SS6H3 

World War I – or the Great War as it was known in 1914 – was the first global conflict of its kind in the modern era. It began in Serbia with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand I of Austria-Hungary, who was there on a diplomatic visit with his wife. What ensued was a regional war between competing Germanic (i.e., Germany and Austria Hungary) and Slavic (i.e., Russia) interests in Central and Eastern Europe. Preexisting defense pacts and political alliances in the region drew Western Europe into the conflict as well, particularly after German forces invaded Belgium and France. Each European empire’s colonies throughout Africa, Asia, and the Americas – France and Britain’s were the most extensive – were likewise obliged to take part in the war.

Russian participation in World War I, and the war’s unpopularity among the Russian people, contributed to the rise of communism in that country. A popular revolution against the rule of Czar Nicholas II Romanov, beginning in 1914, led to the Russian monarchy’s overthrow and Russia’s withdraw from World War I in 1917. A civil war ensued, resulting in the communist takeover of Russia by Vladimir Lenin and the nation’s expansion and rebirth as the Soviet Union in 1922. The United States remained neutral throughout most of World War I, but did eventually enter the conflict on behalf of the Allies (Britain, France, Russia, et al) in 1917. The U.S. was instrumental in the defeat of the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, et al.) An armistice was signed in 1918, and World War I officially came to an end in 1919 with the Treaty of Versailles (vair-sy’). The Treaty of Versailles would later lead to renewed conflict with Germany, however, as the terms of Germany’s surrender (e.g., loss of lucrative territory, military occupation, etc.) were considered overly punitive and financially untenable by its people. The rise of Nazism in 1919 came in direct response to the German public’s outrage over the Treaty of Versailles. The Nazi movement gained traction in the early 1930s – as did likened fascist movements elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe – after the 1929 U.S. stock market crash triggered a worldwide depression. Strong leadership, the Nazis argued, and social policies that put the German people and German interests above all else were required to pull their nation out of economic calamity.1

Disillusionment with the outcome of World War I, lack of confidence in Germany’s post-war leadership, and economic calamity resulting from a worldwide depression all contributed to the rise of Nazism. Adolf Hitler’s election to the German chancellery in 1933 brought with it a policy of state-sponsored anti-Semitism. Nazi propaganda scapegoated the Jewish peoples of Central Europe as complicit in the punitive terms of the Treaty of Versailles, and implicated them in the financial collapse which brought about Germany’s economic struggles in the post-war years. As such, party members and Nazi sympathizers alike were encouraged to boycott Jewish businesses, segregate Jewish people within German society, pass laws which forbade certain civil rights and privileges to Jews, and publically burn Jewish literature and religious sites. This anti-Jewish hysteria and persecution culminated in the roundup, internment, and extermination of European Jewry, known as the Holocaust. 2