20th Century History: From the Origins of the Great War to Vietnam.

Books on the History of the 20th Century.

The Great War and Its Aftermath

By the turn of the century Bismarck’s newly fledged German Empire was enmeshed in industrial, political and colonial rivalries with Russia, France and Britain. The result was a burgeoning arms race and a series of defensive political treaties. When Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by state-sponsored Serbian nationalists on 28 June 1914, Austria responded by making impossible demands on Serbia. Russia’s treaty obligations to Serbia led to her mobilisation; Germany mobilised in support of Austria; and France mobilised as required by its treaty with Russia. Great Britain had been a guarantor (as had Prussia) of Belgian independence after 1839. When Germany occupied Belgium at the onset of war with France, Britain was drawn into the hostilities. With Turkey allied to Germany, the war spread from Europe and colonial Africa to cover the whole of the Middle East (The Ottoman Centuries and A History of the Arab Peoples, available on our Rome & Byzantium page, are essential reading in this regard). America was dragged out of isolationism to take part in the last battles of the Western Front, but by this time Allied blockades had already left Germany impoverished and exhausted.

The Great War saw the final dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, both of which had been crumbling as former provinces gained independence. The German and Russian monarchies were deposed. The newly formed League of Nations ostensibly guaranteed the rights of newly created small nations and the map of the western world was changed.

In many places the Great War was the progenitor of social unrest, revolution and counter-revolution. Russia surfaced from civil war as a communist state. In the west the nationalist myth-making of the 19th Century, with its delusions of racial superiority, gave birth to the fascism of the 1920s and 1930s. German National Socialism, especially, was fed by the draconian reparations imposed by the victorious Allies. In the Middle East, Arab nationalism was constrained by the artificial division of Turkish territories and the enforcement of governing mandates. Zionism, a minority movement that had in its early days existed in Palestine alongside its Arab neighbours, drew more and more immigrants whose Jewishness had been forced upon them by the institutional anti-Semitism of Nazi Europe. Conflict with the administration of the British mandate, and with the indigenous population and neighbouring Arab states, was inevitable.

The Guns of August / Barbara Tuchman

John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been reading The Guns of August as the Cuban missile crisis developed — the book must have given him pause if pause were needed. This immaculately researched title is probably the best account of the origins of the Great War. Barbara Tuchman merges solid documentary evidence with engrossing narrative to draw a picture of portentous escalation.

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War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, Vol I, Pt 1

War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, Vol I, Pt 2

War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, Vol II, Pt 1

Further volume(s) currently unavailable.
Consecutively Chancellor of the Exchequer, Minister for Munitions and Prime Minister, Lloyd George pulls few punches in this narrative of weak politicians and obstinate and incompetent generals. His Memoirs caused tremendous controversy when published in the 1930s (and a spirited reaction from apologists for the High Command). It is surprising how many Boer War officers castigated in Norman Dixon’s On the Psychology of Military Incompetence crop up again in WWI — and how many more candidates the Great War produced. But the failures on the Western Front were counterbalanced by the monumental task of placing British industry and agriculture on a war footing. Lloyd George’s memoirs are also of interest for his accounts of the Irish Easter Rising and the events that led to Britain’s support for the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine.

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English History 1914-1945 / A J P Taylor
A nation traumatised by the Great War and struggling through social unrest and economic depression to be faced with the second global conflict of the century. A popular and controversial historian who is especially observant on social issues. His appraisal of the organisation and administration of public services in the 1920s — parliament, housing, roads, education, health care, justice — is illuminating: ‘The most influential figures in public life were indeed voluntary workers .… The public life of England was sustained by a great army of busybodies .…’

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In Flanders Fields / Leon Wolff

Ineradicably etched into the consciousness of the generations that lived through the first half of the 20th century, Passchendaele was one of the great follies of World War I. Sir Douglas Haig wasted hundreds of thousands of Allied lives through his obsessive determination to prosecute his great offensive, regardless of past experience and in the face of opposition from the War Cabinet and many of his commanders in the field. Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957) presents a chilling snapshot of a self-serving military hierarchy and is available from our Film Store.

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Goodbye to All That / Robert Graves

From Harrow, to the Western Front as a young officer. Life in the trenches and the apprehensions of the front line soldier over the conduct of the war and the inadequacies of the military regime. Character sketches include a description of the war poet Siegfried Sassoon.

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The Zimmerman Telegram / Barbara Tuchman

An intercepted telegram from the German Foreign Secretary, intended for the government of Mexico, was the single factor that persuaded the pacifist Woodrow Wilson to bring the USA into the Great War. Arthur Zimmerman’s note announced the imminence of unrestricted submarine warfare, beginning in February 1917. Even more importantly, Zimmerman offered Mexico an alliance on the basis of financial support and German assistance in recovering her lost territories in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Finally, Zimmerman suggested that the Mexicans should approach Japan with an invitation to join with the Central Powers. Tuchman unravels the tale of the British interception of the telegram, its implications for the security of their code breaking operation and Zimmerman’s major error in admitting the telegram’s authenticity.

