19Th Century Optimism

WORLD WAR I

WHY THEY FOUGHT

THE GLOBAL MILITARY CONFLICT called World War I (1914–1918) was triggered by an event that seemingly had only regional Importance: the assassination on June 28, 1914, of Austrian heir apparent Archduke Francis Ferdinand. The archduke was murdered in Sarajevo, Bosnia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb seeking to free his people from Austrian domination and unite them with Serbia. But because Europe was at that time a welter of rival imperial ambitions, with each great power trying to increase its colonies and influence around the world, and each linked to others in an intricate web of alliances, the small act of violence swiftly escalated. By August, Austria had declared war on Serbia; Russia had joined the war in support of Serbia; Germany had joined on the side of Austria; and Britain and France had joined on the side of Russia. The enemy coalitions took shape as the Allied and Associated Powers, or Allies, chiefly Britain and France; and the Central Powers, chiefly Germany and Austria. For nearly three years the United States stayed out of the war, but in April 1917, provoked by German submarine attacks and other offenses, it finally joined as one of the Allies. Because of advances in military technology, the war was unusually lethal. By the time it ended with defeat of the Central Powers, more than 8 million combatants had been killed and millions of civilians had died. The harsh peace forged at the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920) left such resentment and tension that most of the combatants were soon at war again, in the even greater conflagration of World War II (1939–1945).

______

19TH CENTURY OPTIMISM

Paul Fussell, University of Pennsylvania

"It was genuinely a world war.

"The last twenty years of the 19th Century, say 1880 to 1900; those years were characterized by an immense optimism. It was thought that the telegraph, the telephone, ultimately the wireless and the radio were going to civilize human life in a way that it had never been civilized before.

"When all of a sudden, what happens is ghastly war breaks out and spoils everything.

"That's highly ironic, but it helped add a sort of mode of despair to all subsequent history. One couldn't be sure that something that looked good was really good, because it might recoil and hit you in the face just the way industry did when it was alive with destructive impulses in The Great War."

According to Professor Fussell, how did WWI impact the psyche of future generations?

Is this true today?

THE WAR AS A DETECTIVE STORY

Jay Winter, CambridgeUniversity

"The First World War is a detective story with no resolution for a very simple reason. It's what converts a controlled explosion into a monumental explosion that is the real question. Why Austria-Hungary wanted to punish Serbia for the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand is a question that we can answer.

"On the Sixth of July, there was a German-Austrian understanding about how Germany would support Austrian attempts to annihilate Serbia. We know that. That's not the detective story. The story is how did you get from there to the First World War, and who wanted that small explosion to become a big one? And the answer is almost impossible to define.

"There are those who say that the German military and navy wanted it for years. This was their grasp for world power. This is the moment of truth, when they finally get what they should have gotten because of their economic industrial power. That means it's all malice aforethought, and the whole story is cooked up in Berlin.

"There are other people who say they wanted a small-scale war, and got a big scale war instead, and lost it.

"But there's a third view that it is, as it were, a collective failure. As you said, the collective failure is that individuals who are diplomats, and with the intention of stopping these conflicts from getting out of hand simply didn't take it seriously enough, on both sides of the line.

"I would have thought that the best way to understand this question of who was responsible for the outbreak of the First World War is to eliminate those of lesser responsibility. Nobody in London, nobody in Paris, nobody in St. Petersburg wanted the small war to turn into a big war. That conversion of the Balkan War into the Great War was not conjured up anywhere other than in Berlin and in Vienna.

"If there is a smoking gun, it's in one or the other of those capitals. But the jury's still out. The trial has yet to be concluded."

Historians have studied WWI for nearly a century. According to Professor Winter, what still don’t we know?

What types of evidence could solve the mystery?

THE PLAYERS

Match the correct country with the descriptions below:

______:You are the world’s greatest naval power and the leading industrial power in Europe. However, the recently unified German Empire (1870) and its growing naval, industrial, and colonial (Africa) expansion worry you. You are afraid that Germany may become more powerful than you and threaten your world wide Empire.

______: You are still stinging from your humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. You are determined never to be defeated by Germany again. You, like England, fear this rapid growth of the new German Empire.

______: You are a growing power. You have the second most powerful navy and are a strong industrial nation in Europe. You possibly have the most powerful army. You want the rest of Europe to take your new power seriously and to respect your colonial gains in Africa and Asia. If the rest of Europe will not take you seriously then you will have to demonstrate your strength to them.

______: You wish to maintain peace and protect your “Slavic brothers” in the Balkans and Central Europe. You see these Slavs as being oppressed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and you feel that you have to stand up for them.

______: Yours is an empire of various nationalities that sometimes barely holds itself together. The Hungarians want their rights, the Serbs and Croats theirs, as well as the Czechs and Slovaks. You feel threatened by Russia’s interference on behalf of your Slavic minorities, so you turn for assistance and support from your German cousins. And you fear the Serbian nationalities to your south.

