One day in the early 1970s I was watching an item on a children’s television programme. The presenters had got hold of a newspaper from the 1920s and were looking at articles imagining what life would be like in the future – specifically, in the 1970s. They imagined we’d all be living in sleek towers soaring into the sky and driving cars that flew, though the illustration, showing a Model T Ford with wings, didn’t inspire much confidence. My grandmother, who was watching the programme with me, was a bit put out. ‘They’re talking about the 1920s as if they were ancient history!’ she said, indignantly. Which had me puzzled, because that’s exactly what I thought they were!
Now, you could see that incident as a little illustration of different age perspectives. My grandmother was born in 1900 so the 1920s were her twenties, and you always think they were only yesterday. But this story also tells us something about the century itself. Wondering what the future will be like is a very twentieth-century thing to do – after all, in the Middle Ages no one thought it would be so very different from the present. The comics I read as a child used to carry pieces about the Future and their vision wasn’t so very different from that 1920s newspaper: By the year 2000 we’d all be – you’ve guessed it! – living in sleek towers and whizzing around in flying cars. Oh, and wearing Star Trek-style outfits in all weathers too.
Now, all centuries think of themselves as modern, but the twentieth century went further: It was the futuristic century. The pace of technological change was bewildering. Even in the days of the electric telegraph at the start of the century, no one could have believed that by the end of it people would be beaming instant messages to each other via space. And thinking nothing of it. Yet in many ways the twentieth century was no different from any other. It’s not just that people still fell in love or laughed or cried. Future-gazers didn’t expect that by the year 2000 people would still be starving in Africa while the rest of the world had too much to eat, or that whole communities would set out to massacre their neighbours with guns or machetes, or that millions of people would live in poverty, sheltering under road bridges or on fetid rubbish dumps on the outskirts of hi-tech cities. Or that the world would be pole-axed with grief because of the death of a princess.
No, my friends, the history of the twentieth century will surprise you. You’ll find tragedy and horror, but you’ll also find tremendous advances in the cause of humanity.
About This Book
This book is called Twentieth Century History For Dummies. That title needs a word of explanation. Historians like arranging history in centuries, mainly because a period of a hundred years has a nice round feel to it, but that approach is always a bit arbitrary: Things don’t always change dramatically from one century to another (do you feel so very different when you wake up on your birthday? Apart from the hangover, I mean). Some historians talk of the twentieth century as if it really started in 1914 when the First World War broke out and some like to wrap it up with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But you’ve paid good money for this book and I’m not going to short-change you. In fact, I’m going to give you a bit extra. This book takes you from the end of the nineteenth century right the way through to the Millennium and a little bit beyond. Not too far beyond, because we’re only just into the twenty-first century as I write this, but enough to round off the story.
If you’re going to write the history of the twentieth century you’ve got to think global because that’s how the century thought. When the century opened the world was dominated by global empires and when it ended it was dominated by global corporations, and the two wars which shaped the period in-between were both called world wars. In 1900 travel was an adventure for the rich but by 2000 people of all social classes were hopping on planes and jetting off around the world. To some extent, therefore, any history of the twentieth century is bound to be a history of the world.
But writing truly global history isn’t easy. For much of the century the drive behind world events came from Western leaders, and Western culture certainly came to dominate the world (though Islamic culture made an impressive stand against it). So you’ll find that the first half of this book is rather dominated by the doings of Western countries dragging the rest of the world behind them. Once you get past the Second World War, however, a different story emerges: Countries in other parts of the world gained their independence and began to follow their own courses of action. Lastly, the title says this book is for dummies. As you probably know, this book is part of the successful For Dummies series, but don’t get the wrong idea: I don’t think you’re a dummy. How could I? You bought my book. But all of us can feel like a dummy in front of something we know nothing whatever about. The twentieth century isn’t going to be quite like that, because you’re bound to know something about it, but knowing a few odd bits can be almost as bad as knowing nothing at all, especially if you don’t know how they connect or what the overall picture is. The trouble is that some books can be so off-putting, or use such technical language, or just not bother to explain things that you end up feelinglike a dummy. This book will not do this. You may feel like a dummy when you pick it up, but you won’t by the time you put it down. And, hopefully, you’ll have enjoyed it too.
