Transcript European History Lecture 8

COLLEGE - LIMASSOL
BUSINESS STUDIES
European History
Lecture 8
Topics
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The outbreak of the War: War in the West
1914-1917.
Battles of Marne, Verdun, Somme.
The Eastern Front 1914-1916.
Defeat of Russia.
The Italian Front 1915-1917 and the Gallipoli
Campaign.
The War in the Middle East and at Sea.
Topics
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The Intervention of the United States and the
End of World War I.
The Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of
Versailles.
The outbreak of the War: War in the West
1914-1917.
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During the first days of August 1914, more
than 5 million young European men
responded almost without opposition to
military call-up.
Many of them boarded the troop trains with
genuine enthusiasm.
The bands, banners, and young women with
flowers were not mere widow dressing.
The outbreak of the War: War in the West
1914-1917.
The outbreak of the War: War in the West
1914-1917.
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Each government had been remarkably successful in
portraying the other side as the aggressor.
In London German shops were damaged in London,
and German music was dropped from orchestra
programs.
In German many people felt they were defending
German Kultur against the sly mercantile English
and the decadent Slavs and French.
The Frenchmen went to war convinced that they
were defending humanitarian liberty against the
booted Prussians.
The outbreak of the War: War in the West
1914-1917.
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All the ethnic groups of the troubled AustroHungarian Empire except some South Slavs
and Czechs rallied with enthusiasm to
Switzerland.
The Russians turned away from strikes and
domestic opposition in August to face a
common enemy.
The degree of popular enthusiasm surprised
even the Russian rulers.
The outbreak of the War: War in the West
1914-1917.
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The French economist Paul Leroy-Beaulieu
proved mathematically that a war in Europe
could not last more than six months.
The British Admiralty had stocked only a sixmonths’ supply of naval fuel oil.
Most of the soldiers who boarded troop trains
in August 1914 were certain that they would
be home by Christmas.
Crowds outside Buckingham Palace cheer King George,
Queen Mary and the Prince of Wales following the
Declaration of War in August 1914.
The First Battle of Marne
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On September 4, German armies crossed the
Belgium frontier.
Moltke began to execute the Schlieffen Plan: The
Germans wanted to take Paris.
The French armies made an effort to recapture
Alsace-Lorraine.
By the first week of September 1914, the Germans
had reached the River Marne and the French
government had fled Paris for Bordeaux.
Some German units covered twenty to thirty miles a
day on foot.
The First Battle of Marne
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The French-British counterattack from September 6
to 10 , has became known as the First battle of the
Marne.
General Joseph Joffre French Commander whose
legendary appetite and sound sleep during the
German advance helped steady French nerves,
coolly waited for the moment to strike back.
Moltke was ill and indecisive kept distance with his
army commanders.
General Joseph Joffre French
Commander
The First Battle of Marne
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Under General Alexander von Kluck, the German
First army exposed two vulnerable spots to the
watchful Joffre.
Kluck wheeled east of Paris, exposing his flank to
the German forces in Paris that were now left outside
the trap.
Next, when he turned part of his army to face the
danger from Paris he opened a gap between his own
force and the next German army to the east.
Alexander von Kluck
The First Battle of Marne
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On September 6, the French reserves in Paris
were rushed out in the city’s entire taxi fleet to
attack Kluck’s exposed flank;
The first units of the British Expeditionary
Force pushed cautiously into the gap between
Kluck and the German Second Army.
By September 10, the Germans had fallen
back along the Marne, and Paris was saved.
The First Battle of Marne:
French soldiers waiting for assault behind a ditch
Battle of Verdun
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The Battle of Verdun was one of the longest
and bloodiest battles in human history.
The battle was between German and French
forces and took place from February 21, 1916
to December 18, 1916. The location was
around the city of Verdun in the northeastern
part of France.
Battle of Verdun
Battle of Verdun
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In the end of 1915, Falkenhayn as Moltke’s
successor, proposed to reopen the campaign in the
west with a plan calculated to increase the French
casualty rate.
The target chosen was the French city of Verdun:
strategically the vital hinge where the front turned
southward along the Meuse River.
A historically strongpoint whose southward loss
would cripple French spirit.
Erich von Falkenhayn
Battle of Verdun
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On February 21, 1916, the Germans began a massive
artillery barrage designed to obliterate the French
trenches protecting Verdun.
General Philippe Petain of the French military
effort stated: ‘They shall not pass’.
In the end the Germans didn’t pass but the cost was
staggering.
Those who lived were often maimed physically and
mentally.
General Philippe Petain
‘They shall not pass’.
Battle of Verdun
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More than 400, 000 on both sides did not
escape with their lives.
The German army had been bled white just as
much as the French.
The greatest of all First World War battles
had consumed the young men of a mediumsized town each morning and afternoon for
ten months.
Battle of Verdun
Battle of Verdun
Battle of Somme
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The Battle of the Somme took place between
1 July and 18 November 1916 on either side
of the river Somme in France.
The British Army, mount a joint offensive
with the French Army against the German
Army, which had occupied large areas of
France since its invasion of the country in
August 1914.
An overall view of the front in the
region of the Somme before the battle.
Battle of Somme
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Sir Douglas Haig prepared the classic piercing
operation.
A ferocious artillery barrage of eight days’ duration
was supposed to open the way for three cavalry
divisions to pass through.
One-half of the men and three-quarters of the
officers were either killed or wounded .
