Original subtitles

The 20th century was a time of incredible change.

(Hitler speaking German language)

Unspeakable horrors

and amazing leaps of scientific discovery.

It was a century marked by events

that united and divided us.

From great feats to great wars.

(loud explosion)

With advancements and setbacks

that showed us the power of many, the power of one.

I have a dream.

A century of revolutions,

evolutions,

and retributions.

He's been shot.

A century made by conflicts and crimes,

inventions and entertainment,

politics, protests,

discoveries and disasters.

Oh, the humanity!

We will count down

the 101 events of the 20th century.

Their stories form the tapestry of our history

and shape the world in which we live.

(dramatic marching music)

In this episode...

The workers did one individual task

as opposed to doing multiple tasks.

So they were no longer craftsmen.

They were workers.

The United States regarded the 20th century

as the American century,

and yet in that American century

the first man in space was Russian.

Women think that the peaceful methods

just clearly aren't working.

The government won't listen to their peaceful methods,

so it's time for force.

(light cheerful music) (crowd cheering)

(light dramatic music)

(faint gunfire)

After the devastation of The Great War,

the war to end all wars,

the world started the slow march

to an even greater conflict.

(crowd shouting)

An uneasy peace had followed the 1918 Armistice

and the 1919 Treaty of Versailles

where Germany was stripped of her territories

and held to the high cost of war reparations.

(melancholy instrumental music)

In the midst of turmoil, Hitler rose to power in Germany

promising to erase the humiliation

of the nation's World War I defeat.

His aim was not just regaining territories

lost after Versailles,

but expanding the German empire into Eastern Europe.

Germany's expansionism between 1936 and 1939,

first in the Rhineland, then in Austria and Czechoslovakia

went unchallenged by the world's leaders.

Hitler next turned his sights on Poland.

Hitler's foreign policy against Poland

had changed in the 1930s.

In the early 1930s he was trying to get Poland on side,

chiefly because he saw the opportunity

to use Poland's really quite effective armed forces

against the greater enemy which was Russia.

When it became quite clear

that the Pols wouldn't go for that

and they were determined on their territorial integrity,

he realized he was gonna have to dismember Poland.

Hitler betrayed his agreement

with the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain

by occupying the whole of Czechoslovakia.

The British government reacted in April 1939

by promising to aid Poland if it was attacked.

Hitler signed a nonaggression pact

with Stalin's Soviet Union

that would keep it out of the conflict,

while a secret additional protocol

meant the USSR could take Finland, the Baltic states,

and the eastern third of Poland.

Molotov and von Ribbentrop got together,

and the Nazis and Communists signed the pact.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact

made it possible for Hitler to go to war with Poland

with the knowledge that there was a good chance

this was gonna lead to an extension

of the war with Britain and France,

because Britain and France

had guaranteed Poland's territorial integrity.

Because he knew that he wouldn't also be faced

with a war with Russia.

So it's very much a piece of diplomacy.

As dawn broke on the first of September,

1.5 million German troops rolled into Poland

along its borders with German-controlled territory.

The German POL

begins its ruthless march of conquest

and sets the stage for World War II.

Simultaneously,

the Luftwaffe bombed Polish airfields,

and German warships and U-boats

attacked Polish naval forces in the Baltic Sea.

Poland never really did get mobilized.

The Blitzkrieg swept through like lightning.

The British government replied

by sending a note to the German government

demanding that German forces withdraw.

The demand went unanswered.

On the third of September,

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain

declared Britain at war with Germany.

The immediate reaction of the allies

to the invasion of Poland was to declare war on Germany,

but the actual practical effect of what they would do next

was problematic because there was no easy way

they could get troops and material into assist Poland.

So in effect,

although for all these grand statements of support,

Poland was left to its fate by the allies.

Poland's fate was invasion,

occupation and division.

The first casualty of a war without parallel.

The long-term ramifications of Hitler's invasion of Poland

was the start of a European war, and ultimately it did lead

to the start of the Second World War.

A war that eventually would result in Germany's defeat.

(gentle music)

(moves into light dramatic music)

An invention

that will be both celebrated and reviled.

It will revolutionize the car industry

and set us on a path to mass production.

(gentle guitar music)

The horseless carriage first appeared

in the late 19th century.

Cars were handmade.

They were beautifully produced by craftsmen

who labored over them for many, many weeks.

And if you could imagine, they were chauffeur-driven.

If you could afford a car, you could afford a chauffeur.

