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(dramatic music)
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I'm Christopher Clark, Cambridge historian.
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I was born in Australia.
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For Europeans, that's practically
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the other end of the world.
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But the European continent and its incredible diversity
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always fascinated me.
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Even in the far off country where I grew up,
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I was always aware that so much of our world
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has its roots in Europe.
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And modern Europe is one of
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the greatest achievements in human history.
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I want to share the grand saga of this continent.
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And, in the process,
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I hope to rediscover its wonders for myself.
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(dramatic music)
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Today's leg of my journey begins in Paris
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with a meeting that might surprise you.
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Does this lady here look familiar to you?
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Well, it's no wonder.
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She's the little Paris sister of Lady Liberty in New York.
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The French gave the Statue of Liberty to the Americans
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as a gift in gratitude, it could be said,
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for America's role in inspiring
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the most important turning point in Europe's history.
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America had broken away from England.
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The American Declaration of Independence,
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which the Statue of Liberty holds in her arm,
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includes the lines "All men are created equal"
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and "They are endowed by their creator
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with certain inalienable rights,
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including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
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In the fledgling United States,
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it seemed freedom, equality, and progress reigned.
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Two years before the French Revolution,
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self-determination and the liberty of humankind
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were written into the American Constitution.
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It was as if the utopias of enlightened political theory
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had sprung to life.
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Pennsylvania, 1777.
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French nobleman Lafayette is fighting
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on the side of the American colonists
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for democracy and human rights
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and against the English colonial rulers
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whom the settlers see as their oppressors.
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The old order begins to falter
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in Europe and the rest of the world.
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The Americans man the barricades
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in what will become known as the Revolutionary War.
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In the previous year, the United States of America,
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as the colonists now call themselves,
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had declared its independence from England.
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(cheering)
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The Statue of Liberty in New York
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is still a symbol of freedom and democracy today.
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It was a gift from the French
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to the country that helped to spark a revolution
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in their own country.
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"L'Etat, ce moi."
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"I am the state."
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That's how the kings of France think.
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The Palace of Versailles just outside Paris
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is a manifestation of absolutism
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and of the existing European order.
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Many European monarchs model themselves on French royalty.
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The monarch holds all executive power.
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There's no formal separation of powers
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into executive, judiciary, and legislature.
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All chains of command converge
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on one person in one place, Versailles.
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This is a society of orders
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with different rights and responsibilities.
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The clergy, the nobility, and, of course,
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the third estate encompassing the rest of society.
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Those at the top of the pyramid wallow in luxury
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while the poor often go hungry.
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The days of absolutism were numbered.
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Have the courage to make use of your own reason.
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With these words, the Konigsberg philosopher Immanuel Kant
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summed up the meaning of enlightenment.
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Today, in what's sometimes called a post-factual era,
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his words are more important than ever.
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Profound discoveries in the field of the natural sciences
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had already paved the way.
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With their thinking and their precise reckoning,
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Galilei, Kepler, and Newton
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had already transformed human understanding
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of the world and the universe.
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When the French philosopher Rene Descartes declared,
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"I think, therefore I am,"
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he made the reflecting, questioning consciousness
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of an individual human being
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the fulcrum of our knowable existence.
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In the European salons, often run by high society ladies,
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the old order is increasingly called into question.
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Especially in France.
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Thinkers like Rousseau, Diderot, Montesquieu, and Voltaire
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extol the principles of human equality, tolerance,
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and the division of powers.
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In his nature, man is free.
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And all his actions must be based on reason.
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I tell everybody, think for yourself.
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We, ourselves, are responsible for what we do.
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But also for what we don't do.
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That's true, my dear Voltaire.
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But it's also important to set the limit on power.
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Experienced teachers have said,
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"Any man with power tend to abuse it."
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That is why the three powers of estate should be separated.
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The legislative, the executive, and the judicial.
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Freedom can only exist when
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the powers of the state are separated.
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Reason would mandate that, as well, don't you think?
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During the Enlightenment,
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knowledge is diligently collected and published
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in the form of encyclopedias.
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But these are not mere storehouses of knowledge.
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They are critical and argumentative.
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Ah, Monsieur Diderot, I am glad you could make it today.
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Come with me.
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Here, I bring you the author of the encylopedie
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that you hold in your hands.
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Oh, this here is a declaration of war against the king.
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And why is that?
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When man starts listening to the voice of reason,
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he will strangle the last king
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with the guts of the last priest.
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The writing is on the wall.
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Peasants and commoners are financing
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the extravagant lifestyle of the royal court.
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The nobility and clergy are largely exempt from taxation.
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The argument that this is a natural
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and God-given state of affairs
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comes to seem less persuasive.
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This is a menu from the court at Versailles.
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20 courses were served
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from jellied lobster and scallops in oyster sauce
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to morel souffle and leg of hare.
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And, while the nobles of Versailles reveled and feasted,
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the people in many parts of the country starved.
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The world of the court and the world of everybody else
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drifted apart.
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This was just one of the reasons
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why the French monarchy failed to make it through
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to the end of the 18th century.
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The fundamental problem was government debt.
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France has become the most populous country in Europe.
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25 million people live here.
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Food is scarce and prices have spiked.
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We want bread.
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Down with the king.
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We want bread.
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Down with the king.
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We want bread.
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In 1788, bad harvests
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and catastrophic weather events
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only make the situation worse.
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Bread, the main food of the poor,
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is suddenly much more expensive.
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The French decide to take things into their own hands.
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Food riots break out across the country,
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particularly in Paris.
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Take what you can.
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Take as much as you can carry.
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Do not leave anything behind.
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Keep your hands off.
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You hear me?
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Nothing.
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Take what you can.
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Take as much as you can carry.
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Do not leave anything.
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Take all the bread.
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And the king's soldiers simply stand back and watch.
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When order breaks down in the capital,
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they refuse to intervene against the revolutionaries.
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On the contrary, many side with the rebels,
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because there is unrest in the army, as well.
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By the late 1780s, there wasn't even enough money
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to cover monthly payments to the troops.
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A fully functional and strongly motivated army
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could easily have put down
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the small hunger riot at the Bastille.
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But France no longer possessed
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an army loyal enough to do that.
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On the morning of the 14th of July, 1789,
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an angry Parisian crowd storms
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the notorious state prison in the Bastille fortress.
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Their anger is directed at this symbol
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of the tyranny inflicted on them by the king and nobility.
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The revolutionaries demand
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freedom, equality, and brotherhood.
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But are these ideals really compatible with one another?
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Contention over this question
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will shape the force of the revolution.
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In June 1789, the third estate breaks away
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from the other two orders and convenes in assembly.
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Its members see themselves
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as representatives of the entire nation.
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Open disagreement, debate now becomes
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a central motor of political life.
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Drawing on the legacy of the American Revolution,
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General Lafayette and Honore Mirabeau
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draft a bill of human rights.
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Article one, men are born
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and remain free and equal in rights.
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Social distinctions can be founded only on the common good.
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(applause)
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Article two, the goal of any political association
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is the conservation of the natural
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and imprescriptible rights of man.
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These rights are liberty, property, safety,
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and resistance against oppression.
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(applause)
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Fearing that the revolution
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underway in France will threaten their security,
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the rulers of Prussia and Austria
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declare their military support for the French king.
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The armies marching to Paris in 1792
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are stopped by French revolutionary forces
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in a battle at Valmy.
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Historical events begin to unfold at a breathtaking pace.
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France becomes a republic.
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The king has been deposed and is a prisoner of the people.
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He is put on trial.
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Both Louis XVI and his queen are beheaded by guillotine.
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France enters an era of profound
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political polarization and radicalization.
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The body count goes up.
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Increasingly, the French revolutionaries
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became armed missionaries.
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Using violence to propagate their ideals.
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And that, too, is a European invention.
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The totalized application of a single political theory,
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whatever the human cost.
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Just across the river, in the Conciergerie Prison,
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2,780 people were swiftly processed
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by revolutionary tribunals and sentenced to death.
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And, throughout the country,
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executions during this period numbered
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in the tens of thousands.
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The revolutionaries wanted to liberate all of humanity.
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That was one of the things that made them so radical.
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And the French National Assembly
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was the first organization in Europe, in the world,
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to pose the question of whether and how
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one state could use military force
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to enforce the observation of human rights in another state.
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The age of the humanitarian intervention was born.
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The French National Assembly hopes to offer
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strong resistance to Europe's monarchs
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and mobilizes the population with revolutionary slogans.
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Now let us show Europe that 10 million French citizens,
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when challenged, will be fueled by the fire of freedom.
