Chapter 21

In chapter 21, I learned about the collapse and recovery of Europe.  During the First World War, the balance of power was expressed in two rival alliances, the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy and the Triple Entente of Russia, France, and Britain.  The outbreak of the war is considered an accident because no one predicted the archduke’s assassination would have occurred.  Schools, mass media, and military service had convinced millions of ordinary Europeans that their national identities were profoundly and personally meaningful.  Not only was their public pressure but an industrial militarism contributing to the war.  Each place had substantial standing armies and, expect for Britain, relied on temporary military service to help them.  New military technology contributed to the staggering casualties of the war, including some 10 million deaths.  At the beginning it was thought to be movements and attacks but instead it became “trench warfare.”  These battles would last for months which resulted in over a million deaths.  Vast propaganda campaigns sought to arouse citizens by depicting a cruel and inhuman enemy who killed innocent children and violated women.  So, the First War brought the attention of how much power the United States has because they were a big part of the Defeat of Germany.

Since the World War One represented the political collapse of Europe, the Great Depression that followed suggested that its economic system was to fail as well.  During the Great Depression created a ripple effect of negative events on the country.  First people lost their jobs, with no jobs people soon lost their homes, and then they would starve because they had zero money.  Vacant factories, soup kitchens, bread lines, shantytowns, and beggars came to symbolize the human reality of this economic disaster.  Then shortly after World War One, the Nazi party under Hitler’s leadership proclaimed a message of intense German nationalism cast in terms of racial superiority.  Hitler’s hatred towards Jews as an alien presence, passionate opposition to communism, a determination to rescue Germany from the humiliating requirements of the Treaty of Versailles all lead to the country’s obsession with control.  Then the Second World War started between both Asia and Europe because they sought to fundamentally alter the international arrangements that had emerged from World War One.  The Second World War was the most destructive because they had an estimated 60 million deaths which is six times the deaths in World War One.  A good portion of that number were civilians caught in the cross fire and about 6 million were Jews that perished in a technologically sophisticated genocide (concentration camps).  Russians, Poles, and other Slavs; Gypsies, or the Roma; mentally or physically handicapped people; homosexuals; communists; and Jehovah’s witnesses also perished while Germany attempted to reach racial purification.