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Western Civilizations, 3rd Brief Edition: A W. W. Norton StudySpace
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In This Chapter
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Chapter 24
The First World War
Chapter Study Outline
Introduction
A twentieth-century war
The expectations and reality of war
The July Crisis
Alliances
Triple Entente (Allied Powers): Britain, France, and Russia
Triple Alliance (Central Powers): Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy
Threats to peace
Economic, military, and political advantage
Scramble for colonies
The arms race
Technology
The Balkans
The Austro-Hungarians and the Ottomans: unsteady empires
Nationalist movements and pan-Slavism
Great powers tried to avoid direct intervention
The First Balkan War (1912)
Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and Montenegro against the Ottomans
The Second Balkan War (1913)
Fought over the spoils of the 1912 war
The Austro-Hungarian empirethe "dual monarchy"
Ethnic conflict
Austrians annexed Bosnia in 1878
Bosnian Serbs hoped to secede and join the independent kingdom of Serbia
The Bosnian Serb underground war
Summer 1914
June 28, 1914: Franz Ferdinand and his wife assassinated at Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip
July: Austria issued an ultimatum
A punitive campaign to restore order in Bosnia and crush Serbia
The demands were deliberately unreasonable
The Serbs mobilized their army
July 28, 1914: Austria declared war
Austria saw the conflict as a chance to reassert its authority
Russia saw the conflict as a way to regain the tsar's authority
July 30, 1914: Russia mobilized its troops to fight Austria and Germany
Diplomatic maneuvers
Germany
Detailed war plans
War was inevitable
Kaiser Wilhelm II sent an ultimatum to Russia
Germany demanded to know French intentions
August 1, 1914: Germany declared war on Russia
August 3, 1914: Germany declared war on France
August 4, 1914: Germany invaded Belgium
The British response
Secret pacts with France
August 4: Britain reluctantly entered the war against Germany
August 7, 1914: Montenegrins joined the Serbs against Austria
July: the Japanese declared war on Germany
August: Turkey allied itself with Germany
A "tragedy of miscalculation"
Little diplomatic communication
Austrian mismanagement
The lure of the first strike
The Marne and Its Consequences
General observations
War as national glory and spiritual renewal
War put centuries of progress at risk
Bankers and financiers were most opposed to warfinancial chaos would result
For the young there was the excitement of enlistment
"Over by Christmas"
A short, limited, and decisive war
Size and bigger armies
Speed and quick offensives
German war plans
Designed to suit Germany's efficient but small army
Schlieffen PlanAttack France first, neutralize the Western Front, then attack Russia
Problems
The plan overestimated physical and logistical capabilities
The speed of movement was too much for the troops
Supply lines could not keep up
The resistance of the Belgian army
Frequent changes made to the plan
Troops sent to the Eastern Front
Attacked Paris from the northeast instead of the southwest
The battle of the Marne
Joffre led the Germans into a trap
British and French counteroffensives
German retreat
The race to the sea
The Western Front
The Great Powers dug in
Trench warfare
The importance of the Marne
Changed Europe's expectation of war
The war would now be long, costly, and deadly
Russian intervention pulled Germany away from the Western Front
Stalemate, 1915
The search for new partners
Ottomans joined Germany and Austria in 1914
Italy joined the Allies in May 1915
Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in 1915
Major effect was to expand the war geographically
Gallipoli and naval warfare
Turkish intervention
Threatened Russia's supply lines
Endangered British control of the Suez Canal
Churchill argued for a naval offensive in the Dardanelles
Gallipoli landing (April 25, 1915)
Incompetent naval leadership
Lacked adequate planning, supply lines, and maps
Fought for seven months and then the British withdrew
Major Allied defeat
Two hundred thousand casualties
Gallipoli did not shift the focus away from the Western Front
A war of attrition
The nature of modern war
The total mobilization of resources
The Allies imposed a naval blockade on Germany
Germany responded with submarine warfare
Germans sank the Lusitania (May 7, 1915)
Almost twelve hundred killed
Provoked the animosity of the United States
The blockade stained Germany's national economy
Trench warfare
Life in the trenchesthe "lousy scratch holes"
Twenty-five thousand miles of trenches along the Western Front
Attack, support, and reserve trenches
"Over the top"
"Wastage"
Seven thousand British soldiers killed daily
New weapons
Artillery, machine guns, and barbed wire
Exploding bullets and liquid fire
Poison gas
First used by the Germans at the second battle of Ypres (April 1915)
Physically devastating and psychologically disturbing
Gas took more lives but did not alter the stalemate
Slaughter in the Trenches: The Great Battles, 1916-1917
General observations
Bloodiest battles occurred during 1916-1917
Hundreds of thousands of casualties with little territorial gain
War as carnage
Military planners refused to alter traditional offensive strategies
The "cult of the offensive"
Little protection against new weapons
Poor communication between command and the front line
Firepower outpaced mobility
Verdun (February 1916)
Little strategic importance
Verdun as symbol of French strength
