Original subtitles

(ship honking)

February 1919, In New York,

the return of African-American soldiers is a celebration.

(trumpets playing)

(whooshing)

Their bandleader James Reese recalls.

Heroes were shouted from windows, from roofs,

from the street.

(crowds cheering)

As the regiment moved along,

they were joined by mothers, sweethearts and brothers.

The 369th regiment was nicknamed, the Harlem Hellfighters.

The French had pulled them from their deployment

on the loading docks and rail lines to fight alongside them

and they had fought heroically.

(trumpets playing)

One of the great activists of their (mumbles),

Marcus Garvey proclaims,

"We believe the Negro should not be deprived of any

"of those rights or privileges common

"to other human beings."

(crowd cheering)

President Wilson, however,

believes in the segregation of Blacks from Whites.

At the same time outside the US, he defends the right

of peoples to self determination.

Back in the US, he embarks on a long tour

to mobilize public opinion in favor

of the Treaty of Versailles.

Wilson knows that in Washington,

the Senate remains deeply reluctant.

He knows that voters of German origin are furious

about the clauses of the treaty, that they find insulting,

unfair to their former homeland.

(crowd cheering)

Wilson also knows that the Senate is hostile

to the founding covenant of the League of Nations.

It imposes a mutual defense pact on member states.

This could potentially lead

to a new American military intervention, which nobody wants.

Wilson tries to hold back the tide.

He says, "Failure to back the League of Nations,

"would break the heart of the world."

Wilson works to the point of exhaustion

and suffers a stroke that leaves him paralyzed and mute.

(dramatic music)

What will the US Senate do?

If it rejects the Treaty of Versailles

and the League of Nations, will Peace be possible?

While awaiting ratification by the Americans,

Europe's most urgent priority is rebuilding.

Belgium and Serbia are severely damaged.

But in France, the destruction is far worse.

The North and East of France are devastated.

(gentle music)

Stefan Zweig writes, "All the livid steeds

"of the apocalypse have reared up."

Revolution and famine, terror, epidemics

and above all else, that arch plague nationalism,

which has poisoned our European culture.

(gentle music)

The war destroyed 1/3 of France's wealth.

The numbers are staggering.

Of villages wiped off the map, of unexploded shells

and land mines of fields contaminated with toxic gas.

The earth must be cleansed of this ocean of poisons.

A long and dangerous tasks as these farmers

and pickerdy shell, whose fields are littered with shells,

they must dispose of.

(gentle music)

(loud blasting)

In spite of everything, they resume their lives

as they always have in centuries past.

(gentle music)

The French order German prisoners of war

to de-mine the country, in violation

of the Geneva Convention,

the International agreement that protects captured forces.

There is still 300,000 of these unfortunate men in France,

interned at the horrible Somme camp near Verdun.

The German soldier helmet court writes,

"I have the impression I'm considered a criminal.

"Every hour it becomes clear.

"The cynicism of the French and their hatred of us,

"they now want us to pay."

(faint thudding)

22,105 prisoners die in the ruins or simply from hunger.

(men chattering)

But the French suffer too.

In the markets, the price of beans and potatoes

is four times higher than before the war.

(chattering)

Rich Americans come to the aid of the French,

like the heiress of a large bank.

Anne Morgan, who along with Dr. Anne Murray Dike,

founded this first NGO,

the American Committee for Devastated France.

(trumpets playing)

They replant forests destroyed by shells.

They transform a Chateau into a dispensary.

Anne Morgan writes to her mother,

"Our work is a joy, we are useful here."

These people lived under the German occupation.

Their only food was beetroot that is fed to cows.

They slept at night on bare floors in the bitter cold.

They are now coming back to life.

(bright classical music)

(cow mooing)

(children crying)

6 million orphans are adrift in Europe.

(violin playing)

These Polish children who miraculously survived

the many battles in their homeland,

are welcomed to the United States.

(crowd cheering)

In Paris, the sparring orphans of MoMA are spared

from misery as the French government makes them

Wards of the State, until they reach adulthood.

Russia has untold numbers of orphans,

especially after the Civil War.

The victory of the Communists in 1922 brings the GULAGs,

the concentration camps of Lenin and then Stalin.

And so more orphans are thrown

into the streets, becoming block noise, little criminals.

