Mr. Dostert's Domain
The World @ War
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Technology & Innovation
The Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century had reshaped the lives of people throughout the world. These mechanical advancements also led to scientific discoveries and innovations in the twentieth century which pushed the limit of what was possible. Scientists mapped the periodic table and uncovered secrets of the universe. Inventors built machines which improved daily life and even defied gravity. Meanwhile, intellectuals challenged traditions and convention and reshaped philosophy for a generation built on using science and technology to do the impossible. Although progress rapidly reshaped the world, it was not accomplished without disasters such as the sinking of the Titanic or the destruction of the Hindenburg to remind men that no matter how much power technology gave them, they were not infallible. The twentieth century redefined humanity and created the world we know today.
Man vs. Nature
The late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw revolutions in science and technology. Suddenly men of science were deciphering mysteries of the universe and making discoveries at an unprecedented pace. With the advent of new methods of mass production, industrialized companies were able to harness many of these radical new discoveries and market them in ways which were available and affordable for the masses. These new inventions drastically improved the quality of life for millions. Society began to associate science and technology with progress and the human potential became limitless. The laws of nature which had defined life for thousands of years suddenly became obstacles which could be overcome with enough intelligence and machinery. Even gravity itself was overcome in 1903 when the Wright Brothers invented the world's first airplane. Technology had liberated mankind and the wave of progress felt unstoppable.
A New Revolution in Science
Scientists of the twentieth century had an enormous impact on society. German-born physicist Albert Einstein offered startling new ideas on space, time, energy, and matter. Scientists had found that light travels at exactly the same speed no matter what direction it moves in relation to earth. In 1905, Einstein theorized that while the speed of light is constant, other things that seem constant, such as space and time, are not.
Space and time can change when measured relative to an object moving near the speed of light. Since relative motion is the key to Einstein's idea, it is called the theory of relativity. These ideas allowed scientists to improve their understanding of motion, matter, astronomy, cosmology, and ushered in the nuclear age. Einstein's ideas had implications not only for science but also for how people viewed the world. Now uncertainty and relativity replaced Isaac Newton's comforting belief of a world operating according to absolute laws of motion and gravity.
In the field of chemistry scientists also made great strides to understanding the universe. In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev, a Russian chemist, organized a chart on which all the known elements were arranged in order of weight, from lightest to heaviest. He left gaps where he predicted that new elements would be discovered. Mendeleev's chart, the Periodic Table, is still used today.
Chemists of the twentieth century looked to complete Mendeleev's work. A husband and wife team working in Paris, Marie and Pierre Curie, discovered two of the missing elements, which they named radium and polonium. The elements were found in a mineral called pitchblende that released a powerful form of energy. Marie Curie named this energy radioactivity. Her discovery made her the first women to win a Nobel Prize. Sadly her studies in radioactivity ultimately resulted in her developing leukemia which she died from in 1934. Her discovery revolutionized chemistry and taught humanity a painful lesson on the deadly effects radioactivity.
Other physicists theorized on the makeup of matter. Beginning in 1803, physicists theorized that all matter was made up of tiny particles called atoms. They discovered that elements had only one kind of atom, which has a specific weight. Compounds on the other hand, contain more than one kind of atom. By 1900 physicists took leaps in unraveling the secrets of the atom. Earlier scientists believed that the atom was the smallest particle that existed. A British physicist named Ernest Rutherford suggested that atoms were made up of yet smaller particles. Each atom, he said, has a nucleus surrounded by one or more particles called electrons. Soon other physicists such as Max Planck, Neils Bohr, and Albert Einstein continued their work, eventually mapping the atom.
Psychology & the Social Sciences
The scientific theories of the 1800s prompted scholars to study human society and behavior in a scientific way. Interest in these fields grew enormously during that century, as global expeditions produced a flood of new discoveries about ancient civilizations and world cultures. This led to the development of modern social sciences such as archaeology, anthropology, and sociology.
One field that developed in the twentieth century which drastically changed society's perception of humanity was psychology. Psychology studies the relationship between behavior and the mind. To society, the ideas of Austrian physician Sigmund Freud were as revolutionary as Einstein's. Freud treated patients with psychological problems. From his experiences, he constructed a theory​ about the human mind. He believed that much of human behavior is irrational, or beyond reason. He called the irrational part of the mind the unconscious. In the unconscious, a number of drives existed, especially pleasure seeking drives, of which the conscious mind was unaware. Freud's ideas weakend faith in reason. Even so, by the 1920s, Freud's theories had developed widespread influence.
Transformations in the Arts & Literature
The brutality of the First World War caused philosophers and writers to question accepted ideas about reason and progress. Disillusioned by the war, many people also feared the future and expressed doubts about traditional religious beliefs. Some writers and thinkers expressed their anxieties by creating disturbing visions of the present and the future.
In their search for meaning in an uncertain world, some thinkers turned to the philosophy known as existentialism. Existentialists believed that there is no universal meaning of life. Each person creates his or her own meaning in life through choices made and actions taken. The German existentialist Friedrich Nietzshe wrote that Western ideas such as reason, democracy, and progress had stifled people's creativity and actions. Nietzsche urged a return to the ancient heroic values of pride, assertiveness, and strength. This idealized vision for the transcendence of a person beyond their limitations to become their greater self and maximize their human potential he called becoming the Übermensch. His ideas attracted growing attention in the twentieth century and had a great impact on politics in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.
During the twentieth century artists rebelled against earlier realistic styles of painting. They wanted to depict the inner world of emotion and imagination rather than show realistic representations of objects. Expressionist painters used bold colors and distorted or exaggerated forms. Other artists such as Pablo Picasso explored shapes and dimension by creating Cubism. Inspired by the ideas of Sigmund Freud, an art movement known as Surrealism sought to link the world of dreams with real life. Surrealists such as Salvador Dali tried to call on the unconscious part of their minds. Many of their paintings have an eerie, dreamlike quality and depict objects in unrealistic ways.
Mass Production Brings Technology to the Masses
The industrialization brought in the nineteenth century improved in the twentieth century as a result of the introduction of the moving assembly line. This new method of building mastered by industrial giants such as Henry Ford, allowed the new technology and innovations of the twentieth century to be produced much cheaper. This mass production built products by the hundreds of thousands. Combined with the introduction of readily available credit, all members of society could purchase the new automobiles, refrigerators, stoves, vacuum cleaners and more which flooded markets and improved the lives of rich and poor alike.
Furthermore, the methods of mass production in the twentieth century were used to produce the new vaccines and medical advancements brought by modern science. Penicillin became readily available, virtually eliminating the dangers of infection which ended thousands of lives yearly. New vaccines were also introduced which protected against diseases which once ravaged populations such as smallpox and polio.
For many, technology became synonymous with progress. The people of the twentieth century put their futures in the hands of technological improvement, empowered with the feeling that all of life's challenges could be overcome with machines and scientific know-how. The twentieth century however brought uncertainty as the technology created by man demonstrated the greatness of mankind's ambitions as well as the evils lurking within some men's souls.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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World War I
World War I was a catastrophic event that destroyed the world order which had allowed European nations to dominate the globe for more than a century. Suddenly all the world's great powers found themself committed to a conflict that set Europe on the path to the first total war in which nations fought with their new technological for the complete destruction of other nations. A generation of men found themselves dealing not only with the physical effects of modern war, but also their devastating psychological effects which introduced new terms such as "shell shock" to people's vocabulary. Sadly the "War to End All Wars" proved to be ineffective at solving anything, setting the stage for another, even more deadly war that would be fought only a generation later.
Causes of the War
Even before war broke out, the political conditions for war grew out of the aggressive culture that had developed at the end of the previous century. As a result of the growing nationalism and imperialism in the nations of Europe, nations began expanding their powerful militaries in number of men as well as their weaponry. These new powerful weapons were far more destructive than weapons in previous conflicts and militarism drove an arms race to create the most powerful armies in history. Rather than making nations feel more secure, these powerful militaries made the nations fearful of one another leading to the adoption of alliances in the event of war. Instead of preventing war, these alliances only increased the likelihood of a small conflict developing into a major war. It would only require a push to ignite the powder keg Europe had become.
M.A.I.N. Causes of World War I
Militarism
Alliances
Imperialism
Nationalism
The Spark that Set Off Europe
The most volatile region of Europe had long been the Balkan Peninsula and its many ethnicities, many of whom had been ruled by aging empires for centuries. Like all of Europe, nationalism became a powerful force in the lives of the many diverse people of the Balkans, many becoming committed to the creation of their own nation-states. This demand set them against the powerful Empires of the Ottoman Empire as well the Austro-Hungarian Empire which once was the most powerful state in Europe. To complicate matters, the Russian Empire committed itself to protecting these ethnic minorities due to a shared history and culture Russia shared with the Slavic people. These competing interests heightened tensions, creating extreme political instability that only needed a spark to set off.
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That spark came in June of 1914 when the heir to the Austrian throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand visited Sarajevo in Bosnia for an official state visit. Bosnia, which had been annexed by Austria in 1908, was rife with resentment toward the Empire. During the visit, a Serbian nationalist and member of a secret society called the Black Hand named Gavrilo Princip assassinated Franz Ferdinand and his wife. The murder of the heir to the throne outraged the Austro-Hungarian Emperor. Because the assassin was a Serbian nationalist, Austria assumed that the attacker was supported by Serbia and made an ultimatum filled with demands that Serbia rejected.
The rejection of the ultimatum by Serbia set into action the activation of the alliances made by the European powers. Russia began to mobilize its military to defend Serbia which forced Germany to defend Austria. This brought France into the war as an ally of Russia, and Britain to defend Belgium. Within a few weeks most of the nations of Europe had been drawn into the conflict. Because the European powers had created global empires, this war would be fought around the globe, becoming truly the First World War.
