let's talk about the outcome of world war one so you know woodrow wilson had those 14 points we're gonna make the world safe for democracy and then he kind of threw it all away for the league of nations which was going to fix all the problems but the only problem was at the end of the war the only superpower was the us and since we weren't we picked up our toys and went away oh boy um so what ends up one of the big things that wilson had pushed for was the whole concept of national self-determination um this kind of falls apart on multiple levels like for example the creation of the polish corridor that cuts through germany and it's going to set up world war ii but also you had people who really bought into wilson's ideals and um two of them were ho chi minh and gandhi now um you know gandhi initially when the when the war started and he was released from south africa um was tolerant of the war uh but at the end of the war i mean the the indian contribution to both world war one and world war two is huge and there was a sense among the congress party and other members within the indian elite that after the war um india would get dominion status at least which is the same stuff that canada and australia and new zealand and south africa had the white colonies but it didn't happen um and the british bungled things uh like in north america with the american colonies they preach this whole thing about democracy and rule of law and then when the people in the future us called them on it they backed away same thing happens in india the story of ho chi minh is is kind of interesting um he was actually working in paris during the paris peace conference and he tried to reach out to woodrow wilson now you got to understand the chances of woodrow wilson president united states meeting with the vietnamese um guy who works in a restaurant was pretty close to slim but it's one of those things imagine if woodrow wilson had met with ho chi minh how would the world be different because the thing and this is really important to remember ho chi minh inspiration the person whose ideas guided him george washington ho chi minh tries to be george washington and the us ends up being the british um opportunity severely missed and this is the thing because at the end of world war one when things get broken up the ottoman empire the turks leave and form their own state and most the rest of the ottoman empire gets divided between the french and the um british you know there's they the british take over iraq and jordan the french take over lebanon and syria i mean it's a mess because it shouldn't be happening but without the us to say hey wait a minute it's gonna happen ah mussolini so mussolini start off life as a socialist but then he broke with the socialists and got hooked in with the futurist and the futurists were an italian pre-world war one movement that was all about speed and violence and action it was you know you hadn't lived until you had been in a car accident futurists would love roller coasters most of them died early on in world war one because they all volunteered mussolini broke with the socialists sided with the war the problem was the italian army rather than being a winning card for the allies to pull the weakness away from the germans actually backfired um the italians and the austrians were pretty balancedly matched in fact the austrians were better than the italians and this is the austrian army that's being defeated by the russian army where 50 of their troops have no weapons so at the end of the war the italians figured after all their losses they would get all this territory and instead they got the suter rule which is southern austria which was still filled with austrians and got a little tip of yugoslavia they were not happy and the italians go in this horrible death spiral of convincing themselves that in fact they're a victim of world war one and mussolini at this point in time had switched from being a futurist to developing his own kind of thing called fascism it's modeled on the fascista which is the roman symbol of power and the idea that mussolini had was that we that that the state should work with industry this is very key state working with industry to suppress the workers versus socialism where state works with the workers to take over industry so just so we're clear fascism state works with industry to suppress the workers 1922 in the midst of a political crisis mussolini and his black shirts march on rome now they're dressed in black shirts he's dressed in a suit um the king of italy victor emmanuel says oh what the heck okay muslim you see what you can do mussolini gets appointed prime minister and begins the path of trying to rebuild italy and to turn italy into this great thing uh he's going to reconstruct the roman empire speaking of reconstruction so after lenin took over in november october of 1917 first thing he did was adopt the gregorian calendar um he tried to force russia to go full communist that was war communism um the problem was that there weren't enough industrial workers outside the main cities and it didn't work and the peasants didn't want to surrender their stuff and then before he could really deal with things uh it's not like the forces of the tsar went away after the tsar was executed they formed the whites and we have a civil war and within the civil war you have us and british troops and czech troops actually joining with the whites to fight against the reds the person who made the victory possible was lenin's right hand man trotsky trotsky was this military genius who man he created the red army he's the person who who brings ultimate victory but the problem was that lenin realized that russia was not going to be able to make it to the next level and so he develops this thing