History 112  David C. Hanson, Virginia Western Com. College Lecture 9. The Great War

The First Great War in Europe lasted from August 1914 to November 1918.  In geographical extent, human death, and political upheavals, it surpassed all previous wars.  It severely damaged national economies, led to the redrawing of European boundaries, and caused the demise of four dynasties: the Austro-Hungarian empire, the German empire, the Ottoman empire, and the Russian empire.  It also unleashed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 that set the stage for an ideological conflict between communism and capitalism that lasted until the end of the twentieth century.

Entangling Alliances_______________________
	Shot Heard Round the World       On June 28, 1914, a young Serbian nationalist named Gavrillo Princip shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie in the streets of Sarajevo in Bosnia.  This tragic but relatively minor event had tremendous historical consequences, resulting in more than 10 million deaths.  The assassin was a member of a secret Serb society named the Black Hand.  Serbian military intelligence officers were complicit in the plot, the purpose of which was to achieve Serbian political independence.  The Archduke, a political moderate, was heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne.  His visit to Bosnia, which had been annexed along with Herzegovina in 1908, was meant to reassure Slavic people of his good will.  Serbian nationalists hoped to liberate Bosnia.  The assassination of Ferdinand and his wife ruined any chance of a peaceful resolution.  Austria-Hungary demanded punishment of the assassination conspirators by Serbia and then declared war when the response was unsatisfactory.       Within a month, the system of alliances and armaments meant to maintain a balance of power for a delicate peace in Europe had created the opposite result.  With the full support of Germany, Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia, causing Russia, backed by France, to mobilize for war on behalf of their fellow Slavs.  By early August, Austria-Hungary and Russia had declared war on each other; Germany and France did likewise shortly thereafter.  When Germany prepared to march through neutral Belgium to invade France, the British abided by their pledges to Belgian neutrality and their entente with France to declare war on Germany.  Within a few weeks, Europe was divided into two warring camps [see map]: the Allies (Britain, France, and Russia, later joined by Italy, Japan and the United States) versus the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary, later joined by Bulgaria and Turkey).
	Total War       This was to be a total war in every respect.  It brought down old empires resting on raw power and raised new ones grounded in a mixture of military and economic hegemony.  The global upheaval that grew out of the shots fired in Sarajevo led to nationalist movements that reshaped the world socially, politically, and economically.        The war also brought a coalition of science and industrial technology that resulted in the most destructive weaponry ever seen.  Submarines, tanks, airplanes, improved machine guns, howitzers, naval blockades, heavily armed battleships, poison gas, trench warfare, and a massive flu epidemic altogether caused unimaginable casualties.  In the first year alone there were over 2 million deaths, and that was just the beginning of a four year war.  By the end, the Allies had suffered an astonishing casualty rate of more than 50 percent, and that of the Central Powers reached nearly 70 percent.  The total for both sides: 10 million killed, 21 million wounded, and 8 million missing.  An additional 20 million civilians died as a consequence of the war.

Balance of Power_________________________
	Nationalism vs. The Old Order       The causes of the Great War are still debated by historians nearly a century later.  Factors include intense nationalism, abrasive colonial rivalries, and a general struggle over the balance of power in Europe.  The French revolution and the wars that followed it elevated feelings of national identity throughout Europe.  The Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) temporarily destabilized old political regimes across the continent, and national consciousness arose in Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, Prussia, and Russia.  Opposition to Napoleon and his imperial designs also inspired nationalism in Britain.        After the fall of Napoleon, conservative leaders feared that nationalism and popular sovereignty would lead to political revolution and fragmentation.  In the Congress of Vienna (1815), representatives of Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia attempted to restore the pre-revolutionary order.  Led by Prince Metternich of Austria, the Congress dissolved Napoleon's empire, returned sovereignty to Europe's royal families, restored monarchies to their former thrones, and created a diplomatic order based on a balance of power that prevented any one state from dominating the others.        From the 1820s through the 1840s, a wave of rebellions inspired by nationalist sentiments swept through Europe.  The first uprising occurred in 1821 in the Balkan Peninsula, resulting in the independence of Greece from the Ottoman empire in 1830.  In the same year, revolutionaries in France, Spain, Portugal, and German states called for constitutional governments based on popular sovereignty.  Similar demands for independence and democracy arose in Belgium, Italy, and Poland.  In 1848 a new round of rebellions brought down the French monarchy and threatened the Austrian empire.  Uprisings also arose in Italy, Prussia, and German states.  By the summer of 1849 the armies of conservative rulers had suppressed the last of these rebellions, but advocates of national independence and popular sovereignty remained active.

