A Short History of the World (22 page)

VII

The 20
^th
Century

The Bloodiest Century

Notwithstanding the rebellion in China, the 20th century got off to a good start: there was general peace, growing prosperity, increasing contact between nations and a confidence that strong economic links would ultimately prevent a major war. Technological innovations were gradually improving the life of the masses and the world was on the move. Little did people know that within 50 years, two major wars and a great depression would bring down more than one world empire, change the balance of power, and highlight the fact that even great progress is unable to prevent man’s inhumanity to man.

Oil and the Internal Combustion Engine

The 20th century could equally be called the century of oil. First discovered in sizeable quantities in the USA in 1859, oil rapidly became popular both as a lubricant for machines such as power-looms and train-engines, and for the ability of one of its by-products, kerosene, to fuel lamps. Prior to its discovery, gas and whale oil were used for lighting but were generally unaffordable to all but the rich. It was the discovery that kerosene could be refined from oil, and that it could be produced inexpensively, that set off a global search for oil.

When Thomas Edison discovered a new and revolutionary way of providing illumination through electricity in 1879, this ‘new light’ briefly threatened to eclipse kerosene as a means of lighting the home. The oil industry rapidly rebounded, however, when another of oil’s by-products, gasoline, found a use in powering the internal combustion engine. When this was applied to the automobile in the 1890s, the car slowly started to replace the horse as the primary means of getting around, beginning a transportation revolution that still affects society today. Despite this, kerosene is still used in much of the developing world for lighting, cooking and heating.
 

The 20th century saw a major shift towards the use of oil in every sector imaginable, from powered flight through to agriculture, where oil fuelled tractors and helped create the fertiliser used to increase crop yield. The resulting increase in food supply contributed directly to the growth in the world’s population, from roughly 1.6 billion in 1900 to 7 billion in 2011.
 

Oil has not only fuelled armies but also played a large part in their strategies, including both the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and Hitler’s eastward drive during the Second World War. Its discovery in the Middle East at the beginning of the 20th century transformed the politics of the area and was the direct cause of more than one war, including America’s invasion of Iraq in the 1990s. The application of oil has transformed human society to such an extent that today we would be lost without it.

Though we may live in a world of cheap energy, the consequences of our reliance upon both a non-renewable resource and the wealth it has generated, may yet overwhelm us as we become increasingly vulnerable to the disruption of oil supply and consequent sudden price hikes. What’s more, the burning of oil and other fossil fuels has increased pollution to such an extent that climatologists inform us that, unless we take measures to reduce it, we face catastrophic consequences.

The Russo-Japanese War (1904)

At the turn of the century Japan’s military successes led to the increasing power and ambitions of militarists at the court of the emperor. When Russia reneged upon an agreement to withdraw troops from southern Manchuria in 1904, these same militarists pushed for war. The outcome was a surprise attack by the Japanese navy on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur, on the east coast of China. Battles on both land and sea followed in which the Japanese destroyed the Russian fleet and were victorious over the poorly-led and badly-reinforced Russian army.
 

Following the war, Russia agreed to evacuate southern Manchuria, which was restored to China, and to recognise Japan's control of Korea. By this stage, however, China had lost sovereignty over the region to such an extent that it was not even invited to attend the peace conference between Russia and Japan that followed, despite Manchuria being on Chinese territory.
 

The Japanese victory came as a shock to the world because Japan was the first Asian power to defeat a European power in modern times. Importantly, it showed that the Europeans were not omnipotent after all. The war also acted as one of the contributing factors to nationwide revolts in Russia in 1905, the outcome of which was a declaration of basic civil rights and the creation of a Russian parliament or ‘Duma’ in the same year.

The First World War or ‘Great War’ (1914–1918)

Over in Europe, growing nationalism caused the major powers to come into conflict once again, this time as a result of nationalist movements that threatened Austro–Hungarian interests in the Balkans. The assassination in June 1914 of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg Empire, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife by Serbian nationalists, gave the Austrians the reason they needed to crush Serbia and challenge Russian dominance in the area. With an unequivocal promise of support from Germany, they declared war. When Russia mobilised its forces, this made Germany nervous. When Germany put its armed forces on notice this made France nervous. Before long, France, Russia and Great Britain allied themselves against the Central Powers of Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.
 

The war rapidly became one fought on two fronts by the Germans, against the French and British (plus dominions) in the west, and against Russia in the east, with the British and German navies battling it out on the seas. An attempt in 1915 to open up another front in Turkey by capturing Constantinople saw a massacre of predominantly Australian and New Zealand troops on the Gallipoli peninsula in one of the greatest disasters for the Allies in the war. Although they still officially deny it, the Turks used the cover of a news blackout to wipe out much of their Christian Armenian population, mainly on forced death marches in which large numbers died of starvation and exhaustion. It is estimated that between 1 million to 1.5 million Armenians and other ethnic minorities were killed or forced to flee between 1915 and 1923 in what was to be the first of many genocides of the 20th century.
 

While the war was chiefly fought in Europe it soon spread to Asia, the Middle East and Africa. In Asia, the Allies were supported by Japan; in the Middle East, the British sponsored Arab national movements which opposed Ottoman domination in the area, only to cynically renege on any agreement they made at the end of the war. In an attempt to get the Jewish Diaspora in the USA to sway the government to join the war, the British also expressed their support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, a declaration
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which they subsequently refused to honour. As with many peoples in the 20th century who found themselves pawns in global power games, the Palestinians were not consulted.

Everyone expected the war to be as short as the last major war in 1870-71 between France and Prussia, but modern weapons led to a stalemate of trench warfare and mechanised slaughter. Over a million men died on the borders between France and Germany in the first year, with many forced to make 19th century style charges against enemy machine guns and barbed wire by generals incapable of understanding how the art of war had changed.

