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Traditions and Encounters, 4th Edition (Bentley)Chapter 35:
THE AGE OF ANXIETYChapter Outline- Probing cultural frontiers
- Postwar pessimism
- The "lost generation"
- Term used to describe pessimism of U.S. and European thinkers after the war
- Postwar poetry and fiction reflected disillusionment with western culture
- Scholars--Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee--lamented decline of the west
- Religious thought reflected uncertainty and pessimism
- Karl Barth attacked liberal Christian theology embracing idea of progress
- Older concepts of original sin and human depravity revived
- Attacks on the ideal of progress
- Science tarnished by the technological horrors of World War I
- Most western societies granted suffrage to all men and women
- Many intellectuals disillusioned with democracy
- Conservatives decried "the rule of inferiors"
- Revolutions in physics and psychology
- Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, 1906
- Space and time relative to the person measuring them
- Implication: reality or truth merely a set of mental constructions
- Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, 1927
- Impossible to state the position and velocity of a subatomic particle at same time
- Atomic universe indeterminate; can only speak of probabilities
- Challenged long-held assumptions about truth, cause and effect
- Freud's psychoanalytic theory, 1896
- Sought psychological causes of mental illness
- Conflict between conscious and unconscious mental processes
- Sexual repression frequent cause of neuroses
- Freud's ideas shaped psychiatric profession, influenced literature and arts
- Experimentation in art and architecture
- Modern painting: when photography can reproduce nature, why should painting?
- Painters like Pablo Picasso sought freedom of expression, emotional expression
- Borrowed from artistic traditions of Asia, Pacific, and Africa
- No widely accepted standards of good or bad art
- Modern architecture: the Bauhaus school started in Germany, 1920
- An international style for twentieth-century urban buildings
(a) Walter Gropius: form should follow function; combined engineering and art
(b) Simple shapes, steel frames, and walls of glass - International style dominated urban landscapes well after 1930s
- Global depression
- The Great Depression
- The weaknesses of global economy
- The tangled financial relationships: Germany and Austria borrowed money from United States, used it to pay reparations to Allies, who used the money to pay war debt to United States
- 1928 U.S. lenders withdrew capital from Europe; financial system strained
- Industrial innovations reduced demand for raw materials--rubber, coal, cotton
- Postwar agriculture depressed in Europe, United States, Canada, Argentina, and Australia
- The crash of 1929
- U.S. economic boom prompted many to speculate, invest beyond their means
- Black Thursday (24 October 1929): stock prices dropped, investors lost life savings
- Lenders called in loans, forcing investors to keep selling
- Economic contraction in U.S. economy and the world
- Overproduction and reduced consumer demand
- Widespread business failure and unemployment
- By 1932 U.S. industrial production and national income dropped by half
- Industrial economies felt banking crisis, unemployment
- Germany and Japan unable to sell manufactured goods to purchase fuel and food
- Germany by 1932: 35 percent unemployment, 50 percent decrease in industrial production
- European industrial states and Japan unable to sell to United States because of tariffs
- Primary producing economies especially vulnerable
- Export prices declined sharply after 1929: sugar, coffee, beef, tin, nitrates, and so on
- Latin American states enacted import tariffs that actually helped domestic industry
- Brazil under dictator Betulio Dornelles Vargas built up steel and iron production
- Impact on colonial Africa varied: exports hurt, but not local markets
- China not integrated into world economy, less affected
- Philippines was a U.S. colony; its sugar production protected by the United States
- Economic nationalism favored over international cooperation
- High tariffs, import quotas, and prohibitions to promote economic self-sufficiency
- U.S. trade restrictions provoked retaliation by other nations
- International trade dropped 66 percent between 1929 and 1932
- Despair and government action
- Government policies to reduce female employment, especially of married women
- Great Depression caused enormous personal suffering
- Millions struggled for food, clothing, and shelter
- Marriage and birthrates declined, suicide increased
- Intensified social divisions and class hatreds
- John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath criticized U.S. policy of "planned scarcity"
- Economic experimentation
- John M. Keynes challenged classical economic theory
- Classic theory: capitalism self-correcting, operated best if unregulated
- Keynes argued the depression was a problem of inadequate demand, not supply
- Governments should play active role in stimulating economy, consumer demand
- The New Deal of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt anticipated Keynes's ideas
- After 1932, protected banking system, massive public works, farm subsidies
- Also, legislation established minimum wage, social security, workers' unions
- Military spending in WWII ultimately ended the depression in United States
- Challenges to the liberal order
- Communism in Russia
- Civil war, 1918-1920, between Bolsheviks and anticommunist forces, or the Whites
- The Red Terror: secret police arrested and killed two hundred thousand suspected Whites
- Bolsheviks executed Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family, June 1918
- Despite some foreign support, the Whites were defeated by Red Army in 1920
- Perhaps ten million died during civil war
- Lenin's "war communism" transformed economy
- Policy included nationalizing banks, industry, and church holdings
- Private trade abolished; peasants reduced production
- By 1920, industrial output at one-tenth, agricultural at half prewar levels
- Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP), 1921
- Reversed war communism, restored market economy
- Returned small-scale industries to private ownership
- Allowed peasants to sell their surplus at free market
- Programs of electrification and technical schools were carried out
- Lenin died, 1924; bitter power struggle followed
- Joseph Stalin (1879-1953)
- "Man of steel": Georgian by birth, Russian nationalist by conviction
- Stalin favored "socialism in one country," not international socialism
- Eliminated all rivals; by 1928, unchallenged dictator of Soviet Union