called the nep the new economic policy and basically what the nep was if you are an industrialist who owns a factory sorry um you're now the janitor and the state runs your factory if you run a corner store not a 7-11 but a corner store you can keep your corner store so small business people entrepreneurs will be allowed to survive 7-eleven is now owned by the state it was a temporary measure the problem is that lenin's going to suffer a stroke very quickly thereafter and things are going to go from bad to ugly but before this happens while the march on rome is taking place there's a meeting that's happening in ropella italy and that meeting is supposed to be between the allies and the germans so they can negotiate because the problem is the germans are just printing money like crazy and it's frustrating the allies and so for some unknown reason the allies also invited the russians and while the french and the british and the belgians are talking amongst themselves and not allowing the germans and the russians to participate the russians go hey so you don't like those guys either we hate them and and the germans are like you know if you have a problem with them a big problem they want us to do all this stuff and they do not let us do a lot of things like for example the treaty of versailles limited the german army to a hundred thousand troops and every soldier had to serve for 14 years which means at the end of 14 years he's the best trained private ever there are no tanks there are no airplanes for combat and the russians said hey look no the british and the french and the italians have no idea what happens in russia germany why don't you build your factories for your armaments in the soviet union you can test we have plenty of peasants you can shoot if you wish and so what happens is that the russians the rappello conference the allies leave because they haven't accomplished anything not realizing that in fact the russians and the germans have cut a deal and the um germans are going to start experimenting with tanks and airplanes and all kinds of cool stuff in russia the key the only thing is that they have to share some of the technology with the russians but they figure it's worth the risk [Music] so like i said the germans are printing money and the french and the belgians get sick of it and so what they do is they invade the rural which is the industrial heartland of germany it's critical for two things one it causes the german economy to spiral into crazy inflation because german government tries to pay the workers who refuse to work i mean clearly the french and the belgians try to force people at gun point to work um and so the german mark becomes absolutely useless we're talking you know 100 000 marks to pile off of red and the standard exchange rate is four marks to the dollar a mark should be worth a quarter um also it has a really negative effect in the fact that the british are like oh no um we don't really want to be your allies because you look really bad and they're making the germans look good this is not a good thing it's a publicity nightmare for the belgians and the french well in steps the u.s and this is important because the u.s walked away from world politics but yet the only time when world politics works is when the us is involved and the first thing is the washington naval treaty in 1922 the u.s negotiates a naval treaty with all the various nations of the world um well except for the russians but and the germans aren't allowed to have a navy but basically what it comes down to it is for the first time britain agrees to parody with the us arms reduction so for every five battleships britain has the us gets to have five battleships but japan only gets to have three and the excuse is well you know japan you're not a world power and japan doesn't like this and then to make matters worse 1922 is the 20th anniversary of the british japanese naval treaty and britain doesn't renew and britain's excuse for not renewing is hey we just signed this big naval tree we don't have to have our own separate one but japan doesn't like this japan is offended that their ally has basically abandoned them and then screwed them over because from the japanese perspective it should be five five five ah but this is going to come back to haunt them and you will see the slightly more successful thing is what is known as the dawes plan basically the u.s steps in and says okay france and belgium you're being idiots and the french and the belgians say but the germans will not pay and the u.s is like hey hold my soda water because remember we got prohibition in the u.s i got this so what the us does is the u.s loans money to germany to get the german economy back rolling germany then uses some of that money to pay the british and the french and the belgians and then the belgians the french and the british use that money to pay the u.s so we have this great gigantic circle of funds um and it all works i as long as that u.s currency is floating around in a big circle it is great oh lennon died in 1924 and when the russian revolution happened like lenin and trotsky knew that stalin had been actually a secret agent for the czar so they didn't invite him to participate stalin was angry it's not good to take off stalin after linen so and then to make matters worse they made stalin the secretary of the communist party no one wants to be secretary because you got to take all the notes no one wants to do it stalin turned secretary into a really cool job because he was the one who sent out the announcements of when things were and while trotsky's off like fighting you know counter-revolutionaries stalin is hanging out with linen and especially after linda has a stroke basically he can't do anything when lennon dies stalin is