*4th Epoch* The Epoch of Conflict (1920-1990)
It's said that this epoch had two major conflicts, a "cold" one and a "hot" one. The Hot conflict was the happening and events involved with World War Two. The Cold conflict was the tension and constant competing of the two leading powers, the Soviet Union versus the United States. I think that this epoch was titled correctly. It really was an epoch of conflict and so many wrong decisions were made. It's not possible or correct for us to try to blame all of the events that took place during this time on a certain person or country because they were events that affected the whole world population. In order for it to have affected the whole world, every place must've had in one way or another gotten themselves involved or gotten involved by others.
After the First World War (1914-1918), there was a worldwide depression that hit many populations, some harder than others. Because of this depression, the European economies were destabilized and soon afterwards, the USA’s economy was also destabilized. Germany was one of the countries that were the least well off. Much damage had been done to the country that its potential growth was destroyed. Then Fascism emerged in Italy when Dictator Mussolini rose to power. And of course, Hitler began climbing the political ladder.
So clearly, there was much chaos going on at this time. I mean, the world literally sunk in economic chaos. I think that this could have been avoided if WWI could have been avoided, which is truly something hard to say since there were so many factors involved with it. Almost about as much as there were involved in WWII. But that’s what I don’t get, Could it had been possible to avoid it if maybe one of the events leading up to it wouldn’t have happened?
There really isn’t a way to know for sure because so many tragic things were happening at the same time at different levels of intensity and in different places. Maybe its all of these things combined that affected people so much and made them desperate to get out of it and improve their lives. Desperate times call for drastic measures. But is that really the truth? I believe that in any case, people who are suffering shouldn’t take the first way out. They should evaluate their options and think about the long-term effects so that the possibility of going back into tragedy is eliminated. But over and over again, with gladly, a few exceptions, history proves us that that’s not the way things work. People grab onto the first sign of improvement and follow it till they’re out of what the were in, but later fall into something completely different. Think about Hitler and Germany’s population. He promised them to end the devastating depression they were going through, so they followed him, not thinking about the way in which he would do it. The same happened in Japan, through usage of their newly improved military, they escaped out of the depression and then used it to gain power over other countries. But what most mattered to them was to get out of the depression and they did. And all those that chose the easy way out were later faced with the events of WW2 and the aftermath of it.
USSR vs. USA, after the dropping of the atomic bomb, there would be a possibility of war breaking out again. The world was traumatized as the USSR and USA stayed in a limbo-ish relationship free of military force against one another. I get that the political ideologies of these two were complete opposites but their goals, if looked in a certain way, along with their actions and decisions made them very alike. So why was it that they felt the need to get rid of one another? I think the answer to that is that they both wanted the rest of the world to be mini thems.
From what I understood, that’s why they aided opposite sides (ex: Vietnam), it’s why they had proxy wars. But if this was really the case, why did they decide to end Nazi Germany? I mean, (taking away the genocide they caused), they too were just trying to get the world for themselves, were they not? The United States and the Soviet Union both saw the consequences of Nazi Germany, Japan, and Italy’s greed, were they not afraid of what their competing to be the best could do to the rest of the world? Or was it just that greed took over during this epoch and the powers wanted all for themselves only??
No comments:
Post a Comment