Ballots and Bullets

In this episode, David examines the intriguing paradox of the Great War that it was not caused by profound political or ideological divisions but it did create them in its wake. He looks at how the conflict made politics red hot, giving birth to an age of turbulent mass democracy. Democracy, Reynolds argues, hit post-war Europe like a big bang. He traces how, in the immediate aftermath of war, monarchies toppled, the people rose up and three iconic leaders - Vladimir Lenin, Woodrow Wilson and Benito Mussolini - emerged with competing visions of people power that polarised much of continental Europe between right and left in the 1920s and 1930s. David Reynolds explores why Britain's experience was very different.