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And, armed with swords and reason,
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we'll single-handedly change the world
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and make the tyrants tremble on their thrones.
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The future of the revolution is at stake.
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Ultimately, the advocates of war prevail.
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Now let us vote.
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Peace or war.
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Who votes for peace?
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And war?
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(cheers and applause)
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Napoleon Bonaparte starts out
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as a general of the revolution.
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But, once in power, he brings the domestic tumult to an end
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and focuses on projecting French power outwards onto Europe.
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His battles are legendary.
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And his conquests numerous.
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Napoleon plunges the continent
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00:14:14,610 --> 00:14:16,700
into a state of constant war.
272
00:14:16,700 --> 00:14:19,960
And he leads his army from victory to victory.
273
00:14:19,960 --> 00:14:23,190
And then Napoleon, a national hero at this point,
274
00:14:23,190 --> 00:14:25,210
names himself emperor.
275
00:14:25,210 --> 00:14:27,690
He is crowned in 1804.
276
00:14:27,690 --> 00:14:31,450
Napoleon casts himself as a successor to the Roman emperors
277
00:14:31,450 --> 00:14:33,650
and especially to Charlemagne.
278
00:14:33,650 --> 00:14:37,263
Like his hero, he wants to create a European empire.
279
00:14:39,640 --> 00:14:42,350
In 1806, Prussian troops encounter
280
00:14:42,350 --> 00:14:45,830
the gendarme at Jena and Auerstedt in Thuringia.
281
00:14:45,830 --> 00:14:48,550
The Prussians suffer a harrowing defeat.
282
00:14:48,550 --> 00:14:50,200
Further annexations follow.
283
00:14:50,200 --> 00:14:53,470
Napoleon now dominates almost the whole of Europe.
284
00:14:53,470 --> 00:14:56,420
And he orchestrates his triumph accordingly.
285
00:14:56,420 --> 00:14:58,250
In Berlin, as in many other places,
286
00:14:58,250 --> 00:15:00,310
the response is ambivalent.
287
00:15:00,310 --> 00:15:02,730
Napoleon may be a tyrant to some,
288
00:15:02,730 --> 00:15:05,563
but, to others, he's the herald of a new era.
289
00:15:08,970 --> 00:15:10,930
Napoleon and Europe,
290
00:15:10,930 --> 00:15:14,260
some territories are simply annexed to France.
291
00:15:14,260 --> 00:15:17,040
Outside the borders of an enlarged France,
292
00:15:17,040 --> 00:15:20,630
Napoleon creates satellite states and confederations.
293
00:15:20,630 --> 00:15:23,320
Even great powers like Prussia and Austria,
294
00:15:23,320 --> 00:15:26,190
defeated by Napoleon, now pay tribute to him
295
00:15:26,190 --> 00:15:27,703
and accept his dominance.
296
00:15:29,320 --> 00:15:33,840
Napoleonic rule is a strange mix of military aggression,
297
00:15:33,840 --> 00:15:37,010
fiscal extraction, and progressive institutions.
298
00:15:37,010 --> 00:15:39,440
He hopes to bring progress wherever he rules.
299
00:15:39,440 --> 00:15:42,531
His Napoleonic code promises civil rights,
300
00:15:42,531 --> 00:15:46,193
equal protection under the law, and freedom for peasants.
301
00:15:47,580 --> 00:15:51,640
But the mood darkens as Bonaparte wages war after war.
302
00:15:51,640 --> 00:15:54,840
There's no exit strategy, no limit to his ambition.
303
00:15:54,840 --> 00:15:56,290
Resistance grows.
304
00:15:56,290 --> 00:16:00,690
In 1813, the Battle of the Nations rages in Leipzig.
305
00:16:00,690 --> 00:16:03,810
A European alliance, including Austria, Prussia,
306
00:16:03,810 --> 00:16:08,270
Russia, and Sweden, mobilizes more than 300,000 troops
307
00:16:08,270 --> 00:16:09,710
against Napoleon.
308
00:16:09,710 --> 00:16:11,970
More than 200,000 soldiers,
309
00:16:11,970 --> 00:16:14,740
including Frenchmen, Italians Poles, and Germans,
310
00:16:14,740 --> 00:16:16,720
fight on the side of France.
311
00:16:16,720 --> 00:16:18,270
Bonaparte is defeated.
312
00:16:18,270 --> 00:16:21,443
His dream of dominating the continent goes up in smoke.
313
00:16:31,140 --> 00:16:34,760
He may only have been one meter 68 tall,
314
00:16:34,760 --> 00:16:36,760
but, when it came to his sarcophagus,
315
00:16:36,760 --> 00:16:39,430
there was no such thing as too big.
316
00:16:39,430 --> 00:16:44,000
Here lie the mortal remains of Napoleon in five coffins.
317
00:16:44,000 --> 00:16:47,670
Each nesting inside the other like a Russian doll.
318
00:16:47,670 --> 00:16:49,410
As though the French wanted to preserve
319
00:16:49,410 --> 00:16:53,540
their most important national myth for all eternity.
320
00:16:53,540 --> 00:16:56,110
Napoleon was one of the sculptors of modern Europe.
321
00:16:56,110 --> 00:16:59,590
His tools of preference were armies, legal codes,
322
00:16:59,590 --> 00:17:01,100
and administrative innovation.
323
00:17:01,100 --> 00:17:03,560
He was willing to use any means necessary
324
00:17:03,560 --> 00:17:06,340
to bring the nations of the old continent together
325
00:17:06,340 --> 00:17:09,840
as a family united around and serving
326
00:17:09,840 --> 00:17:13,010
the motherland of human rights, France.
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00:17:13,010 --> 00:17:16,450
He believed in open borders for people and goods
328
00:17:16,450 --> 00:17:18,510
and standardized weights and measures,
329
00:17:18,510 --> 00:17:20,460
such as meters and kilos.
330
00:17:20,460 --> 00:17:22,540
And, of course, the original standard meter
331
00:17:22,540 --> 00:17:26,097
on which all the others are based resides here in Paris.
332
00:17:26,097 --> 00:17:28,639
"France is the measure of all things.
333
00:17:28,639 --> 00:17:32,880
The laws of France must extend to all the united countries
334
00:17:32,880 --> 00:17:36,480
from the Pillars of Hercules to the Kamchatka Peninsula,"
335
00:17:36,480 --> 00:17:38,273
Napoleon is reported to have said.
336
00:17:40,700 --> 00:17:42,937
With Napoleon defeated and banished,
337
00:17:42,937 --> 00:17:46,110
new negotiations begin in Vienna.
338
00:17:46,110 --> 00:17:47,760
After 20 years of war,
339
00:17:47,760 --> 00:17:50,960
Austria, Russia, Prussia, and England are the victors.
340
00:17:50,960 --> 00:17:54,360
The objective is both to contain France
341
00:17:54,360 --> 00:17:57,840
and to block hegemonic projects by the other powers.
342
00:17:57,840 --> 00:17:59,770
France is invited to participate
343
00:17:59,770 --> 00:18:01,376
in the system that will come to be known
344
00:18:01,376 --> 00:18:03,073
as the Concert of Europe.
345
00:18:04,180 --> 00:18:05,920
The settlement hammered out in Vienna,
346
00:18:05,920 --> 00:18:08,660
amidst a flurry of extravagant social events,
347
00:18:08,660 --> 00:18:11,850
will define the future of Europe.
348
00:18:11,850 --> 00:18:15,184
Of course, the nations, the peoples as such,
349
00:18:15,184 --> 00:18:17,440
aren't involved in this process.
350
00:18:17,440 --> 00:18:19,700
They are objects to be acted upon.
351
00:18:19,700 --> 00:18:22,270
Items on the negotiating agenda.
352
00:18:22,270 --> 00:18:25,000
The dynastic rulers view themselves
353
00:18:25,000 --> 00:18:27,040
as the guarantors of order in Europe.
354
00:18:27,040 --> 00:18:30,000
And the result is a security architecture
355
00:18:30,000 --> 00:18:31,563
that spans the continent.
356
00:18:32,430 --> 00:18:36,314
This is the final act of the Congress of Vienna.
357
00:18:36,314 --> 00:18:38,970
And, here, you can see the seals and the signatures
358
00:18:38,970 --> 00:18:40,340
of the statesmen who took part
359
00:18:40,340 --> 00:18:42,860
in the negotiations in Vienna.
360
00:18:42,860 --> 00:18:44,862
Here, Prince Metternich for Austria.
361
00:18:44,862 --> 00:18:49,120
Here, Talleyrand, French representative.
362
00:18:49,120 --> 00:18:53,380
And, on this side, further significant figures.
