StudySpace: Western Civilizations, 16 e.

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1. Introduction
1. A 20th century war
2. The expectations and reality of war
2. The July Crisis
1. Alliances
1. Triple Entente (Allied Powers): Britain, France, and Russia
2. Triple Alliance (Central Powers): Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy
2. Threats to peace
1. Economic, military, and political advantage
2. Scramble for colonies
3. The arms race
4. Technology
3. The Balkans
1. The Austro-Hungarians and the Ottomans: unsteady empires
2. Nationalist movements and "pan-Slavism"
3. Great powers tried to avoid direct intervention
4. The First Balkan War (1912)
1. Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and Montenegro against the Ottomans
5. The Second Balkan War (1913)
1. Fought over the spoils of the 1912 war
4. The Austro-Hungarian Empire - -the "dual monarchy"
1. Ethnic conflict
2. Austrians annex Bosnia (1878)
3. Bosnian Serbs hoped to secede and join the independent kingdom of Serbia
4. The Bosnian Serb underground war
5. Summer 1914
1. June 28, 1914: Franz Ferdinand and his wife assassinated at Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip
2. July: Austria issues an ultimatum
1. A punitive campaign to restore order in Bosnia and crush Serbia
2. The demands were deliberately unreasonable
3. The Serbs mobilize their army
4. July 28, 1914: Austria declares war
5. Austria sees the conflict as a chance to reassert its authority
6. Russia sees the conflict as a way to regain the tsar's authority
7. July 20, 1914: Russia mobilizes its troops to fight Austria and Germany
6. Diplomatic maneuvers
1. Germany
1. Detailed war plans
2. War was inevitable
3. Kaiser Wilhelm II sends an ultimatum to Russia
2. Germany demands to know French intentions
3. August 1, 1914: Germany declares war on Russia
4. August 3, 1914: Germany declares war on France
5. August 4, 1914: Germany invades Belgium
6. The British response
1. Secret pacts with France
2. August 4: Britain reluctantly enters the war against Germany
7. August 7, 1914: Montenegrins join the Serbs against Austria
8. July: the Japanese declare war on Germany
9. August: Turkey allies itself with Germany
10. A "tragedy of miscalculation"
1. Little diplomatic communication
2. Austrian mismanagement
3. The lure of the first strike
3. The Marne and its Consequences
1. General observations
1. War as national glory and spiritual renewal
2. War put centuries of progress at risk
3. Bankers and financiers were most opposed to war -- financial chaos would result
4. For the young there was the excitement of enlistment
5. "Over by Christmas"
1. A short, limited, and decisive war
2. Size and bigger armies
3. Speed and quick offensives
2. German war plans
1. Designed to suit Germany's efficient but small army
2. Attack France first, neutralize the Western Front, then attack Russia
3. Problems
1. The Plan overestimated physical and logistical capabilities
2. The speed of movement was too much for the troops
3. Supply lines could not keep up
4. The resistance of the Belgian army
5. Frequent changes made to the Plan
1. Troops sent to the Eastern Front
2. Attacked Paris from the northeast instead of the southwest
3. The Battle of the Marne
1. Joffre leads the Germans into a trap
2. British and French counteroffensives
3. German retreat
4. The "race to the sea"
5. The Western Front
1. The Great Powers dig in
2. Trench warfare
6. The importance of the Marne
1. Changed Europe's expectation of war
2. The war would now be long, costly, and deadly
3. Russian intervention pulled Germany away from the Western Front
4. Stalemate, 1915
1. The search for new partners
1. Ottomans join Germany and Austria (1914)
2. Italy joins the Allies (May 1915)
3. Bulgaria joins the Central Powers (1915)
4. Major effect was to expand the war geographically
2. Gallipoli and naval warfare
1. Turkish intervention
1. Threatened Russia's supply lines
2. Endangered British control of the Suez Canal
2. Churchill argued for a naval offensive in the Dardanelles
3. Gallipoli landing (April 25, 1915)
1. Incompetent naval leadership
2. Lacked adequate planning, supply lines, and maps
3. Fought for seven months and then the British withdrew
4. Major Allied defeat
1. 200,000 casualties
2. Gallipoli did not shift the focus away from the Western Front
3. A war of attrition
1. The nature of "modern" war
2. The total mobilization of resources
