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AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF EUROPE
by William M. BrintonChapter Two:
London (England)As one writer has said, London is not the eternal city; it had its hour on the stage. Bracketed by the reigns of the two Elizabeths, between 1570 and 1986 Queen Elizabeth II had her coronation in 1953 London became the world's greatest city. In 1570, twelve years after ascending the throne, Henry VIII's daughter opened the Royal Exchange, proudly erected in Cornhill by the millionaire merchant Sir Thomas Gresham; who through that arcaded and four-storey Renaissance building that London told the world it was now a great financial and commercial mart. In 1986, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher abolished the London County Council, leaving London the only world city without its representative government. From 1945 to 1999, Britain has debated itself on the issue of joining the European Union. Every prime minister since Winston Churchill has played a major part in deciding this fractious issue.Sir Henry Tizard, Chief Scientific Advier Ministry of Defence, offered thoughts on what Britain might do in the immediate postwar period at the very beginning of the Marshall Plan. In 1947, Tizard had his own approach.
We are not a Great Power, and shall never be.If we continue to behave like a Great Power, we shall soon cease to be a great nation.
Gaea with Boy (1642)
Leonard KernIn 1979, Sir Nichols Henderson, British Ambassador to Paris, wrote to Margaret Thatcher that "Our decline in relation to our European partners has been so marked that today we are not only a world power, but we are not in the first rank even as a European one." Both of these quotes come from a brilliantly written new book, This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair by Hugo Young. A unified Europe did not really begin until the creation in 1951 of a European Coal and Steel Community. This was followed six years later by the Treaty of Rome in 1957. This treaty was not signed by Britain. Its political leaders saw a possible threat to the Commonwealth and a loss of sovereignty. Publicly, there was real resentment to the thought that sterling currency might turn up in some French farmers'pocket as an agricultural subsidy. The politics of European Union were never free of anger, indeed fury. In July of 1960, Britain applied for membership in the Common Market. General Charles deGaulle vetoed this application, a fact that infuriated British leaders. One should always recall the other institutions had been established. A European Court of Justice had been created with headquarters in Luxembourg. Additionally, the European Convention on Human Rights had been created with offices in Strasbourg, and there was a European Parliament with elected members. The Single European Act finnally passed through Britain's Parliament and the Treaty of Maastricht was the last step but one in the entire process. Prime Minister Tony Blair will not preside over a single currency without first subjecting the proposal to a British referendum.
Since the end of World War II Greater London's population has plunged from 8,196,000 in 1951 to 6,393,000 in 1991. London's downward shift began in 1947, when Great Britain decided it could no longer afford the Empire. Its exchequer had spent too much money fighting to survive the Nazi war that initially overran the European continent. India was the first to go in 1947. Pakistan's Moslems claimed land included in India, and the long-festering sore of Kashmir has been one product of a bitterly-divided India. Bangladesh was later carved out of land claimed by the Hindus of India, and today, Bangladesh is the poorest of the poor third world nations. Both India and Pakistan have test-fired nuclear weapons, and in 1999 India test-fired a missile with an expanded range of some 1400 miles. So the future security of the former British empire can no longer be taken for granted. Over this vast land mass, China looms as a threatening presence. The British Empire was not the only one in town. The Ottoman Empire lasted for almost five hundred years and was finally divided by the victors in World War I. Great Britain presided over some of the divided land. It became mandatory for Palestine, now locked in a bitter struggle for survival. The Jews of Israel may have seen the error of negotiating with Yasser Arafat's Palestinians. Arafat wants an independent Palestinian state. The Israelis feel threatened as never before, and they have looked to President Clinton in vain for help.In at least three wars between 1948 and 1973, the Israelis have defeated attempts by their Arab neighbors to drive them into the sea. However, Arafat's Arab friends have helped the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) get what they wanted by persuading Israel to trade land for peace.
Arabs burst out of the desert into what was left of the Ottoman Empire, then swept across North Africa, converting most of their subjects to Islam. As of 1998, the only official language in once-French Algeria was Arabic. The French presence was a vestige of neocolonial imperialism. There were some million Europeans among ten million natives. These colons did not want independence. They wanted France to stay. The government of French President Charles de Gaulle was ready at first to make concessions and persuade the Algerian independence movement to remain united with France. Those who remained had no influence. Indeed, the Algerian terrorists have been busy killing local opposition. France itself nearly engaged in civil war to protect the money earned by the colons. The successful colons owned the best land, grew the best wine and wheat that were the great exports, handled the shipping, managed the banks, and made the economy work. Their departure did not leave the Algerians bankrupt or even close to it. They had their oil in the desert, but the loss in economic terms left Algeria struggling to rebuild the country France had colonized. Many Algerians have been working in Europe; Europe was growing, while Algeria suffered from stagnation. Indiscriminate killings by Muslim terrorists made it difficult for developers to rationalize local investments.
Another immediate postwar fact of life was the emergence of the Soviet Union as a superpower. Stalin first flexed his muscles in Berlin. He imposed a barricade on road and rail traffic from Germany into Berlin with crucial coal and food. President Truman authorized the Berlin Airlift which was so successful it embarrassed the Russians. This airlift was finally discontinued. Next came the Marshall Plan. This was an American offer of economic aid to all European nations; they would join together to plan their economic recovery from the damaged economies of World War II. As generous as it was, the Soviet Union refused to allow its then satellites to accept such aid. Soviet satellites in Europe included Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland.
The Cold War had begun. It would soon be fought out with nuclear weapons in the background. This in turn led to the Strangelovian principle of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). The North American Treaty Organization (NATO) was the next step in countering Soviet expansionist plans. Primarily, NATO was seen by London and other European capitals as a purely defensive alliance. Then, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed economically and the need for NATO was more difficult to rationalize. Furthermore, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland became free of Communist control and a Velvet Revolution insured free elections in all three countries. This was celebrated in Berlin, Prague, Budapest and Warsaw. On October 3, 1990, West and East Germany became the Federal Republic of Germany. The eve of this reunification was a somber affair. West Germany's Chancellor Helmut Kohl had seriously underestimated the cost. Almost ten years later, some [11man %] of all workers.