Ford saw the potential

in the automobile industry

and dreamed of putting everyone behind the wheel of a car.

His first car, he called it a quadricycle.

He began with an idea

that most people thought wouldn't work.

Henry Ford first starting making the Model T in 1908,

and at that time he produced a car

that was strikingly different to the luxury cars of the day.

It was small, it was lightweight,

it had a small four-cylinder engine,

and people criticized it

because they didn't think it was strong enough.

But it had incredibly strong axles

and leaf springs made of Canadian steel,

and it made it a fantastic four-wheel drive vehicle.

(gentle guitar music)

Unlike other cars,

the Model T featured interchangeable parts,

which meant that every Model T produced on the assembly line

used the same valves, gas tanks, and tires

so they could be assembled in an organized

and repetitive fashion

which increased reliability and lowered the cost.

Ford's greatest innovation and cost-saver

was how the parts were put together.

So Henry thought "I've got the car.

"Now how can I create and build it much faster?"

So he had a good think about it,

and he was really big on sort of time and motion studies.

And he thought, "Oh, if I can get this car made quicker,

"we could make more of them and sell them cheaper."

So that was his ultimate aim,

to bring the car to the masses,

and he could only do that by making them more cheaply.

Ford had been impressed

with the efficiency of slaughterhouse assembly lines

and grain warehouse conveyor belts in the Midwest.

And they did it with a series of conveyor belts

and amazing gravity-fed slides.

And the work was all brought to the car itself.

And the workers did one individual task

as opposed to doing multiple tasks,

so they were no longer craftsmen.

They were workers.

Assembly time was sped up

from more than 12 hours to 90 minutes.

By 1918, half of the cars on U.S. roads were Ford Model T's.

Ford's factories have been credited and blamed

with accelerating the population shift

from rural areas to cities.

Another of Ford's visions that would become enshrined

in the industrial labor movement

was the five-day, 40-hour work week.

Ford championed hours being reduced,

believing leisure time was not only beneficial

and valuable for his workers,

but also something to be enjoyed

by all social and economic classes.

So he had three eight-hour shifts

and ran the factory 24 hours a day.

So a Model T came off the production line

every 1 1/2 minutes, and it was just phenomenal.

It made such a huge difference.

Other industries adopted Ford's production model,

and by the end of the 20th century

all mass-produced items, from tinned food,

to micro processes and teddy bears,

rolled off of assembly lines all around the world.

(bell whistles)

Gotta go now.

(light dramatic music)

In 1962 the United States

and the Soviet Union faced off

with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

14 days in which the threat of nuclear war

was more real and present

than at any other moment in history.

(dramatic music)

The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962

was the most dangerous episode

in the history of the Cold War

when it seemed likely that the Cold War

would become a hot war.

On October 14, 1962,

an American plane flying over Cuba

had photographed medium-ranged

Soviet missiles being assembled.

Tensions had existed between Cuba and the United States

since Castro's communist takeover in 1959,

but Cuba was of course on good terms with the Soviet Union.

The Soviets were installing ballistic missiles

90 miles off the coast of Florida.

Castro maybe the figurehead of Cuba,

but in fact he is a mere pawn in a Soviet gambit

which threatens world peace.

The American President John F. Kennedy

was faced with choosing how to respond to this threat.

When he listed all the options that he could take,

they were all military options.

So what is a good thing

is that Kennedy didn't make a snap decision,

that he was prepared to keep an open mind

and be prepared to change his mind.

After much debate with his team of advisers,

Kennedy decided on a naval blockade of Cuba.

So at 7:00 p.m. on the 22nd of October 1962,

Kennedy delivers a major television and radio address

in which he says to the American people two things.

Firstly, you need to know

that there are Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba,

and secondly, I'm gonna respond with a naval blockade.

The path we have chosen for the present

is full of hazards, but the greatest danger of all

would be to do nothing.

(dramatic music)

Soviet ships approached the blockade

and the world held its breath.

The Soviet ships stopped,

and the Soviet submarine backed off

when the U.S. dropped warning charges around it.

Letters passed between the leaders

with demands and counter-demands,

but the specter of mutually-assured destruction

meant that neither wanted a nuclear war.

On October 28th,

the removal of nuclear weapons from Cuba was agreed.

(dramatic music)

To the public, Kennedy's show of force

had made the Soviet Union dismantle

and remove their missiles,

but unbeknownst to them,

the Soviet Union had asked for something in return.

America complied, removing their own missiles from Turkey.

