Chapter 17 and 18 Reading Notes
The First World War and the Russian Revolution
Sometimes in the years before 1914, Europe had gone off its course. Although most European governments stood for democracy and liberalism, rarely, if ever, was this doctrine used or applied internationally. Europeans had created a system in which they were so dependent on their colonies and the goodwill of their neighbors that they became unable or at least unwilling to stop the imminent crisis that became the First World War. This is a prime example of how national pride and determination got in the way of solving conflicts peacefully.
Causes
One way to look at the causes of WWI is through the “Snowballing to War” model. The effect of each cause is like a snowball rolling down a hill. At first, it could start very small and nothing might come of it, but as the snowball rolls down the hill, it continues to build mass and momentum until it is a force to be reckoned with by the time it gets to the bottom. Likewise, each cause of WWI contributed only a little snow, but the overall effect proved disastrous to the people of Europe.
The first step in snowballing to war is alliances. Countries allied themselves with others to protect against future threats. Germany and France were the main concerns, distrusting each other since the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. In 1882, Germany signed the Triple Alliance with Austria-Hungary and Italy. The terms of the alliance basically said that if any of the countries were attacked by two other nations, the allied countries would come to its aid. Germany also signed a Russo-German agreement in which the countries agreed not to attack one another; this agreement, however, lapsed in the decade before the war because the German government did not respect the Russians as a threat. France, fearing for its safety, signed the Franco-Russian Alliance in 1894. Britain was more difficult to persuade because they had long enjoyed what they called “splendid isolation” in which they refused to entangle themselves in the conflicts on the continent. Nevertheless, as Britain became increasingly wary of Germany and particularly the build up of a German navy, they likewise became increasingly closely tied with France. Between Britain and France there was an entente cordiale which meant an agreement more than an alliance. It said nothing about what would happen in the case of war, but each country agreed to support the other against the protests of third parties. This kind of understanding was important to Britain following the Boer wars because they recognized the depths of their unpopularity and did not want to be left alone in case of war. The French then worked to reconcile Britain and Russia which it successfully did in 1907 when the three powers became the Triple Entente in opposition to the Triple Alliance.
The next step in snowballing to war is imperialism. Discussed in depth in the previous chapter, the importance of imperialism cannot be overstated. Imperialism meant that countries were fighting for territory and influence not only in Europe but all around the world. It created a multitude of new places and points of interest that could cause conflict among the European nations. One example of this would be German intervention in Morocco. In 1905, the German Kaiser Wilhelm II went to Morocco and encouraged the native people to start a revolution against France. The Kaiser said he was trying to support nationalism, but all the European countries understood that their way of life would be threatened if their imperial colonies and protectorates decided to become free. Six years later, a German gunboat showed up off the coast of Morocco. The French were concerned, but the crisis passed when they agreed to give up their claim to the French Congo in favor of German. Thus, imperialism made it possible for conflicts to extend around the globe and for a gunboat in Morocco to cause terror in France. Although WWI did not start abroad, it definitely could have.
The third step in snowballing to war is militarism, or the buildup of both the military and weaponry in a country. Militarism was aided by industrialization making it possible to build new and better weapons more quickly. Weapons such as the machine gun, the tank, airplanes, the submarine, and chemical weapons all made their first appearance during WWI. Militarism was not confined to weapons; never before had Europeans had such large standing armies, especially in peace time. Every European country required at least one year of military service for all young men and some required as many as three years. Therefore, European countries were prepared to mobilize for war at a moment’s notice and had the capability of calling on vast reserves that would need little training because they had already learned about military life in their youth. Germany’s preoccupation with building up a navy became a huge concern for Britain because Britain was so dependent on the import of food for its very survival. The German navy continued to grow in the days preceding WWI and the German Unterseeboot (called U-boats or submarines) became a positive menace to the Triple Entente during the war.
The fourth step is nationalism, or a sense of national pride. In Europe, nationalism at the turn of the 20th century meant that each “nation” or ethnic group should have control of its own destiny. This was no concern in Britain or France, but it was a huge problem in countries like Germany and Austria-Hungary that had huge minority populations living within their borders such as the Czechs and Poles for Germany and the Slavs and Magyars for Austria-Hungary. It was, indeed, the pressure from the Slavic-speaking people that provided the spark that started WWI. The Slavs wanted to break free from Austria-Hungary and have their own country which sucked all of Europe into a war that would destroy them.
