You look really relaxed.
- Thanks, that World War I stuff
really stressed me out,
so I took a spa day.
- Oh, it shows.
- What's the next unit about?
- Um, is the spa still open?
- Oh, no...
- Mm-hmm.
(music playing)
Hi, I'm Kim Lochner,
and along with Colby Burnett,
we're introducing Unit 7:
Interwar and World War II.
From 1914 to 1918,
many people suffered
through the First World War.
They'd rather hopefully called
it "the war to end all wars."
The terrible trench warfare,
gas weapons, artillery,
and grinding conflict
left a generation of men dead.
The economies of major world
powers and their colonies
were destroyed.
It seemed impossible that a war
of that magnitude
could ever happen again.
However,
only a few decades later,
the world would start back down
the road to conflict.
It began first in Asia,
then in the Mediterranean
and Europe,
and then spread
around the world.
The sons and grandsons
of those who had fought
in the First World War
became the soldiers and sailors
of the Second World War.
And this second war would cause
even more death and destruction
than its predecessor.
It would be fought more widely,
drawing in and impacting people
on battlefields
across large parts of Africa,
the Pacific Ocean,
East and Southeast Asia,
and Europe.
And once again,
the end of this conflict
would bring only
an unstable peace.
The victorious allies
divided into two armed camps
in 1945,
and the Cold War set in.
In this course,
we divide the First World War
and the Second World War
into two units.
But we could instead
take a look at the whole period
between the 1914 start
of the First World War
and the 1945 end
of the Second World War.
By doing that,
the years between the two wars
look more like a brief interlude
than a period of actual peace.
It's as if the combatants
were just taking a moment
to catch their breath.
The problems left
by the first war
included a broken global system,
resentful defeated powers,
victors squabbling
over the spoils,
a global economy hobbled
by war reparations,
and trauma-- both of veterans
and of civilians--
went unhealed.
From this perspective,
the Second World War
looks inevitable.
It seems like a logical result
of the world's failure
to solve these problems
in the 1920s and '30s.
COLBY: Another key problem
that led to the Second World War
was how the end
of the First World War
shifted people's perspectives
about their own countries.
Rather than discrediting
militant nationalism
as a war-mongering ideology,
the peace process ultimately
strengthened it.
In the years following
the armistice
that concluded
the First World War,
various forms of nationalism
crept back in.
A new way of thinking of the
state as a community emerged.
It was very nationalist
and authoritarian,
meaning it required
strict obedience.
It was also based on ideas
about race.
In Germany, anti-foreigner
and anti-minority sentiment
was fueled by anger
over its treatment
following its defeat.
Italians, who were technically
citizens
of a victorious state,
resented the fact that they had
been given little
in the treaty
that ended the war.
Japan was also a member of
the alliance that won the war,
but found its appetite
for new territory
amplified by the small gains
that it made in 1919.
Many people in these countries
agitated for revenge
or for an empire.
They were not alone.
Nationalism was on the rise
everywhere
in the 1920s and '30s.
In many places,
it was stoked by racism.
The vast casualty rates
of the First World War
produced fears about the size
of each country's population.
This in turn drove the so-called
science of eugenics
in the United States, Brazil,
Europe, and elsewhere.
Eugenics was an attempt
to control reproduction
in order to increase
a nation's population
and to create a "superior" race.
It became popular between
the wars in the hope of ensuring
that a country would win
the next war.
Eugenics was based
on false science.
It was used to justify
anti-immigrant policies,
practices
of racial discrimination,
and nationalist hatred
for other countries.
Economic troubles,
like the Great Depression
beginning in 1929,
also drove people
to look for someone to blame.
Authoritarian and totalitarian
political parties,
which promised
order and prosperity
at the price
of individual freedoms,
took advantage
of this sentiment.
They stole or intimidated
their way into power.
This was particularly true
of fascist parties
in Germany and Italy.
