[1] The earlier of the two economic downturns generally labeled in this way occurred over the period 1873-96. It was caused by a series of factors, including the end of the mid-nineteenth-century industrial boom (see industrialization) especially in railway building, a scarcity of gold prompted by the widespread adoption of the GOLD STANDARD, and cheap imports of grain from the Americas. Indeed, the recession was an illustration of the ways in which trade and transportation were integrating the global economy (see also capitalism; communications). The effects of the downturn included a fall in cereal prices, unemployment, bank failures, a run on gold, and a general sense of panic. Though Britain persisted with LAISSEZ-FAIRE economics, in Germany industrialists abandoned their earlier attachment to free trade and, alongside the junkers, supported in 1879 a tariff law that created an alliance between “iron” and “rye.” Protectionism also proved popular in France. Some historians doubt, however, whether this slump was truly a depression, since it generally reflected merely a slowing in rates of growth, especially in the case of Britain which had been the first power to industrialize. It was also a time of modernization in which new industries (e. g. chemicals, dyestuffs, electricals, and rubbers) took off.
[2] Though the labeling of the second Great Depression (1929-34), triggered by the Wall Street Crash in October 1929, is far less disputable, its origins have still been much debated. some argue that it was essentially the product of a cyclical downturn, albeit one of exceptional severity. Others place more emphasis on the upheavals of world war i which disrupted the relationship between Europe and the USA and created an unstable economic structure dominated by war debts, reparations, and anxieties over currency exchanges. Such instability left Europe all the more vulnerable to further shocks. In the event, these came from the USA, where the end of the postwar housing and consumer boom, alongside an agricultural downturn and over-speculation in the financial markets, led to the massive withdrawal of investments from Europe and the imposition of tariffs. European BANKING failures followed in 1931, beginning with the credit Anstalt in Austria. Because of its dependency on American loans, Germany was especially affected, defaulting on reparation payments and experiencing widespread bankruptcies, which together with high unemployment did much to destabilize the weimar
REPUBLIC.
High unemployment, falling prices, and a shortage of capital were characteristics of the Depression throughout Europe, though different places were hit at different times. Britain felt the pinch in 1931, whereas the slump arrived relatively late in France in 1932, possibly because its industries were relatively small and less prone to fluctuations in the international system. Large gold reserves may also have cushioned the initial effects, as was true of the Netherlands and Belgium. Whatever the case, until the ideas of keynes began to make an impression later in the 1930s, there was reluctance among the liberal democracies to emulate the New Deal pioneered in the USA. Cuts in government spending, as well as protectionism, were the most characteristic initial responses. It was the totalitarian regimes of HITLER and STALIN which developed massive public works programmes, and eventually rearmament - though it should be noted that Germany was already beginning to recover by the time the Nazis came to power, and that the Soviet economy operated in relative isolation from the capitalist system prevailing elsewhere. Since that epoch, the severity of successive cyclical difficulties within this system has regularly been measured against the exceptionally grave slump of the early 1930s. It still constitutes the principal point of comparative reference used by economic historians in assessing, for example, the gravity ofthe
European and global recession which followed on from the international banking crisis that erupted in autumn 2008, as well as the efficacy of responses thereto.
Great Fear Series of local but linked panics which affected some areas of France at the start of the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789. Most regions were touched by insubordination and a degree of collective violence between December 1788 and March 1790, born out of famine, unemployment, and the expectation of reform. These factors fed into the Great Fear, but the latter was distinguished from this more generalized unrest by its more restricted geographical scope, by its relative brevity (lasting from around July 20 until August 6, 1789), and by the unfounded conviction that brigands in the service of the nobility were being paid to destroy the harvest. This belief in an aristocratic conspiracy meant that sightings of beggars, soldiers, and travelers became the signal for the tocsin to be sounded, for local militias to assemble, and for villagers to arm themselves and warn their neighbors. The Great Fear contributed to a breakdown of all forms of authority in the countryside, and drove the CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY towards meeting peasant demands in its AUGUST DECREES.