3. The Allies impose a naval blockade on Germany
4. Germany responds with submarine warfare
1. Germans sink the Lusitania (May 7, 1915)
1. Almost 1200 killed
2. Provoked the animosity of the United States
5. The blockade stained Germany's national economy
4. Trench warfare
1. Life in the trenches - "lousy scratch holes"
2. 25,000 miles along the Western Front
1. Attack, support, and reserve trenches
2. "Over the top"
3. "Wastage"
1. 7,000 British soldiers killed daily
4. New weapons
1. Artillery, machine guns, and barbed wire
2. Exploding bullets and liquid fire
3. Poison gas
1. First used by the Germans at the second battle of Ypres (April 1915)
2. Physically devastating and psychologically disturbing
3. Gas took more lives but did not alter the stalemate
5. Slaughter in the Trenches: The Great Battles, 1916-1917
1. General observations
1. Bloodiest battles occurred during 1916-1917
2. Hundreds of thousands of casualties with little territorial gain
3. War as carnage
4. Military planners refused to alter traditional offensive strategies
5. The "cult of the offensive"
6. Little protection against new weapons
7. Poor communication between command and the front line
8. Firepower outpaced mobility
2. Verdun (February 1916)
1. Little strategic importance
2. Verdun as symbol of French strength
3. Germany's goal was to break French morale
4. The Battle
1. Germans fire one million shells on the first day
2. Ten month struggle
3. Offensive and counteroffensive
5. By June, 400,000 French and German soldiers were killed
6. The advantage fell to the French, but there was no clear victor
3. The Somme (June-November 1916)
1. Britain on the offensive
1. 1400 guns deliver three million shells in five days
2. The ideas was to destroy the German trenches
2. German trenches withstood the attack
3. Brutal fighting
1. Hand to hand combat
2. 20,000 British killed on the first day
3. July-November: 1.1 million British, German, and French soldiers are dead
4. Neither side has won -- "The War had won"
4. Other Battles
1. Nivelle Offensive (April-May 1917)
2. Third Battle of Ypres (July-October 1917)
1. 500,000 casualties
3. Introduction of tanks had little effect
4. Airplanes used for reconnaissance only
5. Further stalemate on the Eastern Front
6. The war at sea was indecisive
6. War of Empires
1. Europe's colonies provided soldiers and material support
2. Britain and France
1. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa
2. 1.5 million Indian troops served as British forces (Western Front and Middle East)
3. French empire (North and West Africa) sent 607,000 to fight with the Allies
4. Colonies as theatres for armed engagement
1. Allies push the Turks out of Egypt (1916)
2. Lawrence of Arabia
3. British encourage Arab nationalism
4. Balfour Declaration and European Zionism
5. War draws Europe into the Middle East
3. The Irish revolt
1. British vulnerability
2. Sinn Fein ("Ourselves Alone")
1. Formed in 1900 for Irish independence
3. Home Rule Bill passes Parliament (1912)
4. "Irish question" tabled with outbreak of war
5. The Easter Revolt (1916)
1. Dublin
2. Plan to smuggle German arms failed
3. Revolt as military disaster
4. The British execute the rebels in public
6. New Home Rule Bill (1920)
7. Dominion status granted to Catholic Ireland (1921)
8. Civil war
9. Irish Free State established (1937)
10. Irish Republic (1945)
7. The Home Front
1. The costs of war: money and manpower
2. Mobilizing the home front
1. Single goal of military victory
2. "Total war"
3. Civilians are essential to the war economy
1. Produced munitions
2. Purchased war bonds
3. Tax hikes, inflation, and material privation (rationing)
3. Shift from industrial to munitions production
1. Increased state control of production and distribution
2. Germany and the Hindenburg Plan
4. Women in the war
1. Women as symbols of change
2. Massive numbers enter the munitions industry
3. Women enter clerical and service sectors
4. New opportunities
1. Breaking down restrictions
2. A new freedom
3. Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth
4. The "new woman"
1. Symbol of freedom and a disconcerting cultural transformation
5. Long-term changes
1. Women sent home after the war
1. Giving jobs to veterans
2. Governments pass "natalist" policies
1. Encouraging women to marry and raise children
3. Birth control
4. Universal suffrage: Britain (1918), United States (1919), France (1945)
