How The Roaring 20s Became A Precursor To World War | Impossible Peace | Real History

[Music] two world wars tore the heart out of the 20th century they are a rent in the fabric of history between the wars there was progress there was optimism there was ignorance and there was greed economies were fragile peace precarious and people started listening to the claims of those who said they had the [Applause] [Music] answers exchange rates and floundering economies were not the only things influencing how and where people lived the Motorcar and other Modern Marvels were transformative though some hung on to the [Music] [Applause] [Music] past the Knights of the klocks clan bigotry in bed sheets the ignorant the unbalanced the venal completely pervert the motto make America safe for Americans hon Evans a Dallas dentist had taken control of the Klux Clan and in 1925 he led 40,000 Clansman down Washington's Pennsylvania Avenue but The Sensational fall of corrupt KKK leaders in Indiana and Colorado undermine confidence in the organization and it started to [Music] recede in Italy support for a fascist regime was tracking in the other direction in 1925 a slogan authored by a journalist named Leo longanesi began to circulate to be broadcast to appear on posters and it was meant seriously musolini har rajion it said melini is always right he may or may not say something significant about fascist policy but if you write that up on a wall in some peasant Village The Peasants blink and say oh muslin is always right good on April the 28th 1925 Winston Churchill Rose in the House of Commons to deliver the budget speech return Britain to the gold standard and according to his own later assessment make the greatest mistake of his life going back on the gold standard at the 1914 ex stranger was a message which the financers like to present to the world this was blondon the financial center back at the center of things normality had been restored the price of normality was belt tightening that would in 1926 result in a general [Music] [Applause] strike one of the Great Moments was 1926 when Ares Briand welcomed strm and the German FR minister to the League of Nations it was an absolute moment of incredible [Music] hope we have done with the black veils of mourning for sufferings that can never be appeased Bon said done with war done with sanguinary methods of settling our disputes away with rifle clear the way for conciliation arbitration [Music] peace that's what he said but what Bond would have seen if he looked around the world that he claimed was done with war would have given him little cause for [Music] confidence modern China in spite of its age-old history was like the broken pieces of a jigsaw puzzle each piece controlled by a different ruler each with his own private Army in modern terms China was a country but not yet a nation on July the 4th in China the man who had risen to leadership of the Republican government Shang Kai Sheek announced the nor Expedition it aimed at unifying China under a central government ending the Thoms of the Warlords and in time extinguishing opposition in India riots based on sectarian rivalry and inflamed by the rumor that the British were about to withdraw continued to pockmark the subcontinent into war history in 19 26 there were 40 riots in kolata [Music] alone Marshall psky who was head of the democratically elected government of Poland declared a catar and became military dictator at the head of the colonels group he was the second in a long long line of dictators who would take control of European countries in the decades [Music] ahead the first Bonito musolini having survived three assassination attempts transformed Italy into a true onep party state by the time he assumed the absolute role it is estimated that 1 million pictures of Uche in 2500 poses were in circulation there are parallels to this photographic profligacy in both Hitler and Stalin perhaps simply because every portrait poster postcard and postage stamp of me is not a picture of someone [Music] else in Britain the general strike between the 3rd and 13th of May 1926 was triggered by Employers in the coal industry deciding to reduce miners wages to offset falling [Music] prices it's General in the sense that the transport and coal Industries are entirely called out and then you also get the Press um going on strike and towards the end of the strike the electrical industry joins in it it's the largest strike in British history 850,000 miners struck and 1 and a half million workers came out in support but there was to be no revolution in fact the British trades Union Congress rejected money sent from Russia and the strikers which must have completely baffled left Wingers all over the continent played a football match against the police which they won 21 the general strike collapsed after 10 days the miners lasted 6 months before being forced to accept defeat longer hours lower wages and [Music] humiliation in France the Frank which in 1914 had stood at 25.22 to the dollar was by July 1926 trading at$ 238 to the dollar nationalist sentiment was on the rise thousands marched and the war debt from which the Americans were prepared to offer no relief continued to Menace the peace you also have the rise of right-wing monarchist and fascist leagues as they were called extra parliamentary organizations many of them with the support of veterans organizations veterans who felt that they had won the war only to lose the peace to politicians who couldn't make up their minds or make the economy work amidst rumors of a right-wing coup a government was formed under Raymond pakare with four former prime ministers in its [Music] ranks Americans who could cross the Atlantic for $80 and live in Paris him probably cheaply flocked to the French Capital there's one foreign entanglement that nobody who can afford it objects to an entanglement with France which