Welcome back to the series of lectures on Western Civilization, the second half.
We’re going to talk about the Great War today, or World War I. Of course, the contemporaries
called it the Great War because there had not been a World War II; that won’t occur
until the 30s and 40s.
So we want to start here with context and then significance, and then what I’m going
to do is take you through the long-term causes of the War, and then we’ll look at the short-term
or immediate causes of the War.
We’ll briefly characterize the fighting that takes place here, especially on the Western
front, and then of course, we’ll have to talk about the Russian Revolution, about the
United States entry into the War in 1917, and then we’ll have to discuss the Versailles
Treaty – the peace settlement – and how Versailles sort of redraws the map of Europe.
So there’s a lot to do here, and we’ll break this up into separate lectures.
So let’s talk about context first.
I’m going to give you a couple.
The first context is historians refer that long period between the end of the Napoleonic
wars, 1815 to the beginning of the Great War in 1914; they refer to that as the long 19th
century.
What they mean by this is that we have this extended period of time where there is no
general war in Europe.
There are small, local wars; I’m thinking especially with Bismarck and the creation
of the German Empire.
But there’s no general conflagration in Europe.
World War I ends that long 19th century of peace.
A second context is more technical.
When we think of World War I, you have to refer back to those weapon systems that were
created to fight this war, weapon systems some of which had preceded the War, and most
of them have, of course, gone on and become perfected in the 20th century.
Just as an example, the tank.
The tank is created here.
Originally as an armored escort for infantry across no-man’s land.
Infantry would huddle behind a tank and follow it trying to keep from getting killed in this
so-called, no-man’s land where everything is at risk.
Later the tank will have a cannon placed on it, and it will become an offensive weapon.
But here, initially, it is a defensive weapon – as escort for infantry.
Of course, the airplane is going to be used here in World War I.
The Wright brothers, I don’t even remember when the airplane was invented or first flown.
I think it was 1904; it was early 2oth century, and here we are in 1914- the airplane has
been in existence for what?
A decade?
And we’re already using it in battle.
We have observation balloons.
We have machine guns, and of course, machine guns are going to dominate this War.
One man with a machine gun and plenty of ammunition and some protection can hold off hundreds,
if not thousands, of approaching enemy troops.
We have concertina wire.
You’ve seen this in depictions of no-man’s land, this circular razor wire strewn about
the battlefield to impede the advancement of the infantry.
We have submarines attacking enemy shipping.
Indeed, German unlimited submarine warfare will bring the United States into this War.
We have long-range artillery, huge artillery that can fire a shot for many, many miles
and do it quite accurately.
We have gas; poisonous gas is going to be used in this war.
Hitler himself will be wounded in a gas attack.
So we have all these weapon systems.
Again, some of them preceded the War.
All of them have been developed after the Great War and continue to be used.
So there is this technological context to the War.
I want to say something now that’s important regarding all these new weapon systems.
So let’s just move to our significances.
Our first significance – The generals in the First World War, their tactics never caught
up to the technology.
The generals continued to behave as if these were the Napoleonic wars of a hundred years
before.
They continued to feed their men into these ghastly, meat-grinding battles.
This is going to result in astronomical casualties.
We’re going to have casualties here in the Great War unlike anything ever seen in human
history.
So the generals’ tactics never caught up with the technology and we’ll look a little
closer at this, especially the Western front, in a later lecture.
Other significances – The great empires of Europe are destroyed as a result of this
War – the German Empire; the Austria-Hungarian Empire; the Ottoman Empire; and finally, the
Russian Empire.
These are all disbanded, and of course, it’s important to note that we’re going to create
new, small, weak countries where these empires has once existed, and I want you to keep this
in mind.
This is important; these new, small, weak countries are the seeds of the Second World
War.
Other significances – The United States is going to emerge as a world power as a result
of this War.
Lenin is going to take Russia out of the War and create the Soviet Union, the first communist
country.
So these are all big significances.
In fact, if you can understand the Great War, understand especially its settlement, then
the rest of the 20th century will begin to make sense.
Without the Great War, there’s no Hitler.
Without Hitler, there’s no Holocaust.
Without Hitler, there’s no Second World War in Europe.