363
00:18:53,380 --> 00:18:55,963
Hardenberg, Humboldt, and many others.
364
00:18:59,078 --> 00:19:01,620
The ultimate result of the Congress of Vienna,
365
00:19:01,620 --> 00:19:03,770
laid out in this final act,
366
00:19:03,770 --> 00:19:06,410
was, in a sense, the rebirth of Europe.
367
00:19:06,410 --> 00:19:09,770
Napoleon had a vision of a united Europe, of course.
368
00:19:09,770 --> 00:19:12,330
But it was a Europe united under his control
369
00:19:12,330 --> 00:19:14,310
and under French hegemony.
370
00:19:14,310 --> 00:19:16,310
The new Europe allocated more power
371
00:19:16,310 --> 00:19:19,060
to the peripheral empires of West and East.
372
00:19:19,060 --> 00:19:20,626
Great powers Britain and Russia
373
00:19:20,626 --> 00:19:23,380
were granted a stronger voice in determining
374
00:19:23,380 --> 00:19:24,910
the fate of the continent.
375
00:19:24,910 --> 00:19:27,750
A state of affairs that anticipated, in some ways,
376
00:19:27,750 --> 00:19:29,560
the later standoff between
377
00:19:29,560 --> 00:19:32,450
the United States and the Soviet Union.
378
00:19:32,450 --> 00:19:35,160
In the future, problems would be solved
379
00:19:35,160 --> 00:19:38,210
not by uncoordinated individual initiatives,
380
00:19:38,210 --> 00:19:42,250
but harmoniously through the so called Concert of Powers.
381
00:19:42,250 --> 00:19:46,183
This in some ways very intelligent and impressive solution
382
00:19:46,183 --> 00:19:49,180
fell victim, like so many peace treaties,
383
00:19:49,180 --> 00:19:51,973
to the egoism of the most powerful states.
384
00:19:52,830 --> 00:19:55,850
One of Napoleon's unintended legacies
385
00:19:55,850 --> 00:19:58,370
was a surge in national feeling.
386
00:19:58,370 --> 00:20:01,190
Nothing galvanizes patriotic emotion
387
00:20:01,190 --> 00:20:04,563
like the experience of invasion and foreign domination.
388
00:20:05,490 --> 00:20:08,660
In May 1832, more than 20,000 people
389
00:20:08,660 --> 00:20:11,810
from Germany, France, Poland, and other countries
390
00:20:11,810 --> 00:20:15,760
gather at a palace in Pfalz Region of Western Germany.
391
00:20:15,760 --> 00:20:17,920
They call for a united Germany
392
00:20:17,920 --> 00:20:20,480
and a confederated republic of Europe,
393
00:20:20,480 --> 00:20:23,670
as well as for freedom of the press, speech, and assembly
394
00:20:23,670 --> 00:20:25,513
and equal rights for women.
395
00:20:26,570 --> 00:20:28,810
Hambach is considered one of the cradles
396
00:20:28,810 --> 00:20:30,460
of modern democracy in Germany.
397
00:20:30,460 --> 00:20:34,010
And some see it as the birthplace of European unity.
398
00:20:34,010 --> 00:20:37,460
But the European vision was still formless and incoherent.
399
00:20:37,460 --> 00:20:40,190
And the old powers still dominated the continent.
400
00:20:40,190 --> 00:20:42,270
The kings and princes simply ignored
401
00:20:42,270 --> 00:20:45,383
the increasingly passionate demand for liberal reform.
402
00:20:51,160 --> 00:20:54,870
In 1848, another revolution breaks out.
403
00:20:54,870 --> 00:20:57,380
Once again, the French take to the streets.
404
00:20:57,380 --> 00:20:59,430
Invoking the symbols and slogans
405
00:20:59,430 --> 00:21:01,643
of the French Revolution of 1789.
406
00:21:07,820 --> 00:21:09,930
But, unlike the French Revolution,
407
00:21:09,930 --> 00:21:14,130
the Revolution of 1848 spreads like wildfire across Europe
408
00:21:14,130 --> 00:21:17,080
at a breathtaking pace.
409
00:21:17,080 --> 00:21:20,630
From all over the country, deep from every heart,
410
00:21:20,630 --> 00:21:23,183
a strong united German fatherland.
411
00:21:25,110 --> 00:21:26,203
The revolution.
412
00:21:27,890 --> 00:21:31,593
The revolution has won in Paris.
413
00:21:32,830 --> 00:21:35,470
With the exception of England and Russia,
414
00:21:35,470 --> 00:21:38,520
nearly all the major European states are affected.
415
00:21:38,520 --> 00:21:41,980
In the simultaneity of its tumult across the continent,
416
00:21:41,980 --> 00:21:43,813
this revolution is unique.
417
00:21:44,830 --> 00:21:48,810
The people want social reform and liberal constitutions.
418
00:21:48,810 --> 00:21:51,273
And they're willing to use violence, if necessary,
419
00:21:51,273 --> 00:21:52,483
to get what they want.
420
00:21:55,830 --> 00:21:58,910
Full blown revolutions rage in many cities.
421
00:21:58,910 --> 00:22:02,600
And revolutionary hotspots flare up across the continent.
422
00:22:02,600 --> 00:22:05,380
The people rise up against the dynasties of Europe
423
00:22:05,380 --> 00:22:08,493
under the banner of freedom and self-determination.
424
00:22:11,790 --> 00:22:15,040
A wave of revolutions rolled across Europe
425
00:22:15,040 --> 00:22:19,210
form Palermo to Paris to Rome, Milan,
426
00:22:19,210 --> 00:22:22,540
Vienna, Budapest, and Berlin.
427
00:22:22,540 --> 00:22:27,540
Hope, frustration, and anger formed a combustible mix.
428
00:22:27,900 --> 00:22:30,840
The apparent unanimity of the revolutionary protests
429
00:22:30,840 --> 00:22:34,250
concealed a plurality of conflicting aims.
430
00:22:34,250 --> 00:22:38,620
Political liberty, social justice, the unity of nations.
431
00:22:38,620 --> 00:22:40,956
In Central Europe, national identity,
432
00:22:40,956 --> 00:22:44,090
the desire to be united in a common state,
433
00:22:44,090 --> 00:22:46,490
was at the center of the revolutionary movement.
434
00:22:47,460 --> 00:22:49,330
In Germany, for example,
435
00:22:49,330 --> 00:22:52,080
the first freely elected German parliament
436
00:22:52,080 --> 00:22:55,080
convenes at Saint Paul's Church in Frankfurt.
437
00:22:55,080 --> 00:22:57,163
The focus is on uniting the nation.
438
00:23:00,670 --> 00:23:03,940
The parliament is modeled on France's National Assembly.
439
00:23:03,940 --> 00:23:05,266
Parliaments during this era
440
00:23:05,266 --> 00:23:07,733
are still the domain of the elites.
441
00:23:10,290 --> 00:23:12,840
But how is a revolution expected to succeed
442
00:23:12,840 --> 00:23:14,980
without the support of an army?
443
00:23:14,980 --> 00:23:17,780
In most European nations, the army remains loyal
444
00:23:17,780 --> 00:23:19,000
to the rulers.
445
00:23:19,000 --> 00:23:20,330
There's little that militias
446
00:23:20,330 --> 00:23:22,640
or a network of revolutionaries can do
447
00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:25,010
against an armed military force.
448
00:23:25,010 --> 00:23:27,071
And yet the shockwaves of this revolution
449
00:23:27,071 --> 00:23:29,613
would yield several important victories.
450
00:23:30,550 --> 00:23:33,430
New constitutions and parliaments are created
451
00:23:33,430 --> 00:23:35,640
and censorship is scaled back.
452
00:23:35,640 --> 00:23:38,480
Many of the European states absorb and channel
453
00:23:38,480 --> 00:23:39,890
the energy of the revolution.
454
00:23:39,890 --> 00:23:42,163
Selectively implementing its demands.
455
00:23:44,390 --> 00:23:46,750
And these political upheavals take place
456
00:23:46,750 --> 00:23:47,960
against the background of
457
00:23:47,960 --> 00:23:50,870
an even more profound transformation.
458
00:23:50,870 --> 00:23:52,900
The Industrial Revolution.
459
00:23:52,900 --> 00:23:55,540
Enormous factories spring up first in England
460
00:23:55,540 --> 00:23:57,810
and then nearly everywhere in Europe.
461
00:23:57,810 --> 00:23:59,588
With the invention of the steam engine,
462
00:23:59,588 --> 00:24:03,820
manual labor is increasingly replaced by machines.
