14. ATTEMPTS AT RECOVERY (THE 1920s)
THE 1920s: AN OVERVIEW
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The disappointing peace
But Wilson's peace does not work out as planned. Wilson attempts to negotiate a fair end to the slaughter with his Armistice – but fails to connect American power with American diplomacy – and the English and French take the opportunity to pounce upon the exhausted Germans to wreak an expensive revenge. Probably no English or French politician who failed to bring home to his people some major exaction of retribution against the Germans would have had a political future. Wilson’s proposed League of Nations
Wilson hopes to undo the unfairness of such ‘peace’ terms with the creation of a new League of Nations, an international deliberative body which he hopes will provide the forum for more rational reshaping of the post-war world – when tempers have had a chance to cool down and diplomats are more able to think clearly and fairly. However the extensive commitment required of membership in the League alarms American Senators when Wilson’s League of Nations idea is put before them as a treaty requiring Senatorial ratification. But Wilson will hear of none of their complaints – unwilling to hear of any opposition to what he, ever the Idealist, considers to be a plan whose perfection must not be compromised. The net result of Wilsonian "purity" is that the Senate fails to ratify – and America does not join the League (the only major nation not to do so). The German sense of betrayal
Furthermore, the betrayal of Wilson’s promise of an equitable peace, to which the Germans thought they were agreeing when they laid down their arms, will become the source of German ideological opportunity for those (Hitler and his Nazis) who seek to exploit this sense of betrayal to overthrow German "democracy" and institute a Neuordnung (New Order) in Germany. In short, the peace of 1919 merely sets the scene for a return engagement 20 years later in the form of World War II. Chaos among the "losers"
Russia is plunged into a long and bloody civil war (1918-1923) between Lenin’s Communist "Reds" and the coalition of Kerensky’s and the Tsarist’s "Whites." More soldiers and civilians die from this civil war than had died during the Great War. The decrepit Ottoman Empire is taken over by ‘Young Turks’ who want to modernize the Turkish nation – and purify it by ridding it of the many non-Turkish minorities living within its borders. Germany forces the Emperor Wilhelm to abdicate and comes under a Weimar Republic which is challenged on all sides by Germans who have no love or understanding of republican democracy – especially one associated with the stigma of national defeat. The Austro-Hungarian empire is broken up into a number of mini-states, each of whose political viability as new ‘democracies is questionable. Poland is restored out of territorial loss of Russia, Germany and Austria – with no tradition of democracy to guide it into the new era of democracy ... and existing as a vulnerable target should its neighbors recover strength enough to grab back their lost territory (which they do in 1939 – starting another World War in Europe) Disillusionment among the "victors"
The ‘victorious’ democracies – America, Britain, France and Italy – are badly stung by the death and destruction that has ultimately produced no real progress in world civilization. Consequently the democracies suffer a deep drop in moral nerve after the war. The aggressive instinct that marked the West’s presence in the larger world before the war is largely lost, replaced among a number of the West’s political leaders by a tired, timid spirit – a spirit which hopes that future conflicts can be avoided by a new attitude of mutual "appeasement." Deep cultural tensions in post-war Europe
Political radicalism. For the average European family, which has suffered greatly through the four years of war, the post-war period is troubled with the thought that all of the war’s high-sounding nationalist spirit had produced in the end only mindless death and destruction. A spirit of disillusionment with politicians and cynicism with respect to their ideas and programs sets in. (Americans, who experienced much less of the war, nonetheless share much the same sentiments.) This cynical spirit stirs a sense of political opportunity among a number of extremist political factions and their leaders: Marxist Democratic Socialists or Communists on the ‘Left’ and Fascists on the ‘Right.’ They find their appeal strongest among the social classes that have suffered most from the crumbling of the older social order. Socialism/Communism. European soldiers coming out of the war find that with the war over and war-time industry cutting back, jobs were scarce – and the ones that did exist paid very poorly. They are deeply resentful of the way their personal sacrifices have been so poorly rewarded – while fat-cat wartime industrialist owners or "capitalists" still seem to be doing fairly well for themselves. This group of industrial workers is thus easily manipulated by leaders who urge the workers to rise up against the wealthy industrial property owners, seize this property and make it "communally" their own. This is the basis of the Communist appeal which will produce workers’ uprising all across Europe in the 1920s (and a huge ‘Red Scare’ in early 1920s America). Fascism
Other European soldiers, upon a return to their farms, find that they have been left behind economically and culturally by developments brought on by the war. With farm prices running at a new low, farmers find it difficult to sustain a living for themselves and their families. Thye watch with resentment as a fast-growing urban-industrial order appears to be enjoying many new economic opportunities of the post-war world. This agrarian/small-townsmen group is easily manipulated by leaders who stress the importance of restoring a largely romanticized traditional agrarian social order. They promise to bring the glories of a mythical past back to existence – if the people simply surrender their hopes and dreams to the total management by their ‘great’ leaders. This appeal is the basis for what will come to be called Fascism. Rising secular-humanism
At another cultural level, artists and intellectuals (the psychoanalyst Freud being perhaps the most popular figure among this group) are boasting of their escape from the intellectual tyrannies of the past: excessive patriotism and superstitious piety. They proudly profess belief in nothing except the immediacy of their own personal existence – and are quick to mock those who hold higher ideals, whether founded on the past or the future. Philosophically they refer to themselves sometimes as ‘humanists,’ sometimes as ‘existentialists’ – but always as ‘scientific.’ But actually, as pure secularists (believing only in the ‘reality’ of the immediately surrounding material order), they tend to be simply hedonistic cynics. They support no causes – nor do they pay much attention to the social requirements of the larger social order. Those expected to lead the post-war societies get little or no support from this self-indulgent social group. Communist or Soviet Russia heads off in its own new direction
