*World War I nearly destroyed Europe, physically, financially, politically, and spiritually.  Although Britain and France maintained their far-flung empires (and other countries controlled smaller ones), their people felt lost.  The British had gone to fight for God, King, and Country, while German soldiers had 'Gott mit uns' on their belt buckles.  God could not be for both sides, Europeans concluded, and they began to wonder if he could be for either side—or even exist. 

*As people lost their faith in religion, they began to look for new cultural values and to expect the government to solve their problems and take care of them, far more than they had in the past.

*In America, the war was also seen as a mistake, brought about by trading ties with the Allies (especially by debt owed to American financiers who did not want to see their debtors defeated and rendered insolvent).  Americans looked upon the rest of the world with distrust, and turned towards isolationism—a return to normalcy, as Warren G. Harding put it.

*This was a problem, as the Treaty of Versailles had been designed to keep Germany down and a balance of power maintained among the surviving countries of Europe and the new states created by the dissolution of old empires:  in 1914 Europe had 17 monarchies and three republics (France, Switzerland, and newly-republican Portugal); in 1919 there were 13 of each.

*Europeans had depended upon America to help with this—after all, the League of Nations had been Woodrow Wilson's idea—but America did not want any more political or military involvement with Europe.  Furthermore, the USSR was not invited to join, nor would it have done so (although it briefly joined in 1934 to annoy Germany).

*The League of Nations had 42 original members, and more joined (and left) over the years, including the new Baltic Republics, which quickly developed free and democratic governments on their own.  It did successfully help negotiate disagreements, border disputes, and even peace treaties between member nations.

*America might not have joined the League of Nations or any othe major alliance, but it did offer financial stability to the world.  By investing in German industry (which Germany was trying to rebuild), Germany was able to pay off some of its reparations, which, in turn, Britain and France sent back to America in payment of debts incurred during the War.

*Still, Germany has to pay its reparations in gold.  The sum it had to pay was so enormous that, even after it was cut in half out of pity, Germany would have been making payments from 1919 until the 1980s if it had stayed on schedule—in fact, Germany is still making payments (America will be paid off by 2010 and everyone still owed money will be paid by 2020).

*As Germany shipped all its gold out of the country, it printed paper money to pay its bills at home.  This led to hyperinflation:  in 1913, $1 US = 4.2 DM; in 1923, $1 US = 4.2 trillion DM.

*To help get things under control, the US organised the Dawes Plan in 1924 and the Young Plan in 1929, to reduce Germany's reparations and allow smaller payments over a longer period.  During the Depression, the US even allowed Germany to stop all payments.

*The rest of the world was willing to be generous with Germany in part because partial payments were better than none (which is what they would have gotten if Germany's economy had collapsed), but also because Germany was now a democracy—the Weimar Republic.

*The Weimar Republic was named after the town of Weimar, where Goethe lived and wrote, and where the new constitution was created.  It was meant to symbolise Germany's artistic, literary, and cultural achievements—the positive side of nationalism.  The nationalist flag of 1848, black, red, and gold, replaced the black, white, red of the German Empire.

*The Treaty of Locarno in 1925 set Germany's western borders, and caused France to withdraw its occupation troops in 1930 (several years ahead of schedule).  The 'Spirit of Locarno' permeated the diplomatic climate of Western Europe in the 1920s, but it was not well-received in Eastern Europe, where borders were not set (implying that Germany might freely expand to the east—Poland in particular felt cheated by France, with whom it had an alliance).

*Germany was even allowed to join the League of Nations in 1926.

*Despite some problems, the world seemed (in most ways) like a better, safer place.  After all, we had seen how terrible modern war could be, had fought a war to end war, and would never have a war again.

*To make sure of this, in 1928, the US and France organised the Kellogg-Briand Pact.  It was eventually signed by 61 nations, and outlawed war forever.  It is still in force as international law (and Federal law in the US).

*The 1920s were an age of peace and prosperity, particularly in the US.

*American industry had escaped the ravages of the war, and had not lost so large a percentage of her workforce.  Furthermore, America was leading the way in technological progress.

*Just as engineers like Isambard Kingdom Brunnel were heroes of the 1800s, so inventors like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford and adventurers like Charles Lindbergh were heroes in the 1910s and 1920s. 

*Edison invented or refined many modern luxuries (electric light bulbs, microphones, a phonograph, film, a better type of telegraph, an X-ray machine, and the electric chair), mainly in Menlo Park, New Jersey (now called Edison Township, where he built the first research park (so that he could benefit from the work of numerous employees).

*Henry Ford did not invent the automobile (Karl Benz of Germany did that), but he did perfect its mass production on an assembly line using the principles of Taylorism.

*Taylorism was based on the writings of Frederick Winslow Taylor, who conducted time-and-motion studies to determine the most efficient ways to use space and time.  He rejected traditional working methods as inefficient and ineffective to create 'scientific management.'  This made factory work more profitable and allowed the lest skilled of workers to find jobs, but it pushed the dehumanisation of piece-work to its extreme.

*Ford managed to pay his workers high wages while perfecting the assembly line, making cars affordable for the people who made them.  This completely changed society, making it mobile.  No longer did people have to live near where they worked or the people with whom they socialised.  It changed the size and shape of cities and the distribution of labour.

*As America became a mobile society, it glorified travel and speed.  The Wright Brothers only added to this with the development of a heavier-than-air flying machine in December 1903.  Throughout the early 1900s, daredevil aviators sought to set new flying records.  The most famous to do so was Charles Lindbergh, who made the first non-stop, trans-Atlantic, solo airplane flight from New York to Paris on 20-21 May, 1927.  This made him an instant national (and world-wide) hero.

