Collapse at the Center - Chapter 20

Treaty of Versailles, 1919: The treaty that ended the war punished Germany rather harshly, taking away 15 percent of its territory and all of its colonies. Furthermore, Germany was blamed for the war and forced to pay a massive sum in reparations. This only fostered great resentment within Germany and directly led to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. Armenian Genocide, Ottoman collapse, and the rise of Turkey: The young Turk nationalist government had long been suspicious of the Armenians. Fearing that they might work with the Russians, they launched a campaign of deportations and murder against 1 million Armenians. As the war saw uprisings from various Arab groups, the Ottoman Empire collapsed. However, the new Turkish Republic with its young Turk leaders emerged from the ruins of the empire. View from the colonies: Many in the colonies were stunned by the slaughter in Europe. In order to get support for the war, the French and British made promises for reforms and paths toward independence after the war. These promises were not kept. Japanese expansion in China: The Japanese expansionists used the war to move into German territory in China and place a series of demands on China. The unwillingness of the allies to check Japan turned many Chinese nationalists toward the new Soviet Union, the only power that spoke out against imperialism. Rise of the United States: The devastation in Europe and the American industrial expansion made the United States a new powerful player on the world stage. President Woodrow Wilson’s optimistic efforts to create a new and just world order raised America’s diplomatic profile.

Extreme nationalism: Fascism was the most extreme manifestation of nationalism, arguing that the nation should come first and any ideology or practice that divided the people of a nation should be violently opposed. Fascist movements were much more extreme and irrational than other parties, which were nationalist but also promoted other ideologies, such as democracy or socialism. Celebration of violence and a charismatic leader: Fascist movements actually praised violence as a cleansing force that would root out weakness from society and give men of action a chance to prove themselves. The parties regularly used violence against their political opponents during power struggles, and fascist states used violence against their domestic and foreign enemies. This created a culture of violence in fascist movements and states. Central to fascist movements, parties, and states was a charismatic leader. These leaders gave impassioned speeches that appealed to frustrated citizens, mostly men, and offered them an explanation for the frustrations, an enemy to attack, and a movement to be a part of. These leaders became manifestations of the movement and the nation. Reactionary revolutionaries: While the fascist parties called for a revolutionary overthrow of the government (with lots of violence from the party members), their goal was not a progressive change of society but rather a conservative reaction to take the country back to an earlier era.

Legacies of the Holocaust: Two lasting legacies of the Holocaust were the establishment of the state of Israel as a homeland for Jews and the creation of the legal concept of genocide as a crime against humanity. A weakened Europe: As almost all of Europe was a battlefield at one point or another, the continent was devastated by the war. While Europe began to lose its grip on its colonies, much of the continent was occupied by Soviet and American troops. Europe remained divided and weak for the next four decades, and the world soon saw a wave of decolonization.  Communist world expands: While the colonial empires started their retreat, the communist world grew as an outcome of the war. The Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had a newfound credibility at home and abroad. He imposed Soviet-controlled communist parties on the Eastern European nations occupied by the Red Army. In China, the devastating Japanese occupation induced a civil war that led to the victory of the Chinese communists, who then supported insurgencies in Korea and Vietnam. For anticommunists, 1950 was a scary moment as the international communist movement seemed unstoppable.