	German Unification       The Congress of Vienna had created a German Confederation composed of 39 states dominated by Austria.  Kaiser Wilhelm I of Prussia and his prime minister, Otto von Bismarck, provoked three wars (1864-1870) with Denmark, Austria, and France to mobilize German nationalism, resulting in the political unification of Germany.  Metternich's efforts to suppress nationalism and popular sovereignty were ultimately futile; nonetheless, a balance of power was maintained for most of the 19th century.  International tensions escalated again following the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), which cost France heavy war reparations and the region of Alsace-Lorraine, and European leaders built up their armies and formed an elaborate network of secret alliances for mutual defense.       Despite German unification under Wilhelm I, the close relationship between Germany and Austria-Hungary led to an alliance between the neighboring rivals.  Britain, France and Russia reacted by setting aside their differences to form a secret pact for the purpose of neutralizing the German-Austrian threat.  The defensive framework was set for a war of unprecedented proportions.       Emerging European imperialism also played a role in escalating the conditions for the Great War by fueling dangerous conflict between European powers.  All the industrialized nations of Europe competed for foreign markets and engaged in tariff wars, but the rivalry between Britain and Germany was the most ominous, demonstrated by an intense competition for naval superiority.  The Balkan Wars       In the early 20th century there were minor skirmishes between Britain and Germany in Africa, Germany and France in Morocco and Thailand, Britain and Russia in Persia, and elsewhere.  The Balkan Wars (1912-13) dissolved much of the Ottoman empire, seriously strained European diplomatic relations, and helped shape the conditions that led to the outbreak of the Great War.       An alliance between the Balkan states of Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro (known as the Balkan League) fought and defeated the Ottoman Turks, conquering Macedonia, Albania, and Thrace.  Then the victors turned against each other.  Serbia and Greece formed an alliance and defeated Bulgaria, Serbia gained the Kosovo region, and Albania became an independent state.  Bulgaria turned to Austria for support, exacerbating tensions with Serbia.  This set up the conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary that erupted in the summer of 1914.

The War to End All Wars_____________________
	The Vortex of Violence       Following the murder of their leader on June 28, 1914, the Austrians issued the Serbs an ultimatum in the form of a long list of demands (but no explicit threat of war).  Essentially the point was to pressure Serbia to (a) accept responsibility for the assassination, and (b) stop all belligerence directed against Austria-Hungary.  The unwillingness of the Serbian government to promptly comply was all the excuse Austria needed to mobilize its army against its troublesome neighbor.        Immediately following the declaration of war on July 28, Russia mobilized to come to the aid of the Serbs.  In accord with its mutual-defense pact with Austria, Germany declared war against Russia on August 1, then on France two days later.  On August 4 the German army entered Belgium, prompting Britain to enter the war on the side of France.  Everyone expected the war to be a short one.  Twenty million soldiers quickly moved into battle in hopeful anticipation of glorious a victory.
	The Front Lines       The initial German offensive against France came to a grinding halt along the Marne river.  For the next three years the battle lines of the western front remained more or less stationary, as both sides dug in for a war of attrition.  The stalemate reflected technological developments that favored defensive tactics.  Trenches ran from the English Channel to Switzerland.  To the south, another front formed along the Italian border once Italy entered the war on the side of the Allies in 1915.        On the eastern front and in the Balkans, the battle lines were more fluid.  After a strong defense by the Serbians finally collapsed, a combination of Austrian and German forces overran Serbia, Albania, and Romania.  Meanwhile Russia had taken the offensive by invading Prussia, but German-Austrian forces launched a successful counterattack.  The Russians were driven back to a long defensive line from the Baltic to the Black Sea.       The no-man's land between the barbed-wire and trenches was a muddy killing field of machine gun and rifle fire, artillery shells, and poisonous mustard gas.  Thousands of rotting bodies littered the ground, feeding the growing population of rodents and insects.  The theme of patriotic pride, honor, and fatalism is reflected in the following poem by Englishman A. E. Housman:

	The Day of Battle        "Far I hear the bugle blow To call me where I would not go, And the guns begin the song, 'Soldier, fly or stay for long.' "Comrade, if to turn and fly Made a soldier never die, Fly I would, for who would not? 'Tis sure no pleasure to be shot. "But since the man that runs away Lives to die another day, And cowards' funerals, when they come, Are not wept so well at home, "Therefore, though the best is bad, Stand and do the best, my lad; Stand and fight and see your slain, And take the bullet in your brain."
	Opening Battles       Hostilities began with the Battle of the Frontiers in southern Belgium on August 14, followed by the invasion of East Prussia by the Russian army on August 17.  On August 23 Austria-Hungary invaded Russian Poland.  In the Battle of Tannenberg (August 26-30), Germany won a major victory by destroying the entire Russian Second Army and part of the Russian First Army; a total of 300,000 Russian soldiers were killed, wounded or captured, compared to just 12,000 German casualties.  Russia suffered heavy losses again in the Battle of Masurian Lakes (September 9-14).       Meanwhile, trench warfare had settled in on the western front following the First Battle of Marne (September 5-10).  The trenches were usually about seven feet deep and six feet wide, enough for two columns of soldiers to move about under the line of fire, and often waterlogged.  The soldiers were often soaking wet, cold, and suffering from miserable infections such as "trench foot" and "trench mouth."  Sharing the trenches were infestations of rats, lice, and fleas.       With the hope of restoring the Ottoman empire, Turkey had entered the war on the side of the Central Powers on October 19, 1914.  The Allies launched naval and land attacks in the straits of Dardanelles and Gallipoli peninsula from March through August of 1915.  Stiff Turkish resistance, difficult terrain, and foul weather forced the Allied forces to withdraw in failure after suffering 250,000 casualties.  Winston Churchill resigned as First Lord of the Admiralty.

"They Shall Not Pass"       Battle of Verdun in 1916 came to symbolize the resolve of the French army and also the human slaughter of combat in the Great War.  From February through December the Germans tried to capture the fortified French city.  Verdun was a symbol of national pride and the French were determined to defend it.  The heart of Verdun was a citadel built in the 17th century.  An underground complex for housing troops had been added in the 19th century.  Beyond the walls of the city was a ring of 30 underground forts.  Fortifications included concrete bunkers and rotating artillery turrets equipped with fortress cannons.       The German attack began with a fierce artillery bombardment of over one million shells, including poison gas, fired by 1,400 powerful field pieces positioned along a 25 mile line.  This heavy pounding was followed by three infantry corps.  The French defenders fell back but were reinforced by 90,000 men commanded by General Henri-Philippe Pétain.  On June 23, General Robert Nivelle rallied the French, declaring to Commander-in-chief Joseph Joffre, "Ils ne passeront pas" (They shall not pass).       The advancing German soldiers were exposed in the open field and decimated by French field artillery and pushed back to the Meuse river.  A total of 40 million artillery shells were fired by the two sides at Verdun; 600,000 soldiers were killed and 700,000 were wounded.  On July 1 a British offensive in the north was opened to relieve some of the pressure from Verdun, leading to the Battle of the Somme.  An additional 800,000 men were killed or wounded.