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Seven Pillars of Wisdom / T E Lawrence
Much more than a straightforward history of the Arab Revolt, Lawrence offers profound insights into the origins of Islam, the psychology of the Arab movement and the likely outcomes of the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire. The writing is poetic in its intensity. On his first meeting with Faisal: ‘ “And do you like our place here in Wadi Safra?” “Well; but it is far from Damascus.” The word had fallen like a sword in their midst.’ We are still living through some of his predictions. David Lean’s stunning Lawrence of Arabia (1962) was based (loosely) on this account and is available from our Film Store.

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Lost Splendour / Prince Youssoupoff
The last days of the Romanovs from the Russian aristocrat who planned the assassination of Rasputin.

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Ten Days that Shook the World / John Reed

An eyewitness account of the Bolshevik seizure of power in Petrograd in November 1917. Reed recorded events, speeches and the reactions of observers with an enthusiasm that matched the revolutionary zeal of soldiers, sailors and proletariat. Passionate reportage of events that failed to realise their potential. Sergei Eisenstein’s classic October 1917 — Ten Days That Shook the World (1928) is available from our Film Store. Warren Beatty directed and starred in Reds, an epic and very personal account of the turbulent private and political life of the radical journalist, in 1981– also available from our Film Store.

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Trotsky: My Life / Leon Trotsky
Trotsky was one of the key figures in the Russian revolutionary movement and the deposition of the monarchy in 1917. Successful revolution is invariably followed by schism. The creator of the Red Army was forced to find eventual sanctuary in Mexico, but even so could not escape the assassin. Tom Courtenay’s Strelnikov in the film of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago (1965) is based to some extent on Trotsky in the revolutionary period and is available from our Film Store.

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The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich / William L Shirer
Shirer’s influential history bridges the two World Wars with an in-depth examination of the elevation of National Socialism through concerted manipulation of the German psyche. The definitive account of the origins and full degenerate flowering of a dysfunctional state, from the American foreign correspondent who worked out of Berlin between 1926 and 1941. ‘Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.’ (George Santayana). Visconti’s The Damned (1969) effectively recreates the degenerate atmosphere of 1930s Germany and is available from our Film Store.

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The Second World War

The 1930s were marked by economic depression and a kind of wishful optimism that left the European democracies badly equipped and vulnerable to the militarism and massive rearmament of the fascist states. Even though the Spanish Civil War, annexations by Germany in Europe and by Italy in Africa gave a hint of things to come, appeasement remained the only response. By 1939 the Hitler-Stalin Pact had temporarily secured Germany’s eastern borders, allowing Hitler to concentrate attention on his dealings with the west. The German invasion of Poland in September 1939 provoked a declaration of war from Britain and France. Germany embarked on a series of blitzkrieg attacks that left most of Europe and the Balkans under Nazi rule. After the evacuation of Dunkirk, Britain faced the Nazi threat alone as the conflict assumed global proportions.

Europe was to remain under Axis control until January 1944. Britain survived the Battle of Britain and embarked on the Battle of the Atlantic while fighting rearguard actions in Greece and North Africa. 1941 marked the nadir of the Allied war effort, but also gave portents of a turn in fortune. In June, Germany opened up a second front by its invasion of Russia; but December saw the first Russian counter-offensive against German forces that were within 25 miles of Moscow. By August of the following year the German 6th Army was locked down at Stalingrad. December 1941 was also notable for the beginning of the Japanese approach on Singapore through the Malaysian Peninsula and for the attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbour; and while both events were disastrous (and seemingly avoidable) Pearl Harbour had the effect of drawing the USA into the war.

In 1942, El Alamein marked the end of Allied defeats and clamped Axis forces in a vice between British allies and Australian forces in the east and Americans in the west. Stalingrad and the destruction of the 6th Army called a halt to a succession of German victories. In 1943, Italy deposed Mussolini and joined the Allies, though remaining under Nazi occupation. The inexorable attrition of the Axis powers in Europe had begun and was consolidated in 1944 by the invasion of Italy, the D-Day landings in France and the advance of the Red Army in the east. American progress in the Pacific pushed back the Japanese towards their home islands, while the Burma Campaign and Chinese offensives increased pressure on the mainland. In 1945 German resistance ended with Adolf Hitler’s suicide as the Red Army approached the outskirts of Berlin; Mussolini was captured and executed by Italian partisans; and Japan surrendered after atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war was ended; but a new world order had begun.

