Chapter 27 World War I and Its Aftermath
I. The Stage Is Set
A. Pressure for Peace
1. The late 1800s and early 1900s saw serious efforts to end the scourge of war, including opposition by dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel.
2. Women’s suffrage was a prominent issue during the day, and some believed that women’s suffrage would be a means to prevent war.
3. Powerful forces were pushing Europe to the brink of war, with aggressive nationalism, economic competition, imperialism, an arms race, and rival alliance system.
B. Aggressive Nationalism
1. Nationalism was strong in both Germany and France, where the French were still bitter about losing the Franco-Prussian War.
2. Russia felt obligated to lead and defend all Slavic nations, including the ambitious and young nation of Serbia.
3. The multi-ethnic nation of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire were especially fearful of new nationalistic threats and new nations forming on their borders.
C. Economic and Imperial Rivalries
1. There was a fierce economic rivalry between Germany and Great Britain, the two leading industrial nations.
2. The Germans had begun to out-produce the British by using newer factories.
3. Germans were upset with the international community that they were not receiving the respect they felt they deserved by becoming the prominent industrial power in Europe.
D. Militarism and the Arms Race
1. Militarism is the glorification of the military, and under militarism, the armed forces and readiness for war come to dominate national policy.
2. There was a naval arms race between the largest navy of Britain, and the rising German navy.
3. Fear of war gave military leaders more influence, and on matters of peace and war, governments turned to military leaders for advice.
E. A Tangle of Alliances
1. Gradually, two huge powers emerged as a result of “tangled alliances” in Europe, the Central Powers and the Allies.
2. The Central powers, known as the Triple Alliance, were composed of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and the Ottoman Empire.
3. The Allies were composed of Britain, Russia, France, and Japan.
II. The Guns of August
A. A Murder with Millions of Victims
1. Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Black Hand, assassinated the Archduke Francis Ferdinand in 1914.
2. During his trial, Princip stood by his actions and claimed that his only regret was killing a woman.
3. Since he was underage, he was not executed and he died of tuberculosis in prison in 1918.
B. Peace Unravels
1. Austria, who blamed the Serbs for the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, issued Serbia an ultimatum, or final set of demands, that stated that Serbia must end all anti-Austrian agitation and punish any Serbian official involved in the murder plot; when the Serbians refused to accept all the terms Austria declared war on Serbia.
2. When Austria refused to soften its demands on Serbia, Russia mobilized, or prepared its military forces for war, and Germany declared war on Russia; when France refused to remain neutral, Germany declared war on France.
3. Neutrality is a policy of supporting neither side in a war, and Italy and Britain were neutral in the rapidly growing conflict until Germany invaded the neutral country of Belgium to quickly march into France, which caused Britain to declare war on Germany.
C. Whose Fault?
1. During the war, each side blamed the other, and after the war, the Allies put the blame on Germany.
2. Each great power believed its cause was just during the war, although historians now put the blame for the conflict, which ignited from an assassination into a world war within weeks, on all parties involved.
3. Most people on both sides were committed to military action, and many soldiers were enlisted, not realizing the harsh realities that would come with it.
III. A New Kind of Conflict
A. The Western Front
1. The battle lines drawn in during the winter of the first year would remain unchanged for four years, and trench warfare was created for the first time.
2. An underground network linked bunkers, communications trenches, and gun emplacements, where in between trenches was “no man’s land”, where charges were launched to seize the enemy’s trench, which caused countless losses of lives and a stalemate.
3. Modern weapons added greatly to the destructiveness of the war, and World War I is regarded as the first mechanized war.
B. Other European Fronts
1. Russia was the least industrialized great power in the war, and early on they suffered many great losses because of this.
2. In 1915, Bulgaria joined the Central Powers and drew the war into Southeastern Europe.
3. Italy joined the Allies to gain Austrian ruled lands inhabited by Italians.
C. The War Beyond Europe
1. European colonies were looked to for soldiers and supplies, and German colonies were scattered and destroyed, while English allies such as Australia and Canada sent troops to aid Britain.
2. U boats patrolled sea ways to disrupt supply routs and sunk many neutral countries’ ships, much to the dismay of the United States.
