Evidence 2 Contemporary World - Sebastián Ruiz Chong

Vista previa del material en texto

Contemporary World 
 
 
506 
 
 
Evidence 2 
 
 
Sebastian Ruiz Chong 
 
 
 
 
 
05/10/2022 
 
World War I: The events preceding, during, and at the end of this conflict. 
 
The history of all the world is covered with blood and betrayal, the nations have done 
war since they know what a person with power does could do, but until this event, 
any war or any conflict between countries wouldn´t be something to this one, the 
First World War, get us into fatal events that would lead all nations to stay calm for 
some time. The First World War was one of the events classified us as imperfect 
humans, all this conflict began with the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of 
Austria, by the hands of a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, Bosnia This causes that 
two big alliances began to fight because of the threats and mobilization orders that 
followed this murder, this alliances were between “The Allied Powers”, that were 
Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy and Japan, with further help of USA on the 1917; 
and “The Central Power”, Germany, Austria- Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. The 
first battle of World War I, was when the Germans assaulted Liege, using big siege 
cannons to capture it. They didn´t have mercy leaving death and destruction in the 
city, they shoot civilians and the deliberated execution of Belgian priest, who were 
accused of inciting civilian resistance, the Germans advanced through Belgium 
towards France. 
 
The Central Powers were trying to extend their territory, especially Germany, so they 
tried to conquer Britain and France, but most of the times German troops were 
repelled by the Allied Power´s forces like on the First Battle of Marne. On the Eastern 
Front, Russian forces invaded East Prussia and German Poland, but were stopped 
short by German and Austrian forces at the Battle of Tannenberg. Italy Austrian and 
Italian troops faced off in a series of 12 battles along the Isonzo River. But it was 
until the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, or the Battle of Caporetto, where the German 
reinforcements helped Austria-Hungary wins decisively. After Caporetto, the Allies 
began to take back the initiative on the Italian Front. The German navy chose not to 
confront Britain’s mighty Royal Navy because of its big domain of the water, 
preferring to rest and think of its strategy at sea. The biggest naval engagement of 
World War I, is the Battle of Jutland it would leave British naval intact, so Germany 
wouldn´t make further attempts to break the Allied naval. The Allied Powers were 
gaining more and more territory, rounding the Central powers on their own nation, 
on the Second Battle of Marne, this was the battle were the Allied Powers recovered 
France and Belgium, and Germany was finally forced to seek an armistice on 
November 11, 1918, to end the World War. “World War I took the life of more than 9 
million soldiers… and Civilian casualties caused indirectly by the war numbered 
close to 10 million” this World teach that the religion, power and superiority problems 
are the most dangerous on the entire world. But we didn´t even notice it, that´s 
because the Second World War began. 
 
Great Depression: The crisis that hit the world economy in the period between 
the wars. 
After the First World War, and before the Second one, the whole world was on a 
deep debt, because of the money they spend on the war, almost all the banks where 
failing, and there was an enormous amount of money the banks that disappear, and 
the taxes were not enough to cover all this crisis. This crisis began on October 24, 
1929, the stock market finally crashed, some 16 million shares were traded after 
another wave of panic swept Wall Street. This is better known as the “Black 
Thursday”. And finally with the adherence to the gold standard, that was current way 
the exchange goods, helped spread the Depression from the United States 
throughout the whole world, especially in Europe. The most difficult scenery was on 
the USA, were almost everything that was on an inversion or a debt, would be really 
hard to pay for, so the industry production was almost cut to the half of the 
production, even on agriculture and the aliments production were decreasing. 
Treasury didn’t have enough cash to pay all government workers. With the country 
mired in the depths and almost 20 percent or more of the U.S. population 
unemployed, the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt won an overwhelming victory in 
the presidential election, that would change the way of administration on the banks 
and creating two new systems to prevent abuses of the kind that led to the Great 
Depression, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to protect depositors’ accounts 
and the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate the stock market. 
 
By the 1933 to the 1943, the Great Depression began to decrease with the 
government of Roosevelt and the “New Deal” systems, America was increasing its 
economy and they were fixing the errors they committed on the past adopting a 
certain type of economy system for exchanging goods. The United States was the 
only industrialized country in the world when this problem began, without some form 
of unemployment insurance or social security. In 1935, Congress passed the Social 
Security Act, which for the first time provided Americans with unemployment, 
disability, and pensions for old age to eliminate this crisis. 
 
