Ideology alone was of course not enough for Hitler to rise to power. The question remains: how was Hitler able to revive the German economy sufficiently to fight a global war in a mere six years? Hitler had taken political power in Germany in 1933. Once this question has been asked, the direction of the answer is obvious: the German economy would have to be supported by the great powers, France, Britain or America; there was no other way.

From time to time when an important global event occurs, I will write a short essay about the event and illustrate how history can be used to inform ourselves about the event. The success of the Taliban in Afghanistan is just such an event. The question I posed was how can a relatively small military peasant army overcome a mighty nation like the USA? I hope you find the read interesting.

By 1913, America was the richest nation in the world in terms of total and per-capita output. By 1918, she dominated the global financial structures by becoming the world's creditor nation. Her banks had provided the money to fight the war. She was preparing to take over world power; although that had to wait until the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. How had she generated such wealth at incredible speeds? The wealth generated by the USA came out of industrialisation which had begun early in the 19th century. As in Britain, industrialisation had originated out of cotton.

The USA appeared on the world stage with a big bang, if you will pardon the pun. Two atomic bombs were dropped on Japanese cities which announced her entrance. In 1944, at a meeting with the British at the village of Bretton Woods in the northeastern USA, the leaders of the two nations made a historic agreement on the future global infrastructure: something that had been missing in the interwar years; it would remain intact in most respects until the present day.

The USA would protect her vassals so long as they accepted her world leadership role. This latter included allowing USA military bases on their land, joining the military alliance, NATO, led by the USA; and following the financial leadership of the USA in terms of the dollar standard, and rules laid out in the United Nations, World Trade Organisation, and other global financial organisations. The Americans asserted their world power, and the vassals agreed voluntarily to follow behind.

One of the keys to understanding the period between 1914 and 1945 is the continuation of colonialism. Stated or unstated, the expansion and control of foreign states was a major war aim of Britain, France, and Germany. The winners, Britain and France took everything. The one major part of the world uncolonised until this period was the Islamic world of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans had been a strong precapitalist Empire some hundreds of years old. During the 19th century, as the Europeans expanded, the Ottomans declined in wealth, power, and territory. By 1900, they only existed because the European powers supported the Ottomans geographically to stop the Russian Empire from expanding southwards into the Mediterranean.

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.