(bright folk music)

Britain has its own urgent problem of orphan delinquents.

The solution is radical.

A one-way ticket on the first ship

to the farms in the wide open spaces of Western Canada.

In Ottawa, Member of Parliament J.S Woodsworth points out,

"We are turning children into cheap laborers."

Today, one in 10 Canadians is a descendant

of these displaced children.

In a similar vein, the UK begins exporting young women

who now cannot find husbands.

These so called surplus women

from the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps

are headed to Australia.

(cheering)

(gentle music)

How will the survivors mourn?

One of Lithuania's greatest poets, Oscar Milosz

expresses what the parents, widows

and children feel walking through the endless rows

of graves marked by the cross Star of David

or crescent moon.

He says, "Oh, the dead, the dead,

"the dead are at least less dead than I."

Many families seek to repatriate their dead,

to be able to visit their loved ones grave

in the local cemetery.

But first, the remains must be dug up.

Special units of the American Army are filmed carrying out

this grim task.

230,000 bodies are returned to their families

and France where most

of the military cemetery are located.

They remain to this day the graves of 700,000 French

and colonial soldiers, 750,000 German soldiers,

300,000 British soldiers, including 60,000 Canadians,

and 34,000 Americans.

(bird chirping)

Everywhere people try desperately to get in touch

with the spirits of the dead.

(lively upbeat music)

Spiritualism has been very popular since the 19th century.

The high priest of spiritualism at the time

is a certain Leon Vini, he writes,

"Innumerable legions of souls hover over us eager

"to communicate."

Those who died in battle seek only to manifest themselves

to their loved ones on earth.

(gentle music)

Sadly, these seances are just another swindle.

To remember the dead, honor them

and unite the people in their memory.

Every country, every city,

every village must have a memorial.

They can celebrate heroism and combat, pacifism,

or dignified strength.

Like this bronze caribou,

a tribute to 814 men from Newfoundland,

then part of the British Empire who died serving in the war

and who had no known grave.

(upbeat music)

(faint thudding)

Around the world, sculptors work day and night

to fill the thousands of orders for war memorials.

(crowd cheering)

London, November 11th, 1920.

King George V and his sons,

the future sovereigns begin the first ceremony honoring

the Unknown Soldier.

(gentle music)

In this coffin lie the remains of an unidentified body,

chosen at random to commemorate the 500,000 missing

and unburied and all through the British Empire who died.

The French had learned a month earlier that the ceremony

was being organized.

The government had not planned a similar commemoration

and the press was indignant.

A leftist Member of Parliament recorded a vengeful speech.

One of the first films of sound.

(foreign language)

(crowd cheering)

France's Unknown Soldier lies beneath the Arc de Triomphe

with an eternal flame over his grave.

Many other countries also adopted this powerful symbol.

In Belgium, the soldier King Albert I

turns the dedication into a ceremony of unity

for his people.

(gentle music)

(crowd chattering)

Washington, the 11th of November, 1921.

The ceremony for the Unknown American Soldier

is attended by Marshall Ferdinand Foch,

the Supreme Allied Commander at the end of the war.

This is the Crow Chief, Plenty Coups

who only 30 years before had allied with the American Army

and the tragic Indian Wars against the Sioux Nation.

(faint drumming)

At Arlington National Cemetery near Washington,

Plenty Coups presents the Unknown Soldier with a coup stick,

a warriors Weapon of Bravery.

(ululating)

(crowd cheering)

Foch tells the former commander of American Forces

in France, General Pershing,

"I want to see the tribes of the Wild West."

In North Dakota, he meets the Crow Nation's mortal enemy,

the Sioux chief, Red Tomahawk.

A welcoming committee gives him a fur coat,

and a peace pipe.

(men vocalizing)

General Foce is given the name, charging thunder.

(crowd cheering)

In Washington, President Wilson severely weakened

by his stroke is devastated by a defeat in Congress.

The United States refuses to ratify

the Treaty of Versailles.

The vote reflects American public opinion,

which is deeply isolationist.

The American people no longer want to get involved

in the affairs of others, nor go to war again.

(bright upbeat music)

Typical of this 1920s generation,

here's how Zelda Fitzgerald, the young wife

of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, describes her peers.