Great Purges Campaigns of repression conducted in the soviet union under stalin’s leadership. During the 1930s the bolsheviks, who already had much blood on their hands, brought state-sponsored violence to unprecedented levels. This was especially the case in the years 1936-8, often known as the Yezhovshchina (or “era of Yezhov,” named after the then head of the secret police, or nkvd). The Purges began around the time of the introduction of the five-year plans and of COLLECTIVIZATION, which resulted in the persecution of countless kulaks who were deemed to be the class enemy. In the early 1930s the NKVD also launched a drive both against “undesirables” (e. g. petty thieves, prostitutes, tramps, and beggars) and against former opponents of the regime as well. This operation reached a new intensity following the assassination of kirov in 1934, which prompted the arrest, trial, and execution of several prominent party members, including KAMENEV, ZINOVIEV, and BUKHARIN. As directed by Yezhov, and later beria, state-sponsored terror (see also terrorism) reached deep into the ranks both of the party and of the RED ARMY. Nearly half of the officer class was exterminated. After the signing of the 1939 nazi-soviet pact and the outbreak of world war ii, the range of the Purges was enlarged to persecute Poles, who were rounded up and either transported to the gulag or simply shot (see, for example, katyn massacre). In the “Great Patriotic War” from 1941 onward anyone suspected of collaboration with the enemy faced death or the labor-camp system, which often amounted to the same thing. By 1945 the victims included German prisoners of war, workers forcibly conscripted by the Nazis, and opponents of the new extension of soviet hegemony across eastern Europe. Only with the death of stalin in 1953 did the Purges come to an end. It remains unclear how many were killed overall, but most estimates vary between 3 and 10 million. some historians have argued that the slaughter was part of a crusade designed to eliminate all opposition to the creation of “the new socialist man.” Others have claimed that the terror sprang from Stalin’s paranoia and developed a self-sustaining momentum. More recent studies have suggested that soviet bureaucracy was so ramshackle that the Purges were driven not so much from the top as by local and regional agents keen to please the Kremlin. In truth, the violence sprang from both above and below, consistently conditioned by stalin’s obsession with party obedience and supposed ideological purity.
Great War (see world war i)
Greece Located in the southern Balkans, this country (with a current population of some 11.2 million) comprises a mainland bounded by the Ionian, Mediterranean, and Aegean Seas together with numerous islands. Assisted by philhellenism, it broke away from Ottoman Turkey (see turkey AND Europe) during the 1820s through the greek WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. It was ruled by a Bavarian (Otto I) from 1832 to 1862, and by a Dane (George I) from 1863 to 1913. Under the latter the territory of Greece grew to include the Ionian Islands and Thessaly, and, as a result of the Balkan WARS of 1912-13, also Crete together with parts of Macedonia and Thrace. It entered world war i only in 1917, when the pro-Allied urgings of
VENIZELOS at last prevailed. Wrangles over the spoils of victory led on to the greek-turkish war of 1921-2 (see also Paris peace settlement; sevres treaty; LAUSANNE TREATY). The republic instituted in 1924 was led for most of its existence by Venizelos, but from 1935, when the monarchy was restored, metaxas became the dominant figure. Though he operated a style of military dictatorship imitative of fascism, he did not side with the AXIS powers at the outbreak of world war II. When Italy invaded Greece in October 1940, Metaxas led (until his death early the next year) a spirited defensive action. After the Germans overran the country in April 1941, the Greek RESISTANCE movement was increasingly split between rival groupings ofmonarchists and communists. Thus the liberation of the country by British forces in 1944 turned out to be the trigger for a GREEK CIVIL WAR that lasted until 1949. The eventual monarchist victory permitted a return to civilian government, and in 1952 enabled Greece to obtain entry into nato. However, in 1967 the so-called greek colonels seized power and established a further military dictatorship (from which King Constantine II fled after mounting an abortive counter-coup). Their regime collapsed in 1974 after a failed attempt at annexing Cyprus (see also enosis) - a bid that gave Turkey the opportunity to occupy the northern part of the island. Greece then voted to end the monarchy, and instituted a new civilian Hellenic republic initially led by karamanlis. In 1981 the consolidation ofthis form ofgovernance was exemplified by Greek entry into the European Community (see EUROPEAN integration) and by a peaceful transition to the country’s first Socialist administration, under the premiership of Andreas Papandreou. However, the longstanding tensions with Turkey continued to be a worrying feature of Greece’s external relations. So too were the newer anxieties arising from the establishment in 1993 of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (see also YUGOSLAVIA), which thus incorporated a territorial label that the Greeks sought to reserve exclusively for one of their own northern provinces. In addition, during the first decade of the twenty-first century Greece developed a level of public debt that threatened to cause national bankruptcy. By May 2010 the crisis had reached such a point that fellow-members of the euro currency zone (see economic and monetary union), together with the International Monetary Fund, felt compelled to agree a three-year plan of 'bailout’ loans amounting to D120 billion in return for the prompt introduction of severe austerity measures.