463
00:24:03,820 --> 00:24:05,670
The process will take over a century.
464
00:24:09,530 --> 00:24:12,860
Why did all of this begin in England of all places?
465
00:24:12,860 --> 00:24:15,700
For centuries, using the experimental method
466
00:24:15,700 --> 00:24:17,660
to probe the secrets of nature
467
00:24:17,660 --> 00:24:19,750
had been part of the culture here.
468
00:24:19,750 --> 00:24:21,770
So, there was a long run up.
469
00:24:21,770 --> 00:24:23,260
And then there was the pleasure that
470
00:24:23,260 --> 00:24:25,310
English scientists and inventors took
471
00:24:25,310 --> 00:24:28,210
in the practical application of their knowledge.
472
00:24:28,210 --> 00:24:31,100
They fueled the Industrial Revolution.
473
00:24:31,100 --> 00:24:34,840
And among them was James Watt, inventor of the steam engine.
474
00:24:34,840 --> 00:24:37,930
The water in this boiler is heated to steam
475
00:24:39,660 --> 00:24:42,020
and the resulting pressure can be used
476
00:24:42,020 --> 00:24:43,740
to drive other engines.
477
00:24:43,740 --> 00:24:46,860
A loom, for example, or a locomotive.
478
00:24:46,860 --> 00:24:49,070
During the middle decades of the 19th century,
479
00:24:49,070 --> 00:24:50,890
the Industrial Revolution spread
480
00:24:50,890 --> 00:24:53,410
in fits and starts across Europe.
481
00:24:53,410 --> 00:24:55,210
It was a peaceful conquest.
482
00:24:55,210 --> 00:24:58,652
But, for many, the consequences were grave.
483
00:24:58,652 --> 00:25:01,890
Finally, people could free themselves
484
00:25:01,890 --> 00:25:04,674
of the constraints of agricultural production.
485
00:25:04,674 --> 00:25:06,760
Crop failures and famines that
486
00:25:06,760 --> 00:25:10,290
impact entire populations are a thing of the past
487
00:25:10,290 --> 00:25:12,320
in industrialized societies.
488
00:25:12,320 --> 00:25:14,810
But industrial work is poorly paid,
489
00:25:14,810 --> 00:25:16,663
dangerous, and exploitative.
490
00:25:19,250 --> 00:25:21,570
Until late in the 18th century,
491
00:25:21,570 --> 00:25:23,700
the only effective way of increasing
492
00:25:23,700 --> 00:25:25,920
the production of goods was to increase
493
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:28,970
the number of humans employed to make them.
494
00:25:28,970 --> 00:25:31,610
Then, the machines arrived.
495
00:25:31,610 --> 00:25:33,760
They didn't just replace muscle power.
496
00:25:33,760 --> 00:25:35,940
They also multiplied it.
497
00:25:35,940 --> 00:25:37,630
In factories like this one,
498
00:25:37,630 --> 00:25:39,700
huge machines performed the labor
499
00:25:39,700 --> 00:25:41,520
of hundreds of human beings.
500
00:25:41,520 --> 00:25:44,360
It was the most fundamental transformation
501
00:25:44,360 --> 00:25:46,920
in human social existence since the beginning
502
00:25:46,920 --> 00:25:48,690
of organized agriculture.
503
00:25:48,690 --> 00:25:51,370
In other words, it was a true revolution.
504
00:25:51,370 --> 00:25:53,450
An Industrial Revolution.
505
00:25:53,450 --> 00:25:55,141
The inventor of the term was none other
506
00:25:55,141 --> 00:25:57,380
than Karl Marx's close friend
507
00:25:57,380 --> 00:25:59,580
and collaborator, Friedrich Engels,
508
00:25:59,580 --> 00:26:01,750
who coined it in the 1830s
509
00:26:01,750 --> 00:26:06,111
in an analogy with the French Revolution of the 1790s.
510
00:26:06,111 --> 00:26:09,860
If the idea of Communism had a birthplace,
511
00:26:09,860 --> 00:26:11,900
it would surely be Manchester.
512
00:26:11,900 --> 00:26:15,320
The unrestrained form of production that developed here
513
00:26:15,320 --> 00:26:18,190
came to be known as Manchester Capitalism.
514
00:26:18,190 --> 00:26:20,650
In the mid-19th century, Friedrich Engels,
515
00:26:20,650 --> 00:26:23,010
whose father owned a factory like this one,
516
00:26:23,010 --> 00:26:25,490
could study, as if in a laboratory,
517
00:26:25,490 --> 00:26:27,551
the social and economic consequences
518
00:26:27,551 --> 00:26:30,000
of an unchecked capitalism.
519
00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:33,010
And, in his writings, Karl Marx, Engels's friend,
520
00:26:33,010 --> 00:26:34,893
explored the implications.
521
00:26:35,860 --> 00:26:37,453
Workers of the world unite.
522
00:26:38,570 --> 00:26:40,500
Yes, that sounds good.
523
00:26:40,500 --> 00:26:43,150
But we need a strong message at the start.
524
00:26:43,150 --> 00:26:45,280
The aim was to raise the workers
525
00:26:45,280 --> 00:26:47,980
against a system that kept them poor and weak.
526
00:26:47,980 --> 00:26:48,813
That's good.
527
00:26:48,813 --> 00:26:49,646
That's good.
528
00:26:51,540 --> 00:26:53,110
Yeah.
529
00:26:53,110 --> 00:26:54,040
Not bad.
530
00:26:54,040 --> 00:26:56,310
A specter is haunting Europe.
531
00:26:56,310 --> 00:26:58,040
The specter of Communism.
532
00:26:58,040 --> 00:26:59,030
Yeah.
533
00:26:59,030 --> 00:27:00,400
What do you think?
534
00:27:00,400 --> 00:27:03,190
Marx lives in exile in London.
535
00:27:03,190 --> 00:27:05,130
In 1848, he and Friedrich Engels
536
00:27:05,130 --> 00:27:06,960
published their Communist Manifesto,
537
00:27:06,960 --> 00:27:09,290
which will one day become the bible
538
00:27:09,290 --> 00:27:11,180
of the global workers' movement.
539
00:27:11,180 --> 00:27:13,160
Marx and Engels call for a world
540
00:27:13,160 --> 00:27:15,150
without exploitative social relations
541
00:27:15,150 --> 00:27:16,397
in which the means of production
542
00:27:16,397 --> 00:27:19,809
are owned not by capitalists, but by society itself.
543
00:27:19,809 --> 00:27:22,760
Understood as a collective enterprise.
544
00:27:22,760 --> 00:27:25,730
Both of them reflect at length on the idea of revolution.
545
00:27:25,730 --> 00:27:28,020
But it's not until the early 20th century
546
00:27:28,020 --> 00:27:30,830
that the explosive potential of their ideas
547
00:27:30,830 --> 00:27:32,640
is fully realized.
548
00:27:32,640 --> 00:27:35,170
Meanwhile, the gap between rich and poor
549
00:27:35,170 --> 00:27:37,080
continues to expand.
550
00:27:37,080 --> 00:27:39,610
A workers' movement soon begins to take shape
551
00:27:39,610 --> 00:27:41,386
and, with it, come political parties
552
00:27:41,386 --> 00:27:44,313
championing the rights of waged labor.
553
00:27:47,670 --> 00:27:50,170
And thus Karl Marx, who incidentally claimed
554
00:27:50,170 --> 00:27:52,290
never to have been a Marxist,
555
00:27:52,290 --> 00:27:53,880
influenced European history
556
00:27:53,880 --> 00:27:56,470
in several ways at the same time.
557
00:27:56,470 --> 00:27:58,360
The idea of the working class
558
00:27:58,360 --> 00:28:01,830
as a structural feature of all modern capitalist systems
559
00:28:01,830 --> 00:28:03,860
united people across borders
560
00:28:03,860 --> 00:28:06,130
into a sort of community of fate.
561
00:28:06,130 --> 00:28:08,960
The slogan "Workers of the world unite"
562
00:28:08,960 --> 00:28:12,070
offered a counterweight to national egotism.
563
00:28:12,070 --> 00:28:14,700
In the last decades of the 19th century,
564
00:28:14,700 --> 00:28:16,880
left wing parties gained power
565
00:28:16,880 --> 00:28:18,970
and pushed through social reforms
566
00:28:18,970 --> 00:28:21,140
in dozens of European parliaments.
567
00:28:21,140 --> 00:28:24,130
Only under the immense social and political stresses
568
00:28:24,130 --> 00:28:28,090
of the First World War did the socialist left fracture.