Germany's goal was to break French morale
The battle
Germans fired one million shells on the first day
Ten-month struggle
Offensive and counteroffensive
By June, four hundred thousand French and German soldiers were killed
The advantage fell to the French, but there was no clear victor
The Somme (June-November 1916)
Britain on the offensive
Fourteen hundred guns delivered 3 million shells in five days
The idea was to destroy the German trenches
German trenches withstood the attack
Brutal fighting
Hand-to-hand combat
Twenty thousand British killed on the first day
By November, 1.1 million British, German, and French soldiers were dead
Neither side won"The War had won"
Other battles
Nivelle Offensive (April-May 1917)
Third Battle of Ypres (July-October 1917)
Five hundred thousand casualties
Introduction of tanks had little effect
Airplanes used for reconnaissance only
Further stalemate on the Eastern Front
The war at sea was indecisive
War of Empires
Europe's colonies provided soldiers and material support
Britain and France
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa
One and a half million Indian troops served as British forces (Western Front and Middle East)
French empire (North and West Africa) sent 607,000 to fight with the Allies
Colonies as theaters for armed engagement
Allies pushed the Turks out of Egypt in 1916
Lawrence of Arabia
British encourage Arab nationalism
Balfour Declaration and European Zionism
War drew Europe into the Middle East
The Irish revolt
British vulnerability
Sinn Féin ("Ourselves Alone")
Formed in 1900 for Irish independence
Home Rule Bill passed Parliament (1912)
"Irish question" tabled with outbreak of war
The Easter Revolt (1916)
Dublin
Plan to smuggle German arms failed
Revolt as military disaster
The British executed the rebels in public
New Home Rule Bill (1920)
Dominion status granted to Catholic Ireland in 1921
Civil war
Irish Free State established (1937)
Irish Republic (1945)
The Home Front
The costs of war: money and manpower
Mobilizing the home front
Single goal of military victory
Total war
Civilians were essential to the war economy
Produced munitions
Purchased war bonds
Tax hikes, inflation, and material privation (rationing)
Shift from industrial to munitions production
Increased state control of production and distribution
Germany and the Hindenburg Plan
Women in the war
Women as symbols of change
Massive numbers entered the munitions industry
Women entered clerical and service sectors
New opportunities
Breaking down restrictions
A new freedom
Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth
The "new woman"
Symbol of freedom and a disconcerting cultural transformation
Long-term changes
Women sent home after the war
Giving jobs to veterans
Governments pass "natalist" policies
Encouraging women to marry and raise children
Birth control
Universal suffrage: Britain (1918), United States (1919), France (1945)
Mobilizing resources
Mobilizing men and money
Conscription
Before 1914, military service seen as a duty, not an option
France called up 8 million men (two-thirds of the population of men age eighteen to forty)
British introduced conscription in 1916
Propaganda
Important in recruitment
German Kultur
Films, posters, postcards, newspapers
The absolute necessity of total victory
Financing the war
Military spending rose to half a nation's budget
Allies borrowed from Britain, who borrowed from the United States
Germany printed its own money
Dramatic rise in inflation
Prices rose 400 percent
The strains of war, 1917
Declining morale of the troops
Troops saw their commanders' strategies as futile
Rise in number of mutinies
Self-mutilation
War neuroses
On the home front
Shortages of basic supplies (clothing, food, and fuel)
Price of bread and potatoes soared
From restraint to direct control
Governments issued ration cards
Government regulation of working hours and wages
Political dissent, violence, and large-scale riots
Industrial strikes
Governments pushed to their limits
The Russian Revolution of 1917
Disillusionment with Nicholas II is general
World War I and the February Revolution
Russia was unable to sustain the political strains of extended warfare
After 1905, Nicholas was severely unpopular
Corruption in the royal court
Nicholas insisted on personally commanding his army
Alexandra and Rasputin
Poland and most of the Baltics fell to the Germans
One million Russian casualties
Russian army was poorly trained and undersupplied
Domestic discontent
Nicholas faced liberal opposition from the Duma
Soldiers were unwilling to fight
Militant labor movement and a rebellious urban population
February 23, 1917: International Women's Day (Petrograd)
Women marched demanding food, fuel, and political reform
Within a few days, a mass strike of three hundred thousand people
Nicholas sent in the police and military
Sixty thousand troops stationed in Petrograd sided with the revolt
Nicholas abdicated on March 2, 1917
New centers of power
Provisional government (mostly middle-class leaders in the Duma)
Wanted to establish a democratic system under constitutional rule
Set up an election for a constituent assembly
Granted some civil liberties
The Petrograd Soviet
Organized by Leon Trotsky after the 1905 Revolution
Claimed to be the legitimate power
Pressed for social reform and the redistribution of land
Desired a negotiated settlement with Germany and Austria
The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution
Leadership of the Russian Social Democrats split over revolutionary strategy (1903)
Bolsheviks (members of the majority)
Favored a centralized party of active revolutionaries
