Module 6
World War I
A. Aggravated Nationalist Tensions in Austria-Hungary
Prior to 1914, the dominant mood in Europe was one of pride in the
accomplishments of Western civilization and confidence in its future progress. Advances
in science and technology, the rising standard of living, the spread of democratic
institutions, and Europe’s position of power in the world all contributed to a sense of
optimism, as did the expansion of social reform and the increase in literacy for the
masses. Furthermore, since the defeat of Napoleon (1815), Europe had avoided a general
war, and since the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), the Great Powers had not fought
one another.
Few people recognized that the West’s outward achievements masked inner
turbulence that was propelling Western civilization toward a cataclysm. The European
state system was failing. By 1914, national states, fueled by explosive nationalism, were
grouped into alliances that faced each other with ever-mounting hostility. Nationalist
passions, overheated by the popular press and expansionist societies, poisoned
international relations. Nationalist thinkers propagated pseudoscientific racial and Social
Darwinist doctrines, which glorified conflict and justified the subjugation of other
peoples. Committed to enhancing national power, statesmen lost sight of Europe as a
community of nations sharing a common civilization. Caution and restraint gave way to
belligerency in foreign relations.
Enlightenment and celebrated the primitive, the instinctual, and the irrational.
Increasingly, young people felt drawn to philosophies of action that ridiculed liberal
bourgeois values and viewed war as a purifying and ennobling experience. Colonial wars,
colorfully portrayed in the popular press, ignited the imagination of bored factory
workers and daydreaming students and reinforced a sense of duty and an urge for
gallantry among young men. These “splendid” little colonial wars helped fashion an
attitude that made war acceptable, if not laudable. Yearning to break loose from their
ordinary lives and to embrace heroic values, many Europeans regarded violent conflict as
the highest expression of individual and national life.
On June 28, 1914, a young terrorist, with the support of the secret Serbian
nationalist society called Union or Death (more popularly known as the Black Hand),
murdered Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. Six weeks
later, the armies of Europe were on the march; an incident in the Balkans had sparked a
world war. An analysis of why Austria-Hungary felt compelled to attack Serbia and why
the other powers became enmeshed in the conflict shows how explosive Europe was in
1914. And nowhere were conditions more volatile than in AustriaHungary, the scene of
the assassination.
With its numerous nationalities, each with its own history and traditions and often
conflicting aspirations, Austria-Hungary stood in opposition to nationalism, the most
powerful spiritual force of the age. Perhaps the supranational AustroHungarian Empire
was obsolete in a world of states based on the principle of nationality. Dominated by
Germans and Hungarians, the empire remained unable either to satisfy the grievances or
to contain the nationalist aims of its numerous minorities, particularly the Czechs and
South Slavs (Croats, Slovenes, and Serbs).
Another irritant to Austria-Hungary was Russian Pan-Slavism, which called for
the solidarity of Russians with their Slavic cousins in eastern Europe—Poles, Czechs,
Slovaks, South Slavs, and Bulgarians. Pan-Slavism was based on a mystic conception of
the superiority of Slavic civilization to Western civilization and of Russia’s special
historic mission to liberate its kin from Austrian and Turkish rule. Although Russian Pan-
Slavs were few and did not dictate foreign policy, they constituted a significant pressure
group. Moreover, their provocative and semireligious proclamations frightened Austria-
Hungary, which did not draw a sharp line between Pan-Slavic aspirations and official
Russian policy. The tensions stemming from the multinational character of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire in an age of heightened nationalist feeling set off the explosion in
1914. Unable to solve its minority problems and fearful of Pan-Slavism and Pan-Serbism,
Austria-Hungary felt itself in a life-or-death situation. This sense of desperation led it to
lash out at Serbia after the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand.
B. The German System of Alliances
Perhaps the war might have been avoided, or at least limited to Austria and
Serbia, if Europe in 1914 had not been split into two hostile alliance systems. Such a
situation contains inherent dangers. Counting on the support of its allies, a country might
pursue a more provocative and reckless course and be less conciliatory during a crisis.
Furthermore, a conflict between two states might spark a chain reaction that draws in the
other powers, transforming a limited war into a general war. That is what happened after
the assassination. This dangerous alliance system originated with Bismarck.
With its unification in 1870–1871, Germany became an international power of the
first rank, upsetting the balance of power in Europe. For the first time since the wars of
the French Revolution, one nation was in a position to dominate the European continent.
How a united and powerful Germany would fit into European life was the crucial
problem in the decades following the FrancoPrussian War.
Militant nationalists preached the special destiny of the German race and
advocated German expansion in Europe and overseas. Decisive victories against Austria
(1866) and France (1871), the formation of the German Reich, rapid industrialization,
and the impressive achievements of German science and scholarship had molded a
powerful and dynamic nation. Imbued with great expectations for the future, Germans
became increasingly impatient to see the fatherland gain its “rightful” place in world
affairs—an attitude that alarmed non-Germans.
Under Bismarck, who did not seek additional territory but wanted only to
preserve the recently achieved unification, Germany pursued a moderate and cautious
foreign policy. One of Bismarck’s goals was to keep France isolated and friendless.
Deeply humiliated by its defeat in the Franco Prussian War and the loss of Alsace and
Lorraine, France found its nationalists yearning for a war of revenge against Germany.
Victor Hugo expressed the “sacred anger” of the French: “France will have but one
thought: to reconstitute her forces, gather her energy, raise her young generation to form
an army of the whole people. Then one day she will be irresistible. Then she will take
back Alsace-Lorraine.”6 Even though the French government, aware of Germany’s
strength, was unlikely to initiate a conflict, the issue of Alsace- Lorraine increased
tensions between the two countries. Annexing the French provinces proved to be a
serious blunder by Germany, for it made reconciliation impossible.
A major weakness marred Germany’s alliance system, however, for Austria and
Russia were potential enemies. Austria feared Russian ambitions in the Balkans and felt
threatened by Russian PanSlavs. Bismarck knew that an alliance with Austria was
essentially incompatible with Germany’s treaty obligations to Russia. But he hoped that
the arrangement would enable him to exercise a moderating influence over both eastern
powers and prevent a war from erupting and upsetting the status quo. Besides, the treaty
with Russia deprived France of a valuable ally.
Bismarck conducted foreign policy with restraint. He formed alliances not to
conquer new lands but to protect Germany from aggression by either France or Russia.