5. Mobilizing resources
1. Mobilizing men and money
2. Conscription
1. Before 1914, military service seen as a duty not an option
2. France called up 8 million men (two thirds of the population of men age 18 to 40)
3. British introduce conscription in 1916
3. Propaganda
1. Important in recruitment
2. German Kultur
3. Films, posters, postcards, newspapers
1. The absolute necessity of total victory
4. Financing the war
1. Military spending rose to half a nation's budget
2. Allies borrowed from Britain, who borrowed from the United States
1. Britain left with a $4.2 billion debt
3. Germany prints its own money
1. Dramatic rise in inflation
2. Prices rose 400%
6. The strains of war, 1917
1. Declining morale of the troops
1. Troops see their commander's strategy as futile
2. Rise in number of mutinies
3. Self-mutilation
4. "War neuroses"
2. On the home front
1. Shortages of basic supplies (clothing, food, and fuel)
2. Price of bread and potatoes soared
3. From restraint to direct control
1. Governments issue ration cards
2. Government regulation of working hours and wages
3. Political dissent, violence, and large-scale riots
4. Industrial strikes
4. Governments pushed to their limits
8. The Russian Revolutions of 1917
1. Disillusionment with Nicholas II was general
2. World War I and the February Revolution
1. Russia was unable to sustain the political strains of extended warfare
2. After 1905, Nicholas was severely unpopular
3. Corruption in the royal court
4. Nicholas insisted on personally commanding his army
1. Alexandra and Rasputin
5. Poland and most of the Baltics fall to the Germans
1. One million Russian casualties
6. Russian army was poorly trained and undersupplied
7. Domestic discontent
1. Nicholas faces liberal opposition from the Duma
2. Soldiers were unwilling to fight
3. Militant labor movement and a rebellious urban population
8. February 23, 1917: International Women's Day (Petrograd)
1. Women march demanding food, fuel, and political reform
2. Within a few days, a mass strike of 300,000 people
3. Nicholas sends in the police and military
4. 60,000 troops stationed in Petrograd side with the revolt
5. Nicholas abdicates (March 2, 1917)
9. New centers of power
1. Provisional government (mostly middle-class leaders in the Duma)
1. Wanted to establish a democratic system under constitutional rule
2. Set up an election for a constituent assembly
3. Granted some civil liberties
2. The Petrograd Soviet
1. Organized by Leon Trotsky after the 1905 Revolution
2. Claims to be the legitimate power
3. Presses for social reform and the redistribution of land
4. Desires a negotiated settlement with Germany and Austria
3. The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution
1. Leadership of the Russian Social Democrats split over revolutionary strategy (1903)
1. Bolsheviks ("members of the majority")
1. Favored a centralized party of active revolutionaries
2. Revolution would lead to a socialist regime
2. Mensheviks ("members of the minority")
1. Move toward socialism gradually
2. Supported "bourgeois" or liberal reform
2. Mensheviks gain control of the party
3. Lenin (1870-1924)
1. Life
1. Born into the middle class
2. Expelled from the university for radical activity
3. His brother is executed for his part in a plot to assassinate Alexander III
4. Spends three years in Siberian exile
2. Lenin and socialism
1. Russian capitalism made socialism possible
2. Organizing the new class of industrial workers
3. Revolutionary zeal and Western Marxism
4. February-October 1917
1. Bolsheviks demands
1. An immediate end to the war
2. Improvement in working conditions
3. Redistribution of aristocratic lands to the peasantry
2. General Kornilov tries to restore Petrograd to order
3. Lenin calls for "Peace, Land, and Bread, Now" and "All Power to the Soviets"
4. Bolsheviks win support from workers, soldiers, and peasants
5. October 1917
1. Trotsky attacks the Provisional Government (October 24-25)
2. Lenin announces that "all power has passed to the Soviets" (October 25)
3. Provisional government flees the Winter Palace
4. A quick and bloodless revolution
6. The Bolsheviks in power
1. Moved against all political opposition
2. Expelled parties who disagreed with the Bolsheviks
3. Dispersed the Constituent Assembly
4. The one-party dictatorship
5. Peasant soldiers return home
6. The redistribution of land, the nationalization of banks, and workers control of factories