Bolshevik victory. Slowly and painfully the Communist Red Army of Lenin and his close associate Trotsky gain ground against the White Armies of Kerensky and the Tsarists – and by 1923 the horrendous Russian civil war was over. Lenin’s Bolsheviks or Communists ruled Russia – and much of its former empire among surrounding non-Russian ethnic groups. But Lenin was a sick man, and died the following year (1924). Power was supposedly held jointly by the Bolsheviks serving on the Communist Party’s Central Committee – though most observers supposed that Trotsky would emerge as the supreme leader. But Trotsky was more interested in spreading the Communist revolution to the rest of Europe, treating the Russian Revolution simply as a staging ground for "continuing revolution." Stalin's rise to power. Working behind the scenes was the mysterious Stalin, who had been assigned the less glorious task of overseeing personnel issues of the Party hierarchy. But Stalin had been using his position to place and promote individuals presumably loyal to himself personally – thereby building up a personal power base within the Party, a development that the Bolshevik intellectuals directing the Party at its highest levels had not been paying much attention to. Toward the end of the 1920s Stalin was ready to make his move: he impressed (or intimidated) his fellow Bolsheviks into agreeing to the need to focus on "revolution in one country" (Russia), to stand behind a Five Year Plan for the rapid industrialization of Russia (at the expense of the Russian countryside and its people), and to oust Trotsky whose internationalism threatened the security of the revolution in Russia. Stalin begins the massive industrialization of Russia. With the introduction of his Five Year Plan in 1928, Stalin took complete control of the wealth, the productivity, the very life of the nation – and completely reoriented its culture to his industrial agenda. Millions of lives would be lost in this transition, millions more permanently shattered as Stalin forcibly made the shift of the Russian economy away from agriculture to heavy industry. Anyone who complained, anyone he even suspected of complaining, he simply destroyed. There was no way to offer resistance to Stalin. And so the Soviet Russian economy and culture began its move in the new Stalinist direction. The "Roaring Twenties" in America
The "Roaring Twenties" are dedicated to getting on with life – despite (or because of) the long shadow cast over Western civilization by the mindless slaughter of the war. Not so "roaring" for the American farmer. During the war the American farmer had prospered as never before. With the European farmer having to leave his fields to serve on the Western front business for the American farmer had boomed. To meet the demand for American farm products the farmer had, with the help of bank loans and mortgages, bought more land, more machinery. But with the end of the war and the return to the farms of the European farmer the high demand for American farm products ends – and farm prices drop precipitously. Faced with a massive loss of income – and a heavy commitment to the banks for all those loans and mortgages – farms begin to fail. Local agricultural banks soon follow. A ‘depression’ sets in on the American farm – one which is hard to shake. In a sense, for the American farmer the ‘Great Depression’ starts not in 1930 but ten years earlier in 1920. Fast-paced American city life. The war had brought economic boom to the cities – except that in the cities the boom continues right on into the 1920s as businesses turn to the manufacture of radios, cars and home appliances – to meet a huge demand of a prospering urban society. Material goods abound as never before for the great American urban ‘middle class’ imparting to urban culture a decidedly materialist flavor. Deep cultural divisions impact post-war American society. This disparity in the post-war fortunes of rural vs. urban America produces a deep spiritual divide. In the cities this spirit takes the form of a deep desire to get on toward a better future – a future promising vast new wealth, more leisure, more excitement and very much more personal freedom – and a kind of mindless regard for life summed up as ‘Existentialism.’ In rural America this spirit registers itself as a deep desire to return to the past – to condemn the crass materialism of urban America and the way it has given itself off to ‘un-American’ /un-Christian ways. A bitter cultural battle thus erupts between urban and rural America, taking the form of a cultural war over:
The Roaring 20s begins to lose steam
A declining consumer market. Toward the end of the 1920s the industrial world is facing ‘market saturation’: most people who can easily afford to do so have come into full possession of what they consider to be their all-essential ‘goodies' such as radios, cars and new home appliances. Consequently businesses are finding fewer consumers for their products. Accordingly production slows and workers have to be laid off. Prices are lowered in order to attract remaining potential customers – although this causes industrial profits to drop away to nothing. The stock market, which funds industrial investors in order to share in their profits, begins to grow nervous at the thought of the loss of industrial profits. The 1929 stock market crash. For several years wild / greedy speculation in the trading of industrial stock had raised the prices of stock shares way out of proportion to the real wealth of these industries. People did not care as long as the stock market was gripped by a surreal speculative fever which led people, even just mom and pop investors, to believe that they could always sell their stocks tomorrow for more than they were worth today. But with the drying up of the consumer market, the smart investors see trouble with their investments headed their way – and begin to unload their stocks, willing to lower the asking prices for their stocks in order to get rid of them. Other investors notice this behavior and decide it is also time for them to back out of the stock market. Almost overnight there is a mass panic among investors everywhere to get out of the stock market before stock sprices drop further. The stock market was crashing. |
Go on to the next section: The Post-War "Peace"