What's interesting to consider

are the broad implications of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The attempts of Kennedy, attempts of the Kennedy presidency,

I think it is a turning point in his presidency.

And I think what the Cuban Missile Crisis does

is it furnishes him with a visceral understanding

of the dangers of the nuclear age.

[President Kennedy] These new weapons

are not in your interest.

They contribute nothing to your peace and well-being.

They can only undermine it.

And if you look at the final year of his presidency,

the final year of his life, you see that Kennedy shifts.

He begins to look to find ways to reduce Cold War tensions.

Although communications improved

with a new hotline between Washington and Moscow,

tensions remained between the two superpowers,

and the Cold War continued

for three decades after the incident,

but never again to return to the brink of nuclear war.

Our goal is not the victory of might,

but the vindication of right.

Not peace at the expense of freedom,

but both peace and freedom here in this hemisphere,

and we hope around the world.

(light dramatic music)

At the dawn of the 20th century,

two brothers' ingenuity would turn a flight of fancy

into a viable mode of transportation.

(aircraft puttering)

One that would bring the world to our fingertips.

(gentle music)

Orville and Wilbur Wright were not the first people to fly,

but their achievement at Kitty Hawk in 1903,

the first controlled powered flight,

was a vital milestone in the development of aviation.

Originally bicycle makers,

they began to wonder how a pilot

might balance an aircraft in the air

just as a cyclist balances his bicycle on the road.

The biggest thing they found was

that the ratio of span to width of the wing

that was in all the experimental data

from other inventors was wrong,

and that was the key to setting up an aircraft

that could fly well.

Then for control, they watched the birds

and noticed the birds had adjusted their wingtip feathers

when they wanted to turn.

And so they worked out a system of warping the wings

to change the lift on the wingtips

so the aircraft could roll as it turned.

Wilbur and Orville Wright

gave the glider a water-cooled engine of their own design

and two chain-driven 8 1/2 foot pusher propellers.

(aircraft puttering)

Then on the 17th of December 1903,

they made the first sustained controlled flight

in a powered aircraft

along a windswept beach in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

They were in the air for 59 seconds.

They did four flights.

The first one was 12 seconds.

The last one was 59 seconds

and they traveled about 120 meters.

It was the first time an aircraft had taken off,

attained a higher altitude,

and landed again under its own power.

It proved that flight was possible.

It proved their theories

that their calculations were correct

and you could build on that,

and it fired enthusiasm around the world.

So in the 10 years that followed

there were hundreds of people

building aeroplanes that worked.

Following the Wright brothers

came a roster of pioneers and daredevils

whose feats in fast aviation and aircraft design.

Alcock and Brown, Lindbergh, Bleriot,

Kingsford Smith, Amy Johnson, and Amelia Earhart.

Their legacy is global air travel

and an aviation industry

that has become one of the biggest, most innovative,

and most important industries in the world.

It's hard to imagine

what our life today would be without aeroplanes.

It's certainly reduced the distance between peoples,

not just physically

but also in their understanding of each other.

The freedom that flight offers us extends much farther

than merely breaking the physical bonds of Earth.

(light dramatic music)

(gentle music)

In the dark days following the Second World War,

a new international movement emerged.

One seeking to enshrine

the same fundamental human rights for all people,

regardless of their gender, race, or religious observance.

(crowd shouting) (gentle music)

To a world recently devastated by war,

the horror of the Nazi's gas chambers

and concentration camps could not be ignored.

Obviously coming out of that people were concerned with

how to ensure that it didn't happen again.

The idea was that the Nazi regime

had been a grotesque violator of human rights.

So if you wanted to prevent a Nazi Germany

from ever rising again,

you had to have basically a list

of the rights that every human being was entitled to,

and so fundamentally human rights

were about creating a structure for peace

after World War II.

The first challenge

for the international community

was deciding the role governments would play

in respecting, protecting, and promoting human rights.

(metal clinking and loud footsteps)

The League of Nations was replaced

by the creation of the United Nations in 1945,

and its primary goal of bolstering international peace

was underpinned by the creation of agencies

tasked with ensuring no one would ever again

be unjustly denied life, freedom, food, and shelter.

One of the most vocal champions of the cause

was Eleanor Roosevelt.

Mrs. Roosevelt is assured

of a very warm welcome on her visit to Britain

to unveil President Roosevelt's statue in London

on the 12th of April.

