutions had brought representative government to significant parts
: of the world for the first time. The Industrial Revolution promised efficient production,
: cheaper goods, and faster communication and travel.
: If the effects of these revolutions were unequal for different people in different places,
: industrialization allowed some countries to control many others through vast
: overseas empires. Militant nationalism helped inspire competition among those empires.
: But, the long 19th century was about to end in a way that would bring all its progress
: into question. On June 28th, 1914 Gavrilo Princip would assassinate the Archduke
: Franz Ferdinand. Less than two months later, the First World War would erupt. The most
: powerful countries in the world would turn all of their nationalist passions, money,
: factories, railroads, and steam ships to the task of killing each other. From 1914 to 1918
: many suffered through the First World War. The terrible trench warfare, gas weapons,
: artillery, and grinding conflict left a generation of men dead. The economies of
: major world powers and their colonies were destroyed. It seemed impossible that a war
: of that magnitude could ever happen again, so it was often referred to as the war to end all wars.
: Only a few decades later, however, the world would start back down the road to conflict. The
: children, grandchildren of those who had fought in the First World War would become the soldiers,
: sailors, doctors, and nurses on the front lines of the Second World War. And this second war
: would cause even more death and destruction than its predecessor. Most history textbooks
: divide the first and Second World Wars into two units. But what if we look at the whole period
: between 1914 and 1945 as a single, thirty year period of conflict. Even this way,
: the years between the two periods look like a brief interlude than a period of actual peace.
: It's as if the combatants were just taking a moment to catch their breath.
: The problems left by the first war revealed a broken global system. They included
: resentful defeated powers, victorious states squabbling over the spoils,
: a global economic system hobbled by war reparations,
: and widespread trauma. From this perspective the Second World War looks inevitable. It seems like
: a logical result of the world's failure to solve these problems in the 1920s and 1930s.
: Viewed through the communities frame,
: this period looks like a struggle between the different views of how we govern ourselves.
: After World War I, ideas about democracy and international cooperation clash with new,
: radical ideas about nationalism. The peace process did not discredit militant nationalism as a war
: mongering ideology. Ultimately, it strengthened it. A new wave thinking of the state as community
: emerged. It was very nationalist and authoritarian, meaning it required strict
: obedience. These new forms of nationalism depended on oppressive and discriminatory ideas about race.
: Another way to understand the causes of conflict is to look through the production
: and distribution frame. Economic troubles, like the Great Depression beginning in 1929, drove people to
: look for someone to blame. Authoritarian political parties promised economic growth at the price of
: individual freedoms. After making alliances with wealthy business leaders and corporations, this
: was particular true of fascist parties in Germany and Italy. Once these parties gained power,
: they kept it by instituting popular policies of hypernationalism and discrimination against
: minorities. Organizations for global cooperation tried to hold back these movements. The most
: extensive of these was the League of Nations, the world's first international political forum. But
: they failed and their failure set the scene for the horrors of the Second World War. These horrors
: included the slaughter of Chinese civilians by the Japanese army, the deliberate starvation
: and oppression of populations in the Ukraine and Byelorussia by the Soviet Union, the Italian use
: of gas on Ethiopian civilians, the concentrated bombing of Spanish cities by Italian and German
: fascists during the Spanish Civil War, and the Allied fire bombing of German and Japanese cities,
: and finally the Nazi extermination camps in Germany and German occupied Europe. In this
: unit we ask the key question, "What caused the global conflicts and atrocities from 1914 to 1945,
: and how did people experience this period of global war?"
: One method we can use to identify the causes of conflict is by looking at data.
: You can revisit this chart showing the number of democracies across the world at the time.
: You may remember we looked at this data in Unit 4 and we saw the number of democracies rising
: across the 19th century. But then the number levels off before suddenly dropping dramatically
: in the 1930s. This chart defines democracy as a system that has institutions in which individuals
: can play a political role, voting and expressing their preferences. This definition requires that
: the people in charge are kept under some control by courts, journalists, and other institutions.
: Clearly, the number of countries that were democracies by this measure were decreasing
: in the 1930s as authoritarianism rose. We can also explore the causes and experiences of this
: thirty year conflict by scale switching. We can zoom in to explore smaller stories. The Treaty of
: Versailles which ended the First World War also created the League of Nations. We established
: its headquarters in the neutral country of Switzerland. Here on the shores of Lake Geneva
: delegates from many of the world's nations met in the hopes of creating a better future. During the
: 1920s, the League passed treaties that sought to dictate the rules of war and protect civilians as
: well as wounded and captured prisoners. These would be the Geneva Conventions. But soon,
: authoritarian leaders would begin to test the League, challenging it's authority. In June 1936,
: ruler of Ethiopia, Emperor Haile Selassie, arrived in the newly constructed Palace of Nations in
: Geneva. He was there to appeal to the League for protection against one of those challenges.
: Kim, help me out here.
: Yeah, this part's tricky so let's team up. Right, Selassie's nation was under siege.
: In the 1930s, Ethiopia was one of the few remaining independent African nations.
: Benito Mussolini, the fascist leader of Italy wanted to expand his empire and in 1935 he had
: invaded Ethiopia. Italy's industrial military gave it a distinct advantage in the conflict.
: So Selassie fled to Geneva to seek the League's intervention.
: He asserted that the invasion was a violation of international law
: and accused the Italians of using mustard gas which was banned under the Geneva Conventions.
: In his speech to the delegates in the Palace of Nations, Selassie warned that the stakes
: of this conflict reach beyond Ethiopia's borders. Colby, can you read what he said?
: Here is it. "It is international morality that is at stake. Have the signatures appended to a Treaty
: value only in so far as the signatory Powers have a personal, direct and immediate interest
: involved?... At a time when my people are threatened with extermination, when the support
: of the League may may ward off the final blow, may I be allowed to speak with complete frankness...
: Should it happen that a strong Government finds it may with impunity destroy a weak
: people, then the hour strikes for that weak people to appeal to the League of Nations
: to give its judgement in all freedom. God and history will remember your judgement."
: After his speech, Selassie warned the world, it is us today, it will be you tomorrow.
: His warning was ignored. The League failed to take action because it's delegates feared
: that angering Mussolini would drive him to ally with Hitler's Germany. Meanwhile,
: Mussolini declared himself Emperor of Ethiopia and withdrew Italy from the League of Nations.
: The League's failure to act exposed it's weakness. Authoritarians in Germany and Japan were now
: emboldened to continue their own aggressive expansions, confident they would not be challenged. This
: impunity helped produce the horror surrounding the Second World War in which over 70 million died.
: Of these, 12 million were murdered by Germany's Nazi state and the Holocaust.
: The dead included not only Jews, but also Roma, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, political prisoners,
: disabled people, and citizens of Eastern European states.
: Genocide. The attempt to extinguish entire peoples was one of the principal horrors of
: the Second World War. The war and it's horrors was arguably the result of the unresolved
: conflicts of the three decades that proceeded it. How would it influence the decades to come?
: Okay, I finally get what you were doing with that appeasement settings thing earlier.
: Oh. You do?
: Yeah, I mean sure. At first it just looked like you were hogging all the screen time.
: But now I see you were illustrating how the Allie
: strategies of appeasing fascists in the 1930s was doomed to fail.
: Yeah. That's totally what I was doing. I am such a clever teacher.