HIST 1016

Lecture 7

The First World War

 1914-1945:
A Second “Thirty-Year War”?
• World War I, or “Great War”, started a new phase in world
history. For many historians, the twentieth century started
in 1914
• The war caused the revolution in Russia, and the creation
of the first Communist regime in the world
• The conflict caused the end of the big empires in Europe:
Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, the Tsarist Empire
 a number of new, smaller states were created at their
place
• Only in the former Tsarist Empire the Bolsheviks managed
to recreate a state that was as big as the previous empire
Europe in
1914
• Before the war Europe was divided
in a system of alliances Sarajevo, 28
• Russia allied with the French and June 1914
the British
• Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy
• A Serbian nationalist assassinated
the heir to the Austro-Hungarian
throne
• The surging nationalism of the
Serbian Slavs was a threat to the
cohesion of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire
• Austria  backed by Germany
• Serbia  backed by Russia
 The Deep Causes of the
First World War
• Crisis in the multipolar regional order of Europe
• The struggle between European great powers
for markets and colonies
• “Old Powers”: Britain, France, Russia
• “New Powers”: Germany, Italy (and Japan)
• The Crisis of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman
Empire
• Social Darwinism and Nationalisms
 The Deep Causes of the
First World War
• British “imperial overstretch”, relative decline, initial isolation due
to the absence of continental allies.
• Germany’s industrial and military growth, coupled with a precarious
geopolitical position
• France sluggish economic growth and weakness vis-à-vis Germany
• German-British Rivalry and Franco-British Rivalry  Franco-British
Entente, strengthened by the First Moroccan Crisis (1905-06).
• Ethnic and social tensions in the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary
• Russia’s economic immaturity and social tensions
• Italy’s precarious geopolitical position and revanchism towards
Austria
 The Balkans Question
• Strategic importance of the peninsula
• Ethnic tensions in the southern regions of Austria-
Hungary
• Pan-Slavic aspirations in the Balkans fuelled by
Russia
• New assertive Balkan policy of A-H since 1906
• Russo-Austrian competition
• Ottoman Empire’s retirement from the region after
the First Balkan War of 1912-13.
Trench Warfare
 Extended battles lasting months, Trench Warfare
such as those at Verdun and the
Somme in France  casualties of
about a million on each side
 Battle of the Somme, July 1916:
60000 British soldiers killed in one
day
 “The British [this is also true for
Germany, France, Italy, Russia,
Austria] lost a generation: half a
million men under the age of 30”
(E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of
Extremes, 1994)
 Industrial Warfare
• Because of trench warfare, the conflict on the Western Front
became essentially a war of attrition: the only way to defeat
the enemy was to protract the conflict until the other parts’
human, military, and industrial resources would be exhausted.
• The technological developments of the Second Industrial
Revolution resulted in unexpected and profound changes in
warfare techniques which initially surprised observers.
• Weapons became immensely more powerful. Large armies
became easier to manoeuvre, and airplanes, tanks, and
submarines became an integral part of military operations.
 Industrial Warfare
• The war effort was inherently connected to an
unprecedented industrial and more broadly economic
effort by each country.
• The Germans were the first to shift to an effective
“war economy” in which the entire economy of a
country was redirected towards the military effort.
• The effects of industrial warfare on both soldiers
(“shell-shock”, post-traumatic stress disorder) and
environment (“no man’s lands” “zones rouges”) were
unprecedented.
Surroundings of Ypres, Belgium,
after a battle, 29 October 1917
British Army units equipped for
chemical warfare
• Effects of mustard gas on
French soldier (left)
• The WWI saw the first Chemical Warfare
widespread use of chemical
agents in warfare: phosgene,
chlorine, mustard gas.
• Chemical agents had
devastating effects on
soldiers but doubtful military
efficacy beyond psychological
terrorism.
• The scars of chemical warfare
would be so strong that even
though all the major powers
possessed thousands of tons
of gas during WWII, virtually
none, except Japan used
them in the conflict.
 Wilfred Owen’s
If in some smothering dreams you too could
pace Dulce et decorum est
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
Pro patria mori
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
—
My friend, you would not tell with such high
zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: 
Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

