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Modernism. 1914-1945. Main Ideas and Events. WWI WWII The Depression The rise of totalitarianism The rise of the masses Mass culture. World War I. Took an estimated ten million lives Central Powers – Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria
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Modernism 1914-1945
Main Ideas and Events • WWI • WWII • The Depression • The rise of totalitarianism • The rise of the masses • Mass culture
World War I • Took an estimated ten million lives • Central Powers – Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria • Allied Powers – France, Russia, Great Britain, Italy, and the U.S. • U.S. entered the war in 1917 • Treaty of Versailles ended the war in 1919 • Woodrow Wilson was President during and after the war • Established the League of Nations
The Roaring Twenties • A time of great prosperity in the United States • Henry Ford invented Model T Flappers • Prohibition • Expatriates – Fitzgerald, Hemingway • First Transatlantic flight – Charles Lindbergh • Al Capone and gangs • Women vote for the first time in the U.S. • Flappers • Ku Klux Klan • Immigration to the U.S.
The Depression • Crash of the New York stock market in October 1929 • The Depression wiped out prosperity and brought mass unemployment, demonstrations, and near starvation to many people • President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was President during the 1920’s • New Deal program to revitalize the economy • Germany suffered most during the Depression • Japan prospered under Emperor Hirohito
The Rise of Totalitarianism • By 1939, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria and Rumania had become totalitarian. • Totalitarian governments control every aspect of the lives and thoughts of their citizens • Two forms of totalitarianism between the wars: communism and fascism.
Russian Communism • Based on the writings of Karl Marx whose theory was reinterpreted by Lenin. • Belief that reform could only occur when a small elite group seized power in the name of the people • Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, seized control of the government in 1917. • After Lenin’s death, Stalin emerged as ruler of the Soviet Socialist Republic.
Fascism • Based on the idea that the masses should fuse into one spirit. • The individual was insignificant and the nation-state was the supreme embodiment of the destiny of its people. • First appeared in Italy in the 1920’s, and then in Germany and Spain in the 1930’s. • Led by Mussolini in Italy. • Led by Hitler in Germany • Led by Franco in Spain
World War II • Causes of WWII: Treaty of Versailles, the Great Depression, and nationalism • WWII began on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland; France and Britain responded with declarations of war. • Within nine months, the Nazis occupied most of western Europe. • Unable to defeat England by air, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. The Soviet Union and Great Britain became allies against Nazi Germany. • On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. • A few days later Germany and Italy followed Japan in declaring war on the United States.
World War II • The war lasted until May 1945, when the Allied Powers – Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States – forced Germany to surrender. • The war against Japan was brought to an end in August 1945 when the U.S. bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More than 200,000 Japanese were killed in these two raids.
The Holocaust • Gradually it became known that the Nazis had rounded up the Jews in Germany and eastern Europe and transported them to extermination camps, where they were killed in g as chambers. • Six million Jews were murdered out of a population of nine million.
Modernism • 1914-1945 mark zenith of Modernism • Gap between artist and audience • Isolation of artist • Mass culture was a response to this dilemma and a direct outgrowth of industrialized society.
Experimentation in Literature • The Novel • Stream of consciousness technique • James Joyce • Virginia Woolf • William Faulkner • Ernest Hemingway and influence of his style • D.H. Lawrence and novels of sexual liberation
Experimentation in Poetry • William Butler Yeats – mysticism and Irish patriotism • T.S. Eliot – The Wasteland • Langston Hughes and the Harlem Literary Renaissance
Drama • Bertolt Brecht and epic theater- attempt to make the audience uncomfortable • Eugene O’Neil – tense family drama
Existentialism • Major philosophy of the Modern Period • Heidegger • Sartre • Concern for human freedom, personal responsibility and individual choices • Because human beings are condemned to be free, they must take responsibility for their actions.
Painting • Painting dominated the visual arts in the interwar period. • Four major artistic styles: abstraction, primitivism, fantasy, and Expressionism • Picasso and Matisse were major painters • Cubism remained leading art movement in the period with Picasso as leader
Georgia O’Keefe • Distinctly American kind of abstraction • American subjects drawn from nature
Modern Music • Schoenberg introduced serial music- composing with a twelve-tone scale • Stravinsky – leading figures of Neoclassicism in music • American composers – Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, George Antheil, • African American composer – William Grant Still • Duke Ellington • Louis Armstrong • Ella Fitzgerald
