The first and the Second World War had significant effects that altered the course of global affairs irreversibly. The events before during and after the two world wars conspired to changed the political, social-cultural, economic as well as the technological affairs. The Two World Wars were truly global as they actively involved many of the world powers at the time.
Even though the First World War shook Europe to the core, the combination of the first and the Second World War created a three world order, modeled along three rival political affiliations. These three worlds had two major and ugly effects: the cold war which would have destroyed the world and the mass killings, genocide, in many troubled countries. It is the two world wars that opened the world to the idea of globalization.
For the period during and immediately after the two world wars the world experienced and upsurge of technological innovation in media, engineering and technology. These three supported the concept of globalization such that the world was almost becoming a small village. More significantly there have been improved standards of living amongst the people of the world as well as the rise of individualism. Thus the two World Wars played the role of setting the world up to adopt globalization.
Initially the First World War was intended as a quick war with the warring parties hoping to have a quick military fix to a small problem. The Germans had hoped that it was going to be a quick hit on its enemies lead by France. None of the parties were prepared for the total war that was to ensure. Instead of a small war involving Germany on one side Germans and the allied forces on the other side, small wars erupted in various fronts. As such land mines, machine guns wars took centre stage.
The wars condition deteriorated to desolation, disease and vermin. There were emerging very many battle fields, on which many soldiers died. It was due to the realization of the full meaning of the war that both the allied and the central forces started to enegage fully trained battalions (Tignor, Adelman, Aron, Kotkin, Marchland, Prakash and Tsin 813). So intense was the total war that by the end of the warring period in 1918, more that 70 million men had fought in the war.
Many more women had been involved in offering auxiliary service such as nursing, doctors and technicians. The proponents of the total war, in devising a way of rallying the masses behind the war resulted to radio as well as film as the propaganda spreading machines (819). While propaganda fueled the war to new heights it is the involvement of the mass media through radio programs such as The Lone Ranger that gave the war the full impetus of total war.
The power of the media on politics during and after the World War 1 was reinforced by commercialization of film. The film was used for more purposes that entertainment. It was used to highlight new realities about the social, gender and technological effects of the Word War 1. Films such as The Metropolis portrayed technology in more perilous way that it provoked condemnation from critics who felt that it misrepresented the facts about the state of the condition in industries at that time.
The film also in a somewhat satirical ways represented the social democratic views on industrial labor relations by proposing the metropolis solution (the need to raise the industrial worker wages as a way of empowering their spending power) to labor problems (Elsaesser 3). The film also highlighted some of the emerging gender roles and identities of the World War One. In this film the women are seen as a mediators in am male dominated world as well as taking a more sexualized role as seen in the robotized Maria (53).
Immediately after the Great War, a number of events both inside and outside Europe conspired to influence the cause of events. One of the effects of the war was the decimation of the powerful pre war Europe and the rise of the Soviet Union. Two major events especially played a vital part in crating this powerful monster, the Soviet Union. Far away in America the capitalist economic optimism of the 1920s America was drawing into an ugly state, the great American depression.
At around the same time the German had sneaked General Joseph Stalin back into Russian to help fight the enemy forces. Stalin revolted and after eliminating some of his political enemies including former friends Trotsky Leon, he assumed absolute power. The revolution, something akin to political experimentation to form a new world centre of power had began (Tignor, Adelman, Aron, Kotkin, Marchland, Prakash and Tsin 826-827).
Encouraged by the failures of capitalism in USA, Stalin began to experiment with communism, which he modeled long the developmental stages identified by Karl Marx. Stalin though, was faced one big challenge: socialism up to that time only existed in theory and it had not been tested practically. To do this he opted to build a classless society that abolished any private ownership of property. As such he encouraged, actually ordered peasants to merge their farms and hold them communally (828).
Economically he modeled communism by initiating several state projects such as enormous HEP projects, industries and building of cities while politically Stalin adopted the expansionist ideology idea and collaborated such states as Belorussia into the Soviet Union.
While urbanization and state controlled industrialization helped coagulate socialism, it is the use of mass terror that were the hallmarks of Joseph Stalin personal experimentation with socialism. The way he executed friends and foes, loyalist and dissenters made him achieve an almost omnipotent status in the Post Word War 1 Russia (829).
The two world wars lead to the formation of the three world orders: the capitalist first word, the communist second world and the colonies third word (854). The differences between the first and the second worlds lead to an ideological war characterized by mistrust, threats and counter threats. Due the technological advancements that resulted during the cold war and that changed the military affairs irreversibly, sophisticate war weapons such as nuclear bombs and submarines were developed.
The major irony of the cold war was the fact that the two warring factions had fought on the same side during the World War 2. Having eliminated the common enemy in Germany they now turned to each other (861). The World War 2 also gave rise to a new term: genocide. The period after this war experienced mass killing in countries such as Rwanda, Cambodia and other such as Guatemala. It is the Nazi genocide that had the most significant effects of all as it deprived Europe its former glory and morality in word affairs (855).
The effects of the holocaust have been documented in art such as Speigelman’s Maus Art a graphic novel, which portrayed a brave Jew, Vladek who miraculously survived these tumultuous times due to his many skills. As such he was valued by the Nazi over seers in the Auschwitz Nazi camps.
This coupled with diminished European power is what led to the push toward decolonosation. A majority of colonized states now pushed to free themselves from their colonial masters. Some of the decolonization efforts were peaceful such as in Ghana but in other such as South Africa and Kenya the freedom fighter engaged the colonial master in violent revolt before freedom was achieved (8775-877).
It is after the two word wars that the idea of globalists ion started to develop. This was helped by the advancement in technology especially in fids such as transport and communication. It became easier to travel to any part of the world within hours. For those who could not travel the world was brought to them through the radio, television and film (900). One of the ironies of globalization is that increased and decreased diversity.
Decreased global diversity as world citizens were adopting a single global fashion culture while increasing local diversities in urban places like Los Angeles where many cultures converged.. While the notion of globalization started to take shape during the war its realization largely depended upon other factors and the removal of some obstacles such as the cold war. The cold war was particularly important because the communication between the two words was almost non existent (901).
More significantly it is the end of communist socialism, triggered by the election of John Paul II as the pope that also gave way to modern globalization as we know it today. Globalization clearly portrayed the failures of communism (908). Thus not only did globalization change the world demographically, but also resulted to irreversible social economic technological as well as political changes.
The world two World Wars were brewed in Europe, but the connotation of them being true a World War was reflected in the influences of the many activities that happened out side Europe. Wars of such magnitude was bound to have varied and long lasting effects in world affairs, the most significant not the damage of the reputation of European colonials master on their colonies. Furthermore the war leads to great ideological differences termed as the cold wars, which had the potential to annihilate the entire world.
Significantly the two wars lead to the fall of empires that effectively lead to the promotion off states opened up the world to globalization. However globalization can be traced to the events during and after the World War I that promoted the mass culture characterized by mass production which slowly and eventually created a global market for mass consumer goods.
The power of the global market was largely aided by the commercialization of global mass media with networks such as CNN and films s8uch as The Metropolis playing a very large part in advancing global agenda. Thus the two world wars conspired to usher intentionally the concept of globalization.
Works Cited
Elsaerser, Thomas. The metropolis. London: BFI Publishing, 2000. Print
Tignor, Robert; Adelman, Jeremy; Aron ,Stephen; Kotkin, Stephen; Marchand, Suzanne; Prakash , Gyan and Tsin, Michael. Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the World from the Beginnings of Humankind to the Present. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008. Print.