Key events of the 20th century
The 20th century changed the world in unprecedented ways. The World Wars sparked tension between countries and led to the creation of atomic bombs, the Cold War led to the space race and the creation of space-based rockets, and the World Wide Web was created. These advancements have played a significant role in citizens' lives and shaped the 21st century into what it is today.
Historic events in the 20th century
World at the beginning of the century
The new beginning of the 20th century marked significant changes. The 1900s saw the decade herald a series of inventions, including the automobile, airplane and radio broadcasting. 1914 saw the completion of the Panama Canal.The scramble for Africa continued in the 1900s and resulted in wars and genocide across the continent. The atrocities in the Congo Free State shocked the civilized world.
From 1914 to 1918 the First World War, and its aftermath, caused major changes in the power balance of the world, destroying or transforming some of the most powerful empires.
"The war to end all wars": World War I (1914–1918)
The First World War, termed "The Great War" by contemporaries, started in July 1914 and ended in November 1918. The war was precipitated by the Assassination in Sarajevo of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's heir to the throne, Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand, by Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Young Bosnia liberation movement. After a period of diplomatic and military escalation known as the July Crisis, by the end of July 1914 two coalitions were at war: the Allies, comprised initially of the British Empire, France, and the Russian Empire; and the Central Powers, comprised initially of the German Empire and Austria-Hungary.In 1917 Russia ended hostile actions against the Central Powers after the fall of the Tsar. The Bolsheviks negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany, although it was a huge cost to Russia. In the treaty, Bolshevik Russia ceded the Baltic states to Germany, and its province of Kars Oblast in the South Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire. It also recognized the independence of Ukraine. Although Germany shifted huge forces from the eastern to the western front after signing the treaty, it was unable to stop the Allied advance, especially with the entrance of American troops in 1918.
The war itself was also a chance for the combatant nations to show off their military strength and technological ingenuity. The Germans introduced the machine gun, U-boats and deadly gases. The British first used the tank. Both sides had a chance to test out their new aircraft to see if they could be used in warfare. It was widely believed that the war would be short. Unfortunately, since trench warfare was the best form of defense, advances on both sides were very slow and came at a terrible cost to lives.
When the war was finally over in 1918, the results would set the stage for the next twenty years. First and foremost, the Germans were forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles, forcing them to make exorbitant payments to repair damages caused during the War. Many Germans felt these reparations were unfair because they did not actually "lose" the war nor did they feel they caused the war. Germany was never occupied by Allied troops, yet it had to accept a liberal democratic government imposed on it by the victors after the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm.
Much of the map of Europe was redrawn by the victors based upon the theory that future wars could be prevented if all ethnic groups had their own "homeland". New states like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were created out of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire to accommodate the nationalist aspirations of these groups. An international body called the League of Nations was formed to mediate disputes and prevent future wars, although its effectiveness was severely limited by, among other things, its reluctance and inability to act.
Spanish flu
From 1918 to 1920 a remarkably deadly worldwide pandemic caused by the flu broke out near the end of the war and spread globally. Estimates range from anywhere between 17 and 100 million deaths, which staples it as the deadliest pandemic in human history. One of the reasons for the exceptionally high carnage was that wartime censorship was underway to preserve morale in the trenches, leading to poor hygiene. Combined with already existing malnourishment and overcrowded medical facilities, this mix made it all the more deadly.Russian Revolution and communism
The Russian Revolution of 1917 sparked a wave of communist revolutions across Europe, prompting many to believe that a socialist world revolution could be realized in the near future. However, the European revolutions were defeated, Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, and within a few years, Joseph Stalin displaced Leon Trotsky as the de facto leader of the Soviet Union. The idea of worldwide revolution was no longer in the forefront, as Stalin concentrated on "socialism in one country" and embarked on a bold plan of collectivization and industrialization. The majority of socialists and even many communists became disillusioned with Stalin's autocratic rule, his purges and the assassination of his "enemies", as well as the news of famines he imposed on his own people.Communism was strengthened as a force in Western democracies when the global economy crashed in 1929 in what became known as the Great Depression. Many people saw this as the first stage of the end of the capitalist system and were attracted to Communism as a solution to the economic crisis, especially as the Soviet Union's economic development in the 1930s was strong, unaffected by the capitalist world's crisis.
