World Wars I and II tore the heart out of the 20th century. However, the twenty years between them saw the rise of jazz, prohibition, the talkies, radio, and the motor car. Amid the rapid progress, historians describe the inter-war years as an age of anxiety. This richly detailed series explores the looming reality of the period that the terms of peace merely set the stage for another world war. The First World War claimed a life every twenty-five seconds – for four years. What had been the point of it all? Surely it was that out of all the grief and loss would come a new world order, one in which peace and prosperity would replace inequality, injustice and dynastic swagger. But twenty years after the guns fell silent, they were again about their business – louder and more lethal than ever. Why? Why did the peace that people prayed and paid for last little more than twenty years? Why did tyrants rise to control the fate of continents? Why did a world that had survived a war collapse into an unprecedented depression? Two world wars tore the heart out of the twentieth century. Between these two tragedies was an age that nostalgia views enthusiastically – a time of jazz, prohibition, the talkies, radio and the motor car. A time that was in reality an age of anxiety. Our story, told through archive and the insights of international historians, is of twenty years of peace that produced war. A peace that failed. Impossible Peace. The First World War seemed to end all further hostilities forever. So why was it only followed by a 20-year period of peace? By the end of 1919 – when our story starts – it was all done and dusted. The terms had been hammered out at Versailles, the great and powerful had signed the papers, the echoes of war were fading and the new age, the age of a hard-won peace, was beginning. It would last just twenty years. The twenty years that occupy our series. Twenty years is not a long time. This is the story of what went wrong. The series investigates what was the fatal mistake in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which led to another war just two decades later. It turns out that there is much more to the background than “Hitler's rise”, and the road to World War II actually shows a much more colorful and varied picture. From the Great Depression to the Jazz Age and the rise of Soviet power, from Gandhi to Picasso and Cole Porter, we can learn about the key events and people involved in the outbreak of war.

Part 4 Dancing on a Volcano 1929-1931

By the late twenties, Europe – France especially – appeared to have put the bad old days of economic strife behind them. As Paris lurched into 1929, it seemed on the surface (to those with deep pockets) that the party would go on forever. However, few saw the impending future claiming that these people were just hiding away from a harsh reality. A few voices warned that this boom time would have inevitable consequences, but the majority weren't listening …. In a post-war boom, capitalism seemed to be delivering on its promise of prosperity for all – boosting economies both America and abroad. Then, on October 24, 1929, the unthinkable happened The New York Stock Exchange crashed; banks failed; and commerce suffered a blow that would be felt 'round the world. What had seemed to be an economic recovery is revealed to have been at best fragile and the world enters a global depression of unprecedented and unmeasurable savagery. Unemployment, hyperinflation and despair are everywhere and dictators arise. Old empires - Britain and France - come under pressure throughout the extended territories that they can barely afford to police.

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