Chapter 13, Section 1

Postwar Social Changes

Today’s Standard

10.6 .1 analyze the effects of WWI and understand the widespread disappointment with post WWI gov’t

Topic – Effects of WWI – The 1920’sFocus Question

How and why did society change after World War I?

Reactions to WWI

• Destruction & horror of WWI made people question “progress” of society

• Existentialism claimed that there was “no universal meaning to life”

“Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”

God is dead…God is dead…

-Friedrich -Friedrich Nietzsche Nietzsche

Existentialism

• “no universal meaning to life”

• Dada – no meaning to art or life, reject the past

Post War Art

How are these pieces of Art Different?

How are these pieces of Art Similar?

Abstract – Swinging, by Vasily Kandinsky

Surrealism – Persistence of

Memory, Salvador Dali

Social Changes

•20’s Technology – cars & the assembly line; airplane; radio; movies

“Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion” of being eternal.”

The Roaring 20’s in the U.S.

• U.S Experiences Economic BOOM

• Blues and Jazz music created

• Youth Rebellion – drinking & smoking; birth control– Flappers – liberated

young women who wore short hair, short skirts.

– women receive right to vote in 1919.

The noise of cars, planes, radios, and jazz music made cities roar like never

before!

Reaction to Jazz• Conservative men and

women campaigned against drinking

– Prohibition – a ban on the manufacture and sale of alcohol

– Prohibition amendment was ratified in 1919, eventually (repealed in 1933)

– Caused an increase in crime• Speakeasies – illegal

bars• Moon shiners• Black market

New Literature – The Lost Generation

• Postwar writers saw WWI as a moral breakdown of western civilization

• Commented on immorality of men and women all in a search for happiness and meaning in life

• Work conveys a sense of loss, and meaninglessness of life

• Examples of Lost Generation works– T.S. Elliot The Waste Land– F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

F.S. Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night

"This land here cost twenty lives a foot that summer...See that little stream--we could walk to it in two minutes. It took the British a month

to walk it--a whole empire walking very slowly, dying in front and pushing forward behind. And another empire walked very

slowly backward a few inches a day, leaving the dead like a million bloody rugs. No Europeans will ever do that again in this

generation."

Uhhh… I sure hope he’s right…

Paired Discussion

Why did writers fell the way they did after WWI and how was this shown in the

literature, art, music, etc…

New Scientific Theories

• Radio activity: Marie Curie

• Theory of Relatively: Einstein

• Discovery of Penicillin: Alexander Fleming

• Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud

Chapter 13, Section 1 Part 2

Europe After WWI

Today’s Standard

10.6 .1 analyze the effects of WWI and understand the widespread disappointment with post WWI gov’t

Topic – Effects of WWI in EuropeFocus Question

What were the major effects of WWI on Europe?

Europe After the War• Every major European country nearly

bankrupt

• New Democracies are unstable:–new experiment–Dozens of political groups

Germany’s New Weimar Republic

• Weak Gov’t; no strong democratic tradition (used to Kaiser/King).

• Severe Inflation• Germans hated that

the gov’t followed Treaty of Versailles

• Ultimately was blamed for all of Germany’s problems

• Seen as corrupt and money hungry

Inflation in Germany’s Weimar Republic

• Severe Inflation – loaf of bread from 1 mark (1918) to 200 billion (1923)

• Germans blamed Republic for problems

The German MarkThe German Mark

1 Million Mark Notes used as Note Paper

Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic

A medal commemorating Germany's 1923 hyperinflation. The engraving reads: "On 1st November 1923 1 pound of bread cost 3 billion, 1 pound of meat: 36 billion, 1 glass of beer: 4 billion."

50 million mark

America helps Germany• Dawes Act: gives Germany

$200 million loan

• Inflation slowed; realistic reparation schedule

• By 1929 German factories producing prewar levels

“Golden Twenties” in Germany. Mostly just Berlin recovered economically from 1923-1929

The Dawes Plan in Action

Arguing Allies• France is concerned with securing

its German border– They built the Maginot Line – to stop

Germany from invading– France also strengthened its military

and formed alliances

• Great Britain was unhappy with what France was doing

Efforts at Lasting Peace

•U.S. stayed Isolationist, did not participate European affairs

•Germany admitted to League of Nations (1925)

•Kellogg-Briand Pact - promise “to renounce war” (1928)–Signed by almost every country in world, even USSR

The Maginot Line

The Maginot Line