The Great War Lecture

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Western Civilization II

The Great War Lecture

Finish up on Imperialism – Make sure they are very clear on the arguments and why Imperialism occurs, and how it destabilizes the World and leads to the Great War.

Show the end of Breaker Morant.

Set up the Great War. – Talk about how we will work Backwards from 1914.

Show Indiana Jones and Black Adder to show the confusion over the wars beginning.

1)  Put on the Board the Numbers from

a)  The Battle of the Frontiers

b)  Verdun

c)  The Somme

d)  Passchandaele

e)  US losses in all the wars of the 20th Century

2)  Begin with quotes and comments:

a)  “Never such Innocence Again.”

b)  AThe lamps are going out all around the world. We shall not seem them lit again in our lifetime.

c)  Richard Bellamy’s quote from Upstairs-Downstairs.

i)  Show Videotape.

d)  The pre-War world as some idyllic world shattered and destroyed by the Great War.

e)  The “Kindermord bei Yperen” - could march into battle arm-in-arm singing directly into the fire of the British Army

f)  The French could march into Battle in Red and Blue singing the Marseilles.

g)  The English follow their officers over the top kicking a soccer ball or throwing a rugby ball.

3)  Many historians now consider “The Great War” to be the major break point between the “Modern World” and the “ordered” world of the past.

a)  This literally was The “Death of a Generation.”

4)  One historian argued: “The War was insanity, irrationality and the triumph of unreason in a world that taught that reason was the guide to the good life.”

5)  It created the “Twentieth Century Man” - A man who is a political neurotic because he has no answer to the question of the meaning of life, because socially and metaphysically he does not know where he belongs.”

6)  It is also considered the “Thirty Years War” of the 20th Century.

i)  Explain

7)  Many historians have narrowed this break date even further, to the year 1916. This is the year that two of the most terrible battles in the history of the human race took place, Verdun and The Somme.

a)  Explain what happens there and what it means.

b)  The Death Tolls at Verdun and the Somme

c)  There is a direct link between these battles and the death camps and industrialized slaughter of the Second World War.

8)  It changed the way we viewed the world and our place in it.

a)  As I said earlier: People broke the world into what came before and what came after. The years 1914-1918 are seen as a great chasm between the old and the new world. Nothing was ever the same again.

9)  For the soldiers the past is only what they left behind - that they are no longer a part of, and in front of them is the Future - a No-Man’s Land - in which only death and destruction awaits them. They are trapped in an ever present.

a)  The idea of mental illness from that.

i)  Cite Psychosis and inability to deal with time or order things.

b)  Women’s role in society

c)  The personal over the public

d)  God died in the trenches of Europe

e)  Hope in the future died

f)  The confidence and belief in the future and progress was destroyed.

10) It changed language and how we used it.

a)  Cite e.e. cummings, F. Scott Fitzgerald, et. al. - The Lost Generation.

b)  The meaning of words changed. Duty, Honor, and Glory meant nothing after this war. Chivalry as a concept died in the mud of the Western Front.

11) The use of the passive voice as men were no longer actors but acted upon.

a)  Terms like “Lousy,” “Over the Top,” “No-Man;s Land,” “Big Bertha,” “Doughboy,” “Shell-Shock,” “Dogfight,” “Buy the Farm.”

12) The world is totally destabilized.

a)  WW II is a direct result of the war and its aftermath.

b)  The Mid-East problems are directly attributable.

c)  The Balkan problems

d)  Northern Ireland problem

e)  The beginning of the anti-colonial movements. - How could you fight a war over the right of small nations to be free and then not allow them to go free or expect that they would demand that?

13) Also, in this lecture keep in mind, as I said before, that this war was more than just a “simple” war between nations.

a)  It was a war between what was and what was to be.

i)  You need to understand this

b)  It resolved nothing and it was not until WWII that anything was settled. Even now we can look at Ireland, the Middle East, Africa, the Far East, and Central Europe and argue that we are still living with this war.