The Flapper awakes from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism,

bobs her hair, put on her choicest pair of earrings

in a great deal of audacity and rage and goes into battle.

She flirts because it is fun to flirt

and wears a one-piece bathing suit

because she has a good figure, and she refuses to be bored,

chiefly because she isn't boring.

She is conscious that the things she does

are the things she has always wanted to do.

(trumpets playing)

(metal ringing)

But happiness is fragile.

By refusing to sign the Treaty of Versailles,

the United States Senate has jeopardized Wilson's

other dream of the League of Nations.

The league however, has already been established

in the country of neutrality, Switzerland

on the shores of Lake Geneva.

But without America, will this precursor

of the United Nations, assembled for most

of the world's countries be able to keep the peace.

(dramatic music)

The various treaties that follow the Treaty of Versailles

will set off endless conflicts.

The treaties of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1919

and Trianon in 1920, will break up

the Austro-Hungarian Empire by creating new nation states,

such as a smaller Austria, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia,

and also reshape Hungary and Romania.

The famous right of People's

to Self Determination, has not really been respected.

Germans are now in Poland and Czechoslovakia,

Hungarians in Romania, Croatians in Yugoslavia,

the Austro-Hungarian empire in hope to gather

all these people in relative peace.

Similarly, the Ottoman Empire had prevented

various Arab tribes from tearing each other apart.

But at Treaty of Sèvres August 10th, 1920,

the Ottoman Empire,

severely punished for having supported Germany

is stripped down to the Turkey of today,

minus the Greek Enclave of the city of Smyrna.

The map of the Middle East is redrawn by England and France.

The French want to expand their colonial territories

by taking control of Syria and Lebanon.

The British create new countries, Transjordan,

now Jordan, Palestine, and crucially Iraq,

giving themselves control of oil production.

Wilson had supported the creation of a Kurdish State

and for a few months, it did exist, before disappearing,

swept away by the Turks.

(gentle music)

In Palestine, the Romans had driven the Jews out

of Jerusalem 2000 years earlier.

The Arabs now 600,000 strong are less than welcoming

to Jewish Zion's who have been fleeing

to the promised land since the late 19th century

to escape persecution in Central Europe and Russia.

During the war, the British,

like the famous Colonel T. E. Lawrence seen here

at the Treaty of Sykes-Picot

made many promises to the Arabs

in exchange for their support against the Turks,

one being to halt Jewish immigration.

But Lawrence of Arabia had been manipulated

and the promises made will not be kept.

The British authorized the creation of a Jewish homeland.

The three decades later, will become the State of Israel.

Its first president Chaim Weizmann calls for emigration.

He says, "We must make Palestine as Jewish,

"as England is English and America is American."

It is the beginning of a war without end.

In 1920, in a defeated turkey in Constantinople,

now Istanbul, the situation is tense.

The Allies still occupied both the city

and part of the country,

which is unacceptable to the Nationalists

and leads to a large scale insurrection.

At its head is General Mustapha Kemal, who in 1915,

had resisted British and French landing in Turkey.

This revered officer refuses to accept the Treaty of Sèvres

and the loss of the city of Smyrna.

He says, "If we give in to all the Allied demands,

"it will be impossible to curb their greedy intentions."

Mustafa Kemal raises an army of volunteers,

then fights the allies and Greeks for two years

to recover the territory they occupy.

(horse neighing)

(water splashing)

(screaming)

(loud blasting)

(guns blazing)

(loud blasting)

On September 9th, 1922,

his army enters the last stronghold occupied

by the Greeks, Smyrna.

(dramatic music)

The city is set on fire.

The Turks want to drive out not only the Greeks,

but also all non-Muslim minorities,

especially the Armenians.

Only a lucky few are able to escape

and embark for exile in Europe.

In Geneva, the League of Nations,

though it has failed to put an end to war and slaughter,

nonetheless succeeds at rescuing millions of people.

Thanks to an extraordinary man, Fridtjof Nansen,

a Norwegian polar explorer

who became the High Commissioner for Refugees,

and who will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

(audience clapping)

He creates the Nansen passport,

a precious document for all those who are stateless.

Like the painter, Marc Chagall

and the the composer Igor Stravinsky,

it enables them to cross borders.

