WORLD
WAR I
World War I is an important marker event in modern history because it ushers
in a new era in which the global framework changed dramatically. It also marks
the collapse of European hegemony that had been solidly in place during the
1750-1914 era.
CAUSES
The onset of war in 1914 resulted from years of
tensions among European nations:
1) Nationalism - During the 19th century the identities of many European
peoples intensified greatly. This nationalism set the stage for World War I in
two ways:
- National rivalries - The
unification of Germany
threatened to topple the balance of power that had existed in Europe
since the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815. The competition took many
forms: industrialization, a naval race, arms build-ups,
and colonial disputes over territories. In 1870, Britain
controlled about 1/3 of the world's industrial output, and Germany
only about 13%. By 1914 Britain
had dropped to 14%, putting it roughly comparable to Germany.
(The U.S. was taking a huge percentage by 1914).
- Nationalist aspirations -
Inherent in nationalism is self-determination, the right to form states
based on ethnicity, language, and/or political ideals. This part of
nationalism is apparent in the unification of Germany
and Italy, and in the separation of Belgium
from the Netherlands.
However, in eastern Europe, Austria-Hungary
and the Ottoman Empire resisted nationalist
demands. Both empires confronted the nationalist aspirations of Slavic
people &endash; Poles, Czechs, Slovaks,
Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Most menacing of all were the Serbs, who were
encouraged by Russia's
support and promotion of Pan-Slavism, a movement to unite all Slavic
people.
2) Entangling Alliances - As countries and empires built their arms, they looked to one another for support and protection.
Two hostile camps emerged, bound by treaties that stated conditions under which
nations would go to war with one another in order to improve their chances for
self-preservation. The two major alliances were the Triple Entente (Russia,
England, and
France) vs. the Triple Alliance (Germany,
Austria-Hungary,
and Italy). The
allies generally had a common hatred for one or more or the countries on the
other side.
3) An arms race - Driven by Darwinian conceptions of survival and progress,
the nations of Europe embarked on a competition to built
superior armies and secure colonies for strength. Britain's
great dreadnought ships were challenged as Germany
began to build its own super battleships and develop an impressive submarine
fleet. France and
Russia joined
the arms buildup as all countries beefed up armies, equipment, and weapons.
When one increased their military, the others would try to match and outdo the
others.
SPARK FOR THE WAR
In June 1914 all of Europe was
an armed camp, and rivalries were very intense. The war was precipitated by Gavrilo Princip, a member of a
Serbian nationalist group known as the Black Hand. When he assassinated Franz
Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne, he set in motion a series of events
in which one country after the other declared war on another. Austria-Hungary
declared war on Serbia,
who had an alliance with Russia.
Russia declared
war on Austria-Hungary,
requiring Germany
to declare war on Russia.
And so the domino effect continued so that by August a local conflict had
become a general European war. Since 1914 historians have uncovered the fact
that German convinced Austria
to declare war on Serbia
knowing full well that it would pull Europe into
war. Indeed, the German military was
eager for war before the other nations built up armies stronger that theirs.
NATURE OF THE WAR
World War I is often defined by the optimism that countries had going into
the war in contrast to the horror, shock, and slaughter that traumatized them
by the time the war ended in 1918. The balance of power struck in 1815 had been
strong enough to delay conflict so that no one alive in 1914 could remember the
devastation of war, and almost every nation glorified the excitement of war.
The two sides settled into the Allied Powers-(England,
France, Russia,
and Italy (who
switched sides at the last minute) &endash; and
the Central Powers &endash; Germany,
Austria-Hungary,
and the Ottoman Empire. The war was fought on two
fronts:
- Western Front - The Western
Front followed a line between France
and Germany
through Belgium The French and British fought on
one side against the Germans, eventually joined by Americans in 1917. The
war bogged down quickly, with both sides digging trenches, and fighting from them until the war ended in 1918.
The stalemate occurred partly because new technology; machine guns and
poison gas; made any offensive attack so lethal that the army had to
retreat to trenches. Attacks were followed by counter-attacks that
resulted in huge casualties (the Battle
of the Somme). The new weapons of war created a situation in which the
attackers lost most every battle. A
war in which neither side could strike a significant victory seemed as if
it could go on for ever. It literally got to the point where each side
simply hoped that the other would run out of young men first. Indeed that
happened when the United States
entered the war, and Germany
could not match the combined forces on the Western Front.
- Eastern Front - The Eastern
Front was on the opposite side of Germany
from the Western Front. There Germany
and Austria-Hungary
fought Russia
along a much more fluid battle line. The Central Powers overran Serbia,
Albania,
and Romania.