- First Five-Year Plan, 1928-1932, replaced Lenin's NEP
- Set production quotas, central state planning of entire economy
- Emphasized heavy industry at expense of consumer goods
- Collectivization of agriculture
- States seized private farms, created large collective farms
- Believed to be more productive, to feed industrial workers
- Collectivization strongly resisted by peasants, especially the wealthier kulaks
- Half of farms collectivized by 1931; three million peasants killed or starved
- As an alternative to capitalism during the depression, Soviet Union offered full employment and cheap housing and food, but few luxuries or consumer goods
- The Great Purge, 1935-1938
- Ruthless policy of collectivization led to doubts about Stalin's administration
- Stalin purged two-thirds of Central Committee members and more than half of the army's high-ranking officers
- By 1939, eight million people were in labor camps; three million died during "cleansing"
- The fascist alternative
- Fascism: new political ideology of 1920s
- Started in Italy, then Germany; also found in other countries around the world
- Fascism hostile to liberal democracies and to socialism and communism
- Sought subordination of individuals to the service of state
- Emphasized an extreme form of nationalism, often expressed as racism
- Veneration of the state, devotion to charismatic leaders
- Militarism exalted, uniforms, parades
- Italian fascism
- Benito Mussolini, founder of Italian fascism, 1919
- Armed fascist squads called Blackshirts terrorized socialists
- After march on Rome, Mussolini invited by king to be prime minister
- The fascist state in Italy
- All other political parties banned, Italy became a one-party dictatorship
- Supported by business, the party crushed labor unions, prohibited strikes
- Not aggressively anti-Semitic until after alliance with Hitler in 1938
- Germany's national socialism
- Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)
- Born in Austria, schooled in Vienna; hated Jews and Marxists
- Moved to Munich and fought in German army in WWI
- 1921, joined obscure group, National Socialist German Workers Party
- The emergence of the Nazi party
- 1923: attempt to take over Weimar Republic failed; Hitler jailed
- Released in 1924, he organized party for a legal takeover, through elections
- The struggle for power after 1929
- National socialism enjoyed broad appeal, especially from lower-middle class
- Public lost faith in democracy: associated with defeat, depression, inflation
- 1930-1932, Nazi party became the largest in parliament
- 1932, President Hindenburg offered Hitler the chancellorship
- Rapid consolidation of power, 1933-1935
- Nazis created one-party dictatorship; outlawed all other political parties
- Took over judiciary, civil service, military
- Nazi ideology emphasized purity of race
- Women praised as wives and mothers; were discouraged from working
- Cult of motherhood: propaganda campaign to increase births was unsuccessful
- Nazi eugenics: deliberate policies to improve the quality of the German "race"
- Compulsory sterilization of undesirables: mentally ill, disabled
- State-sponsored euthanasia of physically and mentally handicapped
- Anti-Semitism central to Nazi ideology
- 1935, Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of citizenship, outlawed intermarriage
- Jews economically isolated, lost jobs, assets, businesses
- 1938, Kristallnacht: official attacks on synagogues and Jewish businesses
- 250,000 Jews fled to other countries; many others trapped
- Struggles for national identity in Asia
- India's quest for independence
- Indian National Congress and Muslim League
- After WWI, both organizations dedicated to achieving independence
- Indian nationalists inspired by Wilson's fourteen Points and the Russian Revolution
- Frustrated by Paris Peace settlement: no independence for colonies
- British responded to nationalistic movement with repressive measures
- Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948), leader of Indian nationalism
- Raised as a well-to-do Hindu, studied law in London
- Spent twenty-five years in South Africa, embraced tolerance and nonviolence
- Developed technique of passive resistance, followed a simple life
- Became political and spiritual leader, called the Mahatma ("Great Soul")
- Opposed to caste system, especially the exclusion of untouchables
- 1920-1922, led Non-Cooperation Movement; 1930, Civil Disobedience Movement
- The India Act of 1937
- 1919 British massacre at Amritsar killed 379 demonstrators, aroused public
- Repression failed, so the British offered modified self-rule through the India Act
- Unsuccessful because India's six hundred princes refused to support
- Muslims would not cooperate, wanted an independent state
- China's search for order
- The republic, after 1911
- 1911 revolution did not establish a stable republic; China fell into warlords' rule
- Through unequal treaties, foreign states still controlled economy of China
- Growth of Chinese nationalism
- Chinese intellectuals expected Paris Peace Conference to end treaty system
- Instead, Paris treaties approved Japanese expansion into China
- May Fourth Movement: Chinese youths and intellectuals opposed to imperialism
- Some were attracted to Marxism and Leninism; CCP established in 1921
- CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and Guomindang (The Nationalist Party)
- CCP leader Mao Zedong advocated women's equality, socialism
- Guomindang leader Sun Yat-sen favored democracy and nationalism
- Two parties formed alliance, assisted by the Soviet Union, against foreigners
- Civil war after death of Sun Yat-sen, 1925
- Led by Jiang Jieshi, both parties launched Northern Expedition to reunify China
- Successful, Jiang then turned on his communist allies
- 1934-1935, CCP retreated to Yan'an on the Long March, 6,215 miles
- Mao emerged as the leader of CCP, developed Maoist ideology
- Imperial Japan
- Japan emerged from Great War as a world power
- Participated in the League of Nations
- Signed treaty with United States guaranteeing China's integrity
- Japanese economy boosted by war: sold munitions to Allies
- Prosperity short-lived; economy slumped during Great Depression
- Labor unrest, demands for social reforms
- Political conflict emerged between internationalists, supporters of western-style capitalism, and nationalists, hostile to foreign influences
- The Mukden incident, 1931, in Manchuria
- Chinese unification threatened Japanese interests in Manchuria
- Japanese troops destroyed tracks on Japanese railroad, claimed Chinese attack
- Incident became pretext for Japanese attack against China
- Military, acting without civilian authority, took all Manchuria by 1932
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