Another cause for celebration was formation of the United Nations. Because of its structure, the U.N. had to consider the views of the smaller members of its General Assembly. The Security Council operated on a higher plane, and each of its five permanent members could veto action proposed by a majority. The permanent members included the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union, and China. San Francisco in 1945 was the site for this tour de force. However, the UN does not seemed to have fulfilled its early promise of a peaceful world community of nations. Finally, Western Europe set up the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) to handle the Marshall Plan the Soviet Union replied by organizing its half of Europe into the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance or Comecon. It also created the Warsaw Pact as the Soviet answer to NATO. A month after the signing of NATO in 1948, the first political bodies representing ten European nations were set up under the Council of Europe. The body still operates in 1998 as a group that, inter alia, advises its members on military and political matters. French Foreign Minister Robert Schumann proposed a European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). In 1951, this body was formed to include France, Italy, Belgium. the Netherlands, Luxembourg and West Germany. Its obvious rationale was to prevent future French-German warfare. European statesmen had concluded that negotiating must replace warfare. A nonviolent settlement procedure was included to avoid the slaughter of so many soldiers who died in World War I and World War II. Europeans remembered the Thirty Year War that decimated Germany (1618-1648).
Single Combat of Prince Mstislav Udaloi with Rededia, the Prince of Adygs (1812)
Andrei Ivanov
Carol Gerten's Fine Art (CGFA)It was the threat of Soviet aggression that motivated the formation of NATO. On the economic and political front, other organizations were formed In 1957, the European Economic Community (EEC) was authorized by the Treaty of Rome. France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Italy joined in signing this treaty. This process toward unity was slow and complicated, but by 1957 it was accelerating.Those statesmen who made the arrangements declared that armed conflict could never again be an acceptable alternative to cooperation and negotiation. It was in 1948 that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations. This was followed in 1951 by the adoption of the European Convention on Human Rights. This convention was soon an article of faith for all members of the Council of Europe, and the membership application of Turkey was rejected. Turkey's record on human rights was impossibly bad. Most of Europe has been mindful of the Thirty Years War, (1618 - 1648). Europe had expected that the struggle between Catholic and Protestant would be renewed in 1621. In that year, the truce between Spain and her Northern provinces of the Netherlands would end. Ferdinand II of the Habsburg Empire was a generous emperor, but he was determined that the Habsburg empire would remain Catholic. Charles V of Spain was backed by the power of the Catholic church The German Catholic princes were willing to support Ferdinand against the Protestants. Spain, however, emphasized the need to increase imperial power, because it was essential that Spain occupy the Netherlands. Wars originating in deeply held religious beliefs had a way of escalating out of control in Europe.
There were major questions. Would France permit Spain to occupy Alsace, the rest of the Rhineland, and the Netherrlands? Would Denmark and Sweden sit quietly by while the Habsburgs expanded to the Baltic Sea and suppress their fellow Lutherans? As events unfolded, it became clear that Germany would be the battleground of a war that was certain to occur. On May 23, 1621, Bohemians resorted to violence in Prague, at that time within the Habsburg Empire. War was then inevitable, and a European conflict was almost certain.
The Tric-Trac Players (Holland, 1667)
Jan Steen
The State Hermitage MuseumOn July 4, 1632, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden landed in Germany. He saw it was essential to keep the Spanish at bay without at the same time allowing Ferdinand's soldiers to reach the Baltic Sea. Peace in the Thirty Years War came with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The real losers in this war were the German people. Over 300,000 had been killed in battle. Millions of civilians had died of malnutrition and disease, and wandering undisciplined troops had robbed, burned and looted at will. The actual number of dead in this most terrible of all wars up to then is unknown but by conservative estimates the population of the Empire had dropped from about 21,000,000 to 13,500,000 between 1618 and 1648. This futile struggle that was an outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict.
Daniel in the Lion's Den [detail] (c. 1615)
Peter Paul Rubens
Mark Harden's ArtchiveIn recent years, assumptions and attitudes toward war have changed. Beyond this, reorientation propelled Europe toward the modern age. At least one historian cites 1066 and 1648 as milestones on the way toward recognition that we must resolve conflicts in ways other than war. To celebrate these treaties in Westphalia on their 350th anniversary, a vast exhibition has been mounted in Westphalia in the two cities where the treaties were negotiated and signed in 1648. The exhibition was sponsored by the Council of Europe. It does not appear here, because its organizers did not see the advantages of displaying this exhibition on the Internet. Some of the great art from this period has been loaned to the Council for its temporary use. The artists include Rubens, Van Dyk, Velasquez, Bernini, de Meyer, Bourdon,and van Mander. culture.coe.fr/clt/eng/eae26.html.
The Nazi regime in the 20th century compared these treaties of Westphalia to the Treaty Versailles, where France and Great Britain together with the United States conspired to crush German hopes. The xenophobia and arrogance of this attitude exemplifies the new fanaticism and hatred has replaced religious passions in national affairs. The European Settlements of 1648 signed in Münster had no representatives from England, Poland, and Turkey.