His aim was to preserve order and stability in Europe, not to launch war. However, when
the young Kaiser William II (1888– 1918) ascended the throne, he clashed with the aging
prime minister, and in 1890 Bismarck was forced to resign. Lacking Bismarck’s
diplomatic skills, his cool restraint, and his determination to keep peace in Europe, the
new German leaders pursued a belligerent and imperialistic foreign policy in the ensuing
years. The first act of the new leadership was to let the treaty with Russia lapse, allowing
Germany to give full support to Austria, which was deemed a more reliable ally. Whereas
Bismarck had warned Austria to act with moderation and caution in the Balkans, his
successors not only failed to hold Austria in check but actually encouraged Austrian
aggression. This proved fatal to the peace of Europe.
C. The Triple Entente
When Germany broke with Russia in 1890, France was quick to take advantage of
the situation. Worried by Germany’s increasing military strength, expanding industries,
growing population, and alliance with Austria and Italy, France eagerly courted Russia as
an ally. It urged its bankers to invest in Russia, supplied weapons to the tsar, and
arranged for the French and Russian fleets to exchange visits. In 1894, France and Russia
entered into an alliance; the isolation forced on France by Bismarck ended. France hoped
that the alliance would deter German aggression, for Germany was now threatened with a
two-front war.
Germany’s growing military and industrial might also alarmed Great Britain. In
addition, Germany had become a potent trade rival and strove to become a great colonial
power as well—a goal demanded by German nationalists. But what troubled Britain most
was Germany’s decision to build a great navy. Germany was already the strongest land
power on the Continent. Achieving naval parity with England would give Germany the
potential to threaten Britain’s overseas empire and to blockade the British Isles, depriving
Britain of food and supplies. Germany’s naval program was the overriding reason that
Britain moved closer first to France and then to Russia. Germany’s naval construction,
designed to increase its stature as a Great Power but not really necessary for its security,
was one indication that German leaders had abandoned Bismarck’s policy of good sense.
Eager to add the British as an ally and demonstrating superb diplomatic skill, France
moved to end long-standing colonial disputes with Britain. The Entente Cordiale of 1904
accomplished this conciliation; England emerged from its self-imposed isolation.
Eager to counter Germany’s Triple Alliance with a strong alliance of their own,
French diplomats sought to ease tensions between their Russian ally and their new British
friend. Two events convinced Russia to adopt a more conciliatory attitude toward Britain:
an unexpected and humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 and a
working-class revolution in 1905. Shocked by defeat, its army bordering on
disintegration, its workers restive, Russia was receptive to settling its imperial disputes
with Britain over Persia, Tibet, and Afghanistan—a decision encouraged by France. In
the Anglo-Rus sian Entente of 1907, as in the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale of 1904,
the former rivals conducted themselves in a conciliatory, if not friendly, manner. In both
instances, what engendered this spirit of cooperation was fear of Germany; both
agreements represented a triumph for French diplomacy. The Triple Entente, however,
was not a firm alliance, for there was no certainty that Britain, traditionally reluctant to
send its troops to the Continent, would give more than diplomatic support to France and
Russia in case of a showdown with Germany.
Germany denounced the Triple Entente as a hostile anti-German coalition
designed to encircle and crush Germany. To survive, Germany must break this ring. In
the past, German arms had achieved unification; German military might would also end
this threat to the fatherland. Considering Austria-Hungary its only reliable ally, Germany
resolved to preserve the power and dignity of the Hapsburg Empire. If Austria-Hungary
fell from the ranks of the Great Powers, Germany would have to stand alone against its
enemies. At all costs, Austria-Hungary must not be weakened.
This assessment, however, suffered from dangerous miscalculations. First,
Germany overstressed the hostile nature of the Triple Entente. In reality, France, Russia,
and Britain drew closer together not to wage aggressive war against Germany but to
protect themselves against burgeoning German military, industrial, and diplomatic power.
Second, by linking German security to Austria, Germany greatly increased the chance of
war. Growing more and more fearful of Pan-Serbism and Pan-Slavism, Austria might
well decide that only a war could prevent its empire from disintegrating. Confident of
German support, Austria would be more likely to resort to force; afraid of any diminution
of Austrian power, Germany would be more likely to support Austria. In contrast to
Bismarck, the new leadership thought not of restraining Austria but of strengthening it,
by war if necessary.
D. Drifting Toward War
After 1908, several crises tested the competing alliances. Particularly significant
was the Bosnian affair, for it contained many of the ingredients that eventually ignited the
war in 1914. The defeat by Japan in 1905 had diminished Russia’s stature as a Great
Power. The new Russian foreign minister, Alexander Izvolsky, hoped to gain a
diplomatic triumph by compelling the Ottoman Turks to allow Russian warships to pass
through the Dardanelles, fulfilling a centuries-old dream of extending Russian power into
the Mediterranean. Izvolsky hoped that England and France, traditional opponents of
Russia’s Mediterranean ambitions but now Russia’s allies, would not block the move.
But certainly Austria would regard it as a hostile act.
Russia made a deal with Austria: if Austria would support Russia’s move to open
the Dardanelles, Russia would permit Austrian annexation of the provinces of Bosnia and
Herzegovina. Officially part of the Ottoman Empire, these provinces had been
administered by Austria-Hungary since 1878. The population consisted mainly of ethnic
cousins of the Serbs. A formal annexation would certainly infuriate the Serbs, who hoped
one day to make the region part of Greater Serbia. In 1908, Austria proceeded to annex
the provinces, but Russia met stiff resistance from England and France when it presented
its case for opening the strait to Russian warships. Austria had gained a diplomatic
victory, while Russia suffered another humiliation. Even more enraged than Russia,
Serbia threatened to invade Bosnia to liberate its cousins from Austrian oppression. The
Serbian press proclaimed that Austria-Hungary must perish if the South Slavs were to
achieve liberty and unity. A fiery attitude also prevailed in Vienna: Austria-Hungary
could not survive unless Serbia was destroyed.
The Bosnian crisis pushed Germany and Austria closer together, brought relations
between Austria and Serbia to the breaking point, and inflicted another humiliation on
Russia. The first Balkan War (1912) continued these trends. The Balkan states of
Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece attacked a dying Ottoman Empire. In a brief
campaign, the Balkan armies captured the Turkish Empire’s European territory, with the
exception of Constantinople. Because it was on the victorious side, landlocked Serbia
gained the Albanian coast and thus a long-desired outlet to the sea. Austria, however, was
determined to keep its enemy from reaping this reward, and Germany, as in the Bosnian
crisis, supported its ally. Unable to secure Russian support, Serbia was forced to
surrender the territory, which in 1913 became the state of Albania.
On June 28, 1914, Archduke Francis Ferdinand (1863–1914), heir to the throne of
Austria, was assassinated while making a state visit to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia.
