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The World in the 20th Century. What we have become - Coggle Diagram
The World in the 20th Century.
What we have become
Late 20th Century
In 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev, whose intention was to save Communism for the Soviet Union.
The USSR turned to a federation of states, initially independent but with a clear Russian predominance, while the Berlin Wall was dismantled .
The Century has become something distinct, separate from our early 21st Century.
Globalization meant that those without proper infrastructure, communications, economic or political power were left behind in this newly integrative process.
9/11/2001, the terrorist attack on the New World Trade Center and other targets of interest of the so called hegemonic power.
At the same time it meant an opportunity to establish this Western World hegemony as a superpower with no secondary world leaderships, unchallenged.
The triumph of the capitalistic free world, championed by the US and, to some extent, by the European Union was the outcome of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
World War II and afterwards
The consequences of World War II were terrible.
This major senseless loss of lives was particularly hard in the case of the USSR , Germany, Poland and Japan.
The United States provoked the Japanese surrender by dropping two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki .
Eastern Europe was increasingly falling under the influence of the USSR, China was waging a communist revolution, while Western Europe was beginning its post-war recovery with US economic support .
Europe formed the European Community, a forerunner of the European Union with the signature of the Treaty of Rome .
The United Nations were founded to assure that never again there would be a conflict of the magnitude of World War II.
The long survival of the Apartheid system in the Republic of South Africa and of many African and Latin American dictatorships is inconceivable without the framework of the Cold War.
The interwar period (1919-1939)
German media and part of their political class exploited the legend of the stabbing in the back
according to which the rulers had put victory in the hands of the allies, betraying the German people and their army.
In late October 1929, there was a terrible financial crisis.
The stock-market bubble was simply unsustainable and when stock-holders realized, they started to sell their shares, causing a steep fall on the value of stocks.
Small investors went bankrupt.
Germany, in 1933, a party, the NSDAP, took advantage of the financial crisis and the discontent of the impoverished middle class.
Its leader was the German nationalized Austrian Adolf Hitler.
Central Europe, as well as its south, were rapidly moving away from liberal-democratic ideals.
This colonialism set a precedent for the open confrontation that began with the violation of the Polish border on September 1, 1939.
Early 20th Century and the road to World War I
A Second Industrial Revolution , this time with electrical power, the car engine, transatlantic crossings and so forth.
Medicine and science were promising a bright future.
By 1899-1900, the so called “civilised world”, celebrated the arrival of the new century enthusiastically.
Despite this apparently wild development, the reasons for unrest were not clearly visible.
The Balkans are also known as «the powder keg of Europe».
On the one hand several European powers had embarked on an arms race.
There was concern for a series of problems.
On June, 28, 1914, Gavrilo Prinzip, acting on behalf of the Black Hand, murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand, along with his wife Sophie. This killing served as a pretext to start World War I.
The war spanned from the summer of 1914 to November of 1918.
It was a massive confrontation between
France, Great Britain, Belgium, Serbia, Greece, Italy , Russia and the United States , among others
Germany, Austro-Hongary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria
The brutality and unpopularity of the war helped trigger the Soviet Revolution. This is yet another relevant historical process of great impact throughout the 20th Century.
Finally, Germany and the rest of the Central Powers ended up capitulating: the Peace of Versailles (1919)