Conventions Used in This Book
The most obvious convention I follow is to use standard dating: 1900, 1914, 1939, and so on. You might think ‘So what?’ but not everyone sees history that way. You might read that the Battle of Kursk, a huge tank battle between the Germans and the Russians, took place in the year 1943, and so it did in the normal way of dating. But in the Islamic calendar it took place in the year 1362 and in the Hebrew calendar it was in 5703. Confusing. In this book, I use the form of dates in most common use, from the Gregorian calendar drawn up in the sixteenth century by Pope Gregory XIII after whom it is named. Some people like to shy away from this calendar’s Christian origins by adding the letters ‘CE’ after dates, to stand for ‘Common Era’. But since history has no common era this idea has never seemed very sensible to me. No, the nearly-universal use of the Gregorian calendar is just another reminder that, for much of the twentieth century, the world was dominated by the West. Get over it. You can decide whether or not this was a good thing when you’ve read a bit more of the book.
Speaking of dates, not everyone knows that the twentieth century began on 1 January 1901 and soldiered on until the end of 2000. If you’re wondering why 1900 isn’t considered part of the twentieth century, remember that centuries are numbered from the notional date of the birth of Jesus Christ. Because there wasn’t a year 0, the first set of hundred years is numbered 1–100, the second century from 101–200, the third century 201–300, and so on, with every century beginning with a year ending in 01 and ending at the end of a year ending in 00. That means that 1901 was the first year of the twentieth century, and the twenty-first century began on 1 January 2001. But of course people always get the decorations out when the numeral at the start of the date changes, as it did in 1900 and 2000. Trying to explain to them why 1900 and 2000 weren’t the first years of either century but the last years of the previous ones is pointless: You’ll just have to bathe in the warm glow of knowing you’re right and go out and buy an anorak.
Names are the other issue. Names matter but place names and even people’s names often change, which can make things difficult for the poor old historian. The Russian city of St Petersburg was known as Petrograd, Leningrad, and then St Petersburg again at different points in the century. Some cities changed names according to which country they ended up in: For the first half of the century, for example, the Polish city of Gdansk was a German city called Danzig. Some cities deliberately changed their name to wipe out memories of the past: Salisbury in Rhodesia became Harare in the independent state of Zimbabwe, Saigon in South Vietnam became Ho Chi Minh City, Chemnitz in Germany became Karl-Marx Stadt and then changed back to Chemnitz after the fall of communism. Countries changed their names: Ceylon became Sri Lanka, Burma became Myanmar. And sometimes the whole system of spelling changes: We used to write about how Mao Tse-tung defeated the Kuomintang to seize power in Peking; now we say that Mao Zedong defeated the Guomindang to seize power in Beijing. But sometimes people get confused and mix old and new spellings on the same page.
In this book I try to use the names and forms in use at the time – so I refer to Abyssinia in the thirties but Ethiopia in the 1980s, and Peking and Mao Tse-tung until the 1980s when the general usage changed.
Foolish Assumptions
You might have made some foolish assumptions about me; I hope I haven’t made too many about you.
I’m assuming:
You’ve probably heard of the most important figures of the century, such as Lenin or Gandhi, but don’t know much about them
You’re interested to know a bit about the twentieth century but you don’t want to get bogged down in a lot of boring detail
You don’t usually buy history books if you can help it
You haven’t got much time
If this is you, then smile: Your trip through the twentieth-century’s major people and events will be clear and painless and as short or long as you care to make it. You may end up learning more than you bargained for, in fact I hope you do, but I won’t pile too many details on you.