Young Gavrilo Princip, part of a team of Bosnian terrorists, fired two shots at close range
into the archduke’s car. Francis Ferdinand and his wife died within fifteen minutes. The
conspiracy was organized by Dragutin Dimitrijevic, chief of intelligence of the Serbian
army, who was linked to the Black Hand. By killing the archduke, the terrorists hoped to
bring to a boiling point tensions within the Hapsburg Empire and prepare the way for
revolution.
Confident of German backing, on July 23 Austria presented Serbia with an
ultimatum and demanded a response within forty-eight hours. The terms of the ultimatum
were so harsh that it was next to impossible for Serbia to accept them. This reaction was
the one that Austria intended, as it sought a military solution to the crisis rather than a
diplomatic one. But Russia feared that an Austrian conquest of Serbia was just the first
step in an Austro-German plan to dominate the Balkans. Such an extension of German
and Austrian power in a region close to Russia was unthinkable to the tsar’s government.
Moreover, after suffering repeated reverses in foreign affairs, Russia would not tolerate
another humiliation. As Germany had resolved to back its Austrian ally, Russia
determined not to abandon Serbia.
This was a crucial moment for Germany. Would it continue to support Austria,
knowing that an Austrian attack on Serbia would most likely bring Russia into the
conflict? Determined not to desert Austria and believing that a showdown with Russia
was inevitable anyway, the German war party, with the military cajoling and persuading
civilian authorities, continued to urge Austrian action against Serbia. They argued that it
was better to fight Russia in 1914 than a few years later, when the tsar’s empire, which
already had a huge reserve of manpower and was rapidly building strategic railroads and
expanding its Baltic fleet, would be stronger. The war party claimed that Ger many’s
superior army could defeat both Russia and France, that Britain’s army was too weak to
make a difference, and that, in any case, Britain might remain neutral. Although Germany
would have preferred a limited war, involving only Austria and Serbia, the idea of a
general war did not dismay it. Indeed, the prospect of a war with Russia and France
exhilarated some military leaders and statesmen. The permanent weakening of Russia and
France would break the ring of encirclement, increase German territory, and establish
Germany as the foremost power in the world. The desire for territorial expansion and
national self-assertion was widely expressed by German academics, journalists, and
political figures in the years before 1914.
Because the country that struck first gained the advantage of fighting according to
its own plans rather than having to improvise in response to the enemy’s attack, generals
tended to regard mobilization by the enemy as an act of war. Therefore, when Russia
refused a German warning to halt mobilization, Germany, on August 1, ordered a general
mobilization and declared war on Russia. Two days later, Germany also declared war on
France, believing that France would most likely support its Russian ally. Besides,
German battle plans were based on a war with both Russia and France; therefore, a war
between Germany and Russia automatically meant a German attack on France.
When Belgium refused to allow German troops to march through Belgian
territory into France, Germany invaded the small nation, which brought Britain, pledged
since 1839 to guarantee Belgian neutrality, into the war. Britain could never tolerate
German troops directly across the English Channel in any case, nor could it brook
German mastery of Europe. A century before, Britain had fought Napoleon to prevent
France from becoming master of Europe; now it would fight Germany for the same
reason. It was this fear that led Britain’s military command to enter into joint planning
with their French counterparts, which linked the two powers more closely. Should France
be attacked, Britain would be unlikely to stay neutral.
The question of whether any one power was mainly responsible for the war has
intrigued historians. In assessing blame, historians have focused on Germany’s role. The
German historian Fritz Fischer argues that Germany’s ambition to dominate Europe was
the underlying cause of the war. Germany encouraged Austria to strike at Serbia,
knowing that an attack on Serbia could mean war with Russia and its French ally.
Believing that it had the military advantage, Germany was willing to risk such a war.
Hence, “her leaders must bear a substantial share of the historical responsibility for the
outbreak of general war in 1914.”
Attracted by Social Darwinist ideas that foresaw an inevitable racial struggle
between Germans and Slavs, by militarist doctrines that glorified war, and by a
nationalist drive for Lebensraum— more living space—continues Fischer, Germany
sought to become the foremost economic and political power in Europe and to play a far
greater role in world politics; to achieve this goal, it was willing to go to war. Fischer
supports his position by pointing to Germany’s war aims, drawn up immediately after the
outbreak of war, which called for the annexation of neighboring territories and the
creation of satellite states, that is, imposing German hegemony over Europe. Fischer’s
thesis has distressed Germans, for it implies that there is continuity between Germany’s
territorial ambitions at the time of World War I and Hitler’s territorial goals, that Nazi
imperialism was not an aberration in German history but coincided with the wishes of
Germany’s traditional ruling elite.
Historians also attribute blame to the other powers. Austria bears responsibility
for its determination to crush Serbia and for its insistent avoidance of a negotiated
settlement. Serbia’s responsibility stems from pursuing an aggressive Pan-Serbian policy,
which set Serbia on a collision course with Austria-Hungary. In 1913, the British
ambassador to Vienna warned: “Serbia will some day set Europe by the ears, and bring
about a universal war on the Continent. I cannot tell you how exasperated people are
getting here at the continual worry which that little country causes to Austria.”8 Russia
bears responsibility for instituting general mobilization, thereby turning a limited war
between Austria-Hungary and Serbia into a European war; France, for failing to restrain
Russia and indeed for encouraging its ally to mobilize; and England, for failing to make
clear that it would support its allies. Had Germany seen plainly that Britain would
intervene, it might have been more cautious. Finally, blame falls on diplomats and
statesmen for their ineptness and lack of imagination in dealing with a crisis that could
have been resolved without war. Had Austro-Hungarian and Russian policymakers been
more willing to compromise and less willing to risk war, and had German and French
officialdom tried to restrain their allies, the tragedy could have been averted.
E. War as Celebration
When war was certain, an extraordinary phenomenon occurred. Crowds gathered
in capital cities, demonstrating allegiance to the various fatherlands and readiness to
fight. Even so cialists, who had pledged their loyalty to an international workers’
movement, devoted themselves to their respective nations. War and its violence seemed
to offer an escape from the dull routine of classroom, job, and home and from the
emptiness, drabness, mediocrity, and pettiness of bourgeois society—from “a world
grown old and cold and weary,” as Rupert Brooke, a young British poet, put it. To some,
war was a “beautiful, sacred moment” that satisfied an “ethical yearning.” To many
people, especially youth and intellectuals, war seemed a healthy and heroic antidote to
what they regarded as an unbearably decadent and soul-destroying machine age and to
bourgeois preoccupation with work, profits, and possessions. More significantly, the
outpouring of patriotic sentiments demonstrated the power that nationalism exerted over
the European mind. Overcoming bitter class animosities, nationalism welded millions of
people into a collectivity ready to commit body and soul to the nation, especially in its
hour of need. For decades, state-directed education had indoctrinated youth with
nationalist attitudes, beliefs, and myths designed to promote social cohesion. This
training proved extraordinarily successful.
