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The Age of the Masses and the Zenith of Modernism 1914–1945

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The Collapse of Old Certainties and the Search for New Values

Between 1914 and 1945 Western culture was shaken by four cataclysmic events: World War I, the Russian Revolution, the Great Depression, and World War II.
However, the age’s defining feature was the arrival of the common people on the cultural stage. We see the birth of “mass culture”
The rise of the masses was also entangled with the advent of modern dictatorships. Capitalizing on the uncertainties of modern, urban life, dictators of various types rose to power across Europe.

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World War I

The Central Powers-Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria & the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) fought against the Allied Powers-Britain, France, Russia, (also Italy & late in the war the United States) .
The war saw killing at an unprecedented level due to the technological advances in weaponry. The war bogged down into relentless trench warfare with tens of thousands of soldiers dying to gain a few thousand feet of territory.
Germany’s unrestricted U-boat campaign and other factors brought the United States into the war in 1917 which helped shift the balance of power.
The Treaty of Versailles ended the war, but was so punitive to Germany that it set the stage for World War II.
More than 16 million people died as a result of the war (10 million soldiers and almost 7 million civilians)

Weapons of the First World War

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Europe after World War I

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The Russian Revolution

In 1917 Russia was plagued by an incompetent ruler, a weak economy, the ravages of war, and social and political discord. Revolution broke out, and a small band of Marxist communists, the Bolsheviks seized power.
Led by Lenin (r. 1917-24) set up a totalitarian communist state. After Lenin’s death, Josef Stalin (r. 1928-53) emerged as the sole ruler of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (U.S.S.R.) as the Russian Empire was now called.
Claiming that is was a “people’s republic,” it was noting but a harsh dictatorship that controlled all aspects of life. Stalin was ruthless, killing over 10 million men, women, and children in his forced collectivization of agriculture.
Millions more were murdered or died in forced labor camps called Gulags.

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Lenin and Stalin

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The West and Islam

World War I finished off the Ottoman Empire and much of its territory was divided between the victors.
Syria and Lebanon were in France’s “sphere of influence.” Palestine, Transjordan (modern Jordan), and Iraq were in the British “sphere of Influence” and Egypt was a British protectorate.
In 1917 Britain issued the Balfour Declaration which supported Palestine as a “national home of the Jewish people.”
After a War of Turkish Independence (1919-23) the Republic of Turkey was formed from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire.
In Egypt in 1928 the Muslim Brotherhood was founded, a religious social movement designed to promote Muslim identity.

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The Great Depression of the 1930s

The excesses of corporate greed and industrialization resulted in the worldwide economic calamity. The stock market crashed, thousands of banks closed wiping out people’s savings, businesses failed, farm foreclosures shy-rocketed, and unemployment reached over 50%.
In the United States President Franklin Roosevelt responded with the “New Deal,” a wide-sweeping series of programs to revitalize the economy and create a social safety net.
Similar steps were taken in other democracies, but some, particularly Germany (hardest hit by the depression), Italy and Spain came under control of “fascist” dictatorships.
Japan was relatively unscathed by the Great Depression and used the distraction to seize Manchuria and attack China.

Images of the Great Depression

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The Rise of Fascism

Fascism sought to bind the masses by appealing to non-rational sentiments about national destiny and finding scapegoats to blame for problems.
Fascists, like the communist dictatorships, believed that the individual was insignificant and the nation-state was the supreme embodiment of the destiny of the people.
It relied on militarism, nationalism, and the loss of personal freedom, through strict control over the press, education, the police and the judicial system.
It was also innately aggressive, leading to strong military dictatorships which were used to conquer new lands in Europe and to win colonial empires.
Germany and Italy supported the fascist during the Spanish Civil War with troops and equipment. Italy invaded Ethiopia and annexed Albania. Hitler annexed Austria, the Sudetenland, and ultimately Czechoslovakia.
When Hitler invaded Poland (1939) it set off the Second World War.

Hitler & Mussolini

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Roots of the War

Adolf Hitler came to power in 1934 and started a massive rearmament of Germany.
Japanese Nationalist created the “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity” and invaded China in 1937.
In 1939 Hitler invaded Poland went to war with and France and England.

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Nazi Party Rally, 1936

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World War II: Origins and Outcome

The origins of World War II lay in the unfairness of the Treaty of Versailles, the Great Depression, nationalism, and the expansionist policies of the fascist regimes.
In 1939 Hitler invaded Poland and World War II began. The Germans quickly defeated France in 1940 using the “blitzkrieg” (lightening war) and attempted unsuccessfully to bomb Britain into submission.
In June 1941, Hitler launched a surprise attack against the Soviet Union and pushed deep into Russian territory.
On December 7th, 1941 Japan attempted to destroy the U.S. Pacific fleet with a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and successful attacks on U.S. possessions on Guam, Wake Island, and the Philippines.
Germany and Italy, allies of Japan, also declared war on the U.S.