569
00:28:28,090 --> 00:28:30,560
A Communism emerged in whose hands
570
00:28:30,560 --> 00:28:34,980
the teachings of Marx hardened into an unbending doctrine.
571
00:28:34,980 --> 00:28:37,540
As the instrument of Soviet state power,
572
00:28:37,540 --> 00:28:40,240
Communism became a force of global significance.
573
00:28:40,240 --> 00:28:42,050
And, in Europe, the tension
574
00:28:42,050 --> 00:28:44,860
between Communist and capitalist social orders
575
00:28:44,860 --> 00:28:46,873
split the continent down the middle.
576
00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:51,500
It's the high noon of the national idea
577
00:28:51,500 --> 00:28:53,550
in every European country.
578
00:28:53,550 --> 00:28:55,420
In the course of the 19th century,
579
00:28:55,420 --> 00:28:58,610
the concept of nation becomes the pole star
580
00:28:58,610 --> 00:29:00,940
in the firmament of European values.
581
00:29:00,940 --> 00:29:03,670
But, in Europe, where so many cultures and languages
582
00:29:03,670 --> 00:29:05,380
live in close proximity,
583
00:29:05,380 --> 00:29:08,643
one nation's dream can become another's nightmare.
584
00:29:13,830 --> 00:29:15,640
The leading monarchs of Europe
585
00:29:15,640 --> 00:29:19,860
are nearly all connected in the same gigantic clan network.
586
00:29:19,860 --> 00:29:22,460
And, in 1913, many of them come together
587
00:29:22,460 --> 00:29:25,160
at the wedding of the German emperor's daughter,
588
00:29:25,160 --> 00:29:27,463
Victoria Louisa, in Berlin.
589
00:29:35,180 --> 00:29:38,850
No one realizes just how close Europe is to the brink.
590
00:29:38,850 --> 00:29:41,300
This is the calm before the storm.
591
00:29:41,300 --> 00:29:45,230
An assassination in the multinational Hapsburg state,
592
00:29:45,230 --> 00:29:47,940
the murder of the Austrian heir to the throne,
593
00:29:47,940 --> 00:29:49,333
captures the headlines.
594
00:29:50,330 --> 00:29:52,870
But does this automatically mean war?
595
00:29:52,870 --> 00:29:56,050
The great powers recognize the risk of escalation,
596
00:29:56,050 --> 00:29:58,770
but none of them does anything to prevent it.
597
00:29:58,770 --> 00:30:02,840
In 1914, the decision makers are like sleepwalkers.
598
00:30:02,840 --> 00:30:04,670
They maneuver for advantage,
599
00:30:04,670 --> 00:30:06,330
but, in placing their own goals
600
00:30:06,330 --> 00:30:09,710
above the preservation of peace, they risk catastrophe.
601
00:30:09,710 --> 00:30:13,640
When war breaks out, each country sees itself as the victim
602
00:30:13,640 --> 00:30:15,340
and its opponent as the aggressor.
603
00:30:18,930 --> 00:30:21,240
Modern military technology means that
604
00:30:22,600 --> 00:30:25,190
this world war brings unparalleled carnage.
605
00:30:25,190 --> 00:30:27,950
Nearly 17 million people lose their lives
606
00:30:27,950 --> 00:30:30,210
on the battlefields and on the home front.
607
00:30:30,210 --> 00:30:32,840
And the First World War is a breaking point.
608
00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:35,370
The old European order collapses,
609
00:30:35,370 --> 00:30:38,630
but no new order emerges to take its place.
610
00:30:38,630 --> 00:30:41,070
The desire for compromise is there,
611
00:30:41,070 --> 00:30:44,490
but the differences between the fronts are overpowering.
612
00:30:44,490 --> 00:30:47,400
This is the dawn of an age of extremes
613
00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:49,733
shaped by fascism and Bolshevism.
614
00:30:59,130 --> 00:31:01,710
After the October Revolution in Russia,
615
00:31:01,710 --> 00:31:04,200
the Bolsheviks seize power.
616
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:07,440
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is the man of the hour.
617
00:31:07,440 --> 00:31:09,430
He keeps an iron grip on power
618
00:31:09,430 --> 00:31:11,270
in hopes that this Red Revolution
619
00:31:11,270 --> 00:31:13,700
will spread to the rest of Europe.
620
00:31:13,700 --> 00:31:16,520
Versailles, 1919.
621
00:31:16,520 --> 00:31:20,183
How can peace endure if Europe's two strongest powers
622
00:31:20,183 --> 00:31:23,434
play no role in the peacemaking process?
623
00:31:23,434 --> 00:31:26,010
Russia doesn't even send a representative
624
00:31:26,010 --> 00:31:28,860
to the European conference at Versailles.
625
00:31:28,860 --> 00:31:30,740
And the German delegation is barred
626
00:31:30,740 --> 00:31:32,713
from participating in the negotiations.
627
00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:40,103
With its reparations, disarmament clauses,
628
00:31:41,256 --> 00:31:43,460
and territorial penalties, and, above all,
629
00:31:43,460 --> 00:31:47,170
with its insistence on German-sold guilt
630
00:31:47,170 --> 00:31:48,760
for the outbreak of war,
631
00:31:48,760 --> 00:31:50,530
the Treaty of Versailles places
632
00:31:50,530 --> 00:31:54,493
a lasting burden on the new Weimar Democracy.
633
00:31:57,400 --> 00:32:01,140
The multinational Hapsburg Empire collapses.
634
00:32:01,140 --> 00:32:04,120
New independent nations arise in its place.
635
00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:07,910
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia.
636
00:32:07,910 --> 00:32:11,000
The Baltic countries also gain their independence.
637
00:32:11,000 --> 00:32:15,250
But the losers refuse to accept the new post-war order.
638
00:32:15,250 --> 00:32:17,600
Voices of protest grow louder.
639
00:32:17,600 --> 00:32:19,710
Particularly from the right wing.
640
00:32:19,710 --> 00:32:22,603
Germany is being oppressed and robbed, they claim.
641
00:32:29,230 --> 00:32:32,770
There are signs of rapprochement between Germany and France
642
00:32:32,770 --> 00:32:36,840
at an international conference in Locarno in 1925.
643
00:32:36,840 --> 00:32:38,601
It's a time of hope.
644
00:32:38,601 --> 00:32:42,720
German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann
645
00:32:42,720 --> 00:32:46,950
speaks of a Europe of cooperation, not confrontation.
646
00:32:46,950 --> 00:32:48,690
And his French colleague Briand
647
00:32:48,690 --> 00:32:50,137
makes an impassioned speech.
648
00:32:50,137 --> 00:32:52,087
"Away with the cannons," he says.
649
00:32:52,087 --> 00:32:54,057
"Make way for reconciliation."
650
00:32:58,390 --> 00:33:00,930
Both statesmen are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
651
00:33:00,930 --> 00:33:02,120
for their efforts.
652
00:33:02,120 --> 00:33:05,533
But this vision of a peaceful Europe would soon evaporate.
653
00:33:11,970 --> 00:33:15,400
The National Socialists promised to liberate Germany.
654
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:16,860
To restore the country to
655
00:33:16,860 --> 00:33:18,790
its former strength and independence.
656
00:33:18,790 --> 00:33:21,680
Hitler isn't interested in the balance of power.
657
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:24,870
He wants unconditional domination of the continent.
658
00:33:24,870 --> 00:33:28,180
Attempts to appease the new German leadership fail.
659
00:33:28,180 --> 00:33:31,840
The Nazis intend to secure their objectives by force.
660
00:33:31,840 --> 00:33:34,933
Rearmament begins in earnest as soon as they take power.
661
00:33:43,740 --> 00:33:46,110
September, 1939.
662
00:33:46,110 --> 00:33:49,570
The war begins with the invasion of Poland.
663
00:33:49,570 --> 00:33:53,300
The Nazis couple the technology of invasion and conquest
664
00:33:53,300 --> 00:33:55,970
with the subjugation and extermination
665
00:33:55,970 --> 00:33:58,400
of the peoples under their control.
666
00:33:58,400 --> 00:34:00,800
The systematic slaughter of civilians
667
00:34:00,800 --> 00:34:02,767
sets this war apart from past conflicts
668
00:34:02,767 --> 00:34:05,840
right from the very beginning.
669
00:34:05,840 --> 00:34:09,140
The Holocaust begins behind the front lines.
670
00:34:09,140 --> 00:34:12,353
It will claim the lives of six million Jews.
671
00:34:16,550 --> 00:34:18,710
May, 1940.
672
00:34:18,710 --> 00:34:22,193
The German Wehrmacht attacks its neighbor to the west.