usually means Paris and more people can afford it than ever [Music] before by 1926 it was estimated that 45,000 Americans were living in Paris a handful of them were well known and every summer their ranks have swollen by 200,000 tourists by December the Frank had stabilized at 25 to the dollar American expatriate Bohemians were starting to feel the pinch and panare said that through their efforts his countryman were struggling free of the Yoke of anglo-saxon Finance in a similar assertion of nationalist spleen 1926 saw the introduction of a compulsory H Hitler greeting and salute among National Socialist Party members as an outward sign of their bond with their leader their fur in America it was not politicians who made the headlines Rudolph Valentino aged only 31 died in 1926 so did the actress bablo Lamar known as the girl who is too beautiful forgotten now but headlines then five times married and dead at 29 this is the time when is Washington the key American power center or is it the other side of the country in California is it Hollywood now that manifests itself in a series of mergers and Acquisitions that we would now say which is the start of Hollywood the film Factory and we all know the name to this day of MGM and Paramount and Warners and fox and so on American Producers are bringing over foreign directors mainly German as fast as they can Pride them loose reported moving picture world and they [Music] wear names that then and now lit up the movies with style wit and [Music] [Applause] elegance the world did not only hunger for American movies the world was dancing to the sound of America the seavoy ballroom an enormous place that occupied an entire Harlem block opened its doors in 1926 it had two bands positioned at opposite ends of the hall playing alternating sets non-stop music that induced said Carl Van Von writer and photographer intense excitement King to religious mania you listen very differently to Jazz than you listen to classical music you're supposed to move in fact it's kind of not normal not to move in a way you sort of almost expected [Music] to at the high point of the 20s there was the little black dress it was American Vogue declared in October 1926 Chanel's Ford it was Vogue said the frock that all the world will wear dresses were still called frogs Coats were mantles and they his trousers were slacks their suits costumes Coco Chanel would perhaps have delighted in the idea of a Chanel Ford she once said I don't create fashion for three or four Tarts another important development in the 1920s is men's web not least because of you know the Jack Dapper Prince of Wales being photograft you know the golf course wearing plus fours and faroh sweaters and the whole sort of trend for sportsware in America all this froth and bubble did not distract Everyone by the end of 1926 the central Bankers had their eyes on three storm clouds that threatened to dump on their parade the US Stock Market bubble with more and more money being sucked into Wall Street the high level of German foreign borrowing and the increasingly brittle gold St standard Supreme Court Justice Lewis brandise didn't speak for many but he spoke prophetically when he said I wish to record my utter inability to understand why a lot of folks don't go broke a short 3 years later a lot of folks went very brok indeed a result of what John Kenneth galbreth called their Mass Escape into make believe the big problem in China was once the Empire collapsed it very soon fragmented a whole lot of Warlords emerged in were different regions of China there was no natural geopolitical grouping of all these different Chinese provinces in March 1927 Janai Sheek ordered the Communist militia in the army that he commanded disarmed on April the 12th and behind the Declaration that the Chinese Revolution must free itself of Russian influence Chang launched his anti-communist Purge chanek the Nationalist leader who succeeded sunat sen was very clear early on that he would not allow his communist allies to become Rivals and therefore when he had come to power in 1927 he brutally turned on his communist allies first first in the city of Shanghai and then in Canton murdering massacring many thousands of them 60,000 members of the Communist Party of China were alive at the commencement of The Purge by the end of 1927 no more than 10,000 and thousands of peasants had been killed in what has become known as the white Terror and what all that meant for China and the world would not be resolved until the war still more than a decade away the shock of the anti-communist slaughter rocked Moscow which thought it saw the hand of British imperialism in everything Moscow capital of Soviet Russia is a senar dramatic trial it is alleged that try the Unseen prisoner in the duck is the master M behind a great plot to smash up the Soviet regime Russia buzzed with rumors of war and sent Trotsky and Zen nov into Exile Stalin was clearly at top the pile the party had grown enormously after the Russian Revolution in 1917 it had absorbed or destroyed all the other institutions in Russia so there were no more independent institutions and so Stalin had in his hands the levers of great power in the Soviet Union and he used them Stalin's commitment to socialism in one country rather than World Revolution led to the first 5-year plan launched at the party Congress of 1927 the plan demanded a 110% increase in Coal production 200% in Iron production and 335 in Electric Power the jewels in Stalin's Crown where to be the dam on the Dena for hydroelectric power the steel city of magnitogorsk and coercive collectivization the collectivization of Agriculture was designed to kind of pay for industrialization by getting the peasants to to produce more but not necessarily pay them more in 1927 only 2% of Soviet Farmland was held by the state the rest was divided into peasant Farms worked by 24 