The Second World War has been an inexhaustible source of material for film makers, from patriotic propagandists and mythologizers to pacifist evangelists. For the most immediate response of the film industry to the political climate in the years leading up to WWII and to the conflict itself, it is worth browsing our Film Store between the years 1935 and 1959. Our selection includes a number of classic British war movies.

The Second World War / Winston S Churchill
1. The Gathering Storm
2. Their Finest Hour
3. The Grand Alliance
4. The Hinge of Fate
5. Closing the Ring
6. Triumph and Tragedy
Churchill’s comprehensive coverage of the conflict from the viewpoint of the seat of power. Marred somewhat by self-justification for some dubious decisions, and thought by some to say at least as much about the man as it does about the war, this is, nonetheless, essential reading. Churchill is especially interesting on his relationship with American president FD Roosevelt and Roosevelt’s efforts to support the Allies through Lend-Lease up until the time when the US was forced into the war after Pearl Harbour. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.

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The Goebbels Diaries / Ed. Hugh Trevor-Roper
The personal journal of Hitler’s propagandist. Terrifying in its matter-of-fact recording of one of the most traumatic periods of 20th century European history.

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Crete / Antony Beevor

The German airborne invasion of Crete was an operation that barely escaped failure. Hitler never again used mass paratroops to spearhead an assault (the lesson of Crete was lost on Churchill and Montgomery). There followed the retreat of British and Dominion forces, already wearied by their escape from mainland Greece, over the White Mountains to the small evacuation port of Sphakia. The ferocious Cretan resistance to the German occupation attracted an exotic menagerie of SOE officers — archaeologists, latter-day Byrons and other assorted Hellenophiles — who brought their own eccentricities to an eccentric and valiant partisan campaign. Antony Beevor draws on a rich store of anecdote to interweave a seam of mordant humour with the otherwise tragic saga of defeat, repression and reprisals.

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Ill Met by Moonlight / W Stanley Moss

The gripping yarn of the kidnap of General Kreipe, a German commander on Crete, by Patrick Leigh-Fermor, W Stanley Moss and local partisans, their pursuit by German forces across the Cretan mountains and the evacuation of their valuable intelligence prize to Cairo. This oddball enterprise was not totally untypical of British special operations. Interestingly, Kreipe had been based at the Villa Ariadne, the house built by Sir Arthur Evans during his excavations at Knossos (see The Find of a Lifetime on our Ancient World page). Ill Met by Moonlight was filmed in 1956 and is available from our Film Store.

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The Cretan Runner / George Psychoundakis

In his preamble, TE Lawrence commented on the Seven Pillars of Wisdom (qv) that “It is till less fair, of course, like all war stories, to the un-named rank and file: who miss their share of credit, as they must do, until they can write the despatches.” George Psychoundakis helps redress the balance with his description of life as a partisan during the German occupation. Translated by Patrick Leigh-Fermor, The Cretan Runner is a day-to-day account of message carrying, munitions smuggling and other clandestine operations as the Cretan resistance gathered intelligence (and the occasional Axis general) for the Middle East GHQ in Cairo. At the time of the Battle of Crete, this shepherd boy from the White Mountains had seldom travelled beyond the immediate environs of his home village. A meeting with English soldiers seeking sanctuary brought him into contact with SOE officers, and from then on he worked tirelessly under constant hardship and the threat of capture and execution, from bases that shifted continually between mountain caves and shepherds’ shelters. His rudimentary schooling had left him with a thirst for books and poetry; The Cretan Runner is marked by its simplicity, with its early naivety maturing as the writer gains in confidence. Readers familiar with Crete might find it interesting to map the detail of Psychoundakis’s treks through rugged mountain landscapes where foot journeys were computed in hours and days rather than lateral distance. What is immediately apparent is that the action takes place in an area which is no more than 60 kms wide, and where the island measures at most 20 kms from north to south. This over a period of four years under the eyes of the occupying forces (and the very occasional collaborator and informer). In later years George Psychoundakis was to translate the Odyssey and Illiad into the Cretan vernacular, using the traditional form of decapentsyllabic rhyming couplets. His efforts were acclaimed by the Athens Academy.

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Stalingrad / Antony Beevor
The full horror of war is encapsulated in this riveting and unsurpassed account of the siege of Stalingrad and the subsequent elimination of the German 6th Army. Arguably the turning point of World War II. In passing, Beevor examines the cult of sniperism that emerged as a tool of Soviet propaganda as the siege progressed. Enemy at the Gates (2001) focuses on this aspect of Stalingrad and is available from our Film Store.

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Berlin / Antony Beevor

Anthony Beevor is one of the best and most accessible modern military historians. Berlin covers the last days of the war in the east, when the Red Armies advanced on the German capital in overwhelming force. If you have any doubt that brutality breeds brutality, look no further. Raw memories of German atrocities on Russian soil added fuel to victorious fervour. The result was mass rape, mass murder, pillage and devastation.