The Global Conflict________________________
	Clash of Titans       For the first two years of the war, British and German naval forces avoided a major confrontation, but by early 1916 the Central Powers were running out of grain for hungry soldiers, army horses, and civilians because British ships ruled the seas.  Admiral Reinhard Scheer, new commander of the German High Fleet, devised a plan to neutralize Britain's naval superiority.  First, German ships attacked the British eastern coast, which forced the British Admiral Sir John Jellico to divide his fleet.  Scheer then tried to lure a smaller enemy battle-cruiser squadron under the command of Sir David Beatty into open sea for a battle with the entire German High Fleet.        The German plan might have worked, but British Intelligence had broken the German code and Jellico was closing in.  Beatty drew the German warships into a trap.  The German High Fleet was heavily bombarded, but Scheer used the smoke and confusion to escape, circled around, and took the advantage.  Having suffered heavy losses, Jellico elected to withdraw from the Battle of Jutland.  That night the German fleet slipped away.  Germany hailed it as a great victory, having lost fewer ships, but the largest naval conflict of the war had essentially ended in a draw because Britain retained naval superiority and control of the seas. The Russian Revolution       The war exacerbated existing social problems in Russia and created even more, fueling popular discontent.  In September 1915, Tsar Nicholas II decided to go to the front and personally lead the army, hoping it would rally the Russian people and strengthen their loyalty.  He left behind his German wife Alexandra to rule in his absence, aided by a powerful counselor named Grigori Rasputin.       By February 1917 there was little improvement in the war effort, food shortages were becoming more acute, and soldiers were beginning to desert en mass.  Large-scale rioting occurred in Russian cities.  Seeing his authority crumble, Tsar Nicholas tried to disband the parliament.  The assembly defied his order, established a provisional government, and called for his abdication.  Nicholas had no choice but to comply.       Alexander Kerensky, chosen to lead the provisional government, decided to carry on with the unpopular war despite Russia's social problems.  In April 1917, Vladimir Lenin, exiled leader of the Bolshevik faction, returned to Russia.  The Bolsheviks, later renamed the Communist Party, were an organization of Marxist revolutionaries.  Lenin called for immediate withdrawal from the war and socialistic land reform.  After a failed coup, he fled again into exile, only to return in October.  This time a majority of delegates at a Congress of Soviets (worker's councils) supported Lenin's Bolsheviks.  Lenin took power and signed a treaty with Germany in March 1918.  In July, the tsar and his family were executed.