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Famous World War II U.S. Propaganda Poster

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U.S. Propaganda Poster by Norman Rockwell

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World War II: Origins and Outcome

The Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) had many early victories, but the combined military power of the Allies (Great Britain, the U.S., and the Soviet Union) combined with the tremendous industrial and economic strength of the United States, slowly turned the tide of the war.
In the new era of technology the powerful industrial-military state complex that could mass-produce weapons and machines of war, harness their nations economy, and mobilized vast citizen armies.
Ultimately the Allies were victorious because of the well-oiled industrial military state complex that was developed, particularly in the United States, where labor and management worked together under the direction of the government and civilians willingly made necessary sacrifices to insure victory.

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World War II: Origins and Outcome

As the Allies began pushing into German-occupied territories they uncovered the Nazi Death Camps where millions of Jews and other “undesirables” had been systematically murdered.
The U.S. and Great Britain began an “island hopping” campaign in the Pacific, getting close enough to bomb the Japanese home islands. When the Japanese refused to unconditionally surrender we dropped two new atom bombs on them.
The Hiroshima bomb killed some 80,000 people. The Nagasaki bomb killed approximately 60,000. Additionally, tens of thousands more died later due to radiation.
The Second World War was the most devastating conflict in human history and cost around 60 million lives (22-25 million military deaths and the rest civilian).
The war ended with the United States and the Soviet Union being the two most powerful nations in the world.

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Nazi Death Camp in Belsen, Germany, 1945

The Nazis murdered over 11 million people in their death camps, six million of whom were Jews.

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Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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Medicine

In the field of medicine major medical events between 1900 and 1945 occurred primarily in two areas: the identification of disease pathogens and the development of pharmaceuticals.
Medical researchers identified these new pathogens – disease causing agents; organisms that cause diseases such as typhus, organisms that produce tropical illnesses like malaria, and the viruses that cause mumps, measles, and polio.
Aspirin the world’s most universal pain reliever was discovered and became common. Penicillin and other antibiotics were developed to fight infection and saved countless lives.

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Mass Culture and Technology

Mass Culture was a direct outgrowth of industrialized society. The new generation of consumers demanded products and amusements that appealed to their tastes: inexpensive, energetic, and easily accessible.
Entrepreneurs, using new technologies, flooded the market with consumer goods and new entertainments. The untapped consumer market let to the expansion of new industries, including automobiles, household goods, and domestic appliances.
Most forms of mass culture, - radio, newspapers, comic strips, cartoons, professional sports, picture magazines, movies, recordings, and musical comedies – had existed before World War I, but now, between the wars, they came into their own.

Life and Look Magazines were Published from the 1930’s until the 1970’s (Look) and the 1980’s (Life)

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Bourke-White, Russian Tank Driver (1941)
This picture illustrates the growing field of photojournalism in such magazines as “Life” and “Look”

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High Modernism, 1914–1945

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Experimentation in Literature

Modernist writers during this era remained dedicated to experimentation , a stance that reflected despair over the era’s instability. The most distinctive method that arose was “stream-of-consciousness” writing, a method where the narrative consists of the unedited thoughts of the character.
James Joyce uses this narrative in his classic novel “Ulysses” (1922) and did Virginia Woolf in “To the Lighthouse (1929).
Ernest Hemingway (1900-61)emerged as a major literary star. He popularized the term “lost generation” to refer to those that came of age after World War I.
William Faulkner (1897-1962) a giant of 20th century literature wrote often highly emotional, subtle, and complex stories of a wide variety of characters including former slaves or descendants of slaves, poor white, agrarian, or working-class Southerners, and Southern aristocrats.

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The Zenith of Modernism: Painting

Pablo Picasso was still the reigning cubist painter, and painted such recognized masterpieces as “Guernica,” which illustrates the suffering of people bombed during the Spanish Civil War, but some painters now moved beyond cubism to complete abstraction.
Kasimir Malevich (1887-1935) was the most influential Russian painter of this period. He was a pioneer of geometric abstract art.
He originated the “Suprematist” movement, which was an art movement, focused on basic geometric forms, such as circles, squares, lines, and rectangles, painted in a limited range of colors.

Pablo Picasso, “Guernica” (1937)

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Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This was painted to depict the bombing of the town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War in 1937 by fascist forces.

Kasimir Malevich , “Suprematist Composition ” (1917)

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This painting recently sold at auction for $60 million

Kasimir Malevich , “Suprematism” (1916) and “Complex Presentiment: Half-Figure in a Yellow Shirt” (1928-1932)

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The Zenith of Modernism

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) was an American artist. O'Keeffe has been recognized as the Mother of American Modernism. However, she refused to follow European painters down the path to pure abstractism.
She pursued a distinctive type of American abstractism, using subjects drawn from nature which she pared to their pure form and color.
Many observers claimed that O’Keefe’s artwork often was intended to present vaginas. O’Keefe always denied that this was true.