million households all of which were to be forcibly collectivized by Stalin's decree in 1929 in Japan an April financial crisis brought down the liberal government it was replaced by the conservative Sakai party General taner announced his intention of pursuing expansion into China north of the Great Wall into manua Tanaka's government collapsed when the international Powers recognized the authority of the Chinese Republican government over Chinese territory including the three provinces of manoria but things were smoldering and it seems quite fitting that into this world in 1927 Vera honberg brought his understanding that the speed and position of particles around a nucleus could not be precisely known he called it the uncertainty principle America neon lit and traveling the freeway continued to go its own way by the mid-20s Chicago had over 10,000 nightclubs and bars playing music in 1927 to his suite at Chicago's Metropol Hotel Al Capone summoned the press and announced his retirement from the nothingness of a small time bouncer Scarface Al has risen to control a crime and vice Syndicate that grosses $100 million a year he was at the speak of his power and notoriety he was 28 years old and the blue white diamond in the pinky ring on his left hand weighed 11 carats he had 20 years of life left and would spend 11 of them in [Music] prison most Americans didn't patronize the night clubs and the bars they in fact the world went to the movies investment in films skyrocketed from 78 million in 1921 to 550 million in 1930 in the middle of that span there was of course one particular Catalyst the Tories the first of them The Jazz Singer had 354 words of dialogue which mostly came out of the mouth of Al Jolson born Assa yolon in Lithuania wait a minute wait a minute you ain't heard nothing yet wait a minute I said it you ain't heard nothing you want to hear all right and the Jinger is part sound and part silent goodbye and when the sound stops and it reverts to being a silent film with intertitles and heavy music over it it seems to go back about 25 years it's not just 5 minutes it really seems extraordinary the effect of the toris was extraordinary movie audiences jumped from 60 million in 1927 to 100 million in [Music] 1930 but the greatest light of a golden summer sha not from the Silver Screen but from the baseball diamond which immortally saw the slugfest between two Yankees Babe Ruth and Lou [Music] garri Ruth broke his own home run record and those Yankees probably were the greatest team ever to play the game which was not the biggest story of the year that belong to Lindy Charles Augustus Lindberg will attempt what no man has ever dared he will attempt to fly the Atlantic nonstop New York to Paris alone all [Music] along I mean the dramatic moment there is the 20th of May 1927 fox actually has pictures and sound from Charles Lindberg taking off from Roosevelt Field to head off to France on the first major transatlantic flight and that is edited so quickly that's actually shown in at least one New York Cinema that evening in [Music] fact now the ordeal Begins the Lone Eagle heads out into the Uncharted void above Open Seas where none before has ventured alone and live and hour by hour the world below Waits and waits and [Music] waits Lindberg flow for 33 hours to win the Artic prize $25,000 offered by New York hotelier Raymond ortic for the first non-stop flight from New York to Paris where 150,000 people met him at lour that night at the seavoy Ballroom in Harlem they danced the Lindy Hop and Lindy's done it they shouted Lindy's done [Music] it Lindy was 25 and his flight was according to one American newspaper the greatest event since the resurrection [Music] on June 11th the USS Memphis with Lindberg on board steamed towards the Washington Naval dockyards accompanied by four destroyers 88 airlanes two giant rbl and countless small boats he was given a 21 gun salute and his arrival was the first Coast to Coast broadcast you have seen the affection of the people of France for the people of America demonstrated to [Music] you by the time of lindberg's flight onethird of the money Americans spent on furniture was going on radio on June the 13th perhaps the largest crowd ever to gather between 4 and 5 million people cheered him on whom 1,800 tons of ticket tape and confetti some hats and inadvertently the old telephone directory poured down and cost $116,000 to clean off the streets of New [Music] York [Music] we have now entered the age of instant news and instant [Music] celebrity when news then as now flares and Fizzles quickly 8 months after the Paris flight a New York editor wired his reporter who was covering lindberg's Latin American tour the wire no longer interested in progress reports read no more unless he crashes in 1927 the BBC adopted as its motto the scriptural Pro Nation shall speak peace unto nation and more than 2 and A2 million British homes tuned into its first outside broadcast a horse race but no one had any experience as a commentator and finding the right tone was a challenge the last words of journalist GF Allison's call of the Derby where he nears the judge leap then Brave heart look nothing can catch him [Music] now in July 1927 a meeting of the four Central Bankers British American French and German convened at the Long Island Mansion of eggon Mills under Secretary of the US Treasury they knew that ahead lay a rocky road which would require a brave heart and then some the American Benjamin strong strong had already decided on his strategy to dampen down the Gathering crisis he would cut us interest rates famously acknowledging to Charles wrist at the B of force that this would give the stock market a small shot of whiskey rates were cut by half a percent the result was immediate and it was not a shot of whiskey by Year's End the da had risen [Music] 20% in January 1928 the Munich police reported that