After World War II, the major estates really did collapse.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
World War II broke out in 1939, and many people credit that war with saving the economy.
As a result of the World War, this old Germany collapsed. It collapsed in its constitution, in its social order, in its economic structure. Its thinking and feeling changed.
Britain in 1939 and 1940 really thought they were going to lose the war. It looked like they were going to lose. There was bombing every day, and people were literally starving.
America had been a boom-and-bust economy going into the Great Depression - just over and over and over, fortunes were wiped out, ordinary families were crushed under it.
As often happens during a war, some parts of the country prospered, notwithstanding the constant loss.
I don't think estates are grim places.
After World War II society had to settle back for a moment before it picked up the 20th century.
When WWII ended, the Cold War started, and the interest of the Western world was not to completely break Germany. So all those Nazis who had been controlling the country now had the power to rebuild it. I think there were many of them who just continued their life in society; it's a very known fact.
Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts.
The French suffered such catastrophic losses in the First World War. It really was the end of them as a great world power, although they, quote, 'won.'