The fifth step is Places of Conflict. This simply means places where a war could start because tensions were high. There were plenty of global places of conflict: Morocco as was already mentioned, southeast Asia was a concern as were the islands of the Pacific, all major European countries had a stake in China that they wanted to protect, and Alsace-Lorraine which had been ceded to Germany after the Franco-Prussian War was a constant point of concern for France who wanted it back. Despite all this, it was the Balkans (also called the “powder keg” of Europe) where the spark that started the war began.
The final step in approaching a world war is a spark. Though all the previous steps are in place, until there is an impassable conflict which involves two or more major powers, there will be no world war. For WWI, the spark occurred in the Balkans. The Balkans are an area of southeast Europe between modern-day Turkey, Austria, and Ukraine. This area was full (and still is today) of many different groups of people with different customs, ways of life, and religions. The only commonality these people share is that they speak languages from the same language family, namely Slavic. Although they came from different ethnicities including Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, and Slovenian, they all recognized this language commonality and started calling themselves Yugoslavs meaning “South Slavs” (to differentiate from Russians who were Eastern Slavs). After the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, Russia turned its attention to supporting these Yugoslavs in order to gain more influence in Eastern Europe. One thing that really upset the Yugoslavs was the annexation of Bosnia by Austria. Bosnians were Slavic and many thought they should be part of a new, independent, Slavic nation. There were two Balkan Wars in the years preceding WWI. They both showed the weakness of the Ottoman Empire as nations started to appear where there were none before. In both the wars, the Slavic people felt that they did not gain as much territory as they should have, and they pressured Russia to intervene on their behalf.
The Spark occurred when the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, decided to take a trip to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo (which you recall was within the borders of Austria-Hungary). While there the Archduke and his wife were assassinated by a young Bosnian revolutionary that had got the backing of the Serbian government (the Serbs were Slavs). It was later discovered that the assassin belonged to a Serbian terrorist group called the Black Hand. The Austrians wanted to punish Serbia for supporting the assassination, but first they went to Germany to see how much action would be supported. Germany gave Austria a “blank check” and urged them to be firm in suppressing this type of terrorism. Austria demanded many things of Serbia, most detestable of which was the Austrian demand that Austrian officials be sent in to Serbia to help find and punish the Black Hand in assisting with the assassinations. Serbia saw this as a clear infringement upon their autonomy and called for helped from Russia. Serbia refused Austrian demands and Austria declared war on Serbia. Russia mobilized its troops toward Serbia and toward Germany because Russia believed Germany would enter the war on the side of Austria as soon as Russia came to the aid of the Serbs. Russia did not, however, declare war yet on either country. Germany asked the Russians to remove their troops, but the Russians did not reply. Therefore, on August 1, 1914, Germany declared war on Russia and then on France two days later because Germany believed France would enter the war on the side of Russia. Britain joined France on August 4th when Germany invaded neutral Belgium. Thus, the alliance system previously mentioned brought virtually all the major European powers to war within a matter of days. Because Germany was the first to declare war (admittedly responding to real and immediate threats on its borders), it would later be considered guilty of starting the war at the Treaty of Versailles.
The Stalemate on Land
When the war broke out, everyone believed that it would be short and decisive, but they were wrong. The war drug on for four years and used and killed more men than the Second World War. Germany, having declared war on two fronts (France in the west and Russia in the east), especially hoped for an early decisive victory. To this end, the German commanders attempted to follow a military strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan in which Germany would focus all its efforts on invading France, taking the shortest route through neutral Belgium (thereby violating a treaty which ensured its neutrality), with the hopes that Paris would fall quickly and Germany could then redirect all of its troops to the east. Initially, the Schlieffen Plan seemed to work perfectly as the French troops retreated before the Germans, but the Russians had mobilized more quickly than expected and invaded Germany to help France. As a result, some German soldiers had to be taken from the Western Front to the Eastern Front to protect the German homeland. This gave France and Britain enough time to regroup and start a counteroffensive which bogged down the Germans and forced a small retreat. Both the Germans and the French started building networks of trenches to secure their position and their prized weapon: the machine gun. Neither side could move more than a mile at a time and that only at enormous cost.