the advances of the National Socialist movement repeatedly claimed by Hitler are not true they added that meetings attended by 3 to 400 people in 1926 now have an audience of at most 60 to 80 members things were perhaps looking up and peace was in the air on August the 27th 15 Nations gathered in Paris to sign a pact named for its sponsors US Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and his French counterpart ariste Bond Kellogg Bond or The Pact of Paris bound each signatory to agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts or whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be which may arise among them shall never be sought except by Pacific [Music] means so where ashed in what historian David Thompson called The Strange Rose tinted years in the course of 1928 33 Powers signed The Pact Italy was one of them the number would reach 65 but none of them ever r a ified The Pact for [Music] peace in 1928 Stalin the Soviet Union also signed the Paris pact announced that he would put the Soviet Union in a motorc car and the peasant in a tractor and by 1939 20 million people some voluntarily had been moved from the country to take industrial jobs in the town not all of the world was as heads down industrious as a tour group from the British Lord's Day observing society which went on a study tour to observe European dissolution saw for [Music] themselves they reported on frivolity arity betting gambling EX excitement and revelries our Sunday in Paris they declared was a day of desecration we shall never [Music] [Applause] forget this was a Parisian Heyday Paris according to gertred Stein was where the 20th century was jazz clubs and Cabaret bats and Native [Music] genius these were Lan fall the Mad years the time when Paris became the fashion capital [Music] [Music] it's it's the fashion cent of the world there are fashion shows there's a whole industry which is based on the midet the seamstress so this this fashion industry is based on on a tremendous exploitation of of young female workers [Music] but it's tremendously successful particularly in the 1920s and people move the the currious move from Simply producing clothing into the sort of perfume and cosmetics industry so you've got Chanel you've got shampu sets up his business and so it's a very exciting place in that way the leading designers went into ready to wear and launched a fashion Revolution houses like those of Chanel L long and patu introduced their first Preta Porte collections in this world the surprise is not that America had more cars than France it is that Kansas had more cars than [Music] France from 1922 to 1927 profits Rose On The Wall Street Stock Exchange as 75% of stocks climbed it was this momentum that Benjamin strong its governor was hoping to slow when in February the federal took the rate back up to 5% the change could slow or briefly stop the trend but not reverse it so this is an era of very high company profits and these company profits fed into Wall Street and this by the mid 1920s starts off an expansion in Wall Street through the 20s the stock of General Motors Rose 20 fold RCA 70 fold these were the grils for which the one in 10 American households that had money invested in the stock market were groping by the mid 1920s the American economy is doing so well people begin to talk about the end of poverty the end of the business cycle which means permanent Prosperity you don't have to worry about economic downturns you don't have to worry about um [Music] investment It's Only Money Americans are rolling in the stuff there's cream in every cup of coffee plenty of salt in every stew and never have so many had so much of both before the crash RCA the sweetheart stock was trading 10,000 00% above its level of 5 years previously the person who invested $100 in 1924 was a millionaire in 1929 without lifting a finger and that too was the American [Music] dream such was the American boom that even when by 1928 the USA had become the world's leading exporter exports accounted for little more than 6% of national income the trouble was that from around the middle of 1928 the boom detached from any known reality almost doubling the value of the market against only a mod mod Rising profits not so gradually not so slowly the market goes up a little then it goes down a lot and as the real economy began to slow down it was quite clear that many businesses were not going to be as profitable as those people buying stocks in them anticipated and therefore there was a great hesitation on the part of investors and these series of hesitations and fluctuations in the stock market came to An Almighty [Music] crash on the eve of the crash President Hoover was universally respected characterized by the novelist sherard Anderson as someone who had never known failure he was a thoughtful Progressive politic ition who noted in accepting his party's nomination in 1928 that a new era and new forces have come into our economic life they had but he failed to recognize what they were and the buoyancy and sometimes delirium of the 20s everything is possible dance the night away five nights a week get whatever alcohol you need even if it's illegal because my good this America is a good place well that sense of possibility completely collapses Hoover's record-breaking victory of 1928 would be easily surpassed by his record-breaking defeat four years later when Time Magazine dubbed him president reject not just the mighty fil the lowly the market the optimism the 20s were about to crash to the trading floor of the New York Stock [Music] Exchange but between 1913 and 1929 the total value of global exports Rose by 66% but this was not an evenly shared Global recovery British exports Rose by 15% German by 33% French by 50% but those of the USA Rose by 200% despite such success the America refused to consider cancelling or even rescheduling the vast sums owed to