Powder Keg: Europe 1900 to 1914 | Historical Documentary | Lucasfilm

by Panzer
On May 29th, 1913,
the cultural elite of Paris set out with great expectations for the world premiere of “Rite of Spring,” a new ballet by composer Igor Stravinsky.
They got more than they bargained for.
The music was harsh, the dancers’ movements and costumes strange.
Within minutes, whistles started, then hisses, boos and howls.
A riot broke out in the box seats.
“The Rite of Spring” became the most notorious ballet in history.
Provocative and modern with a vengeance, it announced a chaotic, new world.
The uproar in the theater that night was a glimpse of the larger forces of change building across Europe,
ready to explode the next summer, with World War I.
Between August 1914 and November 1918, 27 countries would declare war,
over 60 million men from around the world would fight, and over eight and a half million die.
The war they fought would achieve none of its planners’ goals.
Instead, it would sow the seeds of hatred, destroy and create nations -- and shape the world we know today.
In the summer of 1914, none of Europe’s leaders expected to start the most destructive war the world had yet known.
But they did. And the question is, why?
The years leading up to the war were known as the Belle Epoque – the beautiful time.
The last major European war had been decades earlier.
As the 20th century began, peace and prosperity prevailed.
Technology delighted and amazed.
Railroads crisscrossed nations and empires.
Assembly lines spewed out automobiles that filled the streets of expanding cities.
Steel and glass buildings reached for the sky while early airplanes sliced through it,
and newly invented movie cameras captured the wonder of it all.
But under the surface, Europe was filled with unrest.
There were strains and stresses almost in all of the European countries before 1914.
Deep and abiding sources of tensions within each of these countries.
Governments, most of them still ruled by kings and queens, faced growing pressure for elections and accountability.
Socialists, pacifists, feminists – all were pushing for change.
One idea kept these reformers going: progress.
Progress included becoming more and more peaceful.
People thought that they had progressed so far that they would not have a war for a very long time.
And that was something that the man on the street thought.
But those who were the elites in the military and in the political leadership of countries thought
how soon are we gonna go to a major war.
By 1914, five European countries literally ruled most of the world:
Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the empire of Austria-Hungary.
Constantly competing for resources and colonies around the globe,
these Great Powers had formed a web of agreements to handle conflicts.