The War of the World

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.

1942 was the year that the 20th century teetered on a knife-edge. It was the year when the whole world map appeared to have been redrawn by the Axis powers. This film explores the 20th century that nearly was, one in which totalitarian dictatorship divided the globe between them. And it shows how the Axis powers built their empires by turning living space into killing space.

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?

We remember the Cold War as a nuclear-powered peace that came terrifyingly close to falling apart. But there were many parts of the world where the Cold War was not 'cold' at all. The Third World War really happened, and it was fought in the Third World. Here the superpowers chose not to fight head on. Instead, they waged a war almost as bloody as the First World War - by proxy.

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.