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1900-1938

1900-1938 | World War II | 1946-2000

A Guide to the 20th Century
Snapshots of the century – how people around the world fought, played, thought, worked, experimented and freed themselves – including an hour's worth of video clips.

Lost Generation
With an emphasis on the battle of the Somme, the information on this large site – including history articles and a unique database of the names of soldiers on World War I memorials in Britain – provides an opportunity to turn those lost during the war into real people.

• Monarchy
  Dynamic timeline that illuminates the lives of the men and women who sat on the English/British throne and the powerful individuals who supported and sometimes fought them.
• H G Wells: Visionary novelist
  Wells forecast 20th-century society so accurately that he has been dubbed 'the man who invented tomorrow'.
• Immigration
  Accessible history of immigration into Britain from the time of the Romans to the present.
• The War of the World
  According to historian Niall Ferguson, the 20th century was by far the bloodiest in history. In this website, he explains why this came about, and there is an extensive chronology of the events that made this the ‘age of hatred’.
• The Search for the Northwest Passage
  From the 15th century, European mariners sought to find a seaway through the ice-bound Arctic to the Orient. This website examines attempts including the fatal Franklin expedition and Amundsen’s success.
• Masters of Darkness: Rasputin
  The wandering peasant who exerted a powerful influence over Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
• The Airships
  The story of the largest and most romantic aircraft ever conceived – from the flight of the first Zeppelin in 1900 to the Hindenburg disaster of 1937 and beyond – and its role in intercontinental air travel, exploration and warfare.
• Race in the 20th Century
  This C4 Learning website explores the representations of empire and immigration in Britain and civil rights in the United States.
• The Real Helen Keller
  The legendary campaigner for the disabled rejected her teachers' methods, became a political radical and wrote books inspired by a Christian mystic.
• Edward VII
  Both his parents instilled in Edward a conviction that he was irredeemably frivolous and unworthy to be king. He devoted most of his life to living up to the first judgement, and the last nine years of it to disproving the second.
• Edwardian Country House
  Lots of fascinating information on and insights into the Edwardian age.
• Queen Victoria’s Grandchildren
  Biographies of eight of the queen’s grandchildren who, after her death, occupied European thrones, particularly George V of England, Nicholas II of Russia and Wilhelm II of Germany.
• The Diets that Time Forgot
  Info on weight-loss diets and fitness regimes popular in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras and 1920s, plus general facts on diet and nutrition.
• What the Papers Said
  Newspapers give a contemporary slant to historical events: Chartists, Great Exhibition, Suffragette movement, World War I, Russian Revolution, Treaty of Versailles, General Strike, Cold War, Vietnam War (Channel 4 Learning).
• The Holocaust
  An umbrella website covering all aspects of the Holocaust of World War II, including a chronology (1923 to present) and information on victims and survivors, war crimes trials and later controversies.
• Cities and disaster
  An examination of the calamities that befell seven cities: London (1666), Lisbon (1755), Chicago (1871), San Francisco (1906), Tokyo/Yokohama (1923), Florence (1966), New Orleans (2005).
• Albert Einstein: Unique scientist
  The man who described the link between energy and matter and totally changed the way we view the universe.
• Masters of Darkness: Aleister Crowley
  He spent his life proclaiming himself to be 'the beast 666', but was he just a spoilt rich boy rebelling against a repressive mother?
• The Coldest March
  An extract from Dr Susan Solomon's book in which she defends the reputation of Captain Scott of the Antarctic.
• Titanic: A beginner's guide
  A selection of the best websites and books on the British liner that sank on 14/15 April 1912.
• David Lloyd George
  British prime minister from 1916 to 1922 – the first to come from a humble background – Lloyd George was also a great reformer and a womaniser.
• David Lloyd George
  Britain’s only Welsh prime minister.
• Endurance: Shackleton and the Antarctic
  Background information on Shackleton and his expedition, and on his mentor Scott, plus details about Antarctica itself.
• The Meteorite that Vanished
  The search by two British scientists for a giant meteorite in the Sahara, rumoured since 1916 when a French consular official claimed to have discovered a huge iron hill in Mauritania.
• The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
  While it caused a furore in wartime Britain, the 1943 film’s portrayal of a section of the European military caste was scrupulously accurate and it has grown in stature with each passing year.
• George V
  The king who created an image of the royal family as ordinary people.
• Empire and Globalisation
  Niall Ferguson explains how the British empire provided the framework for present-day globalisation.
• Britain’s Trains and Railways: A beginner’s guide
  Everything you wanted to know about steam engines, railway companies and electric locomotives.
• Winston Churchill: A beginner's guide
  A selection of the best sites about the 'Greatest Briton'.
• The First World War
  An exploration and dissection of some of the war's most controversial features.
• Children and war
  The history of child warriors extends from the youths of ancient Sparta and the youngsters below decks in Nelson’s navy to the young people engaged in military activity in the 21st century.
• Weapons of War
  This C4 Learning website charts the development of weapons technology from World War I to the present.