An Old Woman Cooking Eggs, (c. 1618)
Diego Velàquez
Carol Gerten's Fine Art (CGFA)Through the Thirty Years War, England had done little except help finance the war as it saw fit. Occasionally, it might send its own soldiers to the continent to fight some enemy in alliance with another. England had too many problems of its own. When Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603, James I succeeded to the throne and was in turn succeeded by Charles I. In 1649, Charles I was beheaded, and Thomas Cromwell became Lord Protector. Two monarchs of England sat on the throne during all of the Thirty Years War and did not have either the energy or the will to intervene in affairs across the English Channel. Charles I was fighting a war with Scotland in 1640 and had to call on his British subjects to help him. Without new taxation England could not be defended. Some of the people around Charles saw a conspiracy to restore the power of Rome. In 1642, Charles decided to halt the actions of Parliament, so civil war followed. He lost and was charged with treason. He lost that one, and was executed in 1649. His heir fled to France, and Cromwell ruled England as a republic until his death in 1658. In 1660, Charles II returned to claim his throne. Parliament agreed to impose no new objections, if Charles agreed to defend the Church of England and the Reformation settlement. Evidently, Parliament was more frightened of the Puritans than the Counter-Reformation Catholicism. The Puritans were seen as an oligarchy claiming to know God's will for others. The Peace of Westphalia of 1648, inter alia, marked the end of Spanish military supremacy and the dream of restoring the empire of Charles V of Spain. It also marked the beginning of a period of French ascendancy. Cardinal Richelieu was its principal spokesman, and the seeds of the French Revolution of the 18th century were planted. Richelieu imposed unpopular agricultural taxes to finance his wars, and they naturally fell most heavily on the poor. Additionally, large areas of Lorraine and Burgundy were laid waste during the last phase of the Thirty Years War. In 1664, the Ottomans invaded Hungary and prevailed, thereby reducing the size of the Habsburg empire. but it was restored in 1699 after the second siege of Vienna by the Ottoman Turks. In Poland, the last of a family line died, thus converting Poland's kingdom to an elective monarchy. John Sobiesdki was elected king in 1674. Poland was so divided socially and economically, no monarch could possibly reconcile the families of enormous wealth with the peasants who were constantly at war with their landlords. The Radziwill family owned estates half the size of Ireland, and a descendant of this family married John F. Kennedy in the 20th century.
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews [detail] (1750)
Thomas Gainsborough
Carol Gerten's Fine Art (CGFA)During this period, London was growing. The West End became a happy hunting ground for the professionals. By the early 17th century there, London already had some 500 medical practitioners. It was also the only city where commercial publishing was lawful, at least before 1795. Professional writers tended to live near Fleet Street. Westminister grew more regal for the king. He had hired Inigo Jones, a well-known architect even then. Jones designed Covent Garden financed by Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford. In 1665, London was struck by the Great Plague. Some 68,000 Londoners died. As the plague subsided, London had to deal with another peril, fire. Charles II returned to preside over the Restoration, a period that deserved one.
In 1666, the Great Fire began on September 2, 1666 and rapidly spread, ultimately destroying most of London, then some 448 acres, within the City walls. St. Paul's Cathedral was lost along with eighty parish churches. The Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Bludworth, observed that a "woman could piss it out" according to Stephen Inwood, author of a recent book, A History of London Inwood added that this "must rank as one of history's most unfortunate misjudgments." Refugees gathered in areas considered safe. After the fire was brought under control, some 200,000 refugees settled in the open spaces left untouched. Some 13,000 houses were destroyed along with the Royal Exchange and the Custom House. St. Paul's Cathedral, a mile from Westminister, was reduced to ashes. Parliament enacted the first Rebuilding Act, and it designated a commission to oversee the process. Christopher Wren alone was given the job of designing some fifty-one new churches, including a new St. Paul's. One of the Commission's priorities was establishing standards for new housing, including a requirement that they be built of brick and stone. Restoration was financed by a tax, and some labor ordinances were waived by the London Council. John Dryden, a writer and poet, announced that London had risen from its ashes like the Phoenix. Whitehall was rebuilt, too, and now it is the center of government and diplomacy in London. Piccadilly Circus and Regent Street became fashionable for literary agents and bookstores. By 1801 London's population had reached some 800,000 as shown by the first Census.
The Painter's Daughters Chasing a Butterfly (1755-56)
Thomas Gainsborough
Carol Gerten's Fine Art (CGFA)All these new houses had to be furnished. To this end, Thomas Chippendale arrived in London in 1745. Heppelwhite set up shop in Cripplegate, and Thomas Sheraton arrived in 1790. Commerce was quite diversified. Some 5,000 people were involved in watchmaking alone There were expert furnishers, house painters and decorators, basket makers, box makers, printers and engravers and dozens more. Many precision crafts had connections with shipping: maps, globes, telescopes, barometers, scientific and surgical instruments, clocks, spectacles, plate and jewelry all were made in London. The export trade kept expanding with the Thames River as its channel to the sea. Finally, the Thames became so crowded shippers had to build docks with shelter and security. Theft was an ever present crime. From www.bodley.ox.ac.uk one may see a map of the London docks as of 1831. It was one of many maps in the library of Oxford University near London.
In 1694, the Bank of England was organized as a stock corporation, and other banks grew up in the same period. William III was in desperate need of funds to finance his war against France. Even before him, Charles II was close to bankruptcy during the Restoration. Insurance companies were formed in the 80s. Edward Lloyd opened his Tower Street office in 1680, moving to the corner of Lombard Street in 1682. Lloyd distributed information in Lloyd's News which first appeared in 1696. It changed its mind in 1734 to Lloyd's List and Shipping Gazette, the oldest continuously published London newspaper.
Theater became popular in the last fifty years of the 19th century. Even before this, London had several theaters and the Richard D'Oyly Carte group performed Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. D'Oyly Carte's first production was Trial by Jury at the Royalty Theater in Dean Street. and it was followed by Sorcerers, H.M.S. Pinafore and Pirates of Penzance. In 1881, Gilbert and Sullivan opened the Savoy Theater in the Strand with Patience. Music halls and theaters sprinkled around the West End and City could hold some 300,000 people, providing up to 100 million spectators a year.In the late 1880s, the formation of Piccadilly Circus together with finishing Charring Cross Road produced theater sites for Lyric, the Royal English Opera House, the Duke of York's, Wyndham's, the Apollo, the Globe, and Queen's Theater.