Greek Civil War This conflict, which followed the expulsion of German forces from Greece in 1944, was at its height from 1946 to 1949. Liberation sharpened the divisions that had existed during world war ii within the resistance movement as between communist and anticommunist elements. open hostilities were at first intermittent, but in March 1946 the communists, with material support from TiTo’s regime in Yugoslavia, began a sustained military campaign against the moderate coalition government in Athens. The latter was initially reliant on British protection, but it soon became evident that the exhausted UK was unable to guarantee Greece against a communist takeover. Within the overall context of growing cold war tensions, this particular danger triggered the declaration of the truman doctrine in March 1947. US military and economic aid (see marshall plan) then made a major contribution to the Greek government’s victory over the communists, completed in August 1949. Meanwhile, the insurgents had also been weakened by the fact that a majority within their divided leadership had chosen to support STALIN in the dispute that had arisen between the soviet union and Yugoslavia. Thus they had forfeited continuation of the supplies that Tito had been able to provide from Belgrade much more directly than anything potentially available from Moscow.
Greek colonels Label for the junta that ruled GREECE from 1967 to 1974. Led by Georgios Papadopoulos and Stylianos Pattakos, it seized power to avert the likelihood of a return to the premiership by the moderate socialist Georgios Papandreou. Depicting themselves as a shield against communism, the colonels worked briefly with Constantine II before the monarch launched an abortive counter-coup and fled to Rome. over the following years the junta operated a repressive regime, in which censorship and torture bulked large. In 1972 Papadopoulos declared himself Regent, and then in the following year proclaimed a republic under his own presidency. Towards the end of 1973 he was replaced by General Phaidon Gizikis. In July 1974 the junta tried to effect union (see ENOsis) with Cyprus by ousting makarios. The main outcome amply demonstrated the incompetence of the colonels’ preparations, as Turkey (see TURKEY AND EUROPE) mounted a swiftly successful invasion and partition of the island. With the junta thoroughly discredited as well as unpopular, Gizikis then felt compelled to negotiate with KARAMANLIS the return of Greece to civilian democratic rule. After a trial of the military regime’s leadership cadre in 1975, Papadopoulos and Pattakos received death sentences that were then commuted to life imprisonment.
Greek War of Independence Actively waged against Ottoman Turkey (see turkey and Europe) from 1821 to 1829, this struggle for Greece proved to be one of the most striking manifestations of the continuing importance of the ideas generated by the french revolution of 1789, and particularly of the growing significance of nationalism within early-nineteenth-century Europe. In 1814 a secret Greek revolutionary organization, the Hetairia Philike (Society of Friends), was founded in Athens and among expatriates in Odessa. It was soon fomenting popular uprisings both in mainland Greece and in the Aegean islands. Early in 1821, under the leadership of ypsilantis who was a major-general in Russian service, it provoked an anti-Turkish rebellion in the danubian principalities. Though his particular initiative was denounced by the tsarist regime and soon suppressed by Ottoman forces, it proved to be the inspiration for a more general war of liberation. The wider patriotic movement (assisted by foreign volunteers inspired with philhellenism and encouraged by widespread sympathy from Christian Europe at large) registered gains that spurred the so-called National Congress of Epidauros to proclaim independence in January 1822. Before long, however, the Ottoman forces were regaining the upper hand, aided by the intervention of Sultan Mahmud Il’s Egyptian vassal-ally Muhammad Ali. By the time that the fortress of Missolonghi (crucial to navigation through the Gulf of Corinth) eventually fell to the Turks in April 1826, Russia and Britain had become increasingly inclined towards offering protection to the Greeks. Though metternich as chief minister of Austria continued to regard the national uprising as a regrettable symptom of European disorder, the French government then moved towards supporting the Anglo-Russian demands for an armistice and for negotiations aimed at securing some form of Greek autonomy. in October 1827, after the sultan refused to comply, squadrons from the British, Russian, and French navies entered the bay of Navarino off the western Peloponnese aiming to overawe the main Turk-ish-Egyptian fleet. After the latter chose to open fire rather than withdraw, it was decisively defeated in the last major battle dating from the age of sail. In April 1828 Tsar Nicholas i went on to make a unilateral declaration of war upon Turkey, pursuing thereafter a successful campaign on land that in September 1829 enabled Russia to impose the ADRIANOPLE TREATY. Its terms included a Turkish promise of autonomy for Greece. Early in 1830, following an international conference in London, this was converted into a confirmation of full independence - albeit operative only within borders so limited as to make expansionist irre-DENTISM a central feature of the Greeks’ future agenda. In 1832 the powers agreed that the kingship of the new state should be assigned to a Bavarian prince, who took the title of Otto I. (See also Map 7)
Greek-Turkish War Lasting from March 1921 until September 1922, this conflict arose from dispute about the 1920 sEvres treaty imposed on TURKEY by the victorious Allies after world war i. This had prescribed territorial concessions to GREECE that were now being repudiated by Turkish nationalists under atatUrk. The first stage of the war involved the Greeks occupying smyrna and advancing towards Ankara. By September 1921, however, Ataturk’s forces had begun to gain the upper hand. In March 1922, the Allies sought to restore peace by agreeing to consider reducing the losses to Turkey demanded in 1920. However, the conflict did not conclude until the Turks themselves had driven the Greek forces out of Smyrna. After an interim settlement made at Mudania in October 1922, the Allies replaced Sevres with the lausanne treaty of July 1923. Within months, it was clear that the war had contributed to the introduction of republican regimes both in victorious Turkey and in defeated Greece, confirmed in October 1923 and May 1924 respectively. The conflict also produced large-scale transfers of population involving forms of ETHNIC CLEANSING (see also migration) that featured westward movement of around 1.3 million Greeks and eastward relocation of some 400,000 Turks.