(It is sweet and fitting to die for the

fatherland)
 Cultural Factors
behind the Conflict
• Nationalism: dominant ideas
of masculinity, cultural impact
of decades of colonial
expansionism in Africa and
Asia

• Militarism: social prestige

associated to military service,
militarisation of public life
(politicians often wearing
uniforms in pulic), military
conscription
• Colonial troops and labourers
funneled in the hundred of
thousands into the war effort A Global Conflict
• Battles in Africa and the Pacific:
France and Britain seize German
colonies
• Japan entered the war (allied with
Britain) took German possessions
in China and the Pacific, makes
heavy demands to China
• USA join the war in 1917 when
German submarines threatened
American shipping
• 2 million Americans took part in
the first US military action on
European soil
• Required the mobilization of the
entire population of the The First
countries involved “Total War”
• The authority of governments
expanded greatly (“war
socialism” in Germany)
• Women entered the labour
market in the millions 
factories for ammunitions
• As the war ended, suffrage
movement revived and women
received the right to vote in a
number of countries: Britain,
US, Germany, Soviet Union,
Hungary, Poland
 The End of the War on
the Eastern Front
• The conflict saw Germany and Austria on one
side against Russia and Romania on the other.
• It was mostly fought in the territories of
contemporary southern Poland and northern
Ukraine, at the time divided between Austria
and Russia.
• Conflict continued until 1917 and was
characterized by numerous Austro-German
victories.
 The End of the War on
the Eastern Front
• The immense war effort led to the collapse of
the Russian Empire, considerably weaker in
economic terms compared with its opponents
and fraught by profound social tensions.
• Russian social and economic crisis led first to
the collapse of the Empire in February 1917 and
later to the communist-led October Revolution
of 1917.
• 1921: Establishment of the USSR
 The End of the War on
the Western Front
• War had continued on the Western Front without any achievable
strategic result (Battle of Somme, 1916: more than a million
casualties for a Franco-British enhancement of about 10 km).
• The winding down of military operations on the Eastern Front by
early 1917 resulted into an intensification of the conflict in the
Western Front (France and Belgium).
• Germany’s failed Spring Offensive of 1918 to achieve victory
before the arrival of the bulk of the United States’ military force.
• The arrival of US armies on the Western Front definitely changed
the course of the conflict in favour of the Allies (GB and France).
• August-November 1918: Hundred Days Offensive – decisive
Allied victory over Germany.
 The Impact of the
First World War

• 8 million people died in combat during WWI. 20 million were

wounded.
• 1918 influenza pandemic (50 to 100 million dead
worldwide), widespread food shortages.
• “Disappearance” of European aristocracy and definitive
affirmation of mass society (and consequently of mass
culture).
• Gender tensions (women experienced emancipation through
new jobs during the conflict, but generally lost it after its
end).
 The Impact of the
First World War

• The “idols” of 19th century crumbled: reason, democracy,

capitalism, progress, science
• Crisis of the progressive liberal culture heir of the
Enlightenment and rise of a conflicted “modernist culture”
in the West.
• The liberal order was challenged on the right by new
authoritarian political ideologies (Fascism, Nazism) and on
the left by Marxism-Leninism, the political ideology of the
recently founded USSR, espoused by a number of
Communist parties throughout Europe.
 The Impact of the
First World War