careful to tell trotsky the wrong date for the funeral and then make sure the funeral is filmed and you can see clearly in the footage there is no trotsky this is the beginning of the infratrotsky trotsky will actually end up being assassinated in mexico city in 1940 um but you know it's going to take a while stalin minimizes him and then kicks him out basically stalin will run russia from 1924 until 1953 and the thing about it is is that since no one knows what's really going on in russia every five years he has a five-year plan and at the end of the five-year plan he's like we are successful and he has another five-year plan um the truth is he's not successful he will starve peasants he will throw people into cool logs siberia's population doubles but the rest of the world is totally clueless about this because it's like there's this magic wall around the soviet union the rest of the world everyone seems to be having a good time berlin becomes the coolest place to hang out um the lady over there in the bottom is josephine baker she was an african-american from the u.s who comes to france she did a strip routine she became extremely famous as a singer she becomes a international celebrity except in the u.s a lot of african-americans chose not to go back home after world war one stayed in france created a whole subculture the french become obsessed with la jazz hut um the dude on the upper left that's freud or fruit dude if you've seen bill and tesma's excellent adventure um freud was the cool thing now very few people actually read freud but lots of people pretended to know a lot about freud um freud was this psychiatrist who basically believed that most of the time everything had to revolve around your problems revolved around your sex life which kind of really fit with the weirdness of the 20s and part of it it's it's like the people who survived the french revolution in the directory it's like all these guys who almost died in world war one are like i could die tomorrow i'm gonna have a good time and for a while it works um during the 1920s even as the us is like isolated from the rest of the world us culture becomes world culture um the u.s radio has a huge reach it's a way that u.s music becomes a dominant force so much so that you know when hitler comes to power he will declare a war on swing music also hollywood becomes dominant even though movies are made in france and britain and germany and especially russia um it's hollywood movies that are the ones that are really cool and of course this is the silent era so it's relatively easy to take the silent movie captions and switch them over to your native language and then of course with henry ford and the model t you know american production we're just producing so much stuff this is part of the reason why the oz plan is great because it allows other people to buy our stuff of course the problem of this is the fact that [Music] um there's that whole economic crash now the thing about it is and it's important to realize that great depression is not solely caused by the stock market crash of october 1929. there's also production in american industry there's also people who stop buying stuff um but one of the critical things that does happen is the fact that after the stock market crash banks in the u.s have less money to loan germany to keep the dos plan running and when the us stops loaning money to germany but the belgians and the french still demand their money it causes a very quick strain on the german economy and so you can see how german unemployment just skyrockets very quickly up until 1932 where it's over 25 percent if you look by contrast of british unemployment it was always really kind of bad after world war one um and so for the british the depression wasn't that bad because like for the u.s it's like drop a drop from a roller coaster the same thing with germany because of the u.s money whereas for britain it's like oh gosh [Music] 1932 is a critical year 1932 is a critical year because it's like what are we gonna do um the u.s economy is falling apart at this point in time our banks are are closing there are bread lines everywhere um there's this huge debate that is happening around the world as to what tact do we go do we go communist because stalin says everything's great in russia or do we go hyper conservative fascists and it's like stalin well he says things are great we're mussolini and mussolini is like oh everything is wonderful in in italy and mussolini you know he he he goes out and he was putin before putin the whole taking the shirt off and working in the fields to just show how manly he is and the rest of the world is kind of trapped between the two i mean in germany thirty percent of the population loves muslim loves mussolini and therefore is endorsing hitler um the other half is going no we want communism and 40 percent of the german people are just kind of being pulled in either direction let me say a little bit about hitler so and this is very important like very important like on the quiz the nazi party did not exist until after world war one it was originally a socialist party um it was the german workers party um and hitler actually got hired by the german government to infiltrate this party they're based in bavaria so he's hired as a spy and after a couple weeks he basically said guys your ideas suck but you got potential here are my ideas and they're like oh wow and basically hitler took this like loser socialist party added the word national thus nazi the national socialist german workers party and he added a very dynamic speaking voice and basically he takes the team off and he they go from really small to growing 1923 he tries to launch a coup d'etat he wants to do a march on rome except in bavaria it's a disaster it falls