Century Journey -- A Hundred Years of Diplomatic Turbulence in Seven Great Powers

Author: Hu Liping
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2001-07-01
Features: Sovereign states, especially the UK, France, Germany, Russia, the US, Japan, and China, have consistently been the main players on the international stage throughout the 20th century. According to predictions, sovereign states may likely remain the main players in the next century. The best way to understand the next century—understanding how countries around the world shaped the contours of the 20th-century international system.
Excerpt: The resurgence of hegemonic ambitions. Like Emperor Wilhelm II, Hitler could not resist the temptation posed by Germany's strategic dilemma: eliminating the nightmare of "alliances with foreign powers" through all-out expansion. If Hitler had been a "normal" German leader, as the British appeasers initially believed, he would have expanded Stresemann's achievements, further improving Germany's favorable strategic position. He would have continued to seek the abolition of the Treaty of Versailles' terms, reclaiming parts or all of the German territory dismantled in 1919, and perhaps once again securing a role in overseeing the relationship between the East and West in Europe. But in Hitler's view, the European situation clearly favored Germany. The United States no longer belonged to either side of the balance of power. The Soviet Union was the same. It was happy to sit on the sidelines, watching the capitalist powers fight each other. France was at odds with Britain, and was complacent about the Maginot Line it had built. The French believed that building a concrete wall along the French-German border, equipped with guns, would guarantee their safety. And Britain, until 1939, had been eager to appease "Hitler's" reasonable grievances. Hitler, of course, was not a revisionist who accepted the basic balance of power in Europe but a revolutionary trying to break it. Hitler was also unlike Charles V or Napoleon I, a "normal" hegemonist. In 1939, he not only launched a world-power struggle but also waged a racial extermination war unprecedented in European history. However, despite the unmatched madness of Hitler, one could still see the shadow of German strategic concepts that would excite figures like Moltke and Schlieffen in him. Less than a week before invading Poland in August 1939, Hitler privately revealed the truth: "Everything I do is aimed at the Soviet Union. If the West is foolish enough not to see this, I can only reach an understanding with the Russians first, defeat the West, and then devote all my efforts to the Soviet Union." Hitler did exactly that. On August 24, 1939, just a week before invading Poland, he signed the Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviet Union, securing its neutrality. In May 1940, Hitler invaded France and conquered the country in just six weeks. He then began bombing Britain, preparing for an invasion of the British Isles. In 1914, Moltke moved two crucial armies to the East Front without waiting to completely defeat France. Hitler did the same, launching his invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 before the war in the West was over. Hitler's army, like the army of Emperor Wilhelm II, found itself fighting on two fronts. But this was where the similarities between Hitler and Wilhelm II ended. Hitler was different from Wilhelm II. It can be said that he was different from all the dominant figures in Europe since Charles V. He was not fighting a war but two wars—a war for strategic hegemony and a war for racial hegemony. He had to win the first war before he could launch the second, the industrialized extermination of races. In May 1939, Hitler openly admitted: "Danzig is not the key issue." The major powers still pursuing appeasement believed that Hitler merely wanted to overturn the territorial division clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. This referred to the territory Germany had ceded in Danzig and East Prussia, but Hitler's true goal was to establish a European empire. German colonizers could carve out living space in the conquered east as far as the Ural Mountains. By seizing African colonies on the periphery of the empire and establishing a naval fleet, the core of the empire would be protected. The Third Reich would then form a quadrilateral balance with the United States, the British Empire, and the Japanese Empire. In another generation, only two countries would compete for global hegemony: Germany and the United States. Hitler not only wanted to dominate Europe but ultimately the whole world. "Germany did not just want to seize territory; it also wanted to cleanse the Jews, Poles, and other 'inferior races' living on that territory. The Jews of Europe had to be completely exterminated. After the war turned against Germany in 1942, racial extermination became the primary goal of Nazi fanaticism. Otherwise, why did Hitler continue to allocate his dwindling resources—railway transport vehicles and military personnel—to gas chambers in the East rather than prevent the Red Army's advance? Why did Hitler, in 1945, order the prisoners of Auschwitz and other concentration camps to march to Germany on foot, avoiding the approaching Russians and continuing the massacre in a safer place? Clearly, the goal of racial extermination was paramount, even above the very foundation of strategy—defending the homeland. Only after the Allies occupied every square inch of German territory did this dual war against the entire world and the Jews end. The catastrophic failure of Nazi Germany reveals the immense appetite of Nazi Germany. One of the first measures taken by the victorious powers of World War II was to abolish the entity that had pushed Germany to great power status—the Prussian state—and erase its name. This was followed by the four-power occupation of Germany and then the division of Germany into seven parts. After waging a war that cost 55 million lives, Germany in 1945 faced only endless subjugation and punishment.