What we learn from this is that no mistake can be erased from history just as no reparations can completely repair damage done. Germany's inability to carry her own weight during this time of trouble only prolonged the world economy, which was badly bruised and desperately needing to be healed.
2. Democracy became the word that was whispered across the globe during the twenties and thirties. The promise of democracy proved to be easier than the act of democracy. "Democracy seemed divisive and ineffective, so one country after another adopted a more authoritarian alternative during the twenties and early thirties" (Noble 1034). However, it is impossible to squash the human sprit that longs to be free. Noble asserts, "Democracy proved hard to manage in east-central Europe party because of special economic difficulties resulting from the breakup of the Habsberg system" (Noble 1035). In addition, he notes, "The countries of east-central Europe remained overwhelmingly agrarian, and this, too, proved unconducive to democracy" (1035). Growth and expansion work best under a democracy and the European communist were beginning to understand this.
There is no doubt communism was the result of governments looking for answers. Noble explains, "Communism and fascism were new and no one knew what they would mean to the nations or peoples that embraced them. But these two movements expanded political options and this made the political framework in Europe more complex and unstable during the 1930s" (1035-56). The appeal of communism was infectious and Noble claims, "From its founding in March 1919 until the spring of 1920, as a wave of leftist political agitation and labor unrest spread throughout Europe, the Comintern actively promoted the wider revolution that Lenin and his colleagues had anticipated when they took power in 1917" (1039). The Soviet bloc experienced rapid growth and "cut through all the revolutionary romanticism and rhetoric to show the others what the Leninist strategy, or communism, meant" (1040). The need for some type of leadership brought on the greatest wave of communism. The timing was right and most of the countries affected were still reeling from the war.
3....
Communism, although it remained one of the most popular movements in Europe, was loosing its grasp by the 1970s. After Yugoslavia's break in 1948, the movement lost momentum. This second break became "public and seemingly permanent" (Chambers 1086) and smaller groups in Western Europe followed the Yugoslavian model with criticism.
The "Polish example suggested to anticommunists all over the Soviet bloc that the communist system was open to challenge. As a result, anticommunism spread through east-central Europe by means of the domino effect that had preoccupied the soviets from the start, ultimately toppling the Soviet satellite system" (Chambers Noble 1200). Smaller countries were simply emulating Poland's model, seeking to negotiate a transfer of power from the communist leadership. While many transitions to a more relaxed government were peaceful, a "marked increase in illegal emigration from East Germany to the West had been one manifestation that discontent was reaching the breaking point" (Noble 1201). In November of 1989, the "regime of East Germany did what had been long seemed unthinkable: It opened the Berlin Wall, which was promptly dismantled altogether" (1201). This liberalization "proved too late, however; events outraced the control of even the most innovative and flexible of the East German communists. East Germans no longer aimed simply at reforming the communist system but at ending it altogether. As it even became possible to contemplate German reunification, the communist system in the East quickly dissolved" (Noble 1201). Reformers in the former Soviet bloc wanted "individual freedom, political democracy, and free-market capitalism" (Noble 1201). With the economic system crumbling, communism was in jeopardy. Events like the nuclear explosion at Chernobyl forced individuals to think beyond communism. Citizens were considering "unthinkable possibilities like privatization and a market economy" (Noble 1202).
Works Cited
Chamber, Mortimer, et al. The Western Experience. New York: Alfred a. Knopf. 1979.
Chodorow, Stanley. A History of the World. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers. 1986.
Craig, Albert, et…