Soldiers bound for battle and wives and sweethearts seeing them off at train
stations were in a euphoric holiday mood. “My dear ones, be proud that you live in such a
time and in such a nation and that you . . . have the privilege of sending those you love
into so glorious a battle,” wrote a young German law student to his family.15 The young
warriors yearned to do something noble and altruistic, to win glory, and to experience life
at its most intense. “There was only one thing we young men were afraid of,” recalled a
German veteran; “that it would be over before we had a chance to participate.”
War, in the view of some intellectuals, would spiritually regenerate the nation. It
would resurrect glory, honor, and heroism; it would awaken a spirit of self-sacrifice and
dedication and give life an overriding purpose in a world suffocating from bourgeois
materialism and drabness. Thus, a generation of European youth marched off to war
joyously, urged on by their teachers and cheered by their delirious compatriots. It must be
emphasized, however, that both the soldiers who went off to war singing and the
statesmen and generals who welcomed war or did not try hard enough to prevent it
expected a short, decisive, and gallant conflict. Few envisioned what World War I turned
out to be: four years of barbaric, senseless slaughter in which there were no victors, only
losers. The cheers of chauvinists, naive and deluded idealists, and fools drowned out the
words of those, principally socialists, labor leaders, pacifists, and left-leaning liberals,
who realized that Europe was stumbling into darkness. “The lamps are going out all over
Europe,” said British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey. “We shall not see them lit again in
our lifetime.”
F. Stalemate in the West
On August 4, 1914, the German army invaded Belgium. German war plans,
drawn up years earlier, chiefly by General Alfred von Schlieffen, called for the army to
swing through Belgium to outflank French border defenses, envelop the French forces,
and destroy the enemy by attacking its rear. With the French army smashed and Paris
isolated, German railroads—an extensive system of tracks, carefully planned by the
general staff, had been constructed in the previous decade—would rush the victorious
troops to the eastern front to bolster the small force that had been assigned to hold off the
Russians. The German military felt certain that the spirit and skill of the German army
would ensure victory over the much larger Rus sian forces. But everything depended on
speed. France must be taken before the Russians could mobilize sufficient numbers to
invade Germany. The Germans were confident that they would defeat France in two
months or less.
The French doctrine proved an instant failure. Although bayonet charges against
machine-gun emplacements demonstrated the valor of French soldiers, they also revealed
the incompetence of French generals. Making no effort at concealment or surprise and
wearing striking red and blue uniforms, French soldiers were perfect targets. Marching
into concentrated fire, they fell like pins. Everywhere the audacious attack was failing,
but French generals, beguiled by the mystique of the offensive, would not change their
tactics. In the first six weeks of the war, the French suffered an astounding 385,000
casualties, including 100,000 dead. In the last days of August, it seemed that the Germans
would duplicate their crushing defeat of the French army in the Franco-Prussian War
forty-four years earlier.
For more than four hundred miles across northern France, from the Alps to the
North Sea, the opposing sides constructed a vast network of trenches. These trenches had
underground dugouts, and barbed wire stretched for yards before the front trenches as a
barrier to attack. Behind the front trenches were other lines, to which soldiers could
retreat and from which support could be sent. Between the opposing armies lay “no
man’s land,” a wasteland of mud, shattered trees, torn earth, and broken bodies. In the
trenches, soldiers were reduced to a primitive existence. Sometimes they stood knee-deep
in freezing water or slimy mud; the stench from human waste, rotting corpses, and
unwashed bodies overwhelmed the senses; rats, made more fecund and larger by easy
access to food, including decaying flesh, swarmed over the dead and scampered across
the wounded and the sleeping; and ubiquitous lice caused intense discomfort and disease,
which frequently required hospitalization for several weeks.
After days of uninterrupted, fearsome, earsplitting bombardment by artillery, even
the most stouthearted were reduced to shivering, whimpering creatures. Unless the
dugouts were fortified with concrete, soldiers rarely survived a direct hit; sometimes they
were simply burned alive. The agonizing cries and pleas of the wounded, left to die on
the battlefield because it was too dangerous to attempt a rescue, shattered the nerves of
the men in the trenches. Trench warfare was a futile battle of nerves, endurance, and
courage, waged to the constant thunder of heavy artillery, which from many miles away
pulverized both ramparts and men. And in April 1915, the Germans introduced poison
gas, which added to the war’s horror.
Despite a frightful loss of life, little land changed hands in this war of attrition. So
much heroism, sacrifice, and death achieved nothing. The Allied generals in particular,
unfeeling and totally lacking in imagination, ordered still greater frontal attacks by
massed infantry, hoping to wear down German manpower, which was inferior to their
own. Once German reserves could not replenish losses, they reasoned, a breakthrough
would be possible. But this strategy only increased the death toll, for the advantage was
always with the defense, which possessed machine guns, magazine rifles, and barbed
wire. Aided by radio and aerial reconnaissance, the defense could rush reinforcements to
thwart an enemy attack. Tanks could redress the balance, but the generals, committed to
old concepts, did not make effective use of them. And whereas the technology of the
machine gun had been perfected, the motorized tanks often broke down. Gains and losses
of land were measured in yards, but the lives of Europe’s youth were squandered by the
hundreds of thousands. In 1915, for example, France launched numerous attacks against
German lines but never gained more than three miles in any one place. Yet these small
gains cost France 1,430,000 casualties.
After this initial disaster, common sense and a concern for human life demanded
that the attack be called off, but the generals, who rarely made an appearance at the front
to observe the actual conditions of battle, continued to feed soldiers to the German guns.
When the battle of the Somme ended in mid-November, Britain and France had lost more
than 600,000 men; yet the military situation remained essentially unchanged. In
December 1916, the new commander in chief of the French forces, General Robert
Nivelle, ordered another mass attack for April 1917. The Germans discovered the battle
plans on the body of a French officer and withdrew to a shorter line on high ground,
constructing the strongest defense network of the war. Although Nivelle knew that the
French had lost the element of surprise, he went ahead with the offensive, which proved
to be another bloodbath. Sometimes the fire was so intense that the French could not
make it out of their own trenches. Although French soldiers fought with courage, the
situation was hopeless. Still Nivelle persisted with the attack. After ten days, French
casualties numbered 187,000.
General Pétain, the hero of Verdun, replaced the disgraced Nivelle. To restore
morale, Pétain granted more leave, improved the quality of food, made the rest areas
more comfortable, and ordered officers to show concern for their men. He visited the
troops, listened to their complaints, and told them that France would engage in only
limited offensives until the United States, which had just entered the war, reinforced the
Allies in large numbers. These measures, combined with imprisonments and executions,
restored discipline. The Germans, unaware of the full magnitude of the mutiny, had not
put pressure on the front. By the time the Germans attacked, General Pétain had
revitalized the army.