Without the Great War, you don’t have Lenin and the Soviet Union.
Without the Soviet Union, you don’t have the Cold War.
So if you can understand the Great War, the rest of the 20th century will start to fall
into place.
So let’s start with – Let’s start talking about long-term causes, and there’s a number
of them, so I’m going to mention each one and then briefly give you some sense of why
it’s significant.
Let’s start with the unification of Germany, and you can look at the map here that we provide
for you, and you can see that Germany – prior to 1870 – was just a collection of little
principalities, little independent sovereign states.
After 1870 however, Bismarck – Otto Von Bismarck, the Chancellor – will take all
these independent German kingdoms and principalities and states, and will cobble them together
into a German Empire, and so suddenly in the heart of Europe you have a very new powerful
German state.
This makes the rest of Europe nervous.
Is this new Germany going to be aggressive?
Is it going to be friendly to its neighbors?
What does it want?
What are its ambitions?
So the center of gravity of Europe sort of shifts from London and Paris eastward to Berlin
with the creation of Germany, and we’ll see as we go through these long- and short-term
causes that it is Germany that seems to be the axis around which all of Europe revolves.
A second long-term cause – militarism – East of the Rhine, you notice that national leaders
are dressed in military uniforms.
You see military parades.
You see the military institutions exalted.
You see this increasing tendency to believe that the military has answers to political
problems.
So there’s an increasing militarism in Europe, and other places for that matter.
Third – nationalism – Nationalism is the sort of fervent – think of patriotism run
amuck.
There’s a sense here of people beginning to identify with their nation.
People had traditionally identified with their village, with their province, with their region.
Now people think of themselves as Frenchmen, as Germans, as Italians.
There’s a sense of an imagined community out there, of which we belong; we have something
in common with other Germans, other Frenchmen, other Italians, other Russians.
Even though we don’t know them and will never meet them, there is a sense that we
have something that binds us together.
So nationalism is going to allow these governments by 1914 to access the entire wealth and strength
of the country; these governments are going to have access to a national unit, not just
– When you think of the old feudal system, where the king depended upon the nobles to
bring their knights to fight the battles, that’s just a tiny, tiny percentage of the
population.
Here we’re going to involve the entire nation, not only in fighting but in producing the
war material to fight with.
A good example of nationalism is this photograph you can see here, of Hitler, a young Hitler
– in his twenties, he’s part of this big crowd you see.
I believe it’s in Munich, and you can see the people are very excited.
The announcement has just been made that Germany has declared war on Russia, and you can see
the crowd is ecstatic over this development, and you see a young Hitler here, taking off
his hat and smiling.
It’s one of the few pictures you see of Hitler smiling.
He’s excited along with the rest.
Nationalism - This sense that you are, you now identify with your nation and you are
part of a larger, imagined community – of which you have something at stake.
Another long-term cause is pan-Slavism – with a hyphen.
The Slavic language, of course, is dominant in Eastern Europe.
Russia is the largest Slavic-speaking country.
I want you to take a look at our map here and you’ll see those countries that are
Slavic speaking in green and I want you to notice little Serbia just south of Austria-Hungary.
Serbia is a Slavic-speaking country as well.
Pan-Slavism is a Russian idea; what is says, essentially, is that Russia – as the greatest
of the Slavic-speaking peoples – will protect her little Slavic brothers if they get into
trouble, and of course, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.
Serbia is going to provoke war with Austria-Hungary in 1914, and Russia is going to come to Serbia’s
aid.
This will lead to a catastrophic series of events that we’ll get into.
I’m going to do one more long-term cause, and then we’ll take a break and pick this
up later, and that is imperialism.
We discussed imperialism earlier, so I just want to make a note here that imperialism
tends to put the great powers in awkward positions sometimes.
Imagine French and British units colliding somewhere in Africa, and shots are exchanged,
men are killed.
Could a small local event in Africa, could that rebound back to Europe and put the great
powers at each other’s throats?
Imperialism creates awkward situations; it creates competition, bitterness, suspicion
– among the great powers, sort of poisons the atmosphere, and is one of the long-term
causes of the Great War.
Let’s stop there for the time being.
We’ll resume this and talk about some other long-term causes in our next lecture.
Thank you.