The idea that white Germans were the ‘superior’ race developed in Germany tied in with European and American racist thinking. The Nazi reading of race came out of the work of Hans F. K. Gunther, who developed the Volk or Volkergruppe, people of a common hereditary with precise physical and spiritual habits. The concept of Aryan or Nordic races arose out of Gunther’s work.

In the next several blogs I will cover the rise of Nazi Germany, Hitler, the Jewish holocaust, and racism. European and American readers will be used to these subjects. They are frequently covered in film, radio, TV and even referenced general conversation. This begs the question, is there anything new to say? Outside Europe and the USA, these subjects will be less covered. However, because one outcome of this period was the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Arab world, and to a less extent the Islamic peoples around the world, has been deeply affected by events in which they had no hand. The rise of Hitler and the Jewish Holocaust has therefore been of significance almost worldwide.

Japan had been able to follow European nations in colonising other countries and settling her people in her new colonies. By the end of 1945, around six and half million Japanese lived as settlers or as government officials in Japanese colonies such as Korea, Taiwan, China, Manchuria and Micronesia. Japanese military might had created an empire in the Asia Pacific region.

What had changed by the end of the 1914-18 war? The Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires had disappeared. The Chinese Empire remained in place, just about. The Russian Empire had erupted into a socialist revolution. This revolution would focus the minds of the European and American ruling classes for the next 70 years, the new socialist leaders would nationalise the companies privately owned by wealthy Europeans. They tampered with private ownership; previously, private property had been untouchable.

The 30 years from 1914 to 1944 represent years of such death and turmoil at every level that it is hard to exaggerate the suffering across the globe. Many of the events of this period have become so seared into people’s memory, contemporary events are frequently compared and contrasted with them. More people than ever were involved in, or affected by war, and at the times when there was no war, there was chaos across the global economy, which affected everyone’s lives.

The origins of the war in 1914 cannot be understood without a deeper understanding of racism. The idea that the Europeans stood as a standard-bearer of the world’s peoples, that they were a ‘superior’ race above all others of the world’s peoples, was a widespread belief across all ruling classes at the time.

Britain wanted world dominance, and there was never any place for a competitor of any size like Germany. This thought, that Britain willed and manipulated the way towards the 1914 war, has been so unthinkable to British historians and the public alike that it has never been widely discussed. Unlike German scholarship - where the issue was widely discussed - those few scholars who suggested that a major section of the ruling classes consciously decided to go to war with Germany have been side-lined and ignored.