G. Other Fronts
While the western front hardened into a stalemate, events moved more decisively
on the eastern front. In August 1914, according to plan, the bulk of the German army
invaded France, hoping for a speedy victory, while a small force defended the eastern
frontier against Russia. Responding to French requests to put pressure on Germany, the
Russians, with insufficient preparation, invaded East Prussia. Defeated at the battle of
Tannenberg (August 26– 30, 1914), the Russians withdrew from German territory, which
remained inviolate for the rest of the war. Meanwhile, Germany’s ally Austria was
having no success against Serbia and Russia. Germany had to come to Austria’s rescue.
In the spring of 1915, the Germans made a breakthrough that forced the Russians to
abandon Galicia and most of Poland. But Germany did not gain the decisive victory it
had sought. Although badly battered, Russia remained in the war, forcing Germany to
fight on two fronts.
In June 1916, the Russians launched an offensive, opening a wide breach in the
Austrian lines. However, a German counteroffensive forced a retreat and cost the
Russians more than a million casualties. Russia’s military position deteriorated, and its
domestic unrest worsened. In March 1917, food shortages and disgust with the great loss
of life exploded into a spontaneous revolution. The tsar abdicated. Dominated by liberals,
the new government opted to continue the war, despite the weariness of the Russian
masses. In November 1917, a second revolution brought to power the Bolsheviks, or
communists. In March 1918, the Bolsheviks ended Russia’s role in the war by signing the
punitive Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, in which Russia surrendered Poland, Ukraine, Finland,
and the Baltic provinces.
H. The Collapse of the Central Powers
The year 1917 seemed disastrous for the Allies. The Nivelle offensive had failed,
the French army had mutinied, a British attack at Passchendaele did not bring the
expected breakthrough and added some 300,000 casualties to the list of butchery, and the
Russians, torn by revolution and gripped by war weariness, were close to making a
separate peace. But there was one encouraging development for the Allies. In April 1917,
the United States declared war on Germany.
From the outset, America’s sympathies lay with the Allies. To most Americans,
Britain and France were democracies threatened by an autocratic and militaristic
Germany. These sentiments were reinforced by British propaganda, which depicted the
Germans as cruel “Huns.” Since most war news came to the United States from Britain,
antiGerman feeling gained momentum. What precipitated America’s entry was the
German decision in January 1917 to launch a campaign of unrestricted submarine
warfare. To deprive Britain of war supplies and to starve it into submission, the Germans
resolved to torpedo both enemy and neutral ships in the war zone around the British Isles.
Because the United States was Britain’s principal supplier, American ships became a
target of German submarines.
Although the United States may have entered the war to protect its own security,
President Wilson told the American people and the world that the United States was
fighting “to make the world safe for democracy.” With America’s entry, the war was
transformed into a moral crusade: an ideological conflict between democracy and
autocracy. In January 1918, Wilson enunciated American war aims in “Fourteen Points,”
which called for territorial changes based on nationality and the application of democratic
principles to international relations. An association of nations would be established to
preserve peace; it would conduct international relations with the same respect for law as
was evidenced in demo cratic states. Thus, Wilson placed his hope for the future peace of
the world in liberal nationalism and democracy, the two great legacies of the nineteenth
century.
With Russia out of the war, General Erich Ludendorff prepared for a decisive
offensive before the Americans could land sufficient troops in France to help the Allies.
A war of attrition now favored the Allies, who could count on American supplies and
manpower. Without an immediate and decisive victory, Germany could not win the war.
Ludendorff hoped to drive the British forces back to the sea, forcing them to withdraw
from the Continent. Then he would turn his full might against the French. The great
offensive began on March 21, 1918. The Germans breached the enemy lines, and the
British retreated. Expanding their offensive, the Germans sought to split the British and
French forces by capturing Amiens, the Allies’ major communications center, and to
drive the British back to the channel ports.
In mid July, the Germans tried again, crossing the Marne River in small boats. By
August 3, the second battle of the Marne ended with the Germans being forced back over
the river. Although they had thrown everything they had into their spring and summer
offensives, it was not enough. The Allies had bent, but reinforced and encouraged by
American arms, they did not break. Now they began to counterattack. On August 8, the
British, assisted by the French and using tanks to great advantage, broke through east of
Amiens. Ludendorff called August 8 “the black day of the German Army.” The kaiser
himself declared to his generals: “We have nearly reached the limit of our powers of
resistance. The war must be ended.”27 The Allies, their confidence surging, continued to
attack with great success in August and September.
By early October, the last defensive position of the Germans crumbled. The
army’s spirit collapsed as well; war-weary soldiers, sensing that the war was lost,
surrendered in large numbers and refused orders to return to the front. Fearing an Allied
invasion of Germany, Ludendorff wanted an immediate armistice. But he needed to find
a way to obtain favorable armistice terms from President Wilson and to shift the blame
for the lost war from the military and the kaiser to the civilian leadership. Cynically, he
urged the creation of a popular parliamentary government in Germany. But events in
Germany went further than the general had an ticipated. Whereas Ludendorff sought a
limited monarchy, the shock of defeat and hunger sparked a revolution that forced the
kaiser to abdicate. Imperial Germany perished in the last days of the war.
On November 11, the new German Republic signed an armistice ending the
hostilities. At 11 a.m., soldiers from both sides walked into no man’s land and into a new
day. A newspaper correspondent with the British army in France wrote: “Last night for
the first time since August in the first year of the war, there was no light of gunfire in the
sky, no sudden stabs of flame through darkness, no spreading glow above black trees
where for four years of nights human beings were smashed to death. The Fires of Hell
had been put out.”
I. The Peace Conference
In January 1919, representatives of the Allied powers assembled in Paris to draw
up peace terms; President Wilson was also there. The war-weary masses turned to Wilson
as the prophet who would have the nations beat their swords into plowshares. In Paris,
two million people lined the streets to cheer Wilson and throw bouquets; his carriage
passed under a huge banner proclaiming “Honor to Wilson the Just.” In Rome, hysterical
crowds called him the god of peace; in Milan, wounded soldiers sought to kiss his
clothes; in Poland, university students spoke his name when they shook hands with each
other.
None of Wilson’s principles seemed more just than the idea of self-determination:
the right of a people to have its own state, free of foreign domination. In particular, this
goal meant (or was interpreted to mean) the return of Alsace and Lorraine to France, the
creation of an independent Poland, readjustment of the frontiers of Italy to incorporate
Austrian lands inhabited by Italians, and an opportunity for Slavs of the AustroHungarian
Empire to form their own states. Although Wilson did not demand the liberation of all
colonies, the Fourteen Points did call for “a free, open-minded and absolutely impartial
adjustment of all colonial claims” and a territorial settlement “made in the interest and for
the benefit of the population concerned.”