9 million men, women and children become peace refugees.

Many of them want to leave for the United States.

They all end up at the Port of Cherbourg

in the North of France, which becomes a bottleneck.

The French build the famous Hotel Atlantique,

a transit center for immigrants,

with its own medical and administrative services.

And the long voyage can begin.

(gentle music)

America has always welcomed the world's castaways,

such as the Irish, the Italians, the Jews.

On the Pedestal of the Statue of Liberty,

created by the French sculptor, Auguste Bartholdi

are engraved the words of the Jewish poet, Emma Lazarus,

"Give me your tired, your poor,

"your huddled massage yearning to breathe free,

"the wretched refuse of your teeming shore."

In Montreal, 30,000 Jews demonstrate to draw attention

to the fate of those left behind in Ukraine.

(gentle music)

100,000 Jews were murdered, trapped in the civil war

between the White Russians, the Czarist

and the Reds, the Communists.

After four years of fighting,

the Reds, the Bolsheviks eventually prevail

because they are even more ruthless than their opponents.

December 22nd, 1922, Russia becomes the Union

of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR.

A massive portion of the planet becomes Communist.

The USSR's entire economy has collapsed.

The harvest had been requisitioned to feed the troops.

It's first great famine in 1922 leaves 5 million dead.

Humanitarian aid pours in from all over the world.

A member of the American relief administration

who will save thousands of lives,

William schaffrath recounts,

"People have been reduced to eating weeds mixed

"with ground bones, tree bark and clay

"as well as horses, dogs, cats, rats

"and the straw from roofs."

I see emaciated little skeletons with gaunt faces

and toothpick legs.

Every day a dozen of them die.

The stench is nauseating.

(gentle music)

(bright folk music)

At the end of the Civil War,

one and 1/2 million Russians escaped the country,

400,000 White Russians settled in Nice,

on the French Riviera

or Paris in well-to-do neighborhoods.

(cars racing)

Those who have escaped with their fortunes

can live like kings, and indeed they do.

(bright folk music)

Prince Yusupov one of the assassins

of Rasputin, shadowy advisor,

of Tsar Nicholas II, writes,

"How can one not feel confident in Paris,

"which knows well how to lift a stranger spirits

"with a smile."

The prince has a lover,

the young Grand Duke Dimitri, who was himself living

with the already famous fashion designer, Coco Chanel.

(lively folk music)

When she decides to launch her perfume, Chanel number five,

Dimitri convinces her to adopt for its bottle,

the shape of the vodka flask used by Russian officers.

(lively classical music)

But it's not just (indistinct),

who remains deep to their devotion to the last Tsar,

Yusupov notes in his memoirs, everywhere once

his Russian businesses is springing up.

Restaurants, shops, New Orthodox Churches with their schools

and retirement homes.

Paris is becoming a natural destination for immigrants.

The Czar's generals and former officers

of the Imperial Guard have no skills beyond the military,

but they can drive and so become taxi drivers.

(men vocalizing)

They will long be part of provision folklore.

The last will retire in 1970 at the age of 92.

White Russians like this taxi driver watch

with concern the spread of Soviet influence in the world.

(crowd chanting)

Exorbitant wartime spending has led to deep social tensions.

People everywhere are joining Communist Parties

with their vision of common prosperity in London,

Berlin, New York, Milan, and Rome.

(crowd chanting)

The Italian Communist leader Antonio Gramsci returns

from Moscow and takes his place

as an early Marxist theoretician.

He says, "To live is to be Partisan."

Opposing the Communist, war veterans initially band

together behind a fiery poet,

a war hero, Gabriele d'Annunzio.

He has denounced the Treaty of Versailles

because in redrawing the map of Europe,

the allies have handed to Yugoslavia,

territory is populated by Italians, including Dalmatia

and the city of Fiume.

(foreign language)

Gabriele d'Annunzio laments,

"Our victory has been mutilated."

(foreign language)

He launches his militia proclaiming,

"Italy your hour has come, wonderful years.

"I hear the thunder of Eagles which

"with their talents tear up the night."

(crowd cheering)

Gabriele d'Annunzio is able to seize the city of Fiume.

(crowd chanting)

The regular army then drives him out, but respectfully.