The War Grinds to a Stalemate
In late summer 1914, millions of soldiers marched happily off to battle, convinced that the war would be short. On the Western Front Germany made an aggressive attack to destroy France. Although the German army made quick advance into France, their advance was slowed by strong resistance and a struggle to supply the machinery of modern war. The pause allowed both sides to create strong defensive positions in fortified ditches called trenches, which would become the home for these soldiers for the next four years. On the Eastern Front, the Russians initially pushed back the German army, but were pushed back due to poor leadership and less technology. The war in the east was a more mobile war than that in the west. Here too, however, slaughter and stalemate were common.
By early 1915, opposing armies on the Western Front had dug miles of parallel trenches to protect themselves from enemy fire. This set the stage for what became known as trench warfare. In this type of warfare, soldiers fought each other from trenches. This type of war forced massive frontal assaults against machine guns and new powerful weapons. Armies traded huge losses of human life for pitifully small gains.
Life in the trenches was pure misery. As soldiers waited for the inevitable order to "go over the top" they were forced to live in the mud and rat infested trenches for weeks at a time. Sleep was nearly impossible as the trenches were under constant bombardment by powerful artillery shells. The space between the opposing trenches won the grim name "no man's land." There, soldiers usually met murderous rounds of machine gun fire.
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Militaries turned to new mechanized weapons of war in hopes of breaking the stalemate, yet these new tools of war- machine guns, poison gas, armored tanks, and larger artillery- had not delivered the fast-moving war they had expected. All the new technology did was kill greater numbers of people more effectively.
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The slaughter reached a peak in 1916. In February, the Germans launched a massive attack against the French near Verdun, costing each side more than 300,000 men. In July, the British Army attacked the Germans in the valley of the Somme River. By the time the Battle of the Somme ended in November, each side had suffered more than half a million casualties. Both battles gained the attackers less than five miles.
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On the Eastern Front Russia struggled to defend themselves against the modern German weapons and machinery. Unlike the nations of Western Europe, Russia had not yet become industrialized. As a result, the Russian army was continually short on food, guns, ammunition, clothes, boots, and blankets. The Russian army had only one asset- its numbers. Throughout the war the Russian army suffered a staggering number of battlefield losses as they time after time launched massive frontal assaults with little chance of success. Despite these losses, the army continually rebuilt its ranks from the country's enormous population. For more than three years, the battered Russian army managed to tie up hundreds of thousands of German troops in the east, preventing Germany from using its full fighting force in the west.
A Global War
World War I was much more than a European conflict. European nations drew soldiers from throughout their empires to fight alongside their imperial rulers. As the war dragged on, the main combatants looked beyond Europe for a way to end the stalemate. However, none of the alliances they formed or new battlefronts they opened did much to end the slow and grinding conflict.
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A promising strategy for the Allied seemed to be to attack a region in the Ottoman Empire known as the Dardanelles, the Allies believed that they could take Constantinople, defeat the Turks, and establish a supply line to Russia. The effort to take the Dardanelles was known as the Gallipoli Campaign. British, Australian, New Zealand, and French troops mad repeated assaults on the Gallipoli Peninsula unsuccessfully ans this battle too devolved into a stalemate. After several months of failed attempts to break the deadlock the Allies gave up the campaign and began to evacuate. They had suffered about 250,000 casualties.
In Africa and Asia, the British and French recruited subjects in their colonies for the struggle. Fighting troops as well as laborers came from India, South Africa, Senegal, Egypt, Algeria, and Indochina. Many fought and died on the battlefield. Others worked to keep the front lines supplied. Many volunteered in hope that service would lead to their independence.
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In various parts of Asia and Africa, Germany's colonial possessions came under assault. The Japanese quickly overran German outposts in China. They also captured Germany's Pacific island colonies. English and French troops attacked Germany's four African possessions. They seized control of three.
Total War
World War I was the first total war in which countries devoted all their resources to the war effort. The nations of Europe used the entire force of government to commit all members of society, and all their nation's industrial might to winning the war. Each country took control of their economy, telling factories what to produce and how much they were expected to make. The facilities which had been used to produce the materials of peacetime were converted to wartime manufacturing, producing guns, munitions, machines, and supplies that were used on the front. Nearly every able-bodied civilian was put to work. Unemployment all but disappeared.
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Because the nation's industry was exclusively building the weapons of war, many goods for civilians were in short supply. To deal with these shortages, the nations turned to rationing. Under this system, people could buy only small amounts of those items which were also needed for the war effort. Eventually, rationing covered a wide range of goods from butter to shoe leather.
Governments also suppressed antiwar activity, sometimes forcibly. In addition, they censored news about the war. Many leaders feared that honest reporting about the carnage and reality of the war would turn people against it. Governments also used propaganda, one-sided information designed to persuade, to keep up morale and support the war.
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Total war meant that governments turned to women to help the war effort like never before. Thousands of women replaced me in factories, offices, and shop. Women worked in the factories building tanks and munitions, on farms plowing fields, and assuming other roles traditionally held by men. They also kept troops supplied with food, clothing, and weapons. Although most women left the workforce when the war ended, they changed many people's views of what women were capable of doing.
The Allies Win the War
With the United States finally in the war, the balance, it seemed, was about to tip
in the Allies’ favor. Before that happened, however, revolution in Russia gave Germany
a victory on the Eastern Front, and new hope for winning the conflict when the Czar abdicated and the new government withdrew from the war.
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Russia’s withdrawal from the war at last allowed Germany to send nearly all its forces to the Western Front. In March 1918, the Germans mounted one final, massive attack on the Allies in France. As in the opening weeks of the war, the German forces crushed everything in their path. By late May 1918, the Germans had again reached the Marne River. Paris was less than 40 miles away.
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By this time, however, the German military had weakened. The effort to reach the Marne had exhausted men and supplies alike. Sensing this weakness, the Allies—with the aid of nearly 140,000 fresh U.S. troops—launched a counterattack. Leading the Allied attack were some 350 tanks that rumbled slowly forward, smashing through the German lines. With the arrival of 2 million more American troops, the Allied forces began to advance steadily toward Germany. Soon, the Central Powers began to crumble. First the Bulgarians and then the Ottoman Turks surrendered. In October, revolution swept through Austria-Hungary. In Germany, soldiers mutinied, and the public turned on the kaiser. On November 9, 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II stepped down.A representative of the new German government met with French Commander Marshal Foch in a railway car near Paris. The two signed an armistice, or an agreement to stop fighting. On November 11, World War I came to an end.
A Flawed Peace
Following the signing of the Armistice the victorious Allies decided to meet at a conference at the Palace of Versailles to forge a peace settlement. The compromise which they eventually crafted became known as the Treaty of Versailles. Despite representatives from numerous countries, the major decisions were hammered out by a group known as the "Big Four." Russia which was embattled in the Civil War was not represented. Neither were Germany and its allies.
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The Big Four argued over what should be included in the treaty. The American President Woodrow Wilson had drawn up a series of peace proposals that he called the Fourteen Points. His plan was optimistic and lenient on the defeated nations, hoping to establish a just a lasting peace. Among his points, Wilson advocated an end to secret treaties, freedom of the seas, free trade, and reduced national armies and navies. The fifth principle in particular divided the Allies by advocating for fair treatment toward colonial peoples. Moreover, the Fourteen Points supported the principle of Self-Determination. This meant allowing people to decide for themselves under what government they wished to live. Wilson's final point proposed a "general association of nations" that would protect "great and small states alike." He hoped that this organization could find peaceful settlments to avoid future conflicts.
Unlike the Americans who sought to create better world after the war, the British and French Representatives saw the Treaty as a way to punish the Central Powers and especially Germany for the war. They were concerned with national security, and wanted to strip Germany of its war-making power. They also demanded that Germany would lose substantial territory and lose its global empire. Perhaps the most controvercial provision was the "war guilt" clause which placed sole responsibility for the war on Germany, forcing them to pay reparations to the allies. The only point from Wilson's plan that made it into the treaty was the creation of a League of Nations as an international association whose goal would be to keep peace among nations.
The Versailles treaty created feelings of bitterness and betrayal among the victors and the defeated. The map of Europe was redrawn with several new countries created out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia were all recognized as independent nations. The Ottoman Turks were forced to give up almost all of their former empire. The Allies carved up the lands that the Ottomans lost in Southwest Asia into mandates rather than independent nations. Palestine, Iraq, and Transjordan came under British control; Syria and Lebanon went to France. Russia, which had left the war early, suffered land losses as well. Romania and Poland both gained Russian territory. Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, formerly part of Russia, became independent nations.
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In the end, the Treaty of Versailles did little to build a lasting peace. For one thing, the United States ultimately rejected the treaty. Also, the war-guilt clause left a legacy of bitterness and hatred in the hearts of the German people. Other countries felt cheated and betrayed by the peace settlements as well. Throughout Africa and Asia, people in the mandated territories were angry at the way the Allies disregarded their desire for independence. The European powers, it seemed to them, merely talked about the principle of self-determination. European colonialism, disguised as the mandate system continued in Asia and Africa
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Some Allied powers, too, were embittered by the outcome. Both Japan and Italy, which had entered the war to gain territory, had gained less than they wanted. Lacking the support of the United States, and later other world powers, the League of Nations was in no position to take action on these and other complaints. In little more than two decades, the treaties' legacy of bitterness would help plunge the world into another catastrophic war.
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Twentieth Century Revolutions
As the Twentieth Century began many societies remained locked under corrupt leadership which exploited the poor. In Mexico, the revolutions of the nineteenth century which promised equality fell short as most Mexicans found themselves living under a repressive regime in extreme poverty. In China, the Qing dynasty clung to the old dynastic system which had governed the Empire for thousands of years. The Czars of Russia were the last of the Absolute Monarchs in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. When the people revolted in each of these nations they demanded more than the liberties demanded in the past century. Twentieth Century revolutions would be built on demands for socialist reform and the creation of new states that would destroy social classes once and for all. Ultimately, these revolutions ushered in a new era, and a new type of state built on Marxism and centralized power.