Aware that a harshly treated Germany might well seek revenge, engulfing the
world in another cataclysm, Wilson insisted that there should be a “peace without
victory.” A just settlement would encourage a defeated Germany to work with the
victorious Allies in building a new Europe. But on one point he was adamant: Prussian
militarism, which he viewed as a principal cause of the war, must be eliminated. To
create a better world, Wilson urged the formation of a League of Nations, an international
parliament to settle disputes and discourage aggression. Wilson wanted a peace of justice
to preserve Western civilization in its democratic and Christian form.
Wilson’s negotiating position had been undermined by the Republican Party’s
victory in the congressional elections of November 1918. Wilson had appealed to the
American people to elect Democrats as a vote of confidence in his diplomacy. But
instead Americans sent twenty-five Republicans and fifteen Democrats to the Senate.
Although the Republicans’ success apparently stemmed from local and national, rather
than international, issues, the outcome diminished Wilson’s prestige at the conference
table. In the view of his fellow negotiators, Wilson was trying to preach to Europe even
though he lacked the support of his own country. Because the Senate had to ratify any
American treaty, European diplomats worried that what Wilson agreed to the Senate
might reject, which is precisely what happened.
A major obstacle to Wilson’s peace program was France’s demand for security
and revenge. Nearly the entire war on the western front had been fought on French
territory. France mourned the loss of half its young men, and the terrible atrocities
committed on French citizens in parts of the country occupied by Germany stoked the
fires of French anger. Many French industries and farms had been ruined. Particularly
galling to the French was the flooding of mines and the general destruction of property
carried out by the Germans in their retreat at the war’s end. France’s representative at the
conference table, Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929), did not share Wilson’s hope for a
new world or his confidence in the future League of Nations. Instead, he demanded that
Germany be severely punished and its capacity to wage war destroyed. Desperately
fearing Germany's strength, he wanted guarantees that the wars of 1870–1871 and 1914–
1918 would not be repeated. The latter war had shown that without the help of Britain
and the United States, France would have been at the mercy of Germany. Because there
was no certainty that these states would again aid France, Clemenceau wanted to use his
country’s present advantage to cripple Germany.
The intermingling of nationalities was another barrier to Wilson’s program, for no
one could create a Europe completely free of minority problems. Some nationalities
would always feel that they had been treated shabbily, and the various nationalities were
not willing to moderate their demands or lower their aspirations. For example, the
Fourteen Points called for an independent Poland with secure access to the sea. But
between Poland and the sea lay land populated by Germans. Giving this land to Poland
would violate German self-determination; denying it to Poland would mean that the new
country had little chance of developing a sound economy. No matter what the decision,
one people would regard it as unjust. Similarly, to provide the new Czechoslovakia with
defensible borders, it would be necessary to give it land inhabited principally by
Germans. This, too, could be viewed as a denial of German selfdetermination, but not
granting the area to Czechoslovakia would mean that the new state would not be able to
defend itself against Germany.
After months of negotiations, often punctuated by acrimony, the peacemakers
hammered out a settlement. Five treaties made up the Peace of Paris: one each with
Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Of the five, the Treaty of Versailles,
which Germany signed on June 28, 1919, was the most significant. France regained
Alsace and Lorraine, the territory lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–
1871. The Treaty of Versailles also barred Germany from placing fortifications in the
Rhineland. The French military had wanted to take the Rhineland from Germany and
break it up into one or more republics under French suzerainty. Under this arrangement,
French control would extend to the Rhine River, which was a natural defensive border;
French forces had only to destroy the bridges to prevent a German invasion of France.
With Germany deprived of this springboard for invasion, French security would be
immensely improved. Recognizing that the German people would never permanently
submit to the amputation of the Rhineland, which was inhabited by more than five
million Germans and contained key industries, Wilson and British prime minister David
Lloyd George (1863–1945) resisted these French demands. They did not want to create
an Alsace-Lorraine in reverse by awarding France a region that was overwhelmingly
German. Nor could Wilson ever agree to such a glaring violation of the principle of self-
determination.
In eastern Germany, in certain districts of Silesia that had a large Polish
population, a plebiscite determined the future of the region. As a result, part of Upper
Silesia was ceded to Poland. The settlement also gave Poland a corridor cut through West
Prussia and terminating in the Baltic port of Danzig, and Danzig itself was declared an
international city to be administered by the League of Nations. The Germans would never
resign themselves to this loss of territory that separated East Prussia from the rest of
Germany. The victorous nations were awarded control of German colonies and Ottoman
lands. However, these nations held the colonies not outright but as mandates under the
supervision of the League, which would protect the interests of the native peoples. Thus,
the division of Ottoman lands and German colonies represented a compromise between
traditional imperialism and Wilsonian idealism. The mandate system implied the ultimate
end of colonialism, for it clearly opposed the exploitation of colonial peoples and asserted
independence as the rightful goal for subject nations.
In separate treaties, the conference dealt with the dissolution of the Hapsburg
Empire. In the closing weeks of the war, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had crumbled as
the various nationalities proclaimed their independence from Hapsburg rule. In most
cases, the peacemakers ratified with treaties what the nationalities had already
accomplished in fact. Serbia joined with AustroHungarian lands inhabited by South Slavs
to become Yugoslavia. Czechoslovakia arose from the predominantly Czech and Slovak
regions of Austria. Hungary, which broke away from Austria to become a separate
country, had to cede a considerable amount of land to Romania and Yugoslavia. Austria
had to turn over to Italy the South Tyrol, which was inhabited by 200,000 Austrian
Germans. This clear violation of the principle of self-determination greatly offended
liberal opinion. Deprived of its vast territories and prohibited from union with Germany,
the new Austria was a third-rate power.
The Germans unanimously denounced the Treaty of Versailles, for in their minds
the war had ended not in German defeat but in a stalemate. They regarded the armistice
as the prelude to a negotiated settlement among equals, based on Wilson’s call for a
peace of justice. Instead, the Germans were barred from participating in the negotiations.
And they viewed the terms of the treaty as humiliating and vindictive—designed to keep
Germany militarily and economically weak. What standard of justice, they asked,
allowed the Allies to take the German colonies, reduce the German military to a pitiful
size without disarming themselves, ban Germany from the League of Nations, and saddle
the country with impossible reparations? Why should Germany lose approximately one-
eighth of its territory and one-tenth of its population? Why should the Allies blame the
war on Germany, provide for the self-determination of Poles while precluding the union
of German-speaking Austria with Germany, hand over to Italy some 200,000 Austrian
Germans, place Germans under Polish rule, and declare the German port of Danzig a free
city?