• Map of Europe and Middle East redrawn

• European civilization “tarnished”
– growth of anti-colonial, nationalist movements
• Beginning of the “American Century”, but US returns to
isolationism after the war
• World’s first experiment with Communism
– birth of the Soviet Union (USSR)
• Japan strengthened in Asia
• Germany alienated from the rest of Europe.
• By the time Peace Conference began The Paris Peace Con
in Paris in 1919, US President
Woodrow Wilson had issued his
of 1919
Fourteen Points, upon which he
believed all the decisions of the
peace conference should be made
• Most important: the right of self-
determination
• There was much opposition to the
Fourteen Points, both at the
Conference and at home, especially
among the British and French.
• Eventually, however, they were
passed by the Allies and became the
bases upon which the League of
Nations was formed.
• President of the US for two terms
between 1913 and 1921. Woodrow
• Ideology of liberal internationalism Wilson
and national self-determination
(“Wilsonianism”). and WWI
• Key actor in the post-war peace
negotiations.
• 10 January 1920: establishment of
the League of Nations in Geneva.
• But the US did not join the
organisation (domestic opposition).
• Political failure of the LN, but
blueprint for the establishment of
the United Nations in October
1945.
The League of Nations
The Armenian Genocide (1915-16)
• Armenian labour battalions stripped of their weapons
• Deportation decree of 30 May 1915
• Up to 1 million dead  Massacres and malnutrition
• In 1915, when some Armenians welcomed Tsarist armies
as liberators after years of persecution, the Ottoman
government ordered a genocidal mass deportation of its
Armenian citizens from their homeland to the empire's
eastern provinces.
• A million Armenians died from murder, starvation, and
disease during World War I.
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.
• Ottoman army first executed
Armenian leaders (1915 Red The Armenian
Sunday)
• After their defeat in World Genocide
War I, the new Ottoman
government tried the leaders
of the genocide and sentenced
them to death in absentia.
• However within a few months
the proceedings were
suspended and the matter
dropped.
• The Armenian survivors were
not allowed to return to
Anatolia
• Armenian Operation
“Nemesis”
• After WWI, various parts
of the world were put
under “trusteeship” of The Mandate System
the victorious European
powers
• British mandates:
Palestine, Iraq,
Transjordan
• French mandates: Syria,
Lebanon ( 1916 Sykes-
Picot agreement).
• Basis for the foundation
of modern Lebanon,
Syria, Iraq, as well as for
the emergence of the
Israeli-Palestinian
conflict
• During World War I the
British had made two
promises regarding territory The Mandate System
in the Middle East.
1) Britain had promised the
local Arabs, through
Lawrence of Arabia,
independence for a united
Arab country covering most
of the Arab Middle East, in
exchange for their
supporting the British
2) Britain had promised to
create and foster a Jewish
national home as laid out in
the Balfour Declaration,
1917
The End of the Ottoman Empire
• 1898: Establishment of
German colonies in Shandong.
WWI in China
• 1915: Japan intervention
during World War One against
Germany, and Japanese
victory.
• 1915: Japan’s 21 Demands to
the Chinese government,
• April 1919  at the Paris
Peace conference European
powers awarded former
German possessions to Japan.
• Cultural and nationalist
ferment: “May Fourth
Movement”
 The May Fourth Movement
in China
• Inspired also by the Korean anti-Japanese
movement (Korea colony since 1910) big
demonstration in Beijing,
•  May Fourth Movement
• But triggers a students’ and intellectuals’
movement that changes China’s political culture
 anti-imperialism, labor unions, political
parties  advocating social change, national
unity, and resistance against foreign control
 A Divided China
• 1911: Xinhai Revolution
• 1912: Establishment of the Republic of China
• 1912-16: Yuan Shikai period
• 1917-1927: “Warlord Period”  political division in
military regional governments
• 1921: Establishment of the Chinese Communist Party
• 1921-1927: Alliance between Sun-Yatsen’s
Kuomintang (KMT) and the USSR  First United
Front
 A Divided China
• 1926: Northern Expedition under leadership of KMT
figurehead Chiang Kai-shek
• 1927: Chiang breaks the United Front killing thousands
of communists in Shanghai
• 1927-1937: “Nanjing Decade”
• 1929: most of southern and central China is under
Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists
• 1929  in China now only 6 warlord-controlled areas
in the periphery + Nanjing government + small areas
controlled by the communists
• Right: Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen
• The “father of modern China” and
• Key figure of the Chinese
revolutionary movement
Chiang Kai-shek
(Tongmenghui)
• One of the founders of the KMT
• Chief ideologist of the KMT
(Three People Principles)

• Left: Chiang Kai-shek

• Protegee of Sun
• Head of the Whampoa Military
Academy
• Key figure in the Nationalist Army
• (Contested )Successor of Sun
• Military and political winner of
the Northern Expedition