Ann Byers - Strategic Inventions of the Spanish Civil War

French men and women line up to receive food in 1932, during the Great Depression. The woman helping distribute the packages is Josephine Baker, an Americanborn singer and dancer extremely popular in France.

INTRODUCTION

Europe Between the Wars

T he 1920s and 1930s were difficult everywhere, but especially in Europe. The Great War, which later became known as World War I, ended in 1918, leaving destruction, disillusionment, and chaos in its wake. It had erased or moved national borders, emptied treasuries, and practically wiped out a generation of men. Between the two world wars, Europe was awash in political, economic, and social turmoil.

POLITICAL UPHEAVAL

After the Great War, four empires that had dominated the continent for centuries were no more. When Germany lost the war, the emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, gave up his throne, and the winners took bits of Germanys territory for themselves. A large chunk was cut away and given to Poland.

The massive Austro-Hungarian Empire had splintered into several smaller nations in the waning days of the war. Czechoslovakia and Poland broke away and became sovereign states. Slovenia, Bosnia, and Croatia declared themselves independent of the empire and soon merged with Serbia and other small groups to form Yugoslavia. Hungary and Austria, each reduced to a fraction of its former size, were divided into two separate countries.

To the east, Russia was in the throes of revolution and civil war. Territories on the northwestern edge of the vast Russian Empire Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuaniapulled away. In the southwest, fighting raged in Turkey, Romania, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, and other areas.

The Ottoman Empire, which once stretched across the Middle East, over northern Africa, and into eastern Europe, had begun to disintegrate long before the war. The weakened empire allied itself with Germany and thus was on the losing side. Turkey won its independence, but England and France took over the rest of the empire and divided it between them, governing the different parts like colonies.

When the map of Europe was redrawn, some of the boundary lines did not make sense. People who felt they belonged together found themselves in different countries. Millions of Hungarians were now in Slovenia, Romania, and Yugoslavia. German-speaking people were scattered among several of the new states. New borders separated tribal groups throughout the Middle East. Many people became minorities overnight in what had been their own lands.

The nations that emerged from the shambles of World War I had been monarchies. Whether the ruler was called a king, a kaiser, a czar, or an emperor, he had absolute control. The common people did not vote; decisions were made by the monarch and a small group of nobles. In the new order, there would be no kings to tell the people what to do, to settle disputes, to build roads and bridges, and to keep them safe. Without any experience in democracy, the people would have to figure out how to govern themselves. This made the interwar period a time of political floundering for much of Europe.

ECONOMIC RUIN

The political crisis was made worse by economic disaster. The war had cost more than $200 billion, money spent on tanks, bombs, and other weaponry that was now utterly destroyed or no longer of any use. The harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles saddled Germany with a crippling debt. Nationswinners and losers alikewere not merely bankrupt; they owed huge sums. Some of the money was owed to their citizens, who had bought bonds to finance the war. Much was owed to the United States.

The governments did not have the means to repay the massive amounts they had borrowed. Manufacturing, trade, and even agriculture had been disrupted by the fighting and could not be restored easily. The war had claimed the lives of nine million servicemen and five million civilians, people who would not return to the factories and the fields. In the last year of the conflict and for two full years after, one of the worst flu epidemics in history swept the entire globe, killing more than fifty million and crushing what little economic life there was.