World War II: How it started, the main battles, and how it ended. 
As we know the official day when the Second World War started is on September 
1st on 1939. Actually there is more, we can say that it started with the Munich 
agreement , where Germany reclaimed part of the Czechoslovakia territory as its 
own, this was because there were an small part of Germans , which was one of the 
crazy ideas of Hitler, this agreement was signed by France, Italy and Great Britain 
and of course Germany, but a funny thing is that Czechoslovakia wasn´t invited , 
and I think this countries signed this because they were scared of the power of Hitler, 
he influenced a lot in the way of thinking of its country and it was expanding to other 
countries. Some countries, as Poland and Hungary, saw their chance and tried to 
make the same thing as Germany, days later Czechoslovakia people was removed 
from their homes, and Hitler started to conquer the world and also made an alliance 
with Russia. After this situation, they decided to invade Poland and Great Britain 
helped to stop this invasion, but with the time they also did and alliance with 
Germany, and slowly the Hitler movement, The Nazi movement, started to grow step 
by step. The main battles of the Second World War were: The Stalingrad war that is 
also known as the battle that decided the Second World War Where Germany and 
its allies invaded the city of Stalingrad in Russia. This battle had a duration of 5 
months, and during this time there were a lot of dead. This battle shows us that war 
can be like the board game called “Risk”, where when you conquer a city you get 
more allies, or troops, and become stronger and also you need a good position to 
attack your enemies. The battle of Kursk, battle of Iwo Jima, where and approximate 
of 19,977 Japanese people died, and 19,189 Americans were injured, the battle of 
Moscow and the battle of Normandy, battle of Berlin, this one was important because 
this is where Hitler committed suicide, or that is what some people say, and also 
some other high level leaders of the Nazi army died, so we can say this was the 
surrender of Nazis. 4 months after the death of Adolf Hitler, United States tried to 
stop all allies of Germany, in all this Japan didn’t surrender on the time because of 
their beliefs. In Japan one of the most important values if is not the most important 
is the honor, and surrender is a big dishonor, samurais used to fight until dead and 
if they couldn’t they used to make a ceremony called Hara-kiri where they kill 
themselves to keep that honor. Japandidn’t surrender until United States throw an 
atomic bomb called Little Boy in the prefecture of Hiroshima, causing: the death of 
millions, diseases, and radiation. But that didn’t stop Japan, they thought they could 
resist more until a few days later they throw another bomb, and the government 
didn’t have another choice for the good of their people. And that is how Second 
World War ended. 
 
 
The end of World War II and reconstruction: the occupation of Germany and 
the roots of the Cold War 
After the second World war all Europe was devastated and the armies of the allies 
of Germany (France, Poland, Great Britain and Ireland) took the main country and 
divided in four main parts: Occidental Germany, German Democratic Republic, 
Protectorate de Sartre and West Berlin while the German army was executed or 
exiles for their crimes, some of them were innocent, but by the fact of support and 
idea of killing people just for being of another religion or having another way of 
thinking is inhumane, and provably would be better if they only killed people but I 
wasn´t like that, they tortured millions of innocents forcing them to do physical hard 
work and they were prisoners even in their own minds, so that’s why people who 
supported this needed to be punished. Someone told me that Germany still pays 
taxes for recovering the damage they made in the past, even if most of the people 
who lived in that time are dead now, they are condoned to a dark past. One of the 
results of this war is that some organizations were created for bringing peace and 
put everything in their respective place like: ONU, FAO (their mission was to 
eradicate hunger created by the lack of food because of the war) and IMF 
(International Monetary Fund). At the end of the war United States ordered the 
retirement of troops in the occupied territories meanwhile the Soviet Union tried to 
impose communist governments in those countries in which they were during 
Second World War, this made the US government get worried because of the power 
that USSR was getting. As a consequence, in 1947 US stopped the repartition of 
soldiers in Europe. In June of that year the Truman Doctrine was proclaimed that 
tried to promote the image of US the idea of a free world and the Marshall plan was 
created. And this is how a war that was going to last for years of just threat each 
other started, called the Cold War 
 
Russian Revolution 
The Russian revolution occurred in 1917, this event was very important because it 
put an end to centuries of imperial rule and set political and social changes that 
would form the Soviet Union. The economic and political situation before the 
revolution was awful, there was a lot of corruption and the conditions in which people 
lived were not the ideal. It all started on March 8 of 1917, when demonstrators took 
to the streets in the Russian capital, now called St. Petersburg. They wanted to fight 
for their interests as human beings and to achieve a better life. This problem, 
because a revolution always is a problem, started to grow with the pass of the days. 
The revolution continued until November 8 when the revolutionaries led by Bolshevik 
Party leader: Vladimir Lenin, launched a nearly bloodless “coup d’état” against the 
provisional government, the people involved in the movement occupied government 
buildings and strategic locations in the capital and formed a new government with 
Lenin in charge. He would be the dictator of the first Marxist state in the world. Finally 
in 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established. I need to mention 
that the Russian Revolution caused a great excitement and interest in the Leninist 
version of Marxism all over the world, it also caused that many socialists adopted 
revolutionary principles, examples of this are the 1918-1919 Munich Soviet and the 
1919 Spartacist uprising in Berlin. The govern leaders used the “Freikorps”, that 
were a loosely organized paramilitary group, to crush those uprising events. Many 
leaders of the Freikorps, including Ernst Röhm, later became leaders in the Nazi 
party. 
 