her by France and Britain Britain had had to borrow an awful lot of money from the United States during the first world war support all her allies and she thought that Britain ought to have forgiven this debts and Britain says how can you ask us to pay this when everyone has suffered and America says in the words of President Calvin kulage they hired the money didn't they the young plan named for the American Banker who devised it Revisited the issue of reparations in the context of America's position on the issue of debt under the young plan in order to pay inter-allied debt France would retain only 40% of reparations received from Germany and the UK 22% the balance funds the US loan to Germany to pay reparations made their way back across the Atlantic you're seeing sort of the reparations going from Germany to Britain and France straight back to Washington and then the doors and young plans loans going then to Germany so you're getting this sort of um nice neat sort of Circle of money being uh flowing around the world was setting itself up for something but no one was quite sure what in global economics there can be many reasons for disaster the least likely and most reliable is a surfit of optimism and it was optimism that overheated Wall Street with disastrous results in his March 1929 inauguration Herbert Hoover had told the American people we are steadily building up a new race and a new civilization he could survey an economy in which the average price of stocks on Wall Street had risen by 25% in 1928 and 35% in the first months of [Music] 1929 there is this genuine celebration of traffic of mobility of transport of commotion of speed and all these are wrapped up in this utopian vision of if you like a New York that appears to the eyes of people who visit as a miracle from a distant future era but something went wrong Hoover was later to say that the trouble with capitalism is capitalists they're too damn greedy but he didn't say it at the time [Music] October 29th 1929 the New York Stock Exchange is in a panic frantic investors have scrambled to unload their stocks at any price at the time of the crash there were 1 and a half million unemployed in the US by 1932 the figure had risen to 12 million how did it happen there was nominally an institution entrusted with regulating the market that was the Federal Reserve but it had only been in existence for uh 16 years at that time it had never had a crisis of this magnitude to deal with and they make uh precisely the wrong decision about what to do because once they realize that credit has been given much too liberally the impulse intuitive thing is to restrict credit and so that's that's what they do they make credit hard to get but in an economic downturn the most important thing is not to restrict credit but to ease credit so that the debtors have access to funds that they can pay off their debts the market opened steady on October the 24th but then at 11: a.m. it was overwhelmed by cell orders deluging from all over the country in an hour 20% had come off the main indices and RCA had fallen 35% rumors flared by noon a crowd of 10,000 people stood in Wall Street gping the six major Banks moved to support the trading floor splashing between 20 and $30 million on Blue Chip stocks so that by day's end the Falls had been clawed back and rested at 6% down the market steadied until the 29 9 Black Tuesday everyone wants to sell no one wants to buy suddenly even the most guilt edged Securities are practically valueless by Day end 9 million shares had changed hands and $14 billion had simply vanished from the value of the market the next day before the market opened the New York Federal without reference to the Federal Reserve board injected $50 million into the banking system but the selloff continued during the day the New York Federal injected a further $65 million and in the last 15 minutes of trading the market rallied by late November the Dow was steady at a level 40% down from its giddy top down to what analysts when the bubble was at its fattest had said was its true worth $50 billion had been wiped from the value of stocks the mysterious force of group psychology that had inflated the bubble had deflated the bubble and now with particularly good cause retreated in extreme and prudent sobriety Vehicle registrations fell by 25% AT&T was down by a third General Motors had hared us steel came back more than 40% and so it went on radio sales in New York are said to have hared and people inevitably were thrown out of work if stupidity got us into this mess then why can't it get us out asked the American humorist Will Rogers because of these human errors that were made in policy make what had been a moderate to severe event into the most catastrophic depression in American history in November 1929 an article in The Economist Under The Heading reactions of the Wall Street slump wondered what might happen next and reassuringly noted that the experts are agreed that there must be some setback but there is not yet sufficient evidence to prove that it will go to the length of producing a general industrial depression perhaps the experts had been examining the wrong entrails certainly they were in bad odor don't tell my mother I'm a banker ran a v ofil joke she thinks I play piano in a brothel [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Real History

Views: 218,466

Keywords: Diplomatic Relations, Economic Turmoil, European Crisis, Global Events, Global Impacts Study, Global Politics Overview, Historical Analysis, Historical Context, Historical Insights, Historical Narratives, Historical Unrest, Jazz Music Influence, Modern Age Beginnings, Political History, Post-WWI Era, Pre-World War II, Rising Tensions, Social History, Socioeconomic Changes, Technological Innovations

Id: zSZhTuERypk

Length: 50min 25sec (3025 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 24 2024