Between the wars
Economic depression
After World War I, the global economy remained strong through most of the 1920s. The war had provided a stimulus for industry and economic activity in general. There were many warning signs foretelling the crash of 29 of the global economic system at the end of the decade, that were generally not understood by the political leadership of the time. The responses to the crisis often made the situation worse, as millions of people watched their savings become next to worthless, and the idea of a steady job with a reasonable income fading away.Many sought answers from alternative ideologies such as communism and fascism. They believed that the capitalist economic system was collapsing and that new ideas were required to meet the crisis. The early responses to the crisis were based on the assumption that the free market would correct itself. This, however, did very little to correct the crisis or to alleviate the suffering of many ordinary people. Thus, the idea that the existing system could be reformed by government intervention in the economy, rather than by continuing the laissez-faire approach, became prominent as a solution to the crisis. Democratic governments assumed the responsibility to provide needed services in society, and to alleviate poverty, which soon gave birth to the welfare state. These two politico-economic principles, the belief in government intervention and the welfare state, as opposed to the belief in the free market and private institutions, would define many political battles for the rest of the century.
The rise of dictatorship
Fascism first appeared in Italy with the rise to power of Benito Mussolini in 1922. The ideology was supported by a large proportion of the upper classes as a strong challenge to the threat of communism.When Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, a new variant of fascism called Nazism took over Germany and ended the German experiment with democracy. The Nazi Party in Germany was dedicated to the restoration of German honor and prestige, the unification of German-speaking peoples, and the annexation of Central and Eastern Europe as vassal states, with the Slavic population to act as slave labor to serve German economic interests. There was also a strong appeal to a mythical racial purity, and a vicious antisemitism which promoted the idea of Jews as subhuman and worthy only of extermination.
Many people in Western Europe and the United States greeted the rise of Hitler with relief or indifference. They could see nothing wrong with a strong Germany ready to take on the communist menace to the east. Antisemitism during the Great Depression was widespread as many were content to blame the Jews for causing the economic downturn.
Hitler began to put his plan in motion, annexing Austria in the Anschluss, or reunification of Austria to Germany, in 1938. He then negotiated the annexation of the Sudetenland, a German-speaking mountainous area of Czechoslovakia, in the Munich Conference. The British were eager to avoid war and believed Hitler's assurance to protect the security of the Czech state. Hitler annexed the rest of the Czech state shortly afterwards, indicating that he had ulterior motives.
Fascism was not the only form of dictatorship to rise in the post-war period. Almost all of the new democracies in the nations of Eastern Europe collapsed and were replaced by authoritarian regimes. Spain also became a dictatorship under the leadership of General Francisco Franco after the Spanish Civil War. Totalitarian states attempted to achieve total control over their subjects as well as their total loyalty. They held the state above the individual, and were often responsible for some of the worst acts in history, such as the Holocaust Adolf Hitler perpetrated on European Jews, or the Great Purge Stalin perpetrated in the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
Global war: World War II (1939–1945)
The war in Europe
This section provides a conversational overview of World War II in Europe. See main article for a fuller discussion.Soon after the events in Czechoslovakia, Britain and France issued assurances of protection to Poland, which seemed to be next on Hitler's list. World War II officially began on 1 September 1939, when Hitler unleashed his Blitzkrieg, or lightning war, against Poland. Britain and France, much to Hitler's surprise, immediately declared war upon Germany, but the help they delivered to Poland was negligible. Sixteen days later, Poland was attacked from the East by Soviet Union, acting in a secret alliance with Nazi Germany. After only a few weeks, the Polish forces were overwhelmed, and its government fled to exile in London.
In starting World War II, the Germans had unleashed a new type of warfare, characterized by highly mobile forces and the use of massed aircraft. The German strategy concentrated upon the devotion of the Wehrmacht, or German army, to the use of tank groups, called panzer divisions, and groups of mobile infantry, in concert with relentless attacks from the air. Encirclement was also a major part of the strategy. This change smashed any expectations that the Second World War would be fought in the trenches like the first.
As Hitler's forces conquered Poland, the Soviet Union, under General Secretary Joseph Stalin, was acting out guarantees of territory under a secret part of a nonaggression pact between the USSR and Germany known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. This treaty gave Stalin free rein to take the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as Eastern Poland, all of which would remain in Soviet possession after the war. Stalin also launched an attack on Finland, which he hoped to reduce to little more than a Soviet puppet state, but the Red Army met staunch Finnish resistance in what became known as the Winter War and succeeded in gaining only limited territory from the Finns. This action would later cause the Finns to ally with Germany when its attack on the Soviet Union came in 1941.