Georgia O'Keeffe, “Cow's Skull with Calico Roses

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Georgia O'Keeffe, “White and Blue Flower Shapes” (1919) and “Red Canna” (1924)

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Georgia O'Keeffe, “Blue Flower” (1918) and “Grey Line with Blue, Black, and Yellow” (1923)

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The Zenith of Modernism

The most unusual art movement of the 20th century was certainly “Dadaism.”
Believing the spiritual claims and traditional beliefs of Western humanism were dead, the Dada group embraced “anti-art” as the only ethical position for the artist of the modern era.
The French artist Marcel Duschamp (1887-1968) was the leading artist of this school.

Marcel Duchamp, “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even” (1915-23)
Over nine feet tall, and freestanding two panes of glass with materials such as lead foil, fuse wire, and dust. It combines chance procedures, plotted perspective studies, and laborious craftsmanship

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Marcel Duchamp, Nude (Study), Sad Young Man on a Train and Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912)

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Surrealism

Dadaism led to “surrealism” an art movement that began in the 1920’s. Surrealism was basically a pictorial art that was inspired by Freud’s teachings that the human mind conceals hidden depths.
The surrealists sought to explore the unconscious mind through dream imagery, fantasies, and hallucinations in a direct fashion.
The Spanish painter Salvador Dali (1904-89) and the Swiss painter Paul Klee (1879-1940) were the leading artists of surrealism.
Sometimes the great Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-54) is considered a surrealist.
Henri Mattisse continued to paint expressionist works, as did German painter Max Beckmann (1884-1950) whose works register horror at the era’s turbulent events.

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory (1931)

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Salvador Dali, “The Great Masturbator” (1929) and “Soldier Take Warning” (1942)

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Paul Klee “Senecio” (1922) and Flower Myth (1918)

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Frida Kahlo, “The Two Fridas” (1939)
Some consider Kahlo a surrealist others consider her a muralist

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Frida Kahlo, “The Broken Column” (1944) and “Girl with Death Mask” (1938)

Henri Matisse “Decorative Figure in an Oriental Setting” (1925)

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Max Beckmann, “The Departure” (1932-35)

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Max Beckmann, “The Night” (1918-9)

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Le Corbusier, Savoye House (1929-31) and Walter Gropius, The Bauhaus (1925-6)

Architectural style became sleek, geometrical, and devoid of ornament, reflecting the modern industrial age

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Film and Movies

The Silent Film era saw the first use of advanced story-telling techniques in D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” (1915). It had large-scale battle scenes, used close-ups and long shots, as well as crosscutting to tell a complex story in an exciting fashion.
Unfortunately “Birth of a Nation” was an incredibly racist film in which the Ku Klux Klan are the “heroes” and blacks (white actors in blackface are portrayed as animalistic villains).
The Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisentein pioneered the “montage” technique in his classic “The Battleship Potemkin” (1925).
Other filmmakers soon copied these methods and filmmaking became a serious art form as well as a popular part of mass culture.
Great German silent films include The “Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” (1922), “Nosferatu” (1922), and Metropolis (1927 ).

D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” (1915)

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Great German Expressionist Films of the Silent Era

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Film and Movies

We also see the rise of Hollywood, as the home of American filmmaking. Hollywood began dominating the film industry worldwide after the First World War. That dominance continues to this day.
Great classics such as “King Kong” (1931), “The Wizard of Oz” (1939), “Gone with the Wind” (1939), “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940), “Citizen Kane” (1941), “The Maltese Falcon” (1941), and “Casablanca” (1942) are made.
Film is also seen as a powerful weapon of propaganda. Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003), the German director and actress produces “Triumph of the Will” (1934) a documentary depicting the sixth Nazi Party Congress and “Olympia” (1938) a documentary of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Both films, beautifully directed, glorify Nazism.

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Radio and Music

The broadcasts of live drama, comedy, music and news characterized the Golden Age of Radio. Before television, radio was the dominant home entertainment medium.
The three major television networks NBC, CBS, and ABC began as radio networks.
During the Golden Age of Radio, radio featured genres and formats popular in other forms of American entertainment—adventure, comedy, drama, horror, mystery, musical variety, romance, thrillers—along with classical music concerts, big band remotes, farm reports, news and commentary, panel discussions, quiz and game shows.
Music became more popularized and people could by recordings of their favorite music to play at home on phonographs.

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The Legacy of the Age of the Masses and the Zenith of Modernism

We still live in the Age of the Masses and high modernism.
The era was marked by the most destructive wars in human history.
The worldwide mass culture exploded with movies, radio, newspapers, and this mass culture began to dominate public life.
Advances in medicine, vaccinations and antibiotics resulted in longer life spans.
American emerged as a world leader politically, economically, and militarily. But perhaps more significantly, America emerged as a world leader culturally.