	Neutral in Thought and Action       Eventually, two million American "doughboys" participated in the American Expeditionary Force sent to France, providing invaluable reinforcements for the Allies.  When the war broke out in 1914, that was the last thing most Americans wanted.       At the beginning of the war, the United States had no overseas alliances, and President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed a policy of strict neutrality.  The American people were repulsed by the carnage of the Great War raging in Europe.  Divided in their sympathies, with many favoring the Allies and many others cheering for Germany, the American people shared a common hope of avoiding direct involvement.        Wilson urged Americans to be "neutral in thought and in action."  Nevertheless, from 1914 to 1916 American merchants shipped over $6 billion in exports to the Allies, plus $2 billion in loans.  By comparison, U.S. exports to the Central (Axis) powers totaled just $182 million during this period.  Clearly, Americans were supplying and financing the Allies despite claims of neutrality.  Germany tried to stop shipments of arms and declared a "war zone" around the British Isles, enforced by submarines (Unterseeboots).       The Wilson administration protested that German U-boat attacks on unarmed merchant vessels were "an indefensible violation of neutral rights" and warned that Germany would be held to "strict accountability" for the destruction of American citizens and property.  On May 7, 1915, the British liner Lusitania (carrying ammunition with the passengers as "human shields") was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland.  Over 1,000 passengers died, including 128 Americans.  Despite  warnings about the dangers of travel during the state of war, which passengers disregarded, Americans were shocked and outraged.        Wilson did not believe there was sufficient cause for a forceful response nor that the nation was prepared for war.  He declared, "There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight.  There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right."  He demanded from Germany an apology, reparations, and an immediate end to unrestricted submarine warfare.       German U-boat attacks continued on and off for the next year.  In April 1916 Wilson issued an ultimatum: unless Germany stopped sinking civilian vessels, the United States would break off diplomatic relations.  Tensions eased for several months, and Wilson was re-elected in November 1916 on the campaign slogan, "He Kept Us Out of War."       On January 31, 1917, the German ambassador announced that unrestricted submarine warfare would resume immediately.  Wilson ordered the arming of merchant ships and severed relations with Germany but still hoped to keep the United States out of the war.  Then in February he received a copy of an intercepted telegram from the German foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann, to the ambassador in Mexico, inviting Mexico to join the Central powers and attack the United States in the event of United States entry into the war.  Wilson released the Zimmermann Telegram to the press and ordered merchant ships to shoot U-boats on sight.       Throughout March, U-boats increased their attacks, and on April 2, 1917, Wilson delivered a war message to Congress:  "It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance.  But right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts...."
	The Yanks are Coming       The United States entered the war with barely 180,000 men in uniform.  Congress passed the Selective Service Act in May 1917.  Nearly 3 million men age 21-30 were drafted and another 2 million volunteered.  To finance the war, which cost $32 billion in the end, Congress resorted to an income tax and loans, the latter in the form of "Liberty Bonds."  The national debt jumped from $2 billion to $20 billion, but the economy received a powerful economic stimulus as industrial productivity, wages, and profits rose.         General John J. Pershing and the American Expeditionary Force landed in France in June 1917.  Few reached the front lines until May 1918.  As the Germans closed in on Paris, Pershing dispatched 70,000 American troops to the front and the German advance was turned back in the Battle of Amiens.        As Germany's allies fell like dominos, in September 1918 Allied forces took the offensive in the Argonne Forest on the eastern edge of France and won the last major battle of the war.  With their army in retreat, their economy in a state of near collapse, and civilian morale low, the German government sought an armistice in October.  Kaiser Wilhelm II was overthrown and the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.

The Flawed Peace_________________________
	The Treaty of Versailles        The Paris Peace Conference began on January 19, 1919, and involved 32 nations that represented three-fourths of the world's population.  The defeated countries were not invited and the majority of the negotiations were led by Woodrow Wilson of the United States, David Lloyd George of Great Britain, and Georges Clemenceau of France.        Wilson brought to the table his Fourteen Points, an idealistic plan for sovereignty and nationalism.  Wilson hoped to create new European states with common cultures and languages while reducing arms and establishing a new League of Nations to oversee any future international conflicts.  Great Britain and France were more intent on punishing and weakening Germany, along with expanding their own overseas empires.        After nine days of talks, five separate treaties emerged, one for each of the defeated nations.  The Treaty of Versailles was finally signed on June 28, 1919.  Its conditions were harsh, with Alsace-Lorraine returned to France and most of East Prussia integrated into the reconstituted Poland, which meant that Germany also lost its access to the sea.  The Allies were to occupy the Rhineland for fifteen years.  The size of the Germany army was restricted, and a clause was inserted whereby Germany was assigned responsibility for causing the war, plus reparations of 269 gold marks (the equivalent of $32 billion, or $400 billion in today's dollars).  Although a schedule of payments was approved, the war debt was crippling and allowed to lapse in the 1920s.  Germany signed under protest, and the United States Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles because of the League of Nations.       Far from being settled and peaceful, postwar Europe was beset by economic hardship and border disputes.  The redrawn map of Europe left all of the newly formed states with disaffected minorities, bitterly disappointed by the failure to receive the sovereignty they had been promised in Wilson's Fourteen Points.  Germany had been punished and weakened, but not dismembered as France had advocated.  A Third Reich would rise in just fourteen years, and "the war to end all wars" eventually would be regarded as a prelude to an even greater world war.

Lecture 10

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