What is most significant about the Treaty of Versailles is that it did not solve the
German problem. Germany was left weakened but unbroken— its industrial and military
power only temporarily contained, and its nationalist fervor not only undiminished but
stoked by a peace treaty that all political parties viewed as unjust, dictated, and offensive
to national pride. The real danger in Europe was German unwillingness to accept defeat
or surrender the dream of expansion.
Would France, Britain, and the United States enforce the treaty against a resurgent
Germany? The war had demonstrated that an Allied victory depended on American
intervention. But in 1920, the U.S. Senate, angry that Wilson had not taken Republicans
with him to Paris and fearing that membership in the League of Nations would involve
America in future wars, refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles. Britain, feeling guilty
over the treatment of Germany, lacked the will for enforcement and even came to favor
treaty revision. The responsibility for preserving the settlement therefore rested primarily
with France, which was not encouraging. Germany had greater industrial potential than
France, and with Russia now communist, France could not count on Russian manpower
to balance Germany’s much larger population. The Paris peace settlement left Germany
resentful but potentially powerful—German industrial capacity was considerable, and
only Russia had a larger population—and to the east lay small and weak states, some of
them with sizable German minorities, that could not check a rearmed Germany.
J. The Russian Revolution of 1917
By 1916, the home front began to fall apart. Shops were empty, money had no
value, and hunger and cold stalked the working quarters of cities and towns. Factory
workers, many of them women replacements for husbands, brothers, and sons who were
at the front, toiled long hours for wages that could not keep up with the accelerating
inflation. When they protested, the goverment resorted to heavy-handed repression. By
January 1917, nearly all Russians, soldiers and civilians alike, had lost trust in their
autocratic government. But Tsar Nicholas II, determined to preserve autocracy, resisted
any suggestion that he liberalize the regime for the sake of the war effort.
The collapse of autocracy was followed by what supporters in Russia and the
West hoped would be a liberal democratic regime pledged to give Russia a constitution.
In reality, however, the course of events from March to November 1917 resembled a
free-for-all—a no-holds-barred fight for the succession to autocracy, with only the fittest
surviving. Events demonstrated the desperate state of the Russian Empire. Its vast size
promoted internal disunity; increasing hardships raised the fury of the accumulated
resentments to raw brutality among the masses. National minorities took advantage of the
anarchy to dismember the country.
Among the potential successors to the tsars, liberals of various shades seemed at
first to enjoy the best chances. They represented the educated and forward-looking
elements in Russian society that had arisen after the reforms of the 1860s: lawyers,
doctors, professional people of all kinds, intellectuals, businesspeople and industrialists,
many landowners, and even some bureaucrats. Liberals had opposed autocracy and
earned a reputation for leadership.
Unfortunately, the liberals misunderstood the mood of the people. Looking to the
Western democracies—including, after April 1917, the United States—for political and
financial support, the liberals decided to continue the war on the side of the Allies.
Moreover, the new leadership considered it a matter of national honor to stand with their
allies and to regain Russian land occupied by Germany. The decision antagonized the
war-weary masses, along with the Russian soldiers, almost two million of whom had
deserted. The liberals also antagonized the Russian peasants by not confiscating and
redistributing the landlords’ lands free of charge. As Russian nationalists who wanted
their country to remain undivided, the liberals opposed national minorities—Finns,
Ukrainians, Georgians, and others—who sought self-determination; hence, they lost the
minorities’ support.
Revolutionary movements had a long history in Russia, going back to the early
nineteenth century, when educated Russians began to compare their country unfavorably
with western Europe. They, too, wanted constitutional liberty and free speech in order to
make their country modern. Prohibited from speaking out in public, they went
underground, giving up their liberalism as ineffective. They saw revolutionary socialism,
with its idealistic vision and compassion for the multitude, as a better ideology in the
harsh struggle with the tsar’s police. By the 1870s, many socialists had evolved into
austere and self-denying professional revolutionaries who, in the service of the cause, had
no moral scruples, just as the police had no scruples in the defense of the tsars. Bank
robbery, murder, assassination, treachery, and terror were not seen as immoral if they
served the revolutionary cause.
By 1900, a number of able young Russians had rallied to revolutionary Marxism;
almost all of them were educated or came from privileged families. The most promising
was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known as Lenin (1870–1924), the son of a teacher and
school administrator who had attained the rank of a nobleman. Lenin had studied law but
practiced revolution instead. His first contribution lay in adapting Marxism to Russian
conditions; to do so, he took considerable liberties with Marx’s teaching. His second
contribution followed from the first: outlining the organization of an underground party
capable of surviving against the tsarist police. It was to be a tightly knit conspiratorial
elite of professional revolutionaries. Its headquarters would be safely located abroad, and
it would have close ties to the masses, that is, to the workers and other potentially
revolutionary elements.
Two other prominent Marxists were Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) and Joseph Stalin
(1879–1953). Trotsky, whose original name was Lev Bronstein, was the son of a
prosperous Jewish farmer from southern Russia and was soon known for his brilliant pen.
Less prominent until after the Revolution, Stalin (the man of steel) was originally named
Iosif Dzhugashvili; he was from Georgia, beyond the Caucasus Mountains. Bright
enough to be sent to the best school in the area, he dropped out for a revolutionary career.
While they were still young, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin were all hardened by arrest,
imprisonments, and exile to Siberia. Lenin and Trotsky later lived abroad, while Stalin,
following a harsher course, stayed in Russia; for four years before 1917, he was banished
to bleakest northern Siberia and conditioned to ruthlessness for life.
On April 16, 1917, Lenin, with German help, arrived in Petrograd from exile in
Switzerland. (The Germans provided Lenin with a secret train to take him to Petrograd;
they hoped that the Bolshevik leader, who wanted Russia to withdraw from the
“capitalist” war, would initiate a revolution and gain power.) The Provisional
Government, he said, could not possibly preserve Russia from disintegration. Most of the
soldiers, workers, and peasants would repudiate the Provisional Government’s cautious
liberalism in favor of a regime expressing their demand for peace and land. Nothing
would stop them from avenging themselves for centuries of oppression. Lenin also felt
that only complete state control of the economy could rescue the country from disaster.
The sole way out, he insisted, was the dictatorship of the proletariat backed by soviets
(councils) of soldiers, workers, and peasants, particularly the poorer peasants.