She was of course the wife of the former U.S. President,

the late U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt,

and so his successor, Harry Truman,

appointed her as a U.S. representative to the U.N.,

and from that position

building on her very long history of engagement

in humanitarian causes and her very high public profile,

she was appointed to head the Human Rights Commission

that did the drafting

of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Over the course of a year,

commission concluded its priority should be developing

a human rights declaration rather than a treaty.

This Universal Declaration of Human Rights

may well become the international Magna Carta

of all men everywhere.

Presented to the United Nations

on the 10th of December 1948,

it codified 30 articles of human rights

into a single document.

Its name, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

emphasizing a set of standard of rights

for all people everywhere.

Although not binding,

the declaration became a part of the fabric

of the U.N. itself.

Despite this, the second half of the 20th century

continued to be marred

by human rights abusers around the world

with no U.N. action.

We know that there's lots of wonderful

aspirational pieces of paper

articulating these human rights,

but enforcement has been weak.

The U.N.'s first Special Court

was created in 1993

to investigate charges of genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The U.N. investigation

led to a four-year trial in The Hague,

one of the most important war crimes cases

since the Nuremberg trials.

It's changed the way we think.

We talk about global justice now

in the language of human rights.

Every country basically accepts the principle

that when you develop a foreign policy

you have to take into account

how other countries treat their own citizens.

That's a really revolutionary change.

(light dramatic music)

(gentle music)

In the first half of the 20th century,

poliomyelitis, or polio,

was a word that struck fear into the hearts of parents.

A scourge of children worldwide,

one that modern science could defeat.

At its peak, polio paralyzed or killed

more than half a million people worldwide every year.

In the United States, the 1952 epidemic

became the worst outbreak in the nation's history

with close to 58,000 cases reported.

The reasons why that happened counterintuitive,

it was because of improved sanitation,

it was because of us living in cities,

it was because of industrialization,

and what that meant is that there was less exposure

particularly to children to certain viruses

so they didn't gain an immunity

that they might have in the past.

Children were most susceptible

with effects ranging from fever and limb stiffness

to severe paralysis.

Perhaps the worst feature of the disease

has been a feeling of hopelessness

at the prospect of many months in the grip of paralysis.

Future U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt

contracted the disease when he was 39,

spurring his interest in finding a cure.

His March of Dimes foundation

backed research into the disease

giving grants to scientists.

One of the scientists to receive funding was Jonas Salk

who began studying the disease in 1947.

In 1952 after successfully inoculating thousands of monkeys,

Salk began the risky step of testing the vaccine on humans.

He found that his vaccine was effective,

but he had difficulty

in getting permission to test it on humans.

And the reason was

there had been previous polio vaccines tested

that had resulted in deaths.

Also he was a man who had the courage of his convictions,

and he believed that he had found the vaccine

that people needed.

And because of the epidemic-like situation of polio,

he wanted to act quickly.

So he did what other scientists have done before him,

but not very often.

He tested it on himself and his family.

(gentle music)

(moves into gentle bright music)

In April of 1954,

trials were extended to nearly two million schoolchildren.

Salk's polio pioneers.

These were the largest clinical trials

for a public health experiment in American history.

The vaccine has been subjected

to the most stringent safety measures

by the manufacturers and the Medical Research Council.

Salk's vaccine

was licensed for use in April 1955.

The same day it was announced to the world's media

as safe, effective, and potent.

By 1962, the number of annual polio cases dropped

from 45,000 to just 910.

Over in Russia another American scientist,

Dr. Albert Sabin, was working on what would become

a more effective treatment, as it could be taken orally.

Once Sabin's oral vaccine became available in 1962,

it quickly supplanted Salk's injected vaccine.

Like Salk, Sabin also gifted his vaccine to the public good.

(gentle music)

The two vaccines had largely eradicated the polio virus

for most parts of the world by the end of the 20th century.

Well, I think vaccination was extraordinary,

the impact it had.

It's actually taking away from society's life-changing

or life-destroying diseases

and making it better for everyone.

And I think polio is a brilliant example of that.

(dramatic music)

For as long as we've looked at the night sky,

we have dreamed of visiting the stars.

In the 1950s,

humanity would strive to make this dream a reality.

(gentle music)

With the world settling into a Cold War,

outer space became the frontier

where the USA and the USSR

test their might against each other.

The space race began in earnest in 1955

when both countries announced they would launch satellites

out of the earth's atmosphere into orbit.

One, blast!

Both the Soviet Union and the United States

officially proclaimed

that they were agencies of human progress.

The United States making the world freer,

and the Soviet Union making the world equal.

