Transcript Great War - Newsome High School

The Great War and its Legacy
Tracy Rosselle, M.A.T.
Newsome High School, Lithia, FL
The causes and outcomes
of The Great War … and
why it came to be called
World War I
Leading up to 1914: Long-term causes

Imperialism

Nationalism

Militarism

Alliances
Imperialism
The tensions from 19th-century European
imperialism spilled into the 20th century, as
rivalries continued to percolate over the
extension of empires … that is, European
colonies in Africa and Asia.
Also, in East Asia, Japan was a
strengthening imperial power in its own right.
Nationalism
With the unification of Italy and Germany in
the second half of the 19th century, a sense
of nationalism arose among other ethnic
groups (e.g., Poles, Czechs, Yugoslavs,
Bosnians).
 Widespread desire to redraw national
boundaries  but in absence of agreement,
how are claims settled? Traditional answer:
conquest and war.

Militarism

An arms race had begun
among European nations,
as fighting units were
increasingly mechanized
and more lethal than ever.

Among the new tools of war:
machine guns, tanks, poison
gas, submarines, Zeppelins
and airplanes.
Militarism (cont.)
Most notably, increasingly industrialized
Germany had come to rival the power
of Britain and its vaunted navy.
Militarism (cont.)
Germany’s more aggressive
posture came about when
Kaiser Wilhelm II forced
Bismarck to resign as
chancellor in 1890.
Bismarck had declared
Germany a “satisfied power”
and wanted to balance
power in Europe through
alliances … but the new
Kaiser was really into the
military.
Alliances
Mutual distrust among the great powers of Europe
 military alliances (open and secret agreements)
in case of armed conflict

Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy =
Triple Alliance

France, Russia and (informally) Britain =
Triple Entente
Short-term memory check:
What were the long-term
causes of The Great War?
1914: The immediate spark
On a tour of southern Balkan provinces, the
heir to the Austrian throne was assassinated.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, along with his
wife, Sophie, were shot at point-blank range
in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a young
Serbian Slav nationalist and member of the
Black Hand – a secret society committed to
ridding Bosnia of Austrian rule.
A fatal, and fateful, shot
Austria blamed Serbia,
issued a list of
demands and
threatened war.
Serbia, knowing it was
protected by fellow
Slavs in the Russians,
didn’t back down.
Alliances kick in


Austria, assured that Germany would back it
if Russia intervened, declared war on Serbia
on July 28, 1914 – exactly one month after
the assassination of Ferdinand.
Russia mobilized troops … and like
clockwork the alliance system was triggered
to disastrous consequences.
Within days …
… Serbia, Austria, Russia, Germany, France
and Britain had entered the war. Many
people at the time held romantic notions
about war, about the nature of progress.
They were convinced it would be a neat and
quick war. They were wrong.
The major combatants
Central Powers
Germany
Austria
Bulgaria
Ottoman Empire
Italy abandoned its Triple Alliance
partners and joined the Allies in
1915, having been promised
Austrian territory.
Allies
Great Britain
France
Russia

Britain’s imperial dominions –
Canada, Australia, New Zealand
and South Africa – also fought.

The United States joined in 1917
… the year that Russia dropped
out, signing a treaty with Germany.
Turn to p. 844 in Patterns
In your spiral notebook, summarize the
History in Depth feature about the
Armenians.
Germany’s plan for two fronts
Since the 1890s, Germany’s basic strategy
against the emerging alliance of France and
Russia was the Schlieffen Plan, which, when
devised, made it clear to the Reichstag that
more funds for a larger military was required.
The Schlieffen Plan, then, can be seen as
another cause of the Great War … but
something specific that could be categorized
under militarism or alliances.
The plan thwarted
The Schlieffen Plan called for a majority of German
troops to quickly invade France through neutral
Belgium and take Paris within six weeks … before
the Russians could react and mobilize on the
Eastern Front. But Belgium put up more resistance
than anticipated, and Russia got its act together by
responding in a matter of days. Germany then faced
what it never wanted – a two-front war.
Stalemate … and a propaganda coup



Illegal invasion of Belgium  effective Allied
propaganda labeling Germans as barbarians
While German troops got to within sight of Paris, the
Allies – in part because Germany had to pull some
troops back to the Eastern Front with Russia – made
a stand at the Marne River.
On the Western Front, from then on, both sides were
evenly matched and military technology favored the
defensive.
Trench warfare
One of the most
horrific styles of
combat in history

By end of 1914,
500 miles of trenches,
bunkers, barbed wire
… and virtually no
movement – but plenty
of casualties

Europeans disillusioned


The death and
destruction led to
disillusionment as war
lost its romanticism.
Sad, eloquent
descriptions of trench
warfare in such works
as All Quiet on the
Western Front
A moment of death … one of millions
Moment of Death
Turn to p. 857 in Patterns
Read sources B and C and answer question
#3 in your spiral notebook.
The Eastern Front


The Central Powers – Germans, Austrians,
Bulgarians and Ottoman Empire – fought a
more fluid war on the vast Eastern Front with
a poorly equipped, largely non-industrialized
foe – the Russians.
By 1917, Russia was crippled by war:
–
–
the army was in tatters and beginning to mutiny
food shortages led to demonstrations in the
streets of Petrograd (St. Petersburg)
Revolution in Russia


In spring 1917, as Russia
was nearing virtual
meltdown, Tsar Nicholas II
abdicated the throne, ending
three centuries of Romanov
rule.
An internal struggle for
power between a provisional
government and Bolsheviks
(led by Lenin), who wanted
to discontinue the war
immediately, ensued.
Vladimir Lenin in Red Square
Revolution in Russia (cont.)

