Total Wars and Their Political Consequences

The war that became the First World War was closely connected to the ideals and developments of the previous century. Nationalism encouraged hate and a sense of superiority, imperialism deepened rivalries, militarism created a prowar mood, and industrialization produced horrendous weapons that killed and maimed millions. The armies stalled, digging trenches and using barbed wire to protect themselves from machine-gun fire and artillery. Any gains in territory were miniscule and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. At home national economies were completely geared toward the war effort, in a new and extremely costly “total war” that transformed the lives of civilians. The war became a global one as various other states joined one side or another and troops from Europe’s Asian and African colonies and the British Commonwealth served in the armies of the warring powers. Support for the war turned into protests, which in Russia led to a revolution that resulted in the establishment of a Communist regime with centralized state control.

The peace settlement that ended the war turned out to be a disappointment. The Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian Empires were broken up, but the successor nations were weak, and the victorious powers refused to let non-Europeans determine their own fate and instead put them under a mandate system or retained their empires. The decision to make Germany pay war reparations was a crippling financial burden that created great resentment. Totalitarian dictatorships came to power in Communist Russia and fascist Italy and Germany, promising improvements in people’s lives and using terror to destroy their opponents. In Germany, Hitler’s Nazi Party established firm control with a nationalist and racist ideology that had broad support, and began building up the German military and taking over territory.

The invasion of Poland led Britain and France to declare war. Hitler’s armies quickly conquered much of Europe, establishing a vast empire of death and racial imperialism, in which Jews and other groups deemed inferior were hauled away to concentration camps and murdered; about 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust. In East Asia, Japan had similar racial-imperial ambitions and invaded China and Southeast Asia. An attack on the U.S. fleet brought the isolationist Americans into the war, and the combined might of the Allies forced back Nazi armies, ultimately ending the war, which had claimed the lives of more than 50 million soldiers and civilians.

Wartime cooperation between the Soviet Union and Western powers led by the United States quickly turned into rivalry, dividing Europe into a Soviet-aligned Communist bloc and a U.S.-aligned capitalist bloc that competed for political and military superiority around the world in what became known as the Cold War. Both sides established military alliances and economic organizations, built up huge military arsenals in an arms race, and supported opposing sides in various wars and decolonization struggles that slowly remade the world map as African and Asian nations gained their independence from European empires. Largely peaceful anticommunist revolutions swept eastern Europe beginning in 1989, leading to the reunification of Germany and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and eventually to the enlargement of what had been western European alliances, institutions, and transnational unions. The movement toward a more united Europe has been accompanied by the re-emergence of nationalism as a powerful force, which together with ethnic and religious loyalties has led in some cases to violence, forced deportation, and even genocide. (Pages 826–862, 886–891, 902–938, 942–972, 1001–1014, 1020–1028)