The Agony of Europe: 1900-1945
F 2020

Description

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. 

Weekly Topics

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

13. The end of the war and Europe on Trial; a reckoning with death, destruction, starvation, unprecedented numbers of displaced persons; retribution.

14. Emergence from Hell: Europe at the end of the war


Bibliography

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.