Bolshevism – with its Marxist ideology – won
out:
–
–
Russia signed Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with
Germany in March 1918.
treaty gives Germany one-third of Russian land
(Baltic states, the Caucasus, Finland, Poland and
the Ukraine), which contains one-fourth of its
population … but gives time for the new Bolshevik
regime to deal with Russia’s internal problems.
What is likely to happen
now that Russia is exiting
the war?
Total war



For countries still fighting, civilians –
including women – were involved in the “war
effort” too.
Governments controlled industry, used
propaganda and rationed food, strategic
materials and consumer goods.
War required conscription: The belligerents
of The Great War eventually drafted more
than 70 million men.
Americans tip the balance



The United States finally enters the war in
1917.
Race to get fresh American troops past
German submarines before Germany could
redeploy troops from the Eastern to the
Western Front.
In Second Battle of the Marne, 2 million U.S.
soldiers tip the balance in favor of the Allies.
“On the eleventh hour of the eleventh
day of the eleventh month …”


Ultimately, an exhausted Germany accepted an
armistice (a truce in anticipation of signing a peace
treaty), which took effect at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11,
1918.
This conclusion to hostilities – that Germany did not
surrender and suffer outright defeat – along with the
fact that fighting never took place on German soil –
eventually undermined the post-war German
government because the German people became
outraged at what they perceived as gross inequities
in the peace settlement.
The Paris Peace Conference


After the war, the Big Four – Britain, France,
Italy and the United States – as well as
representatives from all over the world
seeking some say in how to settle issues
stemming from the war, met for months in
Paris.
Clash between Woodrow Wilson’s idealism,
on the one hand, and the more vengeful
posture of David Lloyd George (Britain) and
especially Georges Clemenceau (France).
Russia in the background

Russia did not have a voice in the Paris
Peace Conference, but among the concerns
for those reshaping the world map in Paris:
fear of Bolshevism spreading to Western
Europe, where radical socialism and even
anarchism were already flaring.
Wilson’s Fourteen Points

Wilson wanted “to make the world safe for
democracy” by establishing a generous peace,
reflected in his Fourteen Points:

End to secret treaties
Freedom of the seas
Free trade
Arms reduction
Decolonization
New borders drawn according to self-determination of national
groups
Establishment of international dispute-resolution body called
the League of Nations






The Treaty of Versailles



The most important of the five post-war
treaties
Reflected Lloyd George’s and Clemenceau’s
desire to make Germany pay for the war
(Article 231 = war-guilt clause)
Established League of Nations … but U.S.
never joined (or signed the treaty, for that
matter), greatly weakening its potential
effectiveness
The Treaty of Versailles (cont.)
Terms for Germany, creating a legacy of
hatred among the German people:
 Loss of territory
•
•
•
13% of land (25,000 square miles) home to 6
million people
Alsace and Lorraine back to France
Rhineland, borderland between France and
Germany, occupied until 1935, demilitarized in
perpetuity
The Treaty of Versailles (cont.)

Loss of colonies
•
•

Disarmament
•
•

Germany’s colonies stripped, placed under Allied
trusteeship
Wilson prevented France and Britain from colonizing them
outright
Army allowed only a token force
No military aircraft, submarines, battleships, heavy artillery
War payments
•
Germany to pay full cost of the war ($32 billion) over 40
years
The treaties from Paris
From Habsburg territory, Germany and Russia, new
nations were created according to “selfdetermination”:
 Yugoslavia (“Land of the South Slavs”)
 Czechoslovakia
 Poland
 Finland
 Latvia
 Lithuania
 Estonia
Europe, before the war
Europe, after the war
An unsatisfactory peace
Although new nations were created, other
countries felt cheated – even betrayed – by
the peace settlements. Mandates were
established throughout Asia and Africa,
whereby the League of Nations would
supervise the areas until they were prepared
for independence. But people in these places
thought the mandate system looked an awful
lot like old-fashioned European colonialism.
An unsatisfactory peace (cont.)


Germans interpretation of mandate system:
merely a division of colonial booty by the
victors.
Arab nationalists outraged by broken
promises made during the war:
–
instead of their own nations carved out of the former
Ottoman territories, mandates by the French in Lebanon
and Syria … by the British in Iraq and Palestine.
An unsatisfactory peace (cont.)


The practical problem of using “selfdetermination” to set up national boundaries
was illustrated by Czechoslovakia: Czechs
and Slovaks made up just 67% of the
population, while Germans totaled 22%,
Ruthenes 6% and Hungarians 5%.
Iraq was established without regard to
historic tensions among its constituent Kurds,
Sunnis and Shiites.
An unsatisfactory peace (cont.)
And two Allied powers – Japan and Italy –
felt shortchanged as well. They had entered
the war with the promise of new territory after
victory, but the peace settlement left them
with less than they’d hoped. They, along with
Germany, would eventually make up the
Axis Powers the Allies would fight in World
War II.