Ah, but you may be thinking in terms of someone else. Perhaps you’ve got a relative or a friend who is learning history at college and needs help. Perhaps you are that relative or friend. Perhaps someone has set you an essay.
If so, then this book is the place to start. It will give you a road map, tell you how the land lies, and what the dangers are. If you need to know a lot about the Mexican Revolution or Sukarno’s regime in Indonesia or about the Cold War and you need to know it now, then starting here will make the rest of your reading a whole lot easier to understand. This book is your friend.
But what about you? Perhaps you’re assuming:
This book will have lots of dates
This book will have exercises and tests for you to do
You have to read this whole book
Wrong! You’ll find dates where they’re useful, which is what dates are for. You won’t find any tests or exercises because this book aims to help you learn, not to make you feel small. And you don’t have to read all the book. You don’t have to read all of every chapter. I’ve written it so you can home straight in on the bits you want. Okay, you might need to check some bits elsewhere, and I’ve indicated where doing so might be helpful, but always remember: This book is here to serve you, not you to serve it.
One last very foolish assumption. You might be thinking:
History is heavy
Read on: I think you’ll be surprised.
How This Book Is Organised
I’ve divided the book into chapters which deal with major themes, and the chapters are grouped into four parts. (The fifth one, the Part of Tens, is a bit different and doesn’t fit into the overall historical structure. But it is rather fun.) The overall approach is chronological, that is, I’ve tried to talk about things in the historical order in which they happened. But not always. For example, I deal with the Russian Revolution and the spread of communism in the 1920s and 1930s in Chapter 4 and then Chapter 5 deals with the growth of fascism, even though they were happening at the same time. Parts III and IV also overlap a bit. The Cold War started in the 1940s and carried on right through to the 1980s, so putting it all into Part III so you can get a sense of the whole story makes sense. If I do put everything from those years into Part III, however, it makes that part very large while Part IV only has the 1990s to deal with. So Part III concentrates on issues relating to the Cold War and to the end of Europe’s worldwide empires, while Part IV looks at some of the issues which weren’t resolved by 1989, and which were still keeping the world’s leaders awake at night by the Millennium.
Part I: The Great War Years: 1900–19
This part looks at the first two decades of the century, which were dominated by the Great War. I start by looking at some of the issues left over from the end of the nineteenth century – centuries always take a bit of time to hand on to their successors – and at how quarrels among Europeans turned into a nightmarish global conflict. Europe’s worldwide empires were at the height of their power then, but that situation would soon be changing.
These were also the years of amazing technological changes. Motor cars had been expensive playthings for the rich; thanks to Henry Ford they were rapidly becoming must-haves for everyone. Within a few years of the Wright brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk, men were taking to the air, crossing the English Channel, and soon learning how to fix guns to their planes and shoot each other down. Telecommunications were taking off, thanks to pioneering work in wireless radio, so that not even a ship at sea need be out of touch with the world. These were exciting years, but dangerous ones.
Part II: The Years of the Great Dictators: 1919–45
The First World War shocked the world to its foundations. The old order had led the world into chaos, and would never enjoy people’s confidence in the same way again. Nationalist movements were getting going in Asia and Africa, beginning to challenge the West’s claim to rule the rest of the world. And the working people of the world were challenging the right of the middle classes to rule them.
The Russians led the way when they tore down their imperial regime and set up the world’s first communist state. Many people around the world were excited and expected their own countries to follow Russia’s example. Even when the Russian experiment turned into a nightmare of famine and brutal dictatorship, many communists stayed loyal to their ideals. But others rejected communism and turned instead to fascism, which was developed in Italy as a sort of socialist movement but in military uniform. Adolf Hitler, the German dictator, was the most notorious leader. His drive to make Germany the greatest state in the world led to the Second World War, which was even longer and more destructive than the first. At the end of it, Germany was crushed and the might of the old great powers was shattered.