Another pastime of Britons was the music hall. The catalyst was a new law of 1843 allowing concert rooms attached to pubs to be licensed as music halls. Perhaps the first in London was the Canterbury Hall. It set the style for others such as the Old Mo in Drury Lane and the Cambridge in Bishopsgate. The Canterbury had brilliant gas lighting, a lavish decor, vast chandeliers and rows of dining tables with waiters serving food and drink. Although the first successful film was shown in 1896, it was at the Alhambra that the Derby, a race in which the wagering on the horses reached staggering limits. The first race was recorded on film and shown to diners amidst wild applause.
The Fighting 'Téméraire' tugged to her last berth to be broken up (1838)
Joseph Mallard William Turner
Mark Harden's ArtchiveLondon had always been a learning center. Schools and universities proliferated. Furthermore, attention was paid to night schools for the working men and women. The Royal Society was founded in 1778. Arts and crafts universities were founded during the reign of Queen Victoria. One was the Central School of Art and Design, and another was the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. As part of education, Parliament enacted the Education Act in 1870, and libraries became quite important. Elementary education became compulsory. The London Library was founded in 1841. Well known scholars endorsed this. John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle were early participants. Sir Henry Tate a sugar merchant was founder of the Tate Gallery, and Andrew Carnegie also supported the construction of libraries.
It was during this last period (1840-1896) that other concerns arose. Benjamin Disraeli celebrated the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 See touregypt.net/Suez.htm and touregypt.net Disraeli was Prime Minister of England; he was also Jewish, a fact that drew the attention of some members of the House of Commons. One member taunted Disraeli with this. "Yes," he said, "I am Jewish. But when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon." Initially, Disraeli dismissed the notion of a canal. "The operation of nature," he said, "would in a short time, defeat the ingenuity of man." This was a grave miscalculation, ceding its construction to French capital and engineering backed by Egyptian forced labor. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, effectively redrew the map of Europe. The sea journey which had once stretched to almost 11,000 miles, was reduced to 6,300 miles. Disraeli, however, resorted to secret deals to finance a British purchase of all the corporate stock, guaranteed by the London branch of Rothschild & Company which exacted a fee of a 2½ percent commission on 4 million pounds sterling. The deal held up for some 81 years. In 1956, Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the canal. The British, French, and the Israelis almost went to war but the war actually broke out in 1967. The Six-Day War ended in a humiliating defeat of Egypt, an Arab nation next to Israel, finally settled in a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.
Even before this date had passed, France had seen she needed allies. After all, France had lost Alsace and Lorraine in the 1871 defeat it suffered at the hands of Otto von Bismarck's Germany. France did not have the military forces its generals needed to recover Alsace and Lorraine. At a time that Germany was considering territorial expansion to Africa and beyond, it was essential to have an army adequate to defend French interests.
Execution of the Emperor Maximilian (1867)
Edouard Manet
Mark Harden's ArtchiveThe Algeciras Conference of 1905 demonstrated the importance of Morrocco. Germany had intervened in the relations that France and Great Britain had made to protect their own interests. Germany saw an opportunity. On a visit to Tangier, Morocco in 1905, Kaiser Wilhelm II announced that Germany expected to be consulted in matters affecting Morocco. He created a mini-crisis, and at the Conference at Algeciras Germany won a Pyrhrric victory. The agreement recognized that Europe had a collective interest in management of the fate of Morroco. Both France and England had an interest in encouraging Tsar Nicholas II to support Great Britain. The Tsar was possibly the least imaginative of the crowned heads of Europe, but he did want Russia to be recognized as a great power. Kaiser Wilhelm II was fiercely anti-British with the exception of his mother,the Dowager Empress of Germany and a daughter of Queen Victoria. To avenge conduct he saw as an insult by England's Prime Minister Salisbury, Wilhelm II stirred up the Boers of South Africa. After intense fighting there the British finally prevailed over the Boers, a skirmish well-covered by the late Winston Churchill, England's prime minister during World War II.
In 1912, Serbia and Bulgaria formed an alliance designed to keep the Ottomans in check and reduced German influence in Constantinople. The Serbs were cut off from the Adriatic Sea, and Albania was formed from the land carved out of Serbia. It is worth noting today that Serbia is back in the Balkans trying to recover the land ceded to Albania and fighting the Kosovo Liberation Army which seeks autonomy. Kosovo was 90 percent Albanian in 1990. Other alliances were then negotiated, but not soon enough to prevent the outbreak of war. Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated at Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. A month later, the Austrians presented a humiliating ultimatum to Serbia. The Serb politicians accepted most of the demands, and Britain offered its politicians as arbitrators. Before this could happen, Austrian-Hungarian troops invaded Serbia determined to crush the Serbs and enter Belgrade. Germany encouraged Austria to quash the Serbs, and this word was all Austria needed.
The German military had reasoned that sooner or later the Franco-Russian alliance would force its armies to fight a two-front war. So the German General Staff had dusted off the von Schlieffen plan plan approved in 1895. This plan would require German troops to overrun Belgium on their way to Paris. Britain had an agreement with France and was a guarantor of peace with Belgium. Britain's Foreign Office served notice on Berlin that it would honor its promise. Germany ignored that notice and invaded Belgium. By August 12, 1914, World War I had begun, and Kaiser Wilhelm II was primarily responsible for this catastrophe in which some 8,000,000 people died.
Mike Iavarone designed a Web page entitled Trenches to memorialize the fact that most of the military casualties on both sides died in the trenches with timelines and many explanatory articles. They are listed here, but not necessarily in chronological order.
During the early months of the war, Herbert Asquith served as Britain's Prime Minister. Unfortunately, Asquith could not understand, nor could he control the British generals who insisted that all efforts be made to break the German lines in France. This stubbornness on the part of Asquith led to a disaster in 1916. Some 500,000 British casualties were sustained in the Battle of the Somme in July. A few months later Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War demanded and got approval of a plan to set up a mini-Cabinet responsible for all decisions concerning the conduct of the war. Asquith resigned a few months later. In 1917, the United States joined the forces in opposing Germany, after one of Germany's submarines sunk the Lusitania with great loss of life.
