World War I

“The nations were caught in a trap. . there was no looking back.”

General Joffre,

on the eve of the

Battle of the Marne, August, 1914

“What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?”

W.E.B. du Bois, 1915

The “Great War”

• First “total war”

• First world war

• First fully industrialized war

• First war of annihilation and

genocide

War is Impossible"Nothing could have been more obvious

to the people of the early twentieth century than the rapidity with which

war was becoming impossible.  And as certainly they did not see it.  They did

not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands."

H G Wells, The World Set Free, 1914

First World War.com: http://www.firstworldwar.com/index.htm

BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwone/

How was Europe in 1900 like the Titanic?“La belle epoque”

Britain and France - Europe’s liberal powers“What spoiled children we are”

Germany and Italy - The new nations“We demand our place in the sun”

Austria and Russia - Dying dynasties“Hard times make for hard lines”

Central Europe - The Balkan “tinderbox”“We wanna be free!”

Europe in 1900

The World in 1900

United States – the new great power of the West

China - weak, 1911 revolution

Japan - the new great power in the East

India - England’s “jewel in the crown”

Latin America - political Independence, economic dependence

Africa - partition and resistance

Middle East - Ottoman decline, “the sick man”

WWI and Iraq?• “The strongest military power in sight (Germany)

is made to feel insecure by a terrorist outrage. Instead of confining its response to the known source of the terrorism (Serbia), it lashed out at one country, which it suspected of abetting the terrorists (Russia), and then at another country (France), which was linked to the first. Then it lost the plot. Worst of all, it calculated that the war would be won by Christmas.”

Norman Davies, Oxford, 2003.

“Deep, Underlying Developments”

• Imperialism• Economic Competition and Rivalry • Nationalism • Militarism – the Schlieffen Plan, 1905

Standing armies

Arms races• Alliances

– Triple Alliance – Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy– Triple Entente – France, England, Russia

• Role of Public Opinion – “War Fever”

World War I Alliance System

Central PowersTriple Entente

WAR FEVER

NOTED WRITERS AND THINKERS ADVOCATED WAR

William James (American)

“The plain truth is that people want war” (1912)

Winston Churchill (British)

“. . .in the field of battle life is at its best and healthiest while one awaits the caprice of the bullet.” (1900)

von Treitschke (German)

“War, with all its bruitality and sterness, weaves a bond of love between man and man, linking them together to face death, creating a bond that will last forever. He who knows history knows also that to banish war from the world would be to mutilate human nature.”

Schiller (German)

Man is stunted by peaceful days,In idle repose his courage dercays. . .

But in war man’s strength is seen,War enobles all that is mean.

Belloc (British)“How I long for the Great War. It will sweep Europe clean like a broom!”

Stravinsky (Russian)“War is necessary for human progress.” (1907)

Holmes (American)“. . .man’s warlike nature and his destiny is battle. Civilization has not changed human nature. . .armed strife will not disappear from the earth until human nature changes.” (1895)

Driant (member of the French assembly)“the outcome of the next war will be decided in less than a month.” (1906)

Battle of the Marne, August 1914

(RGH # 62, p. 258)

“Mutual Butchery”

Stalemate – War of Attrition

(See RGH #43, p. 176-178)

Why were there NO victories in World War I?

Machine Gun

Trenches

“No Man’s Land”

Barbed Wire

Poison Gas

Advantage to the Defense

German trenches, 1917

TRENCHES – 400 MILE LINE FROM NORTH SEA TO SWITZERLAND

TOTAL WAR – “the killing machine”

All in the name of national survival

Unrestrained, mass warfare

Draft and Civilian war-related work.

Blurred distinction between the battlefront and the homefront.

Mobilization of vast amounts of human and material resources

Science was mobilized to develop more deadly weapons to break the stalemate.

Homefront attacks, espionage, propaganda, restricting civil liberties

Sacrifices - rationing, bond drives, blood donations, civil defense.

The industrialization of war

British munitions factory

The Great War was a world war

• Combatants from sixty nations

• Mobilized soldiers from colonies

Mass mobilization

• 70 million fought in WWI

• 13 million Germans

• 15 million Russians

• 5.25 million British

• 8 million French

• 1 million Indians

• 1 million Africans

Indians fighting forBritain

Propaganda of World War I

“In himself, man is essentially a beast, only he butters it over like a slice of bread with a little decorum.”