Part III: The Divided World: 1945–89
This part deals with the age of the Superpowers. The United States and the Soviet Union had crushed Hitler together, but they soon became enemies. Each side suspected the other of planning to take over the world, and each side gathered allies and weapons. Nuclear weapons. By the 1950s the world was divided into two hostile blocs of terrifying power. The Cold War was a period of paralysing fear that the next international crisis could mean the end of the world.
On a brighter note, the rest of that world began finally to get its voice heard. As Europe’s worldwide empires finally collapsed, sometimes peacefully, more often very bloodily, new states emerged in Africa and Asia and began to take their places in the councils of the world. But hopes that independence would lead to international peace and prosperity didn’t last long: Many of these new states proved poor and corrupt, and soon got dragged into the Cold War. One of them, Vietnam, was the scene for America’s twentieth-century nightmarish war.
And then, suddenly, the Cold War ended. All that was required apparently was a new leader in Russia and a more open attitude in Washington. Borders opened and Berlin’s infamous wall was torn down. This part explains why.
Part IV: To the Millennium
Not all problems were solved when the Cold War ended. For some areas, like Europe, it produced a whole set of new problems. Incredibly, the 1990s saw horrific tribal killing in Yugoslavia and in Rwanda. In the Middle East, the long battle between Israel and its Arab neighbours carried on as before, only now it grew as the West increasingly identified militant Islam as its new enemy. Only a matter of months into the new millennium Islamic terrorists launched a devastating attack that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York: This event was probably the twentieth century’s biggest legacy to the twenty-first.
This period wasn’t all bad. The last decades of the century saw breathtaking developments in communications and technology, as the world discovered the World Wide Web. Advances in medicine made it possible to treat increasing numbers of diseases. But AIDS appeared in the 1980s, sweeping through the world like a medieval plague and devastating Africa. And as the century ended, our technological advances themselves seemed to put the future of the planet at deadly risk.
Part V: The Part of Tens
Time to cheer up. If the century’s doom and gloom is getting too much for you, have a look in here and discover my thoughts about the century’s highs and lows. Not just the serious stuff: Which were the century’s most important films? What were the century’s most iconic moments? And were men’s flares really the century’s worst idea?
The Part of Tens is always the most fun part to write; you should find it fun to read, too.
Icons Used in This Book
At different points in the book you’ll see little icons that highlight particular points. This is what they mean:
Sometimes something that happened in the past has a direct link with today. It might be the origin of something we’re familiar with, or it might explain why we do things the way we do. Where you see this sign you’ll find one of these direct links between yesterday and today.
Beware: Historians disagree. Not (usually) about dates or events but they can disagree violently about how we should understand the past. Was Stalin just a bloodthirsty tyrant or was he the direct product of the Russian Revolution? Did President Truman need to authorise dropping the atomic bomb on Japan? Was Indian independence rushed through too quickly? These are important issues, often with major consequences, and historians can get surprisingly heated when debating them. This symbol indicates where significant debates have sprung up, so you’ll know how you stand if you decide to look into the issue further.
We may not know much about history, but at least we like to think we know some things. The trouble is, some of the things we think we know turn out not to have happened in the way we thought at all. We all like our myths, but part of a historian’s job is to check facts and doing so inevitably means a lot of myth-busting. If you hate having your illusions shattered, you may want to steer clear of this icon, but if you can take it, read and be amazed.
You’ll see this icon where I mention a significant point that you need to bear in mind, especially if you are to understand something that comes later. Of course the good thing about this book is that if you forget what it is you are supposed to remember you can always look for the Remember icon.
Or, to put it another way, Fancy That! Here I point out some of the enormous technological advances that have been made in the twentieth century and how they have affected events. Some, such as telecommunications, have been entirely to the good; others, like flamethrowers or Agent Orange, have not.
Not to be confused with Technological Breakthroughs! Here I explain some technical terms or ideas as they arise. If you want detail, this is where to look. Or, you can skip these sections and carry on with the story. No one will know.