Revolution would lead to a socialist regime
Mensheviks (members of the minority)
Move toward socialism gradually
Supported "bourgeois" or liberal reform
Mensheviks gained control of the party
Lenin (1870-1924)
Life
Born into the middle class
Expelled from the university for radical activity
His brother was executed for his part in a plot to assassinate Alexander III
Spent three years in Siberian exile
Lenin and socialism
Russian capitalism made socialism possible
Organizing the new class of industrial workers
Revolutionary zeal and Western Marxism
February-October 1917
Bolshevik demands
An immediate end to the war
Improvement in working conditions
Redistribution of aristocratic lands to the peasantry
General Kornilov tried to restore order to Petrograd
Lenin called for "Peace, Land, and Bread, Now" and "All Power to the Soviets"
Bolsheviks won support from workers, soldiers, and peasants
October 1917
Trotsky attacked the Provisional Government (October 24-25)
Lenin announced that "all power has passed to the Soviets" (October 25)
Provisional government flees the Winter Palace
A quick and bloodless revolution
The Bolsheviks in power
Moved against all political opposition
Expelled parties who disagreed with the Bolsheviks
Dispersed the Constituent Assembly
The one-party dictatorship
Peasant soldiers returned home
The redistribution of land, the nationalization of banks, and workers' control of factories
The Bolsheviks and the war
Negotiated a separate treaty with Germany at Brest-Litovsk (March 1918)
Russia surrendered the Ukraine, Georgia, Finland, Polish territories, and the Baltic States
Led to civil war
Not so much a crisis of government, but an absence of government
John Reed and "the ten days that shook the world"
The Allies: the revolution allowed Germany to win the war on the Eastern Front
Conservatives: feared a wave of revolution sweeping away other regimes
Socialists: startled to see a regime gain control so quickly in such a backward country
The Road to German Defeat, 1918
With Russia out of the war, Germany concentrated its efforts on the Western Front
The Allies feared Germany would win the war before the United States entered the war (April 1917)
Major German assault (March 21, 1917) brought the Germans within fifty miles of Paris
Allied counteroffensive (July and August)
New tanks and the "creeping barrage"
American troops
Allies' material advantage overcame the Germans
The German army was pushed into Belgium
The dismantling of the Central Powers
Germany fought alone
Germany surrendered on November 3, 1918
On the verge of civil war
Bavarian republic (November 8)
Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated
The war officially came to an end on November 11, 1918
The United States as a world power
A fast and efficient wartime bureaucracy
Three hundred thousand soldiers shipped "over there" per month
Food and supplies
American intervention prompted by unrestricted warfare by German U-boats
The Zimmerman telegram
Woodrow Wilson
Making the world safe for democracy
Banishing autocracy and militarism
Establishing a league of nations
Maintaining the international balance of power
Total War
"The Great War"
Changing technologies
Most innovations favored defense
The difficulty of offensive movement
Communications lagged behind firepower
Late arrival of wireless sets
Seventy-four million soldiers mobilized
Six thousand persons killed per day for fifteen hundred days
Warring nations as empires
Mobilization of global resources
Economies gave way to military priorities
Propaganda
Attacks on minority populations
"Relocation" and genocide: Armenia
Transformation: The Peace Settlement
Gone were the Russian, Austro- Hungarian, and German empires
Rise of the United States as world power
Thirty nations attended the conference (January 1919)
More countries had investments in the war
Delegates attended to redress national as well as international issues
Conflicting aims made the peace process difficult
David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, and Vittorio Orlando
Five treaties were signed, one with each of the defeated nations
Woodrow Wilson and the Fourteen Points
Wilsonian idealism
An end to secret treaties
Freedom of the seas
Removal of international tariffs
Reduction of national armaments
League of Nations
German losses
Alsace-Lorraine to France
Gave up territories to Denmark and Poland
Gave coal mines in the Saar to France for fifteen years
Danzig put under the control of the League of Nations
Abolition of the air force, reduced the navy
Capped the army at one hundred thousand volunteers
All soldiers and fortifications to be removed from the Rhine valley
Article 231
The "war-guilt" provision
Reparations (set at $33 billion in 1821)
Other treaties
Based on Allies' strategic interests and on the principle of self-determination
Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were created
Poland was reestablished
Austria was separated from Hungary
Boundaries did not follow ethnic divisions
Guaranteed future problems of the 1930s
The Ottoman empire
The creation of modern Turkey
The "mandate system"
Continued attitude of western superiority
Covenant of the League of Nations
An arbiter of world peace?
Japan would not join
France demanded the exclusion of Germany and Russia
U.S. Congress refused to approve membership
Conclusion
Nine million dead
The "lost generation"
Global political and social discontent
Economic consequences: Europe displaced as the center of the world economy
The rise of the United States and Japan
Disillusionment and the decline of liberal democracy