World War I: An End to Illusions

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World War I An End to Illusions

• History 106
• April 6, 2009
• The Green Fields of France

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Reminders

• Readings for this week.
• Bentley and Ziegler, chapter 34 four documents
  on the Middle East 1) Damascus Protocol, 1915
  2) Sykes-Picot Agreement, 1916 3) Balfour
  Declaration, 1917 4) Feizal-Weizmann agreement,
  1919 NEW Brief introduction to
  these documents.
• There will be a brief quiz in your section on
  these documents on April 13 or 14.
• Keep reading Things Fall Apart. Your paper is due
  April 20 or 21 in your section. Instructions
  here.

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Some Websites of Interest

• A Multimedia History of World War I
• British National Archives site on the First World
  War
• PBS website on The Great War and the Shaping of
  the Twentieth Century
• Heritage of the Great War site
• Art of the First World War exhibit

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A World at Peace?

• Was war obsolete?
• From Norman Angell, The Great Illusion, 1913
• War has no longer the justification that it
  makes for the survival of the fittest it
  involves the survival of the less fit. The idea
  that the struggle between nations is a part of
  the evolutionary law of man's advance involves a
  profound misreading of the biological analogy.
  The warlike nations do not inherit the earth
  they represent the decaying human element....

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Europe in 1914
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July 28, 1914 Sarajevo, Bosnia, Austro-Hungarian
Empire

• South Slav nationalist Gavilo Princip
  assassinates Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the
  Hapsburg Empire.
• A generation earlier, German Chancellor Otto von
  Bismarck had said, "If there is ever another war
  in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly
  thing in the Balkans."

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Toward the Guns of August

• Hapsburgs (Austro-Hungarian Empire) threaten
  Serbia.
• Serbia gains Czarist Russias support.
• Germans back Hapsburg demands on Serbia.
• France prepares to fight against a German attack.
• Great Britain offers support to France and
  Belgium.

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Growing Militarization

• New Technologies of Warfare
• Machine guns
• Mobile Artillery
• Breech loading Rifles
• Naval and Land Arms Race
• Railroads as Military Infrastructure
• Conscription

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Rising and Declining Empires

• The European conquest of much of the rest of the
  world had left some nations as satisfied powers
  and others feeling their imperialist goals were
  unfulfilled.
• Great Britain and France as status quo powers
• Germany, Japan and Italy as dissatisfied powers
• Crumbling European empires in the East Czarist
  Russia, Hapsburg Empire (Austro-Hungarian
  Empire), and Ottoman Empire.

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Popular Nationalism and Leaders Policies

• War as a test of character
• War as diversion from domestic problems
• War as opportunity for social reform

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Christmas Truce 1914

• On the front lines at Christmas, 1914, British
  and German troops enjoyed a spontaneous truce and
  in some cases celebrated the holiday together.
  However, hopes for a short war soon evaporated.

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Trench Warfare and Stalemate

• Trench warfare was the characteristic of the
  great battles of the Great War.
• Massive casualties in weeks-long battles over
  control of a few hundred yards of territory.

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Carnage on the Eastern Front

• Russian defeat at the Battle of Tannenberg,
  August 1914
• 95,000 Russian troops surrender at least 30,000
  Russians dead or wounded
• Russian commanding general commits suicide

Link to video of Russian troop surrender.
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Great War as World War

• Gallipoli British Campaign to secure Dardanelles
  Straits, 1915
• Colonial TroopsAustralia and New Zealand
• As many as 250,000 casualties on each side before
  British withdrawal

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Great War as World War

• Battles in German East Africa (now Tanzania).
  About 100,000 men lost their lives in the
  forgotten war in East Africa.
• Japan seizes German-controlled areas of China and
  German colonies in the Pacific Ocean.

Battle of Tanga, 1914 British and French troops
attack German colonial territory in East Africa.
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Senegalese Soldiers on the Front Lines in France

• European powers drew heavily on their colonies
  overseas for military manpower.

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Indian Soldiers heading to France

• Nearly a million troops from India (a British
  colony) served in the Great War, mostly in the
  Middle East. Nearly fifty thousand died in the
  war,

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Algerian Soldiers encamped in France

• North Africans and West Africans served France,
  some as volunteers, others as draftees, during
  the war. Approximately 65000 died in the war.

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Ending the Stalemate 1917

• The U.S. enters the war, April 1917
• Czarist Russias collapse and the Russian
  Revolution
• Russia leaves the war, March, 1918

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America and the Great War

• Why We Fought
• Interests and Ideals
• Economic Entanglements
• German Submarine Warfare
• Wilsons Fourteen Points

May 1915 Lusitania sunk by German submarine
warfare, 114 Americans die.
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World War I Battle Deaths
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As Deadly as the Great War

• The influenza epidemic of 1918-19 killed more
  people around the world (probably 30 million)
  than the Great War had.

Emergency Hospital, Ft. Riley, Kansas, 1918
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November 11, 1918 Armistice Celebration, Paris
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Wars End or a 20-Year Truce?

• Armistice Nov. 11, 1918
• Paris Peace ConferenceVersailles Treaty
• A punitive peace and secret treaties
• Picture shows Wilson in Paris (center in top hat)
  after signing Versailles Treaty, June 1919
• Wilsons dreams defeated
• U.S. Senate Rejects Versailles Treaty and League
  of Nations

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Europe 1919
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