In
1914 a social order that in many ways had changed little since the
mid-nineteenth century was shattered beyond repair. When Austria declared war on
Serbia, a web of alliances brought all the great
' nations of Europe into the conflict. British and French armies faced
the Germans across trenches that stretched from the English Channel to the Swiss
frontier. In Eastern Europe the long war demoralized the Russian army; the Tsar
abdicated and a provisional government was formed in Russia, only to be
overthrown by a Communist revolution. America's entry into the war ensured the
defeat of Germany but the peace treaties that followed sowed the seeds of future
conflict. In the late 1920s the Great Depression created mass unemployment
throughout the industrial world. Hitler brought the Nazis to power in Germany,
establishing a ruthless dictatorship, equalled only by the Stalinist regime in
the Soviet Union. Hitler's territorial ambitions led to the outbreak of
hostilities in Europe in 1939; as the Soviet Union, the United States and Japan
entered the war, the conflict became global. It ended in 1945 with the defeat of
Germany and Japan, but at a dreadful cost in human suffering. The atomic bomb
changed for-ever the concept of warfare.
In
the early twentieth century the notion of art as an imitation of nature was
overturned by the Cubism of Picasso and Braque. Other movements, such as
Dadaism, stressed the irrational and the absurd, while Surrealism explored the
subconscious mind. In Germany the Bauhaus school of architecture created the
functional design that was so popular during the interwar years.
English
music achieved world stature through Elgar and Vaughan Williams, and in the
United States, Ives produced music of great originality. Central to
twentieth-century music were Schoenberg and his successors, who rejected
traditional- ideas of harmony and melody.
