Historians have defined Europe between 1900
and 1945 in their book titles: “The Age of Extremes”, “The Dark Continent”, “To
Hell and Back”, to name a few. Barbara
Tuchman, just past the mid-century point, while researching the 14th
century, stated that only the 20th century surpasses the 14th
in suffering and destruction.
The century did not look bleak to Europeans in
1900. It was a period of optimism, regional peace, economic prosperity,
innovation, and the creation of cultural masterpieces in literature, art, and music.
The 20th century promised to be Europe’s best century, one in which
Europe would tackle social ills to improve the health and welfare of its
citizens. Representative government, the rule of law, economic freedom, and
recognition of individual rights had been expanding from west to east across 19th
century Europe. Science in 1900 promised
increasing prosperity and improving quality of life. Optimism shaped European thinking from the
Russian Empire to Britain in 1900.
By the 1945, this optimism lay in ruins,
crushed against the reality of modern war and ideologies. European culture,
with its roots in the Scientific Revolution starting in the 16th
century, and the Enlightenment of the 18th century, had been
destroyed as completely as the bombed-out buildings that littered the European
landscape. This was not the result of a non-European invasion; Europeans were
the makers of their own destruction.
Why did European societies, in effect, commit
cultural suicide? This will be the main question for this SDG as we
study the impact of war, the rise of dictators championing new ideologies, the
crisis of democracy and the final Armageddon that was WWII. In looking at Europe as a whole, we will concentrate on culture, science, the
arts, and society, as well as politics.
The roots of the world we live in today lie in the first half of the
twentieth century, and we hope you will join us in our journey.
1.
Europe in 1900: Modernity and its contradictions: science, art,
culture, ideologies, industrialization, social structures.
2.
The Nation States and the coming of WWI
3.
Catastrophe: WWI
4.
The Russian Revolution
5.
Turbulent Peace: From Versailles to the mid-1920s
6.
Interwar society and culture: art, science, thought; the
Jazz Age and “Americanization”. The calm of the last half of the 1920s
7.
The Great Depression and the liberal democracies; the crisis of
democracy in eastern and southern Europe
8. Stalinism: the creation of the Totalitarian State; Fascism in Italy and other European states
9..
National Socialism: a racist, anti-liberal world view
10.
The failure of the democracies in the 1930s and the coming of
another war: Germany’s sweep over Europe 1939-1942
11.
Hitler’s Europe: military occupation, repression, the Holocaust,
resistance
12. Axis Conquest and Allied Victory
14.
Emergence from Hell: Europe at the end of the war
Core Book:
To Hell and Back:
Europe 1914-1949 by Ian Kershaw,
2015.
Recommended:
Out of Ashes: A New
History of Europe in the Twentieth Century by Konrad H. Jarausch 2015.