02.1 Hist 20 podcast: 1910-1919

events from the 2nd decade of the 20th C

Transcript

Testing, testing, this is Professor Levy. I'm recovering from bronchitis. So I apologize for the tone of voice and the

potential for a big cough outbreak. I'll edit it out, hopefully. But maybe I'll leave it just for flavor.

But anyway, welcome to the beginning of the 20th century. I think I welcomed you to the beginning of the 20th

century in the previous podcasts. But there are a lot of historians who consider that the beginning of World War I

is the actual beginning of the 20th century. And we've talked about through the arbitrariness of the historical time.

So time is an arbitrary. But what we consider to be important centuries-- I mean, events don't care what year it is.

But if you think about what World War I did to the world, then, eh, you know? And if you consider the existence

and the survival or the end of empires an important part of historical events, then certainly World War I changed

that significantly. The Austro-Hungarian Empire disappeared. The Ottoman Empire disappeared. The Russian

Empire and the German Empire, they all ended at the end of World War I in 1918. And so we will consider that in

a second.

But what I want to do is, before we focus on World War I, I'd like to focus on another thunderous event at the

beginning of the 20th century. And that one started in 1910, in Mexico.

So most events, most revolutions don't happen in a vacuum, right? I mean, even World War I, that started in

1914, has its reasons, its triggers in the years before 1914. And so the 1910 Revolution in Mexico has its origins,

actually, probably 30 or 50 years before. The fact is that, for 30 years, Mexico had had one president. And to a

large degree, at the very beginning of this 30-year period, it had been a really big relief.

Since independence from Spain in the early 19th century, Mexico had had literally a revolving door of presidents. I

mean, every year, another president, if not more. When Porfirio Diaz became president in 1876, well, he vowed to

be a Democratic president. And he was successful in some respects. But he never really left office until the first

decade of the 20th century.

Now there are good things about political stability, right? Well, stability itself and a stability that allows investment

in infrastructure and education, a stability that allows investment in public safety.

When that stability is at the cost of democracy and political representation, it turns ugly. You can have too much of

a good thing is the bad thing, right? And so by the last-- after 30 years of Porfirio Diaz, the Mexican elites-- and by

that, I mean lawyers and bankers, industrial developers, and intellectuals, people who, to a certain degree, were

wealthy enough to have a sense that they could control the destiny of the country, or at least that they could affect

the destiny of the country-- they started to feel like Mexico wasn't quite the democracy they deserved and wereeager to enforce or stimulate political change.

At the same time, the peasants in Mexico-- and Mexico was largely an agricultural country-- were frustrated,

because they were largely working on lands that they did not own and had no means of owning. And these elites,

much of whom were from the northern states of Mexico, were increasingly frustrated by their inability to convince

Porfirio Diaz of leaving power peacefully. And, in fact, the harder they pushed, the harder Porfiri Diaz pushed. And

then he ended up throwing Francisco Madero, the most visible leader of the elites, into jail.

And from jail, Francisco Madero called for an armed revolution to restore democracy. He also appealed to these

other interests in Mexico. And he appealed, so not to start a revolution, not just to restore democracy, but to

reform land ownership and to better distribute power across all Mexicans. So he made a very broad appeal.

This is where Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, two very interesting characters of the Mexican Revolution, and

you might have heard about them, proved to be key, because they brought constituencies across Mexico together

in overthrowing Diaz in 1911. And then once the authoritarian ruler had been sent off, he sailed off to Paris to live

out the rest of his life in relative peace.

Mexico devolved into a series of civil wars, as the country explored, really violently, what democratic rule and

equal distribution of power would mean. So in the end, it took six years for these different constituencies to agree.

And they agreed on a document, a new constitution, and agreed that presidents could not be re-elected. Land

would be redistributed to peasants. And peasants would have a right to life to that piece of land, that the church

was definitively divested from national political affairs. And foreign ownership of Mexican land was significantly

curtailed.

