THE ELUSIVE SEARCH

FOR STABILITY IN

THE 1920s

In the preface to his novel The Magic Mountain (1924), Thomas

Mann (1875—1955) wrote that it took place “in the long ago, in the old

days, the days of the world before the Great War.” Mann sets up a parallel

between a Swiss sanatorium and European civilization. In the sanatorium,

rationality (Enlightenment thought and democracy) confronts irrationality

(the aggressive nationalism of the right-wing dictatorships). In The Magic

Mountain, which was an allegory for the post-war era, Mann expressed the

mood of despair prevalent among European intellectuals in the 1920s: “For

us in old Europe, everything has died that was good and unique to us. Our

admirable rationality has become madness, our gold is paper, our machines

can only shoot and explode, our art is suicide; we are going under, friends.”

The Great War swept away the empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary,

Turkey, and even before the end of the war, Russia. The Treaty of Versailles,

signed in 1919 by a frail new German Republic, and the accompanying

treaties signed by the victorious Allies and Germany’s wartime partners, did

not resolve national rivalries in Europe. Dark clouds of economic turmoil,

political instability, and international tension descended on Europe in the

two decades that followed the war. The specter of revolution frightened Eu­

rope’s business and political leaders. Communist parties sprung up in one

country after another, even though outside of the Soviet Union Bolshevism

only triumphed briefly in Hungary and Bavaria. Although Europe experi­

enced a brief return to relative prosperity and political calm after 1924, the

Wall Street Crash of 1929 ended that short period of hope. The search for

what U.S. senator and future president Warren G. Harding called “nor­

malcy” proved elusive, if not impossible, in the 1920s.

The Great War helped unleash the demons of the twentieth century, as

parties of the political extremes sprang up to threaten parliamentary

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CHAPTER 24