So in that respect they were very similar,

but their mental course, they always compared themselves

very closely with one another.

The Soviets won the first leg

when on the fourth of October 1957

they launched Sputnik 1,

putting the first human-made object into space.

We in the West

had expected that the United States would be the first.

Well, no the Russians have done it.

They've done it first

and they've done it with complete success.

All Americans were raised with the idea

that they were the world's leading power,

and Sputnik ended that security.

They were horrified.

About the size of a beach ball,

the device weighed 83.6 kilograms,

was only a half a meter wide,

and carried four radio antennas

to broadcast signals back to Earth.

The Soviets caught them by surprise in more ways than one.

It caught them by surprise in terms of

just doing it for the first time.

It caught them by surprise

in terms of the size of the satellite.

Sputnik orbited the earth for 96 days

before burning up in the atmosphere.

With Sputnik's successful launch,

the race was now on in earnest,

and America rushed to catch up.

On the 12th of April 1961,

Russian cosmonaut Major Yuri Gagarin

became the first man in space.

The United States regarded the 20th century

as the American century,

and by the time Kennedy became president

it regarded itself as the most advanced,

the most progressive society in the world.

And yet in that American century

the first man in space was Russian.

John F. Kennedy announced to Congress in 1961

that he intended to put a man on the moon

by the end of the decade.

The dramatic achievements in space

which occurred in recent weeks

should have made clear to us all,

as did the Sputnik in 1957,

the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere

who are attempting to make a determination

of which road they should take.

And by the end of the decade

two American men had stepped onto the moon.

Just imagine before Sputnik there was the earth,

at 300,000 kilometers away was the moon,

and apart from the occasional passing small pieces of rock,

there was nothing.

Sputnik for the first time

was something else in orbit around the earth,

and that has had enormous implications

and has led to incredible opportunities.

But it opens up the possibility of star wars,

thus if there were a war, a great war between great powers,

satellite weapons and antisatellite weapons would be used.

Satellites would be used to destroy satellites, and so on.

So it opens up a whole new dimension to war.

The U.S. had taken the lead in the space race,

but every step and every achievement

has followed a path first placed by Sputnik.

(radio chatter)

(light dramatic music)

In China, the 20th century began

with the fall of the last imperial dynasty.

The newly formed fragile Republic

could not withstand the pressure of internal division

and invasion by Japan.

Then in the wake of World War II,

a new China would be formed.

(loud explosion)

(crowd cheering)

The World War ended in 1945,

but China was not free from conflict or foreign occupation.

There was this sense that all right,

the Japanese had been beaten

but they're still around (laughs).

The Americans are still here.

We've got Soviets in the North.

There is an anxiety, a real angst around this kind of

sense of when are we gonna get our peace dividend?

Two opposing forces

that had been contesting control since 1927

launched full-scale civil war:

the Nationalist inheritors of the Republican government

led by Chiang Kai-shek,

and the Chinese Communist party led by Mao Zedong.

Initially the far larger

and much better equipped Nationalist force held sway.

It changed slowly, but it changed dramatically.

Through 1948 particularly,

the Communist Red Army built success on success.

Today,

communism has swept like a red tide

over this ancient civilization on the old capital of Peking

down to the Yangtze and Nanking.

When every national

and international attempt at conciliation failed,

Chiang Kai-shek was finally forced into exile.

Millions had fought.

Perhaps six million were casualties.

The victory of Mao and the Communist party was complete,

and on October the 1st, 1949, in Tiananmen Square

Mao declared the People's Republic of China.

There is a sense I think in the population

of at least a passive hope that things will be different.

That this new People's Republic of China

would take up the mantle that the Republic of China

had sort of left behind of China as to being a world power,

having peace and unification.

(dramatic music) (loud marching)

China signed a treaty with the Soviet Union

and proposed to follow their example

building their new nation as quickly as they could.

They would industrialize and improve food production

over a five-year plan.

Most of the developed world led by the United States

continued to recognize Chiang Kai-shek

on the island of Taiwan as the Chinese head of government.

They blocked the People's Republic entry

into the United Nations

in favor of Chiang Kai-shek for more than 20 years,

which served only to help Mao tighten his grip on power.

The Communist party as a body of the central committee

had lots of revolutionary experience,

lots of military experience,

and so they were able to take advantage

of the Nationalist mistakes

during the Second World War and after during the Civil War,

paint the Nationalists as puppets of America

in the late 1940s, which financially speaking was true.

