The twentieth-century world
History · Key Stage 3 · The School
Two wars
The First World War (1914–18) grew from alliances, imperial rivalry, militarism and a crisis nobody stopped; it killed some 17 million people and redrew the map. The Second (1939–45) killed an estimated 70–85 million, including the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered alongside Roma, disabled people and others. Both wars were fought by people from across the world's empires — Indian, African and Caribbean soldiers among them — which is often left out.
The end of empires
After 1945 empires unravelled fast. India and Pakistan became independent in 1947; partition displaced perhaps 15 million people and cost hundreds of thousands to over a million lives. Most of Africa became independent in the 1950s and 60s. Borders drawn by outsiders, sometimes in weeks, shaped conflicts that continue.
The order that followed
The United Nations (1945) was built to prevent another such war; the Cold War divided much of the world for forty years; and from the 1990s trade, travel and the internet tied economies together. Whether that order is holding is a live question, and a history lesson should present it as open rather than settled.
28 June 1914: Franz Ferdinand is shot. Then the system takes over. Austria-Hungary demands satisfaction from Serbia; Russia mobilises to protect Serbia; Germany, bound to Austria and facing a two-front war, activates a plan that requires attacking France FIRST and fast, through Belgium; Britain, treaty-bound to Belgium, declares war. By 4 August, most of Europe is at war over an assassination none of them ordered — because the timetables allowed nobody to wait.