673
00:34:23,140 --> 00:34:26,690
Hitler always adheres to the same binary principle.
674
00:34:26,690 --> 00:34:28,230
All or nothing.
675
00:34:28,230 --> 00:34:31,790
Germany will be a great power or it will cease to exist,
676
00:34:31,790 --> 00:34:33,880
he declares in his book Mein Kampf
677
00:34:33,880 --> 00:34:36,750
published years before he comes to power.
678
00:34:36,750 --> 00:34:39,970
With his victory secure, Hitler visits Paris.
679
00:34:39,970 --> 00:34:43,350
Among the sightseeing stops is Napoleon's tomb
680
00:34:43,350 --> 00:34:45,400
at the Dome des Invalides.
681
00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:48,339
He plans to surpass even the French emperor's prowess
682
00:34:48,339 --> 00:34:50,020
as a military leader.
683
00:34:50,020 --> 00:34:53,600
But his memory of Napoleon's achievements is selective.
684
00:34:53,600 --> 00:34:55,990
He seems to have forgotten the fact that
685
00:34:55,990 --> 00:34:58,310
Napoleon's invasion of Russia
686
00:34:58,310 --> 00:35:02,050
proved the disaster that undid his empire.
687
00:35:02,050 --> 00:35:05,543
The Nazi ideology leads further into ruin.
688
00:35:12,791 --> 00:35:15,720
The Siegessaule or Victory Column of Berlin
689
00:35:15,720 --> 00:35:18,340
was supposed to serve as an important element
690
00:35:18,340 --> 00:35:20,700
on the great east-west axis
691
00:35:20,700 --> 00:35:24,220
of the capital city of the Third Reich, Germania.
692
00:35:24,220 --> 00:35:26,500
In Hitler's grotesque vision,
693
00:35:26,500 --> 00:35:28,523
the megalopolis Germania,
694
00:35:28,523 --> 00:35:31,020
bulging with oversized monuments,
695
00:35:31,020 --> 00:35:34,940
was to be the focal point of a pan-germanic world empire.
696
00:35:34,940 --> 00:35:38,860
The Nazis liked the mural at the base of the Victory Column.
697
00:35:38,860 --> 00:35:41,300
We see an aroused German people
698
00:35:41,300 --> 00:35:43,650
raising their swords against Napoleon
699
00:35:43,650 --> 00:35:47,270
who's dressed like a Roman emperor in a red toga.
700
00:35:47,270 --> 00:35:48,430
An historical event.
701
00:35:48,430 --> 00:35:50,710
The early 19th century wars of liberation
702
00:35:50,710 --> 00:35:53,240
against Napoleonic France is elevated
703
00:35:53,240 --> 00:35:56,910
to the status of a world historical principle.
704
00:35:56,910 --> 00:36:01,210
For the Nazis, the state was an obsolete concept.
705
00:36:01,210 --> 00:36:03,000
They thought in ethnic racial
706
00:36:03,000 --> 00:36:04,860
rather than political categories.
707
00:36:04,860 --> 00:36:06,710
When Hitler imagined Europe,
708
00:36:06,710 --> 00:36:10,820
it was not the Europe of states, but a continental platform.
709
00:36:10,820 --> 00:36:14,530
A Petri dish inhabited by biological cultures.
710
00:36:14,530 --> 00:36:17,060
One in which the Germans would simply expand
711
00:36:17,060 --> 00:36:19,060
like a bacterial colony.
712
00:36:19,060 --> 00:36:21,910
Lebensraum, the German word for habitat,
713
00:36:21,910 --> 00:36:23,840
has nothing to do with politics.
714
00:36:23,840 --> 00:36:26,060
It's a concept from biology.
715
00:36:26,060 --> 00:36:29,987
In Europe, only the fittest were supposed to survive.
716
00:36:29,987 --> 00:36:33,576
"Every being strives for expansion," Hitler wrote.
717
00:36:33,576 --> 00:36:37,390
"And every nation strives for world dominion.
718
00:36:37,390 --> 00:36:39,790
Only those who keep this goal in mind
719
00:36:39,790 --> 00:36:41,840
will find the right path."
720
00:36:41,840 --> 00:36:44,630
The war Hitler launched on Central and Eastern Europe
721
00:36:44,630 --> 00:36:47,590
was a war of annihilation and enslavement.
722
00:36:47,590 --> 00:36:49,550
A war against the diversity
723
00:36:49,550 --> 00:36:51,610
of Europe's peoples and cultures.
724
00:36:51,610 --> 00:36:54,450
It was a war against Europe's history.
725
00:36:54,450 --> 00:36:57,010
The consequence was an unfathomable break
726
00:36:57,010 --> 00:36:59,110
with culture and civilization.
727
00:36:59,110 --> 00:37:02,523
And today's Europe is still deeply marked by this conflict.
728
00:37:04,060 --> 00:37:08,080
In June, 1941 came the invasion of the Soviet Union.
729
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:10,900
A campaign of unexampled extermination
730
00:37:10,900 --> 00:37:13,870
to expand Germany's territory to the east.
731
00:37:13,870 --> 00:37:16,410
The dictator wants to create a German Europe
732
00:37:16,410 --> 00:37:19,550
from the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains.
733
00:37:19,550 --> 00:37:21,550
The Second World War would cost
734
00:37:21,550 --> 00:37:24,410
60 to 70 million human lives.
735
00:37:24,410 --> 00:37:25,943
The majority civilians.
736
00:37:27,564 --> 00:37:29,520
The Holocaust, millions of slaughtered Slavs,
737
00:37:29,520 --> 00:37:32,290
bombing campaigns, prisoner of war camps,
738
00:37:32,290 --> 00:37:34,630
refugees, and displaced persons.
739
00:37:34,630 --> 00:37:37,663
The war left a traumatized generation in its wake.
740
00:37:47,510 --> 00:37:48,770
I'm in Kiev.
741
00:37:48,770 --> 00:37:50,810
Where an enormous statue commemorates
742
00:37:50,810 --> 00:37:53,120
the Great Patriotic War,
743
00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:57,040
as the struggle against Hitler's Germany is known in Russia.
744
00:37:57,040 --> 00:38:00,093
The fighting here was particularly violent.
745
00:38:01,490 --> 00:38:04,550
In a place like this, you can still feel the horror.
746
00:38:04,550 --> 00:38:06,195
The iron hand of war.
747
00:38:06,195 --> 00:38:08,020
These are the bloodlands.
748
00:38:08,020 --> 00:38:10,540
Areas where two totalitarian powers
749
00:38:10,540 --> 00:38:12,280
fought over the same space
750
00:38:12,280 --> 00:38:15,140
in a life and death struggle for supremacy.
751
00:38:15,140 --> 00:38:16,470
Millions died.
752
00:38:16,470 --> 00:38:18,140
Millions more were murdered.
753
00:38:18,140 --> 00:38:20,180
And, even before the Second World War,
754
00:38:20,180 --> 00:38:22,730
millions had perished in a manmade famine
755
00:38:22,730 --> 00:38:24,309
engineered by Joseph Stalin
756
00:38:24,309 --> 00:38:27,550
to break the national will of the Ukraine.
757
00:38:27,550 --> 00:38:29,490
Hitler's war of annihilation
758
00:38:29,490 --> 00:38:31,550
claimed further millions of lives.
759
00:38:31,550 --> 00:38:33,190
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers
760
00:38:33,190 --> 00:38:36,720
died in battles of encirclement or in POW camps.
761
00:38:36,720 --> 00:38:38,210
The country was plundered.
762
00:38:38,210 --> 00:38:41,060
People starved in a new wave of famines.
763
00:38:41,060 --> 00:38:43,550
There have been phases in the history of Europe
764
00:38:43,550 --> 00:38:46,060
where the violence was so devastating that
765
00:38:46,060 --> 00:38:48,580
the thread of memory was severed.
766
00:38:48,580 --> 00:38:50,862
The intimacy with the past was disrupted.
767
00:38:50,862 --> 00:38:53,490
Only trauma remained.
768
00:38:53,490 --> 00:38:56,370
These are the killing fields of Europe.
769
00:38:56,370 --> 00:38:59,830
In 1945, it seemed unimaginable that
770
00:38:59,830 --> 00:39:02,350
Europe would ever reemerge from the abyss
771
00:39:02,350 --> 00:39:03,863
it had created for itself.
772
00:39:07,140 --> 00:39:10,730
Everyone suffered in this terrible war.
773
00:39:10,730 --> 00:39:12,670
Tens of thousands of soldiers
774
00:39:12,670 --> 00:39:14,570
and civilians lost their lives.