3. The Ottoman Empire was attacked by nationalists and Allied troops to open up seaports, and Japan allied with Britain to seize German outposts in China.
IV. Winning the War
A. Effects of the Stalemate
1. Total war is the channeling of a nation’s entire resources into a war effort.
2. Propaganda is the spreading of ideas to promote a cause or damage to an opposing side.
3. Atrocities are horrible acts against innocent people, which were often greatly exaggerated versions of misreported incidents, and some were completely made up.
B. Women at War
1. Many women needed to take over the jobs that were left vacant by fighting men in the war and they kept the national economies going.
2. Military nurses shared the dangers of the men whose wounds they tended, and women such as Edith Cavell became a hero and a symbol of German Brutality.
3. After the war, most women had to give up their jobs to men returning home, and women gained a new sense of pride and confidence.
C. Collapsing Morale
1. The morale from both troops and civilians had plunged by 1917, and French troops mutinied, as well as many Italian troops deserting.
2. In March 1917, bread riots in St. Petersburg mushroomed into a revolution that brought down the Russian monarchy, and by 1918 Russia had pulled out of the war.
3. With Russia leaving the war, Germany could concentrate its forces onto the Western Front, and the balance of power was tipped.
D. The United States Declares War
1. In May 1915, a German submarine torpedoed the British liner Lusitania, and with this act the American public opinion was shifted towards pro-war, and the unrestricted submarine warfare that caused the sinking continued.
2. In April 1917, Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany, and to recruit, train, supply, and transport a modern army across the Atlantic; about two million effective allied troops were recruited.
3. In January 1918, Wilson issued the Fourteen Points, a list of his terms for resolving this and future wars; it included a call for the end of secret treaties, freedom of the sea,s free trade, and large scale reductions of arms.
E. Campaign to Victory
1. A final showdown got underway in early 1918, and by September of the same year, German generals told the Kaiser that the war could not be won.
2. Kaiser William II stepped down as a result of uprisings by city dwellers, and fled to exile in the Netherlands in November.
3. The new German government sought an armistice, or agreement to end fighting, with the allies and on November 11th, 1918, the Great War came to an end.
V. Making the Peace
A. The Costs of War
1. More than 8.5 million people had died during the war, in addition to material and economic tolls.
2. The Allies blamed the conflict on their defeated foes and insisted that the losers make reparations, or payments for war damage.
3. Turmoil existed throughout Europe and revolutionaries took advantage of this turmoil to install new governments.
B. The Paris Peace Conference
1. Wilson was one of three strong personalities who dominated the Paris Peace Conference, and as a dedicated reformer, he wanted the Fourteen Points to be the basis of peace.
2. Crowds of other representatives circled around the “Big Three” with their own demands and interests.
3. Faced with conflicting demands, Wilson had to compromise his Fourteen Points, but stood firm on the creation of an international League of Nations to guarantee peace for the future.
C. The Treaty of Versailles
1. In June 1919, the peacemakers summoned representatives of the new German Republic to the palace of Versailles outside Paris to sign the Treaty of Versailles, written up by the Allies.
2. The treaty imposed huge reparations that would put an already damaged German economy under a staggering burden, and the reparation costs would exceed 30 billion dollars.
3. The Germans signed the treaty because they had no choice, but German resentment of the Treaty of Versailles would poison the international climate for 20 years, and eventually cause WWII.
D. Other Settlements
1. A band of new nations emerged where the German, Austrian, and Russian empires had once ruled, and one of these new nations was Poland, who had regained independence after more than 100 years of foreign rule.
2. Mandates are territories that were administered by western powers, and Britain and France gained mandates over German colonies in Africa and Ottoman lands in the Middle East.
3. Germany, Italy, and Japan were all dissatisfied with what they felt was unequal distribution of post-war spoils.
E. Hopes for Global Peace
1. More than 40 nations joined the League of Nations, and members of the league promised to take common action, economic or even military, against any aggressor state.
2. The United States Senate did not ratify the treaty and the United States never joined the League of Nations.
3. Although the League was ultimately ineffective, it did create a blueprint for future efforts such as the United Nations, dedicated to preserving peace.