By 1915, the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary) decided their only hope was victory over Russia. They pushed far into Russia with enormous Russian losses (2 million in 1915 alone), but by the end of the year, the Russians were still fighting. The Allies (France, Great Britain, and Russia) tried to fend off the Central Powers by opening a second front in the Ottoman Empire along a narrow peninsula called Gallipoli. The British poured in troops to open up lines of communication with Russia, but the casualties grew with no results, so the British gave up the endeavor by 1916.
In 1916, all the efforts of both the Central Powers and Allies were again turned to the Western Front. The Germans planned an attack on Verdun which lasted for 10 months, engaged 2 million soldiers, and killed or wounded 330,000 Germans and 350,000 French. The Allies fought back with the battle of the Somme (a river in northern France). The British lost 60,000 men the first day. In a week, the Allies had only advanced a mile; in a month, they had advanced less than three miles. The Battle of the Somme lasted 4 months and cost the Germans 500,000 men, the British 400,000, and the French 200,000. Nothing of value had been gained. The countries were locked in endless battle on land.
The War at Sea
With the war going so slowly on land, the Allies decided to blockade the Central Powers. Germany, dependent on food imports as much as Britain, feared that a blockade would ruin their economy and starve their nation. Neutral countries such as the United States, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries were not allowed to make toward German ports. The US vehemently opposed Britain’s restrictions on neutral countries and tried to trade with both sides. The Germans then started to blockade the British to cause the same kind of hardship in Britain. In 1915, Germany declared the waters around the British Isles to be a war zone and indicated that Allied vessels would be torpedoed and neutral vessels would be in grave danger. Three months after this warning a British ocean liner the Lusitania was torpedoed off the Irish coast because it carried munitions of war manufactured in the US being sent for the Allies to use. 1200 persons drowned including 120 Americans. The US President, Woodrow Wilson informed the Germans that another such act would be considered “deliberately unfriendly.” To avoid American involvement in the war, Germany scaled back their blockade of Britain. Although the German fleet was never able to prove its superiority at sea, it caused the British fleet a lot of concern and proved that not only the British could build an effective navy.
War on the Home Front: Total War
WWI changed Europe in many ways, not the least of which in its economic and social characteristics. Before the war, economic independence or laissez-faire capitalism was the economic byword. No one wanted the government interfering in business until the government had to regulate business in order to ensure that the most needed goods were being produced by each country. Since no one had expected a long war, there were no plans in place for industrial mobilization; everything had to be improvised. Competition and profitability were abandoned as being anti-patriotic. Labor unions were asked not to strike or protest wages or hours for sake of the soldiers on the front. Generally, they agreed. It was patriotic to eat meagerly and wear old clothes, even if you had money. Governments had to ration food and gasoline. People started to grow their own gardens to help with the food shortages.
Men were conscripted into the army to serve their countries. Only those who had essential industrial jobs at home were given exemptions. As the war progressed, even many of these were sent to the front while women took their jobs in munitions factories. These women found a significant amount of economic freedom that they had not experienced before. Nevertheless, most women returned to the home after the war in a patriotic gesture to give jobs to the soldiers coming home.
All foreign trade was controlled and private shipping was either closely monitored by the government or directly controlled. Virtually nothing was exported from belligerent countries because they needed everything they produced. In order to make up for the trade deficit, European countries borrowed billions of dollars, mostly from the United States. Since Europe was not producing as many goods to send to the rest of the world, other industrial countries developed their exports including Japan, Argentina, Brazil, India, and the United States.
Propaganda and censorship became essential during WWI because the common person did not understand the complex political causes of the war (and perhaps neither did the politician). The English and French created propaganda posters blaming the evil Germans for starting the war. The Germans likewise demonized the Russians as barbarians and the English as inhumane for blockading Germany and starving their children. This was necessary to keep morale high during the war, but it proved fatal to organizing a fair peace after the war.