(bell dings)

But the People's Republic

that Mao declared in October 1949

had to be acknowledged as a reality,

which was finally done

during President Nixon's trip to meet Mao in 1972.

I have taken this action because of my profound conviction

that all nations will gain from a reduction of tensions

and a better relationship between the United States

and the People's Republic of China.

(gentle music)

It's an epic impact.

China's participation in world organizations.

The United Nations, anti-proliferation treaties,

global climate accords, for example.

Financial deals where by the 1980s

the Chinese economy has grown.

The Chinese model has expanded,

and we're in now today with 1.3 billion Chinese.

A major market for any country's goods

and a huge cultural power as well.

(light dramatic music)

At the beginning of the Second World War,

countries like Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands

were still the greatest maritime empires of the world.

The war would change that.

In its wake, a movement towards self-government

would sweep across continents ending the Imperial Age.

The movement to independence

was at its strongest in the Indian subcontinent

where many have been living under British rule

for 200 years.

The Second World War had a massive impact.

Britain is under far more pressure,

and it's less able to maintain its relationship

with the subcontinent.

So they're more willing, perhaps,

to give up their colonial holdings.

But at the same time,

the pressure builds within India during that time,

and there's a sense that actually

we've put up with this long enough.

So by the time you reach 1945,

it's really expected their independence will be imminent.

Britain, under the Labour government,

committed to implementing welfare programs

which would make the maintenance of empire

even less affordable.

They were determined to relinquish control of India

as soon as possible.

The last viceroy's task

was to assess and implement their withdrawal.

And all the familiar activities

to be witnessed in this teeming city

were being carried on as usual,

and there was an undercurrent of pent up excitement,

for everywhere knew that India, Hindustan India,

was now to be free and independent.

The problem was that though the population

of the subcontinent was largely united against the British,

it was not united amongst itself.

The most dangerous fault line

ran between the Muslim and Hindu communities.

Aware to this antagonism

seemed to be a redrawing of the map,

petitioning the subcontinent into Muslim

and Hindu majority nations.

The actual decision to partition

is made in the middle of 1947.

The line is drawn by Viscount Cyril Radcliffe from Britain.

He's never been east of Paris before.

He's brought in and has six weeks to draw a partition line

for the two states that are Muslim majorities

and are considered appropriate for partition.

On August 15, 1947,

the British left the subcontinent.

India and the newly created Pakistan

were officially independent nations.

We trust as to all responsible Indians

that this great experiment will be successful.

The result of that, that that line

only gets announced right at the last minute,

there's real doubt about which

side of the line they will end up on.

So across the whole of North India

there is a vast movement of people

estimated to be about 10 to 12 million people

that are on the move in the middle of 1947.

And they're moving Muslims to the northwest

and to the northeast

to try and enter the new areas of Pakistan.

And Hindus and Sikhs leaving the northwest and the northeast

are moving into what they hope will be India

and where they think they will be safer.

Violence had been growing

and would ultimately result in one million deaths.

Many of them people moving on foot to find safety.

This is one of the most destructive,

stressing events of the 20th century,

and I think most immediately that is overlooked essentially.

For the British, it's very much in their interest

to portray this is as a success.

As a moment of handing over, handing back power.

The fulfillment of their colonial plans.

So that picture that's really presented

in Britain in the 40s and into the 50s

of the successful end of empire with a promise fulfilled,

that's very powerful, and I think that lasts for a long time

and means that the violence,

the horror is really overlooked.

(gentle music)

A decade after the First World War,

another crisis gripped the world.

It was the bursting of a financial bubble,

and it would contribute to a broader economic collapse,

a great depression.

(gentle guitar music)

(light jazz music)

The post-war decade of the 1920s

had been a period of increasing prosperity.

The United States particularly emerged

from the First World War

with an economic strength that was unrivaled.

First of all, arming the allies

and then towards the end of the war joining the war,

the war effort had created an enormous

sort of superheated American economy

which was churning out enormous amounts

of manufactured and agricultural goods.

All of which got very high price markets

from the government or from the allies

who were desperate for military or agricultural supplies.

The Roaring 20s with its jazz clubs,

prohibition, illegal drinking, and daring fashions

was a time of excitement.

The U.S. stock market soared and flourished.

Speculators bought into Wall Street on margin,

paying only part of a stock's worth when they bought it

and the rest when they sold it.

But, of course, if the stock fell,

they could never recoup the deferred amount

of the purchase price.

Debt was everywhere.