Now if you think about that, the United States was deeply involved in the development of Mexican oil fields and

other types of industrial efforts. That explains why the United States was much more interested in what was going

on in Mexico in 1915, 1916, and 1917, than what was going on in Europe at the time. World War I had started in

the middle of the Mexican Revolution in 1914.

So when you think about the timing of US involvement in World War I, you need to think about what the United

States was looking at. And so while World War I is this massive event that essentially is in every textbook that

you've ever looked at, the most important thing to look at at the beginning of the 20th century, for the US at the

time, the Mexican Revolution was a little bit more important.

And so if we think about why the United States, in a sense, did not get involved in World War I until it did, its

largely because it was involved in the Mexican Revolution. It was sending arms to help the side of the revolution

that it considered to be most reliable, or more amenable to the United States. And ultimately, it supported theperson who did, quote unquote,

"win" the Mexican Revolution.

So a little sidebar, Pancho Villa had been largely supported by the United States, to the point where he invited

American television crews or film crews to film his battles. And he was so mad at the United States when they

decided to put their support behind Carranza instead of him, that he led a raid through the city of Columbus, New

Mexico to punish the United States.

And obviously, he crossed the border. He invaded the United States. So the United States President Wilson had to

do something. And he sent General Pershing, that same general who has a square named after him in LA, to

invade Mexico in his turn and capture Villa. Now he never managed to capture Villa. And that has a large part to

do with why Villa is considered to be such a national hero.

When President Wilson finally entered World War I in April 1917, it also had a lot to do with Mexico, right? So he

didn't enter it until Mexico was at peace with itself. And then he entered World War I, because Mexico had been

mentioned in a plan by Germany to try to convince Mexico to side with Germany, if and when the United States

went to join the war effort.

There was a telegram that the German Foreign Minister, Count Zimmerman, sent to the German ambassador to

Mexico, saying, listen, if you can get this newly peaceful government in Mexico to agree to support us, we will

return all the lands that the United States got in the middle of the 19th century. In the US-Mexican War, Mexico

lost a significant-- almost half of its territory.

Mexico never got that telegram. And it was intercepted by the British, who sent it to Washington. And as soon as

President Wilson saw that telegram, he declared war on Germany. And the rest, as they say, is history, right?

So why do we call World War I the Great War? I mean, it wasn't great. There's nothing great about war. Well, the

first part is that it involved a huge part of the globe. I mean, essentially, there were very few parts of the world that

were not involved. Interestingly enough, Spain was not involved. It remained neutral during this war.

But let's just start with the beginning. Serbian nationalists assassinated an Austro-Hungarian Archduke. So

Austria-Hungary had to declare war on Serbia. If you take a look at the map, you'll understand why Russia, seeing

this, got ready for war.

Then Germany told Russia to stand down, like hey, matey, take it easy. This isn't about you. Russia ignored

Germany. So Germany declared war on Russia. And since Russia and France were allies before any of this

happened, Germany also declared war on France.

And in order to invade France, Germany had to trample through Belgium, which did not amuse the British at all.So they declared war on Germany. And this all happened in less than six days. So in six days, in late July and

early August, seven countries were at war. And I mean, it was unbelievably quick.

Now since Britain, Germany, France, and Belgium all had colonies in Africa and in Asia, and actually, across the

world, if you think about the British, all these territories were soon at war as well. So Australia, New Zealand,

Canada, and South Africa, they were all self-governing dominions of the British Empire, they declared war on

Germany and its allies. And Britain-- they also declared war on Britain's ally in the Far, Far East in Japan. So this

was not an extraterritorial dominion. But it was an ally.

The Ottoman Empire then joined Germany's side so that that part of the world, which included today is Turkey,

Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and most of the coastal areas of the Arabian Peninsula, were then dragged

into this disastrous war.

