The programme should enable students to:
From the Great Depression to the outset of the Second World War, Niall Ferguson takes us through a momentous period in world history, as right- and left-wing extremism led to economic and social upheaval.
After the First World War, the urban world had fallen in love with the good life, with jazz music being played even as far away as Shanghai. In fact, the world was in love with the American dream of prosperity and freedom, a dream abruptly shattered by the Wall Street Crash and ensuing depression.
The Great Depression was a worldwide phenomenon, with horrendous poverty in Germany and the UK, over three million unemployed in the USA, and people actually starving in Japan. It seemed that democracy and the free market had failed, and in its place grew totalitarian regimes determined not to be dependant on world markets again. We learn that in these regimes the assumption of racial supremacy was far more significant than the class struggle and, despite opposing ideologies, these aggressive new empire-states had a great deal in common.
In Russia, Stalin's Five-Year Plans led to construction and the expansion of industry on an unprecedented scale – and we see, for example, the 70-mile long canal between Moscow and the Volga. Yet this industrialisation was only possible because of the Gulag, the government agency that administered the penal labour camps. Prisoners, who had been arrested for having anti-government sentiments, were used as a huge supply of free labour. In addition, thousands of ethnic minority groups, such as Georgians and Koreans, were transported from their homelands to work in mines and factories, and on building projects. As Niall powerfully demonstrates, Stalin's policies had little to do with Marxism and more to do with his deep hatred of all non-Russians.
Meanwhile, in Germany, the Nazis rose to power on a promise of restoring the country's greatness after the humiliations of the First World War and the Depression. With almost religious fervour, Hitler promoted the concept of a pure German race and spread the idea of Jews as almost an alien species. Within a short period, Jews had gone from being totally assimilated in German society, often intermarrying with non-Jews and holding high office, to being banned from any official position, forbidden from intermarrying, and having property confiscated. Niall tells us the story of one such Jew – Victor Klemperer, a university academic – whose diary gives a gruelling account of what happened to Jews in the lead-up to the Second World War.
Finally, Niall travels to Japan to examine the rise of imperial militarism in the 1930s and, in particular, the role of central control and assumed racial superiority. Regarding the Chinese as their racial inferiors, Japan invaded Manchuria and then went deeper and deeper into China. By 1937, the Japanese and Chinese were at war, while the rest of the world did nothing to intervene. According to Niall Ferguson, 1937 in Beijing was the real start of the Second World War, not 1939 as is popularly believed.
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