Mexican Revolution
Throughout the nineteenth century Mexico struggled to improve life for its people as it found itself caught between competing interests. The government flipped several times between a republican system and emperors who often placed their own interests over the people of Mexico. Foreign interests had also set Mexico back. The United States had fought a war which had taken nearly a third of their northern territory, and France had invaded and seized control. Eventually after five years of bitter occupation, they defeated the invaders and reunited the country.
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The end of the French occupation did not bring an end to Mexico's troubles. To rebuild Mexico the President, Benito Juarez, promoted trade with foreign countries, opened new roads, built railroads, and established a telegraph service. He set up a national education system separate from the Catholic Church, and left his country a legacy of relative peace, progress, and reform. Unfortunately, Juarez's era of reforms did not last long. Following his death a new caudillo named Porfirio Diaz came to power after ousting the president in 1876. He had support of the military, and used that power to remove opposition.
During the Diaz years elections became meaningless. Diaz offered land, power, or political favors to anyone who supported him. He terrorized many who refused to support him, ordering them be beaten or put in jail. Using such strong-arm methods, Diaz managed to remain in power for more than thirty years. His slogan called for "Liberty, Order, and Progress." Diaz, however wanted merely "Order and Progress."
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Diaz's use of dictatorial powers ensured order in Mexico. The country also experienced progress as railroads expanded, banks were built, the currency stabilized, and foreign investment grew. On its surface, Mexico seemed to be a stable, prospering country. However, the policies supported by Diaz's government benefited primarily the rich. This prosperity, came at the expense of Mexico's poor as millions struggled to afford food as they continued to grow poorer.
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Frustrated by Diaz's refusal to make meaningful reform or act democratically, Francisco Madero, one of Mexico's richest citizens announced his candidacy for president early in 1910. Soon afterward, Diaz had im arrested. From exile in the United States, Madero called for an armed revolution against Diaz. The revolution began slowly and was very disorganized as leaders arose from different parts of Mexico with their own armies. Many of these leaders came from the peasant class, hoping for property redistribution which would take money from the rich and give to the poor, or break apart the large haciendas owned by the very rich so that it can be given to poor farmers. In the north, Francisco "Pancho" Villa became immensely popular for taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. In the south, the popular leader Emiliano Zapata raised a powerful revolutionary army motivated by his slogan "Tierra y Libertad" (Land and Liberty). Together, revolutionaries defeated Diaz's army and forced him to step down in 1911. It appeared that the revolution was successfully concluded.
Madero was elected president in 1911, but he was unable to unify Mexico's competing interests and their many demands. His policies were seen as too liberal by some and not revolutionary enough by others. Many who had supported Madero, including Villa and Zapata, took up arms against him pushing Mexico into another, and more destructive, revolution. The new president, military leader Victoriano Huerta, was unpopular with the people. After only 15 months as president, he too was overthrown and a new government was set up under Venustiano Carranza. Carranza took control of the government and turned on his former revolutionary allies. Carranza lured Zapata into a trap and murdered him. With Zapata's death, the civil war came to an end. More than a million Mexicans had lost their lives.
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Carranza's new government began to revise Mexico's constitution. It promoted education, land reforms, and workers' rights. Sadly he did not have an opportunity to lead for long as he too was overthrown and later assassinated. The new government stressed nationalism and land reform. Shortly after, a new political party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party took control and did not tolerate opposition. It continued to hold power as a single-party state for decades.
Imperial China Collapses
In the early twentieth century, China was ripe for revolution. For decades China had faced humiliation at the hands of Europeans. Foreign countries controlled its trade and economic resources. Many Chinese believed that modernization and nationalism held the country's keys for survival. They wanted to build up the army and navy, to construct modern factories, and to reform education. Yet others feared change. They believed that China's greatness lay in its traditional ways.
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Among the groups pushing for modernization and nationalization was the Kuomintang (Guomindang), or the Nationalist Party. Its leader Sun Yat-Sen hoped to establish a modern government based on the "Three Principles of the People": (1) nationalism- an end to foreign control, (2) people's rights- democratization, and (3) people's livelihood- economic security for all Chinese. Sun saw nationalism as central to all this and the Kuomintang struggled to create a unified national consciousness for all Chinese citizens.
In 1911 a military mutinies in the military began to spring up throughout the nation, ultimately transforming into a unified Revolutionary Alliance to overthrow the Qing dynasty which had ruled China since 1644. In 1912, Sun Yat-Sen became president of the new Republic of China, putting an end to 3,000 years of imperial rule in China. It is impossible to overstate how revolutionary this transformation was since all of Chinese history had been defined by the dynastic cycle and Confucian principles. Now, the new government would be tasked with forging a new identity while reestablishing a functioning government which could effectively deal with the problems caused by centuries of corruption and European imperialism.
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The new Republic of China under Sun Yat-Sen lacked the authority and military support to secure national unity. In a desperate attempt to hold China together, Sun turned over the presidency to a powerful general, Yuan Shikai, in hopes that his powerful presence would hold China together. Instead, Shikai quickly betrayed the democratic ideals of the revolution and assumed dictatorial powers. His actions sparked local revolts and after the general died in 1916, civil war broke out. Real authority fell into the hands of provincial warlords or powerful military leaders. They ruled territories as large as their armies could conquer.
In 1917, the government in Beijing declared war against Germany, mistakenly believing that for China's participation the thankful Allies would return control of Chinese territories that had belonged to Germany. Instead, the Treaty of Versailles gave those territories to Japan outraging the Chinese. On May 4, 1919, over 3,000 angry students gathered in the center of Beijing. The demonstrations that came to be known as the May Fourth Movement exploded across China as workers, shopkeepers, and professionals all joined the cause and commitment to establishing a strong and modern government in order to end foreign domination of China.
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Though not officially a revolution, the May Fourth Movement began a push by many Chinese to strengthen the central rule of China. Some backed Sun Yat-Sen and the Kuomintang, but others turned against the Kuomintang's belief in Western democracy in favor of communism. In 1921, a group met in Shanghai to organize the Chinese Communist Party. Mo Zedong, an assistant librarian at Beijing University, was among its founders. Later he would become China's greatest revolutionary leader.
The Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was like a firecracker with a very long fuse. The explosion came in 1917, yet the fuse had been burning for nearly half a century. The Russian Empire was the last major absolute monarchy in Europe, and the Czar held autocratic power despite repeated calls for democratic reform. He imposed strict censorship codes on published materials and written documents, including private letters. Secret police monitored all society and teachers were required to file reports on every student. Those who spoke out against the government were sent to remote prisons in Siberia.
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Unlike Western Europe, in the late 19th century Russia was not fully industrialized. In the 1890s, The Czar launched a program to move the country forward. To finance the buildup of Russian industries, the government sought foreign investors and raised taxes. These steps boosted the growth of heavy industry but stirred discontent among the people of Russia. The growth of factories brought grueling work conditions, miserably low wages, and child labor. To help business the government outlawed trade unions and instituted a maximum wage. To try to improve their lives, workers unhappy with their low standard of living and lack of political power, organized strikes and marches in hopes that the czar would reform Russia.
Between 1904 and 1917, Russia faced a series of crises. These events showed the czar's weakness and paved the way for revolution. Following the humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, 200,000 workers and their families approached the czar's Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. They carried a petition asking for better working conditions, more personal freedom, and an elected national legislature. Military leaders ordered soldiers to fire on the crowd. More than 1,000 were wounded and several hundred were killed. Russians named the event "Bloody Sunday."
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Bloody Sunday shocked Russians and Czar Nicholas II reluctantly promised more freedom. He approved the creation of the Duma- Russia's first parliament. When it finally met in 1906 wanted to transform Russia to become a constitutional monarchy similar to Britain. But because he was hesitant to share his power, the czar dissolved the Duma after ten weeks. This act convinced many Russians that reform would be impossible as long as the czar retained power. This meant that the only option for change would be violent revolution.
As a result of all these factors, several revolutionary movements began to grow and compete for power. Groups that followed the views of Karl Marx became increasingly popular, believing that the industrial class of workers would overthrow the czar. These workers would then form a "dictatorship of the proletariat" and rule the country. In 1903 Russian Marxists split over how to achieve revolution. The more moderate Mensheviks wanted to build a broad base of popular support for the revolution while the radical Bolsheviks were committed to instigating revolution by any means necessary.
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The leader of the Bolsheviks was named Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, but he adopted the name Lenin. Lenin had an engaging personality and was an excellent organizer. He was also ruthless. Lenin believed that common people were incapable of starting revolution on their own. His beliefs which became known as Leninism argued that a small number of committed revolutionaries (vanguard party) who were willing to sacrifice everything were necessary to wear away confidence in the government and prevent it from functioning until it eventually collapsed. Lenin believed that once the government collapsed, his party could step in and assume control for the workers to form a new government, a communist government.
In 1914, Nicholas II made the fateful decision to take Russia into World War I. Russia was unprepared to handle the military and economic costs. Its weak generals and poorly equipped troops were no match for the German military and its superior technology. The Russian military leaders believed that its massive army could overwhelm the Germans so they sent waves of Russian soldiers in a frontal assaults against the Germans. The German machine guns mowed down advancing Russians by the thousands. Defeat followed defeat and before a year had passed more than 4 million Russian soldiers had been killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.
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Desperate to change the direction of the war, Nicholas II traveled to the front where he hoped his presence would rally his discouraged troops to victory. His wife, Czarina Alexandra, ran the government while he was away. She ignored the czar's chief advisers. Instead, she fell under the influence of the mysterious monk named Grigori Rasputin. A self-described "holy man," he claimed to have magical healing powers.
Nicholas and Alexandra's son, Alexis, suffered from hemophilia, a life-threatening disease. Rasputin seemed to ease the boy's symptoms. To show her gratitude, Alexandra allowed Rasputin to make key political decisions. He opposed reform measures and obtained powerful positions for his friends. Many within the Russian nobility became angry and jealous of his growing influence, and in 1916 they murdered him.
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Meanwhile, on the war front Russian soldiers mutinied, deserted, or ignored orders. On the homefront, food and fuel supplies were dwindling. Prices were wildly inflated. People from all classes were clamoring for change and an end to the war. Neither Nicholas nor Alexandra proved capable of tackling these enormous problems.
In March 1917, women textile workers in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) led a citywide strike. In the next five days, riots flared up over shortages of bread and fuel. Nearly 200,000 workers swarmed the streets shouting, "Down with the autocracy!" and "Down with the War!" At first the soldiers obeyed orders to shoot the rioters but later sided with them. Quickly the local protest exploded into a full revolution, forcing Czar Nicholas II to abdicate while attempting to return home to confront the crisis. A year later revolutionaries executed Nicholas and his family. The three-century czarist rule of the Romanovs finally collapsed. The revolution succeeded in bringing down the czar, but it failed to establish a strong government to replace his regime.
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Following the Czar's abdication, a new provisional government was established headed by Alexander Kerensky. This government was based on the organization of west European liberal republics. It reestablished the Duma as a representative body that would govern democratically. Kerensky and the new government decided that Russia must continue fighting in World War I. This decision cost it the support of both soldiers and civilians. As the war dragged on, conditions inside Russia worsened. Angry peasants demanded land. City workers grew more radical. Socialist revolutionaries, competing for power, formed soviets. Soviets were local councils consisting of workers, peasants, and soldiers. These Soviets began governing independently of the provisional government in many neighborhoods of important Russian cities and in many circumstances actually exercised greater power than the provisional government. They acted democratically and claimed to speak for the common Russian people. As 1917 dragged on, Russia had a system with dual power, not one but two governments competing for control and a population ripe for another revolution.
Vladimir Lenin, who had been living in exile in Switzerland, was smuggled back into Russia following the February Revolution. The Germans helped him re enter Russia in hopes that Lenin and his Bolshevik supporters would stir unrest and hurt the Russian war effort against Germany. Traveling in a sealed railway boxcar, Lenin reached Petrograd in April 1917.
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Lenin and the Bolsheviks soon gained control of the Petrograd Soviet, as well as the soviets in other major Russian cities. By the autumn of 1917, people in the cities were rallying to the call, "all power to the soviets." Lenin's slogan- "Peace, Land, and Bread"- gained widespread appeal. Lenin decided to take action and seize total control.
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In October, without warning, armed factory workers stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd. Calling themselves the Bolshevik Red Guards, they took over government offices and arrested the leaders of the Provisional government. Kerensky and his colleagues disappeared almost as quickly as the czarist regime they had replaced.
Within days after the Bolshevik takeover, Lenin ordered that all farmland be distributed among the peasants. Lenin and the Bolsheviks gave control of factories to the workers. The Bolshevik government also signed a truce with Germany to stop all fighting and began peace talks. In March 1918, Russia and Germany signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Russia surrendered a large part of its territory to Germany and its allies. The humiliating terms of the treaty triggered widespread anger among many Russians. They objected to the Bolsheviks and their policies and to the murder of the royal family.
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The Bolsheviks now faced a new challenge- stamping out their enemies at home. Their opponents formed the White Army. The White Army was made up of very different groups. There were those who wanted democratic government, and even socialists who opposed Lenin's style of socialism. Only the desire to defeat the Bolsheviks united the White Army. The groups barely cooperated with each other. At one point there were three White Armies fighting against the Bolsheviks'.
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Lenin put Leon Trotsky in charge of building a new modern army to fight the emerging threats from within Russia. Trotsky expertly organized and commanded the new Red Army from 1918 to 1920 in the Russian Civil War. Several Western nations, including the the United States, sent military aid and forces to Russia to help the White Army. Despite the foreign aid and support, the Red Army was able to successfully crush all opposition. The war was extremely deadly, killing around 14 million Russians in the three-year struggle and famine that followed. The victory showed that the Bolsheviks were able both to seize power, and ruthless enough to maintain it.
War and revolution destroyed the Russian economy. Trade was at a standstill. Industrial production dropped, and many skilled workers fled to other countries. Lenin turned to reviving the economy and restructuring the government. In March 1921, Lenin temporarily put aside his plan for a state-controlled economy. Instead he resorted to a small-scale version of capitalism called the New Economic Policy (NEP). The reforms und the NEP allowed peasants to sell their surplus crops instead of turning them over to the government. The government kept control of major industries, banks, and means of communication, but it let small factories, businesses, and farms operate under private ownership. The government also encouraged foreign investment. Thanks to these new policies, the country slowly recovered.
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Bolshevik leaders saw nationalism as a threat to unity and party loyalty. To keep nationalism in check, Lenin organized Russia into several self-governing republics under the central government. In 1922, the country was named the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), in honor of the councils that helped launch the Bolshevik Revolution.
The Bolsheviks renamed their party the Communist Party. The name came from the writings of Karl Marx. He used the word communism to describe the classless society that would exist after workers had seized power. In 1924, the Communists created a constitution based on socialist and democratic principles. In reality, the Communist Party held all power. Lenin had established a dictatorship of the Communist Party, not a "dictatorship of the proletariat," as Marx had promoted.
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Lenin suffered a stroke in 1922. He survived, but the incident set in motion competition for heading up the Communist Party. Two of the most notable men were Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. Stalin was cold, hard, and impersonal. Stalin strategically worked behind the scenes to move his supporters into positions of power. By 1928, Stalin was in total command of the Communist Party and assumed absolute power as a dictator. Stalin worked to establish total control of all aspects of life in the Soviet Union. He controlled not only the government, but also the economy and many aspects of citizens' private lives.
Nationalism in India & Southwest Asia
Following World War I the stirring of nationalism spread to India and the Middle East. To aid in their quest for independence, World War I had revealed cracks in the invincible perception that the British had tried to portray themselves to aid in their dominance of the region. Asians saw an empire decaying and in decline. This weakness encouraged the elites of the countries to move for self-determination. Many of these same elites had attended British schools and learned European views of nationalism and democracy which they would apply to their own country. As these nationalist movements grew they reshaped the map, inspiring others to stand against imperialism. The foundation of the European order suddenly became vulnerable and the twentieth century would see it unwind, one nationalist movement at a time.
Indian Nationalism Grows
Two groups formed to rid India of British rule: the primarily Hindu Indian National Congress in 1885, and the Muslim League in 1906. The Indian National Congress sought to create a unified India based on the principle of Indian nationalism. One India for Indians. The Muslim League however viewed independence differently. As Muslims, they feared that if independence came to India that a Hindu majority would dominate the Muslim minority in a democracy leading to mistreatment and inequality. To prevent this, the Muslim League proposed dividing British India to create a Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The only thing that was certain was that the British needed to leave India.
Until World War I, the vast majority of Indians had little interest in nationalism. The situation changed as over a million Indians enlisted in the British army. In return for their service, the British government promised reforms that would eventually lead to self-government. After the war, Britain renegged on their promise and they were once again treated as second-class citizens. Radical nationalists carried out acts of violence to show their hatred of British rule. To curb dissent, in 1919 the British passed the Rowlatt Acts. These laws allowed the government to jail protesters without trial for as long as two years. To Western-educated Indians, denial of a trial by jury violated their individual rights.
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To protest the Rowlatt Acts, around 10,000 Indians flocked to Amristar, a major city in the Punjab in the spring of 1919. The demonstration alarmed the British. In response the British commander ordered his troops to fire on the crowd without warning. The shooting in the enclosed courtyard continued for ten minutes. Official reports showed nearly 400 Indians died and about 1,200 were wounded. News of the slaughter, called the Amritsar Massacre, sparked an explosion of anger across India. Almost overnight, millions of Indians changed from loyal British subjects into nationalists. These Indians demanded independence.
Mohandas Gandhi & Nonviolence
The Amritsar Massacre set the stage for Mohandas Gandhi to emerge as the leader of the independence movement. Gandhi's strategy for battling injustice evolved from his deeply religious approach to political activity. His teachings blended ideas from all of the major world religions, including Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. Soon they began calling him the Mahatma, meaning "great soul." When the British failed to punish the officers responsible for the Amritsar Massacre, Gandhi urged the Indian National Congress to follow a policy of noncooperation with the British government. In 1920, the Congress Party endorsed civil disobedience, the deliberate and public refusal to obey an unjust law, and nonviolence as a means to achieve independence. Gandhi then launched his campaign to weaken the British government's authority and economic power over India through boycotts, mass strikes, and demonstrations. For example, he urged all Indians to weave their own cloth and only wear homespun clothing. As a result of the boycott, the sale of British cloth in India dropped sharply.
In 1930, Gandhi organized a demonstration to defy the hated Salt Acts. According to these British laws, Indians could buy salt from no other source but the government. They also had to pay sales taax on salt. To show their opposition, Gandhi and his followers walked about 240 miles to the sea coast. There they began to make their own salt by collecting seawater and letting it evaporate. This peaceful protest was called the Salt March. Soon afterward, some demonstrators planned a march to a site where the British government processed salt. They intended to shut this saltworks down. Police officers with steel-tipped clubs attacked the demonstrators. An American journalist was an eyewitness to the carnage as the protesters were beaten. Still the people continued to march peacefully, refusing to defend themselves against their attackers. Newspapers across the globe carried the journalist's story, which won worldwide support for Gandhi's independence movement.
Forced with growing dissent in India and at home, the British Parliament passed the Government of India Act which provided local self-government and limited democratic elections, but not total independence. This act fueled mounting tentions between Hindus and Muslims which ultimately led to partition and violence.
The Rise of Ataturk & the Republic of Turkey
The breakup of the Ottoman Empire and growing Western political and economic interest in Southwest Asia spurred the rise of nationalism in this region. Just as the people of India fought to have their own nation after World War I, the people of Southwest Asia also launched independence movements to rid themselves of imperial rulers. At the end of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was forced to give up all its territories except Turkey. In 1919, Greek soldiers invaded Turkey and threatened to conquer it. The Turkish sultan was powerless to stop the Greeks. However, in 1922 the Turkish military commander Mustafa Kemal successfully led Turkish nationalists in fighting back the Greeks. After winning a peace, the nationalists overthrew the last Ottoman sultan and established the Republic of Turkey.
In 1923, Kemal became the president of the new Republic of Turkey, the first republic in Southwest Asia. He was committed to transforming Turkey into a modern nation. To achieve this goal he ushered in these sweeping reforms:
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Separated the laws of Islam from the laws of the nation.
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abolished religious courts and created a new legal system based on European law
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granted women the right to vote and hold public office
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launched government-funded programs to industrialize Turkey and to spur economic growth.
Kemal died in 1938. From his leadership, Turkey gained a new sense of its national identity. His influence was so strong that the Turkish people gave him the name Ataturk- Father of the Turks.
Persia Becomes Iran
Before World War I, both Great Britain and Russia had established spheres of influence in the ancient country of Persia. After the war, when Russia was still reeling from the Bolshevik Revolution, the British tried to take over all of Persia. This maneuver triggered a nationalist revolt in Persia. In 1921, a Persian army officer seized power. In 1925 he deposed the ruling shah.
Persia's new leader, RezaShah Pahlavi, like Kemal in Turkey, set out to modernize his country. He established public schools, built roads and railroads, promoted industrial growth, and extended women's rights. Unlike Kemal, Reza Shah Pahlavi kept all power in his own hands. In 1935, he changed the name of the country from the Greek name Persia to the traditional name Iran.
Arab Nationalism & the Mandate System
Arabs of the Middle East had lived under Ottoman rule for centuries. During World War I, British envoys had promised Arabs independence if they would take up arms and fight alongside the British against the Ottomans. Arabs agreed, and despite their aid in the Arab Revolt to push the Ottomans out of the Middle East the victorious Allies chose instead to establish mandates rather than grant Arabs full independence. The intention of the mandates was to prepare Arabs for self-rule, but in reality the British and French officials did not respect Arab leaders and governed them the same as colonies. They played Arab tribes against one another and encouraged disunity.
As time progressed Arab nationalism grew amongst the people of the Middle East as an anti-imperialist movement. The mandate system led many Arabs to see Europeans as liars and oppressors leading to revolts in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria. Ultimately these conflicts forced the British and French to grant Arabs greater autonomy and eventually independence. Despite their legal independence, Europeans remained entangled in the Middle East due to the discovery of oil, a discovery that brought both wealth and war to the region.
Oil Drives Development
In Saudi Arabia, Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud successfully unified most of the Arabian Peninsula to create the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. While Turkey broke with many Islamic traditions, Saudi Arabia held strictly to Islamic law. Loyalty to the Saudi government was based on custom, religion, and family ties. Like Kemal and Reza Shah, Ibn Sud brought some modern technology, such as telephones and radios, to his country. However, modernization in Saudi Arabia was limited to religiously acceptable areas. There also were no efforts to begin to practice democracy.
While nationalism steadily emerged as a major force in Southwest Asia, the region's economy was also taking a new direction. The rising demand for petroleum products in industrialized countries brought new oil explorations to the Middle East. During the 1920s and 1930s, European and American companies discovered enormous oil deposits in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. Foreign businesses invested huge sums of money to develop these oil fields. For example, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, a British company, started developing the oil fields of Iran. In Saudi Arabia, American entrepreneurs created Aramco to search for and extract oil. Geologists later learned that the land around the Persian Gulf has nearly two-thirds of the world's known supply of oil.
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This important resource led to rapid and dramatic economic changes and development. Because oil brought huge profits, Western nations tried to dominate the region.
The wealth brought to Southwest Asia by the discovery of oil proved to be a mixed blessing for the Arabs who lived there. Oil wealth was used by leaders such as Ibn Saud to block nationalism and prevent democratization in Saudi government. To encourage stability, the United States supported the Saudi regime despite its mistreatment of its people. Over time Saudi Arabia transformed into a Rentier State, a country which received income without an increase in productivity. This meant that the people of Saudi Arabia received income without work from the government which over time discouraged economic development of the country. Dependent on government aid, citizens of the region did not industrialize the nation, instead relying exclusively on income being shared by the government for the extraction of oil from the country. Today this remains an important issue because the country remains largely un-industrialized and dependent on their oil industry.
The Interwar Years
The First World War had left Europe in shambles. In both human suffering and economic terms, the cost of World War I was immense. The Great War left every major European country nearly bankrupt and struggling to maintain their position of dominance in the world. War's end saw the appearance of new democratic nation-states with the overthrow of Europe's last absolute rulers. Liberal democracy seemed victorious following the destruction of the war. However, the financial crisis caused by the Treaty of Versailles and the eventual collapse of the Great Depression sent voters into panic, rushing into the arms of authoritarian leaders who promised security. The hope and promise that the world would never again plunge itself into global war would be dashed as these new aggressive and popular dictators would once again march their countries into an even greater war. The largest and most deadly war in all of human history.
Postwar Europe
The Treaty of Versailles completely redrew the map of Europe. The ancient empires of Europe were abruptly replaced by smaller nation-states. Many citizens of Europe had little experience with representative government. For generations, kings and emperors had ruled Germany and the new nations formed from the the dismantling of Austria-Hungary. Even in France and Italy, whose parliaments had existed before the Great War, the large number of political parties made effective government difficult. Some countries had a dozen or more political groups, some like communists who argued for radical change and revolution. In these countries, it was almost impossible for one party to win enough support to govern effectively.
Germany's new democratic government was set up in 1919. Known as the Weimar Republic, it had serious weaknesses from the start. First, Germany lacked a strong democratic tradition. Furthermore, postwar Germany had several major political parties which prevented stable government. Worst of all, millions of Germans blamed the Weimar government, not their wartime leaders, for the country's defeat and postwar humiliation caused by the Treaty of Versailles.
Germany also faced enormous economic problems that begun during the war. Unlike Britain and France, Germany had not greatly increased its wartime taxes. To pay for the expenses of the war, the Germans had simply printed money. After Germany's defeat, this paper money steadily lost its value. Burdened with heavy reparations payments to the Allies, Germany printed even more money. As a result, the value of Germany's currency fell sharply. Hyperinflation set in. Germans needed more and more money to buy even the most basic goods. For example, a loaf of bread which cost less than a single mark in 1918, cost more than 160 marks in 1922, and around 200 billion marks by late 1923. People took wheelbarrows full of money to buy food. As a result, many Germans began to question the value of democracy. Many throughout Germany looked for a strong leader who could take charge and return Germany to prestige and prosperity.
To help recover from the postwar collapse of Germany's economy the United States began to provide for loans which would stabilize Germany's economy. These loans allowed Germany to pay its reparations to Britain and France, who used those payments to repay their own debts from the war. This created an international economic network, supported entirely by American banks. If the U.S. economy weakened, the whoe world's economic system might collapse. In 1929, it did.
The Great Depression
By 1929, American factories were turning out nearly half of the world's industrial goods. The rising productivity led to enormous profits. However, most Americans were too poor to buy the goods being produced. This led many to purchase goods with credit. Even still, the factories produced more. By 1929 many store owners were unable to sell all their goods, forcing them to cut back their orders from factories. Factories in turn reduced production and laid off workers. A downward economic spiral began. As more workers lost their jobs, families bought fewer goods. In turn, factories made further cuts in production and laid off workers. To make matters worse, those workers who lost their jobs began to default on their loans at a staggering pace. Combined with the simultaneous foreclosures of thousands of farms, banks began to close. As banks closed, people throughout the country lost all of their savings and were left with nothing because the laissez faire attitude of American government offered no protections for people's savings. This collapse of the banks would eventually result in the Stock Market Crash, signaling the start of the Great Depression.
The collapse of the American economy sent shock waves around the world. Worried American bankers demanded repayment of their overseas loans, and American investors withdrew their money from Europe. America and European nations instituted protectionist tariffs which caused world trade to drop 65%. Throughout the world unemployment rates soared, as the global economy was left in shambles.
The World Confronts the Crisis
The Great Depression forced democracies to reevaluate their political and economic systems. Each country met the crisis in its own way. Britain, France, and many Scandinavian countries adopted socialist measures to help workers. In the United States, the new president Franklin Roosevelt implemented the New Deal in which the government began the building of large public works products to provide jobs for the unemployed. Regulations were imposed to reform the stock market and the banking system. Unemployment remained high, yet these countries avoided political extremes and preserved democracy.
Other nations throughout the world lost faith in democratic government and turned to extreme statist systems which stressed nationalism and submission to the leadership of powerful demagogues. This rise of dictators would ultimately lead Europe and the world down a path to war once again.
Suplemental Videos
Crash Course: The Great Depression
Crash Course: The New Deal
Totalitarianism
Although the democracies of the West managed to maintain their democratic institutions, many others chose more extreme methods to counter the crises of the interwar period. Many countries around the world turned to authoritarian leaders who promised to revive their economies and punish those responsible for the hard times. These leaders transformed their governments and destroyed all those who stood in their way. Unlike the absolute monarchs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these leaders centralized state control over ever aspect of public and private life. The widespread use of mass communication made it possible to reach into all aspects of citizens' lives, creating a rhetoric and prescribed method of thought. Dissent was forbidden and opposition was met with swift punishment. The values of the enlightenment were replaced with conformity, censorship, and most of all obedience. By bringing their country into militant order, they took the first steps towards a second and more devestating global war.
 Benito Mussolini |  Adolf Hitler |
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 Joseph Stalin |
A Government of Total Control
The term totalitarianism describes a government that takes total, centralized, state control over every aspect of public and private life. Totalitarian leaders appear to provide a sense of security and to give direction for the future that seems uncertain.
