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20th Century Crises

Movements at the beginning of the 20th century are not only great describing their
geographical immensity, I would say that these movements produced an enormous
change in the ideology of the people and gave a panorama of human power, despite all
the atrocities it provoked.

This work will be a critical analysis of the events taking place in a context which I think
that, although it was short in relation to time (1907-1950 approximately), contained
many catastrophes, scourges and upheavals; even a drop in human progress and a
reorganization of territories and administration.

While the Great War was happening, in Russia the fall of Tsardom in Russia in
February 1917 represented the first stage of a unique revolutionary process which
included the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in October 1917. I consider that the
February revolution was the spontaneous response of the people to the crisis of system
of Russia. It was the consequence of the incapacity of the ruling class, by this I mean
the czars, to keep Russia in a position in the world that lives up to its history and
potential. Military failures and economic hardship during the First World War support
this. Under these conditions, the abdication of Nicholas II in February 1917 was in my
opinion inevitable, due to the power of the Bolsheviks, who then created what I would
call "a more effective power than the power that was destroyed". Also Russia overcame
from this great tragedy and became even stronger than before, by becoming the USSR.

Then, at the end of World War I in other parts of Europe, the aftermath caused another
war: World War II. The interwar period contained a large part of its causes, such as the
armistice signed by Germany known as the "Treaty of Versailles" which provoked a
series of economic debacles not only for Germany, but also ended up affecting both
England and France and, at the same time, not being able to pay their compensation
commitments, it made England and France unable to settle their loans to the United
States. This was one of the reasons why in 1929, a great economic crisis arose called the
Great Depression.

In this period between wars there was the creation of totalitarian regimes like Fascism
and Nazism. Fascism led by Benito Mussolini, was based on violence, expansionism,
an exaggerated nationalism and opposition to Marxist axioms. Nazism led by Adolf
Hitler, was based on a racist and anti-Semitic ideology which I openly declare, and I
even consider that his expansionism policy was much more aggressive than that of
Mussolini.

After these political parties and ideologies had been created, Adolf Hitler came to power
leading the National Socialist Party in 1936, as he had already gained power since 1932.
Always based on his political ideas, Hitler accused Jews of enriching themselves with
money from people, as a result he took away their assets, which managed to finance a
rapid recovery of the German economy, in addition to form a powerful army. He also
annexed several territories like Austria and Czechoslovakia.

The war began with the invasion of Germany to Poland and shortly afterwards the
countries in order to fight were divided in the Allies: France, the United States, USSR
and United Kingdom; and the Axis: Japan, Germany and Italy.

As the armed movement advanced, the USSR entered the war because Germany
violated a non-aggression agreement and it invaded the USSR. After an inclement
winter, the Germans had to undertake the retreat, which marked the beginning of the
end of the war in Europe.

The event that ended the war was the detonation of the bombs of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. It is very sad the case of Japan regarding the situation that they lived, that is
why in Hiroshima there is a Peace Memorial.

Finally, as a result, 60% of cities in Europe were destroyed, there is a huge amount of
economic and human losses (the Holocaust being a good example), but it is also created
the UN and the state of Israel.

In conclusion, events of the beginning of the XX century were really important because
they made big changes in humanity, such as in World War II where scientific advances
were made such as the physics theory that was the base for the atomic bomb, this was
the beginning and let scientist to do nuclear research

But this had a terrible cost that was the life or the lifestyle of many people who were
participating in the war or that were damaged because of bombs or weapons, so these
movements were relatively unnecessary but until some point they were useful to create
the change that we needed to improve society and to see how wrong were some ideas
and currents.

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