775
00:39:14,570 --> 00:39:17,300
German invaders and Russians alike.
776
00:39:17,300 --> 00:39:21,690
There is a story, a grieving family, behind every headstone.
777
00:39:21,690 --> 00:39:23,590
The military cemeteries in the Ukraine
778
00:39:24,603 --> 00:39:27,143
bear witness to the countless dead on both sides.
779
00:39:28,136 --> 00:39:30,886
(dramatic music)
780
00:39:50,010 --> 00:39:53,490
But the most terrible, the cruelest fate,
781
00:39:53,490 --> 00:39:55,330
was suffered by the Jews.
782
00:39:55,330 --> 00:39:57,360
There was a campaign of extermination
783
00:39:57,360 --> 00:40:00,073
against the entire Jewish population of Kiev.
784
00:40:02,425 --> 00:40:05,040
And, on this precise spot,
785
00:40:05,040 --> 00:40:08,320
the bloodiest mass shooting of Jews took place.
786
00:40:08,320 --> 00:40:10,230
If the name Auschwitz stands
787
00:40:10,230 --> 00:40:14,550
for industrial mass murder by the Nazis in gas chambers,
788
00:40:14,550 --> 00:40:18,850
Babi Yar near Kiev stands for the murder by shooting
789
00:40:18,850 --> 00:40:21,360
of tens of thousands of defenseless
790
00:40:21,360 --> 00:40:24,290
men, women, and children.
791
00:40:24,290 --> 00:40:25,833
Holocaust by bullet.
792
00:40:26,740 --> 00:40:30,210
On the 29th and 30th of September, 1941,
793
00:40:30,210 --> 00:40:31,891
in this ravine near Kiev,
794
00:40:31,891 --> 00:40:36,891
33,000 Jewish men, women, and children were shot.
795
00:40:37,430 --> 00:40:38,860
The Jewish population,
796
00:40:38,860 --> 00:40:41,490
whose roots here extended back for centuries,
797
00:40:41,490 --> 00:40:44,410
was annihilated by Hitler's henchmen.
798
00:40:44,410 --> 00:40:49,140
Babi Yar and Auschwitz, the nadir of the history of Europe,
799
00:40:49,140 --> 00:40:52,543
which it had such a high view of its own civilization.
800
00:40:54,040 --> 00:40:57,770
June the 6th, 1944, D-Day.
801
00:40:57,770 --> 00:40:59,860
The tides of war begin to turn.
802
00:40:59,860 --> 00:41:01,770
With the Allied attack on Normandy,
803
00:41:01,770 --> 00:41:05,350
the assault on Hitler's Fortress Europe begins.
804
00:41:05,350 --> 00:41:07,400
The victorious powers want to put an end
805
00:41:07,400 --> 00:41:09,920
to the Nazi dictatorship once and for all.
806
00:41:09,920 --> 00:41:13,580
Never again should war originate from German soil.
807
00:41:13,580 --> 00:41:16,773
Nor should one European power subjugate the others.
808
00:41:22,550 --> 00:41:26,970
Above all, the humanitarian catastrophe of the war
809
00:41:26,970 --> 00:41:28,593
should never be repeated.
810
00:41:30,993 --> 00:41:33,743
(dramatic music)
811
00:41:50,790 --> 00:41:54,300
I'm standing in the old Jewish cemetery in Vienna.
812
00:41:54,300 --> 00:41:55,810
This is one of those places that
813
00:41:55,810 --> 00:41:58,050
reminds you of what was lost to Europe
814
00:41:58,050 --> 00:41:59,370
through the Holocaust.
815
00:41:59,370 --> 00:42:02,380
The industrialized killing centers of the Nazi genocide
816
00:42:02,380 --> 00:42:03,920
were unique in history.
817
00:42:03,920 --> 00:42:05,780
But so were their victims.
818
00:42:05,780 --> 00:42:07,010
Since the Middle Ages,
819
00:42:07,010 --> 00:42:09,930
Jewish culture, know how, and scholarship
820
00:42:09,930 --> 00:42:12,180
have left a deep imprint on Europe.
821
00:42:12,180 --> 00:42:15,610
Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust,
822
00:42:15,610 --> 00:42:18,770
Stefan Zweig, Sigmund Freud, Hannah Arendt,
823
00:42:18,770 --> 00:42:21,390
Felix Mendelssohn, Gustav Mahler,
824
00:42:21,390 --> 00:42:24,060
Marc Chagall, Albert Einstein.
825
00:42:24,060 --> 00:42:26,063
You could add countless further names.
826
00:42:26,063 --> 00:42:29,436
The Holocaust put a brutal end
827
00:42:29,436 --> 00:42:31,890
to this remarkable history of cultural symbiosis.
828
00:42:31,890 --> 00:42:33,580
Europe has never quite recovered
829
00:42:33,580 --> 00:42:35,843
from this act of self-mutilation.
830
00:42:39,750 --> 00:42:41,360
Zero hour.
831
00:42:41,360 --> 00:42:42,890
The war is over.
832
00:42:42,890 --> 00:42:45,312
The Nazi's attempt to dominate the continent
833
00:42:45,312 --> 00:42:47,340
ends in catastrophe.
834
00:42:47,340 --> 00:42:50,089
Huge swaths of Europe lie in ruins.
835
00:42:50,089 --> 00:42:54,413
Buildings will be rebuilt, but the trauma will remain.
836
00:43:01,360 --> 00:43:04,000
At a conference in Potsdam near Berlin,
837
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:07,340
the victorious Allies negotiate the post-war order.
838
00:43:07,340 --> 00:43:08,633
The future of Europe.
839
00:43:10,090 --> 00:43:11,960
The heads of state of the three allied powers
840
00:43:11,960 --> 00:43:13,260
come together here.
841
00:43:13,260 --> 00:43:17,370
US President Truman, Soviet dictator Stalin,
842
00:43:17,370 --> 00:43:20,033
and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
843
00:43:23,200 --> 00:43:25,690
When Churchill arrived on a hot July day,
844
00:43:25,690 --> 00:43:30,023
the first thing he did was to order a whiskey and a cigar.
845
00:43:32,650 --> 00:43:34,630
He spent a long time looking out
846
00:43:34,630 --> 00:43:36,800
over the peaceful Griebnitz Lake.
847
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:38,370
A Soviet sentry could be seen
848
00:43:38,370 --> 00:43:40,530
patrolling along the opposite shore.
849
00:43:40,530 --> 00:43:42,176
And perhaps Churchill reflected
850
00:43:42,176 --> 00:43:44,867
on how Europe would in future be divided
851
00:43:44,867 --> 00:43:47,103
into East and West.
852
00:43:52,860 --> 00:43:55,890
The Allies have won the war together.
853
00:43:55,890 --> 00:43:58,570
And together they want to work towards peace
854
00:43:58,570 --> 00:44:00,638
and to shape the future of Europe.
855
00:44:00,638 --> 00:44:03,590
But alliances rarely survive the wars
856
00:44:03,590 --> 00:44:05,540
they are created to fight.
857
00:44:05,540 --> 00:44:08,320
And now that their mutual enemy is defeated,
858
00:44:08,320 --> 00:44:12,090
the victorious Allies begin to discover their differences
859
00:44:12,090 --> 00:44:14,853
as they sit talking at this table.
860
00:44:18,040 --> 00:44:20,410
After this war, the preeminent position
861
00:44:20,410 --> 00:44:24,400
of the old European continent was a thing of the past.
862
00:44:24,400 --> 00:44:27,520
Moscow and Washington now called the shots in Europe
863
00:44:27,520 --> 00:44:30,320
and would do so in the decades to come.
864
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:33,360
Europe, like the world, would be divided.
865
00:44:33,360 --> 00:44:35,633
Embedded in two opposing blocks.
866
00:44:36,802 --> 00:44:38,790
And this, too, was Hitler's work.
867
00:44:38,790 --> 00:44:40,780
The aim of defeating Nazi Germany
868
00:44:40,780 --> 00:44:43,610
had united the world's two greatest powers
869
00:44:43,610 --> 00:44:45,770
in a struggle that brought them together
870
00:44:45,770 --> 00:44:47,680
in the heart of the continent.
871
00:44:47,680 --> 00:44:50,060
But, when it came to shaping the peace,
872
00:44:50,060 --> 00:44:53,262
the tensions between two radically opposed systems
873
00:44:53,262 --> 00:44:56,120
proved impossible to contain.
874
00:44:56,120 --> 00:44:59,240
The so called Iron Curtain separated
875
00:44:59,240 --> 00:45:01,940
the capitalist from the Communist world.
