Four Threads for a Century
The course's last set of claims
- Total war and political instability in the first half of the 20th century gave way to a polarised state order during the Cold War and eventually to efforts at transnational union.
- The stresses of economic collapse and total war engendered internal conflicts within European states and created conflicting conceptions of the relationship between the individual and the state, as demonstrated in the ideological battle between and among democracy, communism, and fascism.
- Diverse intellectual and cultural movements questioned the existence of objective knowledge, the ability of reason to arrive at truth, and the role of religion in determining moral standards.
'Total war' means a war in which the state mobilises...
Labour, industry, food and opinion, not only an army.
And a fourth, about everyday life
- Demographic changes, economic growth, total war, disruptions of traditional social patterns, and competing definitions of freedom and justice altered the experiences of everyday life.
- Five causes listed for one effect — the CED is signalling that daily life has multiple, simultaneous drivers.
- 6.1's everyday-life thread returns, now with war and competing definitions of freedom added to it.
Select all three ideologies in the CED's battle.
'Between and among' also allows conflict within each camp.
'Total war' is a technical term here
- It means a war in which the state mobilises the whole society — labour, industry, food, opinion — not only an army.
- That is why the CED can put total war in the same sentence as internal conflict and everyday life.
- A war of that kind changes the state whether it is won or lost, which is 8.2's central point.
Select all the forces the CED says altered everyday life.
Five causes for one effect — multiple simultaneous drivers.
The CED names three ideologies, not two. The battle is between and among democracy, communism, and fascism — and "among" allows for conflict within each camp as well as between them, so a two-sided account of the century has dropped a dimension the CED kept.
Which of unit 8's threads?
Sort each statement into its thread.
Total war and instability gave way to a ____ state order during the Cold War.
And eventually to efforts at transnational union.
An ideological battle among three
- Between and among democracy, communism, and fascism — the CED names three, not two.
- The extra phrase and among allows for conflict within each camp as well as between them.
- So an answer that reduces the century to a two-sided contest has lost a dimension the CED preserved.
The conditions named here were all in place before 1914.
That is what makes them context rather than cause.
Writing the context
- The objective is the context in which global conflict developed in the 20th century.
- Conditions: unit 7's alliance system and Balkan crises, industrial capacity capable of total war, and no shared standard for settling disputes.
- Each of those was already in place before 1914 — that is what makes it context rather than cause.
A state that must feed, arm, employ and persuade an entire population in order to fight has taken on powers it will not readily give back. The war ends; the ministries do not close. That is why total war belongs in a sentence about the individual and the state.
Unit 8 opens four threads: total war and political instability gave way to a polarised state order and eventually to efforts at transnational union; economic collapse and total war created conflicting conceptions of the relationship between the individual and the state, seen in the battle between and among democracy, communism, and fascism; movements questioned objective knowledge, reason and religion's moral role; and five named forces altered the experiences of everyday life.