Lecture Outline: The First World War and its Legacy
I. Transformations Wrought by the War
A. Political: collapse of 3 great states, Ottoman Empire, AustriaHungary, Russia
B. Economic: lay the groundwork for catastrophe in the 1930s
C. Cultural: pushed people towards political extremism, revitalized imperialism
II. A War Set in Motion by Interlocking Diplomatic Obligations
A. Bismarck’s “Triple Alliance” – Germany, Austria, Italy (1879 and 1882)
B. Alliance of France and Russia (1892)
C. France’s and Britain’s secret Entente Cordiale (1904)
D. Belgian neutrality, established 1839
E. How these alliances pull Europe into war
III. Towards Trench Warfare on the Western Front
A. The German “Schlieffen Plan”
1. To wage a two-front war, defeat France first, then fight Russia
2. Go through Belgium, take Paris, then push east
B. Invasion of Belgium, August 1914, brings Britain into the war
C. The Battle of the Marne, September 1914
1. French and British hold off Germans – “the race to the sea”
2. Trenches, a fixed front from the English Channel to Switzerland
IV. Life and Combat in the Trenches
A. Trench layout – barbed wire, “no man’s land”
B. Filth and rotting flesh
C. The all-out offensive, going “over the top”
D. Shell-shock
E. By 1916, a “war of attrition” – see who runs out of people first
F. Armistice, November 11, 1918
G. Staggering losses – 8.5 million dead in battle
V. Three Veterans
A. Henri Barbusse (French)
1. Sees war as dehumanizing product of capitalism and nationalism
2. International Socialism as a way of ensuring it never happens again
3. Embraces Soviet Communism
B. Ernst Jünger (German)
1. War as adventure and test of character
2. Fusing soldiers into a unified mass, made “superhuman” by patriotism
3. Experience strongest during 1918 German offensive
4. This vision of the unifying power of violence appeals to Nazis
C. Thomas Edward Lawrence (British)
1. Fighting the Ottoman Empire in the oil-rich Middle East
2. 1916, begins helping Arabs in their revolt against Ottoman rule
3. Behind the scenes, the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916)
4. Lawrence’s deception – tricking the Arabs to strengthen British Empire
5. Political legacy of this in Middle East today (especially Iraq)
6. A “poster boy” for heroism in the British and American press, and as
such an antidote to the demoralizing accounts of trench warfare
VI. The Legacies of these Veterans
A. Growing turn to political extremism between 1918 and 1939
1. Barbusse’s extremism: Communism
2. Jünger’s extremism: Fascism
B. Lawrence and the growing tensions created by imperialism
“After all, why do we make war? We don’t know at all why, but we can say who we make it for. We [are] forced to see that […] whole nations go to slaughter marshaled in armies in order that the gold-striped caste may write their princely names in history, so that other gilded people of the same rank can contrive more business, and expand in the way of employees and shops […].” – Henri Barbusse,Under Fire, 1916.
“The atmosphere of intense excitement was amazing. […] The roar of the battle had become so terrific that we were scarcely in our right senses. The nerves could register fear no longer. Everyone was mad and beyond reckoning; we had gone over the edge of the world into superhuman perspectives. Death had lost its meaning and the will to live was made over to our country; and hence everyone was blind and regardless of his personal fate.” – Ernst Jünger,Storm of Steel, 1920.
“Arabs react against you if you try to drive them, and they are as tenacious as Jews; but you can lead them without force anywhere, if nominally arm in arm. The future of Mesopotamia is so immense that if it is cordially ours we can swing the whole Middle East with it.”– T.E. Lawrence, letter to Lord Curzon, Foreign Secretary, 1919.