Fascist and Nazis regimes 
The totalitarian regimes (which include Nazism). These regimes were totalitarian 
governments, which means that the state controls all aspects of the lives of the 
citizens, literally, the govern had control of the religion, the way of thinking of the 
people, ideology, their exposure to art and culture, the moral behavior, and also who 
can be married. The fascist regime started in Italy by Benito Mussolini which ruled 
the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, for me this person wanted to do the things 
in his own way, he wanted to have control of everything and everyone, and day by 
day he wanted to be more powerful and have as many territories as possible. It´s 
important to mention that this regime was built on a foundation of violence, disdain 
for the middle class, an uncontrolled nationalism, and absolute opposition to 
Marxism. On the other side the Nazism (which is also a totalitarian govern and one 
of the most known groups of the world) started in Germany in 1932, this regime was 
one of the biggest groups that existed in Germany. Nazism became the strongest 
political force in the country and Hitler would become the most important and 
aggressive leader of Nazism. His totalitarianism was more aggressive than the 
fascism of Mussolini; he declared his racist ideology (against, homosexuals, black 
people, etc.) and his hate for Jewish people, most known as Anti-Semitism. Many 
historiographers say that this element was created for Hitler to gain attention and 
popularity for the movement, Hitler was one of the most violent, rude, and dangerous 
leaders in history, and he would do everything he could to win territories and achieve 
his goals of having the “perfect race”. These types of government led many problems 
to the whole society and from my point of view were a very important cause that led 
the event worldwide known as “World War II 
 
 
Define the concepts multipolar, bipolar, and unipolar as used in the field of 
geopolitics. 
Unipolar: In this system the distribution of the power is concentrated in only one great 
power that face no competition. A unipolar international system is supposed to 
maintain balance between the great powers and favors the absence of war. Bipolar: 
This is an international system in which two states have the distribution of power and 
most of the economic, politic, cultural, and military influence. Multipolar: Is an 
international system of distribution in which two or more states have almost equal 
influence in military, economic, politic, and cultural areas. 
 
After defining the concepts multipolar, bipolar, and unipolar, analyze the 
relationship with the historical events of step 1. 
After the Cold War the international system was unipolar. United States was vastly 
stronger than any other state. US had the advantage of possessing nuclear weapons 
and even the other powers together didn’t have the military power to conquer it. The 
end of bipolarity opened the way for American dominance. Both World Wars show 
geopolitical bipolarity, during the World War I the power was divided between the 
Central powers and the allies, and in the Second World War between the Axis, and 
the Allies. During the Cold War, the powers were divided between two great powers, 
the US and the USSR, the war between capitalist and socialist systems. After the 
collapse of the Soviet Union the world entered in a post-communist system, headed 
by the US, increasing fragmentation and multipolarity. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
References 
 
History. (2015). Russian Revolution. Retrieved from History.com: 
http://www.history.com/topics/russian-revolution 
 
History. (n.d.). The great depression. Retrieved from History.com: 
http://www.history.com/topics/great-depression 
 
Kangas, S. (n.d.). Timelines of great dedpression. Retrieved from Hyperhistory: 
http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/connections_n2/great_depression.htmlP, S. (2013). The balance of power in a unipolar system. Retrieved from 
Wordpress: 
http://policytensor.com/2013/06/10/the-balance-of-power-in-a-unipolar-world/ 
 
Unknown. (n.d.). Nazi Ideology. Retrieved from Nazism: 
http://www.nazism.net/about/nazi_ideology/ 
 
Unknown. (n.d.). World War I. Retrieved from History: 
http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/world-war-i-history 
 
Wikipedia. (2015, Oct 03). Russian Revolution. Retrieved from Wikipedia: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution 
 
 
 
http://www.history.com/topics/russian-revolution
http://www.history.com/topics/great-depression
http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/connections_n2/great_depression.html
http://policytensor.com/2013/06/10/the-balance-of-power-in-a-unipolar-world/
http://www.nazism.net/about/nazi_ideology/
http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/world-war-i-history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution