Chapter 27The Great Break:

War and Revolution, 1914–1919

Bismarck’s subtle diplomacy maintained reasonably good relations among the eastern monarchies—Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary—and kept France isolated. The situation changed dramatically in 1891, when the Russian-French Alliance divided the Great Powers into two fairly equal military blocs.

The Alliance System After 1871

As these impressive ships engaged in battle exercises in 1907 suggest, Germany did succeed in building a large modern navy. But Britain was equally determined to maintain its naval superiority, and the spiraling arms race helped poison relations between the two countries.

German Warships Under Full Steam

Archives Charmet/Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs/ Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library

The Ottoman Empire suffered large territorial losses but remained a power in the Balkans.

The Balkans After the Congress of Berlin, 1878

Ethnic boundaries did not follow political boundaries, and Serbian national aspirations threatened Austria-Hungary.

The Balkans in 1914

This band of well-armed and determined guerrillas from northern Albania was typical of groups fighting against Ottoman rule in the Balkans. Balkan nationalists succeeded in driving the Ottoman Turks out of most of Europe, but their victory increased tensions with Austria-Hungary and among the Great Powers.

Nationalist Opposition in the Balkans

Roger- Viollet/Getty Images

Trench warfare on the western front was concentrated in Belgium and northern France, while the war in the east encompassed an enormous territory.

The First World War in Europe

When in 1915 some Armenians welcomed Russian armies as liberators after years of persecution, the Ottoman government ordered a genocidal mass deportation of its Armenian citizens from their homeland in the empire’s eastern provinces. This photo, taken in Kharpert in 1915 by a German businessman from his hotel window, shows Turkish guards marching Armenian men off to a prison, where they will be tortured to death. A million Armenians died from murder, starvation, and disease during World War I.

The Armenian Atrocities

Courtesy of the Armenian Library, Watertown, Mass.

Blockaded and cut off from overseas supplies, Germany mobilized effectively to find substitutes at home. This poster calls on German women—especially young women with long flowing tresses—to donate their hair, which was used to make rope. Children were organized by their teachers into garbage brigades to collect every scrap of useful material.

Hair for the War Effort

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At a midnight meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, the Bolsheviks rise up and seize power on November 6, 1917. This painting from the 1940s idealizes Lenin, but his great talents as a revolutionary leader are undeniable. In this re-creation Stalin, who actually played only a small role in the uprising, is standing behind Lenin, already his trusty right-hand man.

Lenin Rallies Worker and Soldier Delegates

Sovfoto

A Red Army soldier makes a compelling direct appeal to the ordinary citizen and demands all-out support for the Bolshevik cause in this 1920 poster by Dmitri Moor, a popular Soviet artist. Lenin recognized the importance of visual propaganda in a vast country with limited literacy, and mass-produced posters like this one were everywhere during the civil war of 1918–1920.

“You! Have You Volunteered?”

Stephen White, University of Glasgow

The Great War brought tremendous changes in eastern Europe. New nations and new boundaries were established, generally on the principle of national self-determination. A dangerous power vacuum was created by the new, usually small states established between Germany and Soviet Russia.•1 Identify the boundaries of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia in 1914, and note carefully the changes caused by the war.•2 What territory did Germany lose, and why did France, Poland, and even Denmark receive it? Why was Austria sometimes called a head without a body in the 1920s?•3 What new independent states (excluding disputed Bessarabia) were formed from the old Russian empire, and what nationalities lived in these states?

Shattered Empires and Territorial Changes After World War I

By 1914 the Ottoman Turks had been pushed out of the Balkans, and their Arab provinces were on the edge of revolt. That revolt, in alliance with the British, erupted in the First World War and contributed greatly to the Ottomans’ defeat. Refusing to grant independence to the Arabs, the Allies established League of Nations mandates and replaced Ottoman rulers in Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, and Palestine.

The Partition of the Ottoman Empire, 1914–1923

Surnamed Atatürk, meaning “father of the Turks,” Mustafa Kemal and his supporters imposed revolutionary changes aimed at modernizing and westernizing Turkish society and the new Turkish government. Dancing here with his adopted daughter at her high-society wedding, Atatürk often appeared in public in elegant European dress— a vivid symbol for the Turkish people of his radical break with traditional Islamic teaching and custom.

Mustafa Kemal

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Palestinian Arabs protest against large-scale Jewish migration into Palestine.

Palestinian Arabs protest against large-scale Jewish migration into Palestine.

Roger-Viollet/ Getty Images