World War I ended on November 11, 1918, and Germany had been defeated. Versailles, outside Paris was the venue for negotiating a treaty. The Allies demanded reparations that were wholly unrealistic. German could not possibly pay them and still function as a country, even a defeated Germany. America's President Woodrow Wilson was present in Paris to urge adoption of his personally cherished plan for a League of Nations. The League of Nations was created to end war as an instrument of national policy, The Allies signed the treaty incorporating its language, but upon return to Washington, the Senate which must ratify all treaties by a two/thirds vote rejected this treaty. Senator Cabot Lodge, a Republican argued forcefully against it partly because of personal pique. Wilson had neglected to invite Lodge to Paris for the treaty negotiations.
The Treaty of Versailles was the first treaty to be signed by Great Britain, France, and the United States. See www.ac.acusd.edu/History/text/versaillestreaty/all440.html. This address means that all 440 sections have been made available. The treaty demanded reparations of $5 billion payable May 1, 1921. However, the Reparations Commission added another $25 billion. John Maynard Keynes, a noted economist, wrote that "The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation of degrading the lives of millions of human beings and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorent and detestable... Nations are not authorized by religion or natural morals to visit on the children of their enemies the misdoings of their parents or rulers." However, once France had re-acquired Alsace and Lorraine, two provinces that produced most of Germany's coal, the essential operation of furnaces in Germany was brought to an end. As a direct result, economic disaster occurred.
Dancing Bar in Baden-Baden (1923)
Max Beckmann
Mark Harden's ArtchiveThe German economy, once the most powerful in Europe, was severely damaged by defeat in several ways. One of them was the rapid devaluation of the German currency which soon produced the most devastating inflation in history. The government fanned the flames by continuing to borrow and print money to wipe out its foreign debt, including reparations. France claimed Germany was trying to default on its loans. so it occupied the Ruhr, a huge industrial region in Germany. In November, 1923 the mark was almost worthless, about 4.2 billion to the dollar. Germany therefore abandoned its resistance to the French occupation of the Ruhr and introduced a new currency, the Rentenmark. The government said the Rentenmark was backed by all of Germany's real estate. There was pressure on ethics because of this inflation. Hugo Stinnes, for example, bought up bankrupt businesses for a fraction of their real worth. Even his wealth was not enough. Other Germans engaged in the same practices and amassed more wealth. The middle class was essentially wiped out. In 1927, Adolph Hitler made a cameo asppearance during the abortive putsch in Munich. Hitler's court-imposed sentence lapsed long before its termination, and six months later, Hitler was released from jail. He also wrote his two-volume work, Mein Kampf. In it, he described just what he would do if elected chancellor of Germany, but few Germans believed him, except for a handful of Nazi ideologues.
In November, 1929, the dissolution of the capitalist world began, but did not end, on a massive scale, when the October crash of the stock market occurred in the United States. Soon banks failed, and Americans were reduced to poverty. Europe followed the same path to poverty. Actually, it was the failure of Austria's central bank, Credit Anstalt, in 1934 that touched off more failures and closed factories in Germany and Austria. All Europe suffered from this Great Depression.
Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust
(Photos and speeches...)In 1932, 6 million Germans were unemployed. The appeal of National Socialism was hardly surprising in view of Hitler's promises. In 1934, Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany, replacing the pathetic General Paul von Hindenburg. In 1936, Hitler's Germany hosted the Olympic Games. Avery Brundage, whose wealth came from mass marketing, lost some friends when he fired Eleanor Holm Jarrett from the swimming team for drinking champagne on the ship carrying the athletes to Germany. Jesse Owens was a superb track star, and won a gold for the 100-metre dash. Hitler is said to have blanched when he himself had to present the medal to this black athlete.
On November 10, 1938, Hitler's policy of persecuting Jews surfaced with a vengeance. Nazi thugs launched Kristallnacht night of shattered glass the night of November 9 and 10, 1938, during which the Nazis organized a pogrom throughout Germany, burning synagogues and breaking the windows of Jewish shops. Ten months later, Germany was at war with Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and France.
The first months of the war in Europe had not gone well for France. The German Luftwaffe used its fearsome Stukas in early 1940. These highly effective dive bombers expedited the German Blitzktieg, allowing tanks and foot soldiers to overrun Belgium and most of France. British troops had to be saved from the disaster at Dunkirk by hundreds of boats, large and small mobilized by the owners to rescue some 250,000 British soldiers who, otherwise, would have been captured by the Nazis. Instead, they lived to fight again. Helped by use of German codes used by Hitler, a small handful of British officers were often able to figure out in advance when German bombers would be over London. The British, with help from Polish encryption experts were able to read German military messages from the very highest levels. The German messages were sent on a code machine that Britain labeled Enigma. British scientists decoded all traffic and knew in advance what Germany would do. This machine may have won the war for the West. At least, Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots could respond to air raid alarms in time to meet German bombers on RAF terms. Even so, RAF losses were substantial. Winston Churchill, then Britain's Prime Minister said, "Never have so many owed so much to so few." Indeed, Hitler's Luftwaffe lost so many bombers over England that he decided to postpone the invasion of Britain in favor of launching an attack on Russia. The Nazis had signed a non-aggression treaty with Stalin, but this meant nothing. On June 22, 1941, the Nazis launched Operation Barbarrossa, the invasion of Russia.
Hitler knew that Germany had lost World War I because of running out of oil. The war machine ground to a halt. Hitler's advisors recommended he build plants capable of producing synthetic gasoline. A few American engineers were shown these plants and knew that Hitler was on a roll toward war. Nazi forces marched into Russia on theri way toward Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad. This industrial city was only a few hundred miles from Caspian Sea oil. Hitler saw this a fallback in case its synthetic gasoline plants were severely damaged by Allied bombers. They were, but German troops were now in retreat from Russia because of the Russian winter. Actually, the German 7th army finally surrendered to the Russians; Germans had been decimated by Russian firepower and its freezing winters. Germans were dying of starvation and frost, so surrender was inevitable although Hitler demanded his troops fight to the last man. In this period, Stalin was pushing the United States, Britain and France to launch a second front in Europe from the island fortress of Great Britain.