7. The Bolsheviks and the war
1. Negotiated a separate treaty with Germany at Brest-Litovsk (March 1918)
2. Russia surrenders the Ukraine, Georgia, Finland, Polish territories, and the Baltic states
3. Led to Civil War
8. Not so much a crisis of government, but an absence of government
9. John Reed and "ten days that shook the world"
1. The Allies: the revolution allowed Germany to win the war on the Eastern Front
2. Conservatives: feared a wave of revolution sweeping away other regimes
3. Socialists: startled to see a regime gain control so quickly in such a backward country
9. The Road to German Defeat, 1918
1. With Russia out of the war, Germany concentrated its efforts on the Western Front
2. The Allies feared Germany would win the war before the United States entered the war (April 1917)
3. Major German assault (March 21, 1917) brought the Germans within 50 miles of Paris
4. Allied counteroffensive (July and August)
1. New tanks and the "creeping barrage"
2. American troops
3. Allies' material advantage overcame the Germans
4. The German army is pushed into Belgium
5. The dismantling of the Central Powers
6. Germany fights alone
5. Germany surrenders (November 3, 1918)
1. On the verge of civil war
2. Bavarian republic (November 8)
3. Kaiser Wilhelm abdicates
4. The war officially comes to an end on November 11, 1918
6. The United States as a world power
1. A fast and efficient wartime bureaucracy
2. 300,000 shipped "over there" per month
3. Food and supplies
4. American intervention prompted by unrestricted warfare by German U-boats
5. The Zimmerman telegram
6. Woodrow Wilson
1. Making the world safe for democracy
2. Banish autocracy and militarism
3. Establishing a league of nations
4. Maintaining the international balance of power
7. Total War
1. "The Great War"
1. Changing technologies
2. Most innovations favored defense
3. The difficulty of offensive movement
4. Communications lagged behind firepower
5. Late arrival of wireless sets
6. 74 million soldiers mobilized
7. 6,000 persons killed per day for 1500 days
2. Warring nations as empires
1. Mobilization of global resources
2. Economies gave way to military priorities
3. Propaganda
4. Attacks on minority populations
1. "Relocation" and genocide: Armenia
8. Transformation: The Peace Settlement
1. Gone were the Russian, Austro-Hungarian and German empires
2. Rise of the United States as world power
3. Thirty nations attended the conference (January 1919)
1. More countries had investments in the war
2. Delegates attended to redress national as well as international issues
3. Conflicting aims made the peace process difficult
4. David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and Vittorio Orlando
5. Five treaties were signed, one with each of the defeated nations
6. Woodrow Wilson and the Fourteen Points
1. Wilsonian idealism
1. An end to secret treaties
2. Freedom of the seas
3. Removal of international tariffs
4. Reduction of national armaments
5. League of Nations
7. German losses
1. Alsace-Lorraine to France
2. Gave up territories to Denmark and Poland
3. Gave coal mines in the Saar to France for 15 years
4. Danzig put under the control of the League of Nations
5. Abolition of the air force, reduced the navy
6. Capped the army at 100,000 volunteers
7. All soldiers and fortifications to be removed from the Rhine valley
8. Article 231
1. The "war-guilt" provision
2. Reparations (set at $33 billion in 1821)
8. Other treaties
1. Based on Allies' strategic interests and on the principle of self-determination
1. Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were created
2. Poland was reestablished
3. Austria was separated from Hungary
2. Boundaries did not follow ethnic divisions
1. Guaranteed future problems of the 1930s
3. The Ottoman empire
1. The creation of modern Turkey
2. The "mandate system"
3. Continued attitude of western superiority
9. Covenant of the League of Nations
1. An arbiter of world peace?
2. Japan would not join
3. France demanded the exclusion of Germany and Russia
4. U.S. Congress refused to approve membership
10. Conclusion
1. Nine million dead
2. The "lost generation"
3. Global political and social discontent
4. Economic consequences: Europe displaced as the center of the world economy
5. The rise of the United States and Japan
6. Disillusionment and the decline of liberal democracy

 

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