“There is no escape anywhere. . .I open my eyes—my fingers grasp a sleeve, an arm. . .a dead man.”

“We have all lost feeling for each other. . .we are insensible, dead men, who through some trick, some dreadful magic, are still able to run and to kill. . .”

“I am young, I am 20 years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow.”

“Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of us?”

From All Quiet on the Western Front, (RGH #63, pp. 261-266)

Definition of War changed

The War Sonnets: V. The Soldier Rupert Brooke, d. 1915

If I should die, think only this of me:That there's some corner of a foreign fieldThat is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England's, breathing English air,Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -- The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires. What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

Wilfred Owen, d. Nov. 4, 1918

Children's CrusadeSting, Dream of the Blue Turtles, 1984

Young men, soldiers, nineteen fourteenMarching through countries they'd never seen

Virgins with rifles, a game of charadesAll for a children's crusade

Pawns in the game are not victims of chanceStrewn on the fields of Belgium and FrancePoppies for young men, death's bitter trade

All of these young lives betrayed

The children of England would never be slavesThey're trapped on the wire and dying in waves

The flower of England face down in the mudAnd stained in the blood of a whole generation

Corpulent generals safe behind linesHistory's lessons drowned in red winePoppies for young men, death's bitter tradeAll of those young lives betrayedAll for a children's crusade

The children of England would never be slavesThey're trapped on the wire and dying in wavesThe flower of England face down in the mudAnd stained in the blood of a whole generation

Midnight in Soho nineteen eighty fourFixing in doorways, opium slavesPoppies for young men, such bitter tradeAll of those young lives betrayedAll for a children's crusade

Corpulent generals safe behind linesHistory's lessons drowned in red winePoppies for young men, death's bitter tradeAll of those young lives betrayedAll for a children's crusade

The children of England would never be slavesThey're trapped on the wire and dying in wavesThe flower of England face down in the mudAnd stained in the blood of a whole generation

Midnight in Soho nineteen eighty fourFixing in doorways, opium slavesPoppies for young men, such bitter tradeAll of those young lives betrayedAll for a children's crusade

IMPACT OF WORLD WAR I[John Lukacs—“The Short Century”—1914-1989 (or 1991)]

Military

Technology—machine gun, barbed wire, gas, flame thrower, tank, airplane,submarine

The end of courage—trench warfare, massed assaults, artillery, attrition—Verdun, Somme

Total war—civilians’ role (background for totalitarianism)

Fear of total war in post-war era—disarmament and appeasement

World War I and World War II—cause and effect?

Political – A New World Order

Old states and New states

End of four empires: German, Russian, Austrian and Ottoman

New states: Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Czechoslovakia,Yugoslavia, Austria, Hungary

German and Russian losses (Nazi-Soviet pact, 1939) and appeasement

Russian revolution—Lenin and the party state (beginning of Cold War?)--the ideologically based state

The Middle East: New countries—Iraq, Syria, Palestine-Jordan

Within statesPolitical centralization—suspension of democracyPropaganda—dehumanization of the enemyEnd of aristocracy—many died in warDemocracy to dictatorship in 20’s and 30’s (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,Poland, Austria, Yugoslavia, Spain, Italy, Germany)Appeal of ideologies—Koestler and conversion to communismGenocide—Turkey and the Armenians

Economic

Economic regimentation during the war—“war socialism” and the growth of government

Break up of empires causes economic chaos

German reparations and allied war debts

USA: debtor to creditor contributes to the depression

International law, etc.

Treaty of Versailles

Idea of an international forum—League of Nations, UN

Idea of arms control—Washington Naval Conference, etc.

U.S. emerges as a reluctant world power—Wilson—self-determination

USSR—Lenin and global ambitions

Revolt against Europe—decline of imperialism (eg. of India)

Cultural (See RGH #65)

End of Enlightenment values—irrationalism (Nietzsche, Bergson, Freud)

“Age of Anxiety”—Eliot, Yeats, y Gasset, Sartre and existentialism

Art—Dada, Surrealism, Futurism, abstract expressionism, etc.

Literature—war novels, the “Lost Generation,” Kafka

History—Spengler

Religion—original sin—Barth

Psychology—Human nature (Inge); behaviorism, instinctualism

Science—the end of exact science: Planck, Heisenberg