apart he's thrown in prison but he gets to write his book mineconf that we'll talk a little bit later about but by 1932 he is a power to reckon with all right thank you sorry about that all right so if you look at 1928 before the economic crisis that's the top left you'll see that the nazi party was pulling 2.6 of the vote now jump ahead to the next major election which is going to be in september of 1930 the nazi parties jumped up to 18.25 percent of the vote okay it's it's a party that feeds on dis dysfunction it feeds on fear it feeds on economic collapse we jump ahead then to july of 1932 and the nazi party has um has the largest share of votes but the party right below it the red party and the rest of the world read equals communism the sd uh the sd the spd the german communist party as is pulling 21 percent and this is the thing if you look back their numbers were pretty consistent even when the economy was good they had almost 30 percent of the vote they actually dropped a little bit early on um what's interesting is this final one in november of 1932 there's another election and the nazi party drops by four percentage points and von poppin who's the dude with a mustache on the bottom right next to hitler basically goes to um hindenburg upper left who's president of germany and says the nazis are on their way out there has been there's a flash in the pan let's make hitler chancellor we'll give him two positions in the cabinet um and uh we can use him biggest mistake ever hitler is appointed chancellor january of 1933 for the next year or so things are a little iffy um the reichstag which is their capital burns uh it is blamed on a dutch guy but we all know the nazis did it basically in 1934 when hindenburg dies hitler cuts a deal with the army and gets himself a pointed fuhrer guy in charge and in return he basically purges um it's called the knight of the long knives he purges all his early guys who are in the brown shirts the people who run around beating people up all the leadership there is killed so that hitler can take full control now what hitler does between 1934 and 1936 when he reappears again is he begins doing a ton of public works programs he kind of copies actually what franklin roosevelt is doing with the new deal they're doing very similar things um roosevelt is building dams post offices stuff like that um hitler is building the autobahn his thing is you know basically he runs up the german debt putting people to work doing public works projects and guess what you know the unemployment rate drops um [Music] meanwhile after china became a republic uh it struggled there were warlords it was difficult um by the late 20s china has stabilized and just when china stabilizes um in 1931 uh the japanese invade manchuria and it's right across from japan you can see it there and they name it manchuguo and they put a puppet the son of the last emperor empress on the throne of manchu but it's basically it's a slave labor camp for the japanese and for six years the japanese are satisfied and then in 1937 the japanese invade china proper and if you're an asian scholar this marks the beginning of world war ii because china is the oldest ally and japan is the oldest member of the axis um 1938 the chinese take the sorry the japanese take the chinese capital of nanking um and they devastated uh they kill over 200 000 civilians and we're not saying like in the taking i'm saying after it's taken like they do say it's called the rape of nan king for a reason at some points in time they go around and they round up children who are ages nine months to a year and a half and they stick them on a wall and they use them for target practice it is so disgusting that the germans these are nazis 1938 nazis are so disgusted by what they see that they begin filming it and if it weren't for the germans filming it i mean today the nation of japan denies that this ever happened but we have footage and you're seeing a very edited view of just the killing that took place it was on a scale up until that point unimaginable but it hints at what the japanese will do in all the territories that they conquer including vietnam the rest of china the philippines it's not going to be pretty speaking of like rape and torture and so forth so mussolini decided that he had to create his whole roman empire thing right and so he decided to invade ethiopia in 1935. um now i should point out that ethiopia is today the oldest christian kingdom and i say that because the roman empire no longer exists going back to the ancient world it was rome and ethiopia and so mussolini said you know what the heck will take them out um ethiopia had never been conquered and mussolini moves in and this is the propaganda picture that's the reality um the italians love to portray the ethiopians as just simple tribesmen they were not the italians tried to portray the ethiopians as willing to embrace the italian flag they were not the author the youth the ethiopians will fight from 1935 until 1939 in order to um defeat the italians after the first about nine months it becomes a guerrilla war and in fact if you're an africanist so an asianist if you're if you study asian history world war ii starts in 1937 if you're an africanist it starts in 1935 because ethiopia becomes an ally and obviously mussolini part of the axis of evil um this is emperor haile selassie he will go before the uh league of nations and ask for the league's help and demand that that italy be reprimanded and the italian press shows up and tries to whistle and make so much noise that he cannot be heard in giving a speech the league proposes to ban um the sale of of a whole bunch of stuff but war materials are not included in them um this incident in 1936 basically leads italy to league leave the league