Chapter 1 – Age of Total War “In 1914 there had been no major war for over a century, that is to say, a war in which all, or even a majority of, major powers had been involved, the major players in the international game at the time being the six European ‘great powers’, the USA and Japan.” (Hobsawm p. 22). The French lost 20 per cent of their men of military age. “One quarter of Oxford and Cambridge students under the age of twenty-five who served in the British Army in 1914 were killed.” (Hobsawm p. 26). The British lost 500,000 men under the age of 30. Both sides tried to win the war by developing new technology. The Germans brought poison gas, and hydrogen-filled airships. The British developed the tank. Both sides developed their own submarines. At the end of the war the Treaty of Versailles was signed which dealt with the rise of Russia as an alternative regime, the need to control Germany, and the search for the kind of settlement which would prevent another war. WW2 was a result of the failure of the treaty of Versailles. Germany was forced to limit its army to 100,000 men, pay for the entire costs of WW1, and give up its overseas colonies. Germany felt this was unfair. Japan and Italy were also major aggressors into the start of WW2. The losses from WW2 were many times greater than the first one. “In short, 1914 opens the age of massacre” (Hobsawm p. 24)
Chapter 3 – Into the Economic Abyss
Each state trying to protect their economies from the outside, globalization stopped inter-war (Hobsbawm p. 88). The world’s largest economy was becoming virtually self-sufficient. Rising production costs as a result of strengthened power of labor and its unions caused the post-war boom to collapse. Many people became unemployed. The world monetary system collapsed. “Private savings disappeared totally, thus creating an almost complete vacuum of working capital for