Totalitarianism is led by a dynamic leader who can build support for his policies and justify his actions. Often the leader utilizes secret police to crush opposition and create a sense of fear among the people. No one is exempt from suspicion or accusations that he or she is an enemy of the state.
Dictators of totalitarian states use terror and violence to force obedience and to crush opposition. In a totalitarian state, the police serve to enforce the central government's policies. They may do this by spying on the citizens or by intimidating them. Sometimes they use brutal force and even murder to achieve their goals.
Totalitarian states rely on indoctrination- instruction in the government's beliefs- to mold people's minds. Control of education is absolutely essential to glorify the leader and his policies and to convince all citizens that their unconditional loyalty and support are required. Indoctrination begins with very young children, is encouraged by youth groups, and is strongly enforced by schools. To spread their message to all citizens, totalitarians use propaganda used to sway people to accept certain beliefs or actions. No publication is made without permission of the state. Citizens are surrounded with false information that appears to be true. Suggesting that the information is incorrect is considered an act of treason and severely punished.
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Totalitarians often create "enemies of the state" to blame for things that go wrong. Frequently these enemies are members of religious or ethnic groups but they can also be certain social classes as well. These groups are easily identified and are subjected to campaigns of terror and violence. They may be forced to live in certain areas or are subjected to rules that apply only to them.
The Rise of Fascism
Fascism was a new, militant political movement that emphasized loyalty to the state and obedience to its leader. Unlike communism, fascism had no clearly defined theory or program. Nevertheless, most Fascists shared several ideas. They preached an extreme form of nationalism, and argued that nations must struggle for dominance- peaceful states were doomed to be conquered. They pledged loyalty to an authoritarian leader who guided and brought order to the state. In each nation, Fascists wore uniforms of a certain color, used special salutes, and held mass rallies.
Fascism's rise in Italy was fueled by bitter disappointment of failure to win large territorial gins at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Soldiers returned to rising inflation and unemployment which frustrated them, making many believe that their democratic government was helpless to deal with the country's problems. They wanted a leader who would take action.
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A newspaper editor and politician named Benito Mussolini boldly promised to rescue Italy by reviving its economy and rebuilding its armed forces. He vowed to give Italy strong leadership which could return Italy to the glory of the Roman Empire. As economic conditions worsened, the popularity of his Fascist Party increased. Finally, Mussolini publicly criticized Italy's government. Groups of Fascists wearing black shirts attacked Communists and Socialists on the streets. Because Mussolini played on the fear of a workers' revolt, he began to to win support from the middle class, the aristocracy, and industrial leaders.
In October 1922, about 30,000 Fascists marched on Rome. They demanded that King Victor Emmanuel III put Mussolini in charge of the government. The king decided that Mussolini was the best hope for his dynasty to survive. After widespread violence and a threatened uprising, Mussolini took power. Mussolini was called Il Duce, or the leader. He abolished democracy and outlawed all political parties except the Fascists. Secret police jailed his opponents. Government censors forced radio stations and publications to broadcast or publish only Fascist doctrines. Mussolini outlawed strikes. He sought to control the economy by allying the Fascists with the industrialists and large landowners. However, Mussolini never had the total control achieved by Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler in Germany.
Stalin Creates a Dictatorship
Following the Russian Civil War, Lenin struggled to implement his communist dreams because the war and revolution had destroyed the Russian economy. Trade was at a standstill and industrial production had almost stopped. Lenin temporarily put aside his plan for a state-controlled economy and instead brought some aspects of capitalism back in what he called the New Economic Policy. Lenin died in 1924 leaving a power struggle between his most faithful supporter Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin. Stalin was cold, hard, and impersonal. For the last two years of Lenin's life Stalin worked behind the scenes to move his supporters into positions of power. Lenin believed that Stalin was a dangerous man, but his warnings went unheard. By 1928, Stalin was in total command of the Communist Party and wielded absolute power as a dictator.
Stalin aimed to create a perfect Communist state in Russia. To realize his vision, Stalin planned to transform the Soviet Union into a totalitarian state. He began by destroying his enemies- real and imagined. Stalin's secret police monitored telephone lines, read mail, and planted informers everywhere. Even children told authorities about disloyal remarks they heard at home. Every family came to fear the knock on the door in the early morning hours, which usually meant the arrest of a family member for dissidence. The secret police arrested and executed millions of so-called traitors​. In 1934, Stalin turned against members of the Communist Party who he began to distrust through his growing paranoia. In 1937, he launched the Great Purge, a campaign of terror directed at eliminating anyone who threatened his power. Thousands of old Bolsheviks who helped stage the Revolution of 1917 stood trial and were executed or sent to labor camps. By the time the purge ended in 1938, Stalin had gained total control of the Soviet government and Communist Party. Historians estimate that during this time he was responsibile for 8-13 million deaths.
Stalin's government controlled all newspapers, motion pictures, radio, and other sources of information. Many Soviet writers, composers, and other artists also fell victim to official censorship. Stalin would not tolerate individual creativity that did not conform to the views of the state. Soviet newspaers and radio broadcasts glorified the achievements of communism, Stalin, and his economic program.
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By the mid-1930s, Stalin had forcibly transformed the Soviet Union into a totalitarian regime and an industrial and political power. He stood unopposed as dictator and maintained his authority over the Communist Party with fear. He ushered in a period of total social control and rule by terror, rather than constitutional government.
Adolf Hitler & the Rise of Nazism in Germany
Adolf Hitler's early life had been marked by disappointment. As a young man in Austria, he had failed as an artist and even for a period been homeless. When World War I broke out, Hitler found a new beginning. He volunteered for the German army and was twice awarded the Iron Cross, a medal for bravery.
At the end of the war, Hitler settled in Munich. In 1919, he joined a tiny right-wing political group. This group shared his belief that Germany had to overturn the Treaty of Versailles and combat communism. The group later named itself the National Socialist German Workers' Party, called Nazi for short. Its policies formed the German brand of fascism known as Nazism. The party adopted the swastika as its symbol and following the model of Mussolini set up its own private militia called the storm troopers or Brown Shirts.
Within a short time Hitler rose through the ranks of the Nazi party thanks to his skill as a public speaker. His followers began to call him Führer, or leader. Inspired by Mussolini's march on Rome, Hitler and the Nazis plotted to seize power in Munich in 1923. The attempt failed, and Hitler was arrested. He was tried for treason but only sentenced to five years in prison. He served less than nine months.
While in jail, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf which set forth his beliefs and his goals for Germany. Hitler asserted that the Germans, which he called Aryans, were a master race. He believed other races of humanity as inferior, particularly Jews, believing that these races were in a constant war to dominate the earth. He called the Treaty of Versailles an outrage and vowed to regain German lands. Hitler also declared that Germany was overcrowded and needed more lebensraum, or living space. He promised to get that space by conquering Eastern Europe and Russia. After leaving prison in 1924, Hitler revived the Nazi Party. Most Germans ignored him and his hate-filled message until the Great Depression ended the nation's brief postwar recovery. When American loans stopped, the German economy collapsed. Civil unrest broke out. Frightened and confused, Germans were desparate for security and a strong leader. They turned to Hitler.
By 1932 the Nazi Party had become the largest political party in Germany. Conservative leaders believed that they could control Hitler and made him Chancellor under President Hindenburg. Once in office, Hitler called for new elections. Six days before the elections a fire destroyed the Reichstag building where the parliament met. The Nazis blamed the Communists. By stirring up fear of Communists, the Nazi won a majority and began taking steps to transform Germany into a totalitarian state. After the passage of the Enabling Act, Hitler banned all political parties other than the Nazis and had all opponents arrested. He then created an elite military unit called the SS (Schutzstaffel) which was loyal only to Hitler. In 1934 his secret police, the Gestapo, began a terror campaign which arrested and murdered hundreds of Hitler's enemies in what became known as the Night of the Long Knives. This sudden attack shocked most Germans into total obedience.
Hitler wanted to completely transform German life. To counter the effects of the Great Depression, Hitler took command of the economy by dissolving labor unions and putting millions of Germans to work by rebuilding the German military. Hitler also took control of the media, using the press, radio, literature, and film to create pro-Nazi propaganda. Books that did not conform to Nazi beliefs were burned in huge bonfires. School children joined the Hitler Youth where they were indoctrinated with Nazi beliefs. By the time World War II began in 1939, Germany was remade to conform with Hitler's beliefs; those who did not comply were eliminated.
Hatred of Jews, or Antisemitism, was a key part of Nazi ideology. Although Jews were less than 1% of the population, the Nazis used them as scapegoats for all of Germany's troubles. Beginning in 1933, the Nazis passed the Nuremberg laws, depriving Jews of most of their rights. Violence against Jews mounted. On what became known as Kristallnacht, or the Night of the Broken Glass, Nazi mobs began a state-sanctioned rampage which destroyed the homes and property of Jews throughout Germany. This began the process of eliminating Jews from German life which would progress from isolation to eventual extermination.
With complete control of Germany, Hitler began taking the steps which would ultimately lead Europe back to war by aggressively taking territory. First he re-militarized the Rhineland which had been taken from Germany after the First World War. He then annexed Austria. Next, Hitler set his sights on the German-speaking portion of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland. To preserve peace, Britain and France gave in to Hitler's demands at the Munich Conference believing that this agreement could prevent war. This is called appeasement. Less than six months later, Hitler reneged on his promise and annexed all of Czechoslovakia. Shortly thereafter, Mussolini seized Albania. Appeasement had convinced both Hitler and Mussolini that the Allies would not risk war, encouraging their aggression which would finally push Europe to war following Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939.
Lie Hitler and Mussolini, Japan's militarists were supernationalists. Unlike the Fascists in Europe however, the militarists did not try to establish a new system of government. They made the emperor Hirohito the symbol of state power. Their aggression would be done in his name.