Greenland (see under Denmark; Scandinavia)
Gregory XVI(1756-1846), Pope (1831-46). Born in Venetia to aristocratic parents, Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari entered the strict Benedictine Camaldolese order at age 18. His experience of the foreign occupation of Rome during the french REVOLUTIONARY WARS led him to publish The Triumph of the Holy See (1799) defending papal infallibility and temporal independence. His election as Pope was supported by metternich, who strongly desired such a firmly conservative outcome. Insurrection soon broke out in the papal STATES and Gregory was obliged to obtain Austrian assistance, leading to a seven-year military occupation of the territories. His encyclicals Mirari vos (1832) and Singulari nos (1834) denounced liberty of conscience, press freedom, and separation of church and state, as well as the Catholic LIBERALISM associated with lamennais and Georg Hermes. More positively, Gregory reformed many of the regular religious orders and put enormous effort into overseas missions. (See also Catholicism)
Gromyko, Andrei (1909-89), Foreign Minister of the SOVIET UNION (1957-87). His diplomatic career advanced under stalin through the patronage of MOLOTOV, who appointed him ambassador to the USA in 1943. During world war ii Gromyko attended the Tehran, Yalta, and potsdam conferences. In 1946 he became Soviet representative at the UNITED NATIONS. After two spells as deputy minister for foreign affairs, he was promoted to replace Molotov in 1957. Doggedly loyal first to KHRUSHCHEV and then to brezhnev, he oversaw Soviet external policy during three decades of COLD WAR. His depth of experience became particularly important as a stabilizing factor during the brief leadership tenures of andropov and CHERNENKO. He also supported the succession of the reformist gorbachev in 1985, albeit without appreciating the extent of the transformation in world affairs that this would soon unleash. After relinquishing his ministerial post, Gromyko ended his career as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.
Grossdeutsch/Grossdeutschland (see under german unification)
Guderian, Heinz Wilhelm (1888-1954), German military theorist and general during world war ii. A professional soldier, he served as a signals officer in World War I, and later took an interest in motorized armor. Alongside other analysts, including Liddell Hart in Britain and de gaulle in France, he came to see the tank as an offensive weapon, rather than merely an appendage to the infantry, thus helping to lay the foundations of BLITZKRIEG. He was instrumental in establishing three tank divisions in 1935, and his views on modern warfare were articulated in Achtung-Panzer! (1937). In 1939 he was in charge of the 19th Panzer Corps in the Polish campaign, before heading the armored assault on France in May-June 1940. Both invasions illustrated the power of fast-moving tanks, supported by low-flying aircraft and dive-bombers. Promoted to general, Guderian participated in Operation barbarossa against the Soviet Union where he enjoyed several successes, though his criticism of hitler’s tactics led to his dismissal in late 1941. He was recalled in
1943 as Inspector-General of Armored Troops and took charge of Panzer Command. Never a full-blown convert to Nazism, he knew of the
1944 JULY PLOT to kill Hitler, but kept apart from the conspirators. Made chief of the army general staff shortly afterwards, he had a stormy relationship with the Fuhrer who again sacked him on March 28,1945. Guderian was subsequently captured by US forces, but escaped prosecution at the NUREMBERG TRIALS because his actions were deemed to have been consistent with those of a professional soldier. However, both the Poles and the Soviets provided evidence that his troops had committed atrocities against prisoners of war.