______: You are a small neutral nation, who wishes to stay out of this European power struggle, but you realize that you may not be able to protect yourself alone.

______: A small Slavic state in the Balkan peninsula, you fear Austria-Hungary may try to take you over. The Austrians already possess a large Serbian area in their empire and the Austrians have complained about the Serbian problem. You would like to see a united Serbia, and you are pleased that your Russian Slavic brothers are supportive of this.

______: You fear the monstrous Russian bear to the east. The Russians have tried before to conquer the Bulgars, and you know that you cannot stand alone against Russia.

______: You are a great power on the decline and would like to stop this. You are upset about the continuing breakup of your Empire (you have lost Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and other Balkan lands, either to independence or to the Austrians or Russians). You would like to rebuild the strength of your empire and possibly gain back lost lands.

______: Nationalism is very strong in your country. A relatively new country that unified the peninsula in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War, you have an agenda. The Austrian-controlled areas bordering your country contain many people whom you consider part of your country.

Ottoman EmpireSerbiaAustria-HungaryGermanyUnited Kingdom

FranceBelgiumItalyRussiaBulgaria

CAUSES OF WORLD WAR ONE

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 = The Powder Keg of Europe

1. ______

This means being a strong supporter of the rights and interests of one's country. The Congress of Vienna, held after Napoleon's exile to Elba, aimed to sort out problems in Europe. Delegates from Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia (the winning allies) decided upon a new Europe that left both Germany and Italy as divided states. Strong nationalist elements led to the re-unification of Italy in 1861 and Germany in 1871. The settlement at the end of the Franco-Prussian war left France angry at the loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany and keen to regain their lost territory. Large areas of both Austria-Hungary and Serbia were home to differing nationalist groups, all of whom wanted freedom from the states in which they lived.

2. ______

This is when a country takes over new lands or countries and makes them subject to their rule. By 1900 the British Empire extended over five continents and France had control of large areas of Africa. With the rise of industrialism countries needed new markets. The amount of lands 'owned' by Britain and France increased the rivalry with Germany who had entered the scramble to acquire colonies late and only had small areas of Africa.In the Middle East, the crumbling Ottoman Empire was alluring to Austria-Hungary, the Balkans and Russia.

3. ______

This means that the army and military forces are given a high profile by the government. The growing European divide had led to an arms race between the main countries. The armies of both France and Germany had more than doubled between 1870 and 1914 and there was fierce competition between Britain and Germany for mastery of the seas. By 1889, the British had established the principle that in order to maintain naval superiority in the event of war they would have to have a navy two and a half times as large as the second-largest navy. The British had introduced the 'Dreadnought', an effective battleship, in 1906. The Germans soon followed suit introducing their own battleships

4. ______

This is an agreement made between two or more countries to give each other help if it is needed. When one is signed, those countries become known as Allies.A number of these had been signed by countries between the years 1879 and 1914. These were important because they meant that some countries had no option but to declare war if one of their alliesdeclared war first.

5. Crises

Moroccan Crisis

In 1904 Morocco had been given to France by Britain, but the Moroccans wanted their independence. In 1905, Germany announced her support for Moroccan independence. War was narrowly avoided by a conference which allowed France to retain possession of Morocco. However, in 1911, the Germans were again protesting against French possession of Morocco. Britain supported France and Germany was persuaded to back down for part of French Congo.

Bosnian Crisis

In 1908, Austria-Hungary took over the former Turkish province of Bosnia. This angered Serbians who felt the province should be theirs. Serbia threatened Austria-Hungary with war, Russia, allied to Serbia, mobilized its forces. Germany, allied to Austria-Hungary mobilized its forces and prepared to threaten Russia. War was avoided when Russia backed down. There was, however, war in the Balkans between 1911 and 1912 when the Balkan states drove Turkey out of the area. The states then fought each other over which area should belong to which state. Austria-Hungary then intervened and forced Serbia to give up some of its acquisitions. Tension between Serbia and Austria-Hungary was high.

The Fuse is Lit . . .

Assassination in Sarajevo
Europe had reached its breaking point when on June 28, 1914, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austria-Hungarian throne, was assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia, by a Serbian nationalist belonging to an organization known as the Black Hand. Immediately following the assassination Germany pledged its full supportto Austria-Hungary, pressuring them to declare war on Serbia, while France strengthened its backing of Russia. Convinced that the Serbian government had conspired against them, Austria-Hungary issued Serbia an unacceptable ultimatum, to which Serbia consented almost entirely.

Falling Dominoes
Unsatisfied, Austria-Hungarydeclared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914. On July 29, Russia ordered a partial mobilization only against Austria-Hungary in support of Serbia, which escalated into a general mobilization. The Germans threatened war on July 31 if the Russians did not demobilize. Upon being asked by Germany what it would do in the event of a Russo-German War, France responded that it would act in its own interests and mobilized. On August 1, Germany declared war on Russia, and two days later, on France. The German invasion of Belgium to attack France, which violated Belgium's official neutrality, prompted Britain to declare war on Germany. World War I had begun.