The first target of Japanese expansionism was China's northeast province Manchuria. It was an area rich in iron and coal. In 1931, the Japanese army seized Manchuria despite objections from the Japanese parliament. The army then set up a puppet government. Japanese engineers and technicians began arriving in large numbers to build mines and factories. Four years later, a border incident touched off a full-scale war between Japan and China. Japanese forces swept into northern China. Despite having a million soldiers, China's army was no match for the better equipped and trained Japanese.
Japanese Militarism & Expansion
Although the Japanese government was essentially democratic, its military was largely independent, answering only to the emperor. As long as Japan remained prosperous, the civilian government kept power. But when the Great Depression struck in 1929, many Japanese blamed the government. Military leaders took action to restore traditional control of the government to the military which immediately began an expansionist policy to solve the country's economic problems. They planned a Pacific empire that included conquering China and East Asia, providing Japan with raw materials and markets for its goods that would help their recovery.
Beijing and other northern cities as well as the capital, Nanjing, fell to the Japanese in 1937. Japanese troops killed tens of thousands of citizens and brutalized the population of the city in which has come to be known as the Rape of Nanking. Despite these extreme losses, the Chinese would not surrender and the war continued, eventually becoming part of World War II.
Suplemental Videos
Crash Course: Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution of 1917
World War II
During the 1930s Hitler played on the hopes and fears of the Western democracies. Each time the Nazi dictator grabbed new territory, he would declare an end to his demands. Peace seemed guaranteed, until Hitler moved again. When Hitler marched into Poland in 1939, the French and British finally declared War on Germany initiating the largest war in human history. This war was truly global, involving every great power by land, sea, and air. The war would last six long years and caused more death and destruction than any other conflict in history, leaving more than 60 million dead. Another 50 million people were uprooted from their homes. But from the despair of war a new world was forged, forever changing the political landscape across the globe.
Germany's Lightning Attack
After signing a nonaggression pact with the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Hitler quickly moved ahead with his plans to conquer Poland to acquire lebensraum for the German people. His surprise attack took place at dawn on September 1, 1939. German tanks and troop trucks rumbled across the Polish border. At the same time, German aircraft and artillery began a merciless bombing of Poland's capital, Warsaw. Although France and Britain declared war on Germany, they were unable to stop Germany due to the speed of the German advance. This strategy became known as the Blitzkrieg or "lightning war." It involved using fast-moving airplanes and tanks, followed by massive infantry forces, to take enemy defenders by surprise and quickly overwhelm them. On September 17, Stalin sent the Soviet Red Army to occupy the eastern half of Poland. In only 35 days Poland was wiped off the map and Hitler annexed the western half of Poland and Stalin annexed the east.
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After they declared war in Germany, the French and British had mobilized their armies. They expected a war similar to the First World War, so they built defensive positions and prepared for a war of attrition. They waited for the Germans to attack- but nothing happened. German soldiers jokingly called it the sitzkrieg, or "sitting war." Some newspapers referred to it simply as the "phony war." Suddenly, on April 9 1940, the calm ended and the Germans launched a surprise invasion of Denmark and Norway. In just four hours Denmark fell. Two months later, Norway surrendered as well.
In May 1940 the "phony war" came to an abrupt end when Hitler began a dramatic sweep through the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. This was part of a strategy to strike at France. Keeping the Allies attention on those countries, Hitler then sent an even larger force of tanks and troops through the Ardennes forest. This was a heavily wooded area in northern France and Belgium. Moving through the forest, the Germans bypassed the French defenses and reached the country's northern coast in ten days. The German forces then swung north again to trap the Allied forces.
Outnumbered, outgunned, and pounded from the air, the Allies retreated to the beaches of Dunkirk. In one of the most heroic acts of the war, Great Britain set out to rescue the army. It sent a fleet of about 850 ships across the English Channel to Dunkirk. Along with Royal Navy ships, civilians craft- including yachts, lifeboats, motorboats, paddle steamers, and fishing boats- joined the rescue effort. Under heavy fire from German bombers, the amatuer armada sailed back and for from Britain to Dunkirk, carrying some 338,000 battle-weary soldiers to safety.
Following Dunkirk, resistance in France began to crumble. By June 14, the Germans had taken Paris. Accepting the inevitable, French leaders surrendered on June 22, 1940. In a symbolic gesture, Hitler forced the French to sign the armistice in the same train car that the Germans signed the armistice that ended World War I. The Germans took control of the northern part of the country. They left the southern part to a puppet government headquartered in the city of Vichy. After France fell, Charles de Gaulle, a French general, set up a government-in-exile in London. He committed all his energy to reconquering France and called on the people of France to join him in resisting the Germans.
With the fall of France, Great Britain stood alone against the Nazis. Winston Churchill, the new British prime minister, had already declared that the nation would never give in. Hitler put that declaration to the test in the Battle of Britain. To clear the way for invasion, the Germans needed to knock out the Royal Air Force (RAF). In the summer of 1940, the Luftwaffe, Germany's air force, began bombing Great Britain. At first, the Germans targeted British airfields and aircraft factories. But starting in September, they began focusing on the cities, especially London, to break the British morale. Despite the destruction and loss of life, the British did not waver. Despite being badly outnumbered, the RAF used radar to turn the tide by launching attacks against German bombers.
To avoid the RAF's attacks, the Germans gave up daylight raids in favor of night bombing. At sunset, the wail of sirens filled the air as Londoners flocked to the subways, which served as makeshift air-raid shelters. The Battle of Britain continued until May 10, 1941. Stunned by British resistance, Hitler decided to call off his attacks and instead focus on the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe.
The stubborn resistance of the British in the Battle of Britain caused a shift in Hitler's strategy in Europe. The German army swept across the Balkans. By early 1941, he had persuaded Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary to join the Axis powers. Yugoslavia and Greece resisted, Hitler invaded both. Yugoslavia fell in 11 days. Greece surrendered in 17. By the summer of 1941, Hitler was the master of Europe, with only Britain still resisting.
Hitler Invades the Soviet Union
With the Balkans firmly in control, Hitler could move ahead with Operation Barbarossa, his plan to invade the Soviet Union. Early in the morning of June 22, 1941 the German tanks and aircrafts rushed across the Russian border. The Soviet Union was not prepared for this attack. Although it had the largest army in the world, its troops were neither well equipped nor well trained. To make matters worse, many of the Soviet Union's best generals had died in the Great Purge, meaning that the military was headed by inexperienced leaders that were unable to confront the German Blitzkrieg.
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The invasion rolled on week after week until the Germans had pushed 500 miles inside the Soviet Union. As the Soviet troops retreated, they burned and destroyed everything in the enemy's path. The Russians had used this scorched-earth strategy against Napoleon. On September 8, German forces put Leningrad under siege. To force a surrender, Hitler was ready to starve the city's more than 2.5 million inhabitants. German bombs destroyed warehouses where food was stored. Desperately hungry, people began eating cattle and horse feed, as well as cats and dogs and finally crows and rats. Nearly one million people died in Leningrad during the winter of 1941-42. Yet the city refused to fall.
Further south, the German military drove deep into the heart of the Soviet Union. By December, the Germans had advanced to the outskirts of Moscow. Soviet General Georgi Zhukov counterattacked. As temperatures fell Hitler issued the order: "No retreat!" German troops dug in about 125 miles west of Moscow.
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When summer arrived, Hitler sent his Sixth Army to seize the oil fields in the Caucasus Mountains. The army was also to capture Stalingrad, a major industrial center on the Volga River.
Japan's Pacific Campaign
Like Hitler, Japan's military leaders also had dreams of empire. Japan began its expansion in 1931 when Japanese troops took over Manchuria. Six years later, Japanese armies swept into the heartland of China. They expected quick victory. Chinese resistance, however, caused the war to drag on. This placed a strain on Japan's economy. To increase their resources, Japanese leaders looked toward the rich European colonies of Southeast Asia.
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To stop the Japanese advance, the United States government sent aid to strengthen Chinese resistance and cut off oil shipments to Japan. Despite the oil shortage, the Japanese continued their conquests. They hoped to catch the European colonial powers by surprise while their attention was focused on Germany in Europe. So they planned massive attacks on British and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia and on American outposts in the Pacific simultaneously. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Japan's greatest naval strategist, also called for an attack on the U.S. fleet in Hawaii. It was, he said, "a dagger pointed at (Japan's) throat" and must be destroyed. The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 stunned Americans who had previously felt safe from the conflict raging across the globe. Within two hours, the Japanese had sunk or damaged 19 ships, including 8 battleships, and destroyed more than 180 aircraft. More than 2,300 Americans were killed and over 1,100 wounded. The next day, President Roosevelt addressed Congress asking for a declaration of war. With the United States entry into the conflict the war became a truly global struggle of Axis against the Allies.
Almost at the same time of the Pearl Harbor Attack, the Japanese launched bombing raids on the British colony of Hong Kong and American-controlled Guam and Wake Island. They also landed an invasion force in Thailand. The Japanese then turned their attention to the American colony of the Philippines. After seizing Hong Kong from the British, they invaded Malaya from the sea and overland from Thailand. By February 1942, the Japanese had reached Singapore, strategically located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. After a fierce pounding, the colony surrendered. Within a month, the Japanese had conquered the resource-rich Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). The Japanese also moved westward, taking Burma. From there they threatened to strike against India, the largest of Great Britain's colonies. Japan had taken control of more than 1 million square miles of Asian land. About 150 million people lived in this vast area. Prior to the war Japan had tried to win the support of Asians with the anti-colonialist idea of "East Asia for the Asiatics." After victory, however, the Japanese quickly made it clear that they had come as conquerors. They often treated the people of their new colonies with extreme cruelty.
However, the Japanese reserved the most brutal treatment for Allied prisoners. The Japanese considered it dishonorable to surrender, and they had contempt for the prisoners of war in their charge. On the Bataan Death March- a forced march of more than 50 miles up the peninsula- the Japanese subjected their captives to terrible cruelties. Of the approximately 70,000 prisoners who started the march, only 54,000 survived. Throughout the war, both American and Japanese soldiers often refused to take prisoners. Soldiers employed a level of brutality far greater than the European War against one another and civilians.
