Chapter 10 - Recent Times: Around 1914 to the Present

Since European powers had colonies ot strong economic tiews with most of the rest of the world, the original gunshot by Serbian nationalist resulted in widespread casualties across the globe. More than 40 countries found themselves taking up arms, including Japan, which fought on the side of Britain, France, and Russia, now known as the Allies. In 1915, Italy managed to complete its aboutface and joined the Allies as well.
The Unitd States declared its nuetrality at first, preferring to focus on its own internal affairs, a policy know as isolationism. But when a German submarine (wow, technology came a long way quickly) sank the British passenger liner The Lusiania ib 1915, killing more than 100 Americans who happened to be on board, public opinion in the United States shifted away from isolationism. the next year, as Germany tried to cut off al shipments to Britain, thereby fueling American sentiment toward war. Then the Simmerman telegram - a secret message sent between German diplomats suggesting that Mexico might want to join forces with Germany and thereby regain the territory it had lost to the United States in the Mesican-American War of 1846 - was intercepted by the United States. The public and President Wilson flipped out. On April 2, 1917, American entered the war on the side of the Allies. On November 11, 1918, after brutal battles, trench warfare, and enormous loss of life, Germany and the Central Powers finally gave up.

When the U.S. stock market crashed in October 1919, a spiral of monetary and fiscal probl;ems called the Great Depression quickly escalated into an international catastrophe, and shattered the illusion of financial health in Europe. American banks immediatly stopped extending credit. The effect was that Europe ran out of money, which it never really had in the first place. Germany couldn't pay its reparations without American credit, so France had no money either.

The Nazi Party gained political power in the 1920s with Hitler as its guide, or fuhrer. At first, the Nazis received votes democratically and participated in the Reichstag. In the early 1930s, as the Great Depression devastated the German economy, Hitler received increasing support. In the election of 1930, the Nazi Party increased its seats in Parliament tenfold. By 1932, the Nazis dominated German goverment and many who disagreed with Hitler still backd him, thinking he was the country's only hope. In 1933, Hitler became chancellor, or leader of the Reichstag. He then seized control of the government, known under his racist rule as the Third Reich, and set his eyes on conquering Europe.

Hitler assumed that Great Britain would crumble quickly after the fall of her ally, France. But a new leader, Winston Churchill, replaced Britain's more diplomatically minded Chamberlain. Chruchill proved to be resolute and fierce prime minister. He refused to cut a deal with Germany, so Hitler launched a massive air bombing campaign in 1940 known as the Battle of Britain, which pitted the surperior numbers of the German air force against the smaller numbers of the Royal Air Force. The British succeeded in keeping the German army out, and with their newly devised handy tool known as radar, they managed a successful, though costly, defense of the island.
It took a while for the United States, after joining Great Britain against the Axis, to coordinate a land attack against Germany because they needed a foothold in Europe from which to begin their assult. In the meantime, the allies fought the Japanese in the Pacific and the Germans and Italians in Africa while the United States also secretly worked on its Manhattan Project - the development of an atomic bomb. By 1943, the United States and Britain were ready for their European offensivem and they started it by taking control of Italy. The next year, English, American, and Canadian forces launched their biggest offensive, landing on the French beaches of Normandy on what is now known as D-day. With the help of French resistance forces, Allied Forces battled their way across northern France in the summer of 1944 and liberated France.

After World War II, the Allies believed that a network of international organizations would reduce the probability that such a great war would break out again. The first of these international organizations was the United Nations, created in the aftermath of World War II to replace what was seen as a failed League of Nations. Givern more muscle than the League of Nations, the primary goal of the U.N. was simple: to mediate, and if necessary to intervene in, international disputes between nations. As time passed, the U.N. espanded beyond the realm of political conflicts and increasingly involved itself in the monitoring of human rights and other social problems. But in addition to the U.N., the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (now known as the World Trade Organization), were formed to create and manage a more intergrated global economy. The Allis believed that countries that were more connected economically would be less likely to invade one another.

By 1949, the communists under Mao Zedong had rallied millions of peasants in northern China and swept southward toward the Kuomindang strongholds, driving the Kuomindang farther and farther south until they finally feld to the island of Taiwan, where they established the Rebublic of China. The impact for mainland China was enormous. It became the Perople's Republic of China, the largest communist nation in the world under the leadership of Mao Zedong. the two Chinas have been seperate ever since, and both claim to be the "real" China. Taiwan eventually developed into an economic powerhouse, but lost its credibility as the true China when the United Nations and eventually the United States recognized the People's Republic of China as China in 1973. taiwan has rejected China's efforts toward reunification, but nevertheless the two nations have grown close together, especially as the economis of both nations have grown stronger and stronger.

When the Soviet Union collasped in the early 1990s, the Cubans lost their main financial backer. This was a huge loss because it amounted to billions of dollars of aid. Still, Castro has managed to hang on to his power, but economic conditions in Cuba deteriorated sharply after the fall of communism in Europe.

The decline of communism brought sweeping reform to Poland and its goverment, which had been trying for years to prevent the spread of anticommunism sentiment. In 1980, more than a decade before the fall of communism in the Soviet Union, a group of workers began the Solidarity movement under the leadership of Lech Walesa. Thousands of workers joined a strike for reform of the communist economic system. The government reacted by imposing martial law and arresting Lech Walesa, as well as other Solidarity leaders. Thorughout the early- and mid-1980s, the goverment tried to suppress Solidarity. But in 1988, the reform-minded Rakowski became the Premier of Poland. Solidarity was legalized and in 1989, a member of Solidarity, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, became Prime Minister in the first open elections since the end of World War II. In 1990, the communist party fell apart in Poland, just as it was falling apart thoughout eastern Europe, and Lech Walesa was elected president. During the 1990s, the economy improved swiftly as Poland introduced market-based reforms and a new democratic constitution. Poland formally completed its integration into the West by joining NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004. Quite a change.

When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985, he instituted policies of openess and urged restucturing of the Soviet economy. He may not have realized it at the time, but as he set in motion a tidal wave of change that wouldn't be able to reverse. Legislation was passed to add elements of private enterprise to the economy. Nuclear arms treaties were signed with the United States. Gorbachev even publicly and officially denounced the Great Prupe by Stalin in the 1930s, a huge deal because it showed that the Soviet Union was re-evaluating itself. The list of former Soviet satellites declared their seperation from the USSR. The Soviet Union itself disintigrated in 1991. Russia became its own country again, while the other parts of the old Soviet Empire, such as the Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia, just to name a few, became independent nations.

In response to the system of aparthied ("seperation of the races"), the black community organized. In the 1950s, Nelson Mandela became leader of the African National Congress, an organization determined to abolish aparthied. At first, he advocated peaceful protest, following the example of Gandhi. ut in 1960, after the Sharpeville massacre in which 67 protesters were killed, the African National Congress supported guerrilla warfare. At Shareville, blacks were protesting a policy that forced them to carry passes to be in the cities in order to go to their jobs. The passes were issued at places of employment. This meant if you worked and your wife didn't, you couldn't go into the city with her because she wouldn't have a pass. The massacre rallied the anti-apartheid movement. Mandela was arrested in 1964 for his role in anti-apartheid violence and sentenced to life imprisonment.
After decades of increasng pressure from the black majority and the international community, South Africa finally released Madela in 1990 and agreed to negociate on the policy of apartheid. the government more than negotiated, it crumbled. In 1994, after apartheid was abolished, Mandela was elected president in the first free and open election in the nation's history.