876
00:45:01,940 --> 00:45:04,243
And did so in the very center of Europe.
877
00:45:05,460 --> 00:45:07,930
The western power zones of occupation
878
00:45:07,930 --> 00:45:09,963
become the Federal Republic of Germany.
879
00:45:12,180 --> 00:45:13,706
In the east, the Soviet Union creates a bloc
880
00:45:13,706 --> 00:45:17,120
of socialist satellite states, which includes East Germany.
881
00:45:17,120 --> 00:45:18,450
The continent splits into
882
00:45:18,450 --> 00:45:21,310
a mainly capitalist and liberal democratic region
883
00:45:21,310 --> 00:45:22,830
and a Communist region.
884
00:45:22,830 --> 00:45:26,183
And the two alliance blocs keep each other in check.
885
00:45:29,150 --> 00:45:32,100
The term balance of terror is often used
886
00:45:32,100 --> 00:45:34,663
in this era of nuclear arms buildup.
887
00:45:43,250 --> 00:45:45,330
Meanwhile, in the Hague,
888
00:45:45,330 --> 00:45:47,340
European leaders take up an idea
889
00:45:47,340 --> 00:45:51,230
that failed to acquire traction between the two world wars.
890
00:45:51,230 --> 00:45:54,743
The vision of a Europe united in peace and freedom.
891
00:45:56,620 --> 00:45:58,910
We cannot ordain that anything less
892
00:45:59,810 --> 00:46:02,253
than the union of Europe as a whole.
893
00:46:03,280 --> 00:46:06,173
Winston Churchill even floats
894
00:46:06,173 --> 00:46:08,630
the idea of a United States of Europe.
895
00:46:08,630 --> 00:46:10,610
This goes too far for many Europeans,
896
00:46:10,610 --> 00:46:13,140
but the heads of state manage to agree
897
00:46:13,140 --> 00:46:16,730
on the creation of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.
898
00:46:16,730 --> 00:46:19,920
It's the precursor to the future European Community
899
00:46:19,920 --> 00:46:21,550
and to the EU.
900
00:46:21,550 --> 00:46:25,050
In May, 1949, 10 founding fathers
901
00:46:25,050 --> 00:46:27,620
sign this institution into existence.
902
00:46:27,620 --> 00:46:29,420
A Western European forum
903
00:46:29,420 --> 00:46:32,773
for freedom, peace, and social justice is born.
904
00:46:33,690 --> 00:46:36,540
The hope is that a spirit of solidarity
905
00:46:36,540 --> 00:46:39,210
will blossom from the conflict of the past.
906
00:46:39,210 --> 00:46:42,753
Shared values and symbols are at the heart of this project.
907
00:46:44,630 --> 00:46:46,920
Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor
908
00:46:46,920 --> 00:46:48,690
of the Federal Republic of Germany,
909
00:46:48,690 --> 00:46:51,680
sees an opportunity in this bond with Europe.
910
00:46:51,680 --> 00:46:54,210
By collaborating with the Western allies,
911
00:46:54,210 --> 00:46:55,850
he hopes to lead Germany
912
00:46:55,850 --> 00:46:58,330
back into the family of free peoples.
913
00:46:58,330 --> 00:47:00,350
Or at least West Germany.
914
00:47:00,350 --> 00:47:02,923
Even if doing so intensifies the division
915
00:47:02,923 --> 00:47:06,433
between eastern and western halves of his country.
916
00:47:08,430 --> 00:47:10,200
The Wets German government's goal
917
00:47:10,200 --> 00:47:12,130
is to peacefully overcome
918
00:47:12,130 --> 00:47:14,540
the division of Germany and Europe.
919
00:47:14,540 --> 00:47:16,300
But what's the first step?
920
00:47:16,300 --> 00:47:18,690
Building bridges with France.
921
00:47:18,690 --> 00:47:22,527
France's Foreign Minister Shuman already has a plan.
922
00:47:22,527 --> 00:47:25,667
"If we want to prevent war in the future," he argues,
923
00:47:25,667 --> 00:47:27,410
"the coal and steel industries
924
00:47:27,410 --> 00:47:31,170
in various European countries, vital to any war effort,
925
00:47:31,170 --> 00:47:33,830
were to be consolidated under one roof."
926
00:47:33,830 --> 00:47:38,437
In 1952, the European Coal and Steel Union is born.
927
00:47:38,437 --> 00:47:42,570
Now, iron and steel shall forge
928
00:47:42,570 --> 00:47:44,570
the peoples of Europe together
929
00:47:44,570 --> 00:47:47,763
in a community of actions and ideals.
930
00:47:49,580 --> 00:47:51,880
Just seven years after the war,
931
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:55,400
national sovereignty over a crucial military resource
932
00:47:55,400 --> 00:47:58,110
is handed over to an international body.
933
00:47:58,110 --> 00:48:00,530
A world historical step.
934
00:48:00,530 --> 00:48:04,700
As the economy recovers, Europeans grow more mobile.
935
00:48:04,700 --> 00:48:06,780
Their horizons broaden.
936
00:48:06,780 --> 00:48:09,049
They drive their own cars or motorbikes or hitchhike
937
00:48:09,049 --> 00:48:12,000
to new destinations.
938
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:13,420
Traveling through a Europe that
939
00:48:13,420 --> 00:48:15,060
was opening up to the world.
940
00:48:15,060 --> 00:48:16,743
Today, we take it for granted.
941
00:48:21,860 --> 00:48:25,470
As early as the 1950s, some young Europeans
942
00:48:25,470 --> 00:48:28,290
are already calling for open borders.
943
00:48:28,290 --> 00:48:30,210
That's still a long way off at this point.
944
00:48:30,210 --> 00:48:32,250
Particularly since a few early attempts
945
00:48:32,250 --> 00:48:34,600
at expanding the community failed.
946
00:48:34,600 --> 00:48:37,153
But the campaigners refuse to be deterred.
947
00:48:40,780 --> 00:48:44,630
And, once again, all roads lead to Rome.
948
00:48:44,630 --> 00:48:47,510
The Roman Empire was one of the largest in history
949
00:48:47,510 --> 00:48:49,370
and the EU would later become
950
00:48:49,370 --> 00:48:51,550
the world's largest trading power.
951
00:48:51,550 --> 00:48:54,980
In 1957, representatives of West Germany,
952
00:48:54,980 --> 00:48:57,630
France, Italy, and the Benelux Countries
953
00:48:57,630 --> 00:49:00,180
come together in Rome to establish
954
00:49:00,180 --> 00:49:02,158
the European Economic Community.
955
00:49:02,158 --> 00:49:05,980
The EEC also results in closer political ties
956
00:49:05,980 --> 00:49:07,260
between the countries.
957
00:49:07,260 --> 00:49:08,820
It's open to new members.
958
00:49:08,820 --> 00:49:13,010
And plans to expand its powers step by step.
959
00:49:13,010 --> 00:49:15,663
Building the foundation for a shared future.
960
00:49:22,660 --> 00:49:25,410
Ancient Rome eventually fell, of course,
961
00:49:25,410 --> 00:49:29,009
thanks to financial crises, political conflict,
962
00:49:29,009 --> 00:49:31,740
and barbarian invasions.
963
00:49:31,740 --> 00:49:34,730
And Europe has its own share of tensions today.
964
00:49:34,730 --> 00:49:37,070
The divide between north and south,
965
00:49:37,070 --> 00:49:40,460
the Euro crisis, immigration policies.
966
00:49:40,460 --> 00:49:42,330
These are all challenges that
967
00:49:42,330 --> 00:49:44,633
the continent will continue to face.
968
00:49:48,980 --> 00:49:52,000
But the European political order is robust.
969
00:49:52,000 --> 00:49:55,080
It's underpinned by longstanding common values,
970
00:49:55,080 --> 00:49:58,330
civil and political freedom, equality before the law,
971
00:49:58,330 --> 00:50:02,630
democracy, human dignity, and a rational view of the world.
972
00:50:02,630 --> 00:50:05,490
This order is now in danger.
973
00:50:05,490 --> 00:50:08,830
If Europeans really want to inhabit a common house,
974
00:50:08,830 --> 00:50:10,640
they will have to make it so strong that
975
00:50:10,640 --> 00:50:13,400
it can withstand storms and earthquakes,
976
00:50:13,400 --> 00:50:15,540
even those that come from within.
977
00:50:15,540 --> 00:50:17,280
This can be learned.
978
00:50:17,280 --> 00:50:20,353
And wasn't Europe always a continent that learned?
979
00:50:21,292 --> 00:50:24,459
(inspirational music)
76254
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