Chapter 20: Collapse at the Center

The Great War which was called The First World War or World War because it was considered a new phase of world history. The Western Europe for more than a century dominated the center of the modern world system. The Europeans controlled the world's other people through their formal empires, their informal influence, or the weight of their numbers. European had the dominance as less than a half a century later. That was the start of the first World War. There was a rivalry, which was Italy and Germany in which they joined a fragmented territories into two major new powers around the 1870. By the 20th century the balance of power was expressed in two rival alliances. the Triple Alliance of Germany, Italy, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Triple Entente of Russia, France and Britain. The system of alliances intended to keep the peace created obligations that drew the Great Powers of Europe into a general war.

The Great Powers of Europe had to complete the colonies, sphere of influence, and superiority in armaments. There was a lot of men that were rushed into recruiting offices and a fear to what the war might end before they could enlist. Europe's armed rivalries had long ensured that military men enjoyed great social prestige, and most heads of state wore uniforms in public. The Great Powers had armies and excepted for Britain, relied on conscription. The rapid industrialization of warfare had generated an array of novel weapons, including submarines, tanks, airplanes, poison gas, machine guns, and barbed wire. The new military technology contributed casualties the war including some 10 million deaths the majority were male and twice that number were wounded, crippled, or disfigured. For women they would be no husbands or children.

World War I was represented as a political collapse of Europe, there was a catastrophe that suggested the Western capitalism system to fall as well. There was unemployed in both Germany and the United States that reached about 30% or more by 1932. Latin American countries who economies were based on the export of agriculture products and raw materials were also vulnerable to the world market. The Great Depression also challenged the government of industrialized capitalist countries and they believed that the economy would regulate itself through the market.