Well, a bit like organized crime and prohibition,

the speculation economy became a symbol of the 1920s

and the Swinging 20s, a period of very ostentatious

and definite economic growth.

(people talking)

That environment of risk and speculation

came crashing down on the 29th of October, 1929.

In history's worst panic,

over 16 million shares are dumped on the market.

Over $14 billion go with them,

and so goes the confidence of a nation.

Billions of dollars were lost,

wiping out thousands of investors.

Those that had bought on the margins

were forced to pay up on stocks that were now worthless.

The (mumbles) was quick and savage.

The banks, particularly in rural areas,

struggled to keep their doors open,

causing depositors to panic and withdraw their money.

In just three years more than 5,000 banks shut their doors

threatening the entire U.S. banking system.

If you were an ordinary person

with a small amount of life saving in a bank account

and your bank collapsed, you'd lost your money.

It was gone.

And so that, of course, had an absolutely chilling effect

on people's economic well-being and their ability to spend,

and it quickly moved from a short-term crash

into a long-term structural depression.

The country's largest banks

called in their short-term foreign loans,

showing how interconnected the world's economies had become

and turning a shock into a shockwave

that traveled the world.

When the worldwide depression

hit the United States, the fact that it was international,

that no people were spared,

meant very little to the man suddenly without work.

As national economies struggled to survive,

political instability and the rise of both left

and right-wing extremists

started the march towards another world war.

(gentle guitar music) (loud marching)

(light dramatic music)

The Berlin Wall created a physical and ideological divide,

literally cutting apart through the historic German capital.

It embodied the standoff between world superpowers

for almost 45 years.

A symbol of division,

its fall would make a powerful statement of change.

(people shouting)

(tank rattling)

(loud explosion)

At the end of the Second World War,

Germany was divided into four occupation zones:

The Soviets in the East

and the U.S., Britain, and France in the West.

After the three allied zones

were unified into a single unit,

the Federal Republic of Germany,

commonly known as West Germany,

tensions with the Soviets increased.

For those straddling under the Communist system,

West Berlin promised a better life.

More than 2.5 million Germans fled from east to west

over the next decade following the war.

To help the exodus, East German soldiers

laid almost 50 kilometers of barbed wire barrier

through the heart of Berlin

during the night of August 12, 1961.

Three days later, a concrete wall had begun to be built

to replace the barbed wire.

The battle cage had previously been

a comparatively flimsy affair.

Now it was to be impregnable apparently.

The Communists did the West an enormous favor.

They built the biggest advertisement possible

for free market democracy,

and the West used that wall in its propaganda.

And they needed it developed,

because of course on the western side

people could graffiti on it.

I mean perfectly ordinary people.

They graffitied their own liberal

and libertarian messages messages on the wall,

and it became a great celebration

for 28 years of human freedom quite spontaneously.

By the late 1980s,

demands for greater personal freedoms in East Germany

were growing as Europe's political landscape changed.

With public opposition rising,

East German officials tried to stem protests

by announcing a softening of the travel regime.

The evening of the 9th of November, 1989,

a government spokesman announced by mistake

that people would be able to travel more freely immediately.

Today we have decided to introduce

measures permitting every citizen of the DDR

to leave for the Federal Republic by any crossing points.

(people shouting)

A few hours later,

confused guards were faced with growing crowds

demanding to be let out.

By 10:45 p.m., guards opened the gates,

and tens of thousands of East Germans poured out.

Celebrations continued long into the night

in front of and on top of the wall.

The fall of the wall, that had profound effects.

It meant, of course, that the great symbolic benefit

for the West was gone, but it didn't really need it anymore.

It then conquered East Germany and Eastern Europe.

Indeed that's what the expansion of the EU was all about,

imposing the free market and democracy on Eastern Europe

and turning all Europe into one capitalist democratic space.

It was a moment signaling

the last throws of the Cold War.

Reunification talks began soon after,

and a year later on the 3rd of October 1990

East and West Germany reunited for the first time

in 45 years.

(people shouting)

(light dramatic music)

In the early years of the 20th century,

the rights of British citizens

were divided on gender lines.

Women were fighting passionately for change.

A battle that would see its share of tragedy.

(people talking)

Before the Great War, the issue that occupied women

in Britain and many other parts of the world was suffrage.

The right to vote.

In England, the movement split into factions.

The mild-mannered suffragists

who were willing to work with the government

and fundraise for their effort,

and the more violent suffragettes

who relied on hunger strikes

and public attacks to further their cause.

