World War

Why did the World Wars break out in the 20th Century followed by the cold war?

Given that the European international soceity of states had its inception as long ago as 1648, why did two unthinkably violent world wars break out in the 20th century,f ollowed by a Cold War that threatened nuclear annihiliation of the human race? That hardly sounds like the kind of thing you would expect to see in the “society.” What went wrong?

World War 1 [the Great War, so-called] was a tragic, terrible and stupid diplomatic accident. Since 1815, there had been no Europe-wide conflict and people had forgotten how destructive and painful wars could be. All that remained after 1815 was a rising nationalism and patriotism in the new countries that emerged during the 19th century. This included Germany, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Greece and so on. To “protect” themselves, all European countries formed alliances with neighbours and pledged support in time of attack. It was this system of alliances that led directly to WW1. When a Serbian nationalist assassinated the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo in June 1914, Austria mobilised an army to take revenge. But Russia had a treaty of protection with Serbia, and mobilised its army in the East. France had a commitment to support Russia in any conflict, and so mobilised the French Army also. In response, the new Germany invoked a particular strategy we now call the Schlieffen Plan – when France mobilises an army, attack immediately and go for Paris. The German army did this and attacked France through Belgium. But Britain had a treaty of protection with Belgium since 1829. Suddenly, by the end of August 1914, the whole of Europe was caught up in a war that had no purpose and no legitimate objectives. Also, for various reasons, Germany had an alliance with Ottoman Turkey and agreed to split the Balkans, Greece and Mesopotamia from European control [France and Britain] in return for assistance.

World War 2 came about because WW1 did not finish with a peace treaty; but with an Armistice – a cease-fire. Germany was ascribed the full blame by the Versailles Conference of 1918-19, and ordered to pay massive reparations to the French. The German army was limited to a few battalions for civil defence, and the navy to small flotillas of little ships. Neither USA nor Britain wanted the reparations to be so large, but both sets of politicians chickened out. The effect was a growing resentment in Germany, which developed into extreme political attitudes including Nazism. [As a matter of interest, the final payment of the 1919 reparations was made on Sunday 3 October 2010. During the Nazi period from 1933 and after the split of Germany between East and West until 1989, no payments had been made.]

In this sense, WW2 was the second part of the unfinished Great War of 1914-18. Also in the same way that Germany allied to Turkey in 1914, Germany allied to Japan in 1940 with the intention of keeping USA out of the European war. It didn’t work, of course, because USA had various treaties with the United Kingdom and felt threatened by all members of the Axis. The situation of Italy is a military and diplomatic anomaly, over which historians are still arguing. Italy was formed as a single country over the period 1859-71, and never had a warlike history. How it came to be mixed up with Adolf Hitler is is still a mystery to many Italians and other Europeans.

The Cold War was an undeclared [mostly non-shooting] war that grew out of WW2 because of American fear and USSR distrust after the splitting of Europe from Danzig [now Gdansk] on the Baltic Sea to Trieste on the Adriatic Sea, by the “Iron Curtain” in 1945. It came to an end when USSR collapsed in 1991, to become the Federation of Independent States and the Russian Federation.

The people, mostly politicians, who dashed into WW1 and WW2 were pretty much the same kind of people that we see today. They were excessively proud of their own countries, talked about “making the world safe”, thought they had the technology for a quick and easy war, and could whip up anti-foreign feeling. Hate the Germans, the Turks, the Japanese, the Russians, the Chinese, the Arabs. Not much has changed.

OK?

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