• Rescued from Oblivion
  An extract from Steve Humphries' book on the deprivations on the British home front during World War I.
• Boy Soldiers
  Historian Richard van Emden tells how at least 250,000 of the soldiers who fought in World War I were 17 years old or less, too young to join up legally.
• Dirty Hands: Atrocities of World War I
  According to Dr Alan McDougall, the Germans were guilty of atrocities, but the Allies' hands weren't clean and the Turks were responsible for the worst crimes.
• What Happened at Jutland?
  Article by maritime historian Bill Jurens gives the reasons why the battle of Jutland went so disastrously wrong for the British fleet.
• Dogfight: The mystery of the Red Baron – Interviews
  Interviews with historians Philip Sabin and Norman Franks and with the Red Baron's nephew Baron Hermann von Richthofen.
• The Science of Secrecy: The Zimmerman telegram
  Deciphering this telegram from the German foreign minister was the most important episode in the history of wartime cryptography.
• Women in the 20th Century
  This C4 Learning website examines the roles of women during the last century in terms of war, work and the family.
• Lost Generation
  With an emphasis on the battle of the Somme, the information on this large site – including history articles and a unique database of the names of soldiers on World War I memorials in Britain – provides an opportunity to turn those lost during the war into real people.
• Lenin
  Father of Russia’s Bolshevik revolution.
• Woodrow Wilson
  US president who failed to secure a fair post-war settlement after World War I.
• The Spanish Flu of 1918
  Many more soldiers met their deaths on their return home from World War I – in just one year, 50-100 million people died from the flu.
• Leon Trotsky
  A crucial figure in the Russian Revolution who was murdered in Mexico City.
• Bodies of Evidence
  Investigation of forensic archaeology and the scientific methods of unravelling the mysteries of the past. Plus more than two dozen case studies, including mummies, left-handedness and Lenin's body.
• 1798 and After
  The social and political history of Ireland from the 1798 Rebellion to partition in 1921 (Channel 4 Learning).
• Allied tears, German tears
  Historian Gregor Dallas reveals how the Allies and the Germans viewed the 1929 novel All Quiet on the Western Front completely differently.
• Crime Team: The body in the trunk
  In May 1927, the police open a trunk at the left luggage office at Charing Cross and discover the dismembered body of a woman...
• William Jason, Jim and Me: The real Amy Johnson
  A heroic pioneer of aviation, a celebrity who sought anonymity and a record-breaker who longed for a steady piloting job.
• Aldous Huxley: Prophetic writer
  In Brave New World, Huxley created a society where babies were engineered to a specific social status and happiness was controlled by drugs.
• Howard Hughes: A chronology
  This reveals all the American billionaire’s triumphs and disasters, then charts his descent into madness, squalor and death.
• Citizen Kane
  Former war correspondent Christy Campbell looks at the truth behind Orson Welles’ exposé of an American press baron.
• Mao Zedong
  Communist dictator whose rule – and whims – led to disaster for the Chinese.
• Crime Team: The box office hit
  A vicious attack in London's East End in August 1934 leaves cinema owner Dudley Horde dead and his wife Maisie unconscious with head injuries...
• The Real Crawfie
  The story of Marion Crawford, the royal governess who was ostracised by her former charges after publishing a book about her experiences.
• The Nazi Expedition
  Robin Cross reveals how a curious mixture of ancient Teutonic myth, Eastern mysticism and late 19th-century anthropology lay at the heart of the SS.
• Stalin: A beginner's guide
  A selection of the best internet sites and books about probably the worst tyrant of the 20th century.
• The Real Mussolini
  Benito Mussolini is remembered as a fascist dictator whose ludicrous posing was dwarfed by the incalculably more sinister Adolf Hitler, but he was a much more complex character.
• Benito Mussolini
  The Italian dictator who was executed by Italian partisans.
• Josef Stalin
  Georgian-born dictator of the Soviet Union, probably the most brutal dictator of modern times.
• Augusto César Sandino
  Revolutionary whose murder in 1934 turned him into a symbol of liberation in Nicaragua.
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt
  President who guided the US through the Depression and World War II.
• Wallis Simpson: The demonised duchess
  A strong-willed woman, hungry for independence but caught up in a situation she could not control.
• Howard Goodall’s 20th Century Greats
  Why Cole Porter, Bernard Herrmann, Leonard Bernstein and Lennon & McCartney are among the greatest and most influential composers of the last 100 years.
• Mahatma Gandhi
  This Channel 4 Learning website examines Gandhi as a political campaigner and religious leader and the effects of his policies.
• Secret History: Television in the Third Reich
  An account of the TV service run by the Nazis 1935-44 and its spreading of anti-Semitic propaganda.
• 1936 Cable Street Riots
  The day when East End Jews decided to confront Oswald Mosley’s Fascist blackshirts.
• Humphrey Jennings: The man who listened
  to Britain
  Director who became part of the British documentary film movement and made a series of classic morale-boosting films during World War II.
• Japan at War: A beginner's guide
  Books and websites – from the seizure of Manchuria in 1931 to the atomic bombs that ended the war in the Pacific in 1945 – reveal the conflict from a mainly Japanese perspective.
• Howard Goodall’s Great Dates
  Goodall shows that great pieces of music are not freak accidents of genius but the direct products of their time, place, culture and politics (Channel 4 Learning).

1900-1938 | World War II | 1946-2000

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