For the Communist Gramsci, this tragic comedy

is yet another sign of the decadence

of the Bourgeois State.

He says, "The old world is dying.

"The new world struggles to be born.

"And in this twilight, monsters suddenly appear."

That monster is Benito Mussolini.

His wife Rachele writes, "His eyes were phosphorescent,

"his gaze piercing, his pupils seemed to flash lightning.

"He knew that his eyes held incredible power over everyone."

Mussolini began his career as a socialist journalist.

He became a Nationalist during the war.

In 1919, he created the Fascist Movement,

named after his Fasci di Combattimento, fighting squads.

Mussolini rides on the prestige of Gabriele D'Annunzio,

copying everything.

The black shirts, the Roman salute, the race dagger

and the cry,

annoy, to us, to us. (crowd chanting)

But Gabriele D'Annunzio had 2500 men in 1919,

Mussolini has 300,000 in 1922.

With his populist slogans, Mussolini unites veterans,

war invalids, the unemployed, the middle class,

and even the feeble minded

who have trouble making the Fascist salute,

And all the underclass who after their street fights,

right on their bandages, Menefrego, I don't care.

Mussolini promises to restore social order.

He gives his squads a weapon,

a wooden cane to beat the Communists,

and set fire to their Houses of the People.

(dramatic music)

Mussolini says, "I will restore discipline

"in the factories."

Which pleases the big industrialists,

like Agneli the founder of Fiat,

and Pirelli the Tyre manufacturer.

(gentle music)

(laughing)

(gentle music)

(crowd cheering)

Mussolini organizes on October 28, 1922,

a show of force pumpously called the March on Rome.

(foreign language)

He himself arrives in comfort on the train from Milan.

(foreign language)

He has exchanged his black shirt for a suit and tie,

meant to be more statesmen like in the midst

of his Fascist henchmen.

King Victor Emanuel 111, hands him the reins of power,

much to the misfortune of the Italian people.

Supported by the church, Mussolini makes clever use

of propaganda and fills concentration camps

with his opponents,

ushering in an authoritarian anti-communist regime.

One year later, in 1923, German veterans also unite

around their wartime leader, General Ludendorff

who now supports the leader of the Nazi Party Adolf Hitler.

Hitler says, "Our people are subjects to such misery,

"that if we do not act now,

"they will join the Communists."

The allies will assist Hitler through a series

of blunders like the Belgian and French occupation

of Germany's war mining region,

where coal is seized in forced reparations,

which leads to an economic crisis and staggering inflation.

With banknotes being printed as fast as possible,

the currency depreciates at an unimaginable rate.

A loaf of bread costs 460 billion Marks.

A 13-year old German girl, Erma Lange recounts,

"When our father comes home with the day's wages,

"we rush right out to spend it, otherwise in no time,

"it would be worthless."

Between the Germans of the war and the French

and Belgian occupiers, tension is rising.

On March 10th, 1923,

the French officers strikes German onlookers,

who failed to remove their hats for the funeral cortege

of a victim of an attack.

Amid such instability, Hitler tries to seize power

on November 9th, 1923.

But the army and police remain loyal to the German Republic

and the putsch fails.

Hitler is imprisoned for now,

Stefan Zweig speaks for many when he writes,

"In this year 1923, the Swastikas have disappeared,

"the stormtroopers and the name

"of Adolf Hitler have all fallen into oblivion."

But Zweig is terribly wrong.

From his cell, Hitler will prepare his revenge.

He writes his book, "Mein Kampf" my struggle,

a screed against the Treaty of Versailles and France.

The Totalitarian Menace is real.

In Spain. General Primo de Rivera

also inspired by Mussolini

seizes power on September 23rd, 1923,

and establishes a dictatorship.

This military coup delights an ambitious young officer,

Francisco Franco.

Noted for his discipline and ferocity,

Franco, at 33 will become the youngest General in Europe,

and the next dictator of Spain.

In 1921, he is one of the leaders

of the Spanish Foreign Legion,

responsible for maintaining order in the Rif,

an area of Morocco controlled by Spain.

The French dominate the rest of the country.

During the World War and the iron mines of the region,

Moroccans were forced to work beyond exhaustion

to supply French munitions factories.

The Moroccan people rebel against this exploitation.

