Chapter 24: The First World War
Chapter Summary
In many ways the twentieth century began with the outbreak of world war in August 1914. The ostensible cause of the Great War was the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife Sophie at Sarajevo on June 28th. There were other, more subtle causes at work as well. The Bismarckian system of secret alliances had broken down. The Second Industrial Revolution created the chemical and electrical industries while at the same time changes in management practice increased the speed of efficient production. The end of the 19th century was also the period of the new imperialism in which the great powers of Europe and the United States made a desperate bid to colonize the uncolonized. An arms race was well-defined as well. On the cultural front, it has been said that Europe had perhaps become "flabby," that the grand system values that we call Victorianism had finally succumbed to its own weight. Something had to give and so Europeans welcomed war when it finally broke out in August 1914. It would be a glorious war and over by Christmas. It was not to be.
When the Great War broke out the leading nations of Europe were perhaps at the height of their power. The center of a world economy and controlling vast overseas interests and colonies, the great powers of Europe believed they were the harbinger of peace, prosperity and the progress of human civilization. But progress proved difficult to defend in the wake of a war that killed more than nine million people, decimated the French countryside, shackled Germany with "war guilt," and created the seeds for the authoritarian regimes of the interwar years. The Great War was a different kind of war. It was an "industrial war," waged by generals, businessmen and men in black suits who stood in their nation's capitals, comfortable with the knowledge that they were "directing" the war. The reality of the war -- hundreds of miles of mud-filled trenches, poor food, weapons that would not fire, machine guns, and poison gas -- was quite different. And while the foot soldier in Verdun, Ypres or the Marne carried sixty pounds on his back, and huddled in his trench, the big guns continued to pound Europe.
At war's end in 1918, all soldiers would have agreed with Edmund Blunden's bleak statement following the first day of the Battle of the Somme (July 1, 1916) that "both sides had seen, in a sad scrawl of broken earth and murdered men, the answer to the question. No road. No thoroughfare. Neither race had won, nor could win the War. The War had won, and would go on winning." Even worse to come was the answer to the question: who was responsible? "War is hell and those who initiate it are criminals," responded Siegfried Sassoon.
The Great War was a new war for a new century. It ushered state intervention into the economy and society. It brought women into the workforce and broke down gender barriers. It destroyed the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires and left Germany reeling under the pressure of galloping inflation. The Russians forced the abdication of their tsar and the Bolsheviks took power. It also produced the Treaty of Versailles, which served as the great humiliation Adolf Hitler needed to create the Nazi "new world order." But above all else, the Great War created the twentieth century.
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