Guernica Scene of a devastating German bombing raid during the Spanish civil war. This ancient capital of the basques was viewed as strategically important in the Republican defense of Bilbao. In late afternoon on market day, April 26, 1937, the town was bombed for several hours by aircraft from the Condor Division. Those attempting to flee were machine-gunned by surrounding Italian expeditionary troops, and Guernica itself was razed to the ground. No official death toll was recorded at the time, though the Basque authorities claimed that around 1,600 had been killed. Recent scholarship has suggested a figure of between 250 and 300, though hundreds more were wounded. franco’s Nationalists claimed that the town’s destruction was the work of the communists, yet the world’s press was aware that the Germans were responsible. Along with Rotterdam, Coventry, and Dresden in world war ii, Guernica came to symbolize civilian suffering under aerial bombardment, and its own particular horror was encapsulated in one of Picasso’s most celebrated paintings.
Guesde, Jules (1845-1922). left-wing politician who promoted marx’s ideas among French socialists. Son of a schoolteacher, he worked in the Paris prefecture before taking up journalism. After supporting the Paris commune, he fled to Italy where he came under the influence of anarchism. He then converted to Marxism in 1876. Returning home he founded the Parti des Tra-vailleurs socialistes which, in 1881, became the Parti Ouvrier Francais, widely acknowledged as the first centralized party in France. A passionate orator, Guesde had little success in winning over the trade unions (see trade unionism), but established a sizeable power base in the industrial north and several municipalities. By 1898 the Gues-distes, with 13 parliamentary seats, formed the largest socialist faction in France, and the one most feared by the bourgeoisie. Guesde himself was a deputy between 1893 and 1921, and a cabinet member during World War I. Yet he did not possess the tact, inclination, or vision necessary to reconcile the ideological differences of the French left, hence the earlier split with BROUSSE in 1881-2. The task of unifying French SOCIALISM fell to JAURES in 1905, though Guesde remained influential in the new party, the section Francaise de l’Internationale Ouvriere. Thus he helped to nurture a Marxist tradition which survived well into the epoch of the fifth republic.
Guizot, Fron<;ois (1787-1874), Prime Minister of France (1847-8). Born into a bourgeois Protestant family, Guizot was raised by his mother after his father’s execution during the french revolution OF 1789. In 1812 he became professor of history at the Sorbonne before serving briefly on LOUIS xviii’s council of state. He opposed the reactionary policies of charles x and, following the REVOLUTIONS OF 1830-2 and the establishment of Louis Philippe’s july monarchy, he was minister of public instruction from 1832 to 1837. In that capacity he dramatically increased the number of elementary and secondary schools and teacher training colleges. He served as foreign minister from 1840 to 1847 when, despite his broadly liberal outlook, a concern with French national interest led him to form closer ties with METTERNiCH’s Austria. In 1847 he supported the conservative Swiss sonderbund. During his brief tenure as premier, Guizot refused to extend the suffrage, and this domestic immobilisme helped to trigger the revolutions of 1848-9. Their outbreak caused him to flee into exile, and thereafter he devoted himself to completing a history of the seventeenth-century English Revolution and to the major autobiographical project of his Memoires (9 vols, 1858-68).
Gulag Russian acronym for the Chief Directorate of corrective Labor camps and colonies, administered first by the cheka and eventually by the NKVD. The term is now synonymous with the worst internal oppression inflicted by the soviet UNION. The camps were initiated during the Russian CIVIL war (1918-20), but then grew dramatically during the period of the great purges. In 1932 the Gulag population had reached possibly 200,000. By 1939 nearly a tenth of the Russian population may have been interned - a figure including common criminals, but primarily comprising innocent men and women who had fallen foul of the Purges and been sentenced to long periods of hard labor. During world war ii inmates became conscription fodder for the red army, with their places being taken by civilians and prisoners of war from Soviet-occupied territories such as Finns, Latvians, Poles, Germans, and Japanese. contributing to the labor for state projects, the camps of the Gulag were always a key part of the Soviet economy. They were generally located in remote areas (especially Siberia), yet close to natural resources. Given the loss of the economically valuable Ukraine to Germany in 1941, they proved vital to the war effort. Conditions in the camps were appalling: sub-zero temperatures, paltry rations, disease, and overwork may have cost the lives of some 20 million people by the time of stalin’s death in 1953. Though the Gulag system never included extermination centers as such, even more victims perished there than in the Nazi camps involved in the so-called final solution (see Nazism; CONCENTRATION CAMPs). The scale of the USSR’s state-sponsored terror (see also terrorism) became evident only in the 1950s and 1960s, when it emerged as the subject of several memoirs, including Slavomir Rawicz’s The Long Walk (1956). However, it was the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago in 1973 which did most to scandalize the wider world. After Stalin’s death, the camps were massively scaled down, though they persisted into the GORBACHEV era and beyond. The Russian authorities have remained secretive about them, refusing to release records establishing their full human cost.
World History
