🏞️ The Western Front

After the German advance was halted in 1914, both sides dug trenches from the Channel to Switzerland, and the war on the Western Front became a stalemate. Weapons included machine guns, artillery, poison gas, tanks and aircraft. At Verdun (21 February to 18 December 1916, 300 days) the French held out against the Germans. At the Somme (1 July–18 November 1916, 141 days) the British suffered about 57 000 casualties on the first day, and the entire battle produced over a million casualties on all sides. Overall about 9 million soldiers died in the war.

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📃 Total war and peace

It was a total war: economies, civilians and propaganda were all mobilised. The USA entered in April 1917 after German submarine attacks, and Russia left the war after its revolution in 1917. The Armistice came at 11 a.m. on 11 November 1918. The Treaty of Versailles (28 June 1919) forced Germany to accept war guilt, lose territory, limit its army to 100 000 men and pay reparations (set in 1921 at 132 billion gold marks). Many Germans bitterly resented it. The League of Nations was created in 1920 to keep peace, but the USA never joined.

❄️ 1917: two revolutions

The Romanov dynasty (1613–1917) was weak: Russia had suffered military defeats, hunger and strikes. In March (February by the old Russian calendar) 1917 riots in Petrograd forced Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate and a Provisional Government was formed, but it kept fighting the war. Lenin and the Bolsheviks promised “Peace, Land and Bread” and took power in the October Revolution (November by the Western calendar). A civil war between the Bolshevik Reds and the anti-communist Whites followed (1918–1921), won by the Reds. The USSR was formed in 1922.

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🏭 Stalin’s USSR

After Lenin’s death in 1924, Joseph Stalin became dictator. He launched Five-Year Plans (from 1928) for rapid industrialisation, and collectivisation of farms, which brought terrible famines in 1932–33, especially in Ukraine, and the deaths of millions. In the Great Purge (1936–38) hundreds of thousands were shot and many more sent to gulag labour camps. The state controlled the economy, the press and education, and the USSR became an industrial superpower at heavy human cost.

💥 The Crash

The 1920s were boom years in the USA: mass production, credit, and rising share prices. Many people bought shares on margin with borrowed money. Overproduction, uneven wealth and bank weakness made the economy fragile. In October 1929 share prices collapsed on Wall Street (the Crash). The Dow Jones index fell from about 381 (September 1929) to about 41 (July 1932). Banks failed, businesses closed and US unemployment reached about 25% in 1933.

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🌐 A world crisis and responses

Trade collapsed as countries raised tariffs, and American loans to Europe stopped, so unemployment soared in Germany (about 6 million in 1932). Britain and France struggled. Franklin D. Roosevelt won the US presidency in 1932 and launched the New Deal (1933 onward): bank regulation, public works, social security (1935) and support for workers. Many countries turned to economic nationalism. Economists such as John Maynard Keynes argued that governments should spend to boost demand in a slump. In many places, hardship made voters turn to extremist parties.

🟫 Dictatorships

Fascism glorifies the nation, demands obedience to a single leader, suppresses opposition and uses propaganda and violence. Benito Mussolini took power in Italy after the March on Rome (1922). In Germany, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party blamed Jews and the Versailles treaty for the country’s problems; Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933, and within months ended democracy. The Nuremberg Laws (1935) stripped German Jews of citizenship. In Japan, military leaders gained power and invaded Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1937.

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📆 Appeasement to war

Hitler broke Versailles: he rearmed (1935), marched into the Rhineland (1936), and united Austria with Germany (Anschluss, March 1938). At Munich (September 1938) Britain and France accepted German annexation of the Sudetenland in the hope of peace (appeasement). In March 1939 he took the rest of Czechoslovakia. In August the Nazi–Soviet Pact secretly divided Poland. On 1 September 1939 Germany invaded Poland, and Britain and France declared war on 3 September.

🌍 The course of the war

Germany used fast tank and air attacks (Blitzkrieg) to conquer Poland, Norway, France and others by 1940. Britain survived the Battle of Britain (1940). Hitler invaded the USSR (Operation Barbarossa, June 1941), and on 7 December 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing the USA in. The Soviet victory at Stalingrad (Feb 1943) was a turning point. On 6 June 1944 (D-Day) Allied forces landed in Normandy, with about 156 000 troops on the first day. Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945 (VE Day). After atomic bombs on Hiroshima (6 August) and Nagasaki (9 August), Japan surrendered on 2 September 1945. About 70–85 million people died.

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✡️ The Holocaust and a new order

The Holocaust was the Nazi regime’s systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of about six million Jews, about two thirds of the 9 million Jews in Europe. Nazis also persecuted and killed Roma, disabled people, Poles and other Slavs, political opponents and others. Methods included ghettos, mass shootings and extermination camps such as Auschwitz (liberated 27 January 1945). Some people resisted or rescued Jews at great risk. After the war, the Nuremberg trials (1945–46) prosecuted Nazi leaders for crimes against humanity. The United Nations was founded in 1945, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948.