14) It is the event that sets the entire tone for the 20th Century, the bloodiest and most horrific century in the history of the Human Race.

a)  It set the tone for the 20th Century by justifying slaughter on a scale that the human race had never contemplated.

i)  Many have argued that the death camps of Auschwitz and Dachau were prepared in the charnel houses of Verdun and the Somme.

ii)  That Rwanda, Srebenica, Cambodia, and anywhere else you can think of where mass slaughter has occurred has its roots in “The Great War.”

15) Since this war had such a great impact on the 20th Century, we need to understand what caused this terrible War and why it represented this great rupture in the history of the world.

16) But before we can go further, we must understand what the Great War was not. What I will tell you is to throw out all the simplistic arguments you learned in high school. This war was not:

a)  The result of the interlocking Alliance System,

b)  Inevitable because of this alliance system.

c)  The result of imperialism.

d)  The result of any one nation’s desire for dominance, although this could be argued.

e)  The result of an accident waiting to happen.

f)  Sidelight: Black Adder

i)  Remember Baldrick said: “I believe the war started when some bloke named Archie Duke shot an Ostrich, ‘cause he was hungry.”

17) It is my argument that The Great War resulted from:

a)  The demoralization of Western, and all European Countries, prior to the war, as the certainties and ethos of each nation were undercut by the Avant Garde, science and technology.

b)  Imperialism

c)  Militarism

d)  The Interlocking Alliance System

e)  The technological changes that took place in Europe prior to the war.

i)  It was the internal social, political and economic problems of the individual European Societies, societies that were radically altered, while the ruling classes of each nation attempted to preserve their outmoded political and social systems to hold onto their positions in the face of the new emerging world.

18) It was the “Ancien Regime” that survived in each country and fought desperately to hold onto its position in the world that dragged the World into war. IT WAS THEIR ATTEMPT TO HOLD ONTO POWER THAT DRAGGED EUROPE AND THE WORLD INTO THE ABYSS, AN ABYSS THAT IT DID NOT DRAG ITSELF OUT OF UNTIL 1945.

a)  That is, this War occurred because each country in Europe found itself in an internal crisis and could find no other way out of the crisis.

b)  As Charles Nordman wrote:

i)  “There exist in the life of societies as well as individuals hours of mortal discomfort when despair and fatigue spread their leaden wings over human beings. Men then begin to dream of nothingness. The end of everything ceases to be “undesirable” and its contemplation is in fact soothing.”

19) Keep all these factors in mind. They are all very important and all play in the role in the coming of the Great War.

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Part-2

So now we need to look at why The Great War occurred.

1)  Each nation in Europe, (STRESS THAT IT IS THE INTERNAL WHICH CONDITIONS THE EXTERNAL.) by 1914, had reached a point of total stasis. Each of the political systems in Europe had, in their own way, reached an impasse. In the European societies as a whole,

a)  All the old values and beliefs and certainties were either gone or under attack from all corners.

b)  The political systems had stalemated as the political leaders realized their societies were in a stasis, and that their position was under attack from the new urban/industrial classes and also the avant-garde.

i)  A symptom of this was the increase of terrorist attacks all over Europe prior to The Great War. Between 1890 and 1914 every nation in Europe had to deal with revolutionary terror.

ii)  The leaders of all nations, and everyone, even if they did not really understand what was happening, realized something great and terrible was at hand.

iii)  Among all classes a terrible sense of “ennui” took hold.

2)  This Crisis was sensed by the Avant-Garde.

a)  The Avant-Garde=s paintings and art and literature between 1911-1914 anticipated The Great War and all it would bring.

b)  Some gloried in it, while others feared it.

3)  The key is that everyone knew a great and momentous change was at hand.-

a)  Everyone knew that societies could not continue to live in the old way, but no one had any idea what the new way was. This led to the terrible malaise that affected every country in Europe. The war would would act as a great pressure release valve, that ended the AMalaise,@ destroyed the Old World, and brought on the world we now live in.

b)  It is this that explains why the war is welcomed by the Europeans with such rejoicing and celebration.