After the string of victories the Japanese seemed unbeatable. Nonetheless, the Allies-mainly Americans and Australians- were anxious to strike back in the Pacific. The United States in particular wanted revenge for Pearl Harbor. In April of 1942 the Americans bombed Tokyo and several other Japanese cities. The bombs did little damage. The raid, however, made an important psychological point to both Americans and Japanese: Japan was vulnerable to attack. Slowly, the Allies turned the tide of the war.
Two major sea battles halted the Japanese attack, the Battle of the Coral Sea, and the Battle of Midway. Both battles depended on a new kind of naval warfare- aircraft carriers. The opposing ships did not fire a single shot at each other. In fact, they often could not see one another. Instead, airplanes taking off from huge aircraft carriers attacked the ships. In the Battle of the Coral Sea the Allies suffered more losses in ships and troops than the Japanese, but they had stopped Japan's southward advance. The Battle of Midway however was a crushing defeat for the Japanese. American pilots destroyed 332 Japanese planes, all four aircraft carriers, and onse support ship were sunk. The Battle turned the tide of the war by crushing Japan's ability to launch offensive attacks across the vast distances of the Pacific Ocean. For the remainder of the war Japan would be forced to fight a defensive war.
The Tide Turns on Two Fronts in Europe
Late in 1942 the Allies began to turn the tide of war in both the European and Pacific Theaters of the war by winning important battles which forced the German and Japanese armies into retreat. First, the British under General Bernard Montgomery fought fiercely to drive back the Germans near the Egyptian village of El Alamein. As the Germans slowly retreated west across North Africa the United States landed in Morocco and Algeria to advanced from the west. Caught between two armies, the German Afrika Korps was finally crushed in May 1943.
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As the Germans suffered defeats in North Africa, German armies met their most devastating defeats on the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union. The Battle of Stalingrad began on August 23, 1942. The Luftwaffe went on nightly bombing raids that set much of the city ablaze and reduced the rest to rubble. The situation looked desperate. Nonetheless, Stalin had already told his commanders to defend the city named after him to the death.
By November 1942, Germans controlled 90% of the ruined city. Then another Russian winter set in. With the Germans committed to the city, Soviet troops outside the city launched a counterattack. Closing in around Stalingrad, they trapped the Germans inside and cut off their supplies German commanders begged Hitler to order a retreat, but Hitler refused. By January the conditions were dire for the German army. They had few supplies and were freezing to death in the bitter cold of Russia without shelter due to the complete destruction of the city. On February 2, 1943 after more than five months of fighting in the ruins of Stalingrad, some 90,000 frostbitten, half-starved German troops surrendered to the Soviets. Stalin's defense of the city had cost the Soviets over one million soldiers and the city was 99% destroyed. However, the defeat of the German Sixth Army put the German military on the defensive, with the Soviets pushing them steadily westward.
As the Battle of Stalingrad raged, Stalin urged the British and Americans to invade France. However, Roosevelt and Churchill decided to attack Italy first. They first attacked Sicily and captured it about a month later. The conquest of Sicily shocked Italians leading them to turn on their dictator Mussolini. On July 25, the King had Mussolini arrested and surrendered just over a month later. Despite these successes, the Germans refused to give up and seized control of northern Italy and put Mussolini back in charge. After a year of brutal fighting, the Germans retreated northward, and the victorious Allies entered Rome. Fighting in Italy continued until Germany fell in May of 1945.
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By May 1944, the British and Americans were finally prepared for their plan to launch an attack across the English Channel against German forces in France. The invasion was planned for a region of France called Normandy. Code named Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy was the largest land and sea attack in history. The invasion began on June 6, 1944- known as D-Day. At dawn on that day British, American, French, and Canadian troops fought their way onto a 60-mile stretch against German defenses. The Germans had dug in with machine guns, rocket launchers, and cannons. They sheltered behind concrete walls three feet thick. Not surprisingly, the Allies took heavy casualties. Despite heavy losses, the Allies held the beachheads, and within a month more than one million troops had landed.
After nearly 2 months of fighting in Normandy, the Allies punched a hole in the German defenses near Saint-Lo, and the Third Army, led by General George Patton, broke out. A month later, the Allies marched triumphantly into Paris. By September, they had liberated France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. They then set their sights on Germany.
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As Allied forces moved toward Germany from the west, the Soviet army was advancing toward Germany from the east. Hitler faced a war on two fronts. In a desperate gamble, he decided to counterattack in the west, hoping to split American and British forces and force a peace settlement. On December 16, German tanks broke through weak American defenses in the Ardennes. The battle that followed became known as the "Battle of the Bulge." Although caught off guard, the Allies eventually stopped the German advance and pushed the Germans back. With no reinforcements and short on supplies, the Germans were forced to retreat. Never again would the Germans be able to mount an offensive.
The Allies Advance in the Pacific
With morale high after their victory at Midway, the Allies the offensive in the Pacific. The war in the Pacific involved vast distances. Japanese troops had dug in on hundreds of islands across the ocean. General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the Allied land forces in the Pacific, developed a plan called island-hopping to hand this problem. MacArthur believed that storming each island would be too slow and costly, instead he would seize control of islands that were not well defended. The first target was the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. The Marines had little trouble seizing the island's airfield, but the battle for control of the island turned into a savage struggle as both sides poured in fresh troops. After six months of fighting on land and sea, the Battle of Guadalcanal finally ended when the Japanese finally abandoned what the Japanese called "the Island of Death."
By the fall of 1944, the Allies were moving in on Japan. They had won several costly battles including Tarawa, Saipan, and Peleliu as they leapfrogged across the South Pacific moving closer and closer to the Japanese mainland. In October, Allied forces landed on the island of Leyte in the Philippines. General Douglas MacArthur, who had been ordered to leave the islands before their surrender in 1942, waded ashore at Leyte with his troops. On reaching the beach, he declared, "People of the Philippines, I have returned." The Japanese had devised a bold plan to halt the Allied advance in the Philippines. They hoped to destroy the American fleet, thus preventing the Allies from resupplying their ground troops. This plan, however, required risking almost the entire Japanese fleet. They took this gamble in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Within four days, the Japanese navy had lost disastrously- eliminating it as a fighting force in the war. Now only the Japanese army and feared kamikaze suicide planes stood between the Allies and Japan.
In March 1945, after a month of bitter fighting and heavy losses, the American Marines took Iwo Jima, an island 760 miles from Tokyo. On April 1, American troops moved onto the island of Okinawa, only about 350 miles from southern Japan. The Japanese put up a desperate fight, nevertheless, the Americans took the islands and the bloodiest battle of the Pacific campaign had ended. The Japanese lost over 100,000 troops, and the Americans 12,000.
Victory in Europe
After the Battle of the Bulge, the war in Europe rapidly drew to a close. In late March 1945, the Allies rolled across the Rhine River into Germany. By the middle of April, the American and British were closing in on Berlin from the West while the Soviets were approaching from the East. While Soviet shells burst over Berlin, Hitler prepared for his end in and underground bunker beneath the crumbling city. After some debate it was decided that the Soviets would take the city. The Battle of Berlin was brutal, as Hitler called on the volkssturm , a national militia made up of all Germans, to defend their capital by any means. This last effort to defend the capital forced old men and even the child members of the Hitler Youth to fight to defend Berlin. Many were compelled to make suicide attacks with little or no training against the attacking Soviets using Panzerfausts. The fighting house-to-house and hand-to-hand culminating with the Soviet capture of the German Reichstag.
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On April 29, he married his longtime companion, Eva Braun. The next day, Hitler and Eva committed suicide. Their bodies were then carried outside and burned. On May 7, 1945 General Eisenhower accepted the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich from the German Military. On May 9, the surrender was officially signed in Berlin. The United States and other Allied powers celebrated V-E Day. After nearly six years of fighting, the war in Europe had ended. The cost of victory had been a very high price. Europe lay in ruins. Close to 40 million people had died, two-thirds of them civilians. About half of those occurred in one country, the Soviet Union. Constant bombing and shelling had reduced hundreds of cities to rubble. The ground war had destroyed much of the countryside. Displaced persons from many nations were left homeless. Despite their cooperation in defeating Nazi Germany, the victorious Allies were divided on the future of Europe. Quickly the World War devolved into a Cold War as the Liberal Democracies of the West squared off against the Communist Soviet Union for world domination.
Victory in the Pacific
Although the war in Europe was over, the Allies were still fighting the Japanese in the Pacific. After Okinawa, the next stop for the Allies had to be Japan. The Japanese government had called on every Japanese citizen- man, woman, or child- to resist the Allied invaders. The ferocity of Japanese resistance on Okinawa led many American leaders to question the cost of invading the Japanese home islands. Some even suggested that the United States should negotiate a surrender instead of invading Japan. The new American President, Harry S. Truman, was informed that an invasion of the Japanese homeland might cost the Allies more than half a million lives to complete. To compound the matter, Truman had to make a decision whether to use a powerful new weapon called the atomic bomb, or A-Bomb which had been developed by the top-secret Manhattan Project headed by J. Robert Oppenheimer. Most of his advisers felt that using it would bring the war to a quick end. Others protested the horrific power the new weapons possessed and questioned whether their use was necessary with the offensive capacity of the Japanese military effectively destroyed. Despite these objections, Truman decided to go ahead with the attack.
The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a city of about 350,000 people, on August 6, 1945. In a flash between 70,000 and 80,000 people died in the attack. Three days later, on August 9, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, a city of 270,000. More than 70,000 people were killed immediately. Radiation fallout from the two explosions killed many more. The Japanese finally surrendered to General Douglas MacArthur on September 2. The ceremony took place aboard the United States battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. With Japan's surrender, the war had ended. Now, countries faced the task of rebuilding a war-torn world.