Now as the war progressed, the British became deeply interested and deeply involved in destroying the Ottoman

Empire. Now I'm going to pull up a map and look at what areas the Ottoman Empire covered. These were areas

that the British Empire had its sights on for a while. And the British were largely successful in destroying the

Ottoman Empire. And they helped Palestinian and Syrian bedouin leaders ward off Ottoman attacks.

At the same time, they were also establishing their power over the region, right? And in this case, it's really

important to remember that they were still a great imperial power, and that they were not necessarily interested in

liberating territories that were under Ottoman rule. They were not interested in independence. All right, so keep

that in mind.

Now the Jewish population in the Middle East had been persecuted and driven out since the Roman era. And

most Jews had eventually migrated to the US as well. So they were throughout Europe. And the US.

Remember, the United States doesn't join World War I until April 1917. So in 1917, the British are seeking the

support of the United States in the war. So the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, promises he would

support a Jewish national home in Palestine if the American Jewish population would support the United States

entering the war.

But this was not a promise that Balfour could make, nor could the American Jewish population guarantee the

United States would enter, that they would be able to push the US government into the war. But it was a promise.

It became an official document.

And so the degree to which the Balfour promise, the Balfour Declaration pushed the United States to enter into

war is doubtful. But it would have-- but I mean, the United States did eventually enter the war because of the

Zimmerman Telegram. And once you see how keen the British were to involve the United States in the war, andyou remember that the British intercepted the Zimmerman Telegram, there's significant questioning around the

fact whether that telegram was actually sent by Germany or if it was constructed by the British.

In the end, it doesn't really matter. The Balfour Declaration was an actual document that was used with some-- it

became a cornerstone of the creation of the state of Israel, with some really, really complicated long-term

consequences. But we're going to take a look at that in a subsequent podcast. But if you want to take a look at-- if

you're reading Footnotes in Gaza as your graphic novel, this is a pretty-- this is all tied to it.

Now another reason why World War I is called the Great War is because it was monumental in its casualties.

There were new weapons, new planes, new tanks, a series of technological innovations that conspired to making

this one of the most deathly wars in history.

There were no planned attacks, which you know is, if you read about anything about military confrontations in the

18th and 19th century, these battles were planned. Soldiers knew where they were supposed to show up. And the

battle happened in a field. And generally, civilian populations were left out of this. World War I showed that war

could include civilians. And the war left approximately 8 million dead and 29 million injured.

The third reason why this is called or goes down as the Great War is that it wasn't just a territorial war. Again, back

to 18th and 19th century wars, they were largely territorial. World War I was a war that was imbued with an

idealism about fighting for a just cause, about fighting against tyranny. And the degree to which that idealism was

warranted, it was still a fairly novel concept in the early 20th century. And it would be a concept that would

unfortunately be revisited all too soon in World War II. But all these combination of idealism, [COUGHS] costs of

the war, and an expanse of the war contributes to it becoming considered a great war.

Now how does World War I end? In the middle-- or not in the middle, but towards the tail end of World War I,

Russia goes to war with itself. So as Mexico is wrapping up its revolution, Russia starts its own. Up until 1917,

Russia, like Germany, was ruled by an emperor. And in Russia, they called him a tsar. So Tsar Nicholas was the

emperor of Russia.

And the people of Russia had already been beaten down by rough winters of poverty for decades. And not unlike

the case in Mexico, they wanted a better distribution of power, better representation. And they wanted a

functioning democracy.

And Russia, with the Russian tsar, might have thought it could distract this increasingly unsatisfied population with

World War I. After all, war is a pretty good distraction. I'm not advocating this. I'm just suggesting that a war makes

you look at it. And in 1917, workers in St. Petersburg, which is in Russia, took to the streets to demand food and

an end to the war, because they were not benefiting from this.And the army wasn't there to restore order. Not just because it was busy fighting in World War I, but because they

just weren't going to take arms against their own people. And faced with this, Tsar Nicholas abdicated and

realized that he really-- there was no legitimacy, that he couldn't do anything. And part evolved to the Russian

parliament, which was soon led by Vladimir Ilich Lenin, whom you might have heard of. We're going to talk a lot

more about communism in the upcoming podcasts.