Once these parties gained power,
they kept it by pursuing
popular policies
of hyper-nationalism
and discrimination
against minorities
and foreigners.
Organizations for global
cooperation tried to hold back
these authoritarian parties
and nationalist movements.
The most extensive of these
was the League of Nations--
the world's first international
political forum.
But they failed,
and their failure set the scene
for the Second World War,
which would bring a series
of atrocities
that exceeded anything
that had come before.
These horrors included:
the wholesale slaughter
of Chinese civilians
by the Japanese army;
the Soviet deliberate starvation
and oppression
of populations in Ukraine
and Byelorussia;
the Italian use of gas
on Ethiopian civilians;
the concentrated bombing
of Spanish cities;
and finally, the Nazi
extermination camps
in Germany
and German-occupied Europe.
In this unit,
we ask the key question:
How were these horrors of the
Second World War possible?
This question connects
the First and Second world wars
and the years in between
into one longer history.
As a result,
we can understand
the Second World War
in a longer context.
We can identify trends that led
to extermination camps
and genocide.
And perhaps learn how to look
out for them in the future.
One way of beginning to identify
what led to the Second World War
and the terrors it created
is by looking at data.
We can revisit this chart
of the number of democracies
across the whole world
over time.
You may remember that we looked
at this data in Unit 2,
when we saw the number
of democracies rising
across the 19th century.
But then the number levels off,
suddenly dropping dramatically
in the 1930s.
In this chart,
the definition of democracy
is based on a measure called
Polity IV.
It defines a democracy
as a system
that has institutions
in which individuals
can play a political role,
voting and expressing
their preferences.
This definition requires
that the people in charge
are kept under some control
by courts, journalists,
and other institutions.
Clearly, the number of countries
that were democracies
by this measure
were decreasing in the 1930s,
as authoritarianism rose.
KIM: We can also explore
the turn
towards authoritarianism
and extreme nationalism
by scale-switching.
We can zoom in
to explore smaller stories.
One of the epicenters
of authoritarianism
was the city of Nuremberg.
Nuremberg was a historically
significant city
in the center of Germany.
In the early 1920s,
it was still a mainly
medieval-style city
made up of small, old wooden
houses and town squares.
But then, the German
authoritarian party--
the Nazis--
came to power.
They transformed Nuremberg
into a city that reflected
their policies.
Huge buildings,
especially a vast arena,
were built to reflect
the power of the state.
The Nazis
held massive rallies there
to command and demonstrate
the unity of the German people.
Films were shot
of these rallies,
meant to inspire the Germans
to believe in
and obey the Nazis.
In 1935, the Nazi leadership met
at Nuremberg
to implement policies.
It is these policies
that in many ways
began the horrors
of the Second World War.
The Nazis blamed minorities
within Germany
for the country's economic woes.
In particular,
they singled out
the Jewish population.
Using eugenic theory,
they defined Jews by biology,
rather than religion.
They passed laws stating
that German Jews could not be
citizens of Germany,
and that they could not marry
non-Jewish Germans.
These race-based laws
were perhaps the most extensive
in Europe.
But they were not unique
to Germany.
These laws were part
of the horrors
surrounding
the Second World War,
horrors that were reflected
in the changing shape
of Nuremberg itself.
Nuremberg held one camp
that was part of a large system
of extermination camps
in which the Nazi state
killed 12 million people.
The dead included not only Jews,
but also Roma,
Jehovah's Witnesses,
homosexuals,
political prisoners,
disabled people,
and the citizens
of Eastern European states.
This genocide--
the attempt to extinguish
entire peoples--
was one of the principal horrors
of the Second World War.
This war was arguably a result
of the unresolved conflicts
of the three decades
that preceded it.
How would it influence
the decades to come?
Okay, I know our students
are not children.
- No.
- But you're scaring
the children.
- And teaching, it's how we keep
genocide from happening again.
- Genocide has happened again.
And happened again.
- Now you're scaring
the children.
- (softly): Oh.
(music playing)