The United States had been sending men and materials to Britain in preparation for the invasion of Europe. The build up had taken some two and one half years. Dwight D. Eisenhower was Commander in Chief for all allied forces. After getting weather advice from an expert, Eisenhower authorized an invasion to begin on June 6, 1944, a cross-Channel invasion. This was the beginning of the end for Germany. Allied troops reached Paris in August, and it was a race to see which armies reached Berlin first. For reasons still unclear today, Eisenhower told his generals to get to Berlin first, but Russian troops were in Berlin first. Soldiers from both armies reached the River Elbe in May, 1945. The Pacific war against Japan ended on August 10, 1945 after President Harry Truman authorized the use of two atomic bombs dropped on Hirashima and Nagasaki. The surrender took place in Tokyo Bay on board the USS Missouri. Two months later, the United Nations was officially born in San Francisco Bay. The war was over, but it had left London in ruins.
Postwar London was an enigma. There were shortages of fuel, power outages, and food rationing. The Olympic Games took place in 1948, and in 1953, Queen Elizabeth II had her coronation in Westminister Abbey. Enterprising Americans bought package tours to watch this royal spectacle, and it was spectacular. Every regiment of the commonwealth had a marching unit from India to Singapore and London. The package tours were fully booked, and they offered the verandas and interiors of London's private men's clubs to watch the passing parade after first watching the Abbey services on black and white television. Color was still five or six years away. London had other problems. Housing was in short supply, and there was no Christopher Wren or Inigo Jones to design architecture for new homes. Consequently, reconstruction was was slow and buildings were designed by conventional archecture. Between 1938 and 1981, London's population declined by some 2,000,000 people. In the 1930s and 1940s, inner London suffered from traffic congestion, decaying housing, a lack of parks, and factories belching smoke next to apartmant complexes. Additionally, there was visible bomb damage, and some one hundred families had lost their homes. By the end of 1949, some sixty thousand had been built, principally by the London County Council (LCC). Aggregate housing never really caught up with demand, and a shortage of rental homes allowed landlords to profit from misery.
A Labor government elected in 1945, took the first step in reestablishing the hegemony of labor unions. Winston Churchill was relegated to the back benches of the Tory members of the House of Commons. Actually, one with a seat in the Commons balcony might see Churchill struggle to his seventy-year-old feet and put sharp questions to the Labor members at the ministerial level. In 1946, Churchill gave his famous "Iron Curtain " speech at Fulton, Missouri. "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the (European) continent." He meant the Russian iron curtain that divided Europe. Soon threafter, Britain, the United States and France agreed on the need for a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It was considered as defense against Soviet territorial expansionist plans. Germany had been the scene of many battles during World War II, and the NATO governments were determined to prevent another war there, this time to resist what were seen by the West as Soviet plans In the early days of NATO, there were only sixteen members of NATO. With the admission of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, there are now nineteen members, and they all agree on what NATO is doing in Yuigoslavia.
The very idea of rearming Germany and that was exactly what NATO visualized only ten years after Hitler had destroyed large areas of Europe was not uniformly supported. However, as French intellectual Raymond Aron observed, it was better for the West to rearm Germany than it was for those pacifists in the Kremlin to do so. This opinion was one of many offered by Aron, always in a sarcastic tone, but it was one that made some enemies. Aron died in 1983 after a distinguished career as a professor of philiosophy at the Sorbonne. Leon Blum was another French intellectual, this one on the left of the political spectrum. He had a broad field of vision. It helped Blum see some things sooner than other people. In July 1928 he wrote an editorial column condemning the then widespread admiration for the achievements of Mussolini. "There is nothing worse in this world than the abuse of force; it is the servile complaisance that such force encounters when it is successful, that obsequious adulation which forgets the crime in order to flatter the success" Blum warned Charles de Gaulle against giving the Communists (in France) a special status in in the emerging Resistance coalition. The Communist Party, he wrote, was a "foreign nationalist party."
In 1951 most of these European nations decided to set up their own system of treaties and conventions. One of the earlier steps in this direction was the Council of Europe, which now has 21 members. Abdullah Ocalan was tried and convicted of treason in 1999. Ocalan is Kurdish and said to be a terrorist. The devastation and horror of World War II was not lost on the countries of Western Europe. Thus, they adopted and ratified the Convention on Human Rights located in Strassbourg. In 1974 its Commission took evidence in Cyprus v. Turkey and concluded Turkey had violated the human rights protected by this convention. Additionally, these nations amended the Geneva Conventions of 1949 to provide a new category of war crimes. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was also ratified. Recently, a Spanish magistrate had sent a writ of extradition to London to extradite General Augusto Pinochet and try him in Spain for crimes committed by his agents in violations of their rights in Chile. The British House of Lords held that Pinochet, even though he was a retired head of state, enjoyed no immunity from prosecution for these crimes. This case, Regina v. Bartle and the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis and others Ex Parte Pinochet (On Appeal from a Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench Division) was decided on March 24, 1999. The Lords, however, placed a limitation on crimes that could be tried. The Lords decided Pinochet might be tried for all crimes committed after 1988, the year in which the Parliament in Britain had enacted the Extradition Act. Thus, the crimes had to be criminal in both Chile and Britain, the so-called double criminality rule. Most observers who followed this case seem pleased.
