WINNING THE WAR AND LOSING THE PEACE

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CHAPTER 24

• WINNING THE WAR AND LOSING THE PEACE

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World War I

• Precipitated so many major changes that it is
  widely regarded as a watershed in modern history.
  
  
• The enormous significance of the conflict as well
  as its inherent drama have attracted the
  attention of many scholars, popular writers, and
  artists.

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Consequences

• Ruined the Hohenzollern (German), Habsburg, and
  Ottoman empires.
  
• Gave the Bolsheviks their opportunity to seize
  power in Russia.
  
• Set the stage for the subsequent rise of fascism
  and the outbreak of World War II.

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Less Tangible Changes

• No less significant.
• The grim and costly slaughter of the First World
  War led to massive disillusionment.
  
• Pessimism, irony, and doubt supplanted the
  optimism and belief in progress that had
  characterized prewar European attitudes.

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Enthusiasm Lost

• Romantic ideas about military glory and gallantry
  lost much of their appeal.
  
• The bright enthusiasm with which young men
  naively marched to war in 1914 seemed pathetic in
  retrospect.

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Innocence Lost

• European peoples had lost some of their
  innocence.
  
• But militarism, nationalism, and the
  glorification of war did persist after 1918.

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Disillusionment

• Allied and American leaders popularized
  glittering promises of a new world order in an
  effort to justify and sustain the costly campaign
  for victory.
• These promises had the unintended consequence of
  aggravating the subsequent disillusionment.

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Signs of Trouble

• The peace settlement fell far short of
  expectations.
  
• Various regions and groups enjoyed years of
  prosperity during the 1920s.
  
• But problems of runaway inflation and lagging
  farm income were ominous signs of trouble.

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German Inflation

• Many middle-class German families saw their
  savings evaporate as the government printed so
  much money that it virtually ceased to have any
  value.

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U. S. Economic Troubles

• Dazzling profits on the stock market and booming
  industrial growth.
  
• But weaknesses in the economy such as lagging
  incomes among farmers and workers were masked.
  
• At the end of the 1920s, general economic
  depression compounded many governments problems.

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Democracies Struggling

• Against overwhelming challenges.
• In some countries the economic doldrums lasted
  through the 1930s.
  
• Responses varied widely, but a noteworthy trend
  was a strong impetus toward using government to
  relieve suffering and stimulate economic activity.

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New Scientific Concepts

• Some of them developed before the First World
  War.
  
• Began to have a wider impact.

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Albert Einstein

• His theories displaced fundamental assumptions of
  Newtonian physics that had prevailed for two
  centuries.

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Relativism in Philosophy and Art

• The relativistic implications of Einstein's
  theories also influenced philosophers and
  artists.
  
• The first few decades of the twentieth century
  constitute a period that featured much ferment
  and experimentation.

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New Forms Accepted

• Some of the new forms and concepts came to be
  widely known and accepted.
  
• Paintings of artists such as Pablo Picasso.
• Psychological theories of Sigmund Freud.

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YOU SHOULD UNDERSTAND

• The Balkan crises that led to the outbreak of the
  First World War.
  
• The course and nature of the conflict.
• The peace settlement of 1919.
• Economic problems between the warsespecially
  international debts, inflation, and depression.

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YOU SHOULD UNDERSTAND

• The struggles of European democracies with
  economic difficulties and political unrest.
  
• The undemocratic trends in eastern Europe and in
  the Iberian peninsula.
  
• The less-than-Wilsonian internationalism of the
  United States.

18
YOU SHOULD UNDERSTAND

• Domestic politics during America's industrial
  prosperity of the 1920s and the great depression
  of the 1930s.
  
• Latin America's difficult pursuit of reform and
  economic prosperity.

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YOU SHOULD UNDERSTAND

• Scientific, artistic, and intellectual
  developments during the first few decades of the
  twentieth century.
  
• The expansion of popular culture during the
  interwar period.