*There were tragedies, as well.  In 1932, Lindbergh was targeted, due to his fame, for the Crime of the Century.  His 20-month-old son was kidnapped, held for ransom, and then killed (the kidnapper was executed in the electric chair).  As a result, kidnapping was made a federal crime if the kidnapper crossed state lines.

*The most famous aviation disaster of the 20th century occurred in 1937, when the German zeppelin Hindenburg, named for the World War I hero and President of Germany, caught fire and crashed as it approached a landing in New Jersey.  This was filmed and played as part of newsreels in movie theatres, and led to the rapid decline of airship travel (as did the new availability of cheaper, faster, but less comfortable passenger travel by airplanes).

*The wealth created by America's industrialisation combined with a culture that seemed adrift—no longer tied to its traditions but without a new goal or identity—to create what came to be known as the Roaring Twenties.

*Jazz music was popular, spreading from the black musicians of New Orleans to all the major cities of the United States and to many of the capitals of Europe (Paris loved Jazz).  This was loud, wild music that mixed black music with white culture, shocking many traditionalists.

*It was generally a time of cultural development for African-Americans.  The Harlem Renaissance was a period when literature, poetry, and drama by black authors flourished and was widely accepted and even admired.

*Stylish women of the time were called flappers, and bobbed their hair short, wore (relatively) tight clothing to make themselves seem tall and slim and that also exposed their lower legs and their arms, smoked in public, and generally lived a liberated life unknown to their mothers.  Their fashions also included round hats that looked like helmets and coats like those worn by soldiers in the trenches.

*Women's lives also changed in the 1920s as the US, UK, USSR, and many other major countries gave them the right to vote.

*The 1920s did not roar for everyone.  Many writers, sometimes called the Lost Generation, wrote of alienation, disillusionment, and a lack of conviction—there was nothing left to believe in.  Because they attempted to describe the modern world as they saw it, their style is sometimes known as modernism.

*In literature, modernism depicted a grim world, sometimes realistically, sometimes surrealistically.  Modern artists, however, knowing that they could never be as realistic as a camera, produced works based on abstract forms, lines, and shading, often not clearly depicting real things at all.  Pablo Picasso was a famous modern artist, whose subjects were twisted and deformed, often presented as combinations of shapes that showed body parts placed together symbolically rather than realistically.

*Even in science, hard reality less certain.  Albert Einstein's theory of relativity postulated that space and time did not remain constant, particularly as things approached the speed of light.  Other scientists like Werner Heisenberg used his theories to demonstrate changes in the basic properties of molecules depending on how they were observed or treated.  Enrico Fermi and Robert Oppenheimer even discovered how to split atoms (forming the basis of nuclear power and nuclear weapons).

*Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis, theorising that many of the things that motivate humans come from subconscious urges struggling with social conditioning, often trying to work out problems (often sexual in nature) suppressed from childhood.  Although his specific theories are largely discredited today, they formed the basis of most subsequent psychology and psychiatry, and for the first time made people question whether they were really thinking what they thought they were thinking.

*There were reactions against the breakdown of the old social order.  In the United States, Prohibition (instituted by the XVIII Amendment and repealed by the XXI Amendment) lasted from 1920 to 1933.  It outlawed the manufacture and sale of alcohol in the United States (which led to moonshining, bootlegging,  speakeasies, and the rise of gang warfare).

*Religious fundamentalists tried to retain traditional beliefs.  In Tennessee, the Butler Act of 1925 forbade teaching that man had evolved from lower orders of life (although teaching other applications of evolution was fine).  This law was tested in May of that year when John Scopes was convicted of violating the law in Dayton, Tennessee (although the case was overturned on a technicality by the state Supreme Court) after a trial involving former presidential candidate and secretary of state William Jennings Bryan and famous defence attorney Clarence Darrow.

*Politically, Americans and Europeans were frightened by the Communist Revolution in Russia.  In American this became the 'Red Scare' of about 1917-1920, when freedom of speech and the press were limited for socialists, and two communists named Sacco and Vanzetti were executed for their participation in an armed robbery and murder, but who probably did not get a fair trial due to their communist sympathies.  Because many communists came from southern and eastern Europe, immigration from those areas was limited.

*Furthermore, the prosperity of the 1920s did show a few signs of underlying problems.  American farmers initially grew rich selling grain to Europe during and right after WWI, but after the war, prices dropped and many American farmers went bankrupt.  Nonetheless, those that continued to farm could undersell farmers in Europe, depressing their economies as well.

*In Britain a general strike in 1926 in protest against falling wages and increased working hours for coal miners.  The strike shut down transportation and industry in Britain for nine days, and was seen as a great moral victory for the working class, but in the short run it led to Britain passing much tougher laws against strikes and labour unions.

*Despite the enormous production of goods in America, or perhaps because of it, purchasing power did not keep up with manufacturing, and the stock market, which had grown along with production (or even ahead of it, as speculators borrowed money to buy stocks whose value they expected to keep increasing) crashed in October 1929.  As banks began to call in bad debts, people tried to withdraw money to pay their debts—or to hide their money.  This led to runs on banks in the US, UK, and Europe. 

*This was the beginning of the Great Depression, which hurt most western nations, especially those that depended on exports.  The US and Germany suffered terribly, as did Britain's colonies (many saw their factory production cut in half and unemployment of nearly half their workforces).  The UK suffered as well, although not as much.  France was more self-sufficient and was not hurt as badly.  Japan was largely untouched, and so was the USSR.

*This sudden Depression led to a decline in faith in democracy, which many people saw as the basis of this chaos.  This would cause many people to turn to strong leaders promising new solutions to their problems—at the cost of a few minor freedoms.  For some it proved that capitalism had failed, especially as the Soviet Union continued to rebuild its economy.  The prosperity and the cautious hope of the 1920s now turned to desperation and the search for leaders who could pull their countries out of chaos.