The postwar literary scene flourished along with new wave music. From Liverpool, the Beatles emerged as the new wave in music they sang original songs pitching peace in the world. The Beatles arrived in New York in 1964, just the right time. They appeared on the Ed Sullivan television extravaganza becoming instant hits. T.S. Eliot and Evelyn Waugh were literary lions. Waugh wrote A Handful of Dust, a story of frustration in the jungle. A lost traveler fell into the hands of an autocrat who demanded that the traveler read to him almost continuously. His host hid him when his rescuers turned up. London supported a culture that was distinctly left as of recent years. Before Tony Blair was elected to form a Labor government, a series of Tory leaders were elected, until Margaret Thatcher took over from the Conservative Party. She held office for some eight years and changed the economy of London. One of her early successes was the decision to evict Argentine armed forces who,invaded the Falkland Islands in 1988. She succeeded and became a hero of the right, until she too was displaced by John Major. The culture brought people together and included radical intelligentsia, the young, musicians, advertising, design, film, television and the media. Publishing was another field attracting talent. Pearson PLC, for example, acquired Simon & Schuster, once America's largest publisher, second only to Random House recently acquired by Germany's Bertelsman AG. Andrew Lloyd Webber produced several musicals, including Evita, Cats, Midnight Express and others, and Webber himself was added to the Queen's Civil List. He must now be addressed now as Lord Webber. Television, and particularly, the documentary film has had a revival of sorts in the 1990s. Public Broadcasting in the United States recently showed Royal and Country narrated by Edward Windsor. It was a stunning history of Windsor Castle first built in 1284 and then rebuilt to the point that it is now a residence for the Queen and her family. In 1993, Windsor Castle was the scene of a terrible fire that caused a great deal of damage. The film showed people trying desperately carrying art work out of the castle to save it. Since then, Windsor Castle has been completely restored. The documentary continued on with a history of Cambridge University also started in the 13th century. It now has some 101 colleges where students study and live at the center of this castle of learning a few miles from the center of London.
Millenium Dome, London U.K.
(Photos...)During the 1970s and 1980s, Britain's Tory government encouraged reliance on international capital transactions. This strategy had its risks, even though 1979 was the year in which foreign exchange control ended. In 1988, the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) began. With public money, the Corporation was to provide new roads, sewers, and public transit to attract private investment. By 1988, some $660 million of state money brought in ten times as much private capital The principal structure was to be Canary Wharf, at 824 feet it was the tallest building in Britain, and promoted by the Canadian firm of Olympia & York. Construction began in 1987. This project had suffered many setbacks. In 1991, Canadian developers sought protection from creditors under the bankruptcy laws. At this point, only 60 percent of Canary Wharf had been leased. Public transportation had been found hideously expensive to build, so inner London got a dose of highways, or one ringway. Traffic stagnation and environmental degradation got worse and worse. London banks had probably concluded that this project was too large to fail. The Thatcher government operated with a curious mentality. The LDDC wanted to expand the Light Railway System with one gauge of track, while the extension used a different gauge, possibly to limit spending.
The Thatcher government had always been reluctant to spend public money. The money for projects like Canary Wharf was slow in materializing, but Thatcher said money should always come from the private sector guided by market forces. These forces were never present at the right times, and projects like Canary Wharf were the early victims of the market mentality. Unemployment, particularly in the East End continued to rise. The inevitable was only a step behind: slums and racial violence. Tony Blair's Labor government was only marginally better in subsidizing housing and jobs to improve these slums, but there were few takers. Temporarily, Blair's government also opted out of the new currency, the euro. Britain may become the "Odd Man Out" of Europe. It seems to have forgotten how to manage risk. Thus, London may have to operate as a tourist destination, a haven for those who did not plan cityscapes properly.
Even as a tourist haven, London seems almost irrelevant except as an older city decaying at the edges. Its buildings are aging, and new construction has slowed since the 1950s. Fleet Street, once the dynamic center of news and newspapers, has more or less closed shop. Its demise sets a huge question mark over the economic future of central London. The docks were next. The Port of London tonnages hit record levels in the 1950s, but world trade patterns had changed by 1960. Rotterdam, Hamburg, and Dunkurk were the newly-developed trade centers designed for container ships. From a peak of 30,000 employees in 1950, dock employment declined to 2,000 by 1981. London dockers accelerated the decline by militant strikes. Racial tensions simmered through the 1960s and 1970s, associated with poverty, unemployment, aging housing and a growing war between blacks and police. A recent report suggested strongly that London police were not race-sensitive, and race riots in Brixton shattered the calm of the Tory Heath government. About the only flourishing area of London was the construction or reconstruction of hotels, expensive housing, new restaurants, and other art forms of entertainment for the leisure class and tourists. The theater also flourished with Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical touch. In contrast, office blocks with flat walls and no design plus congested urban streets that by day were virtually impassable further discouraged London residents.
In 1996, Britain's voters elected a Labor government with Tony Blair as Prime Minister. In 1998-99, this new government had to grapple with at least one major problem; what to do with the Serbian president Slobodan Milosovic. After the Dayton Accords settled the Croatian, Bosnia Hertzegovinian rebellion, ie., freedom from rule from Belgrade, Kosovo demanded independence from Serbian rule. Milosevic refused to back down when threatened with NATO air attacks, so on March 24, 1999, the first NATO jets rained destruction on critical areas of Serbia, including most recently, its electrical grid. At home in London, Blair sought to abolish an institution that had served Britain well for centuries, its hereditary peers in the House of Lords. In the period after 1985, the Lords gave advisory opinions on legislation and managed to slow passage of truly burdensome laws. The Law Lords have often acted as a court of last resort in significant cases, e.g., the Pinochet case.
This NATO force included all nineteen members of NATO with the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Germany plus all the others. Each contributed to this military effort. Some contributions were minimum, e.g., approving over flight rights. Even before the bombs fell, the Serbian army and pararegulars led the way in new "ethnic cleansing." Refugees by the thousands fled Kosovo to Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro. An estimated 1.5 million refugees in these three areas had to be fed, clothed, and sent on to other areas, such as Greece, Turkey, and Germany. Columbia Broadcasting System did an interview of Mirjana, wife of Milosivic. She absolutely denied there was constant persecution of Kosovars when asked by Dan Rather. He should have asked her to describe what evidence he might provide to document the commission of war crimes.