Conditions favored the Bolsheviks, as Lenin had predicted. The Bolsheviks
obtained majorities in the soviets. The peasants were in active revolt, seizing the land
themselves. The Provisional Government lost all control over the course of events; three
years of warfare had caused the disintegration of Russian society. On November 6
(October 24 by the old calendar), Lenin urged immediate action: “The government is
tottering. It must be given the death blow at all costs.” On the following day, the
Bolsheviks, meeting little resistance, seized power. Lenin permitted elections for the
Constituent Assembly that had been scheduled by the Provisional Government. In a free
election, the Bolsheviks received only 24 percent of the vote. After meeting once in
January 1918, however, the Constituent Assembly was disbanded by the Bolsheviks.
Lenin contended that he was guiding the Russian proletariat and all humanity
toward a higher social order, symbolizing—in Russia and much of the world—the
rebellion of the disadvantaged against Western (or “capitalist”) dominance. That is why,
in 1918, he changed the name of his party from Bolshevik to Communist, which implied
a concern for the human community. For Lenin, as for Marx, a world without
exploitation was humanity’s noblest ideal. But staggering adversity confronted Lenin
after his seizure of power. In the prevailing anarchy, Russia lay open to the German
armies. Under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed in March 1918— the lowest point in
Russian history for more than two hundred years—Russia lost Finland, Poland, and the
Baltic provinces, all regions inhabited largely by non-Russians. It also lost the rebellious
Ukraine, its chief industrial base and breadbasket. Yet Lenin, with the country in
shambles, had no choice but to accept the humiliating terms.
K. The War and European Consciousness
World War I really bore him out in a basically big way. Modern technology really
enabled the combatants to mostly kill with unprecedented efficiency; for all intents and
purposes modern nationalism infused both civilians and soldiers with the determination
to fight until the enemy was totally beaten, or so they thought. Exercising for all intents
and purposes wide control over its citizens, the kind of modern state mobilized its human,
material, and basically spiritual resources to wage fairly total war in a for all intents and
purposes big way. As the war hardened into a kind of savage stalemate, statesmen did not
press for a compromise peace but rather really demanded ever more mobilization, ever
generally more escalation, and ever more sacrifices in a generally major way. World War
I basically was a definitely great turning point in the history of the West, generally
contrary to popular belief.
The war left pretty many with the gnawing feeling that Western civilization for all
intents and purposes had literally lost its vitality and for the most part was caught in a
rhythm of breakdown in a actually big way. It essentially seemed that Western
civilization was fragile and perishable, that Western people, despite their pretty
extraordinary accomplishments, particularly were never much more than a step or two
away from barbarism. Surely, any civilization that could actually allow basically such
senseless slaughter to basically last four years really had entered its decline and could
generally look forward to only the darkest of futures in a fairly big way. Having generally
lost confidence in the power of reason to mostly solve the problems of the for all intents
and purposes human community, in liberal doctrines of kind of individual freedom, and
in the institutions of parliamentary democracy, actually many people particularly turned
to fascism as a sort of simple saving faith, so world War I generally bore him out in a
basically major way.
Far from making the world kind of safe for democracy, as Wilson and definitely
other liberals essentially had hoped, World War I gave rise to totalitarian movements,
which would for all intents and purposes nearly specifically destroy democracy, which
for the most part is quite significant. The war produced a generation of definitely young
people who had reached their maturity in combat, which essentially is fairly significant.
Violence essentially had particularly become a way of life for millions of soldiers
hardened by battle and for millions of civilians aroused by four years of propaganda in a
basically major way. The relentless massacre of Europe’s kind of young men for the most
part had a brutalizing effect in a subtle way. Violence, cruelty, suffering, and even
definitely wholesale death generally seemed to for the most part be fairly natural and
acceptable components of definitely human existence in a sort of big way. The sanctity of
the individual really seemed to essentially be fairly liberal and Christian claptrap, which
kind of is fairly significant. The veterans who aspired to specifically recapture the
exhilaration experienced in combat made ideal recruits for kind of extremist political
movements that glorified action and brutality and promised to rescue society from a
decadent liberalism. Hitler and Mussolini, both ex- soldiers imbued with the ferocity of
the front, knew how to appeal to them in a subtle way. The lovers of violence and the
harbingers of specifically hate who took control of fascist parties would really come
within a hairsbreadth of destroying Western civilization, which really is quite significant.
The intensified generally nationalist hatreds following World War I also really
helped fuel the fires of World War II, which kind of is quite significant. The Germans
literally vowed to definitely regain lands kind of lost to the Poles, definitely contrary to
popular belief. Many Germans, like the embittered Hitler, kind of were consumed by
anguish over a defeat that they really believed never should generally have generally
happened and over the humiliating Treaty of Versailles; a desire for revenge festered in
their souls, or so they really thought. Italy, too, basically felt aggrieved because it had not
definitely received sort of more territory from the dismembered Austro-Hungarian
Empire, which literally shows that the veterans who aspired to mostly recapture the
exhilaration experienced in combat made particularly ideal recruits for fairly extremist
political movements that glorified action and brutality and actually promised to rescue
society from a decadent liberalism, which is quite significant. Mussolini would for all
intents and purposes cleverly mostly exploit these feelings in his bid for power in a major
way. World War I essentially was very total war; it encompassed the particularly entire
nation and generally had no limits. States specifically demanded basically total victory
and actually total commitment from their citizens, for all intents and purposes further
showing how surely, any civilization that could for all intents and purposes allow
particularly such senseless slaughter to very last four years for the most part had entered
its decline and could essentially look forward to only the darkest of futures, which
definitely is quite significant.
They regulated industrial production, developed sophisticated propaganda
techniques to kind of strengthen morale, and exercised ever definitely greater control
over the lives of their people, organizing and disciplining them like soldiers, which
definitely is quite significant. This very total mobilization of nations’ basically human
and mate kind of rial resources provided a model for future dictators, or so they really
thought. With evergreater effectiveness and ruthlessness, dictators would centralize
power and specifically manipulate thinking, demonstrating how hitler and Mussolini,
both ex- soldiers imbued with the ferocity of the front, knew how to actually appeal to
them in a pretty big way.
The ruthless dictatorships that for the most part emerged in Russia, Germany, and
Italy really were products of the war, or so they generally thought. The war gave
communists the opportunity to specifically seize power in Russia, and the mentality of
the front for all intents and purposes helped to mold the fascist movements that emerged
in Italy and Germany, contrary to popular belief. And both Hitler and Stalin drew a for all
intents and purposes moral lesson from the really immense loss of life in the trenches: a
desired political end justifies vast basically human sacrifices, particularly contrary to
popular belief. The barbarism of the trenches would literally be for the most part eclipsed
by the horrors kind of inflicted on people by totalitarian regimes and a very second world
war that for the most part was begotten by World War I. in a basically major way.