Just how badly the Germans had underestimated the Russians in the wake of the Russo-Japanese War was evident by 1915 as they had been forced to commit two thirds of their forces to the Eastern Front even as the Western Front had become bogged down in stalemate. Yet the Russian military was untrained and unprepared for the ferocity of the battle, and though on paper it had the world’s largest army, by 1917 this army was on the verge of collapse.
 

The Russian Revolution (1917)

Revolution in Russia broke out in Petrograd (modern-day St Petersburg) in February 1917. Cold, hunger, and general war-related weariness drove people to the streets demanding bread and peace with Germany. The Empress Alexandra’s infatuation with the monk Rasputin,
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whom she claimed had healed her son, did not endear herself to the people, nor did her German blood for that matter. When the tsar prevaricated in putting down the revolt, many troops joined the crowds, shooting at their own regiments. Finally, persuaded of the severity of the situation, the last tsar abdicated in March 1917, thereby ending the 300-year-old Romanov Dynasty.
 

While workers’ councils, or ‘soviets’, were set up to represent the masses, the temporary ‘provisional government’ that had inherited power continued to support the allied cause. This turned out to be a disastrous mistake. In April the Germans pulled a masterstroke by helping Vladimir Ulyanov (who used the pseudonym ‘Lenin’), who had been living in self-imposed exile in Switzerland, return to Russia. Leader of the majority ‘Bolshevik’ faction of the Russian Social Democrat Workers Party – as opposed to the minority faction, or Mensheviks – since 1903, Lenin had been calling for the end of the ‘imperialist and capitalist war’ since it had begun. The Germans hoped that he would foment the unrest necessary to destabilise the Russian war effort and even help take Russia out of the war entirely. This would allow Germany to focus its resources on the Western Front.
 

The next six months saw a last-ditch summer offensive by the Russians that ended in disaster in the form of a flood of desertions and complete chaos in which the provisional government only just survived an attempted coup by the Commander-in-Chief of the army. Lenin was forced to flee to Finland after being exposed as being in the pay of the Germans.

Yet the situation played into Lenin’s hands. His call for peace, land, bread, and transfer of power to the soviets became too strong for the exhausted population to resist. Returning to Russia again, this time in disguise, Lenin instigated an armed coup in October 1917. This was the final death-blow for the provisional government and resulted in the creation of the first Marxist government in the world. On the 8th of November 1917, Lenin was elected by the Russian Congress of Soviets as Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars. It was generally accepted that this Soviet government would not last long; nobody had any idea of the misery it would inflict on its people over the coming decades.
 

The new Soviet government immediately issued two decrees: the first, ‘On Peace’, called for a negotiated end to the war and ordered Russian troops to cease all hostilities on the front (which had been part of a secret agreement between Lenin and the Germans in exchange for Lenin being returned to Russia); the second, ‘On Land’, declared all land the property of the people – a good propaganda tool if ever there was one! They also nationalised the banks and repudiated all debt built up under the Romanovs. Hoping that workers throughout Europe would rise up in support of their comrades in Russia, they sought to stall a further German advance by signing an armistice with Germany and Austria, pending a formal peace treaty.
 

However, the working class of Europe did not rise up. And so, desperate to end the war at any cost – especially after Germany continued its eastwards march – Russia was forced, in March 1918, to accept a humiliating armistice in which it was required to give up Finland, Poland, the Baltic states, the Ukraine and Belarus. In the duplicitous way that came to be the hallmark of the leaders of Soviet Union, Lenin never had any intention of standing by the treaty and Russia declared the treaty null and void at the end of the war. It was also the last straw for anti-Bolshevik forces, which were let down by the Russian capitulation. The next three years witnessed a civil war that caused upwards of ten million casualties, more lives than would be lost in total among all nations in the First World War.

The End of the Great War

The peace on the eastern front allowed a renewed offensive by the Germans on the western front, but Germany’s decision to use unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic proved as harmful to their cause as sending Lenin to Russia had proved helpful. President Wilson gave this, together with Germany’s attempts to entice Mexico into an alliance against the United States, as reasons for bringing America, with all its troops and resources, into the war on 6th April 1917. Unable to carry the fight on any longer, Germany surrendered and peace finally came on 11th November 1918.
 

Of the 65 million men who had taken part in the war, over eight million were killed, up to 20 million were wounded – including hundreds of thousands of victims blinded and crippled by chemical warfare – and several million others were captured and kept as prisoners of war. Worse still, in the final stages of the war, an influenza epidemic preyed on the general exhaustion and swept the world, killing an estimated 20 million people
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– at least twice the number that had died in the War.
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Named the ‘Spanish Influenza’ because the Spaniards had been one of the few nations not to censor information on it, the flu predominantly affected young healthy people and proved to be virtually untreatable.
 

Following the war, the great powers met in Versailles, near Paris, to deal with the aftermath and to ensure that Europe never saw such devastation again. The Germans and the Russians were not invited to take part. The Treaty that was signed in June 1919 is most memorable for the way in which Germany was treated. While all the parties wanted Germany punished for the damage it had caused, France specifically wanted to ensure that the country would never be able to wage war on her again and rushed through draconian and ruinous terms. Germany was ultimately deprived of some 13 percent of its 1914 territory, including the lands Germany had seized from France in 1871. Germany lost some six million Germans, and its overseas possessions were shared among the victorious powers. Additionally, its army was limited to a 100,000-strong defensive force and the country was denied the right to possess aircraft, heavy weapons and submarines. On top of this, the French also forced Germany to pay huge war reparations of billions of gold marks. This humiliation and economic devastation created the instability in Germany that allowed Hitler and his Fascist minions to rise to prominence and eventual control of Germany.