INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Hand planned to assassinate Archduke Franz
▪The industrial revolution changed European
societies. ▪ Before mid-1800s, European societies
were primarily agricultural. With the spread of
industrialism, people began working in factories.
▪ Industrial revolution allowed for the production
of very cheap commodities in vast quantities.
⮚ Not just clothes and canned goods but also
guns, ammunitions, and military uniforms
⮚ Altered the course of war
NATIONAL SELF DETERMINATION
▪Modern nationalism embraces the doctrine of
popular sovereignty.
▪Modern nationalism places a high value on
ethnic or national self-determination.
▪ National self-determination – the principle that
each national or ethnic group has the right to
determine its own destiny and ruler.
▪ The idea of national self-determination was a
political time bomb in 19th century Europe
because its political map did not reflect its ethnic
composition and distribution.
EXPANSIONISM AND GEOPOLITICAL CONFLICT
▪Presence of multistate nation and multinational
states.
▪Europe’s major multinational states. For
example, within Austria-Hungary there were at
least 10 different ethnic groups.
▪Different ethnic groups demanded greater
autonomy and independence, central
governments found it necessary to expand
resources and efforts to suppress nationalist
movements.
▪Multistate nations. For example, there was no
such country as Germany existed before 1871: it
was divided in several states (Prussia, Bavaria,
etc.).
EXPANSIONISM AND GEOPOLITICAL CONFLICT
What triggered World War 1 was the
assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of
Austria and his pregnant wife Sophie.
▪Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was the
nephew of Emperor Franz Josef and heir to the
throne of Austria and Hungary.
▪The assassination was planned by a Serbian
terrorist group, called The Black Hand and the
man who shot Franz Ferdinand and his wife was
a Bosnian revolutionary named Gavrilo Princip.
Why a Serbian terrorist group, called The Black
Ferdinand, nephew of Emperor Franz Josef of
Austria?
▪Austria-Hungary was the power whose
territorial ambitions played a large part in the
coming of war in 1914. Although head of an
increasingly outdated regime, the emperor Franz
Josef was an expansionist.
▪In 1914, his latest addition to the Austro-
Hungarian Empire was Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Bosnian Serbs resented Austrian rule and sought
the protection of independent Serbia.
⮚There were substantial populations of Serbians
living within the borders of Austria-Hungry.
⮚ Sentiments of nationalism: powerful forces
within Serbia called for a Greater Serbia,
incorporating all Serbian people.
EUROPE ALLIANCE SYSTEM
▪ Before WW1 was triggered, a number of
defense alliances existed between the major
European countries. What this meant was that if
one country declared war on another, the other
countries would also have to enter the conflict
because it was in the treaty they agreed.
▪Britain, France, Ireland and Russia were part of
an alliance called the Triple Entente, while
Germany aligned itself with Austria-Hungary and
Italy, known as the Triple Alliance.
▪The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
in Sarajevo on 28th June 1914, it triggered a
chain of events that resulted in World War 1.
After the assassination, Austria-Hungary
threatened war on Serbia. They set out some
very harsh demands that Serbia must meet.
Germany sided by Austria-Hungary, while Russia
sided with the Serbians. At this point, Europe was
at the brink of going to war.
▪ One month after the Archduke’s assassination
– on July 28 1914 – AustriaHungary declared
war on Serbia with the backing of Germany.
Germany then declared war on Russia on August
1, and on France on August 3.
▪ On August 4 1914, the German troops marched
on France and the route they took went through
Belgium
THE WESTERN FRONT
▪According to an aggressive military strategy
known as the Schlieffen Plan, Germany began
fighting World War I on two fronts, invading
France through Belgium in the west and
confronting Russia in the east.
▪On August 4, 1914, German troops crossed the
border into Belgium.
▪In the first battle of World War I, the Germans
assaulted the heavily fortified city of Liege, using
the most powerful weapons in their arsenal—
enormous siege cannons—to capture the city by
August 15. The Germans left death and
destruction in their wake as they advanced
through Belgium toward France, shooting
civilians and executing a Belgian priest they had
accused of encouraging civilian resistance.
• The Western Front was a 400-plus mile stretch
of land weaving through France and Belgium
from the Swiss border to the North Sea.
• The Western Front was the main theatre of war
during the First World War or the are where
important military events occurred.
FIRST BATTLE OF THE MARNE SEPTEMBER 6-9,
1914
•French and British forces confronted the
invading Germany army, which had by then
penetrated deep into northeastern France,
within 30 miles of Paris. The Allied troops
checked the German advance and mounted a
successful counterattack, driving the Germans
back to north of the Aisne River.
TRENCH WARFARE
▪Both alliances dug into trenches, and the
Western Front was the setting for a hellish war of
attrition that would last more than three years.
▪Trenches were long, narrow ditches dug into the
ground where soldiers lived.
▪They were very muddy, uncomfortable and the
toilets overflowed. These conditions caused
some soldiers to develop medical problems.
There were many lines of German trenches on
one side and many lines of Allied trenches on the
other.
• In the middle was no man's land, which
soldiers crossed to attack the other side
AMERICA ENTERS WORLD WAR I
▪At the outbreak of fighting in 1914, the United
States remained on the sidelines of World War I,
adopting the policy of neutrality favored by
President Woodrow Wilson while continuing to
engage in commerce and shipping with European
countries on both sides of the conflict.
▪Neutrality, however, was increasing difficult to
maintain in the face of Germany’s unchecked
submarine aggression against neutral ships,
including those carrying passengers.
▪In 1915, Germany declared the waters
surrounding the British Isles to be a war zone,
and German boats sunk several commercial and
passenger vessels, including some U.S. ships.
▪ Widespread protest over the sinking by boat of
the British ocean liner Lusitania—traveling from
New York to Liverpool, England with hundreds of
American passengers onboard—in May 1915
helped turn the tide of American public opinion
against Germany. In February 1917, Congress
passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill
intended to make the United States ready for
war.
▪ Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships
the following month, and on April 2 Woodrow
Wilson appeared before Congress and called for
a declaration of war against Germany.
SECOND BATTLE OF THE MARNE
▪With Germany able to build up its strength on
the Western Front after the ceasefire with
Russia, Allied troops struggled to hold off
another German offensive until promised
reinforcements from the United States were able
to arrive.
▪On July 15, 1918, German troops launched what
would become the last German offensive of the
war, attacking French forces (joined by 85,000
American troops as well as some of the British
Expeditionary Force) in the Second Battle of the
Marne.
▪ The Allies successfully pushed back the German
offensive and launched their own
counteroffensive just three days later.
▪ After suffering massive casualties, Germany
was forced to call off a planned offensive further
north, in the Flanders region stretching between
France and Belgium, which was envisioned as
Germany’s best hope of victory.
▪ The Second Battle of the Marne turned the tide
of war decisively towards the Allies, who were
able to regain much of France and Belgium in the
months that followed
TOWARD ARMISTICE WORLD WAR 1 ENDS – NOVEMBER 11, 1918