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c)  Therefore, as I said earlier, I also argue that The Great War was not inevitable; it was, in historical terms a necessity. It had to get Europe out of the impasse that came about because of the convergence of the factors on the board.

i)  As I said earlier, none could have done it alone.

ii)  European Societies suffered shocks, philosophical challenges, and structural changes which dramatically changed the nature of European Society while the old Landed Aristocratic Classes tried to hold onto their power at all costs.

d)  We already went through these:

i)  Interlocking Alliance system.

ii)  Industrialization

(1)  Brought on Imperialism

iii)  Destabilized the internal politics of the society.

iv)  Created the urban and mainly industrial classes that undercut the power of the old landed aristocrats who still dominated the political landscape in Europe.

v)  Technological and scientific advances changed the way people lived and their view of the world.

vi)  Heavy Industry

vii)  Electricity

viii)  The Telephone and Telegraph

(1)  Simultaneous Poetry - Get examples

e)  The Avant-Garde

i)  Futurists

ii)  Symbolists

iii)  Nijinsky-Djiaghelev-Stravinsky

iv)  Nietzcshe

f)  Science

i)  Freud

ii)  Einstein

4)  The Avant-Garde –

a)  One thing to keep in mind about the Avant-Garde- they almost to a person tied themselves to the Totalitarian movements of the 20th Century.

b)  The Avant-Garde and science destroyed or attacked all the conventions and long-held beliefs of all Europe. When the War came the welcomed it as a AGreat Cleansing Fire@ that would sweep away the old world-destroying the past and all tradition.

i)  The DaDa=s, who we will study, hated the war yet reveled in it writing that: AThe War is our brothel.@

(1)  They believed in liberation through madness. Rejecting the rationalism of western societies that led to the war they retreated into irrationalism and unreason.

(2)  Read the poem from Tristan Tzara and explain how it was written.

5)  Prior to the War the Avant-Garde took the lead in destroying or undercutting the basis of Western Culture.

a)  Einstein destroyed Absolutes with his Theory of Relativity.

i)  Explain how this affects civilization.

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b)  Freud destroyed the belief in humans as rational beings.

i)  Explain this,

c)  Nietzsche called on people to destroy convention and become AGods@ unto themselves, rejecting all laws and restrictions on human action.

i)  APure Will without the confusions of Intellect...how happy! How Free!@

ii)  AOnly he who lives dangerously, lives fully.@

(1)  Hitler was to say AHe wrote that for me.@

d)  The Impressionists, Cubists and other art movements destroyed perspective, attacking absolutes and undercutting all the certainties of Europe.

i)  Use Picasso quote on the “Wild Horse.@

ii)  In fact, the Cubists ended up creating camouflage in the War.

e)  The Futurists attacked everything that was of the AOld World.@

i)  They celebrated war and violence as liberating.

(1)  AWe Futurists, who for over two years, scorned by the Lame and Paralyzed, have glorified the love of danger and violence, praised patriotism and war, the hygiene of the world, are happy to finally experience this great Futurist hour of Italy, while the foul tribe of pacifists huddles dying in the deep cellars of the ridiculous palace at The Hague. We have recently had the pleasure of fighting in the streets with the most fervent adversaries of the war, and shouting in their faces our firm beliefs:

ii)  All liberties should be given to the individual and the collectivity, save that of being cowardly. Let it be proclaimed that the word Italy should prevail over the word Freedom. Let the tiresome memory of Roman greatness be cancelled by an Italian greatness a hundred times greater.

iii)  For us today, Italy has the shape and power of a fine Dreadnought battleship with its squadron of torpedo-boat islands. Proud to feel that the marital fervor throughout the Nation is equal to ours, we urge the Italian government, Futurist at last, to magnify all the national ambitions, disdaining the stupid accusations of piracy, and proclaim the birth of Panitalianism.

iv)  Futurist poets, painters, sculptors, and musicians of Italy! As long as the war lasts let us set aside our verse, our brushes, scapels, and orchestras! The red holidays of genius have begun! There is nothing for us to admire today but the dreadful symphonies of the shrapnels and the mad sculptures that our inspired artillery molds among the masses of the enemy.@