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The Post-War World

Our 20th Century page ends, for the time being, at the cessation of hostilities in 1945 — with the exception of one title that brings the American nightmare in Vietnam to impressionistic life. But we thought it useful to close this page with a brief summary of the profound changes that followed the Second World War.

The immediate post-war period was marked by a falling out of comrades-in-arms that left a divided world. The independent nations of Eastern and Central Europe were subsumed by the communist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Russia faced its former western allies across a divided Germany. In the Balkans, that perpetual crucible of conflict, the communist Republic of Yugoslavia was constituted with Russian aid but broke with the USSR in 1948. The communist and royalist factions in Greece that had formed the resistance against German occupation now fought a civil war in which the communists were defeated. Jewish settlers in Palestine had resisted British efforts to limit immigration and now, hugely augmented by European refugees, waged a terrorist war against the Mandate and declared an independent Israel. The new state, and the mass exodus of Palestinians into neighbouring countries, created a focus for pan-Arabism and brought many Arab states within the Russian sphere of influence. The various communities in India had given Britain stalwart support through two world wars, even though anti-colonial movements had gained popularity in the intervening period. When independence was granted in 1948 the sub-continent descended into violent civil strife between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs that left more than a million dead and led to an exchange of populations between India and the newly formed Muslim states of East and West Pakistan, the cause of friction and war in years to come.

In China, communist and nationalist armies had co-operated against Japan but now competed for power, with the communists victorious. Korea had been liberated from the Japanese by Russian and American forces. The result was partition into a communist North Korea and a South Korea under US military government; war between the two erupted in 1950, with the South supported by a US led United Nations coalition. In Indochina a nationalist communist government, supported by China, fought the French colonial regime until a ceasefire resulted in the creation of the two separate states of North and South Vietnam.

America in the 1930s had suffered through the Great Depression that had caused social division and raised the spectre of communism. Support of Britain under Lend-Lease and the subsequent war economy gave a boost to US industry to the extent that the USA came out of the war as a major economic and military power. The post-war world found America, through the revived fear of communism, as the self-elected champion of the free world. The battle was fought in both the economic and military arenas. War debts placed US allies under considerable obligation and American influence in Europe was increased by reconstruction under the Marshall Plan. The Cold War confrontation with Russia across a divided continent, the creation of NATO, and the maintenance of American military bases in Europe and occupied Germany, made for an economic and military sphere of influence. In the Middle East, with oil as the prize, US interests fought a failing battle against nationalist, socialist or Islamic alliances. Japan had been placed under a post-war American military government that provided a base against communist incursions in South East Asia. Japan’s war-savaged economy received a massive boost from the American presence, especially after the outbreak of the Korean War. Other regions in the Pacific zone benefited from US support of South Vietnam against China’s satellite in the north. In Latin America and elsewhere the overt actions of the US were matched by covert activity that undermined or displaced governments antipathetic to American objectives. And economic influence was bolstered generally by the globalising tendencies of corporate America and US dominated media — Golden Arches are often the herald of political change (and an exchange of criminal cultures)! So that, with more than a touch of irony, an America that perceived itself as isolationist, anti-imperialist and pro-democratic created an economic and doctrinal domain through persuasion, coercion and clandestine operations. What remains of the post-Cold War world is a de facto, if amorphous, American empire faced with equally amorphous enmity as aggressive administrations, convinced of the rightness of their cause, attempt to resolve complex political questions by the crude imposition of a Pax Americana.

The last years of the 20th Century witnessed the collapse of communism in the west, the painful fragmentation of the USSR and Yugoslavia, and the re-unification of Germany. The first years of the new millennium saw China creeping towards a capitalist economy and the Middle East disrupted by dangerous frictions that, ultimately, have their source in US support of the State of Israel. On a global level, old ideological differences are morphing into new commercial rivalries, with Russia and China challenging the status quo. India also seems certain to emerge as a major economic force. As large, densely populated, areas of the globe strive for the prosperity enjoyed by the west using western methods, competition for energy (and for influence over the sources of energy) is likely to be become acute; unprecedented growth in industrial activity will add environmental threat to a planet already threatened by climate change; and in some regions the competition for water is likely to be even more intense than the competition for oil.

Dispatches / Michael Herr
Reeks of the jungles of Viet Nam and the smell of napalm in the morning. ‘It is as if Dante had gone to hell with a cassette recording of Jimi Hendrix and a pocketful of pills: our first rock-and-roll war, stoned murder.’ New York Times. Michael Herr wrote the narration for Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), one of the best films to come out of America’s traumatic involvement in South East Asia, available from our Film Store.

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