The abdication of the Tsar led to Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania-- they were all formally part of the

Russian Empire-- to declare themselves independent. So as a consequence of the Soviet Revolution, which is

what this was, Russia also got smaller overnight. It was not an immediate communist transition. There was

reaction by royalists, by non-tsarist social revolutionaries, by more extremist Marxists.

People who were opposed to Russia's participation in the war, who really didn't have a problem with its political

system could not agree on what would follow. And again, I've just talked about this, right? It's very easy to identify

who you want to overthrow. It's not so easy to figure out how you want to replace or structure power in their

absence. We'll revisit the Soviet Russian history throughout this course, since so much of the 20th century is really

marked by not just their policies, but their relationship with the United States.

But for now, I just want you to remember that the Soviet Revolution in Russia is one more of the many

transformations in this 1910 to 1919 period. So we've got the Mexican Revolution at the beginning of the period.

We've got World War I squarely in the middle, and the Soviet Revolution at the end. All three fundamentally redo

territorial boundaries, political alliances, and political system.

But they're not the only thing that marked this time period. There are a few more elements. And I mean, I'm just

going to mention two. And you can find many others that you can argue are just as important. I mean, the Oreo

cookie was invented in 1912. I don't know that it was a global phenomenon. But certainly, it has lasted very long.

So we could make a whole argument for the Oreo cookie as being a significant part of world history in this decade.

But I'd like to focus on one or two. The first is Henry Ford's assembly line. Now Henry Ford did not invent the

automobile. He did not invent the assembly line. That's a product of the Industrial Revolution.

But he combined the two to make the first affordable car for mass consumption. So he understood enough about

how to build a car. And he understood enough about how to build a car in a way that was affordable, in a sense,

piecing, putting every part of that engine of that car on a production line that could then really reduce the cost of

cars.

So he organized car manufacture along a mechanized assembly line that reduced the cost of production,increased productivity, and therefore, made it possible for many more people to afford a car. And in that sense,

Henry Ford directly contributed to the world we know now. And he directly contributed to that rush hour you're

going to be stuck in soon.

Last, but definitely not least, I want to talk about a natural disaster that happened in this decade, and that was the

Spanish flu. It started approximately in 1918. And it ended in December 1920. So during two years, this strain of

H1N1 virus decimated the world's population.

Do you remember how many people died in World War I? It's about 8 million. It's hard to get exact figures for this

disease, because the deaths were overwhelming. They were all over the globe. And it's really pretty difficult to

keep accurate accounts of deaths happening at the speed at which they were happening across the world. But the

estimates are somewhere between 50 to 100 million people. That's about 3% or 5% of the world's population.

So World War I, by comparison, was not as deathly as these two years. Over the course of four years, World War

I did not kill as many-- not as many people died in World War I as during two years of this epidemic. It was an

event of a significant magnitude. And it did not get the coverage that World War I had received.

And in late 1920, it ended much as it began. It just-- it was over. The epidemic was gone. And it killed as many

people as it was going to kill. And the strain, in a sense, changed and became less virulent.

Now why do you think that is? Well, think about it. That virus took the world over in 1918 as World War I was

ending. During the war, there was a significant level of censorship of information. And there might have been good

reasons to control the information about the war while the war was going on. But it continued after the war, or at

least it continued when it came to the virus, to the epidemic, because there was a concern that, at the end of four

years of a global war, having reports of an even more violent killer, and this one, invisible and unfightable, would

not really help restore morale across the world.

And so the Spanish flu did not get the coverage. This was something that, in a sense, happened to everyone, but

was not written about as much at the time as the war and its resolvement was. But it may have a lot to do with why

the 1920s would become the Roaring 20s, the Jazz Age, 10 years during which the way in which the stories are

told, humanity would dedicate itself to having a little bit more fun. But we'll get to that in our next podcast on the

next decade.