The British gained a mere 120 square miles for
400,000 casualties, and the cavalry could never go
into action.
The Eastern Front 1914-1916
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In 1915 the Germans came to the aid of their allies in
the east.
General Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich
Ludendorff used their new prestige to extract
reinforcements from the High Command.
A fresh German-Austrian force battered an opening
in the Russian line in Galicia on May, 2, 1915,
initiating one of the great retreats of Russian history.
General Paul von Hindenburg
General Erich Ludendorff
Defeat of Russia.
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Demoralized and short of ammunition, the tsar’s
armies reeled back out of Galicia 300 miles into
Russian territory, until winter finally terminated
operations.
The great Russian retreat of 1915 nevertheless cost
European Russia 15 percent of its territory, 10
percent of its railroads, 30 percent of its industries,
and nearly 20 percent of its population.
The Russian army’s casualties are said to have
amounted to 2.5 million killed, wounded, or
captured.
The Italian Front 1915-1917 and the
Gallipoli Campaign.
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The Entente found itself blocked from sea contact
with Russia and saw its colonial holdings threatened.
The British and French reacted with the landing at
Gallipoli in April 1915.
After Bulgaria’s entry into the war on the Central
Powers' side and Serbia’s defeat in October 1915, the
Allies considered the peninsula untenable, and
withdraw from Gallipoli in January 1916.
The Italian Front 1915-1917 and the
Gallipoli Campaign.
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The Allies also successfully outbid the Central
Powers in the effort to bring Italy into the war.
Italy had declared its neutrality on August 3, 1914.
Italian participation in the war became more
desirable to both sides.
Although Italy had signed treaties with Germany and
Austria-Hungary in 1882, the Entente could better
accede to Italian ambitions in the Austrian alpine and
Adriatic regions.
The Italian Front 1915-1917 and the
Gallipoli Campaign.
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Italian Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnini
signed the secret Treaty of London with
Britain and France on April 16, 1915.
Italy joined the war on the Entente side and
opened an additional southern front against
Austria-Hungary.
The Italian Front 1915-1917 and the
Gallipoli Campaign.
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In exchange for declarizing the war on the
Central Powers, Italy was to receive important
gains in the Alps (the Italian-speaking
Trentino and part of the German-speaking
Tirol up to the Brenner Pass), the head of
Adriatic Sea, the Dodecanese Islands, and the
south coast of Turkey, as well as
compensation in Africa if Britain and France
made gains there.
The Gallipoli Campaign.
The Gallipoli Campaign.
The Gallipoli Campaign.
The War in the Middle East and at Sea.
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From the first hours of war, Britain and
France used their naval superiority to destroy
German warships.
The heavy German cruisers Scharnhorst and
Gneisenau, were finally run down and sunk
by a superior British force off the Falklands in
December 1914, and the Dresden was sunk
off Chile in March 1915.
Scharnhorst
Gneisenau
The War in the Middle East and at Sea.
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There remained no effective obstacles to an Allied
blockade of Germany and Austria-Hungary.
It was expected that the Central Powers would be
unable to sustain a long, modern war without
imports from overseas.
In retaliation, Germany used its submarine fleet to
impose a counter blockade.
On February 4, 1915, the German governor declared
the area around Britain, Ireland and northern France
a war zone within which any ship, even neutral
would be torpedoed without warning.
The War in the Middle East and at Sea.
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After the sinking of some passenger ships had
the effect of creating a strong current of
prowar opinion in the United States.
The following September, German submarine
action in the Atlantic was restricted to avoid
further complications with Washington.
World War I at Sea - Naval Battles
The Intervention of the United States
and the End of World War I.
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In the end of the war all the nations were exhausted.
In 1918, America’s President Wilson announced that
he wanted a peace in which every nation would
determine its own fate, many of their troops gave up.
Germany and Austria were forced to agree a
ceasefire
Those who had survive, returned home to their
starving families.
The Intervention of the United States
and the End of World War I.
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There was to be a peace treaty, and the
negotiations were to be held in the ancient
palace of Versailles, St. Germain and the
Trianon, Austria, Hungary and Germany sent
envoys to Paris, only to discover that they
were excluded from these negotiations.
President Wilson
The Paris Peace Conference and the
Treaty of Versailles.
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The Paris Peace Conference was an international
meeting convened in January 1919 at Versailles just
outside Paris.
Purpose: to establish the terms of the peace after
World War.
Thirty nations participated.
The Big Four: the representatives of Great Britain,
France, the United States, and Italy.
Formulation of the Treaty of Versailles: a treaty that
articulated the compromises reached at the
conference.
The Paris Peace Conference and the
Treaty of Versailles.
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It included a plan to form a League of Nations
that would serve as an international forum and
an international collective security
arrangement. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson
was a strong advocate of the League as he
believed it would prevent future wars.
The Paris Peace Conference and the
Treaty of Versailles.
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Germany was subjected to strict punitive measures
under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
The Germans had to surrender all the colonies and
lands which they had taken from France in 1870,
and pay sums of money to the victors each year.
They also signed a formal deglaration saying that
Germany alone was to blame for the war.
The Germans accepted responsibility.
The Austrians and the Hungarians fared little better.
The Paris Peace Conference and the
Treaty of Versailles.
References
Gombrich, E., H. A little history of the world.
2nd edition, 2008.
 Paxton, O.,R., 1997. Europe in the Twentieth
Century.
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