The Russians took the offensive in Prussia,
but by the summer of 1915 combined Germany
and Austrian forces drove the Russian armies back eastward across Poland,
and eventually back into Russia's
borders. Russia's
armies were poorly led and badly equipped, with the tsar sending men into
battle without guns, food, or shoes. Mass desertions and loss of
confidence in the tsar led to chaos in Russia,
where a communist-inspired group called the Bolsheviks eventually took
over the government and assassinated the tsar.
Perhaps the most significant long-term effect of the war was the change that
occurred in Russia
in 1917. When the German assault into France
drew to a halt and soldiers on both sides settled down into trench warfare, Germany’s
greatest nightmare became a reality: a war on two fronts. They decided to solve this dilemma by helping
Lenin, the communist revolutionary, sneak back into Russia
and start a revolution to overthrow the Russian government. It worked.
The communists toppled the Czarist government in October 1917 after
which Lenin, as promised to the Germans, withdrew Russia
from the war. This released German
soldiers to transfer to the Western Front, but U.S.
soldiers supplemented French and British soldiers there so that the stalemate
was finally broken, with the armistice occurring in November 1918. The net
effect of the war was the slaughter of a huge portion of a generation of young
men, primarily from Russia,
Germany, Austria-Hungary,
England, and France.
Arguably, Europe never fully recovered from the loss.
The first year of the war also saw the first case of modern genocide in the
20th century.
The “Great War” shattered the optimistic promises held out by a century of
scientific progress and advancement.
Mankind seemed not to have changed at all; only now men could inflict
death and destruction on a scale never before possible. This realization, along with the Great
Depression of the 1930s, explains the pessimism of the decades between the wars
and created the fertile ground for the rise of Fascism.
THE VERSAILLES TREATY
The "Great War" is a marker event in world history because it is
the first in a series of events that led to declining European power and
ascending power for the United States
and Japan.
However, the Versailles Treaty at the end of the war is almost as important
event as the war itself because it changed the nature of international
relations and set the stage for World War II.
It was one of the worst diplomatic blunders in the 20th
century.
Although 27 nations gathered at Versailles
Palace in France
in 1919 to shape a treaty, men from three nations dominated the proceedings:
David Lloyd George from Britain,
Georges Clemenceau from France,
and Woodrow Wilson from the United States.
Russia, who had
pulled out of the war in 1917, was not represented. Woodrow Wilson came to the meetings with his plan, called the Fourteen Points, which was grounded in
two important principles:
- Self determination -Wilson's
document asserted the need to redraw the map of Europe
and the old Ottoman Empire along the lines of self
determination, allowing groups based on nationalism to determine their own
governments.
- The need for an international
peace organization - The Congress of Vienna had created the Concert of
Europe in 1815, an organization of European nations bound to keep the
balance of power in the region. Wilson's
vision was broader, in that he advocated a worldwide organization charged
with keeping the peace and avoiding another war like the one that had just
occurred.
Britain and France
came to Versailles with different
motivations. After all, their countries had suffered a great deal more from the
war than the United States
had. For example, whereas Britain
lost almost a million young men and France
lost almost 1,400,000, the United States
lost only about 115,000. A great deal of the war was fought on French soil, and
so France
suffered devastation of cities and countryside, and even French people who were
not soldiers experienced the war first hand. As a result, George and Clemenceau were less idealistic than Wilson.
Revenge and control of Germany,
who was a more immediate threat to them than to the United States - were more
important to them.
The treaty that resulted was a compromise among the three countries. The
many provisions include these important ones:
- Germany
lost land along all borders, including Alsace-Lorraine and the Polish
Corridor
- German military forces were
severely restricted and a demilitarized zone was created along lands
bordering France
and Belgium.
- Germany
had to pay very high reparations
for war to specific Allied Powers.
- An international
organization called the League
of Nations was created.
- Germany's
overseas possessions were placed under the control of the League,
remaining as mandates until they were ready for independence.
- Although the Ottoman
Empire was dismantled as well, the resulting pieces were
designated as mandates, not independent countries.
The treaty was a fiasco that satisfied almost no one and infuriated many.
The Turks and Arabs of the former Ottoman Empire, as
well as people of Germany's
colonies, couldn't understand why eastern European countries were created as
independent countries and they weren't. What's more the British occupied many
areas of the Middle East, and did not leave once the
treaty was signed. The League of Nations excluded Germany
and Russia from
membership, and the United States Senate failed to ratify the treaty and never
joined the League. As a result, the international peace organization had very
limited authority from the beginning. However, the most immediate reaction came
from Germany,
who saw the treaty as unfairly blaming them for the war and punishing them so
severely that they could not recover. Their discontent provided fertile grounds
for the rise of a demagogue that of course happened in due time.