The World in the 20th Century
The interwar period
Late 20th Century
Early 20th Century
World war II and afterwards
A Second Industrial Revolution had been added to the first one, this time with electrical power, the car engine, transatlantic crossings and so forth. At the same time, medicine and science were promising a bright future.
By the early 1900s, mass consumption society and the new consuming habits were not yet at their peak as they would become in the roaring twenties.
At the same time, medicine and science were promising a bright future.
World War I
World War I Allies: Great Britain, Belgium, France,
Greece, Italy, Serbia, Russia and the United States.
By 1917, Russia retreated from the war in exchange for large territorial concessions to the favour the central powers. The brutality and unpopularity of the war helped trigger the Soviet Revolution.
The consequences of World War II were terrible.
The total death toll is about 50 to 60 million people.
The disagreements between the Allied Powers throughout World War II became clear during the conferences that took place during and shortly after the war. This conference had the purpose of regulating world relations after the conflict.
These newly formed independent countries were
expected to support either the Western capitalist side or the Eastern communist, a situation which must beunderstood
within theframework of the Cold War (1947-1990).
In late October 1929, there was a terrible financial crisis. The main cause was an over-inflation of prices of stock products in Wall Street.
In 1989 the Communist block began its dismantling from within, promoted by CPSU (Communist Party) Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev, whose intention was to save Communism for the Soviet Union.
These new policies were based on the ideas of Perestroika (Reform) and Glasnost (Transparency), but at the same time, the USSR was freeing the Eastern countries from their ideological influence.
Another turning point was 9/11/2001, the terrorist attack on the New World Trade Center and other targets of interest of the so called hegemonic power. 9/11/2001 meant new challenges for the US and their allies.
It was the age of globalization, a new term that appeared in the early 1990s to refer to a more integrated world, based on economic, cultural and political interconnections.
Meanwhile, in Germany, in 1933, a party, the NSDAP, took advantage of the financial crisis and the discontent of the impoverished middle class. It had established an ultra-nationalist discourse.
In Central Europe, since the end of World War I, a series of traditional regimes without a democratic background had been established. These regimes shifted to authoritarianism, sometimes with a clear affinity for German nazism.
In particular, the 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.