Their motto "Deeds not words"

separated them from their sister group.

Women think that the peaceful methods

just clearly aren't working.

The government won't listen to their peaceful methods,

so it's time for force.

A minority of women,

and they're the ones we call the suffragettes,

they were the ones breaking windows,

chaining themselves to railings.

And also you'll hear often that they did things

like set fire to post boxes.

Emily Wilding Davison was a governess

passionate about the suffragette movement.

She became a full-time member of the group,

quit her teaching job, and threw herself off a balcony

to try to draw attention to the plight of the suffragettes.

(people shouting) (hooves rumbling)

On Derby Day at Epsom 1913,

she walked out onto the racetrack,

and in her last great act for suffrage

tried to attach the suffragettes' colors

onto King George the Fifth's horse.

Within seconds, Emily Davison had been trampled to death.

A return train ticket in her purse found after the event

suggests that she had not thought

she would die on the track that day,

but her past behavior indicated she was at peace

with the possibility of becoming a martyr.

(celebratory band music)

Women in England chose to hold their suffragette efforts

during the First World War as a gesture of patriotism.

But following the armistice,

they resumed their agitation until a limited franchise

was granted in 1918.

The right was extended to all women aged over 21 in 1928,

by which time Emily Davison had become a symbol

for the suffrage movement.

And more broadly, the women's movement,

which over the course of the 20th century,

achieved advances in career, academic opportunities,

and participation in government.

1931, and on the terrace

of the House of Commons a group of new MPs

being introduced by Lady Astor.

The transformation of views,

it shows how a fundamentalist tenet can change.

And I think it's the first big example in the 20th century.

There are others like changing attitudes

to race and immigration, to gay people,

but women's suffrage is the first.

There are many heroines

of the suffragette movement,

best known of those who were martyred to their cause

was Emily Wilding Davison.

(light dramatic music)

At the heart of Nazi policy

and Hitler's personal politics was so-called race theory.

It fueled a campaign of marginalization,

terror and control.

Its primary target and victim, the Jew.

(people shouting)

In September of 1935,

the viciously discriminatory Nuremberg laws were passed,

and the elimination of Jewish people

from positions of influence, authority,

and respect gathered pace.

(crowd shouting)

Jewish books were burned,

Jewish businesses were boycotted,

and it became illegal for Jews to marry German citizens.

Jews were becoming victims of increasing violence

leading up to the 1938 Night of Broken Glass, Kristallnacht.

While stories of wanton beatings and bullyings

in the darkened streets added to the terror.

After 1933 when the Nazis had seized power,

antisemitism became the doctrine of the state,

and that mandate was immediately translated into prejudice.

Jews in Germany experienced a bombardment

of public antisemitic symbols,

particularly in regional areas.

And it became clear for them

that they were not anymore welcome in Germany.

So prior to Kristallnacht,

there was already a wave of antisemitism in Germany

which excluded Jews from society.

Marking the anniversary

of Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch,

orders were sent out around 1:20 a.m.

to capitalize on an event in Paris.

(crowd shouting)

Two days earlier, a young Jewish man, Herschel Grynszpan,

had shot a German embassy official, Ernst vom Rath,

whose wounds resulted in his death.

The German government used Grynszpan's act as a cover.

They orchestrated attacks,

then claimed they had been the result

of spontaneous public outrage.

In the night of the 9th and 10th of November,

synagogues in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland

were burned down, razed to the ground.

Jewish shops were ransacked.

Properties and apartments were attacked,

and approximately 30,000 Jewish maids were arrested

and sent into the great concentration camps

to enforce the pressure upon Jews

to leave Germany as quickly as possible.

Under direction from their government,

the German police and the Hitler youth

defiled cemeteries and hospitals

forcing people out of their homes,

and forcing them to commit humiliating acts.

Their directives told them to target Jewish buildings.

Laws were tightened even further.

Jewish property was given to Aryan business owners.

Jewish children were barred from school.

Many Jews had hope that democracy would return to Germany

and that they could continue to live in Germany,

but the event of Kristallnacht,

they realized quite clearly the time has come to leave.

That they had no right anymore to live in Germany,

and Kristallnacht was also the turning point

for the Nazi policy

on the so-called twisted road to Auschwitz.

(crowd shouting)

Within a year of Kristallnacht,

the Second World War began drawing Jews

of Central and Eastern Europe into the Nazi madness,

creating a holocaust

that took the lives of six million Jewish people.

(uplifting music)