Starting Week 10

Dear Jeffrey Epstein,

Weeks 8 and 9 were relatively more concentrated in focus, Week 8 on the developments leading into World War I and the conclusion of that war's first major phase, concluding in the winter of 1916-17. Week 9, covering only about 13 years, concentrated on the way that war widened, deepened, and then was part of the breakup of so many traditional imperial systems. It concluded with a look at broader changes in global society in the "broken world" (a term I will always associate with the last book of the great Berkeley historian, Raymond Sontag).

Weeks 10 and 11 will be even more concentrated, covering only ten years apiece, though they are both packed with material. Week 10 begins with the twin world crises that begin the 1930s, one that shattered economic security and another that dispelled nascent hopes for political security. A good deal more attention goes to the development of the powerful new prototypes of collective state mobilization in the Fascist and Communist states.

But we do not slight the promise of another kind of model that flowers during the crisis years of the 1930s, one that borrowed heavily from classical liberalism, from national conservatism, and from democratic socialism. In my presentations I call these groups "social democrats." The United States and Sweden were leading archetypes for this new kind of hybrid during the 1930s. I define my usage of these terms, since this is potentially confusing. For instance, Marxist revisionists (e.g., followers of Edouard Bernstein in Germany) were already calling themselves social democrats to signify their commitment to democratic change and reformism. But please note that I refer to these ideologies as democratic socialist. My use of "social democrat" means something different. I use it to describe an explicitly non-Marxist model of mixed state/private governance that welcomes a large role for capitalist organization. This is also sometimes called the "Nordic model" of social democracy. When the German Social Democratic Party (SPD to use the German acronym) finally and formally abandoned Marxism (in 1959) it called its approach "liberal socialism" and party members and their European kindred would sometimes refer to themselves as social liberals. That is the family I call "social democrats."

Back to Week 10. The title for the week speaks for itself. You have seen that I did not cover World War I in a single unit. I don't cover World War II that way either. Doing so would tend to obscure key break points in world history. In World War I, that was the break point between the runup to 1917, and what happened during and after 1917. In World War II think of a critical break point occurring in 1940-41. The developments of the 1930s produced two major wars. One was in East Asia, a war that flared in 1931-32, subsided, and then burst into a wide war — centered in China — beginning in 1937. The second major war, or set of wars, was in Europe. The principal war there began in 1939, and related wars by the Soviet Union (joining Germany against Poland, then attacking Finland) and by Italy (against Albania, then Greece). A decisive campaign in the European war had concluded with the surprising defeat of France in the summer of 1940 — which led to further Japanese expansion that summer into Southeast Asia.

Where Week 10 ends is with the world as it has been transformed by these wars, the culmination of a decade of crises. By the time we conclude the presentations for this week, it is the autumn of 1940. The new breeds of dictatorship hold the decisive weight of world power. Their choices will now shape the world's future. What still remains to be seen is what they will choose and how others will react, including the alarmed, but still relatively weak and politically very divided, United States.

Best wishes,

Philip Zelikow

The Modem World: Global History since 1760 Course Team

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