The War of the World (2006)
A documentary in which controversial historian Professor Niall Ferguson argues that in the last century there were not in fact two World Wars and a Cold War, but rather a single Hundred Years' War. A compelling argument is made to consider all of the conflicts of the 20th century in a broader context.
Seasons & Episode
The first episode in the series shows that in 1900 the world was dominated by Empires that were both multinational and multiracial. But they would soon explode into an inferno: the First World War. Their war to the death ignited fires of racial animosity that were exploited by new and more terrible nation states which were far more preoccupied with national and racial purity. It was the beginning of the age of genocide.
In the aftermath of the First World War, the whole world was entranced by an American dream. America stood for new freedoms: in economic, social and political life. Then this dream was shattered by the greatest economic disaster in modern history precipitated by the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
The years from 1943 to 1945 were the cataclysmic crux of the 20th Century's war of the world. But the defeat of the German and Japanese empire states was less of a victory for morality than we tend to assume. The Allies were forced to make terrible compromises to defeat fanatical enemies. Could the Allies only win by adopting the same inhuman methods as the dictators?
When the Berlin Wall finally fell, the 20th century seemed to have reached its climax. Optimists believed they were witnessing the final triumph of the West. But Niall Ferguson shows that in the last decades of the 20th century, dark forces of racial violence were still at play. And he analyses whether the century to come will be able to escape the outbreak of a new cataclysmic global war.
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