Those who demand that the United States halt the bombing and withdraw all its aircraft show no signs of knowledge that such a program would be seen everywhere as a defeat for NATO. This in turn might destabilize the Balkans and neighboring countries with irredentist ethnic minorities who might engage in guerilla warfare to recover land that some peace treaty had incorrectly assigned to the wrong country, i.e., some 400,000 Hungarians in Rumania. Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire is an excellent book by Jason Goodwin. He has this to say about Kosovo:
The very presence of the Ottoman frontier had a melting effect on the lands beyond. At the Turks' approach people fled with all their goods and beasts, leaving behind a sort of frontier wilderness which slid into Turkish hands almost by osmosis. Many of their great victories were reactive, and their advance seemed ordained. Seldom did they pick a vulgar quarrel, or ignore a challenge. Kosovo was the result of a Serb rebellion. In 1448, 60 years later, the battle was fought again, this time against a Hungarian-backed Serbian army, which had broken a solemn truce and was advancing towards Edirne; Kosovo 1448, like Kosovo 1389, was a far-reaching Ottoman victory.Robert Kaplan wrote Balkan Ghosts A Journey Through History. It was published in 1994. In an article appearing in the Atlantic Monthly in 1989, Kaplan warned that "In the 1970s and 1980s the world witnessed the limits of superpower influence in places like Vietnam and Afghanistan. In the 1990s those limits may well become visible in a Third World region within Europe itself. The Balkans could shape the end of the century, just as they did in the beginning."
Hyde Park, London (1890)
Camille Pissarro
Carol Gerten's Fine Art (CGFA)In this period of the 18th century, Charles Dickens (1812 to 1870) emerged as a literary lion. He is still regarded as the finest novelist in England. However, he almost missed his calling as an author and gravitated toward the stage. Dickens wrote novels read avidly today. He knew the seamy underworld of London, since his father had been imprisoned for debt, and Dickens worked as court reporter. Dickens education stopped at 15; he had to go to work. Thus his writing had a middle class perspective. One of his greatest was a short story,A Christmas Carol (1843). Its principal character was Scrooge, while Tiny Tim, a crippled child, was a close second. At one time, some twenty theaters were performing his books revised for the theater. Oliver Twist was another great novel, made into a musical in the 1980s. David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities, about London and Paris during the bloodshed of the French Revolution, were both great novels. In early 1998, the Public Broadcasting System showed the last of Dicken's books on television. Reviewers, one of them for The New York Times, described the film version of Our Mutual Friend, as "vividly popular, visually beautiful altogether engaging series on Masterpiece Theater, ...and episode one begins with a stunning vision of the Thames , a fantasy of moonlight shimmering on midnight blue that evokes Turner and Whistler..." Dickens followed Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels which was a satire of the times. For further information on both Dickens and Swift, see anova.org/dickens.html and www.jaffebros.com/lee/gulliver/chron.html. The timeline in this address shows other writers of the 18th and 17th centuries, including John Milton who wrote Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained in 1667. Elsewhere on the Web, some on-line books may be read entirely on a computer monitor. See www.literature.org/Works/ One of them is Voltaire's Candide and others include works by the Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Anne, and Emily. together with Jules Verne in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Chaucer is also available and so is Rudyard Kipling. He wrote tales of the Far East and Africa still read by youngsters. Joseph Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness, still considered a classic and scathing criticism of slavery in Africa organized by King Leopold II of Belgium. This king was probably responsible for more deaths in the Congo than Adoph Hitler some seventy years later. Hitler condemned only 6 million Jews to death, while King Leopold is thought to have condemned some 10 million black Africans to death over a period of about twelve years. After King Leopold died, the fraud and deceit continued. He made millions in the ivory and rubber trade and used the proceeds to build extravagant castles in France and elsewhere and did his best to disinherit his three daughters in favor of his mistress, Caroline. See King Leopold's Ghost published in 1998.
In 1884, the International Meridian Conference set zero degrees longitude at a point four miles down London's Tower Bridge. At the time, London was the largest and most important city in the world. At midnight on New Year's Eve, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich will be the center of the world. Its director is fully aware of the fact that the millennium begins in the year 2001, not 2000. But, like others, the director has a policy of not being left out if a party occurs on New Year's Eve 2000. This Royal Park is England's oldest dating from 1433. Near the Thames River, the Duke of Gloucester built a palace where Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth were born. This park and the Observatory belong to history. Zero longitude and a clock that kept time allowed navigators to use it to sail safely anywhere in the world. Latitude had been used for a long time and zero latitude was set at the Equator. Navigation made creating distant colonies easier to find on charts.
Great Britain also joined the scramble for Africa. Extension of European rule in the "Dark Continent" was justified by spreading the blessings of civilization there. The indigenous tribes of Africa, mostly black, were never given a real chance to reject such blessings. Africa was already unstable when in 1881, a British force was sent to Egypt to secure that country's government against a nationalist movement that threatened the recently-opened Suez Canal. In fact, Britain sent two military units to Afghanistan in 1881, and a decade later, another British force enforced the peace against rebellious natives. Great Britain found itself ruling areas of Africa that might threaten its route to India and Asia via the Suez Canal. During the years running up to 1899, British and French forces fought actions in China to protect their investments there. The Boxer Rebellion was an example. The Boxers were violently anti-foreign, attacking Chinese Christian converts and the foreign missionaries. As the rebellion spread , these foreign troops seized Chinese forts in order to protect the route to Peking now Beijing. The Manchu Empress fled from the capital but a rebellious city had to be punished. Shanghai was divided into zones of interest for the British, French and Americans. The Boxer uprising merely hastened the downfall of the Manchus.
Back on the European continent, the ambitious politicians and the "fight the last war" military mentality was in control. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was in London in 1910 for the funeral of King Edward VII. Nine kings of Europe rode horses out of Buckingham Palace three by three. Barbara Tuchman wrote in her Guns of August that "the muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled the hour nine in the morning as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock, it was sunset and the sun of the old world was setting in a blaze of splendor never to be seen again."
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All contents © 1999 William M. Brinton