▪ By the fall of 1918, the Central Powers were
unraveling on all fronts.
▪ Austria-Hungary, dissolving from within due to
growing nationalist movements among its
diverse population, reached an armistice on
November 4. Facing dwindling resources on the
battlefield, discontent on the homefront and the
surrender of its allies, Germany was finally forced
to seek an armistice on November 11, 1918,
ending World War I.
▪ At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany, losing its
manpower and supplies and faced with
imminent invasion, signed an armistice
agreement with the Allies.
▪ The First World War left 9 million soldiers dead
and 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia,
Austria-Hungary, France, and Great Britain each
losing nearly a million or more lives. At least five
million civilians died from disease, starvation, or
exposure. Events that led the the end of WWI

▪ Germany and its alies weakened, accepted

WW1 – WHY IT WAS CALLED AS THE GREAT
WAR?
▪ During WWI, it was not uncommon for single
battles to result in more than 500,000 casualties.
▪ Enthusiasm of nationalism brought men to the
battlefields.
▪ Factories of Industrial Revolution supplied
endless guns, bullets, canons, and artillery shells.
armistice terms.
▪ Because of the devastation of the war, the
demoralization of the army, and the weakness of
the government, the Bolsheviks seized power in
the Russian revolution and made Russia
withdraw on the war.
▪ American entry into the war on the side of
France and Britain.

▪ People not fighting the war on battlefield

worked at factories supplying the soldiers.

▪ Governments mobilized entire populations and

seized control of industry.

▪ War bonds were sold; prices and wages were

controlled; consumer goods were rationed; new
taxes were imposed; women worked in the
factories; children collected scrap metal to be
turned into weapons and ammunitions.

• WWI became the first total war, in which every

element of the society and every aspect of
national life were consumed by the conduct of
war.

• Total War - A war in which participants mobilize

all available resources, humanand material, for
the purpose of waging war. - Represented the
coming together of of the two developments
(Nationalism & Industrialization) transforming
European socities and politics over the previous
cetntury.

• Nationalism – allowed governments to make

unprecedented demands of their citizens.

• Industrialization – provided the material to

equip, transport, and sustain armies on a vast
new scale.

• The nations and armies of Europe were close to

exhaustion