Rise of the Nations I BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1918 1 of 2 - YouTube

At the end of 1918, the Great War is over but in Europe, on the now silent battlefields, there are new nations, and new leaders springing up.

And those battlefields will soon see a lot of renewed warfare as those nations fight each other, or fight themselves in civil war.

Welcome to Between Two Wars, a chronological summary of the interwar years period, covering life, uncertainty, hedonism, and the euphoria of the 1920s.

The descent of that life into the poverty, suspicion, fear, and autocracy of the 1930s, and ultimately, humanity's descent into the darkness of the Second World War.

I am Indy Neidell.

As soon as the Great War is over, a huge change comes over Europe. In the vacuum created when the Central powers collapsed

and the Russian Civil War rages on in the East, new nations arise. Poland becomes independent again after 123 years of partition.

Czechoslovakia becomes a Republic. A Hungarian Democratic Republic is declared. Latvia declares independence from Russia.

The British Military Government of Palestine begins. Montenegro becomes part of Serbia.

Iceland regains independence from Denmark. Transylvania again, becomes part of Romania.

The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes has been established.

Now, it's important to note that although these lands have, in some way, maybe existed before in history

they have never been nation states. Nor have they ever been truly independent.

Most certainly they haven't been constitutional democracies. Not ever.

They arise out of the ruins of an old system of feudal allegiances,

where the land might've had the name they adopt when they become countries.

But rather than countries, they had been the land dependancies of a complex system or

more or less interrelated dukes, princes, kings, queens, emperors and empresses.

In the past two hundred years, some of them have achieved

some representation of the people but were never self-governing, some of them, like Poland,

might have been independant kingdoms for a while at some point.

But even then, they were the lands of some family, not the lands of the people.

There has been much research on the concept of national identity, right ?

The majority of historians today agree that before the 18th century, there was no such thing.

Some studies even indicate that a widespread sense of nationality doesn't arise until shortly

before the beginning of the 20th century or even, only with the World War.

During the 19th century, there was though a concerted effort by politicians and intellectuals to promote

national identity, especially as identity politics almost always connects with interest politics.

This all contibuted to the complex web of conflicts that led to the Great War.

Now after that war, or perhaps because of it, that has pretty much succeeded

and nationalism is the standard way of looking at the world.

But there is a problem, although the nationalist movement has already created a definition,

or actually many conflicting mythical definitions of what these new nations are, and where they came from, reality is much more complex.

In central and eastern Europe, where many new nations now arise,

there has been a balance held in place, since 1648 and the peace of Westphalia,

that settled the previous identity conflict between protestants and catholics within the Habsburg empire.

The idea is that national identity, was based on some mix of ethnicity, geography, religion and whatever else.

Unfortunately, for the now fervant nationalists, there are no natural borders on which to base these new divisions.

If the lines have ever existed at all they've never been clear.

So no matter which way you cut it, a lot of people, with any given language and common cultural identity,

will end up on the wrong side of some border.

And you move that border a little to fix that, and it's another language group that gets split instead.

Now this might sound trivial to those who are not affected, but it's certainly not to those who feel strongly about national identity.

And in 1918, some people are starting to feel very, very strongly about national identity.

So this is not some academic analysis, or political opinion from our time, it's a real, tangible issue

that will have catastrophic effects.

You see, people will start wars over this, steal each other property,

rob them of their rights, incarcerate, torture and mass murder each other over identity,

starting now, in the autumn of 1918, as the new borders are drawn.

And Germany, that last man standing that finally stopped fighting the war,

on the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 ?

Well, a week before that happens, sailors of the Imperial High Seas Fleet mutinied in Kiel.

The mutineers were imprisoned but thousands of civilians marched in the streets, demanding their release,

shots were exchanged and over thirty men were killed or injured.

This is usually seen as the beginning of the German Revolution,

which soon broke out in cities like Wilhelmshaven, Hannover, Braunschweig and Munich.

Actually, in Munich, a worker's council forces the last King of Bavaria, Ludwig III,

to abdicate, and a bavarian free state is declared.

In Berlin, Kaiser Wilhelm II is also forced to abdicate and a revolutionary council of people's deputies is proclamed,

led by the Social Democrats and Friedrich Ebert.

While revolutionary forces continue to fight for regional soviet style republics,

the moderate parties under Ebert are fighting for a Democratic Federal Union.

For all practical purposes, Germany is now at civil war.

Another nation at civil war is Russia, after the November Revolution of 1917,

the bolshevik leadership under Lenin had withdrawn from the World War.

The Brest-Litovsk Treaty gave Germany huge slots of land all over Eastern Europe,

which had, with Germany's defeat, become many of the new Eastern european nations.

Some regions also seceded from Russia during the Civil War, while counter-revolutionaries try to turn the tide.

The, by now fairly well-organized, bolshevik forces, the Reds,

face a mess of different counter-revolutionary factions : the Whites.

Now these imperialists, democrats, proto-fascists, monarchists and God know what else,

are fighting bitterly not only against the Reds, but also for control of the war between each other.

While Germany and Russia continue to burn, and nations form all over Europe,

there's also unrest in many other parts of the world : in China,

the new Republic that had deposed the emperor in 1912 is already falling apart.

Although the Republic of China still exists officially, in reality the country is now under control of local warlords,

other parts of China are under japanese control.

Japan had fought on the side of the Allies in WWI and expanded its influence on the Asian mainland and in the pacific.

Together with the U.S., they're now involved in Eastern Siberia in an attempt to stop the bolsheviks

from establishing control of the russian Pacific Rim.

On the japanese home islands, a fragile democracy had been established in 1912,

but the Taishō democracy is now under threat from a popular rise of fascism, striving for expansion and militarization.

In India, South-East Asia, Africa and the Middle-East,

France and Britain have tightened their control over their colonial dependencies.

Nevertheless, there is increasing unrest, as the peoples of these regions watch new independant nations arise

all over the rest of the world.

In the Middle-East, the British have made the Emir Faisal king of Greater Syria, a British dependency,

they've also promised him a new pan-arabic nation.

This is a reward for uniting the Arab tribes, together with Lawrence of Arabia,

on the side of the Allies against the Ottoman Empire and the other Central Powers.

But the intricate web of financial interests, oil fields and agreements like Sykes-Picot that

divides up the region between France and Britain,

or the Balfour declaration that promised a Jewish state in Palestine now stand in the way of a united Arabia.

So, as 1918 ends, the armistice of WWI is not yet a peace treaty nor is there any peace and it will stay like this for some time.

The wars will rage on and a peace treaty,

that will be forged in Paris at the peace conference that is about to begin,

will be fraught with weakness.

Instead of solving the butting ethnic conflicts, it will fend them.

But before we get to all of that, in our next episode, we'll take a look at the Spanish flu,

which had as much of an impact on 1919 as the war did.

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WWII week by week begins 1st september 2018. See you next time.