(horses neighing)

A Nationalist leader emerges in the Arab world,

his name is Abd el-Krim.

He is a well read scholar about 50 years old.

He has successfully unified the Berber tribes around him.

(gentle music)

He begins by inflicting a crushing defeat

on the Spanish at the Battle of Annual,

on July 21st, 1921.

(loud blasting)

(horse neighing)

20,000 Spaniards are defeated by the Rif tribesmen.

13,000 of them are killed or wounded,

the survivors retreat in chaos.

The French intervene to fight alongside the Spaniards.

(loud blasting)

Is this the beginning of the end of colonization?

The Rif War foreshadows all the horrors of the future.

Here, a Moroccan soldier has beheaded his rebel brother.

There is an escalation of atrocities on both sides.

The French and Spanish use every weapon in their arsenal,

including aerial attacks.

(airplane racing)

(loud blasting)

Some bombs are loaded with the same horrific mustard gas

used by the Germans in 1917.

(loud blasting)

Landing their forces behind enemy lines,

and advancing with tanks,

they finally defeat Abd el-Krim.

He surrenders to the French on May 27th, 1926.

His surrender is filmed for movie house newsreel,

which seek to reassure viewers proclaiming,

his elderly father and his family placed themselves

under the protection of the victors.

The Rif War will become the inspiration

for every subsequent war of decolonization in Africa

and around the world.

(dramatic music)

It also marks a decisive turning point.

From now on, the world will be structured

around a new fault line.

(gun blazing)

People have lost their religious bearings,

and their identity during the war.

They will find new meaning, a new project, a vocation

and political engagement.

(crowd cheering)

1926, Fascist fever rises everywhere,

like here in England.

Communists fever also rises everywhere, even in New York.

(guns blazing)

The United States tries to expel its Communists,

they will be given a one-way ticket to the homeland

of socialism on this boat renamed The Soviet Ark.

(ship honking)

Bye.

(bright jazz music)

In addition to the Red Scare,

Americans are dealing with prohibition.

By banning alcohol, Conservatives hope to impose morality

on a society at full roar.

And so begins the wild pursuit of smugglers

of every type of alcohol, distilled in Canada or at home.

American police resort to all the means at their disposal

to destroy the contraband.

(metals cracking)

(glasses shuttering)

(faint thudding)

(water running)

(glasses shuttering)

(bright jazz music)

Prohibition is a boon for the Italian-American mafia,

now strengthening its grip on America.

Al Capone takes center stage in the history of gangsterism.

Americans are giddy with life.

The rhythms of jazz give rise

to new dances like the Charleston.

(bright jazz music)

They wanna forget everything,

they don't wanna have to think anymore.

The American writer John Dos Passos projects,

The 20th century will be American,

American thought will dominate it, American Progress,

will give it color and direction.

The regeneration of the world physical as well

as moral has begun,

and revolutions never move backwards.

(plane engine roaring)

(bright jazz music)

Jazz has crossed the Atlantic.

In Paris, Josephine Baker sets the tone.

When the French writer (indistinct) first sees her,

he exclaims, "Eroticism has just found it's style."

(bright jazz music)

These are the roaring 20s of (indistinct).

Ernest Hemingway's Paris memoir,

"A Moveable Feast" will be his last book.

He writes, "Living in Paris is like having a great treasure

"given to you."

(bright jazz music)

In Berlin too, the rhythms

of the Charleston echo every year.

Stefan Zweig writes in his book, "The world of Yesterday."

As the value of money dwindled,

all other values began to crumble.

It was a time of high ecstasy,

a singular mixture of unrest and fanaticism.

Everything that was extravagant and uncontrollable,

experienced a golden age.

In the madness of these post-war years,

someone to feel alive,

to bury once and for all the memory of disaster and death.

Others will wait for Hitler to put an end

to the Treaty of Versailles by rearming Germany.

Financial crises will weaken democracies

and another World War, which ones seemed unthinkable,

then a distinct threat could become inevitable.

(crowd chanting)

And yet, after November 11th, 1919,

people everywhere proved their tremendous capacity

to start living again.

Will they know how to fight to ensure

that the next war will finally be the last?

And Will they be able to keep the peace?

(dramatic music)

(laughing)

(dramatic music)