of nations also additionally it shows that the league without like a nation like the us is just totally pointless um just a couple things about emperor haile selassie he's the direct descendant of king solomon and the queen of sheba he's also the inspiration for the rastafarian movement so you know uh if you if you like uh rastafarian music this is the dude who inspired it the line of judah 1936 is also a big year because basically it's when hitler rips up the tree of your side and says screw you and on that day that private who was so well trained for 14 years automatically became a sergeant the diversity peace treaty had tried to limit the german army and it completely backfires because now boom it can expand also the germans miraculously have planes and tanks you know what they all come out of the soviet union and to show hitler's new power he occupies the rhineland now the rhineland is german territory between the rhine river and france and as part of the treaty of versailles it was a demilitarized zone and hitler says screw you and you can see the german troops marching across the bridge into and they were welcomed as heroes by the german people on the other side and the french and the british and the belgians do nothing always think the belgians do something they go britain france we're no longer your allies we're neutral go away oh great 1938 1934 hitler had tried to take over austria and it failed miserably hitler is originally austrian and in 1938 um he threatens to invade austria and well he he threatens to invade austria and the austrians say let us have a vote and in order to prevent that vote from happening hitler you know lives up to his stuff and so hitler invades austria in 1938 so if you like viennese coffee and good pastries you would say the first victims of the nazis were the austrians and um in case you recognize this this is christopher plummer playing and fun trap the sound of music is actually based on the von trapp family uh it's loosely accurate roth was actually helped them escape but the there are a lot of austrians who are thrilled to welcome in the nazis and to welcome the old homeboy back you know hitler made good but a lot of austrians don't a lot of austrians want nothing to do with hitler or as um hindenburg used to call him that horrible corporal but again the allies do absolutely nothing to stop the takeover roster [Music] hitler's next step october of 1938 is there's land around the czech um german border which actually has german speaking people in it they used to be part of austria this is also where the czechs have built a fortified wall system uh to keep the germans out and i'll say a little bit more about that in a minute oh next lesson but so there's this fortified wall and hitler knows he can't get through the wall but there are these germans living there and so he demands that he will go to war if he doesn't get those germans and so there's a meeting that happens in in munich and at the end of the meeting the french and the british give hitler this little strip of land around the border which of course also has the fortifications and hitler's like oh i'm fine i need nothing i'm totally fine of course in march of 1939 he just finishes and occupies the rest of the czech half of czechoslovakia now the dude over here at the whole new piece of paper is neville chamberlain neville chamberlain um had made his reputation the inner war years as a guy doing public housing and now he was prime minister of england and basically when he became prime minister he said okay i think we're going to have to go to war with germany how quickly can we be prepared and his advisor said well if we really push we can be ready by 1942 you have to buy time and so what chamberlain does is a policy of appeasement he buys time in order to prevent hitler from declaring war too early because the british and the french don't realize that hitler is also not prepared to go to war but there's a whole story about munich that isn't told like from the perspective of your standard european textbook it's like neville chamberlain appeasement he surrendered to hitler blah blah blah but what the story the other half of the story that you aren't told is about this dude right here the grand mufti of jerusalem ah the grand mufti of jerusalem he was a muslim leader the term grand mufti which still exists today was created by the british as the occupied palestine they wanted a muslim puppet that could help kind of control the people and so they picked this dude to be the grand mufti and from 1920 until 1937 he was he worked with the british he kept you know he was like he was tight with the british the problem is by 1937 hitler has already started encouraging jews to immigrate to palestine and encouraging them to try to create that palestinian homeland that they were promised by forum the jews are starting to be an increasing issue in palestine and we're starting to see conflict between european jews arriving in palestine and the palestinians at this point in time the grand mufti switches 180 degrees and with the help of hitler he stages a revolt now chamberlain can't go to war with hitler in 19 in october of 1938 because he's sending troops to palestine to keep this arab revolt in check and the thing about it is is he's afraid that if he pulls troops out of palestine to um defeat hitler in europe then that revolt might spread and he would lose access to suez canal and the british in india would be screwed and we all know there's already this movement that's happening in india with gandhi it could just blow out of proportions and next thing you know the british empire could be gone he's not willing to take that risk now what will happen to the grand mufti he will end up going to exile in germany but that is another story