The Glorious Years: Part One

By J R Monroy

The British Empire, and the French Republic have been at war with Imperial Kaiser Germany for five uproarious years. The war was won with millions of soldiers killed in battle, the world economy was upside down preparing for a readjustment with the financial assistance of the US Treasury, New York and London banks. The crucial fact was that in 1919 the Versailles Treaty did not find a balance understanding between victorious and defeaters, it was an uncontrollable vendetta against Germany and it's allies without any mercy creating innumerables economic, social, geo-political problems without immediate and future solutions. (John Maynard Keynes).

The real fact was that Europe was re-drawing into a geo-political map which created a socio-economic and political condition to a medium sized power that transformed into a new advanced model of capitalism. The leadership of President Woodrow Wilson (1854-1924), played a fundamental role not only to convince its own Congress to declare War on to Germany. But moreover, it definitively transformed the US army and navy into a worldwide competitor of colonial power shall we say, of Britain, France, Germany, Russia and inclusive Japan.

In addition, President Wilson, politically took a leading role in 1917 to 1918 emerging as a indisputable speaker of a new vision of the democratic world government with an interest to create a World Order accordingly with new political and economic vision of international relations. ( Wilson, A.Scott Berg). The ideal of Republicanism became an international slogan in opposition to Central Europe authoritarian regimens, i.e., Nicholas II Tsar of Russia (1868-1918), William II (1859-1941), German Emperor and King of Prussia (1888-1918),and Austrian Empire, The Habsburg dynasty, including Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia, Silesia, Slovakia, Transylvania, the Bukovina, Croatia-Slovenia, Carniola, Corizia, Istria, Dalmacia, Lombardy, and Venetia, eleven nationalities under a central government with political, military and economic responsibilities, which fatally ended in disintegration during the Great War Years.

Europe between 1920-1930, started an intellectual process of searching how to build a modern democratic society after the collapse of the conservative society, represented by traditional groups linked to a medieval past. The theoretical and academic discussion was to focus on the social changes as reform or revolution. This dichotomy resulted in changes of the social structure of society. The long period of the Great War, not only created political challenges but also the class - structure was questioned by class rivalries between industrial proletariat, reformist petit bourgeoisie and traditional grand bourgeoise. The conceptions of socialism and nationalism became antagonised. This ideological contradiction was a political dilemma for political parties, i. e., Conservatives, in Britain became politically in a more soft social approach to collectivism, Liberal was slowly replaced by Labour. Ramsay MacDonald Labour was elected PM in a coalition government in 1929.

(A Shortened History of England, G.M. Trevelyan).

In Germany these political phenomenons took an opposite direction than in England, i.e., the German Army capitulation under the leadership of General Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937), and the Kaiser Wilhelm II exiled in the Netherland in 1919, accelerated Germany political Troya in a debacle where political parties representing industrial and financial sectors included Conservatives, Liberal, Nationalist and a group of Social Democrats were in a chaos and paralysed to find solutions to the national debacle which included financial, territorial and diplomatic restrictions imposed by the French delegation in all the peace settlements with the new German Republic of 1919. The Weimar Republic was excluded of membership of the league of nations.(La Paix, Andre Tardieu, Paris, 1921).

A last comment to the German Republic Interregnum is related to the historical Weimar Constitution, and its influence in many democratic nations, since its short existence. The real historical drama of Germany post Bismarck, undoubtedly was that its formed a power of that enclosed privileges to social caste rooted in the great landowners traditionally without changes since the medieval times. This mode of feudalism in the agrarian tenancy in the mid of the 19th century coexisted with the industrial transformation off the german economy, creating a rare social-economic phenomenon, called structural dualism. The German economy received this legacy until the end of the Great War and later continued until 1933, when its was taken to a political programme and started exercising its absolute power through a party dictatorship in alliance with the Junkers a ruling rural medieval class controlling the army, serving the imperialist purposes and exercising brutality and loyalty to reactionary anti-racial totalitarian Nazi regimen 1933-1945.

To be continued, by 1933-53: The collapse of the Allied entente and the Cold War stability.

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